|
I don't see how, really. David Copperfield is very like a lot of his other books.  I haven't read it since I was 15, but I know that it has a great opening and an excellent cast of Dickensian characters filled with quirks.
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 03:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 13:04 |
|
|
Bicyclops posted:I don't see how, really. David Copperfield is very like a lot of his other books. I think it's the semi-autobiographical nature of the book. It feels like, to my uncultured and not a Dickens fan view, it gives the story a bit more momentum.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
Bicyclops posted:I don't see how, really. David Copperfield is very like a lot of his other books. You're thinking of The Old Tawdry Quirk Shop.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 06:37
|
|
|
Doctor Who "A Christmas Carol" Series 6, Episode 0 I love Dickens. I mean, I adore his oeuvre, most especially A Christmas Carol, his, in my opinion, greatest work. I love the holiday of Christmas and the entire Christmas season; when it comes to Christmas specials, however, I'm fairly particular- I think A Christmas Story is overrated and kind of hack, most of the claymation stuff I find outright embarrassing- The Year Without a Santa Claus excepted because the Miser songs fuckin' rule. The Polar Express is a bad loving film and I will fight you if you argue otherwise. And so on. And then, of course, there are the legions and legions and legions and legions of Christmas Carol clones, derivatives, and knock-offs. It's obvious to see why it's copied so endlessly- it's a redemption story framed in the context of having somebody understand the meaning of Christmas. Ebeneezer Scrooge goes through the textbook Hero's Journey throughout the tale- starting at his lowest possible point, and ending at his highest, having experienced significant growth and change literally overnight (although in the original book it takes place over three nights, which raises the question of what in the gently caress Scrooge was doing during the day after each Ghost visited him. Playing parcheesi?). It makes sense why it's copied so endlessly- Dickens' story is as study a foundation to spin a tale on. The funny thing about A Christmas Carol is that it can be retold endlessly because its framing narrative is so sturdy, and all you need to follow is the very basic structure- Main character is an rear end in a top hat/flawed in some way, visited by spirits who firstly, create sympathy/empathy for the protagonist by explaining his backstory, secondly, start main character's growth and change, and finally warn the hero of the dark future that occurs if the protagonist doesn't change his ways. It's a sturdy, but infinitely malleable base to start from for any narrative. That all being said, I usually dislike interpretations of A Christmas Carol that aren't straight, source-material faithful reproductions. For instance, I strongly dislike Scrooged- one of the only Bill Murray films I actively dislike -because I find "A Christmas Carol, but in modern day" to not be a significant enough draw for me to get over the setting change. I know, objectively, that Scrooged is a good film, but I can't get over the fact that it seems like someone tilted A Christmas Carol two degrees to the left or right. (I also can't get over the fact that Bill Murray's character is so morally and ethically compromised that he was apparently, as a producer literally producing a tv special of A Christmas Carol during the entirety of Scrooged, unable to at any point grasp that he was getting, well, Scrooged. To me the framing narrative of Scrooged makes the protagonist so spectacularly oblivious and shady that's he's borderline retarded to not get what's happening to him.) To me, A Christmas Carol is so indelible and perfect a classic that changing things just for the sake of changing them is bad- if your conceit is "A Christmas Carol but in modern day" you're just as hacky and creatively barren as whatever C-list theatre company in Canton, Ohio is currently putting on a production of "Romeo and Juliet, but in Gangland Chicago". If you're gonna change Carol, then change it- It's a Wonderful Life is a fairly good example of taking the central premise of Dickens' tale and actually making it feel like a different story (to its benefit, I might add), through changing the backstory and character of its protagonist significantly. Either play it straight or go vastly different with A Christmas Carol, in my opinion, but these half-steps, these half-measures of changing the setting and calling it a day or changing the name of the main character and calling it a day or having one Angel instead of three and calling it a day benefits nobody, because why even bother with the slight changes? And so we get to my central grievance with "A Christmas Carol", an episode of Who that I absolutely hated for the first half and really loved the second. "A Christmas Carol" opens in some offworld planet, seemingly a mix of Chinatown with a steampunk aesthetic through the lens of near-future