Call the Midwife 8.04
Feb. 6th, 2019 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakYES! Ever since Graham in Doctor Who outed himself as a Call the Midwife fan, I was hoping the show would reciprocate, and in this episode it did.
Figures that Sister Monica Joan would be the DW fan of the first hour. I already squeed when we heard the theme tune coming from the tv, but lo and behold, the episode gave us even glimpses at the serial our heroines were watching, which was The Aztecs. This also meant we can date this „Call the Midwife“ episode to somewhere between May 23rd to June 13 in 1964. Which was of interest to me in a far more serious matter, about which more in a minute. Anyway, go show! Now Sister Monica Joan must convert the other midwives to the joys of time travel in a police box.
In terms of continuity, I was pleased that something an earlier episode brought up – the fact that the medical text books in Britain don’t hold much information on diseases mostly relevant to African countries, which due to the population shift now means doctors and nurses are lacking important knowledge of how to treat their new patients – gets some follow up via Valerie and Lucille taking classes in tropical diseases. I also changed my mind re: the opening episode doing another abortion story. This one does as well, revealing we’re dealing with a feature, not a bug. What this sent me googling was when abortion law changed in the UK, which turns out to have happened in 1967. Because the other thing not a bug but a feature was that both Dr. Turner and Trixie earlier in the episode failed their patient by only repeating platitudes of how she would surely cope and how the law was the law etc.; by the end, both Patrick and Trixie raised that very point themselves, and methinks both of them will end up as „legalize abortion not just in case of threat to a mother’s life“ activists before the season is over. Which, mind you, is bound to cause conflict, angst and distress. For all that Sister Julienne et al are horrified for women damaged (or in this case killed) by an illegal and incompetent abortion, I can’t see them becoming pro choice. Phyllis and Valerie, yes. None of the nuns, and Shelagh didn’t leave her faith behind when leaving the order. Lucille, I don’t know, but probably not. Anyway, this is actually a valid storyline for a show taking place in the sixties – some medical practitioners realising keeping abortions (safe when the life of the mother is threatened) illegal won’t stop abortions but will endanger a great many women’s lives by deciding the law must change.
The other cases of the week, the estranged mother and daughter both pregnant, went the optimistic way by the mother seeing the light re: her Sikh son-in-law, but given the darkness of the abortion storyline, I’m all for a lighter counterpart. Incidentally, when Shelagh and Sister Julienne had their conversation about the mother and daughter and Shelagh made the comparison to Angela and herself, you could tell that Sister Julienne was thinking more in terms of her own relationship to Shelagh when „mother and daughter“ came to mind. She really tries hard to be non-partisan as befits her position, but come on; she does love Shelagh best. Her assigning the younger of the two new nuns, Frances, to Shelagh for mentoring could also be interesting in terms of Shelagh’s Bernadette past.
Lastly: I must admit it did crack me up that the Phyllis-smitten Seageant Wolf is now nicknamed Baloo by the boy scouts while Phyllis is still Akeela. Also, was that a David Bailey exhibition they accidentally ended up watching?
Figures that Sister Monica Joan would be the DW fan of the first hour. I already squeed when we heard the theme tune coming from the tv, but lo and behold, the episode gave us even glimpses at the serial our heroines were watching, which was The Aztecs. This also meant we can date this „Call the Midwife“ episode to somewhere between May 23rd to June 13 in 1964. Which was of interest to me in a far more serious matter, about which more in a minute. Anyway, go show! Now Sister Monica Joan must convert the other midwives to the joys of time travel in a police box.
In terms of continuity, I was pleased that something an earlier episode brought up – the fact that the medical text books in Britain don’t hold much information on diseases mostly relevant to African countries, which due to the population shift now means doctors and nurses are lacking important knowledge of how to treat their new patients – gets some follow up via Valerie and Lucille taking classes in tropical diseases. I also changed my mind re: the opening episode doing another abortion story. This one does as well, revealing we’re dealing with a feature, not a bug. What this sent me googling was when abortion law changed in the UK, which turns out to have happened in 1967. Because the other thing not a bug but a feature was that both Dr. Turner and Trixie earlier in the episode failed their patient by only repeating platitudes of how she would surely cope and how the law was the law etc.; by the end, both Patrick and Trixie raised that very point themselves, and methinks both of them will end up as „legalize abortion not just in case of threat to a mother’s life“ activists before the season is over. Which, mind you, is bound to cause conflict, angst and distress. For all that Sister Julienne et al are horrified for women damaged (or in this case killed) by an illegal and incompetent abortion, I can’t see them becoming pro choice. Phyllis and Valerie, yes. None of the nuns, and Shelagh didn’t leave her faith behind when leaving the order. Lucille, I don’t know, but probably not. Anyway, this is actually a valid storyline for a show taking place in the sixties – some medical practitioners realising keeping abortions (safe when the life of the mother is threatened) illegal won’t stop abortions but will endanger a great many women’s lives by deciding the law must change.
The other cases of the week, the estranged mother and daughter both pregnant, went the optimistic way by the mother seeing the light re: her Sikh son-in-law, but given the darkness of the abortion storyline, I’m all for a lighter counterpart. Incidentally, when Shelagh and Sister Julienne had their conversation about the mother and daughter and Shelagh made the comparison to Angela and herself, you could tell that Sister Julienne was thinking more in terms of her own relationship to Shelagh when „mother and daughter“ came to mind. She really tries hard to be non-partisan as befits her position, but come on; she does love Shelagh best. Her assigning the younger of the two new nuns, Frances, to Shelagh for mentoring could also be interesting in terms of Shelagh’s Bernadette past.
Lastly: I must admit it did crack me up that the Phyllis-smitten Seageant Wolf is now nicknamed Baloo by the boy scouts while Phyllis is still Akeela. Also, was that a David Bailey exhibition they accidentally ended up watching?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-08 11:48 pm (UTC)Awwwww. that's reallys weet.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-09 05:20 pm (UTC)