Complain about terrible storylines all you want but now isn't must different from what it was in the past. People considered interracial relationships and being gay in the past the same way you consider "fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now".

> Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer.

People were been just as dismissive about interracial kiss in the 60s. About gay relationships in the 70s and 80s.

Evolve or become a dinosaur.

What if the societal trends were in the opposite direction? Should you evolve or become a dinosaur then too? If so, why bother caring at all?

Unless you're corrupted by archaic religious morals, generally it's pretty obvious to tell when society is progressing or regressing.

It did not “make sense”. It was a concerted effort to include women and other races, which was controversial at the time.

If it made sense, why was it so groundbreaking?

So it’s not consistent that show set in America be multi-racial and have people with different sexual orientations?

Back in the 90s, they showed Jadzia Dax as being interested in men and women on Star Trek DS9.

Not to mention X-men has always been a allegory of prejudice against minorities.

I think it's more that Netflix just has poor execution on a lot of shows.

When telling a story on TV, you often want to cut the story to the bone such that it can be understood quickly and entertain without confusing the viewer with side tangents that aren't central to the story. If a non-story-essential element is too prominent then the viewer might feel it's boring

This happened to Doctor Who. Too much emphasis on LGBTQ rather than good stories.

Sad, really; Whitaker nailed the role as the Doctor. At least the most recent season made up for it. The previous season's attempt at giving everything a woke angle simply turned out to be really, really boring sci-fi.

That's good to hear, I might it up again.

They forgot the golden rule of tv, make a good show first.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, when exactly did that happen? Most people who enjoyed the new show and dropped out did so with the Thirteenth Doctor (Whittaker). There were some episodes that made me roll my eyes (e.g. the Rosa Parks one) but personally I mostly I lost interest because of the pacing and the IMO blandness of the characters and the lack of chemistry between them (again, this is just me).

But the show was pretty much about identity for most of its first ten series, not to mention that you could say that there is an inherent aspect of transness to the character of the Doctor (especially their experience with other characters familiar with past incarnations of the Doctor). The show plays a lot with gender, especially around the timelords.

Heck, even on a purely literal textual level the show is extremely LGBTQ from the start. Captain Jack Harkness is openly bisexual (or pansexual) and flirts with the (male presenting) Doctor who is clearly intrigued. The "love triangle" subplots largely play out more as depictions of polyromantic relationships rather than sources for drama. Even without featuring any clearly trans characters, the show is fundamentally queer if you even barely scratch the surface of it.

I guess if you want to consider the show overly "woke", that started as early as when Martha Jones became a companion because her race became relevant to the plot. The only thing that changed with the newer series is that the writing IMO got sloppier.

I don’t remember Harkness, love triangles, or sexuality pre-reboot Doctor Who. I don’t recall any Doctor having relationships with companions pre-reboot, yet the opportunity to showcase that was always possible. It was a sci-fi kids show that didn’t include love, but still had great stories.

So you dislike the entire new show starting with the Ninth Doctor, not just the more recent series. That's important context. FWIW I'd argue that the Eight Doctor also had a heavy romance subplot, so I guess your cut-off is 1989.

That's all percectly reasonable but I don't see how this has anything to do with the discussion related to the article, given that the new Doctor Who show started in 2010, Netflix only started doing its own productions in 2013 and most complaints about "too much politics" tend to be about media produced in the mid-2010s onwards (the Ghostbusters reboot was released in 2016).

Would anyone say that a show emphasized heterosexuality too much?

Yes. Even before the source material for GOT dried up it was borderline unwatchable due to the constant nudity.

I’m really not a prude, I hope, but I prefer to keep my intriguing and backstabbing separate from my softcore pornography.

Do you have an example of this preaching from Netflix? I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're referring to, but maybe I just haven't seen it