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Rose is a dumb chav. The show points this out over and over. It doesn't make it any less lazy or sexist by the creators of the show, but if you look at all the dumb things she does, it's pretty accurate to her character 
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Aug 11, 2014 17:34
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As one of the primary pushers of Big Finish in the other thread, I promise not to bring it over here. The two of you are doing a very fine job and I’m enjoying the hell out of your reviews. They’re incredibly honest and being written with effort and attention to detail, not just “gently caress it, put some words on the screen and call it a day.” I’m avoiding posting in this thread because you are getting some very knee-jerk reactions from me, but they’re honest reactions, but I’m definitely enjoying reading them! However, should you find yourself interested in other avenues, let me tell you about the Brazzers Doctor…
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Aug 11, 2014 18:16
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Jerusalem posted:A young Mickey is present during the events of this episode, and in his fear he looks to Rose as a mother-figure to protect him, and Rose even jokes that she fears she may have imprinted herself on his subconscious. MrL_JaKiri posted:Context? I could only assume E PLURIBUS ANUS was formerly Occupation (a name otherwise unmentioned in this thread!) who I think I remember from the VGHS thread and who had a Breaking Bad avatar. And I thought it was him that did that Last Man Standing review thread, but I wasn't sure. So anyone who spends less time than me on TV IV would probably be completely lost. ...I just think hating Doctor Who should be accessible to other people!
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Aug 11, 2014 19:34
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Can't we just change his name back to Occupation already
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Aug 11, 2014 19:39
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But what if that name is already occupied?
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Aug 11, 2014 19:40
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VagueRant posted:Thanks for the answer. Yeah, that does seem a little too weird. We did it oxx, well done us
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Aug 11, 2014 19:48
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Toxxupation posted:We did it oxx, well done us Hatefriend hi-5
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Aug 11, 2014 21:08
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Oxxidation posted:Hatefriend hi-5 Is that like a normal high-five, but done while flipping each other off with the high-fiving hand? Really though, and I know I can't be alone in this, but I only like Doctor Who because well, what other sci-fi do we have out there now? Defiance? It's a soap opera with aliens. Doctor Who, for better, and just as often for worse, takes and runs with the whole 'idealism' aspect. That's why I watch it - once only though, this thread is a great example of why.
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Aug 11, 2014 21:32
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Doctor Who isn't great television by any means, but it's fun, frequently ludicrous, isn't really like anything else on TV even remotely, and as mentioned the core of the show is essentially inclusive idealism and a belief in the inherent value of people, which is somewhat cheering. Those are the reasons I watch it, anyway!
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Aug 11, 2014 21:36
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If you make it through Series 3 of Doctor Who I'll create a review thread for all three seasons of The Newsroom, 
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Aug 11, 2014 23:35
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MrAristocrates posted:If you make it through Series 3 of Doctor Who I'll create a review thread for all three seasons of The Newsroom, No, man no! What are you doing!
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Aug 11, 2014 23:35
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MrAristocrates posted:If you make it through Series 3 of Doctor Who I'll create a review thread for all three seasons of The Newsroom, You've made a huge mistake
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Aug 11, 2014 23:38
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Toxxupation posted:You've made a huge mistake I realize.
