Re: Pompeii - First Thoughts with Spoilers

Water pistol

--
Socrates taught his students that the pursuit of truth can only begin once
they start to question and analyze every belief that they ever held dear. If
a certain belief passes the tests of evidence, deduction, and logic, it
should be kept. If it doesn't, the belief should not only be discarded, but
the thinker must also then question why he was led to believe the erroneous


"Mike Morris" <nyder_o_leary@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:14284eeb-9d7d-4ab0-9529-c33c0003bca3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Apr 19, 12:25 am, "pbow...@xxxxxxx" <pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 19 Apr, 06:20, Mike Morris <nyder_o_le...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Apr 13, 7:39 pm, "L. Ross Raszewski" <lraszew...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:04:10 -0700 (PDT), pbow...@xxxxxxx

<pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 13 Apr, 01:11, "solar penguin" <solar.peng...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
pbow...@xxxxxxx wrote:
On 12 Apr, 21:21, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
<pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message

<<<It does within limits. Teen slang, I feel, is outside those
limits.>>>

It's not even teen slang

It was 20+ years ago. At about the time the writer was growing
up, I
shouldn't wonder.

Also about the time Donna would have been growing up. She's
hearing
hear Pompeiian (sp?) slang as the sort of slang that she
remembers.
Clever things those telepathic circuits...
;)

Definitely - she heard them talking in '80s slang in scenes where
neither she nor the Doctor were actually present...

Phil

So what would you have found apropriate ot hear at those times?
Latin?

No, but some sort of suggestion of different speech-patterns would
have helped. I viewed the story today and thought the modern slang
element failed terribly. Rather than show the past as being different
and alien, it just shows it as being the same. The Romans are
interesting because they weren't just like us! I also thought it
undercut the realism of the environment - Pompeii simply didn't feel
like a real place to me, it felt like Doctor Who was inhabiting a TV
set rather than a world... so when we kicked into the whole "moral
dilemma" element it didn't feel at all momentous to me.

I don't know, you can bandy around all the technobabble about
translation circuits you like, but having all your period characters
behave like contemporary teenagers shows a terrible lack of
imagination IMO.- Hide quoted text -

I saw it more as a deliberate effort to show that the Romans were
indeed much the same as us than a lack of imagination, though I think
the point could have been made without introducing glaringly
anachronistic English slang. On the other hand, I also wasn't
convinced by Pompeii as a whole, but I don't think that was a result
of the slang.

I wouldn't say it was entirely due to the slang, but it was a
contributory factor. To me it smacked of "well they did it in Rome and
everyone liked that", but it just annoys me and keeps jolting me out
of the story. Overall it just felt like the Doc and Donna were running
around in a TV programme rather than an ancient civilisation, Pompeii
didn't convince me at all. It seemed - and I hate using this word, but
I can't think of any other - pantomimesque. The characters looked like
actors in fancy dress to me. It's hard to put my finger on why - I
suspect the too-busy story didn't help, as it meant we didn't devote
enough time to the environment, and the quick-zoom direction was off-
putting - but when you've got one character saying "only the menfolk
have the gift of true prophesy" and another saying "oh c'mon dad, I
want to go to the pub" (I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly!), it
punctures the environment terribly. I don't know if it was laziness,
smugness, or pseudo-cleverness, but it got on my tits. Why, for god's
sake? How does it makes the story better?

I dunno, I'm surprised how popular this episode was. I thought it was
pretty piss-poor, frankly. The environment doesn't convince, the
direction is inappropriate, the tone jars from action-movie to
tragedy, the characterisation's thin, the alien's objectives are
unclear (why have they given everyone the gift of prophesy anyway? Why
are there two different factions working for the Pyrovile?), and the
moral dilemma is nowhere near as terrible as it thinks it is. Besides
which, Tate is adequate during some scenes, but she's certainly a poor-
to-middling actress and she keeps breaking character to shout at
people. Peter Capaldi and Phil Davis are great actors and are horribly
underused, and I still don't know why there was any need for big stone
monster things to stomp around. Particularly when they get nobbled by
a bucket of water!


.

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