The Inevitable Dr Who Review

[green_amber]

Actually 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 :-)



Most people seem to agree with me that this ep was altogether rather bla - a fault I lay squarely at the feet of the writer whoever he is (Tom McRae - but who be he? (other than quite a nice singer/songwriter?) . The Cybermen looked great (though like several people over at blue_condition's place, I was mildly amused that they seemed to be wearing steel flares and matching 70s steel hush puppies), the soap opera elements were enjoyable, if a mite predictable (go Mickey! Rose, get over your father already! if I was Mickey I'd give her a good slap , now we've find out that he's lost *both* parents, not just one like Rose, and THEN had his sainted gran fall downstairs to boot) but the dialogue in the main plot was just either boring or pantomimeish - especially the dire Cyborg inventor guy. (The actor was OK, not his fault - he did as well as you could with dialogue straight out of Comic Villain Mastermind No 101). And nothing really seemed to HAPPEN (except nice shots of Zeppelins) for acres of time - why did this one get two-parter status when either Moffat's effort or School Reunion could have done so much with more space? was it just because (as seemed the case from Dr Who Confidential) creating the Cybermen cost so much money, they had to get their screen-time value out of them?

And what was with the alternative London politics? This seemed a really lazy case of world-building (as full of holes as Mickey's comics-derived knowledge of alternate universes, in fact) - compulsory downloads into people's heads, police state, army on streets, curfew , ok, so far so Brazil/Matrix -- but how did that go with a state that still apparently has ethics committees, bioethics conventions, the rule of law (it was Cybus not the government who were disappearing people, and Cybus didn't seem to run the govt judging by its President, however much they may have wanted to)and a humanist President who tells Cyber-guy off, and apologises to the Cybermen for the wrong done unto them? It was noticeable too that the compulsory downloads didn't have anything remotely unsavoury in them. If a "subversive" point was being made about how we all absorb the same media nowadays through our pores, then it was both too obvious and too irrelevant to the main plot to be bothering with. (And in fact even as satire it's WRONG - the effect of the Internet and new technology has been to give us all wider access to different media, the *opposite* of consumer homogenisation. Very few marks out of ten here at all.)

Battersea Power Station & The Lion Sleeps Tonight was great tho.

The only redeeming bit of this ep was really Mickey/Rickey (shades of Eastenders - Rick--aaayyyyyyyy!! something only catabolism will understand)- not to mention Noel Clarke with his kit off - phhwooaarrr! - I shall add him to the esteeemed glade of People Who Are LOTS Better With Shirt Off, like Sawyer from Lost and my long lost Spikey. Mickey's suddent rejection of his spare part/tin dog status did seem a bit - well - sudden - he's seemed to quite enjoy being the kid mascot up till now; also why should he expect the Doctor to care about him? Rose yes: but that didn't seem to be what was upsetting him - his lttle tantrum was all aimed at De Doc. (Mickey/Dr shippers - do any exist? - must have been wetting their pants.) Anyhow I hope Rickey dies heroically, Mickey fixes his gran's carpet and comes back to our universe for a grateful shag from Rose, who's remembered what great pecs he has. That would be a consummation devoutly to be worth watching :-)

Comments

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

I loved the episode, I thought that the characterisation was great, as opposed to last week's episode. The writing/production team have more or less said that last week's was written as 'filler' material between 'School Reunion' and this two-parter (hence some large inconsistencies in terms of characteristion this week and last).

I didn't see a problem in Rose wanting to go to find her dad...She's only really got to know him reasonably recently, and she never had him in her life for any considerable length of time. Mickey, on the other hand, grew up with his mum, dad, and gran (albeit for differing lengths of time) and lost them all at least 5 years ago, and has had time to get used to all of that loss, so it's probably more upsetting for Rose to see images of her dad, because it's 'rawer' for her emotionally.

Mickey does look great sans shirt, though :)

[nwhyte]

I'm with you on all the above!

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

Hooray! :)

[devilgate.livejournal.com]

I was sort of getting the impression that she doesn't remember the events of "Father's Day". Which is possible, since it happened in a sort of pocket universe that the reapers snipped off (or something); but unlikely.

Otherwise why go after her Dad again? It's only going to hurt.