technology, as Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon) is being entreated by a poor family to release their adult sister, who volunteered to be cryogenically frozen as collateral for a loan they took many years ago and have been unable to pay back. Kazran, the clear Scrooge stand-in, mockingly disregards their complaints as he's called on the phone by the president- an Earth ship (with Rory and Amy aboard, who were spending their honeymoon on it) desperately needs to land on the planet, and cannot due to the clouds above said planet preventing any ship from landing. Kazran is the only one able to control the machine that controls the skies, but in a fit of pointless cruelty decides not to use it, out of sheer antipathy. The Doctor then shows up and decides to teach Kazran a lesson and convince him to change his mind. Since it's Christmas Eve he, of course, decides to go about this in the most Dickens-y way possible. The Doctor finds a old holo-tape of Kazran and plays it- in it, young Kazran (Laurence Belcher) tries to record the swimming sky fish, but is interrupted by his father Elliot (Michael Gambon), who then proceeds to slap him for his transgressions. Current Kazran, in enraged grief, orders The Doctor to leave his house- which The Doctor dutifully complies- only to pop up in the holo-tape. The night when young Kazran was hit- on Christmas Eve, no less -is what set him down the dark road to where he is at present within the show. AS Kazran himself notes, it taught him a "valuable lesson- that nobody ever comes". That is, until The Doctor decides to futz with Kazran's past and fix him into a better man- as old Kazran watches. The Doctor and young Kazran both decide to lure a sky fish into Kazran's bedroom, by using the sonic screwdriver as bait. Unfortunately, it attracts a sky shark, which ends up chewing the sonic screwdriver in half. The Doctor is able to subdue the sky shark before it eats both him and Kazran, but in the process the shark starts to die. Kazran, in a fit of selfless pity, tearfully insists to The Doctor that they try to save the shark, only for The Doctor to explain that the only way it could be saved was if it was placed in some sort of freezer- which describes exactly the chambers that the Sardicks are holding the debtors in. The Doctor and Kazran both go downstairs to open up the freezer storage room, when The Doctor stumbles on the tank of the sister of the family from the beginning of the episode, and decides to release her. Before he can, though, the sky shark attacks again, and is only calmed by the just-released Abigail (Katherine Jenkins), who sings it into complacency. A grateful Doctor and Kazran decide to break out Abigail and hang out with her all Christmas Eve, then subsequently decide to turn the Abigail visits into an annual thing- The Doctor zooms ahead in time and spends Christmas Eve with both Abigail and Kazran, the latter of whom quickly grows up and becomes a young adult. Eventually, the Kazran/Abigail relationship turns romantic, because of course it does. Unfortunately, on Kazran and Abigail's last visit together she confesses that she is clearly dying- the timer on her container counts down by one each night she goes out, and she only has one day left to live. Kazran, heartbroken over her impending death that he's powerless to stop, decides to lie to The Doctor and insist on breaking off their yearly trips, in a desperate and ill-thought-out attempt to save Abigail's life. The episode then zooms back into the present as Kazran has now changed from a malicious rear end in a top hat who denied The Doctor's insistence on helping those aboard due to sheer antipathy into a nihilistic douchebag so twisted and angered by the loss of the love of his life that he cynically denies anyone else's chance at happiness, in an extreme example of "misery loves company". Amy soon appears to Kazran (as a hologram) as the "Ghost of Christmas Present", which entails her summoning him up to the ship where he sneeringly refuses to help out the people in need. The Doctor summons him back to the freezer room, wherein Kazran fatalistically rails against humanity- not realizing that The Doctor brought his younger self with him to the future, showing young Kazran the man he would grow up to be if he didn't change- Christmas Future. Kazran, obviously, experiences his epiphany and decides to part the clouds, but can't because he's literally not the same person as he was at the beginning and thus can't operate the cloud-machine. The Doctor realizes that the only way that he can part the clouds is if Kazran breaks out Abigail on her final day and amplifies her singing to sooth the sky, and after some waffling Kazran decides to do so. Day saved, eveyrone makes it out fine, and the sky even starts to snow because well of course it does. Hooray. There are so many problems, complaints, and issues I have with this episode I don't know where to start. Let's begin with the minor complaints; firstly, I loving despised the fact that Moffat straight-up reused, as in an almost literal copy-paste, that scene in the first episode