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beccatoriaThe thing is, it's never the viewer's job to make the telly okay. Sometimes, though, I wonder how much of what we see depends more on us than what's on the screen. Subjectively, much of the criticism of this season confuses me. Subjectively, I have no idea where half of it comes from.
So this chick is driving her boy's car but she's such a shitty driver, she can't help but crash into THE WHOLE UNIVERSE and the boy ends up having to write such a big cheque to fix the situation, he's probably not even gonna exist after it clears.
So this boy, he loves this chick so much, he lets her drive his car, and he never lets anyone drive his car, but this chick, he trusts. So when some jerk carjacks her because he wants some payback on the boy, and crashes his ride into THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, the boy is pretty much willing to write whatever cheque he has to to make things right again; it's the whole universe, after all. And it was his car.
Which story do you like better?
So there's this girl, and she bites psychiatrists. She runs away on the night of her wedding, all legs and lips and short skirts, inappropriately kissing men who aren't interested like some kind of drunken harlot. She gets her boyfriend killed, and when he comes back made of plastic, it's about five minutes before she's yelling at him and trying to kiss strangers at their wedding. But at least someone managed to marry her, so that's something.
So there's this girl, and she bites psychiatrists. She runs away on the night of her wedding, abandoned kid in a grown-up's body. There are too many rooms in her house, so she runs. Too much of her life has been stolen, she's made of gaps, she can't communicate and it takes her boy dying in her arms, and her dying in his before she works it out. It's a wedding, and it's growing up, and it's not the end.
Which story do you like better?
So this roman soldier remembers he used to be a wimp who let his bitchy girlfriend push him around. And he didn't let her wear her ring and figured eventually she'd snap back to reality and realise he's been waiting and deserved her. Instead he died, came back as a roman, waited and deserved her. Shame she was still a bitch.
So there's a roman soldier, and he's not really a real boy. He's the shell of a boy who loved a girl and died for her because he never understood there was more to life than a village. A shell of a boy who tried to wish himself real and failed. A thing-boy who held onto the shell of a memory (from a universe that died in 102 AD) for 2,000 years, because he knew his plastic heart was full of love. It's a wedding, and it's growing up, and it's learning there is more to life than a village, and it's not the end.
Which story do you like better?
There's a mad man in a box. He's frivolous and annoying and has no understanding of the weight of his decisions. He's paternalistic and controlling. He's childish. He's unemotional. He's a collection of disassociated character tics. He's ugly, he's boring, he's got a bow tie.
There's a mad man in a box. He's brand new and ancient. He's quiet, stoic, understated, noble. He's silly, he's childlike, he's easy to read. He's finally more than a collection of disassociated character tics. He's gorgeous, he's intriguing, he's got a bow tie.
Who do you like best? Which man is in which story?
Because this story - it's arbitrary - a series of coincidences masquerading as a fairytale hanging on a half dozen repeated themes because writers only ever tell one story. The out of order, years-apart meetings, repeated voices of the dead, girls who love the Doctor and girls the Doctor loves, time loops, paradoxes, River Song. Throw it all on a board and play pin the plot on the donkey, if we throw enough symbolism out there we can pass it off as myth.
There's a story. It's cyclical and unending. It's about a boy and a girl and a boy and a girl, about magic boxes and magic books, about running away and running back. It's about burning at the centre of time, about creation and destruction in the same instant, about death, about sacrifice, about bedtime stories (the most important things left in the universe). It's about legs and lips and it's all right, we can buy a fez. It's about joy and of course Amy wants to kiss them all, it's a fairytale and no one ought to be a frog. It's about a dozen repeated themes because writers only ever tell one story, but this is a good one. This is the best.
I know which story I like better.
Subjectively:
One of my favourite exercises in writing is to remove all the adjectives and see what's left. The near lack of them is one of the things that renders translated haiku so beautiful to me.
Smith's Doctor has no adjectives.
Tennant's had nothing but.
So this chick is driving her boy's car but she's such a shitty driver, she can't help but crash into THE WHOLE UNIVERSE and the boy ends up having to write such a big cheque to fix the situation, he's probably not even gonna exist after it clears.
So this boy, he loves this chick so much, he lets her drive his car, and he never lets anyone drive his car, but this chick, he trusts. So when some jerk carjacks her because he wants some payback on the boy, and crashes his ride into THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, the boy is pretty much willing to write whatever cheque he has to to make things right again; it's the whole universe, after all. And it was his car.
Which story do you like better?
