The
Whoniverse’s spinoffs, with their lack of TARDISes, travel in time far less
than the parent show does, but there’s still the odd time-travel episode here
and there. This offers a few more
opportunities to explore race when 21st-century characters of color
visiting the past.
On Torchwood, “Captain Jack Harkness” finds
Jack and Tosh transported to 1941. Tosh,
who’s of Japanese descent, is lucky to be in Wales in January rather than the
U.S. in December, but it’s still a thoroughly-unnerving experience. As soon as she realizes when they are, she
gets anxious, and rightfully so. “Jap”
trips easily off of people’s tongues, and Tosh’s natural out-of-placeness from
being displaced in time is interpreted by those around her as traitorous
behavior. She’s quickly suspected of
being a spy, and without Jack asserting her loyalty to Britain, things might
have turned very ugly for her. For me,
one of the hardest-hitting moments of the episode is when she worriedly asks
Jack what will happen to her if they can’t get back, and Jack replies, “I’ll
take care of you.” Yes, it’s one friend
looking out for another, but it’s also one friend acknowledging that the other
will experience additional danger solely because of her race and that he, due
to his privilege as a white person, will need to protect her. Very sad, but very honest.
With The Sarah Jane Adventures, we have two
PoC of different races with separate time-travel experiences, which are
interesting to compare. Rani visits the
past twice and gets “exotic foreigner” reactions both times. When she crashes a mid-century village in
“The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith,” she causes quite a stir (to be fair, that’s
partly because she’s wearing pants.
After she leaves, a villager exclaims, “Can that really be the fashion
in the Punjab?”) Rani has a bemused/weary
acceptance of shocking the locals, replying, “Yes, hello. Ethnic person in the ‘50s.” Her other jaunt into the past is in “Lost
Time,” where she, Clyde, and Sarah Jane are sent to different points in
history. Rani meeta Jane Grey, under the
guise of being her new lady-in-waiting, and while one of Jane’s servants doubts
the “foreigner” can be trusted, Rani uses the “mysteries of the East” thing to
her advantage. She plays off any
out-of-time faux pas as Indian customs, and Jane, fascinated by but ignorant of
Asia, easily buys her excuses.
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