of Sherlock where Sherlock does his weird "analyze the whole scene around him as he smugly monologues via voiceover to autistically come to some major revelation" thing. The fact that the shot direction, voiceover, and framing of the sequence were a straight-up copy of a different scene he wrote for a different character on another show he ran is just some fuckin' lazy poo poo, and worse off implies that Sherlock and The Doctor are interchangable characters, when they could not be any more different. Secondly I really dislike that Amy and Rory are shoved into their own, much lesser storyline, that is barely tangentially related to the main one. The fact that "A Christmas Carol" has to periodically check in with Amy and Rory's predictably boring "ship in crisis" plot every five to ten minutes messes up the pacing of an episode with deep pacing issues already. The episode would've only benefited if Amy and Rory had been thrust into the main plot over sequestered for no really good reason, and it's frustrating to finally get Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan back again, finally, after half a season apart only to get virtually nothing from them in this bloated, hour-long episode. There's also various logic issues I have with the episode: I think the fact that the family knows that their sister is dying and decides to literally risk her life just to hang out with her for one day is spectacularly short-sighted of them, further compounded by how none of them even deign to mention that she's dying- not even in passing as justification for giving her temporary release. The logic issues blow out to the episode as a whole; this episode basically resets all of Doctor Who's "rules" for how time travel is supposed to work- I could've sworn that The Doctor can't meet people earlier in their timelines after having already met them, that he can't make significant changes to the way a life lives or has lived (which, this episode raises serious questions that if he's willing to do all this for four thousand lives, why he hasn't you know...solved the whole "Hitler" thing.)...to me the central conceit of the episode, while cool, completely destroys the fundamental tenet for how time travel "works" on this show in a way that's really unpalatable. That's my minor beefs, let's delve into the major ones. Firstly, that the first half of the episode is just "A Christmas Carol but two degrees to the left". The setting of this episode- Steampunk Chinatown in Space -is fuckin' lame as poo poo and I hated the look of all the ancillary characters especially their dumb loving goggles. But more than that it's how the setting is used, which to me reeks of "Victorian England but weird!" and it's why I was so immediately repulsed- to me this is Moffat at his absolute laziest writing-wise, where so much of the first half of the episode is Carol with the numbers filed off. The setting feels self-consciously different to be self-consciously different from its source material, not anything really important to the story being told. But more than that, at least to me, it reinforces how everything about the setup of the episode feels like a weirder, worse version of Carol, not any sort of statement of individuality- like Moffat was aware how closely he was following another author's narrative so felt the need to change poo poo just for the sake of changing it. I don't know why, in this day and age, people feel the need to rewrite A Christmas Carol but keep all the boring setup. It's one of the most well-known origin stories possibly ever, and the fact that this episode had fifteen minutes of setup- a full quarter of the episode's running time -to explain how much of a douche Scrooge, er, Kazran is downright bewildering. Come on Moffat, the episode is loving titled "A Christmas Carol", I know that Kazran is the Scrooge character. I don't need fifteen minutes of him being an unrepentant dick until the Angels, er, Doctor decide to teach him a lesson. It's like how every single Spider-Man movie feels the need to spend the first thirty or forty-five minutes showing how much of a nebbish loser Peter Parker is until he gets bit, and then how much of a selfish prick he is after until Ben dies- everybody already knows how he became the wall crawler, skip to the punching. The first half of "A Christmas Carol" is just, well, an unfocused mess. The one change that Moffat made to the Scrooge backstory is an in my opinion bad one- firstly, I think the child abuse sequences were cringingly overwrought, but even beyond that the beauty of A Christmas Carol is in the fact that Scrooge is completely and utterly the architect of his own demise. Fezziwig is one of the most important and underrated characters within the story, because when Scrooge is brought through his past the reader learns that his first boss was every bit the man and business leader that Scrooge should have become in his old age. It reinforces the overriding narrative of Scrooge's past that he was constantly surrounded by people attempting to point him in the right direction but was undone by his own failures, and not anybody