green_amber: (Default)
green_amber ([personal profile] green_amber) wrote2006-07-16 11:11 pm
Entry tags:

The Others

(With apologies to [livejournal.com profile] 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!!!
andrewducker: (Default)

[personal profile] andrewducker 2006-07-16 10:24 pm (UTC)(link)
That link is borked. It has a quote at the end and a number 2 at the beginning...

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-07-16 10:31 pm (UTC)(link)
fixed!

[identity profile] despotliz.livejournal.com 2006-07-16 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting. Which is, of course, code for saying that I disagree with chunks of it.

There's a number of good points in there, about rediscovering the mainstream TV audience and shows for family viewing, which Who has definitely done. I don't mind Rose having a family, and recurring characters so much, I mind that I disliked nearly everything I saw of Jackie and Mickey and Pete, and that we kept revisiting the issues with her father over and over again, and it got boring very quickly for me. I admit that maybe it's because I would like to see a show about a Time Lord who can travel in time and space not spending half his time in present-day London, but if I had been engaged with the saga of the Tyler family I might not have a problem with that.

Similarly, I didn't like Love and Monsters. The depiction of fan culture I didn't mind, and it was certainly more positive and respectful than a lot of shows manage (Aaron Sorkin and J M Stracynski being particularly bad). It's that it shows the fans a) rolling over and doing whatever Victor says, even though he's being a comedy bad guy, b) not noticing that anyone who got left with Victor was never seen again, and c) that paving slab ending. That's three reasons why I hate it.

My opinion of new Who is that it's pretty good, on the whole, but it would not take much to make it really good, and it falls frustratingly short a lot of the time. Maybe that's what happens when you make something for the mainstream audience.
andrewducker: (Default)

[personal profile] andrewducker 2006-07-17 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
It's interesting - but I took both (a) and (b) as narrative short-cuts. When watching simplified TV (i.e. most kid's TV) I tend to think of what I'm being shown as a cut-down/stylised version of what "actually" happened, and fill in the gaps in my head.

So when theyt instantly obey a comedy villain, I assume that in the "real life" version of what happened, they were taken in by a charismatic man who used their obsessional behaviour against them.

And when (repeatedly) as they leave they fail to hear the screams, I assume that they are picked off one by one in a less-obvious manner.

The same as Elton watching The Doctor and Rose doing a cartoon-esque chase through the corridoors at the beginning - I assume it didn't _really_ happen like that, it's just the way the story's being told.

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:45 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, spot on. It's a stylised episode and Elton is an unreliable narrator (a device I've always loved as it's so REAL, oddly enough..)

[identity profile] despotliz.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, that makes sense - I'm quite bad at spotting when I'm supposed to be thinking it's an unreliable narrator, so I took too much at face value. The Doctor doing the Benny Hill act at the beginning should have clued me in there.

[identity profile] blue-condition.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:16 am (UTC)(link)
> I mind that I disliked nearly everything I saw of Jackie and Mickey and Pete

While accepting that Camille Coduri gave a pretty good performance and that Jackie was necessary for the story arc, I didn't like the character of Jackie at all. For all but Doomsday she pretty much could've been $random_eastenders_matriarch.

Both Petes on the other hand were interesting - the "failed" dead Pete of our universe and the tough, pragmatic Pete of the alternate universe (mirroring Ricky/Mickey). A good performance, understated and rounded. And I felt that with Rose, Mickey and Pete on-side the other universe is pretty safe.

[identity profile] bohemiancoast.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 07:13 am (UTC)(link)
I suspect I am approximately the exact target audience for new-doctor-who; nuclear family with primary-school-age kids where the parents watched the show enthusiastically as children but were never obsessive fans. We've enjoyed it hugely; second series I think has rather more rather better SF in it but both have been really fine family entertainment.

If it were more artistically successful as a show, it would largely lose my kids, and it would lose its general audience. Veronica Mars is great, amazing, but you so have to watch every single episode.

Doctor Who is the first show that has ever caused our family to do the Simpsons thing; we drive home, run into the house, and all flop down in front of the telly in a row on the sofa as the credits roll. True.

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:47 am (UTC)(link)
that's exactly what he's getting at (did you read the link>?)

[identity profile] lil-shepherd.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 08:32 am (UTC)(link)
Which is just another way of saying that you can't have mainstream success without elements of soap opera.

However, this simply isn't true. Go back before 'Dr Who' and the BBC regularly had mainstream (and critical) success with science fiction serials. CSI on the whole gets by without soap opera elements.

As for the 'family' audience. Once kids are over 5 or so, they are the best people in the world at spotting the logical flaws with which this series abounds. They also don't like the slushy stuff, and neither do I! (This is mainly because I think Rose is an idiot, but that is another story.)
ext_8559: Cartoon me  (Default)

True indeed

[identity profile] the-magician.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 11:34 am (UTC)(link)
CSI on the whole gets by without soap opera elements.

True, though they do seem to try from time to time (Catherine's father, Catherine's daughter, Catherine's ex, Warwick's gambling addiction, Jorja's lovelife (or lack thereof) etc.) but in the end these appear for an episode or two and then disappear again until they are needed to provide a little "backstory".

[identity profile] loveandgarbage.livejournal.com 2006-07-18 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure when family drama (aside from soap) went into a coma on TV. Sunday evenings used to have the classic serial (its heyday involving a former Doctor Who production team - Letts and Dicks) or various children's programmes adults weren't embarrassed watching. ITV used to have Robin of Sherwood. The suddenly such programmes stopped on both sides (coinciding with the rise of the kidification of Saturday TV to game shows and gunge - the Noel Edmonds or Bland Date effect?).

THe increasing use of soap elements in British television generally can be seen in shows like The Bill. In the past CSI like (honestly) it concentrated on the story of the week. There was no indication of the personal lives of the characters, other than tangential references. Things changed in The Bill with the Don Beech storyline and now The Bill is to me virtually uwatchable as the victims and perpetrators of the weekly crimes are either the police officers themselves, or their spouses, lovers, and/or children.

[identity profile] blue-condition.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:12 am (UTC)(link)
Re: L&M:

If the mainstream public hated it and the fans hated it, it can't be 'successful'. If a few meeja-obsessives and recovering fans liked it, fair play. ;)

> They like their SF, not their British telly,

Hmmmm. I don't accept that stereotype. To a first approximation, I don't lime most contemporary SF on telly, and I believe British TV had a golden age running from about 1960-85. ;)

[identity profile] surliminal.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:46 am (UTC)(link)
Then it's exactly right. You like sf (not sf on telly) and you don't like current telly = bingo.

[identity profile] blufive.livejournal.com 2006-07-17 09:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm reminded strongly of the phenomenon Greg Costikyan calls Grognard Capture (http://www.costik.com/weblog/2003_08_01_blogchive.html) (link is to an archive page, entry is 7 August).

All game styles run the risk of what I term "grognard capture."

"Grognard" was a slang term for members of Napoleon's Old Guard. Hardcore board wargamers adopted it as a term for themselves. By extension, grognard capture means capture of a game style by the hardest-core and most experienced players--to the ultimate exclusion of others.

[...]

Developers move in [the direction of increased complexity] because their market demands it; the hard core, who are also the opinion setters, want new features and games that reward their hard-won skills. And if that ultimately means cutting off a game genre from a wider audience, that's not their concern--though perhaps it should be of the developer's.
The Doctor Who stuff mentioned above appears to be an example of something breaking free of such an influence.

It's been truly interesting to observe, at close quarters, the reactions of hardcore DW fans among friends. I really ought to start running sweepstakes on which ones will hate which episodes - it's completely unpredictable...