Maybe her Dad will get to die heroically again.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually I've worked out why Rose's dad does nothing for me in this ep. in Father's day, Rose finding out the dad she always idolised was actually a complete failure - was pathos enough - but then miraculously him turning into a hero after all and sacricising himself for the world - that's real tragedy.
But Rose finding her dad is actually a rather bland success, jus like she always expected - who cares?? there's no reversal of expectations, no defesting of his tragic flaw (always taking the easy way out.) The writer just hasn't read enough Shakespeare..

If she doesn't remeber Father's day - well I think that's a very lazy way out.

[anyana13x5.livejournal.com]

I was, indeed, wetting my pants. And martyn44 was pretty much agreeing with me.

Also, I agree with you about the crappy dialogue, but I'd so kill for those ear piece things for like, constant internet access. That would rock so hard.

[andrewducker]

I didn't get the impression that the downloads were mandatory - I thought that people _wanted_ to get their news updates. What we were seeing was a comment on Fox/Sky News and how people will happily sign up for their daily news update if it means they get the swanky new toys.

Mickey's suddent rejection of his spare part/tin dog status did seem a bit - well - sudden - he's seemed to quite enjoy being the kid mascot up till now

I disagree - he's been complaining (and upset) about being the spare wheel/tin dog, and clearly wanted to come along the first time he was offered, but was just too scared. He's got over that now, which is nice to see.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

"wot abaaaaat ther baaaaaybaaaaay rickaaaaay." who, indeed, could forget.

not only sans shirts but sans trousers with definite hints of bondage and probing by his identical twin. *cums*. sorry. Rickey/Mickey is the ship im boarding.

as for the identical downloads, i actually think that we are far nearer a culture of homogenisation than previously because there are no longer any real barriers between informational states. You get real heterogeneity only when systems can't communicate with each other (the informational equivalent of speciation); now that we're all floating in the common ether, we are all catching the same viruses. Funny, because the orginal conception of the Panoptican society was us all being watched by the same thing; instead it is vice versa, we are all, figuratively, watching Big Brother. So no, disagree, spot on.

As for the rest, a christmas panto episode of east enders indeed. That villain, I swear he went "mwaah ha ha", he did, didn't he? Kind of rubbish really, but fun. Just like that old seventies kids TV series, oh yes, Doctor Who.

[andrewducker]

Just to disagree wildly on the way past...

While international heterogenity is definitely on the decrease, on an intra-national basis it's increasing. The number of people watching any one channel has dropped significantly over the last twenty years - when Doctor Who was cancelled for low ratings it had much the same audience figures as are now lauded as incredible.

The options for people are now much higher than they were before and the splinter channels, appealing to only a few thousand people here and there are now much more viable.

If you're one in a million then there are 6000 of you worldwide, a viable distributed community; in ye olden days you'd have been stuck with whatever entertainment was available at 6PM on the BBC (which is why the audience share used to be higher - there wasn't any alternative).

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Re TV I can see where you're both coming from : yes we have a milion channels with theoretical niches for everyone, but in practice (what was saying) tehre's a cross cultural homogenised blandness : 1000 channels al showing re runs of Friends and will and Grace.

But I was really meaning the Internet - where a genuine every-niche exploitation/heterogeneity has taken place - my stock example being that if you now want to find pages for men who fantasise about being swallowed by giant women, well, you can :-) (Or just spend a week reading every link on Boing-Boing.)

[andrewducker]

Actually, the channel showing re-runs of Will & Grace and Friends is Living TV. Which has a 1% share of UK TV.

Looking at a recent report:
http://www.barb.co.uk/viewingsummary/weekreports.cfm?report=multichannel

this is, indeed, higher than most of the non-sky non-terresterial channels, but there are vast numbers of channels getting not much lower. Between them the Discovery channels are doing better than that, for instance.

The report is fascinating actually - worth taking a quick look at.

I want me pap!

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

yeah, i know what you are saying, but my point, at its most crude (but with an allusion to Beckett*) is that just because there are 3000 flavours of pap, doesnt mean that we aint all eating pap. If you look at identity marketing (aka niche marketing where products are aimed at ever more rarified social sub-groups), there may well be an off the peg music/clothes/magazine combo for more and more sub-groups; but they are all equally subject to the commodification of identity that is late capitalism (aka 3000 flavours of pap).

