Happy colony

[cosmolinguist]

Still typing on my phone (Andrew's got a new laptop but until it's set up needs mine 24/7 so that he can keep up a steady enough stream of Twitter) so I'll have to be quick.

I finally got to see last week's episode of Doctor Who and while generally I liked it (at first I was wary of the premise for how Russell Davies it sounded, but it didn't do too badly with it), there was one thought I had during it that has stuck in my brain.

So I don't think this is spoilery but obviously opinions on what counts as a spoiler differ. I'd say this is in the "it contained the following general types of plot device" category, but I suppose that might be up for debate too.

Because I'd seen a lot of people's reactions to this episode already, I knew one of them went something like "you can tell white people write Doctor Who because when he asks Bill why she wants to go to the future instead of the past, her answer isn't just 'I'm a black woman.' "

Similarly, I can tell the show isn't written by immigrants because it inescapably hinges on the colonists' assumption that they can be happy all the time because they're headed to this utopia that's been built for them where everything is perfect.

Even if it had lived up to those utopian expectations, that would not have stopped grief being there.

Moving so irrevocably away from home leaves you grieving for everyone you left there. Except in some ways its worse than if they died, because you know they're grieving for you too. Some people (if you're lucky, all of them if you're not) you will probably never see again, no matter how much you love them.

There'd be homesickness. There'd be nostalgia in the sense it was first intended, as a proper disease people even died from, as well as its colloquial meaning today. There'd be dreams about the voices of lost people. We're sometimes fine when contemplating the big things, but then cry because we remember the pattern on the dishes, the noise the door made when it closed, or the colors in the sky.

You couldn't have a colony without grief.

Comments

[silveradept]

Yes. There's no way that someone would be able to avoid unhappiness for everything. If that were a glitch in the system, it should have been discovered and ironed out. Or something.

[sfred]

<3

[miss_s_b]

Can I put this in GT for tomorrow?

[cosmolinguist]

Sure, if you like!

[miss_s_b]

And yeah, to the point of this: even if you are fleeing from war and horror, and even if you've brought most of your loved ones with you, there would still be things you'd miss, even something like the shape of the hills or the colour of the flowers

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah. And certainly that people were more fleeing to this colony than going with any sense of choice or optimism, it just seems like a bigger plot hole the more I think about it.

[(Anonymous)]

Or just written by someone with massive privilege

[davidgillon]

Really good observation.

I'm just back from a trip home, and after 32 years in Kent, not Durham, I'm still instinctively calling Durham 'home'. We did a trip into the local countryside while I was there and it's skylines and colours and wildlife that are right at some fundamental level.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to get up to Durham three or four times a year, but coming back to my theoretical home afterwards only seems to get harder.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, it's definitely not something a person has to love to another country to experience (I had it when I went to college too, and that was still quite close by and quite similar a part of the world really). I just think the more difficult and infrequent the trips back, the worse the feelings can get.

Skylines are a big one for me, too. I realized in recent years I only feel "at home" with a nice big horizon around me. (Something I rarely experience here, even the seaside kinda works for this though obviously it's very different from living in the middle of a continent in every other way!) I miss seeing stars at night, too, which surprised me.

[davidgillon]

There's a Welsh term, hiraeth*, that sums up the yearning and loss very well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraeth

* I don't speak Welsh, but my best friend is Welsh and has talked about it.

[cosmolinguist]

I think I'd heard of hiraeth, vaguely. I'm terribly interested in this kind of thing, have been since I somehow encountered saudade (a Portuguese word mentioned in that entry for hiraeth which seems to have a similar meaning) soon after my brother died and I moved here and it just seemed so perfect for how I was feeling all the time.

[davidgillon]

Yeah, homesick doesn't really seem to cover it adequately, perhaps because 'sick' really doesn't have the nuance needed.

How are you with heights?

[po8crg]

Because a trip to Cloud 23 might be good for you with the horizons thing.

Re: How are you with heights?

[cosmolinguist]

I love heights, I looked through the glass floor there and everything.

Cloud 23's not my type of place normally, though I do like that when you're there you don't see the Hilton blighting the skyline. ;)

Re: How are you with heights?

[po8crg]

When Owen Street is finished, there's supposed to be a viewing platform up there somewhere (that will be twice as high as C23), but I'll happily take you to Cloud 23 and buy a few drinks if you need to see a horizon a long way away.

Re: How are you with heights?

[cosmolinguist]

That is terribly sweet of you and a thing we really must do, it sounds like a lot of fun.

[skington]

Surely this was the point the writer was making? This was a technocratic rush-job , organised and staffed by the survivors of a war, and it went horribly wrong until a benevolent Time Lord turned up, saved the day, and told the humans not to be so bloody stupid next time?

To me, it sounds like a standard government IT procurement snafu.

[cosmolinguist]

I think it sounds like that because IT government projects also tend to be done by people who assume everyone is like them--often because they're while men? :)