Goodreads feminist reviews - Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside

Book: Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside, by Stephen Cole.

2.5/5 Goodreads review also here.

 This is the fourth DW book with Rose and the Ninth Doctor that I've read, and while I quite enjoyed the rest of them, this one didn't quite hook me :S The narration style and quality wasn't my favourite, and even though I think the premise was really promising, I also think the social criticism got derailed quite a lot by the alien menace of the story, which is a shame :S Some spoilers in the points below!

+1 The initial premise of a human-made planetary system serving as a series of concentration/labour camps and prisons for the criminals of the Galaxy, both human and alien, was very promising, and there was some social criticism related to that in the story. The system is corrupted, primarily based on money and people in high ranks gaining power (no surprises there). People are mistreated, tortured and exploited in the labour camps, which also include several science experiment projects using the detainees as test subjects and problem-solvers. Those deemed criminals (it seems that often unjustly or for minor offenses) are sent to long prison terms, with abusive wardens and minimally decent living conditions. There is also some criticism of speciesism and racism/xenophobia in the way the system segregates humans and aliens in different complexes, and seems to mainly exploit the latter for their science projects.

-1 All this background called for way more social criticism than we finally ended up getting, though. Mid-story, the social criticism content that was coming via the Doctor and Rose against this human-made penitentiary system is suddenly basically put on hold indefinitely as the alien antagonists - Slitheen and other Raxacoricofallapatorian families - turn out to be impersonating more than one high rank officer in the complex. From this point, I felt like the Slitheen aliens (the main antagonists are actually not from the Slitheen family, but I'm going to use it this way to avoid saying 'Raxacoricofallapatorians' xD) became the only antagonists in the tale, effectively seeming to shift the blame to them and pretty much forgetting about the *human*-made complex full of freaking labour camps and prison mistreatment :S

The fact that most of the human workers and leaders mentioned are either Slitheen posing as them (these are also the most evil and morally wrong), or described as more greymoral and/or becoming allies of the Doctor and Rose (even though more than one continues to be complicit in the system) doesn't really help matters in this case. The end also reminded me of Kerblam! in this way - The aliens are fully defeated and these greymoral humans who became allies of the Doctor suddenly find themselves in charge of matters and decide to make the system better. Which could sound good and like a very Whovian ending, but it's not fully clear which subjective criteria they are going to implement and if they're actually making the complex less of an authoritarian, capitalist, exploitative torture detainment site and more of a humane set of prisons for those who do deserve a prison sentence. The freaking existence of labour camps are also not really addressed at this point, and the Doctor and Rose seem to only insist on them freeing those detained aliens and human inmates who have helped in the cause against the Slitheen :S.

The fact that the social critique was so suddenly shifted to the bad alien menace of the Slitheen against the not-so-bad-after-all humans does whitewash and diminish the actual problematic issues the story was dealing with in the first place, I think. 

Nine was in this mode until...he just wasn't because the plot decided the sole baddies were the aliens :S

+1 I quite liked how Rose was depicted in the tale. She is well characterized and very proactive, as usual. She spends most of the book on her own and becomes a Doctor-figure at one point with a companion of her own, a low-rank male warden from the prison they sent her to. There is also some female bonding and Bechdel going on, with Rose making friends with her fellow cell inmate, Riz, and also developing alliances and tenous friendly dynamics with scientist warden Flowers and other fellow female inmates.

+-1 However, I felt like the Doctor was more 2D and less interesting to read about in this tale. I quite like the Ninth Doctor, but I don't think he was as fleshed out in this tale as he could have been, even though he has his fair share of social criticism (while it lasts, at least :S), techno babble and action.

-1 Even though I think Rose is well depicted and there are a fair number of female characters in this book, the treatment of the rest of the female characters is sorely lacking in some respects. The descriptions of each and every one of the women in this book scream of 'male writer syndrome' and are full of problematic and pretty sexist clichés - The narrator keeps evaluating their physical appearance in a way that's unsolicited, cringy and a double standard compared to most male characters, and more than one woman, be she a high-ranking officer, a scientist, an inmate or a warden, or even an alien, are helpfully described as being 'fat', 'plain', 'old', 'short', 'jealous of prettier women', or 'with more testosterone than the thin male warden they're comparing her to'. This soured my experience of the book quite a lot.