So there's this girl, and she bites psychiatrists. She runs away on the night of her wedding, all legs and lips and short skirts, inappropriately kissing men who aren't interested like some kind of drunken harlot. She gets her boyfriend killed, and when he comes back made of plastic, it's about five minutes before she's yelling at him and trying to kiss strangers at their wedding. But at least someone managed to marry her, so that's something.
So there's this girl, and she bites psychiatrists. She runs away on the night of her wedding, abandoned kid in a grown-up's body. There are too many rooms in her house, so she runs. Too much of her life has been stolen, she's made of gaps, she can't communicate and it takes her boy dying in her arms, and her dying in his before she works it out. It's a wedding, and it's growing up, and it's not the end.
Which story do you like better?
So this roman soldier remembers he used to be a wimp who let his bitchy girlfriend push him around. And he didn't let her wear her ring and figured eventually she'd snap back to reality and realise he's been waiting and deserved her. Instead he died, came back as a roman, waited and deserved her. Shame she was still a bitch.
So there's a roman soldier, and he's not really a real boy. He's the shell of a boy who loved a girl and died for her because he never understood there was more to life than a village. A shell of a boy who tried to wish himself real and failed. A thing-boy who held onto the shell of a memory (from a universe that died in 102 AD) for 2,000 years, because he knew his plastic heart was full of love. It's a wedding, and it's growing up, and it's learning there is more to life than a village, and it's not the end.
Which story do you like better?
There's a mad man in a box. He's frivolous and annoying and has no understanding of the weight of his decisions. He's paternalistic and controlling. He's childish. He's unemotional. He's a collection of disassociated character tics. He's ugly, he's boring, he's got a bow tie.
There's a mad man in a box. He's brand new and ancient. He's quiet, stoic, understated, noble. He's silly, he's childlike, he's easy to read. He's finally more than a collection of disassociated character tics. He's gorgeous, he's intriguing, he's got a bow tie.
Who do you like best? Which man is in which story?
Because this story - it's arbitrary - a series of coincidences masquerading as a fairytale hanging on a half dozen repeated themes because writers only ever tell one story. The out of order, years-apart meetings, repeated voices of the dead, girls who love the Doctor and girls the Doctor loves, time loops, paradoxes, River Song. Throw it all on a board and play pin the plot on the donkey, if we throw enough symbolism out there we can pass it off as myth.
There's a story. It's cyclical and unending. It's about a boy and a girl and a boy and a girl, about magic boxes and magic books, about running away and running back. It's about burning at the centre of time, about creation and destruction in the same instant, about death, about sacrifice, about bedtime stories (the most important things left in the universe). It's about legs and lips and it's all right, we can buy a fez. It's about joy and of course Amy wants to kiss them all, it's a fairytale and no one ought to be a frog. It's about a dozen repeated themes because writers only ever tell one story, but this is a good one. This is the best.
I know which story I like better.
Subjectively:
One of my favourite exercises in writing is to remove all the adjectives and see what's left. The near lack of them is one of the things that renders translated haiku so beautiful to me.
Smith's Doctor has no adjectives.
Tennant's had nothing but.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 01:12 am (UTC)I liked Nine. I liked Rose. I watched all the eps, but never felt them.
Ten? I met him. I thought maybe I could like him, and I did like him some of the time, and I loved what I saw of Martha Jones. But I never did really like Ten all that well, and I still haven't seen all of his series.
And then came Eleven and Amy Pond. And I heard many varied opinions on both, but what I heard the most clearly, because it came from those I trust, was the awesome. And the wonder. And the River. And so I checked out this new series and I fell in love.
Me? I like the second of all those options best, but that's mostly because I don't think whatever show those people with the first options even exists. It's certainly not the one I saw.
Edited to use a more appropriate icon, because now I HAVE some appropriate ones. :D
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 01:27 am (UTC)But I do think the subjectivity factor, the ability of me the viewer to make TV make sense, is why I loved Battlestar Galactica in the face of 90% of my f-list HATING IT BEYOND MEASURE.
I also think you are right about Eleven having no adjectives.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 01:48 am (UTC)[/one-track mind]
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Date: 2010-07-31 02:19 am (UTC)I was pulling for, uh, I can't spell his name, but the dude from "Serenity" and "Kinky Boots". But now I can't imagine anyone but Matt Smith.
ETA: Is your icon Drop Dead Fred?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 03:16 am (UTC)Tennant's had nothing but.
I don't even know where to go with this except that I kinda love this a lot!
As for your two stories...I actually do think that we make our own reactions, i.e., while there are certain things we can't think/write/talk away, we can always get the second version in our reading. And I saw that second version and I liked it@!
