#basil's notes

If I remember rightly, when they were working out the casting all the previous actors they considered before Craig were white, like I don't think they ever considered a non-white actor until Craig asked to try for the part. I totally agree that they hadn't originally written the character as black and continued to write Lister the same way even after the show started. The writers wanted to focus on the classism themes in the show but they lacked the skills to tackle how having a biracial working class protagonist meant that racism goes hand-in-hand with classism. It's always kinda perplexed me how in the show the future is free of racism but sexism, homophobia, classism and ableism still exist. It lacks intersectionality. In a way I understand, in that it must have been refreshing to the actors at the time to just play a part that doesn't feature overt racism but the show still needed to dedicate more character moments to make them just as fleshed out as the white characters.

I remember how the american cover for the first book whitewashed Lister and made cat into an actual furry but, considering the artist probably only had the book to work with, it's pretty damning about the lack of description for both of them in the novel.

As much as I loved the first book (BTL and Backwards are good but I won't be reading Last Human again) I do find the weakest aspect is Cat, again, as everyone else gets a chance to have some internal character exploration but the most we get with Cat is a more detailed description of the evolution of Felis Sapiens and a brief mention of his parents. We never get to see his inner thoughts. I know the writers were going for the idea of him being a cat and that's the big joke but if they could add depth to the three other main characters then they could have added more to him too. It's sad to me that the only other black main character, and the only one always intended to be played by a black actor, is given the least characterisation.