Me every time yet another female character got described in this way

-1 There are also some problematic jokes having to do with implementing 'mixed-sex cells' with male and female inmates in the teenager prison Rose is sent to, clearly drawing on the sexual assault possibilities :S However, most inmates also choose to behave like prom is coming and making lists of which inmates are hot?? Female inmates also seem to prefer to obsess over handsome male wardens rather than feel miffed about their generally horrible treatment - coincidentally, these are the most humane and sympathetic of the complex, compared to the b*tchy female wardens :S . It's worth mentioning that the evil Slitheen were actually hoping that the 'mixed-sex cells' would lead to the inmates reproducing and giving them more labourers for their exploitative purposes (aka sexual assault in more than one case, and women as incubators, yay :S).

-1 In the same line of thought, scientist warden Flowers, who works in the alien labour camp the Doctor is trapped in and who becomes her companion of sorts in this tale, is depicted as 'plain', nearing early middle age and 'overweight', and thus, horribly insecure, forever jealous of prettier women and desperately 'needing some exercise', and the Doctor himself puts it because she can't keep up with him when running (wow). She's also pragmatic in the moral sense and doesn't really care about exploiting other people if that means her career is going well, but even so all that is brushed aside pretty quickly, and she ends the story with even more control in the complex (after all, the baddie was her female superior who was actually an Slitheen in disguise, not the complicit underlings). But instead of actually making the system better like they claim they want to do, she starts making a list of 'hot male inmates sentenced for minor offenses' so that they can be their personal assistants. WTF. Feminism this is not.

When a female character is butchered with sexist tropes but ends up redeemed for being complicit in the system and not for any correction of said sexist tropes :S

-1 There are also some unfortunate racist touches here and there - The sole female character described as Asian is said to be stereotipically 'petite and delicate, but with a comically low voice' (wat), and the few black and dark-skinned characters are described as 'swarthy', and who even uses that anymore to describe poc, it sounds so cringy??

+-1 There is some greymorality going on, both among the humans in charge of the penitentiary complex and among the Slitheen, which I do appreciate, even though that also becomes a bit problematic when complicit underlings in the system are not really held accountable in the story :S Or that the most sympathetic and humane wardens in the story turn out to be male, which kinda promotes more the archetype of the b*tchy (they're called this in the book more than once) woman in charge :S The actual Slitheen in this book are more greymoral and become tenous allies of the Doctor in most of the story, as they are also against the other Raxacoricofallapatorian family who serves as the main antagonists of the tale. There are also two female Slitheen in the tale with proactive roles.

Rose is also initially bullied and attacked by a pack of female inmates (fully stereotyped as big, burly and rough) who give her a very hard time, but in the end they kind of apologize for it when Rose becomes a hero figure of the prison with her uncovering the Slitheen. She shouldn't have to prove herself in this way to be respected, though - although I kind of loved the idea of Badass Boss Rose Tyler becoming famous in the teenage prison and getting a reputation as the ultimate rebel disruptor xD, and also the fact that Nine tried to get her out of the prison by claiming she was a genious astrophysicist who was needed for the science project the Doctor was made to work on, and Rose actually using her wits to trick the wardens into that assumption in spite of her zero science skills!

I am always here for Baddass Rose Tyler

-1 And to conclude this, the Slitheen are not my fave Whovian alien at all, I actually quite dislike them. Apart from the juvenile 'farts and belches' shenanigans (which I'm not a fan of) and the horrible prosthetics, the rampant fatphobia in their characterization is the main reason for this. The book ends up basically demonizing all fat people because they might be monsters in disguise, and I find that deeply disturbing :S Rose and other characters have to be careful of any fat person in power they encounter because an Slitheen might be lurking inside, ready to chase and kill them, and it's actually a huge plot twist when one of them turns out to be in the body of a *gasp* slim woman.

When I started reading this book, I linked the title, The Monsters Inside to another Whovian critique of how humans can often be the actual monsters rather than the monstrous aliens we're supposed to be thinking about. Especially with the background of a dystopian human complex full of concentration camps and prison mistreatment. But we actually got a very literal meaning of the title, with the murderous, power-hungry Slitheen hiding inside the humans in power and becoming the actual baddies of the tale. Which was pretty disappointing, but ah well.