The Others
Jul. 16th, 2006 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_amber(With apologies to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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=3F0qUmeRI7E - alternate ending to Doomsday which is well... watch it!!!
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=3F0qUmeRI7E - alternate ending to Doomsday which is well... watch it!!!
