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Well that was different, wasn't it.
RTD in non sentimental political comment shock horror. "Immigrant?" Different from a traveller? An alien? Well?
And perhaps a timely reminder to remind us as we fan wank about Moffat taking over (which I'm as excited about as anyone) that Davies really does deserve his OBE for restoring a national icon AND making it relevant to today - not just as fiction but as comment.
( ..and.. )
RTD in non sentimental political comment shock horror. "Immigrant?" Different from a traveller? An alien? Well?
And perhaps a timely reminder to remind us as we fan wank about Moffat taking over (which I'm as excited about as anyone) that Davies really does deserve his OBE for restoring a national icon AND making it relevant to today - not just as fiction but as comment.
( ..and.. )
Look! I was in to work at 9.30am!
Jul. 2nd, 2007 10:47 amBest quote of LJ so far today
"Don't you think that the intellectual tone of 5 Live could be improved by having someone sit there and read out random Twitter messages for 3 hours instead of the morning phone in?"![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
celestialweasel
( possibly still spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen Dr Who finale yet (do such people exists?) )
"Don't you think that the intellectual tone of 5 Live could be improved by having someone sit there and read out random Twitter messages for 3 hours instead of the morning phone in?"
celestialweasel( possibly still spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen Dr Who finale yet (do such people exists?) )
who's Who.?
Jun. 19th, 2007 12:46 amSaddo that I am, I've just been looking at votesaxon.org.uk.. and either there are some very big hints being left there or some moderately clever red herrings..
( spoilers, who knows?? )
( spoilers, who knows?? )
Skiffy Night In: Dr Who and Dr Jekyll
Jun. 16th, 2007 10:43 pmAfter the decadence of the last two days in London (I was too hungover yesterday to chronicle my epic four hour lunch with rosamicula - that girl is a bad influence!!)tonight was recovery with my own fave meal of home-fried fish and lo-fat cauliflower cheese (mm), and a star double bill of Dr Who and the new Jekyll - both of which were really quite surprisingly good.
( spoilers )
rosamicula - that girl is a bad influence!!)tonight was recovery with my own fave meal of home-fried fish and lo-fat cauliflower cheese (mm), and a star double bill of Dr Who and the new Jekyll - both of which were really quite surprisingly good.( spoilers )
A line I just commented to someone and rather like :-)
"Moffat is basically an expert on structure in drama, and rearranging it. To him, time travel is just another way to rearrange structure. "
I still want to have his lesbian spank inferno babies :-)))
"Moffat is basically an expert on structure in drama, and rearranging it. To him, time travel is just another way to rearrange structure. "
I still want to have his lesbian spank inferno babies :-)))
The Others
Jul. 16th, 2006 11:11 pm(With apologies to percyprune), a really excellent comment from Paul Cornell's blog on how RTD deliberately recreated Dr Who, not as cult TV, watched by a small coterati of knowing non-mainstream fans, mainly on DVDs or via downloads or TiVOs, but as a real-time watched broadcast TV hit, "for the whole family", just when that concept was supposed to be dead.
And why this makes Love and Monsters both artistically the most successful show of the last season and the one most despised by both the hardcore fans and the mainstream unknowing public.
"Doctor Who fans now find themselves in the rather odd position of everyone once more knowing about the thing that used to be their terrifying and private love. It’s like Doctor Jekyll’s potion becoming available on the NHS. ..Some of them campaign for things to be more like they used to be. These are the guys for whom the Dalek/Cybermen battle was the meaningful bit of ‘Doomsday’, and who ache that time was wasted on Rose and her family. Some of them think of the new series as a simple betrayal. All these sorts of fans are probably the DVD/Xbox 360 guys I mentioned above. They like their SF, not their British telly, and often not the non-SF bits of new Doctor Who. ...
