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Dubaious Doctor
“Surely this most
progressive of programmes should not be
filming one of this year’s specials in such
an unsavoury place,” says the
Gareth McLean On TV blog in a piece
headlined
The
Doctor in Dubai: dubious indeed.
Doctor Who fan
Stephen Blake reports.
McLean begins his piece
rather tantalisingly. He invites us to
envisage a scene from a Doctor Who
story, as the TARDIS appears in a windswept
desert and the Doctor steps out onto the
dunes.
“Beyond the sands,” says
McLean, “there is a glittering capital full
of futuristic skyscrapers, extravagant
edifices and peoples from all over the
planet in pursuit of pleasure in the
metropolis’s plentiful fun palaces.”
He goes on:
But there is a
sinister side to this sparkling city. It
is built on slave labour, at an enormous
ecological cost, and some of its
population is criminalised just for
being who they are. Moreover, it is
ruled by a rich-as-Croesus dynasty
unwilling to give its people that most
basic of rights – the vote – while its
police and judiciary are no strangers to
excessive force and Kafka-esque
machinations. In short, it’s just the
sort of place that the Doctor – the
moral, courageous Doctor with his
beliefs in equality and justice and
difference – would find cause to fight
for right and justice.
Well, we’ve all seen
Who episodes that could well pan out
like this. But here is where McLean begins
to make his argument. For this is not from a
Who episode – past or proposed – but
the real-life scenario that will play out
when Who actually films in Dubai,
where the BBC has, “in its infinite wisdom”,
says McLean, decided to film part of one of
its specials.
“That’s the Dubai that
isn’t a democracy,” he says, continuing:
Dubai with its
dubious human rights record, appalling
treatment of migrant workers and
flagrant disregard for the environment.
Dubai, where you can
be arrested for being gay and jailed
for up to 10 years. To that list, you
can now add – because you can be sure
the emirate’s tourist board will –
Dubai: location for BBC1 hit drama
Doctor Who. Come! Bring your
children!
Filming even some
of the famous Doctor’s adventure there is
plain wrong, McLean argues.
Leaving aside the
lack of democracy just for a moment,
[. . .] most people will be familiar
with the emirate’s zero tolerance
approach to drugs that has resulted in
quite bonkers situations such as
that of Briton Tracy Wilkinson. In
2005, she was arrested in Dubai for
having codeine in her system. She spent
two months in jail where she contracted
dysentery before being released after
her GP wrote to confirm that he had
prescribed the drug for Wilkinson’s bad
back.
And there’s by far
the most atrocious of Dubai’s offences –
its treatment of migrant workers. It is
no secret that Dubai’s glimmering towers
and artificially created islands in the
shape of palm fronds, the world and Kate
Moss’s nostrils were and continue to be
built by cheap-to-the-point-of-enslaved
labour.
Not only has his own
paper reported on this, but Human Rights
Watch have done much work on the subject
and, “though such organisations are barely
tolerated there, workers’ rights groups
campaign in the United Arab Emirates”.
McLean asked Nicholas
McGeeghan, who runs one such organisation,
what he thought of the BBC’s decision to
film in Dubai. He told the journalist, “The
United Arab Emirates’ [of which Dubai is a
part] systematic racial discrimination
against migrant workers in the worst cases
constitutes enslavement. Any project which
adds value to ‘brand Dubai’ is to be
actively discouraged.”
What does the Beeb have
to say about it? “Well,” says McLean, “this
is the line they gave me when I asked for
their response: ‘There are no restrictions
governing the filming of BBC drama in
Dubai.’ ”
He says the corporation
might argue that the emirate “has a
substantial film infrastructure and provides
a unique location that is too expensive to
create using CGI and unavailable in the UK –
or anywhere else where people have the
vote”. He continues:
Well you know what?
Change the setting of the story. They
never miss an opportunity to mention
Doctor Who’s Welsh pedigree and the
BBC commitment to nations-and-regions,
so what the heck are they doing nipping
off to the UAE? (See also the plans to
film another of the specials in
America.)
He then goes on to
tear a strip off Russell T Davies, the
gay writer and producer who brought Who back to our screens when
Christopher Eccleston became the ninth
Doctor. But you feel that McLean is
laying into Davies somewhat reluctantly,
because he seems to have a lot of
respect for the man.
Davies, he says, has
“no problem” with filming Doctor Who
in Dubai – “Dubai, let me remind you
again, regards homosexuality as a
crime”. He continues:
That’s Davies who has
been
named the most influential gay person in
the UK. Davies, whose work such as
Queer as Folk,
Bob and Rose
and indeed Doctor Who, has been
ground-breaking in terms of giving gay
people visibility and representation on
television. Davies, who has never been shy
of championing equality for gay people or
castigating those who campaign against it.
Davies who is practically a god at the BBC
and could surely, if he so wished, have
vetoed the Dubai idea.
I’m not saying that all
Davies’s decisions should be made on the
basis of his sexuality but let’s face it – a
lot of his writing is. There are those on
these very blogs that bang on about Davies’s
pro-gay agenda in Doctor Who.
(Actually I’d argue that it’s a pro-equality
agenda and who can argue with that really?)
So what are we supposed to think of Davies’s
apparent lack of concern about the
criminalisation of homosexuality in Dubai?
That only gays of paler hues are entitled to
equal rights?
Unequivocally, McLean
says there is no justification for filming
in Dubai other than its cheapness and that
the folk at the BBC “fancied a jolly”.
By filming there, he
says, the BBC and Doctor Who are
“lending Dubai credibility and
respectability – neither of which it
deserves”.
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Who'd credit
it:
Doctor Who
“lending Dubai
credibility and respectability
– neither of which it deserves”. |
And it goes against
everything that the Doctor as a character
stands for, he reckons. “At best, filming
Doctor Who in Dubai is stupid. At worst,
it’s hypocritical – and it’s hypocrisy
fuelled by hubris at that. What would the
Doctor do?”
Since writing the piece,
McLean has been responding to comments that
appeared under it:
Well this is all
terribly lively – and there’s plenty I
could respond to. Of course, those of
you who disagree with me are entitled to
your opinion on Dubai but don’t try and
[sic] obscure the facts that have
been reported by the likes of Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty and Nicholas
McGeeghan’s organisation at
www.mafiwasta.com. Or do they all
have a secret agenda too? Are they part
of a worldwide homosexual conspiracy
demanding gay parades on every street in
every country? (If they are and they get
their way, you’ll find me on the Brunch
float!)
Alexanderm – are you
really suggesting I travel to a country
that criminalises me for who I am? And
are you saying that you cant comment on
a country unless you’ve been there? May
I refer you again to the HRW and Amnesty
International reports. Even if you cant
be bothered looking those up,
thebustyaliens writes of his/her
experience of the UAE. Are you going to
find some way to discredit that view?
Has s/he been there too much?
As it says up top, my
real beef is that a progressive
programme such as Doctor Who –
run as it is by someone who professes to
be similarly progressive and has
demonstrated that forward-thinking in
the past – is to be filmed somewhere
contrary to the values it embodies.
Moreover, I don’t think its too much to
question the appropriateness of spending
public money in the form of the licence
fee somewhere like Dubai. By visiting
the emirate, Doctor Who and the
BBC endorse it and give it credibility
that I do not believe it deserves.
Finally, can I just
say to the likes of AdamDJT – the BBC
confirmed to me that some of one of this
years Doctor Who specials will be
filmed in Dubai. This blog is not based
on fan speculation – its based on the
BBC confirming to me that Dubai will be
used as a location. How much clearer do
you need me to be? If you don’t believe
me, lets wait and see, shall we?
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