Reception
This story has aroused some controversy because of its alleged racism. Some of the English characters display racist attitudes towards the Chinese characters, while the Chinese immigrants themselves are portrayed in a stereotypical fashion – other than Li H'sen Chang (a major villain who is himself akin to Fu Manchu, but portrayed by a white actor – another source of criticism), all of the Chinese characters are coolies or members of Tong gangs. As a result of a complaint to TVOntario following the initial broadcast of the story the Canadian channel chose not to rebroadcast it when that year's season was rerun. A number of other stations across North America refused to screen the serial.
This story was voted the best Doctor Who story ever in the 2003 Outpost Gallifrey poll to mark the series' 40th anniversary.
Russell T Davies, writer/producer for Doctor Who's 21st-century revival, praised this serial, saying, "Take The Talons of Weng-Chiang, for example. Watch episode one. It's the best dialogue ever written. It's up there with Dennis Potter. By a man called Robert Holmes. When the history of television drama comes to be written, Robert Holmes won't be remembered at all because he only wrote genre stuff. And that, I reckon, is a real tragedy."
In his volume of British history State of Emergency, Dominic Sandbrook criticizes the giant rat for being "one of the worst-realized monsters not merely in history, but in the history of human entertainment."
Read more about this topic: The Talons Of Weng-Chiang
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)