Re: Should Doctor Who have remained shelved?

I was hanging out with the cool kids in rec.arts.drwho when
Dahahn got out a spraycan and scrawled the following:
> "Diane L" <diane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:43dcba15$0$82638$ed2619ec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Tasem wrote:
[...]
> >> The sad thing is that some people will be happy with anything. It is
> >> getting the recognition it deserves, which is the problem. If you're
> >> a cult tv nerd you're not going to care because you are a singularly
> >> undiscerning lot.
> >
> > No, if you are a cult TV nerd you're going to be desperately unhappy,
> > because you can no longer convince yourself that only 'special' people
> > like you are capable of enjoying the show. You'll then try to convince
> > yourself (and others) that the show can't be any good anymore because
> > 'ordinary' people are enjoying it, forgetting that in the show's heyday
> > it was very popular with general audience.
>
> Cult tv nerds [...] A grade and C grade [...] don't discern [...]
> I was once asked by a
> cult tv nerd friend what I thought was different about newWho. I boggled;

....and there you go *again*. There is some indefinable quality that is
so blindingly obvious to you, yet when someone asks you what that is,
you have difficulty pinning it down. On to your attempt at a breakdown
of all this, then:

> "the actors doing it,

Tom Baker is too old to keep playing the Doctor. Get over it.

> the way they do it,

This is just another one of your unquantifiable differences, isn't it?
Until you say what it *is* that you dislike about "the way they do it",
I'm going to keep bringing up similarities to the classic series, and
you're going to keep accusing me of focussing on the trivial details
that are irrelevant when compared to these glaring differences that only
you can see.

> the look of them

See #1.

> the look of the show

Yes, it no longer looks like the wobbly, shoestring-budgeted show that
it used to be. Different, but how is it worse?

> the way it sounds

The music in "Rose" was a little jarring (though still an improvement on
S24), but after that they toned it down, and you only tend to notice it
when actively listening out for it - as incidental music *should* be.

> the way if feels...

See #2.

> It's like asking, "ok smartypants, what's so different between
> "Empire Strikes Back" and "Phantom Menace""?

Oh, that's easy. The latter's got Jar Jar Binks and an endearing brat
(and one stupid line that tosses out the religious metaphor in favour of
an unnecessary pseudo-scientific explanation). If it weren't for those,
I reckon it would only have been considered mildly disappointing.

> Talking of a "general audience" is a tad misleading. A pbs general
> audience is not the same thing as a sci/fi channel general audience. Drwho,
> in it's heyday, didn't have the same appeal as Starwars or Star Trek or Buck
> Rogers.

I wasn't around when new ST was competing with DW, but I'm fairly sure
that Buck Rogers wasn't anywhere near as popular.

> I don't know exactly how much of it was unintentional (probably too
> much), but in it's heyday, drwho was not "tv as usual". It wasn't "the
> military in space" or "dashingly handsome captain in space" or "kung fu
> warriors in space" or "rocknrollers kickin arse in space"... Today it is
> "cockney Buffy" in space. Also, Britain is a smaller place than America and
> most other places, meaning it will be more lowest common denominator

It might be that the majority of material that gets *exported* is LCD, in
the same way that from every era/genre, the bits that gets noticed more
are, by definition, the really popular bits. But quite a bit of what
the BBC churn out is a world apart from LCD.

> (like radio is compared to tv because radio has a smaller audience)

Try BBC Radio 4 some time. The really popular stuff on R4 sometimes
makes the transition to becoming a minority-appeal TV show. That's how
Lowest Common Denominator it is ;-)

> and the BBC
> cranks out programming that is so awful that something just a little bit
> shiny is going to get stared at (get a high appreciation).

The new DW is now well-produced, and so I can see why you're saying
"shiny". Big budgets shouldn't be used as a substitute for quality, but
that doesn't mean that they can't be used to complement it.

--
Remove caps to communicate more easily.

"twat ... bogey nosed newbie" - Steve F
"a prize prick ... lol" - FairPlay
"another person for the killfile" - DBurns
"Belt up ... smartarse" - Frankymole
"Go eat Raspberries! ... anyone recalls WWII?" - The Doctor
.

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