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Popular Culture Review
town marshal, Isaac, who, confronted with an impossible situation, sticks
to his convictions and fights to protect everyone, eventually dying while
saving the town’s most-wanted resident. Faced with the threat of
imminent death, the townspeople panic before seeing the fault in their
actions, and the entire eollectivity comes together in order to resolve the
crisis. Though fear, anger, and cowardice are some of the most
prominent emotions shown by the Americans in this episode, the
character of Isaac shines brightly enough to bring the whole town to a
place of compassion and courage. Unfortunately, this overwhelmingly
positive image of Amerieans does not persist, as the show again uses a
voracious American villain two episodes later.
Similar to the very first American character seen in the new
series of Doctor Who, Julius Grayle is an intense man with a penchant
for rare and dangerous artifacts. Described as a “crime boss with a
collecting fetish” {Doctor Who “Angels Take Manhattan”), Grayle, just
like Van Statten, has captured a living alien specimen whom he tortures
“to know if it [can] feel pain” {Doctor Who “Angels Take Manhattan”).
With this despicable American character dying at the hands of his own
dangerous collectibles, the show again warns of the dangers of greed
implicitly associated to the American materialistic way of life.
We observe a definite tendency over the first six seasons, which
consists in casting British actors to play the most likable American
characters, i.e., those who redeem themselves over the course of the
episode; the truly contemptible Americans are indeed played by
Americans. Laszlo, a dumb but well-intentioned man constitutes the only
exception; however, he becomes half pig, an arguably more literal or
visual metaphor for an undesirable character. In the current season
(Season Seven), both the irreproachable American character of Mercy’s
marshal and the materialistic villain Grayle are played by Americans,
which tends to level the semiotic content of the representation; as Doctor
Who goes increasingly global, the image of the American is hence further
negotiated in terms of ethical value: even American actors can play good
American characters.
Perhaps the most striking changes brought to the show in order
to accommodate a new, globalized and U.S. culture-aware audience—in
or out of the United States—^have been within the Doctor himself
Originally, armed with nothing but a sonic screwdriver, the good Doctor
touts the importance of mercy and second-chances. He scolds those who
wield weapons and repeatedly reprimands those he thinks guilty of