More on the Great Dr Who debate..

[green_amber]

.. 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 :-)

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

None of your reasons listed above apply to my dislike for this episode.

We have had so many different types of episode on 'Dr Who' over the years that practically anything can be included. Even the dreadful TV movie has to be included in canon somehow.

I don't like Rose. I'm not particularly fond of Tennant's doctor. So their absence didn't bother me. I disliked the bits where they did appear because they were totally out of character.

I don't know what you mean by 'confounds expectations'. It confirmed mine - unfortunately.

It wasn't like a soap opera - I could have coped with that, and there are elements of the soap opera in current continuity anyway. (Jackie, Mickey, the Doctor/Rose romance.) What it was was a sitcom, and not a very funny one at that. What annoyed me about this was that it was played as sitcom, which is completely at odds with the way 'Who' is normally played. They might just have got away with it if the continuing characters had played their roles straight. Unfortunately, the Doctor, Rose and Jackie were also playing as sitcom - or even farce. The result is to downgrade the rest of the season, because when you are watching high drama - if we get any amid the camp - this episode will be at the back of your mind. If it had been hilarious or moving this might have been justified, but it was funny only in odd moments, and not at all engaging.

It is not original. The outsider view has been used many times - the most familiar will, I think, be its various appearances in 'Babylon 5'. Fannishness as send up sitcom is the whole purpose of the dreadful 'Kinwig'. And us nerds are being sent-up all the time.

Finally, over the other side of the fence, apparently RTD was heard to say that it was aimed at males because women don't watch 'sci-fi'... This has caused much hilarity in Trek fandom, apparently.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

What annoyed me about this was that it was played as sitcom, which is completely at odds with the way 'Who' is normally played. </>

But this is *exactly* what I meant about confounding expectations - and it beinga good thing. We expect Who to be played as portentous drama/horror with a bit of sly humour on the side. So an ep that is done like an episode of Peep Show is a wonderful change. What did you think of the Buffy musical? Of Green Wing? Of Moonlighting? these are all series which have delighted in playing with format and expectations , which is the thing I love most.

I haven't seen either B5 or Kinwig so can't comment on them.

I think this comes down really to whether you're the kind of genre viewer who mostly wants to be reassured with more of the same, or surprised by disconcerting playing with the genre - and I'm always of the latter camp. Onviously you need a norm before you can deconstruct it - so I quite agree with the (substantial number ) of people who've said "I liked it, but I'm glad it's a one off." I'm with them, certainly.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

"What did you think of the Buffy musical? Of Green Wing? Of Moonlighting? these are all series which have delighted in playing with format and expectations , which is the thing I love most."

Loved the 'Buffy' musical, which was superbly written, very funny, and was in character and played in the puzzled fashion that would have affected real people who found themselves in that position.

Hated 'Moonlighting' because I found the premise totally illogical and sexist, and, besides, I hate Brosnan. The only decent character was the receptionist, and when they focused on her it was great.

'Green Wing' is fun.

As it happens, I usually know why I like or dislike a TV programme - or a book, comic or film, come to that. I love episodes that break the mould, so long as they do it within genuine series continuity. B5 did this continually. It followed the characters with a TV crew, it spent a whole episode with two original (and very minor) characters and saw everything through their eyes, it even put in subliminal recruiting ads for the Psicorps. Most of those episodes were excelllent.

However, none of these did what 'Love and Monsters' did. Searching for an exact parallel, I went to comic books, and came up with the Giffen/de Mattis 'Justice League', where DC's iconic team of superheroes were catapulted into pure sitcom. Now, I've been a fan of, say, Batman, for far longer and loved him far more than I ever loved 'Dr Who', but the Giffen/deMattis period is one of my favourite run of a comic book of all time, and I adored the sight of Batman desperately reversing the Batmobile to get away from a JLA barbie, with the Joker racing after him yelling, "Save me, my not-so-dark knight in shinning armour..." So why should I love this so much, and dislike 'Love and Monsters' so much? Well, for a start, the Justice League stuff was done from a vast knowledge of the characters and a deep love for them. This made the send-ups spot on, yet kept the whole thing anchored in the DC Universe, because everyone in the stories acted within DC universe continuity and also like vaguely normal people. (They made 'Star Trek' jokes. They invested in unwise financial projects. They held barbies...) In 'Love and Monsters' it was the fans who were being sent up and, to be frank, RTD plainly knows very little about fans - he thinks, after all, that women don't watch sci-fi. (I say again, in 'Dr Who Confidential' he apparently remarks that 'Love and Monsters' was aimed at male fans and that woman don't often watch 'sci-fi'.) I found neither accuracy nor affection in his script - nor come to that, wit. (And there was a lot of wit around the Justice League.)

Personally, I think the writing was lazy. RTD was hoping that people would add to the characters from their own experience rather than see what was actually there, which was very little, if you analyse it. Apart from Elton, I don't think anyone had more than twenty lines. What did we actually learn about any of them? About their background? About their motivation?

They are fans viewed with slight condescension through the eyes of a pro writer/producer, with little understanding and not much affection. This episode is not a satire on 'Dr Who' but a satire on its fans - and not a particularly well-informed one.

(I am not and have never been active in 'Dr Who' fandom.)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I found neither accuracy nor affection in
his script - nor come to that, wit.

Whereas I found all 3. I think we'll have to agree to differ :-)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, guess so. [Grin] The one thing you can't predict is what people will find funny.

'S been interesting.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Oops!

Got 'Moonlighting' mixed up with 'Remington Steele' - not difficult when they are both sexist and I hate both lead males. I should have said Bruce Willis, though.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Not to be a pedant but it's Kinvig, and that at least had Prunella Gee in a sort of sub-Sibyl Danning bacofoil outfit, and the rather droll Tony Haygarth and Colin Jeavons.

Nigel Kneale should stick to the grim stuff though.

L&M was rather like an episode of Kinvig turning up halfway through Quatermass. Doesn't fit. Destroys the tempo, destroys the flow.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

"not to be a pedant but it's Kinvig"

Be a pedant as much as you like [grin]. As you can see from later posts, I have a tendency to type first and consider afterwards. And I never have been able to spell...