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Aug 11, 2014 23:40
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Doctor Who "The Empty Child" Series 1, Episode 9 Okay, to say this episode comes with huge expectations it could never, ever live up to is a massive understatement. The Empty Child/Doctor Dances two-parter (that's how well-known this two-parter is: Even to me, a person who hates Doctor Who, I was intimately familiar with the names of these episodes) is considered a crowning triumph of NuWho. Whenever I would insult Doctor Who for being unredeemable garbage, a Whovian (ugh) would inevitably pop up and insist to me to "Just watch 'The Empty Child'/'Doctor Dances'", over and over and over again. Oxxidation, in one of his myriad deceits, his multitude of cons with the express purpose of getting me to watch this show, would even insist on giving Doctor Who a try via these two episodes, as if they were all indicative of the general quality of the show as a whole. I see through your games, Oxxidation! You're a liar and a cheat. But that's my point, really. To someone who hates Doctor Who, these two episodes are held up as the golden standard to make a new fan of the show. And because I heard, repeatedly, about how great these two episodes were, especially coming off of the rarefied excellence that was "Father's Day", I was expecting a true raising of the bar. It was impossible for "The Empty Child" to meet the level of quality I expected from hearing about it incessantly whenever DW was discussed in any context, especially from friends and others attempting to convince me this show had value. And that's not really the episode's fault- don't get me wrong, it's a solid episode, just nowhere near as good as I had hoped, which is altogether kind of disappointing. That being said, "Empty Child" is still a very fun time, and a very tonally different episode than the Doctor Who reboot has shown previously. The episode starts out with a bang. Very rarely are the cold opens of an episode of Doctor Who worth anything, since it's usually unnecessary exposition ending on a pseudo-cliffhanger into title sequence. In contrast, there's a sense of real fun and tension from the very first shot of the episode, as The Doctor and Rose are tracking down a wayward ship broadcasting mauve, the universal color of danger (not red, as The Doctor asides. Only humans care about red, for the rest of the known universe, red's camp). The cold open, for once, is a microcosm of the episode at large- frightening, with genuine stakes, but still able to find humor and warmth throughout. It also helps that for once the humor isn't centered around dumbass puns and stupid physical bits, but on genuinely clever, sly writing. Anyways, the Doctor and Rose track the ship, which crash-lands in the middle of London. Just as quickly, our protagonists are split up via the old audience favorite, of Rose being a complete loving idiot who doesn't know how to let go of ropes. This was my first major issue with the episode: For once, the writer of the episode (more on him below) actually decided to characterize Rose. Now it wasn't a great characterization, but Rose actually had a character throughout this episode, especially in the beginning: Instead of endlessly being surprised and impressed by whatever The Doctor was doing like some interstellar groupie, she actually decided to question him and engage in at least some intellectual activity. Heck, even her decision to place herself in mortal danger, as Rose nearly always does, was at least somewhat justifiable since she was looking to help out some gas-mask wearing child over just doing something idiotic because the plot demanded it. In any case, at about five minutes into the episode the plot converges into two distinct storylines: The Doctor is called on the TARDIS' phone (which he even notes doesn't work) by, presumably, the gas-mask wearing child (we'll call him Empty, for convenience's sake), and is then immediately warned off of pursuing Empty from Nancy (Florence Hoath), a young teenage girl who seems to know more than she lets on. There's a real sense of uncertainty that permeates the episode, which is partially explained right off the bat: it turns out that the episode is set in London 1941, during the height of the London air raids. Now, setting any sort of fiction in and around WWII, especially around anything involving the Third Reich, is an incredibly dangerous narrative game to play, because the setting is so inherently emotional and charged: Luckily, the episode avoids most of the common narrative pitfalls associated with WWII/Nazi fiction and instead makes the time setting more textural and background than front-and-center. London during the bombings was a frightening, uneasy time, and if anything the tone of "Empty Child" is helped by setting it during such an unpleasant period; most of the sets pop from the ever-present sound of planes overhead, of the light flashes of bombs exploding in the distance, of the murky grey atmosphere of soot and burning that colors every shot. It helps set the sort of nervous energy that permeates the episode as a whole. The Doctor immediately tracks Nancy down, observing her sneaking