By popular request...

[avevale_intelligencer]

I've always hated, in a muted grumbly sort of way, those films where a currently popular comedian is implausibly transported to the Middle Ages or another equally benighted period, and his or her main achievement is to whip out a Walkman and treat the peasants and nobles to whatever variant of disco is in fashion that week. Whereupon, of course, they all exclaim "Gadzooks, verily this be a gas!" and start frugging or whatever as if they had been doing it all their lives, causing unintentional merriment to those who watch the film a year later when that particular dance looks even stupider than it did at the time and nobody remembers the comedian's name.

For much the same reason I question the wisdom, in what purports to be both a serious (children's) drama and an episode of a programme that has transcended fashion and will be fifty years old before too long, of referencing existing television shows which, please gods, will be gone and forgotten inside a decade, one with "Take Your Pick" and "Criss Cross Quiz." I know they did it in the early years, but they didn't know any better then, and besides, the Beatles have lasted, kind of. It would have been just as easy to make up similar but different programmes and just refer to the real ones by name.

We're getting to the end of the season now, and things are moving faster. It's nice to see the Daleks again, particularly as it pokes a rather large hole in the alleged Doctor's story about the Time War. There's no doubt that a war did take place, as other people have talked about it, but it obviously was not as he thought it was in at least one respect. (Incidentally, I worked out last night why they had Gallifrey destroyed. Nothing to do with adding drama and pathos to the character: nothing to do, except marginally, with stripping away all the mythological apparatus of the Time Lords: purely and simply because RTD's beloved conception of the Doctor as workin' class 'ero goes completely phthbbbththphttt if you've got Chancellors and Castellans and Cardinals in fancy robes all deferring to him and calling him "Lord Ex-president" and so on. In fact, the writers destroyed his home and his people for political reasons. That's why, even though the Daleks are back, the Time Lords won't be. They upset the balance of good and evil in their entire universe so that the Doctor didn't have to talk like a southerner. I call that petty. But see below.) I did have a slight problem with the fact that when the Daleks threatened to exterminate Rose if the Doctor didn't co-operate, and he said "no," they then did not exterminate Rose. If there is a reason for this, doubtless it will be explained next week.

Apart from those quibbles and my ongoing gripes, it was a good episode again. Pity that for me at least it's too little too late. Which is not to say I won't keep watching subsequent seasons, assuming there are any--I kept watching "Lost In Space," after all--but more critically than I really wanted to watch something I loved this much. There's been a violation of trust, and, as someone once said, it has to be rebuilt. It's a long and important process. And I'd love to just skip it, but I can't.

Having said that, I have had to face up to some things about myself I'm not too keen on as a result of this series. I said it wasn't the accent I was objecting to, it was the sloppy diction, which does make me an education snob. (But WHY can't the Doctor, who obviously is educated, appear to be educated???) That isn't all, though. The "confidential" programme on BBC3 afterwards mentioned the Doctor's "eccentricity" as one of the reasons he was so loved. I'm sure I don't have to point out that only the upper class are privileged to be "eccentric": for the rest of us they have other, less attractive words. That isn't it either.

Here's the thing. If I was walking down the street and I saw any of the previous Doctors standing on the corner, and I didn't know them, I'd be interested, amused perhaps by their outfits. I would know them for people like me. If I was walking down the street and I saw this Doctor standing on the corner and I didn't know him, I would cross the street to avoid him, in case he decided I was a pansy and needed a kicking. I would think he was a thug, because there are thugs, and he looks like a thug. I'd be afraid.

The Doctor has never, ever, scared me before. And that's why I feel betrayed...but it's really not his problem, in the end. It's mine.

Comments

Well yes, I agree....

[(Anonymous)]

...the use of the game shows was just too post-modernist, self-referential cute and indicative of the failure of RTD to grasp the scale of what he's writing about. (Oddly, I didn't think that adding disintegration to THE WEAKEST LINK made it any nastier: it's already a pettily sadistic program.)