"My favourite episode of Doctor Who is ‘Love & Monsters’, the One With Peter Kay. It broke format and that’s always fun, but what was stunning about it was its depiction of fan culture as a vital, gorgeous, force. Elton’s folk, the ‘fans of the Doctor’, were diverse, artistic and creative, supportive and loving... Look at that radical final line: this life of odd dislocation from the mainstream, of very personal and difficult moral choices, isn’t just different: ‘it’s better’. It’s better. You wouldn’t even hear that on Veronica Mars. ..Only someone who knows the mainstream, who writes for broadcast, entirely has the moral right to say it. And I’m very glad he did. "
Lots to think about here for those like me, who are both glad they have access to a life outside the mainstream via fandom, sf, LJ, etc etc, but who simultaneously castigate these fandom-peoples for all of (well maybe some of) the ways in which they don't confirm to mainstream norms.
ps PC also has a link to this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
percyprune), a really excellent comment from Paul Cornell's blog on how RTD deliberately recreated Dr Who, not as cult TV, watched by a small coterati of knowing non-mainstream fans, mainly on DVDs or via downloads or TiVOs, but as a real-time watched broadcast TV hit, "for the whole family", just when that concept was supposed to be dead.And why this makes Love and Monsters both artistically the most successful show of the last season and the one most despised by both the hardcore fans and the mainstream unknowing public.
"Doctor Who fans now find themselves in the rather odd position of everyone once more knowing about the thing that used to be their terrifying and private love. It’s like Doctor Jekyll’s potion becoming available on the NHS. ..Some of them campaign for things to be more like they used to be. These are the guys for whom the Dalek/Cybermen battle was the meaningful bit of ‘Doomsday’, and who ache that time was wasted on Rose and her family. Some of them think of the new series as a simple betrayal. All these sorts of fans are probably the DVD/Xbox 360 guys I mentioned above. They like their SF, not their British telly, and often not the non-SF bits of new Doctor Who. ...
"My favourite episode of Doctor Who is ‘Love & Monsters’, the One With Peter Kay. It broke format and that’s always fun, but what was stunning about it was its depiction of fan culture as a vital, gorgeous, force. Elton’s folk, the ‘fans of the Doctor’, were diverse, artistic and creative, supportive and loving... Look at that radical final line: this life of odd dislocation from the mainstream, of very personal and difficult moral choices, isn’t just different: ‘it’s better’. It’s better. You wouldn’t even hear that on Veronica Mars. ..Only someone who knows the mainstream, who writes for broadcast, entirely has the moral right to say it. And I’m very glad he did. "
Lots to think about here for those like me, who are both glad they have access to a life outside the mainstream via fandom, sf, LJ, etc etc, but who simultaneously castigate these fandom-peoples for all of (well maybe some of) the ways in which they don't confirm to mainstream norms.
ps PC also has a link to this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
(Yes, more thoughts - I've come home early for a plumber who wasn't there!)
( That dr who ending, passim )
( That dr who ending, passim )
Dr Who and The Lake House
Jun. 25th, 2006 04:40 pmBefore I fly off to Cambridge for 4 days..
( quick comments on Dr Who, Fear Me )
And finally, The Lake House is much better than (most of) its reviews too. It's kind of a filmed romcom version of The Time Travellers Wife, only without the dodgy pedophile overtones of that novel. The alleged romantic chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves which got the film made (remember them smooching in Speed? well, I only remember The Bus) is non-existent again (actually, both seem keener on the dog) but it honestly doesn't matter very much; this is a genuinely intelligent, European style (well, adapted from a Korean movie by a Spanish director) movie, which takes a rather different look at time travel paradoxes than most movies which invoke the trope - here the key issue is not whether the past can be changed, but how much, how, and, especially, when. My own rather elitist feeling is that the reviewers who said the plot is full of holes, just weren't genre savvy enough to understand it - there *are* holes, but one is minor (the book business) and one is major, but kind of playing an allowable joker card (is the time gap between the parties always exactly two years?). I liked it, a lot, and vaguely expect it, if geeks can get over the few uber-schmaltz moments (the dog playing chess - ick!)to become a minor sleeper genre cult film.