into abandoned houses while air raids are occurring, then filching the food to sort of Robin Hood it to the local orphans. He soon confronts her about the phone and the downed ship, and she reveals that she knows the location of the item he's searching for: Unfortunately, it turns out to be under armed guard by the British army. Meanwhile, Rose has been airlifted by a barrage balloon, due to her inexplicable love affair with certain death situations, until she is luckily at the last minute saved by Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) via tractor beam of his invisible ship. Because Rose is attracted to every single human male she sees, they immediately begin flirting, until it's revealed that Jack is a Time Criminal (his words) who wants to sell a warship he has hidden in this date and time to the "Time Agents", whom he assumes Rose is a part of. Rose and Jack immediately set to tracking down The Doctor due to Rose hoodwinking Jack into thinking she's interested in purchasing his spaceship, as long as her "Companion" consents. The Doctor sets to the hospital to meet a certain doctor (lowercase this time) who informs him that apparently, at the crash site, there has been an outbreak of a plague, except the plague is a physical one. People who "catch" it (from physical contact with an infected host) develop cuts on the back of their hand and bruising on their temple, before a gas mask bonds to their face permanently. Most interesting of all, however, is the fact that the infected don't have a heartbeat, but can still move and talk, although most only shout for their "Mummy". It's almost as if they're...empty. In any case, at the climax of the episode Jack and Rose finally meet up with The Doctor at the hospital, wherein Jack reveals himself to have lied all along- he's, essentially, a con man, and the "ship" that crash-landed was in fact just an empty tube Jack shot in front of The Doctor's TARDIS to grab his attention, a giant mislead. With no easy explanation for what the source of the plague is, the episode ends on a cliffhanger as the previously-bedridden gas-mask-wearing infected start shambling, zombielike, towards The Doctor and his pals. There's really quite a bit I enjoyed about this episode to be honest. In my continuing quest to compare this show to genre stuff I actually enjoy, I really got a Bioshock vibe from the episode. I love the Bioshock series, and that's because it's really able to establish a sense of creeping tension. The series has always known how to build a world that resembles what we already are familiar with, and then shift everything just a little...bit...off until everything seems just...just off. Anachronisms abound in the world of Bioshock, only helping in its misplaced, out-of-place feel, and the real sense of dread you get from exploring the ruins of Rapture or of Columbia is when Bioshock is at its most effective: Why are things happening? What is happening? How is it happening? You don't know, and you're not sure if you want to find out. The Doctor is essentially our audience surrogate throughout the episode, and Eccleston and the writer of this episode's script both do an absolutely stellar job of replicating that feel I had when playing the Bioshock series. From every encounter, great and small, that The Doctor has with Empty, the audience is acutely aware that something is just plain wrong with that kid- from such simple stuff as The Doctor answering the telephone on the TARDIS for the first time, even as he insists that it's impossible to get a call on that phone, because it's "not hooked up to anything". There's just an unmistakable sense of dread and confusion that permeates every single scene of The Doctor's storyline, and it really coalesces into a genuinely unnerving hour of television. This episode is a very textural, tonal one, to its benefit: the writer is very capable of setting up the slow reveals, the constant sense of confusion and worry present throughout to keep its audience watching. In comparison to the vastly inferior "Aliens of London", this is how you write a two-parter with a cliffhanger: I never really knew at any point what was going on, and was gripped by the setting and plot twists and turns in a way I never really have before in Doctor Who. "Empty Child" earns its cliffhanger ending, even if it's a little trite. Beyond that, though, the Rose storyline is kind of a huge mistake. To its credit, it's still moderately well-written and the writer attempts to establish Rose as a character even when she goes through the same tired motions of being in mortal danger due to her own stupidity, again, and flirts with a guy she just barely met, again. She still moderately intelligent and on the ball, immediately figuring out that Jack is attempting to use psychic paper on her, and even jokes about it. Further, she even uses some wits, for once, and is able to manipulate the situation for her own advantage over being a complete loving moron like she almost always is. It helps, too, that John Barrowman breathes life into Jack in his scenes with Rose, able to establish Jack as a dashing, if slightly skeezy and garrulous would-be hero. Still though, fundamentally it's yet another