else's. The point of Carol is largely that Ebeneezer took a promising life and squandered it through his own greed and self-interest, which is what makes the final act land as hard as it does- he's the one, and the only one, who causes his own misfortune, but he's also the only one who decides to fix it. It's a triumphant story of it never being too late to change and be good. But it works well, only works as well as it does because Ebeneezer is never really a victim- he experiences heartache and pain but it's all the result of his own mistakes. Making Kazran into a victim of child abuse which is supposed to justify how he's such an evil dick is both too little- okay, Scrooge was an rear end in a top hat but he wasn't a murderous loving psychopath -and also undercuts his eventual growth throughout the episode, because it seems like a weak-willed and kinda flaccid way to make him more sympathetic. Which isn't the point of Carol; you don't sympathize with Scrooge, you empathize with him, because the story is well-written enough that even though Ebeneezer is a self-obsessed piece of garbage who engineered his current fate the framing narrative still makes him into a human being. Writing Kazran's backstory so sympathetically, to me, sells out the fundamental throughline of the source material for no real reason. It's why I hate the first half of the episode as much as I do; the (few) changes made to the overarcing story of Carol feel either superficial or distinctly worse than the alternative. The sky shark plot point, for instance, was both overlong and superfluous; we got enough of a sense from Kazran's later interactions that he was a good, compassionate kid, and the sky shark stuff makes Kazran seem like kind of a chump. On a broader level the ship crashing storyline was completely, utterly unnecessary to the stakes of the episode. It also frames what The Doctor's doing as kind of morally repugnant- willing to sell out every single one of his rules "just" to save several thousand lives. It's a weird crisis for the episode to have because it feels so unnecessary- The Doctor's time fuckery of Kazran's past would be a lot more palatable if it weren't viewed as a means to an end. The whole conceit of the episode revolving around The Doctor venturing into Kazran's past to "fix" him feels like a very Ten approach to a problem -where the ends always justify the means. Eleven would've ventured into Kazran's past to make him a good guy but it, at least to me, would've been rooted in doing it for the sake of doing it, not because there are lives to save and well sometimes you have to break a few eggs. The fact that there is a crisis that needs solving taints everything that Eleven does throughout the episode because it gives his actions a disingenuous edge. The removal of the ship from "A Christmas Carol" entirely would've improved the episode immensely- not just because Rory and Amy feel completely stranded during their scenes, but because Eleven just stumbling over Kazran and randomly deciding to gently caress with his life to make him less dour is something Eleven would just do, he doesn't need lives hanging in the balance to be motivated to do stuff like that. The pacing and tone of the first half of the episode feel completely unfocused- unsure if it wants to be a character study, period piece, romp, or sci-fi adventure, it attempts to be all four and ends up being a boring copy of its source material with extra silly nonsense. It also feels like murky stalling- I seriously do not know how it took them until fifteen minutes in for The Doctor to finally go into Kazran's past, and then fifteen minutes more for The Doctor and Kazran to finally meet Abigail. For a guy like Moffat who worships a well-paced and conceived story that flows naturally, the first half of "A Christmas Carol" is just bizarre because it's so slow and such an obvious reinforcement of theme over and over and over and over; nothing breathes the way it's supposed to because it underlines everything so obviously, and not in the way Dickens did it where you give it a pass because it's his "style". It just seems like a heavy hand over what should've been a light one. Once The Doctor and Kazran meet Abigail, though, the episode starts improving drastically. The second half of "A Christmas Carol" seems like the story Moffat wanted to tell- a love story dovetailed with a traditional father/son relationship narrative with a time-bending component, which incidentally has loving nothing to do with the themes, narratives, or overarcing plot of Carol. Once Abigail and Kazran meet, the obvious romantic narrative plays out, but it's so deftly handled and relatively understated that it's still very enjoyable to watch, and the father/son stuff- especially having Michael Gambon play both himself and his father, in a genuinely brilliant casting move that makes the payoff of "Dad?" land all the harder -is all just top notch. It's all great stuff. But here's the rub- the great stuff didn't need the framing narrative. It's not good because it's a reinterpretation of A Christmas Carol, because it's not a