Re: Should Doctor Who have remained shelved?


Dahahn wrote:

> >> Astonishing. They see all of it as one big thing of which
> >> they are "fans". This isn't against the law, but it is undiscerning.
> >> I was once asked by a cult tv nerd friend what I thought was
> >> different about newWho. I boggled; "the actors doing it, the way they
> >> do it, the look of them, the look of the show, the way it sounds, the
> >> way if feels... are you kidding me with this question!"
> >
> > So how would that be different from your answer to the question "What
> > was different about the Pertwee Who compared with the Hartnell Who?"?
>
> I don't know what that's about. You'll have to point that out. Don't
> recall anything about that. Maybe you're thinking of someone else...

Whether you remember answering the question or not, the point still
applies; why is the difference between this series and the old one any
greater than the difference between Pertwee-era Who and Hartnell-era
Who? Go on, just assume we're stupid and explain it to us.

> >> Drwho, in it's heyday, didn't have the same appeal as Starwars or
> >> Star Trek or Buck Rogers.
> >
> > Here's a piece of information that may come in handy. America is not
> > the world. Really. There are a whole bunch of other countries out there,
> > one of which was the one in which Doctor Who was made and over here
> > it was much *more* popular than Star Trek and Buck Rogers. Star Wars
> > was very different, but the TV successors to it like Battlestar Galactica
> > (the original) didn't do as well as DW either.
>
> It was popular here, too, but it was on PBS - and I think it was Tom
> Baker who was popular. It wasn't network material, which is what I liked
> about it.

> I could use that same schtick on your statements, too, and you could go
> chasing ppl. down on this newsgroup alone until the crack of doom for not
> providing supporting statements with their assertions. Lessee, RTD idolizes
> Whedon and copies his style, has declared as much, RTD also has a deep sense
> of nostalgia for the 1980's, which is certainly reflected in the
> cinematography, the particular colour schemes and the way their contrasted,
> etc. - that "1980's futuristic look". He has declared, and everyone has
> talked about it, that his stories are more about characters having little
> heart to hearts, so called character driven, and less (much less, as in
> none) about science - the same sickly sentimentality that dominates
> mainstream teevee and movies and is used by Whedon (when I think of every
> time I've seen Buffy on teevee all I remember are two emotional teenagers
> standing face to face having some kind of cow eyed heart to heart - followed
> by a waifish blond doing kung fu on a dozen 2 meter tall stunt guys wearing
> Halloween make up).

I like the Buffy summary BTW. Yes, the new series has been influenced
by Buffy in terms of how the stories are structured (although
"character driven" wasn't invented by Buffy, you know). That's not the
same as it being in Cockney Buffy in Space, any more than the
Hinchcliffe era was Hammer Horror in Space. Doctor Who has always
cannibalised other sources for its stories. What you haven't done, in
terms of the new stories, is explain why that's a bad thing. Or do you
just think that DW should be exactly the same as it was thirty years
ago?

The focus of the stories isn't "characters having heart-to-hearts".
It's a part of the mix. But there's as much - in fact a damn sight more
- straightforward plotting in the two-part stories as there is in ye
olde Tom Baker tales. That it's now been designed to, you know, examine
the characters and their emotional responses as part of the overall
story, seems to me to be an advance in how the story is being told.
Sometimes this has been clunky - Boom Town, the end of World War Three
- but it largely works very well if you ask me.

> Now really, was all that necessary? You KNOW he's a Buffy fan and has
> intimated more than once that his drwho would look like something Whedon
> would do.

Um, yes it was necessary. It gives us something to actually discuss.
And as far as I can tell you aren't distinguishing between what RTD
says and what he actually writes. It's a basic rule that writers are
very unreliable when they're talking about their own work.

> >> Also, Britain is a smaller place than America and most other
> >> places, meaning it will be more lowest common denominator
> >
> > Again, you need to back up arguments like that with something a
> > little more substantial than "I said it so it must be true."
>
> Ask any anthropologist, sociologist... when fewer ppl. are listening, you
> dumb down the programming to make it appeal to the greatest number. My own
> guess is that this is because you don't want to invest a lot when there
> isn't going to be a great return.
> [snip]

Well, perhaps you should actually provide examples of brilliant
American TV and BBC crap, say, in the last year. The only decent
American series I can remember in the past year are The Sopranos (as
usual) and Deadwood. In the same year, there's been some outstanding
British series - as well as Doctor Who, and off the top of my head,
there's Bleak House, In The Thick Of It, Shameless, Ghost Squad, Life
On Mars... and while I didn't watch them myself, people whose opinions
I respect raved about Rome and Casanova. What have we got from the
States in the same period? Desperate Housewives? Lost?

> >> (like radio is compared to tv because radio has a smaller audience)
> >
> > So it's true what they say about American radio, then? I can
> > assure you that this, also, is not the case everywhere. Radio in
> > this country broadcasts some fantastic drama, documentaries,
> > comedy and news and magazine programmes.
>
> "I said so, so it must be true". ;)
>
> Yes, the same can be said here (thanks to NPR). But radio programming
> (commercial channels), compared to tv programming, is more dumbed down, on
> average, because it has a smaller audience. Agian, walk into any sociology
> university department and pick out a professor at random and ask them.
> Honestly, haven't you ever noticed this? Don't you wonder why commercials on
> the radio are even more insipid than tv commercials?

Are you really basing your argument on commercials? Radio also has a
much lower cost of production than TV, so the lower audience is less of
a problem. BBC Radio 4 (and 5, to some extent) would be considered more
highbrow than most TV. In Ireland (where I'm from, y'know) there are a
number of highly intelligent commercial stations (Newstalk 106).

> But the interesting thing is that a smaller market also means weaker
> corporate restrictions. At no time in American television history could
> there have been something as wonky as drwho; but something like drwho could,
> indeed, happen in Britain in the 60's and 70's. It was a kind of fluke, you
> might say, that I think can't happen these days. Britain, like so many other
> places, is transforming itself to resemble the industrial aspects of
> American culture with every hour that passes, it seems.

It's true - Doctor Who was a unique, flukish product of its time, and
there's a gorgeous heroism about them bashing it out on about a tenner.
This show doesn't have that joy - it's professionally produced and
beautifully resourced. But it's a case of taking the rough with the
smooth (or rather, taking the smooth when you kind of liked the rough).
And in terms of its central thrust - a show about looking outside,
about "taking a stand and saying no" - it's very much the same
programme.

.

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