tired, kinda sexist Rose storyline in a season replete with them. But that isn't the main problem with Rose's storyline. The main problem is that her story, which although moderately entertaining, is intercut between scenes of The Doctor's vastly more tense, disconcerting, and overall bizarre storyline, so it kinda throws the brakes on the mood the episode attempts to establish. It'll be weird and bizarre and unsettling, but then we cut to scenes of Jack and Rose flirting. Even though the dialog's fun and clever, the tonal dissonance prevents the audience from ever fully being able to be immersed into the fiction and setting the episode is trying to establish, and that's a shame. Finally though, we get to the writer of this episode, a certain "Steven Moffat". Okay, I'm just gonna say it now: All y'all bitchin' about Steven Moffat: you people are crazy. Just from his work on this episode alone he's written circles around every other writer this season: He does an absolutely splendid job of creating a tonal piece of televistic fiction. Sure, it's not an emotive piece, and I (as I'm sure Oxxidation will note/deride) adore emotive pieces of fiction, but I sure as hell can respect the man for being able to build a world so well. Everything about this episode, from a worldbuilding perspective, is on-loving-point, and the plot, for once, is actually genuinely compelling. gently caress, he even made Rose not absolutely terrible, which is a high praise indeed when considering how terrible of a character she is to start with. And this is with him as a staff writer, not a showrunner. If this is the quality of work Moffat turns in when he's working under the constraints of somebody else's super flawed vision, having to deal with a garbage character like Rose, I'm genuinely excited to see what he does with the series when freed from those shackles, even if it's not exactly my cup of tea. Moffat wrote the hell out of this episode, and I can deeply respect that. Grade: A (Formerly B, I adjusted my grade up after the next episode) Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Aug 17, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 04:00
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Toxxupation posted:Finally though, we get to the writer of this episode, a certain "Steven Moffat". Okay, I'm just gonna say it now: All y'all bitchin' about Steven Moffat: you people are crazy. Just from his work on this episode alone he's written circles around every other writer this season: He does an absolutely splendid job of creating a tonal piece of televistic fiction. Sure, it's not an emotive piece, and I (as I'm sure Oxxidation will note/deride) adore emotive pieces of fiction, but I sure as hell can respect the man for being able to build a world so well. Everything about this episode, from a worldbuilding perspective, is on-loving-point, and the plot, for once, is actually genuinely compelling. gently caress, he even made Rose not absolutely terrible, which is a high praise indeed when considering how terrible of a character she is to start with. And this is with him as a staff writer, not a showrunner. If this is the quality of work Moffat turns in when he's working under the constraints of somebody else's super flawed vision, having to deal with a garbage character like Rose, I'm genuinely excited to see what he does with the series when freed from those shackles, even if it's not exactly my cup of tea. Moffat wrote the hell out of this episode, and I can deeply respect that. All of us once thought as you do.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:20
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Many of us still do. He's not perfect, and his flaws become a lot more evident as showrunner, but he's lightyears ahead of Rusty.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:23
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Doctor Who "The Empty Child" Series 1, Episode 9 Yes, boys and girls, here we have the big debut of Steven Moffat, Doctor Who's future showrunner and the nemesis of Tumblrites everywhere. Moffat's still getting his sea legs here, so I won't go into detail on every aspect of his writing since that would practically be blueprinting his future episodes for Occupation. However, two of his favorite quirks are on display here - an ominous repetition of an otherwise innocuous phrase, and an unabashed love for making young Who viewers poop their pants. Gas masks are one of the more overplayed "creepy" props out there, but for bloody good reasons - their disfiguring, insectile shape, their eye-consuming goggles, their thick, fleshy rubber, and the way they completely erase the silhouette of any head that wears them inspires revulsion whether you think they're overused or not, and Moffat plays that instinctive reaction to the hilt. The Child's masked face is usually shown briefly or in silhouette, further reinforcing his otherworldly nature; it's his victims that have their masks constantly on display, and in their case, the mask is a legitimate disfigurement, which actuates the threat of being touched by the Child. Becoming "empty" is an unsettling but vague threat, but when you see the masked victims, and the