Land of our fathers (and Doctors )

[green_amber]

Heroes continues to improve. Here I was watching the last few moments of ep 9 (I think?)and vaguely thinking how fixated Heroes in particular, and modern US TV in general seems to be on fathers, and especially dead fathers - when we discover that HRG isn't dead at all. A twist! Redemption by the blood of the daughter rather than the son! And Hiro couldn't rescue his dad from death, we all knew that, or no one would ever stay dead, but it was nicely done. But that still leaves Telepath Cop and his dysfucnctional father and Mohinder and his dad, and Elle and Monster Bob (funy how everyone called Bob is evi isn't it?) and, and...

But seriously why IS America apparently so hung up on fathers (usually dead) and children? What happened to the mothers? Lost season 3 is the same. Jack and his father, the Korean couple and who is the father of her child and *her* father, Kate and her murder of her step-dad, and about a 1000 other badbad child-father relationships I can't recall right now.

Will no one think of the mothers? All we've got is Angela Petrelli in Heroes and no obvious mother-daughter (or son) relationship of any importance in Lost (unless you count non adult-to-adult relationships, like Claire and her baby, which I don't). Strange!

In other meeja news, caught up on Turn Left in Dr Who which like most people i think I thought was bloody ace (and Catherine Tate acted her socks, shoes and sandals off). So now we know the Donna-is-deadmeat stuff was misdirection, does our-Donna still have to die? (My bet is no, and happy ending for Donna and her dream guy from the library.)And how many people out there said , "oh god, it's Crisis on Infinite Earths!" as soon as Rose told us why she was there?!

Has The Doctor ever mentioned his mother or father, one wonders? And if not, why not? It seesm we now know that Gallifreyans *do* marry and raise kids; having just rewatched The Impossible Plahnet, I vaguely wondered if Time Lords were also "grown not made" but probably not. Maybe UK TV writers are just less hung up on their relationship with their fathers than the US variety?!

Comments

[makyo.livejournal.com]

Some of the books in the Virgin New Adventures series (especially Lungbarrow) say that Gallifreyans have not reproduced naturally since the time of Rassilon (due to the curse of the Pythia, the former ruler of Gallifrey) but instead are cloned by genetic 'looms'.

Lungbarrow (available online here) implies that the Doctor is somehow a loomed reincarnation of the Other (a mysterious and nameless figure in Time Lord history, a contemporary and colleague of Rassilon and Omega) and that Susan is really the Other's granddaughter. However, at the end of Lungbarrow, it is discovered that Leela (one of the Doctor's former companions) is pregnant (with her Gallifreyan husband Andred's child), thus demonstrating that the Pythia's curse has been lifted.

It's not clear how canonical this story is, although it was the culmination of the Cartmel Masterplan and would have been part of the tv series had it not been axed. (It's also not clear to me what, if any, meaning canon and continuity have in a series which involves heavy amounts of time travel and occasional rewriting of history, but it's something that some DW fans get frightfully worked up about.)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. ta.
I really hope MOffat brings back Leela - you'd think she'd be just his cup of tea:) Tho I doubt Jameson can quite carry off the outfit now..

I am intrigued as i commented elsewhere how Dr Who has become practically the only place in mass audience uk tv where older women as well as anorexic jail bait are still sexy and dynamic (SJS, Donna, River Song...)I guess that is its artial soap/serial heritage - soaps being the only other place you get this phenomenon.