This is news to me, the racism in a lot of Doctor Who has been discussed at length for decades - you'd find plenty of stuff to write a book about - from Tomb of the cybermen to The Celestial Toymaker and so on.
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Doctor Who has largely been racist and sexist for most of its run. The Davies era was at least a bit better when it comes to sexism, but the Moffat era has now returned to type. Oh, and if the next Doctor, after Matt Smith, is a white dude - again - it would be blatant ignorance on the part of the producers.
I've never seen as many interracial couples in any television series as in Doctor Who during the RTD era.
The Timelords have spent the last million years indoors. Everyone on Earth used to be black, it's only taken a few tens of thousands of years for roughly the same looking ethnicity to divide into what we regard now as a typical strata of human diversity. And %99 percent of those tens of thousands of years, we as a species had mostly spent outdoors. English weather makes white people. If you want to chose, decree what colour your family will be graduating towards for the next thousand years, move and plant your legacy where the sunlight will reflect that aspiration, baring of course any catastrophic climate shift. So saying all that, what I found ridiculous was all the lilly white anglosaxon cavemen in The Savages. How many Asian actors were in Marco Polo?
Still if we want to talk about racism in mainstream Sci-fi, you'd have to go some way to beat "all the the black people went to live on an island" as we saw in the Legion of Super-Heroes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyroc I am watching "Chasing Liberty" a Mandy Moore Romcom about the pressure of dating when you're the first daughter, right now, and I still have the reserve to vomit a little more after learning about this Tyroc person. Although, to be fair... All the black people in the world didn't go to an island, it was just a handful of escaped slaves in the 19th century, who then invented super science and... If hyper intelligent telepathic Gorillas could invent super science before the rest of the world why not runaway African slaves half way to America? Hitler originally wanted to send the Jews to Madagascar. No tricks. He just wanted them out of sight. It wasn't until the Reich Treasurer broke down the cost of humanely shifting that many people so far away, that things got out of hand.
What a load of bollocks. Most of the issue is just with the fifth doctor. "Hi I'm a 19th century cricketer, I must be racist". I get fed up with all this shit. I remember reading this blog by some women who accused Moffat of being sexist. While I don't really like Moffat, sexist is one thing he is not really. At least not intended.
This is such bullshit. Why is society so precious about skin colour? I couldn't care less. Be proud about something you've achieved, not your race.
RTD era was racist as were a few classic stories but this article ignores all the actual cases? Black people were consistently portrayed as idiots under RTD. That said it's terribly ageist as is 99% of other tv. If they can get that many kid actors there should be old ones too. Villains are fun but other roles please too.
The audience isn't ready for that yet. Maybe in a few years, but, not now, too Controversial. Yea, 1960s Doctor Who was pretty Racist with caricatures like in Tomb of the Cybermen, but, you'd be hard pressed not to find that kind of thing in most shows from that time. Same with being Sexist. We've had Mickey and Martha as Companions, the Doctor gave all kinds of respect to the Indian lady in the Silurian two-parter Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, as well as the one in the The God Complex. Classic Who had Brigadier Bamberra in Battlefield. The Doctor has always been a White Male, not changing him to black is not a sign of racism, it's showing consistency, but, the door is open if/when they have an actor show up who's black and is the best for the part. I don't want them going out of their way to check the box, I just want the best actor for the job, and I would welcome him/her if he/she was black.
Neither Mickey, nor Martha were portrayed as being idiots for being Black. Mickey wasn't treated any more like an idiot or differently early on, then Rory was, and he grew into a great hero that had The Doctor's respect and Martha's only "idiocy" was expecting to get together with a Time Lord on the rebound, She was a Doctor, a Torchwood Agent, a UNIT Agent, she saved the world a couple of times. The Tree Lady certainly wasn't portrayed as idiot. Then of course there was Clyde in SJA
RTD threw Martha and Mickey together for no other reason than they're black. As stated though, racism rarely bothers me and I find the idea that races compete with eachother in the Offence Olympics as to who suffers the most injustice to be hilarious. I heard a recent interview with Jamie Foxx where he claimed there was "nothing in the world more dangerous than being a black man in America today". Get perspective, people. Oddly, I almost NEVER hear complaints that Chinese people aren't portrayed well in Doctor Who, despite them easily having the most legitimate case. We've had 2 black companions in the modern series. What the fuck more are people expecting!? What do the black community feel they're still owed? 3 black Doctors!? No other minority community whines this much, despite them getting FAR less exposure in the media. When was the last time you saw a Native American headline a blockbuster movie?
Eh...Mickey traded up(From a Shop Girl who treated him like garbage to a Medical Doctor/Secret Agent)
I do think it's unfortunate that Martha was his "rebound companion". If the Doctor had been as obsessed with her as Rose, Amy or Clara I think it'd be harder to raise the question of race. I think Indians/Pakis have probably been given short shrift the most considering they outnumber blacks in the UK from what I've read. SJA did a pretty good job with Clyde and Rani and they really grew on you by the end.