mask erupting from Constantine's throat in the episode's final act (the first legitimately well-done bit of CGI in the whole series), the Child goes from a disturbing nuisance to a two-legged hell-virus that would send any young English tyke scuttling behind their couch. Even beyond the mask, the Child's performance and the atmosphere it creates help turn what could have easily been another evil-child cliche into one of Doctor Who's most unnerving antagonists. His pleas for his mother are always plaintive and on their own would sound completely reasonable if it weren't for their context; the Child only barely adjusts his questioning based on what people are saying to him or where he is, making him sound less like a broken record and more like a thinking creature whose mind is simply locked on this one, single track. Whereas a lot of cheap movie monsters would use the sympathy of a child looking for his mother to go for the throat of any sap who fell for the act, the Child acts like an actual child would; when the Doctor says he'll let him into the house, the Child shuts up, steps back, and waits patiently for the door to open, then blips away when he apparently sees the Doctor isn't what he's looking for. When we actually see him move (which is rarely - he's often viewed through a first-person fisheye or just warping from place to place) it's in slow, uncertain, purposeless steps, making him out as both the lost child he appears to be and the wandering plague he actually is. Just how aware is he under that mask? Why are his injuries contagious? How is he tampering with all machinery in his vicinity? The mysteries surrounding the Child both make for an excellent plot hook for the next episode and draw the viewer in, even as quite a few of them find him really very uncomfortable and would like him to go away now please. Moffat's every attempt at horror is far from a masterstroke, but in this episode at least he knows how to twist every dial available to him ever so slightly to inflict what Occupation saw as that atmosphere of wrongness and dread permeating the Child's spreading plague. The sets are abandoned, washed-out, and always rumbling with distant explosions. The side characters are largely harried and humorless, the orphan children's giddiness at a nice stolen meal drained by the knowledge they'll be running right back out into the blitz when dinner's over. Of special note is Dr. Constantine, played by Richard Wilson - his dry, weary performance as a newly-childless old man playing caretaker to a hospital of undead masked corpses is a standout, especially his elliptical replies to the Doctor's questions. "Why are they all wearing gas masks?" asks the Doctor. "They're not," Constantine replies, and before the viewer can fully work out what they just heard, the scene continues to its unsettling conclusion. As Occ stated, the mysteries set up by this episode are far and away better than Davies' first two-parter for a number of reasons, not in the least because the "monster" here is genuinely threatening and its aims and origins are a genuine mystery. Rose once again drags things down, though her escapade this time is kind of amusing in its cartoonish ineptitude. Destroying the world, not cool. Getting caught up in the middle of the Blitz with a loving Union Jack bullseye across your torso? That girl needs her own theme music and bumpers. Her interaction with Jack Harkness (with valuable guest actor, Jack Harkness' Chin) is relevant setup to the rest of the episode, as their eventual reunion with the Doctor shows, but runs overlong and serves as yet another scene of Rose flirting with mysterious men who are also con artists. I swear, the only honest man that girl has in her life is Mickey. God help her. "The Empty Child" and its successor aren't exactly the sole saving grace of Doctor Who, but they're a brisk and engaging adventure with a surprising handle on atmosphere and intricate plotting that hadn't been seen yet in this series. If nothing else, it definitely gave Moffat a good first impression with the show's viewers, even if quite a few of them carried that impression into their nightmares for a few days afterward.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:29
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Let it be known. This is not the time or the place for everyone to start expressing their grievances with Moffat, especially in a "just wait til you see episode [x]" sense. It will count as a spoiler, and I will both chastise you for breaking the no-spoilers rule and for being an oversensitive Tumblr-reading whiny-whine ninny. "Neener-neener" sound effects may be vocalized if not typed outright.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:30
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It's too bad you had these episodes hyped so much, though I think their genuine merit will probably shine through regardless.
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Aug 12, 2014 04:35
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True; I'd have liked to have seen your reaction had you gone in totally blind. Just out of curiosity, are there any other episodes coming up that you're aware of in some way?