One thing that RTD keeps banging on about is the Doctor's rolling stone nature: I think he sees this as some sort of moral immaturity rather than a tragedy. He's setting up the Doctor to experience some sort of plonking and overstated moral realisation: he foreshadowed this with the realisation this week that 'This is all my fault...' Dammit! Cheap and maudlin.

Part of the death of the Time Lords may be due to RTD not liking the social mileu. I think another part is him not being able to handle the mythic depth that it gives the Doctor. There's been rather too much of cutting the Doctor down to size this season.

Michael Cule

Re: Well yes, I agree....

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Exactly. To misquote Benjy Stone: "I need Doctor Whos as big as I can get them! I can't use you life size!"

RTD's been quoted as saying that he wants the Doctor to sound "like your mate down the pub." Well, I'm at a disadvantage right there, in that I don't have Mates Down The Pub: I have mates who go to pubs, but they go for specific reasons, they don't live there.. But even if I had a Mate Down The Pub, I know damn well he wouldn't have a TARDIS. If I had to picture someone who had a TARDIS, I would be picturing someone quite unlike your basic Mate Down The Pub. Which makes me a snob again, I suppose.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Just a quick thought ... would your mate down the pub be like Ford Prefect? Someone a little quirky, but not from Guildford but from some place that a mutant star goat once ate?

The Doctor would never be "a bloke at the pub", it just doesn't fit. And while personality changes have occurred with each regeneration (and as the writers and the new actor have worked out what each other want), I don't think he'd become a northern yob.

There are some who speculate that it will turn out that CE isn't the *real* DW, but some other sort of construct ... but I don't believe that's going to happen (sadly).

I *did* enjoy the gameshow references (particularly when they got all the real people to play their gameshow counterparts), more than I enjoyed a living Bertie Bassett licorice all-sort man (which I have a vague memory of being in a DW episode years ago ... am I imagining that?)

The world has changed a lot in the last forty years, and one of the things that has changed is the amount of TV and the impact it has on society. Long gone are times when half the nation would sit down to watch Morecombe & Wise. But things like "The Weakest Link" and "Big Brother" I think will be remembered for a long time (Trinny & Suzannah will disappear from memory, hopefully within a week or two!)

TWL and BB are both international phenomena with US (and other country) versions. But I hope that there is something much more going on here than we've seen so far ... the Doctor and Rose have gone back to Dickensian days and forward to 20100 and "Bad Wolf" has been there each time. And while it's possible that the Daleks (and the mysterious "other person") have been working on this plan for 19,000 years ... I think it more likely that there's some sort of strange time bubble thing going on and that using the 21st century game shows in 20100 is symptomatic of that "wrongness".

Well, one can hope!

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Yep, I think the shows they parodied were well chosen for the likely market of DW. The only one of the three that isn't already international is Trinny & Susanna, and there are *similar* shows in many other nations.

My only gripe is that this stoy, and "the long game", are set ridiculously far in the future, which overstretches the credibility of what's going on bearing *any relation at all* to early 21st century human activities. But like Terry Nation, Mr Rusty seems to like big numbers. Oh, and the faux precision of it being *exactly* the years 200000 and 200100 that things happen. I know, its just anaid to the viewer to make the numbers easier to remember but... It sticks out like a sore thumb, y'know?

Why is everything always "100 years later", or "returns to earth every 25 years (exactly)", or.... [EXITS GRUMBLING AND LATE FOR A MASSAGE]

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

It's lazy writing is what it is. Both the cheap-shot parodies and the insufficiently thought-out figures. The two policemen in the Beiderbecke series know better than these guys.

"What time is it?"

"Quarter past three."

"Make it three-seventeen. Sounds more official."

Grump.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

No, you didn't dream the Bertie Bassett, unfortunately...