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Date: 2010-07-31 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 09:12 am (UTC)Which is odd, because the first couple of seasons of RTD, he was much more Moffat-esque, before rushing off into hyperbole arm-waving and shouting territory, and turning the Doctor into sparkly house-elf Jesus.
It still genuinely astonishes me to hear people in Who fandom reminisce over how much they miss RTDs doctor. Because as much as I love Tennant, he was absolutely wasted in the last couple of seasons of Who.
I suspect fandoms reaction is just one of... having been spoonfed easy stories and simple writing for a couple of years, suddenly they had to process something a bit more complicated. And that's difficult sometimes. So hopefully, next season, unless moffat is ordered to dumb the show down again, people will have adjusted better to it.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 09:50 am (UTC)I'm wary of warding off the entirety of Whodom with a single post because it's so enormous I'm sure there are good bits to it, but...I have to admit that skirting the edges has left me...unsettled. I loved Harry Potter too, but had a similar reaction to that fandom.
I liked Nine. I liked Rose. I watched all the eps, but never felt them.
That's an interesting way of putting it. I think I agree. I watched them all too, and I liked them both, and perhaps, as characters, at the start, really did love them. It was a feeling that crystalised once or twice during the series - at odd moments, like at the end of the episode about the end of the world, or, unsurprisingly, in the Moffat episodes. But it never came together. It was never coherent enough. It was fun, but it wasn't amazing. It made me smile, or feel sad, but it never really got beyond popcorn emotion. Which, you know, was fine and I still enjoyed it, until Tennant's doctor came along and...like you, I never really liked him. It's a shame - David Tennant is a good actor, but this was...not a show I enjoyed. I've probably seen more than you, because I have seen most of his episodes by now, but I missed a LOT of them on first airing and don't regret that, or the ones I still haven't seen.
I'm so glad you love this New New Who, though. Like you, I think it's just...marvelous. The wonder is a good issue to raise. Makes me think of Farscape, just a little.
but that's mostly because I don't think whatever show those people with the first options even exists. It's certainly not the one I saw.
Yeah, and that's the thing - I agree. I can't see it either. And I've been trying, because so many seem to. So...again...subjectively, carefully, but truthfully, my opinion is that the first story isn't even a representation of what was on screen. I wish the line between interpreting what's on screen via one's personality and experience and preferences, and warping what's on screen because of personal baggage were clearer.
Cus sometimes you can point to a person, like, say, I'm comfortable pointing to Jacob and saying, this is a clear example of you just making shit up,dude. It gets uncomfortable and frustrating when instead of a person you're up against a nebulous mass of fandom opinion that is varied and...too easily stereotyped. But...it's still how I feel and that's why this post probably needs to be clearer but isn't.
I guess I'm just hyper aware that this is a divide I've been on the other side of extremely recently. BSG being the obvious elephant in the room but also Doctor Who itself, since during the RTD era I was the one complaining about the offensive nature of the thing and others were telling me I was just watching it wrong.
IT'S SO HARD!
At least I have likeminded friends. <3
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:28 am (UTC)Ultimately, the line for me is whether I feel I'm being forced to fix the telly via alternate readings (as I did at the end of BSG or during most of Tennant's run), or whether I don't notice if that's what I'm doing, and if I do notice, how far and for how long and to what degree I'm willing to expend that effort. The inability of the universe to provide me with a clear and obvious line regarding where that is, is a point of endless frustration.
So, without attempting to quantify it, I will say another broad area that I was...circling with this very vague post, is about how the show itself changes. I think the reason that I, and 90% your flist, felt the final season of BSG changed and started focusing on different things, themes and ideas, and to see the original things required increasing interpretational effort. Similarly, I imagine, for those who liked RTD's Who, this new era represents their show braking hard left.
I could argue that Who has been on TV for so long, indeed the central regeneration method of its continued existence implies, that such changes are central to it and should be expected; I'm sure you could argue that BSG never changed right up until the end. Neither would really be the point - the point is more perceptual - did our show change direction without us and without our consent? How do we respond to that? If we respond poorly, can we back up our opinions with objective arguments or are we consigned forever to subjectivity?
I absolutely have no answer to that, which is something I find frustrating. I guess what this post is really saying is, I don't think the first stories are even on the screen; I don't even think they're viable, rational readings that viewers ought to choose against. I just don't think they're even there.
I believe this fairly strongly, the same way I believe, fairly strongly, that BSG 4.5 was a failure, that Tennant's Doctor was a jerk, that Batman isn't a very admirable person, that Farscape S4 really wasn't that bad, and that Luke Skywalker should have died when he was 43.