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Aug 12, 2014 04:43
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MikeJF posted:True; I'd have liked to have seen your reaction had you gone in totally blind. I know nearly the entire plot of love and monsters due to hanging out in irc with nerds who couldn't wait to let me know how id find it so offensive cause I'm like super feminist and poo poo I know of fear her, that it's like real bad because peeps couldn't stop talkin about how bad it is In a similar way I know bad wolf is bad because oxx shut you guys the gently caress up about it which only can mean, because he's a real rear end in a top hat, that it's real bad And I think I know about...it's called blink, right? I know about that because well, I've been on the loving internet Also don't quote or respond to this in any significant way I'm just planting my flag and making sure you're all aware of my opinion: blink sounds real fuckin stupid and not scary That's it tho I think
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Aug 12, 2014 04:56
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Boy howdy, this episode scared the crap out of me when I was a tyke. 'Contagious villainy' has always been unsettling, but watching the hospital's doctor transform from an educated man into a warped, disfigured and dangerous child gave me nightmares. Occ's description of the Doctor as a time travelling con-man in his Father's Day review caught my eye, since one episode later that's exactly the sort of person we meet. This is essentially why I think Jack makes an interesting foil for the Doctor in this two-parter. That said, it did bug me how the episode just kind of glossed over "Oh, other people have time machines too, I guess."
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Aug 12, 2014 05:29
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I remember thinking these episodes had potential and were indeed better than some of the others, but I still hated them. From what I recall, the creepy gas mask children talking about "mummy" just got repetitive and annoying and there wasn't a real sense of dread and it was all very silly and disappointing. I've heard people say Moffat is a good writer and a bad showrunner, but I wonder if he just used to be good at TV but degraded. Because Coupling was an amazing sitcom, while the last season of Sherlock can go gently caress itself. MrAristocrates posted:If you make it through Series 3 of Doctor Who I'll create a review thread for all three seasons of The Newsroom, 
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Aug 12, 2014 05:40
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The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances hold up fairly well, unlike a lot of series one. I enjoy the Hell out of the cliffhanger.
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Aug 12, 2014 05:46
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Toxxupation posted:I know nearly the entire plot of love and monsters due to hanging out in irc with nerds who couldn't wait to let me know how id find it so offensive cause I'm like super feminist and poo poo Unless I missed something this is patently untrue. we just talked about how stupid the reveal that must not be discussed is, not how sexist it was.
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Aug 12, 2014 05:57
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I don't give no fucks bout what Oxxidation says.Toxxupation posted:Finally though, we get to the writer of this episode, a certain "Steven Moffat". Okay, I'm just gonna say it now: All y'all bitchin' about Steven Moffat: you people are crazy. Just from his work on this episode alone he's written circles around every other writer this season: He does an absolutely splendid job of creating a tonal piece of televistic fiction. Sure, it's not an emotive piece, and I (as I'm sure Oxxidation will note/deride) adore emotive pieces of fiction, but I sure as hell can respect the man for being able to build a world so well. Everything about this episode, from a worldbuilding perspective, is on-loving-point, and the plot, for once, is actually genuinely compelling. gently caress, he even made Rose not absolutely terrible, which is a high praise indeed when considering how terrible of a character she is to start with. And this is with him as a staff writer, not a showrunner. If this is the quality of work Moffat turns in when he's working under the constraints of somebody else's super flawed vision, having to deal with a garbage character like Rose, I'm genuinely excited to see what he does with the series when freed from those shackles, even if it's not exactly my cup of tea. Moffat wrote the hell out of this episode, and I can deeply respect that. Steven Moffat contributes one story per season in the RTD years. The first three are fuckin' fantastic, light years above almost anything else the show has to offer at this point. Even the fourth one is good, despite the fact he'd already used up his bag of tricks and everything in the ep is kind of a mishmash of stuff from the previous three. However.....well, that's the issue. Moffat has about three episodes' worth of ideas and he used them all up before he even began his tenure as showrunner. Everything he's done from then on has been a variant of something from those three episodes. As someone has said already almost EVERYONE was excited as hell when it was announced that he'd be taking over. And, has been stated before, even his first season loving owns. As for the sexism....haha, dude, Rose being a cliched damsel in every episode in the RTD seasons is nothing compared to the poo poo Moffat will pull. But we'll get to that. Sorry but if you really feel the need to make those grand sweeping generalisations based on the 45 minutes of him you've seen so far you're being kind of a loving idiot and the multiple people who know better than you deserve a chance at a rebuttal.
