Re: Harry Sullivan Dead?

peachy ashie passion wrote:
Elvis Gump wrote:

To see the whole world duped so completely cheering their savior 'Saxon' would have been a real Gordian knot for the Doctor to untie. How would he ever do it? How could he ever win against that? Wouldn't you like to know? That would be a real pay-off for the Doctor to win against.


Didn't you just describe the plot of the whole Slitheen thing?

Or was that a different invastion ?

Anyway, we've already DONE that.

Yes, I suppose they would be similar, but I also described a scenario similar to Hitler's or Bush's rise to mass popularity and power. Bush isn't anywhere near as evil or competent as Hitler, but starting a war for their own purposes have vast amounts of similarities.

There are only so many ways to take over the whole world.

However the Slitheen were engaged in a hit and run action. They were going to basically strip the Earth for parts and leave it up on blocks like a stolen car. Their take-over was never meant to be long term and they had no ambition to do more than rob. The Slitheen weren't trying to win hearts and minds, just keep humans confused long enough to make a getaway.

The difference with the Master is that he is a megalomaniac who's in it for the long haul.

As to your assertion that "we've already seen it" can be made about multitudes of similar 'alien-wants-to-take-over-world/Universe' scenarios we've seen on any program or movie. Many of the Doctor Who stories have many structural story similarities.

How many Doctor Who stories can be described as Doctor lands TARDIS, aliens/humans up to no good, Doctor captured, his life/TARDIS threatened, Doctor ingeniously escapes, defeats aliens, funny/heartwarming ending, closing credits? That's pretty much all of them. When something like "BLINK" comes along and explodes the narrative rut we fall in love with it.

The longer any show runs fans start to sense that even if they can't quite explain why. Long running shows like Star Trek or X-Files suffer from that and you see those same sorts of complaints. Fans groaned late in the X-Files run because they knew that Mulder typically never got one-up on the alien conspiracy or was believed by anyone including Scully. The ingenious idea of aliens among us fought by a lone FBI agent had to wear thin sooner or later.

Probably one of the things Doctor Who has going for it is they produce typically half the amount of material person season or 'series' as they like to call yearly runs of episodes in England. So there's greater anticipation probably and longer stretches where people are craving the next new story that it doesn't become so pronounced. The American TV tendency to do 20-26 episodes a year means there's always a lot of shows that might go by that are weaker or poorly plotted because of the pressure for material that puts on a production, even though Hollywood productions spend far more and employ more people than say Doctor Who does.

It's sad to go back and look at the late 1980's when say Star Trek The Next Generation was in production and then look at the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who when not only the stories got weaker and weaker, but the production was hamstrung by financial indifference on the part of the BBC. It's hard to believe they were produced at the same time when you look at the then stunning visual FX in ST:TNG. But even ST:TNG took the better part of it's first three seasons to produce any stories worth watching twice and recycled many plots structures from the original series while it's writers strove to find their own way. Their big breakthrough was the Borg, though it could be argued that they were basically just the same thing as Cybermen, but the tenor the production had made them far scarier. Even the re-boot of the Cybermen in the new Doctor Who aren't anywhere near as scary as the Borg. Or either as scary as the idea of say The Terminator or the machine minds and robots of the Matrix. Ron Moore's reboot of Battlestar Galatica has ampped the kind of paranoia such stories hold to the Nth degree and it's the best thing on TV right now IMO.

The fear of robots or cyborgs in general to me is a general expression of the fear of humans in real life who become unthinking followers of evil leaders, fascist regimes, crazy religions, movements, etc.

You can recycle the same structure, general concepts, but in execution they can become vastly different things.
--
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
.

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