There's a land to burn out everything that you've learned

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Internet! I am looking for a good database and/or personal recommendations of science fiction media foregrounding characters of color. My father was expressing his disappointment in the latest season of Doctor Who tonight and he is quite right (among other complaints) that reverse-fridging a male character reads much less cleverly and much more sketchily when the male character is black. I should like to be able to recommend him some antidotes.¹ More than one person of color in the cast preferred—who are not the canaries in the coal mine or the sacrifices on behalf of the white characters, if there are any white characters; there don't need to be. Bonus points from my perspective if there are women with agency and queer characters. (I should just hand him Janelle Monáe's back catalogue, right?) He is a hard sell on animation and does not play games, but enjoys things that are not in English. I can do this a lot more easily with books.

1. It is not like my father has never seen science fiction with protagonists of color; he followed Eureka for a while just because it contained Joe Morton. I just know there's always room for more. A lot of room.

Comments

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Yes.

Right. Soon as I get a functioning DVD drive again, that's the plan.

(My laptop no longer burns DVDs. I hate planned obsolescence.)

Seconding above recs for Sleepy Hollow (silly and ridiculous but good, as long as you are willing to ignore the blatantly misogynist writing of Katrina Crane), DS9, and Elementary (OMG how perfect is Joan Watson? The perfectest, that's how).

Thank you! If nothing else, I'll probably start watching these shows. I missed Elementary when it first aired because I was feeling burnt out on Holmes, but then I kept hearing really good things about it, like Joan Watson and Mrs. Hudson being actually played by a trans actress. Most of my friends' Tumblrs are full of Sleepy Hollow by now.

If your dad watched Eureka, he's probably already aware of Warehouse 13 (also campy and ridiculous at times) which featured a black woman in the main ensemble for the first three(?) seasons, and a black woman in the supporting cast for the entire run.

I'll check with him!

I'm not sure if Person of Interest counts as scifi or dystopian thriller, but the black woman cop in the first three seasons was excellent. She got written out and replaced with a light/passing Iranian/Spanish actress, sadly.

I haven't seen Person of Interest, but I have the impression it contains artificial intelligence, so that's sci-fi by me. So noted about the written-out black character. Bah.

but I feel like I have to shout out Enthiran for the single most ridiculous mecha scene in film history.

Yes! The giant robot made out of normally human-sized robots extends one massive hand and gives the army the finger which is a robot with its middle finger raised. That was something.