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Aug 12, 2014 08:53
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Moffat is great and on average during his run there was the highest number of episodes I enjoyed per season. I enjoyed all his episodes during the RTD years. Moffat can do another 5 years in my book.
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Aug 12, 2014 09:56
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And if we'd all gotten together and decided that your opinion was fact, that would be a worthwhile addition. But we didn't, so it isn't.
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Aug 12, 2014 10:06
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VagueRant posted:Thanks for the answer. Yeah, that does seem a little too weird. I didn't know who either of them were before this thread and it didn't confuse me, stop being a crazy person
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Aug 12, 2014 10:22
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MrAristocrates posted:If you make it through Series 3 of Doctor Who I'll create a review thread for all three seasons of The Newsroom, Jesus Christ, dude. Think this through. You have so much to live for.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:13
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Bown posted:Sorry but if you really feel the need to make those grand sweeping generalisations based on the 45 minutes of him you've seen so far you're being kind of a loving idiot and the multiple people who know better than you deserve a chance at a rebuttal. Bown posted:And if we'd all gotten together and decided that your opinion was fact, that would be a worthwhile addition. But we didn't, so it isn't. Oh ho ho, this kitten's got claws. We were both quietly amused when you posted that chatlog with the other d-bag whining about how Occupation's take on Fartbutts Rule The World wasn't quite how you envisioned it and I smothered the whole "coy spoilers" thing in its little coy crib, but at this point I feel the need to point out that your name isn't in that spiffy portmanteau up top. You seem more aggravated than anything about how the usual Who-fandom memes don't really apply to his episode synopses, which is the whole point of this thread in the first place, and not only that, you're still posting wait-and-see spoilers and giving other people flak for disagreeing with them. What I'm trying to get at here is that you're being a weird and unpleasant little creep and may want to stick to lurking 'til you can successfully disengage from our respective takes on your telephone-box spaceman show.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:30
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Oxxidation posted:Who-fandom memes That reminds me of something that I think is worth mentioning, and which ties into the reason threads like this are interesting: Doctor Who is a 50-year-old program, and just 25 years ago, most fans didn't have access to the internet. Even fewer had access to all the episodes, not even counting the fact that many were - and still are - lost (apart from their audio tracks). As a result, publications like Doctor Who Magazine/Monthly and coffee-table books like Doctor Who: A Celebration had a huge effect on "fandom consensus" at the time. For instance, the then-lost First Doctor story "The Celestial Toymaker" had a hugely popular "fan memory" - it was considered a classic, even by people who had never seen it. In contrast, the more comedic (and watchable) story from the same era, The Gunfighters, was extant, but everyone hated it, even folks who'd never watched it, because that was the consensus. Even after quality "reconstructions" of The Celestial Toymaker became widely available, it took a surprisingly long time - years, arguably decades - before most fans actually started to re-evaluate much of those 80s-era received wisdom. Which is disturbing, because The Celestial Toymaker consists of a ridiculous racist stereotype, played by Michael Gough in yellowface, forcing the Doctor to play Towers of Hanoi for 88 minutes while being vaguely menaced by Thing One and Thing Two. It's poo poo. It's plainly poo poo. Entirely unwatchable now and unwatchable in 1966. But no one seemed to want to go "against the grain" and point out that the emperor, as it were, had no clothes, and was also taking part in a minstrel show. ANYWAY, what makes threads like this, and blogs like The Wife in Space, so interesting is that people are going into a highly mythologized TV show with (mostly) untainted expectations. Their interpretations and opinions aren't colored by decades of fandom dogma and received wisdom. And that's so neat! DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 14:13
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Oxxidation posted:You seem more aggravated than anything about how the usual Who-fandom memes don't really apply to his episode synopses, which is the whole point of this thread in the first place Not only am I not a part of the DW fandom in any way I have no idea what these memes are I'm apparently so angry you guys aren't parroting. But nice try being super reductionist and whiny when I was literally just trying to explain why saying "people who hate Moffat are crazy" after watching 45 minutes of his first ever episode is a dumb thing to do. At this point you seem much angrier about the idea of people having different opinions to you than I do.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:24