reinterpretaton of A Christmas Carol; Carol is about one guy realizing the joy of giving and being selfless, he becomes self-actualized. This is a story about The Doctor travelling through time to fix an abused child's life and also make him fall in love and realize how desperately he doesn't want to be his father. None of that stuff has anything to do with A Christmas Carol either thematically or tonally, so it makes me honestly wonder why the source material was there in the first place; the diversions are what's good and so different from the textural makeup of its source that it ends up striking. As I'm sure Oxx will tell you, I was a right little pill about this episode, but a lot of it was rooted in my complete lack of understanding of why I hated this episode as much as I did- I love A Christmas Carol, I love Moffat's stuff, I love Matt Smith. I hated so, so much of this episode, and I'm really trying to figure out if it's just bias- on some objective level I can view the quality of this episode, like how incredible Gambon's and Smith's performances were or how what little we got of Gillan and Darvill was fantastic. I want to like this episode so much more than I do, but I really, really, really don't. Most of it is because, I think, it's a bad version of A Christmas Carol smashed in with this really good, completely unrelated narrative about the relationship between fathers and sons and an old-school romance. I can see why people love this episode, I just can't really loving stand it outside of only a couple of scenes, all in the very end. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Mar 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:14
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:18
|
|
|
Oxx I'm the Occupation of Posting Past, I just want to point out before you write your review that Occ's current review is literally a direct result of your actions
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:28
|
|
|
Oxx I'm the Occupation of Posting Present, look at this thread! I mean seriously, this thread is all on you, man!
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:28
|
|
|
Oxx I'm the Occupation of Posting Future, you got me into Homestuck again
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:29
|
|
|
reported for triple-posting and for not being in the monhun IRC
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:30
|
|
|
Why would be be when the real monster was Occ all along.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:32
|
|
|
I'm a big fan of this episode, though to be fair my knowledge of Christmas Carol is all based on the many adaptations I've seen it, and so the idea of yet ANOTHER adaptation doesn't bother me much - it's just the done thing when it comes to the Dickens Tale, really. The thing I really enjoy about it is that outside of our initial meeting with him, we see Kazran's world-view isn't based on being a horrible person, but on shutting himself away from people/society/emotions because he's scared of pain and loss. There's that shot of him closing the curtains on the Doctor that is both literally and metaphorically shutting him out, and all of Kazran's angry bluff and bluster after that is just in an effort to shield himself from the pain of opening up to the world like he once did with Abigail. He'd rather see her "live" forever in suspended animation than suffer the pain and agony of losing her, and her immediate, gentle understanding of this when she sees him as an old man is what finally breaks through to him - the realization that a life lived barricaded away from emotions and pain isn't a life worth living, because these things help make the good stuff better, and give them a context they wouldn't otherwise have. I dig that "halfway out of the dark" opens and closes the episode - at first it is said with an almost sneering contempt for people, barely out of savagery, still superstitious and in need of comfort in the thought of something protecting/looking after them. In the end, it's said as an aspirational thing - that people are moving onwards and upwards, becoming better and more "human" even if it a long, arduous, and often painful process. This same message could have easily occurred without wrapping it up in the old Scrooge tale, but this IS a Christmas Special after all, and it's a familiar structure that most people are familiar with, so I don't mind it. I'd also quite enjoy seeing a Doctor Who take on It's A Wonderful Life though, so maybe I'm not the best person in the world to be making judgement calls on stuff like this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 08:59
|
|
|
I think the episode made it work because it's not an adaptation of Dickens. It's the Doctor, an established fan of Dickens (The Unquiet Dead), trying desperately to make the Dickens thing work and failing. I think that by making it an in-universe thing and having it blow up in the Doctor's face, it earns the shmaltzy frame
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 09:09
|
|
|
Yay I picked a B because as lovely as the episode is I knew Toxx would give it a better rating!
