Whereas every other fictional haracter you encounter in a 45 minutes TV show slot is a fully worked out original and completely comvincing character? Come on. It's serial, relatively low budget, pre watershed TV. We're all working within certain limitations, both watcher and writer. To give an example: after Dr Who, I was channel hoping and I got the first episode of some dreadful new US Friends-lite comedy, but I watched it through, because it had Alyson Hannigan in it. Every single character in it was a complete cipher, distinguishable only by gender, occupation and haircut (and perhaps not even then), their only purpose being to be manoeuvred into certain situations which might enable the delivery of supposedly funny lines. Now that's what I call standard TV lack of characterisation.
Whereas at the end of 45 minutes here, I felt I had a good idea who Elton fundamentally was, hiow he'd behave in certain scenarios, and had seen him go through subtstantial character development - as said above, realising he had feelings that had gone from friendship to love, becoming acclimatised to the fact his whole life had been altered/destroyed, his acceptance that sometimes danger and thrils were wonderful even if they were also awful. That's just about as much as you can hope for from a one off character in 45 minutes. (It is also, incidentally, far more than I felt I learnt about Mme de Pompadour in a very well received episode - all I knew of her was that she was cute and inexplicably fond of the Doctor.)
Indeed of all the eps of New Who so far you've *liked*, can you name any one-ep character (ie not Rose, Jackie, Cpn Jack or Mickey) you feel has been better characterised than Elton?
(I'm getting tired of this one, as you can tell - this is a reply to others , not just you. I can see lots of reasons why people wouldn't like this ep, but plot and chacracterisation are just not acceptable reasons compared to the rest of the oevre.)
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Re: Interesting ...
Date: 2006-06-19 12:48 pm (UTC)Come on. It's serial, relatively low budget, pre watershed TV. We're all working within certain limitations, both watcher and writer. To give an example: after Dr Who, I was channel hoping and I got the first episode of some dreadful new US Friends-lite comedy, but I watched it through, because it had Alyson Hannigan in it. Every single character in it was a complete cipher, distinguishable only by gender, occupation and haircut (and perhaps not even then), their only purpose being to be manoeuvred into certain situations which might enable the delivery of supposedly funny lines. Now that's what I call standard TV lack of characterisation.
Whereas at the end of 45 minutes here, I felt I had a good idea who Elton fundamentally was, hiow he'd behave in certain scenarios, and had seen him go through subtstantial character development - as said above, realising he had feelings that had gone from friendship to love, becoming acclimatised to the fact his whole life had been altered/destroyed, his acceptance that sometimes danger and thrils were wonderful even if they were also awful. That's just about as much as you can hope for from a one off character in 45 minutes. (It is also, incidentally, far more than I felt I learnt about Mme de Pompadour in a very well received episode - all I knew of her was that she was cute and inexplicably fond of the Doctor.)
Indeed of all the eps of New Who so far you've *liked*, can you name any one-ep character (ie not Rose, Jackie, Cpn Jack or Mickey) you feel has been better characterised than Elton?
(I'm getting tired of this one, as you can tell - this is a reply to others , not just you. I can see lots of reasons why people wouldn't like this ep, but plot and chacracterisation are just not acceptable reasons compared to the rest of the oevre.)