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VagueRant posted:I've heard people say Moffat is a good writer and a bad showrunner, but I wonder if he just used to be good at TV but degraded.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:26
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DoctorWhat posted:That reminds me of something that I think is worth mentioning, and which ties into the reason threads like this are interesting: Hi yes these are posts I like, please continue making posts like these. It also helps remind me of the cargo-cult mess a lot of fandoms were before the Internet starting making community interaction much quicker, if no less painful. I wasn't a close fan of anything in particular when I was younger and I still accumulated enough Gamepro magazines and bleary videotapes to make a landfill hiccup, which it probably did, because you can't hoard that crap forever.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:28
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I like Doctor Who, and I like seeing the opinions of someone who does not like Doctor Who. That is all I want out of this thread.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:29
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Bown posted:Not only am I not a part of the DW fandom in any way I have no idea what these memes are I'm apparently so angry you guys aren't parroting. But nice try being super reductionist and whiny when I was literally just trying to explain why saying "people who hate Moffat are crazy" after watching 45 minutes of his first ever episode is a dumb thing to do. Hey yeah I don't care if people insult me, because if I did I would 1) have to stop being oxx's friend and 2) stop posting in TVIV in general, and also I make a general rule to not comment on criticisms of my reviews because that creates a weird power dynamic and I'd rather have people honestly criticize me than not and it makes the thread lovely and blah blah death of the author blah blah, and you're a generally cool guy who I like but bown you've been real lovely to people who disagree with you like that Decius guy and that's not v cool That's all I got to say about that
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Aug 12, 2014 14:34
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Oxxidation posted:Hi yes these are posts I like, please continue making posts like these. Will definitely do! 50-year fandoms are fascinating because of how... well, religious they can become. Legends form up about convention anecdotes, the lost visual details of missing episodes inspire whole novels, et cetera. It's bonkers and I absolutely love exploring it.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:36
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I don't care that he disagreed with me. I made a post explaining why some people don't like Moffat and he replied with "Well I like him!" as if that makes even a bit of a difference. I literally do not care one bit if you or anyone else disagrees with me about the show. Oxx has this idea that I'm some card-carrying fandom member and I'm annoyed that you guys aren't agreeing with the brunt of the fandom even though I had no idea they felt that way and really don't care.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:37
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Bown posted:I don't care that he disagreed with me. I made a post explaining why some people don't like Moffat and he replied with "Well I like him!" as if that makes even a bit of a difference. I literally do not care one bit if you or anyone else disagrees with me about the show. Oh my god, just drop it. Don't post here at least until the next review-pair goes up, and it'll all blow over. EDIT: Also, it looks like the hosting for the Wife in Space blog is down at the moment, so I'll give some context: It's a blog about a married couple, Neil and Sue Perryman, who decide to watch every single pre-2005 episode of Doctor Who, including the slide-show reconstructions of the lost episodes, as a kind of... experiment? Neil is the total Who nerd, but even he hasn't seen all of it, while Sue has only ever watched (but enjoyed) the New Series and has been almost completely insulated from in-fandom received wisdom and suchlike. They (and their marriage) manage to survive it and Sue's often iconoclastic perspectives, along with her ability to see past the trivia and did-you-knows straight to stuff like set design, direction, et cetera, are a really fascinating read! When the hosting fixes itself, I'll post the link again. It's a lot of content, obviously, but it's hysterical. EDIT: LINK DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 14:39
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