( quick comments on Dr Who, Fear Me )
And finally, The Lake House is much better than (most of) its reviews too. It's kind of a filmed romcom version of The Time Travellers Wife, only without the dodgy pedophile overtones of that novel. The alleged romantic chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves which got the film made (remember them smooching in Speed? well, I only remember The Bus) is non-existent again (actually, both seem keener on the dog) but it honestly doesn't matter very much; this is a genuinely intelligent, European style (well, adapted from a Korean movie by a Spanish director) movie, which takes a rather different look at time travel paradoxes than most movies which invoke the trope - here the key issue is not whether the past can be changed, but how much, how, and, especially, when. My own rather elitist feeling is that the reviewers who said the plot is full of holes, just weren't genre savvy enough to understand it - there *are* holes, but one is minor (the book business) and one is major, but kind of playing an allowable joker card (is the time gap between the parties always exactly two years?). I liked it, a lot, and vaguely expect it, if geeks can get over the few uber-schmaltz moments (the dog playing chess - ick!)to become a minor sleeper genre cult film.
More on the Great Dr Who debate..
Jun. 19th, 2006 11:54 am.. from email conversation..
Reasons why people didn't like Love and Monsters
- it's not Who
- the Doctor (and Rose) wasn't the main character
- it "confounds expectations" (as if that was a bad thing!)
- it's like a soap opera, and that's NOT WHO
I think at root what we're seeing here is the naked faaaan mentality - we want it to look like the Who
we remember, monsters, aliens, no characterisation and no emotional development - that's for GIRLS. There's also a lot of gender and class issues floating around in there - Dr Who is above soap opera, and , god help us all, popular culture references - it's POSH and for BOYS. (oddly enough, exactly the kind of boys who will get the ELO references - which makes the hostility all the oddder.)
I do think anyone who could say it wasn't funny has had a complete sense of humour failure- but this seems to include people like Swisstone, so I'm utterly bemused..
It's CHANGE. Like I always say, nobody likes that :-)
Reasons why people didn't like Love and Monsters
- it's not Who
- the Doctor (and Rose) wasn't the main character
- it "confounds expectations" (as if that was a bad thing!)
- it's like a soap opera, and that's NOT WHO
I think at root what we're seeing here is the naked faaaan mentality - we want it to look like the Who
we remember, monsters, aliens, no characterisation and no emotional development - that's for GIRLS. There's also a lot of gender and class issues floating around in there - Dr Who is above soap opera, and , god help us all, popular culture references - it's POSH and for BOYS. (oddly enough, exactly the kind of boys who will get the ELO references - which makes the hostility all the oddder.)
I do think anyone who could say it wasn't funny has had a complete sense of humour failure- but this seems to include people like Swisstone, so I'm utterly bemused..
It's CHANGE. Like I always say, nobody likes that :-)
The Inevitable Dr Who Review
May. 15th, 2006 12:35 amActually I wasn't bothered enough this week to write one, but then I wondered if everyone had found this ? Good fun in places, (do Cybermen really run on Linux?) and it also gives you a useful password :-)
( spoilers I guess, since I'm here )
( spoilers I guess, since I'm here )
And the real thing...
May. 7th, 2006 11:26 pmSo OK, I've re watched Dr Who properly (in case you think I lead a very sad life, well, you're right, but I've also made another fabulous Nigel Slater curry with the left over curry leaves and coconut milk, tidied up, bought a new smartphone *finally*, dragged Andy round clothes shops til his head exploded, and caught up on Green Wing, and so ...)
Well I liked it a lot better when I watched it properly - so much vital plot hole filla that goes whoosh! past you if you don't watch out but it's still a game of two halves.. so in the style ofninebelow:
( spoilers )
Well I liked it a lot better when I watched it properly - so much vital plot hole filla that goes whoosh! past you if you don't watch out but it's still a game of two halves.. so in the style of
ninebelow:( spoilers )
Hip Hip Who-ray
May. 2nd, 2006 11:30 amOk, since this is my curent obsession..
