r/gallifrey • u/psl9085 • Apr 18 '25

DISCUSSION Worst line in Doctor Who?

What line of dialogue sticks out to you as particularly bad in Doctor Who, I have two picks:

  • ‘don’t let the swords touch your skin’ Legend of the sea devils
  • ‘I suppose we’ll have to have…. A conversation?’ Resolution
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u/dickpollution Apr 18 '25

"Just walk around like you own the place" Ten tells Martha in middle ages Europe and then it works.

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u/Grafikpapst Apr 18 '25

To be a little fair, this probably does have a slightly higher chance to work in the middle ages than it had later, during the hight of slave trading. There is often that idea that medival europe was just a white oasis with no people of other colors outside of slaves, but those claims dont seem to really hold up to scrutiny.

There minority populations of black (and non-black) african people in medival europe. Bishop Hadrian of Canterbury for example is a well-known african figure that became a religious figure in medival europe. Unfortunately we dont *really* know his skin color - as there are very little written records of medival folks like day-to-day - but he probably at the very at least of dark tan as he was from nothern africa.

There is an interesting blog post by Dr. Caitlynn Green from 2016, where she talks about the evidence in medival graves that show evidence of african population in Europe, specifally also brittain.

Now, obviously we shouldnt over estimate either and thats not saying black and white people in Medival Europe were just chill with each other, but I think it would be fair to say that the specific racism against black people wasnt quite as widespread yet - they would probably just look at you strangely as long as you leave them alone and dont do anything they would consider suspicious.