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 09:40
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:Oxx I'm the Occupation of Posting Future, you got me into Homestuck again Occupation elbows the other mouth breathers away from the ladder and starts climbing to reclaim the Nerd Belt in Wrestlemania MMXIV, starting with a dickens reference leading into homestuck To be honest, of all the derails in this thread, how has wrestling not been one of them
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 11:29
|
|
|
It was really hard not to laugh at all of the "half way through the dark" stuff when you're watching the episode on a 30 degree day and the sun is still up outside because it's only 8pm.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 11:32
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:It was really hard not to laugh at all of the "half way through the dark" stuff when you're watching the episode on a 30 degree day and the sun is still up outside because it's only 8pm. Whatever, mister antipodian. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 11:37
|
|
|
"halfway out of the dark" is clever, but it does nothing to make me feel better about the winter i want to stab Winter in the eyes, twist them out of Winter's sockets, and shove them up Winter's rear end.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 11:41
|
|
|
A B grade after the constant diatribe about how much you hated this episode? I think you've missed your calling as a videogame reviewer. Glad I missed the deadline for the guessing game this time because I'd have gone low, I think. I really hated this one but at the time I was kind of equivocating and finding the good in it because of how much I'd enjoyed the previous season but it really does seem like the turning point for me with Moffat's Who. It's still a little while from the point where I just threw my hands up and said gently caress This though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 13:35
|
|
|
It's been said before, but with this season for the love of god do anything you can ti avoid seeing episode titles before you get to them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 13:54
|
|
|
I enjoyed this episode but what bugged me most of all was the redemption/or not arc. Despite what you've said about the re-writing of Scrooge's past being a means to an end, I think even that works better than treating him like a good man who did the right thing. Scrooge didn't make the choice to become a better person or move past his (bizarre, aimless) spite. Instead, a time traveller tweaked his life until he did the right thing. He didn't choose to be a good man; he simply always was one. That works for coldly forcing him to save the ship, but you can't paint him as a redeemed man afterwards. In my opinion, for him to legitimately change (instead of being changed) he would to have to come across adversity and choose, in spite of himself, to do the right thing. A good person would have rejected his rear end in a top hat father. By the time Scrooge made that choice for himself, the Doctor had already re-engineered his childhood so that nothing would push him too far or make him too bitter, as had originally happened. TL;DR Scrooge doesn't deserve any credit for his transformation into a not-colossal-psychopath-dickhead because all the choices were retroactively made for him.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 13:55
|
|
|
Senor Tron posted:It's been said before, but with this season for the love of god do anything you can ti avoid seeing episode titles before you get to them. Here loving here. I've got to say A Christmas Carol is kind-of the inverse for me Oxx. I know it's weirdly schmaltzy and badly paced and a poor-as-gently caress interpretation of A Christmas Carol, with loads of dumb poo poo like the crashing spaceship and the screwdriver in the shark's mouth, but goddammit somehow it just works for me. Oddly enough it's thanks to you that I think I can articulate why: It feels to me the way the best RTD episodes did to you-- massively uneven and clearly constructed around little moments of ideas and emotional resonance that flit all over the map and form a messy whole, but a few of those individual moments just work so well for me that I'm inclined to forgive the episode for its ambitions rather than get frustrated at its clumsiness. Maybe that's why you gave it such a high grade, unrecognized RTD nostalgia?
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 14:00
|
|
|
Moffat is 10 inches shorter than Davies 
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 14:07
|
|
|
I think this is an absolutely magical and wonderful episode and the fact that it didn't get an A is bordering on a war crime. That being said, I predicted a B so fair enough.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 14:09
|
|
|
Fun fact: the very earliest things Moffat wrote for Doctor Who was a short story called "Continuity Errors", which is about the Doctor rewriting the personal history of the librarian in the biggest library in the universe to make them a nicer person so they'll let him have the book.