*NAGG:Me pap!

HAMM: Give him his pap.

CLOV: There’s no more pap.

HAMM (to Nagg): Do you hear that? There’s no more pap. You’ll never get any more pap.

NAGG: I want me pap!

[Nagg lives in a dustbin.]

Re: I want me pap!

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I bet you like The Royle Family too.

I don't think the Internet in all its panoply is 3000 flavours of pap. Unles pap is defined (here we go again) as anything that isn't High Lit. (In fact I suspect more of the Internet is scholarly research than it is LJ. But then again most of anything will be porn.) TV is , because in the end TV (except public b/casting) is funded by advertising, and advertisers haven't worked out how to apeal to anybody but the "mainstream" yet. The Internet OTOH is cheap enough for the self funded auteur.

Re: I want me pap!

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

its not so much a hi-lit low-lit kind of thing i mean. Its more to do with the form, rather than the content, of our behaviour these days. Its all about staring at boxes. its kind of freaky. See below.

Re: I want me pap!

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure what you mean by pap here, and rather than assuming I'd rather you gave me a definition to work from...

you call this heterogenous

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

"on an intra-national basis it's increasing. The number of people watching any one channel has dropped significantly over the last twenty years..."

The very fact that your default example of cultural "heterogeneity" is what TV chanel a person choses to watch kind of proves my point.
Every evening almost everyone comes home and sits and stares at a light box. All evening, almost all of us swim in a sea of luminescent drivel. If you just zoom out _a little_ and take your eye of the content of the behaviour (what chanel we are watching) and switch to the form of the behaviour (everyone is sitting watching light boxes) you'll witness a truely astonishing homogenization in our use of leisure time, in our use of our selves, a kind of massed habit in which our idiosyncracies, our personalities are expressed by, what, the number we press on the remote control?

Re: you call this heterogenous

[andrewducker]

Every evening almost everyone comes home and sits and stares at a light box.

Actually, the number of hours of TV a person watches has also dropped over the last ten years. And I know people (at work, so proper people, not my actual friends) who spend little-to-no time watching TV. I also know people that spend a lot, of course. I, personally, spend about 3 hours a week watching TV.

Go back a hundred years or so and people were spending much the same amount of time in all the same pursuits as each other - either in churches or in the social sense. The homogenity level hasn't changed much, as far as I can tell.

Re: you call this heterogenous

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Oddly , this is pretty much the argument I used to have with Andy, about living alife directly rather than intermediation into other people's lives. (Oddly also, we seem to have stopped having it.)I actually spend very little of the week staring at the TV on my own - i do use it as background/company while I eat, play with the PC, work etc. I only WAAAATTCHH probably Dr Who and Lost right now, and used to with the Apprentice (and yeh, Green Wing.) So about 4 hrs per wk? I see a lot of people, I work a lot, I walk, i swim, I go to yoga (not enough), I cook and play with cats and do LJ and listen to music & sometimes even read. Is this so different from ye olden days? One thing that always strikes me while watching period drama is how DULL it is - all people have to do is play games, eat too much and gossip. Of course that's the UCs - the LCs would just have been working, shagging or sleeping, one assumes..

Also it isn't really all staring at boxes of the same kind - talking to someone via LJ or email really does feel different to me to passively watching TV. And talking to someone about what we've both watched on TV or done on LJ is absolutely fine. It may be hermetic, but no more so really than discussing our 10 favourite books (or 10 best shags.) ata North london dinner party. I'm not totally convinced any more that I get more cultural diversity or stimulation out of going to theatre or other arts than TV /Film either, frankly: so much theatre is incredibly fossilised these days.

If what you mean really is that we aren't doing enough with our BODIES then yes, I agree. But I am trying and so are most my post-30s, equally interlektual friends; A has taken up rowing, C running, S plays tennis practically every nights at the moment. This isn't just fitnes (tho it's significant all are female) - it's also a gut feeling that we live via our bodies as wel as our brains.

In the end diversity isn't what gets us through our lives really - it's companionship, however repetitive. (discuss.)