I believe that I have rational, solid, objective arguments for these opinions.
I keep looking for the unifying theory of I'm Right to back up why I feel one text is worthy of generosity and trust while another has squandered that right. About how story one says more about the viewer and story two says more about the text.
But I haven't found it. At times, this morass of subjectivity, this freedom to choose your own adventure is comforting. At times, I find it anything but.
I think, in the end, this post is about my own confusion as much as anything. *waves hands vaguely*
But yes, Eleven has absolutely no adjectives. ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:37 am (UTC)Yes, he would be quite marvelous, though I was actually pulling for Paterson Joseph because there was a really, really big rumour it was gonna be him and he was just so fantastic as the Marquis De Carabas in Neverwhere that I was so immediately sold on him. In fact, I was so annoyed when it wasn't him and it was some Skinny Young Thing that I had to be quite strongly persuaded to give it a chance.
But yeah, Matt Smith has really convinced me.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:44 am (UTC)Regarding the two stories, I'm...probably circling a lot more confusion in this post than is immediately evident, mainly because I've been on the other side - the side where I can't get the second reading, and I don't think the second reading is even there to be gotten without massive excuses for things that oughtn't be excused, so often recently, I now feel odd flipping back onto the side that's effectively yelling, "But you're interrogating this kitten from the wrong perspective!"
The line between a redemptive reading and an excuse is horribly blurry and perhaps even exactly the same thing sometimes.
In this instance, I'm left unconvinced the first reading is even particularly viable without large amounts of mental gymnastics, but also left with the knowledge, there is nothing tangible, provable, objective on which I can hang my certainty.
Oh telly, why aren't you more like science... ;)
And I'm very, very glad you saw the second version too.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 10:52 am (UTC)I think fandom's reaction is perhaps less of having become used to being spoonfed easy stories and more down to fandom having slowly, of a four-year period of filtration, been whittled down to just people who - for whatever reasons they have that are unintelligable to me - genuinely enjoyed RTD's simplistic, coincidental, melodramatic, deus-ex-machinas. So now for them, this is a genuine change, this is genuinely not what they signed up for. Hopefully, if it's not told get dumbed down (which I sort of doubt? I mean, despite Murdoch's media panicking over it, it doesn't appear the ratings have actually dropped when you consider the increase in iPlayer usage over the last two years - and it's been two since the last series, and the fact it was up against the world cup in a changing timeslot during the hottest month we'd had in years?), that hopefully the show will just attract more people to whom it will appeal and those who don't like it will move on?
ROLL ON SEASON 6.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 11:08 am (UTC)Personally what I think happened is over the course of the season they lost the half million or so Tennant fangirls, who only really watched the show for ten-inch, who just never quite got into Matt Smith in the same way.
Which is fair enough, we've all watched shows just because we happen to like somebody in them.
And yes, the changing timeslot was RIDICULOUS. It wasn't on at the same time running for any two consecutive weeks. I do not know what the BBC were playing at with that, it's like they were actively trying to make Doctor Who fail again.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 01:14 pm (UTC)I mean, I also think that yes, probably they lost half a million Tennant fangirls along the way and honestly I would have been surprised if the ratings did stay completely static during this relaunch. But I don't think that they probably lost as many as it initially looks.
I remember reading that the consolidated ratings, with repeats and iPlayer, etc., are almost identical to the consolidated ratings from the previous series? Suggesting that either that the ratings were steady but more people were choosing to watch at a later time (due to changing viewing habits and the World Cup and the good weather?) or that the people who did watch were rewatching on iPlayer and via repeat more than usual.
Though lord knows that Big Corporations usually don't have any truck with that kind of common sense. Reminds me of poor Superman Returns which, if I recall correctly, made about 400 million worldwide, doubling the investment, but was dubbed a flop because it didn't break 500 million.
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Date: 2010-07-31 01:29 pm (UTC)But ratings seem to be so... variable, in the sense of, lots of wiggle room in what they really mean. So who knows.
And yes, it was odd how Superman Returns was considered a flop, when it made such a huge profit. Of course, I absolutely don't think it deserved to make a profit, because I thought it was horrible, but... :)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 03:16 pm (UTC)I don't think it's a coincidence that I watched and loved them both at the same time (well, "same" in that it was fall of 06). I think I even made a post about Rose and John being similar, and loving them for similar reasons (because I really did love Rose in the Nines).
I just...TEN, you guys! Ten and freaking Jacob.