Doctor Spaceman fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Mar 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 14:18
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:Oxx I'm the Occupation of Posting Future, you got me into Homestuck again Eagerly awaiting podcast read along time. mind the walrus posted:It feels to me the way the best RTD episodes did to you-- massively uneven and clearly constructed around little moments of ideas and emotional resonance that flit all over the map and form a messy whole, but a few of those individual moments just work so well for me that I'm inclined to forgive the episode for its ambitions rather than get frustrated at its clumsiness My thoughts on the episode as well. The hammy goofy eleven and ensemble gala anyone around near the end was just so joyfully Christmas that it eclipsed the episodes earlier issues for me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:15
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:Fun fact: the very earliest things Moffat wrote for Doctor Who was a short story called "Continuity Errors", which is about the Doctor rewriting the personal history of the librarian in the biggest library in the universe to make them a nicer person so they'll let him have the book. Including the bit where a flashback changes halfway through, yeah. He'd already used its setting in Silence in the library, though.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:19
|
|
|
Moffat is enough of a Doctor Who superfan that a lot of the ideas he uses have been kicking around for years. I can't say anything about it because it's an upcoming episode, but there's a Usenet post or something that he made in the early 90s that has an idea he brings up later this season.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:23
|
|
|
Christ, I agree with almost* every single word of that review and I even guessed the grade right. Have we entered some kind of weird alternative universe where I can win this game? (The answer is no, I'll get back to losing next time.) I can understand why people like this episode; it's got a lot of the right pieces in it and it has its heart in the right place. But a) the way that the all the (admittedly spotty) rules of time travel are broken just to make an emotional point and b) how it's basically an inferior copy of Christmas Carol just totally turn me off. It also feels too long and too short at the same time; too much time spent on things that aren't interesting and don't advance the plot, too little time spent on things that are and do. * Scrooged is really good. It is really, really good. So is the Muppet version of Christmas Carol. HOW COULD HE BE A DIFFERENT PERSON, IF HE WERE A DIFFERENT PERSON HE'D HAVE BEEN A DIFFERENT PERSON ALL ALONG, THAT'S HOW TIME TRAVEL WORKS, THE DEVICE WOULD BE PROGRAMMED TO WORK WITH HIS NEW PERSONA, NOT HIS OLD ONE AAAAAAAAAA FUUCK AAAAAAAGH
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:46
|
|
|
A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:51
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU I'm fully aware this is playing with fire but I honestly want to ruin your day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9MpsAftCDk
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:53
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU I was gonna be mad at the lack of an A grade but this is the correctest post possible, so. Blasmeister fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Mar 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:55
|
|
|
Random Stranger posted:The only Dickens I've gotten into (other than A Christmas Carol which is so atypical I feel like it shouldn't count) is David Copperfield which I've heard of as "Dickens for people who don't like Dickens". I thought A Tale of Two Cities was pretty good, if slightly verbose.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:59
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Hell yea
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 15:59
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:[*] The Doctor: "I think you'll find I'm universally recognized as a mature and responsible adult. (holds out psychic paper)" Kazran: "It's...just a lot of wavy lines." The Doctor (checking): "Yeah, it shorted out. Finally, a lie too big." This might be my favorite Who gag and the episode deserves an A for it alone. Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU CORRECT.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 16:01
|
|
|
You talked poo poo about Scrooged and failed to give this dumb episode the F it deserved. Thread voted '1'.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 16:11
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU indisputable
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 16:14
|
|
|
Edit: I fail at reading comprehension.Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU You're goddamned right it is! idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Mar 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 16:30
|
|
|
Agreed, agreed
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 16:43
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:
That's consistent with the rest of the episode at least. It's a fools errand trying to make sense of time travel logic in this show, but a lot of the "but why doesn't he just change X in the past then" criticisms don't hold water when you look at the fact that the Doctor is somehow quarantining any changes in the timeline to Kazrans memory. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, things are still as they were in the original timeline.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 17:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 13:04 |
|
|
Toxxupation posted:A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL IS THE BEST VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL, MICHAEL CAINE IS CANON EBENEEZER SCROOGE gently caress YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU god look at this poo poo link if you don't start tearing up when Scrooge starts sobbing and goes "these events can be changed! a life can be made right!" i don't think you're human, michael caine totally fuckin' kills it as a broken, wretched, utterly pitiable man
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2015 17:25
|
|