Re: New Series: Re-watchability?

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:46:27 -0700 (PDT), "pbowles@xxxxxxx"
<pbowles@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On 18 Jul, 12:36, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:12:20 -0700 (PDT), "pbow...@xxxxxxx"





<pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 18 Jul, 09:38, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:02:57 -0700 (PDT), "pbow...@xxxxxxx"

<pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 18 Jul, 01:05, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

We haven't mastered Time Travel yet.>you might as
well give a nuclear arsenal to a cave man and expect him to develop a
civilisation similar to our own.

No, it's more like giving an arsenal to a caveman and expecting him to
press the big red button - you give them a time machine and, hey
presto, they use it to travel in time - not to build a society.

It's easier to crash a car than it is to drive one (assuming that you
master the art of starting it). It's easier to press a big red button and
inadvertently destroy yourself than it is to build a sophisticated
technological society from a heap of incomprehensible junk.

How much control did they need if they were just following in the
TARDIS' wake? For all we know Time Agent time machines are just a
matter of pressing a button and going from there - and the Family ship
would just be sucked into the same time vortex as the TARDIS, going
wherever it went. It's a bit meaningless to speculate about it when we
know basically nothing about time machines other than TARDISes.

Having the toys doesn't necessarily give them the level of sophistication
required to use them.

Jack didn't seem to have any trouble flying a Chula ship, but as far
as we know he had no prior experience with that technology.

jack wasn't hampered with a 3 month lifecycle - if these things were
equipped with a superior ability to process information and develop skills
that take years of learning they certainly didn't show it in the story.
Jack was perfectly confident with Tula technology so presumably it was no
more complex to him than Japanese technology is to us.

It's not close to being as much of a stretch as, say, the Weeping Angels.

I find it easier to accept the angels because they're far less elaborate
than the Family, and they don't need to be understood in such detail to
follow the plot. the 3 month life-cycle is a key element of the plot and it
doesn't make sense.

It's less of a key element than the Angels freezing to stone when not
being watched, and at least it makes more sense than that. The key
element is only that they're coming to the end of their lifespans and
want to extend them - it's not especially critical for us to know that
they only live three months to appreciate that, any more than we need
to know the Master's age to appreciate that he has basically the same
motivation in his stories.

The short life-span is critical to the Doctor's decision to become human.
You are simply arguing that the scriptwriter should have managed this
better. I agree.

And incidentally, the human analogy doesn't work since they only used
the humans as bodies - we don't know what was involved in them
stealing Time Lord essence or if the same process would work with
humans.

Sorry, but I can only comment on the script as presented - not speculation
about an undeveloped back-story.
the school is equally contrived, with all the cliches neatly in place and a
devastating conflict as a back drop. Unfortunately it's only a back-drop
for the Doctor's own little charade, which is the main point of the story.

Is it? Even without knowing the novella had a different focus, I saw
it at least as much as being a story about Martha coming into her own
- and the John Smith aspect is mainly there to build the character
into someone whose eventual sacrifice the viewer cares about.

It failed in that for me; partly because of the contrived circumstances,

Oh dear, the vast majority of Who must fail for you then...

and substantially because of Tennant's unconvincing performance.

Nonetheless, whether or not you felt it worked it's still possible to
appreciate that it was the general idea, rather than just a 'backdrop'
to the Inner Light stuff.

Again the TV version necessarily truncated the exposition on the
creatures' biology, but turning them into a family with "Father of
Mine" amnd "Mother of Mine" indicates that at least half of them have
reproduced. As for the others, I'd comment but I really don't want to
start Aggy off foaming about Dr Who promoting incest.

I don't care if they have to *** cats in order to accomplish it - the
ground rules make it obvious that they Will breed during the 3 months, and
the Doctor's assumption that the problem will take care of itself is
therefore Utter Rubbish.

How is it obvious they will from what we're given in the story?
Whatever a creature's lifespan, if it has no opportunity to breed it
won't breed. Not everything reproduces, after all.

Then how did they start their cycle mere months before the start of the
story. They only live 3 months but they've acquired time travel and located
the Doctor. If it's taken successive generations to accomplish this then
there is the real threat that future generations will continue the work.
the doctor's only options were to wipe them out at the first opportunity
or face the certainty of placing many lives at risk. under these
circumstances it was criminally insane to take refugee in a school full of
children on a planet that could not begin to imagine the technology about
to threaten it's existence.

His strategy also costs hundreds of Human lives, as he leads the creatures
to a place that is defenseless against their natural parasitic powers as
well as their stolen superior technology.

A point well-made in the story itself. But bear in mind the Doctor
wasn't expecting to be found, and if he wanted to hide he had to go
*somewhere* where there were other people - making himself human's not
much of a disguise if he's the only one around. I do wonder, though -
if a "simple olfactory misdirection" was enough to keep them off his
scent when he was standing next to them, why didn't he try that from
the start instead of actually turning human?

The family were hot on his trail from the outset. The 'disguise' was a
last-ditch attempt to keep them at bay. His instructions to Martha made it
clear he knew that they would be close at hand;

It was the final instruction, as a contingency plan - he was being
chased by aliens, he had to know there was some prospect they would
actually find him and plan for it. That doesn't need to imply that he
thought it inevitable or especially likely - and since they were after
him specifically at the time he might reasoned that there was at least
some chance that, if they did find him, they might be too focused on
that to harm anyone else (again this might be something else lost in
translation - in the short story the aliens were reluctant to kill at
first).

You can't realistically cite the story as justification for the TV script.
The audience didn't have it to hand.

And the Doctor was almost right; it was two months before the Family
found him, so plainly they weren't quite that hot on his trail.

but all of it is contrived for entertainment

Strange how TV shows do that...

Not all - some shows use entertainment to offer insights into reality -
Empty Child managed this with a very simple story.

I think I missed the reality of a story based around a time traveller
inadvertently causing a plague in 1940s London.

Others exploit 'reality'
in order to heighten the dramatic impact of plot. To me, 'Family' exploits
the background for effect without offering any meaningful insight into the
reality of the circumstances.

You noted yourself (as did the original author in his notes) that the
senselessness of the forthcoming war was a prominent subtheme; the
dialogue explicitly referred to the reality that unprepared kids were
thrown into battle with visions of glory drilled into them by old
soldiers. What else did you want - setting it in Paschendale? That
would indeed have been trite and cliched - as you say, little is
written about the fate of children in the Blitz, but a lot is told
about the suffering of adults. By the same token, plenty is written
about the horrors of WWI itself, but much less about the mentality
that spawned it and that drove kids to join up in the early days of
the war.

Of course it's hardly original insight, but nor are images of
starvation during the Blitz, and it will have been new to a lot of its
target audience.

Phil

= IF
.

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