I am one of the ones who hopes that the various anomalies about this Doctor will be explained when the real one shows up...whether David Tennant is he will remain to be seen. I agree, though, that it's probably not going to happen...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"when they got all the real people to play their gameshow counterparts"

They did? I was disappointed that it was an 'android' rather than Anne R or a simulacrum (but the timing which had the real "Weakest Link" immediately before was priceless, whether they planned it or not). Who on earth (or anywhere else) Trinny & Suzannah? I assume it was the 'girls' having fun with Captain Jack, but I don't know the original...

(Which goes to emphasise the problem with using 'popular' TV shows -- fans of DW aren't necessarily fans of pop culture. I did know BB and WL, and I loved the reference to "Call My Bluff -- with guns", but I suspect that I missed a lot of references...)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Trinny and Susannah are two ineffably smug ladies who go around making rude comments about people's clothes and passing themselves off as fashion experts.

Apparently the robots were supposed to look naff...I think somebody disappeared up their own ironic postmodern orifice.

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

Oh, and on a petty note - Trinny & Susannah's stuff is hardly a game show of any sort. So - no real place on somewhere named a Game Station.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Well, it was an "Anne-Droid" as Rose pointed out. And yes, reading the credits (which I did several times to see if they had got the voice of Big Brother, but I didn't spot him) it was Anne Robinson, and Trinny & Suzannah (from "What Not To Wear"). It's been on (I think) BBC for the last three years or so and seems to be one of the standard repeats out on Discovery Real Time (which was Discovery Home & Leisure until a few weeks ago).

Pretty much as Zander described them.

oh

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

and they've been in the recent ads for coffee (Nescafe Gold Blend?) where one of them is wearing pink bunny slippers

Re: Well yes, I agree....

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I didn't think that adding disintegration to THE WEAKEST LINK made it any nastier: it's already a pettily sadistic program.

*g*

Now that you mention it - I suspect that by the time Weakest Link was done with them, some of the contestants might have preferred disintigration.

[armb.livejournal.com]

> referencing existing television shows

Me too, but I have since come up with a potential rationalisation. If the shows are specifically targeting Rose in some way, there may be some reason to base them closely on shows she would be familiar with.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Very good point. =:o}

[armb.livejournal.com]

Apart from the fact that nothing that I noticed actually supported it being planned that way. Next week could change that.
Incidentally, doesn't a transmat beam, even an extremely high powered one, getting into the Tardis, contradict past continuity? (And wouldn't the story have worked just as well if they had been grabbed as soon as they came out of the Tardis somewhere else?)
(There a sort of connection in that a comment (that I can't now find) I made earlier about a book involves something getting into the Tardis, and once [SPOILER] is revealed rather later, it suddenly made sense to me.)

Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

I thought that it was BLOODY AWFUL.

The varous media parodies were limp, unimaginative stuff that would disgrace a particularly poor "Judge Dredd" strip, and had all of the humour of a truly duff Mad magazine script. Not to mention being the sort of smug, self-indulgent toss that you'd find in the worst of the Virgin New Adventures books. It was sub-panto crap that made stage play "The Ultimate Adventure" look good.

The Daleks. Oh how are the mighty fallen. The once-proud and ruthless conquerors and schemers, who planned to rip the cores out of planets and destroy Time itself, now plot to rule the Universe by...sponsoring naff game shows and reality TV. It's enough to make even strong men shiver. And as for sparing Rose's life to take her hostage - come off it. That's the sort of thing that a Cyberman would do. A Dalek is supposed to be so arrogant - "one Dalek can destroy all" - that it wouldn't NEED to take hostages. It would just merrily exterminate them all.

And Eccleston's big speech at the end had all of the fire and intensity of Walter the Softy. When any other Doctor - even McCoy - squared off to the Daleks, you could HEAR the fury and defiance in their voices, and they rang true. Eccleston merely came across as a posturing pub bully.

