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Post by Thebogiehole on Apr 22, 2019 10:08:24 GMT
Have any stories been set in Korea or Indochina during their conflicts?
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Post by Digi on Apr 22, 2019 10:40:32 GMT
As I recall (and it's been a while, so I'm pretty hazy on the details), Renaissance of the Daleks popped into Vietnam during the war, but I don't remember the visit being very long.
I think the oversight (if we can even really call it that) is simply down to geography. Vietnam (and somewhat Korea, but especially Vietnam) is really baked into the DNA of the North American collective consciousness as a result of the colossal social upheaval that happened over here in the 60s, and it still has ripple effects today. It wasn't so long ago that John Kerry's Vietnam record was viciously attacked during a Presidential election, and it's been even more recent that a certain orange-hued would-be dictator has been mocked as a draft dodger. A great many of the people involved in political policymaking here in North America grew up during those tumultuous times, and the worldview forged by those events guide much of the political winds still to this day.
This is not (or at least, to a significantly lesser degree) the case in Europe or really anywhere else in the world (well, excepting Vietnam itself). Shoe on the other foot: when stories out of the UK treat rationing or Thatcherism as read, in a large way it's really lost on the rest of us because those experiences are baked into their collective DNA, but nobody else's.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2019 11:18:52 GMT
There's also a short story by Eddie Robson. Interesting Times, set in 1969 Saigon at Christmas with the Third Doctor and Sarah. I think Who's tackled some of the Vietnam/Korean War tropes via proxy through stories like Ambassadors of Death, the sympathetic portrayal of Carrington's PTSD is ahead of conventional trends by ten years. The Brigadier's mentioned to have served as a private in the Korean War as part of his national service. Nothing full length, though. At least, not so far.
[...] I think the oversight (if we can even really call it that) is simply down to geography. Vietnam (and somewhat Korea, but especially Vietnam) is really baked into the DNA of the North American collective consciousness as a result of the colossal social upheaval that happened over here in the 60s, and it still has ripple effects today. It wasn't so long ago that John Kerry's Vietnam record was viciously attacked during a Presidential election, and it's been even more recent that a certain orange-hued would-be dictator has been mocked as a draft dodger. A great many of the people involved in political policymaking here in North America grew up during those tumultuous times, and the worldview forged by those events guide much of the political winds still to this day. This is not (or at least, to a significantly lesser degree) the case in Europe or really anywhere else in the world (well, excepting Vietnam itself). Shoe on the other foot: when stories out of the UK treat rationing or Thatcherism as read, in a large way it's really lost on the rest of us because those experiences are baked into their collective DNA, but nobody else's. It's also a touchy subject in regard to aspects such as conscription. In Australia, you were chosen by lottery. Two years full service, three years on active reserve. By the late 1960s, there were protests all over the country about it. Public opinion had turned significantly and people knew it couldn't be won. But if you disobeyed, if you refused to be sent off to the war, you were branded a criminal and imprisoned. It was illegal not to fight. The Save Our Sons women who spoke out against it in 1970 were imprisoned in Fairlea, so even if you were ineligable for service, you could still be a target for arrest.
The temptation is to write something set in the mud and the jungles, but there's an equally interesting backdrop going on in the West. Particularly given the reaction to veterans in the years following. Their portrayals in things like the novel of First Blood are extremely unkind. Brutalist and animalistic. A polar opposite to how they would later be portrayed in the 1980s. The film adaptation was a real breakthrough for showing that these men coming back were still human beings. That final scene with Sylvester Stallone breaking down in tears in the police station radically altered the public perception of these figures.
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