I thought of trying to turn this into a poll/sweepstake but it's just not nuanced enough a format - basically I'm wondering if it's possible at this stage to predict what's going to happen relationship-wise by the end of this series of Dr Who. My personal theory is that at the end of (or possibly 3/4 way through) the series, Mickey will get killed, because of the Doctor making some kind of heroic but recklessly wrong choice, which in true Whedonesque style, will (a) leave Rose properly and conveniently single, opening up future story possibilities, but (b) simultaneously make Rose hate the Doctor, thereby stopping us all saying "get a room, already". Not based on any spoilers, all my own work.. This ties up both with the "Doctor and Rose are way too cocky" theme introduced rather obvious in the first two episodes & highlighted in various spoilers all over the Net, and with the engaging "Doctor always fucks up his travelling companions" theme introduced last week. This also conveniently gives us a sensible reason why Rose would leave the Doctor, if, as I think originaly mooted, Billie Piper is still scheduled to leave the Tardis at end series 2. Alternatively if she stays on, we can have a series of them glowering at each other in mixed hatred and passion. Ooh, yummy.
Aternately, we may be seeing Mickey groomed as the next companion to take over when BP does leave, if she does. I just don't see this one; he isn't popular enough with the audience and it'd take a lot to make him so ; and Rose and the Dctor having a "will they, won't they" thing is kinda fun, but the Doctor and a male youth, m'lud?? Even though there isn't such an age gap with DT playing the part, enough people remember him as Hartnell/Pertwee/whoever (hah) that it's verging on the uncomfortably pedophilic.. plus, finally, I just don't think RTD is that interested (strangely) in writing intense male/male relationships - since his first major work with QAF it's all been M/F - Bob and Rose, the new Jesus and Jude (can't remember the original name of the Eccleston character), Casanova and various femmes, the Doctor and Rose.. (Does this make RTD the gay inverse of a slash writer??)
Alternately alternately we could see a flying intervention by Cpt Jack to make a bid for both the Doctor, Rose and conceivably Mickey in some kind of giant jammy three/foursome. What time did they say Torchwood was going out at night?-)
I thought of trying to turn this into a poll/sweepstake but it's just not nuanced enough a format - basically I'm wondering if it's possible at this stage to predict what's going to happen relationship-wise by the end of this series of Dr Who. My personal theory is that at the end of (or possibly 3/4 way through) the series, Mickey will get killed, because of the Doctor making some kind of heroic but recklessly wrong choice, which in true Whedonesque style, will (a) leave Rose properly and conveniently single, opening up future story possibilities, but (b) simultaneously make Rose hate the Doctor, thereby stopping us all saying "get a room, already". Not based on any spoilers, all my own work.. This ties up both with the "Doctor and Rose are way too cocky" theme introduced rather obvious in the first two episodes & highlighted in various spoilers all over the Net, and with the engaging "Doctor always fucks up his travelling companions" theme introduced last week. This also conveniently gives us a sensible reason why Rose would leave the Doctor, if, as I think originaly mooted, Billie Piper is still scheduled to leave the Tardis at end series 2. Alternatively if she stays on, we can have a series of them glowering at each other in mixed hatred and passion. Ooh, yummy.
Aternately, we may be seeing Mickey groomed as the next companion to take over when BP does leave, if she does. I just don't see this one; he isn't popular enough with the audience and it'd take a lot to make him so ; and Rose and the Dctor having a "will they, won't they" thing is kinda fun, but the Doctor and a male youth, m'lud?? Even though there isn't such an age gap with DT playing the part, enough people remember him as Hartnell/Pertwee/whoever (hah) that it's verging on the uncomfortably pedophilic.. plus, finally, I just don't think RTD is that interested (strangely) in writing intense male/male relationships - since his first major work with QAF it's all been M/F - Bob and Rose, the new Jesus and Jude (can't remember the original name of the Eccleston character), Casanova and various femmes, the Doctor and Rose.. (Does this make RTD the gay inverse of a slash writer??)
Alternately alternately we could see a flying intervention by Cpt Jack to make a bid for both the Doctor, Rose and conceivably Mickey in some kind of giant jammy three/foursome. What time did they say Torchwood was going out at night?-)