This sort of thing can work well as a 25-minute piss-take (and I'm sorry, calling it "camp" is not defence enough, it needs to be good AS WELL AS camp), with the right cast and writer. I believe it was called "The Ratings War", and starred Colin Baker as the Doctor and Toby Longworth as Beep the Meep, and was written by Steve Lyons. And was BRILLIANT.

This, on the other hand, was tawdry, smug, vapid TOSS. And "The Parting Of The Ways" is going to have to be truly brilliant to atone for it.

Re: Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

My goodness. I thought I was unhappy. Well articulated, that lady.

Re: Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, "The Ratings War". Magnificent.

[SINGS BOLDLY:]
Kill them all! Kill them all!
Kill them all! Kill them all!
Kiiiillllll.... theeeeemmmmm.... aaaaalllllll!
[SINGS DAINTILY:]
La-la-la, la la la *laaah*, la-la!
La-la-la, la la la *laaah*, la-la!
La-la-la, la-la-la,
La-la-la-la-la-la-la,
La-la-la la *laaaahh*, la-laaaahh!
[EXITS SKIPPING DAINTILY, WITH POINTY EARS FLICKING CUTELY, RAZOR TEETH CAREFULLY CONCEALED, AND MEGA-DEATH HAND CANNON CASUALLY DANGLING FROM FINGERS]

Re: Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

"Let the streets run red, spread our message of pain:
When they beg for their lives, use the pliers again -
No need to ask why! Do it for The Most-High!
YOU ARE BEEP'S FRIEND, CONQUER ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!"

Re: Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

(backing away slowly, hands in the air) And this was...what exactly?

Re: Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[cpt-buggernuts.livejournal.com]

It was a free CD given away with Dr Who magazine a while back, made the Big Finish Dr Who audio people. Featured a character Beep the Meep (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/b/beepmeep.htm) from the old Dr Who comic strips, and parodied reality television (along with the effects taht the realities of television had upon the later years of Dr Who).

Surprisingly good.

Re: Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...

[cpt-buggernuts.livejournal.com]

That should read 'made by Big Finish, the Dr Who audio people'

[cpt-buggernuts.livejournal.com]

I've just been pointed in the direction of your LJ by pink_sweater_uk. Because apparently everyone else on the entire internet loved the damn thing, and I was feeling increasingly old and rubbish and left behind because it made me want to track down everyone responsible and do terrible snake and turkey ham based things to them.

This was the first week for me that the 'ya Dr Who is back' factor didn't cancel out any dissatisfaction with the episode itself. Lor but it was rubbish.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Um, sorry, where are my manners? Welcome to my journal. Nice to meet you. Feel free to wander around and poke things.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Since I couldn't hear what they were saying at the end, because of the ridiculously high level of the 'background' music (hasn't anyone told them that it's supposed to be in the background?), I don't know whether anything meaningful was actually said. I did think that most of the rest of it was pretty good, though (although see my other comment about not getting the PopTV references). Finally the Doctor seemed to be doing something...

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"(hasn't anyone told them that it's supposed to be in the background?)"

I think they've decided to treat the Dalek episodes as opera. And to be fair, at the points where the music swells, the details of the dialog aren't significant. It's a stylistic way of saying "...and at this point, everybody's just yelling at everyone else out of force of habit (daleks) or because they don't know what else to do (humans)."

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And the brain finally catches up...

ZANDER: Why can't the Doctor just remember how to speak?
A brogue like his on Gallifrey would mark him out a freak.
The Lords in the Panopticon spoke BBC with pride.
Oh why can't the Doctor
Well
Just
Tidy up his diction to show his education, not just his social class?
Most aliens' elocution would surely pass.
Of course not all of them have a voice like a sounding brass.
Some communicate in a quite different manner.

...and so on. To be finished maybe when I look out the original lyrics.

[aunty_marion]

Aaarrgghh!! And now I have the image of Rose saying "I washed me 'ands and face afore I come, I did!" (Not to mention, and possibly more plausibly: "Not Bloody Likely!")