(no subject)
Flist basically caught up on, writing untouched, passed the 600-hour mark on Pokemon Diamond. Hooray.
I haven't been actively following the Olympics. People are trying to make me feel inadequate about this. Well, I generally don't watch them anyway since me and anything related to physical exertion are mutually exclusive, but this year I'm more pointedly not following them. I'm sure I don't need to say why. I guess the most positive part of it is that they have a cooler-looking logo than 2012 will, although that's not difficult. Did catch a few clips while we were on holiday, though. The least tedious out of the events I saw (mainly swimming) was the men's 4x100m relay, because wow. And the women's one, I've forgotten which one but it was where we got both gold and bronze, that was pretty cool.
In other non-news, earlier today I was thinking about the Whoniverse. I do that more than I should. Specifically: I've always seen it taken as a given around fandom that the main character in Doctor Who is, surprise, the Doctor. It seems obvious - he's the man with the police box and the tiemcock, the only character who's constant, etc. And similarly, the main character of Torchwood is Jack with the rest of the team orbiting around him, the main character of SJA is Sarah Jane because she's in the title and all.
Except... well, for new-school!Who at least (I've only watched Seven+Ace serials of oldschool and it doesn't feel quite the same there), I've never actually been convinced of that. The Doctor's still the central character, yeah, but the main characters are his companions. Almost everything we see and learn about Ten and I guess Nine is from somebody else's viewpoint.
I get this feeling even in scenes where he's not currently with a companion. Maybe not the best example, but off the top of my head? The opening of Partners in Crime. The Doctor and Donna are pretty obviously mirroring each other, they're initially in the building for the same reason and doing exactly the same things... but with Donna, straight after that, it's back home with Sylvia and Wilf and we already have a strong impression of her current character motivation, backstory, whatever. The story is Donna trying to find the Doctor; it's her story.
And now I'm stretching, but another vague example - Smith and Jones. (Yeah, another pilot, but I think the pilots kind of have to set the tone of the upcoming series, if you know what I mean.) We open with Martha, and within a few minutes her backstory, her current life and her personality have been firmly established. The story here is her meeting and getting a little crush on the Doctor, a plot which follows her all the way through. There's at least one scene where the Doctor is doing Doctor-y things by himself - when he pretends to be a milkman in front of the plasmavore - but he remains enigmatic. We don't know when and why he decided on a milkman instead of, say, a postman, so we're just a little bit detached. Whereas, earlier in the episode when Martha runs into the plasmavore, we can tell she's frightened and we can make a pretty good guess at what's going through her mind when she closes Stoker's eyes - because we're watching her story, not the Doctor's.
Rrrgh, I'm still crap at explaining, but I think I got my point across. I always thought the same applied to the spin-offs, too, to some extent. Sarah Jane is the central character in her eponymous series because without her there'd be no haven for aliens on Bannerman Road, but it's not often we have scenes from her point of view - for the most part, we're looking through Maria's eyes. Which might be one reason why those series 3 spoilers have me so annoyed, but. In Torchwood, Jack is the boss and the guy who stands on top of tall Welsh buildings with his coat swishing, but he doesn't introduce himself to us like that - it's the impression he leaves on Gwen. (Although it's less clear-cut in series 2; I'm not trying to claim that she was still the main viewpoint character in 2x08.) Adrift is an example which comes to mind of an episode where Jack's motives are almost entirely opaque, because Gwen has no idea and we're following her.
This is really nothing more than a pointless and pretentious observation which doesn't say much about new!Who itself, but maybe it's the reason why I don't hate Ten with the fury of a thousand suns. Among other things.
I haven't been actively following the Olympics. People are trying to make me feel inadequate about this. Well, I generally don't watch them anyway since me and anything related to physical exertion are mutually exclusive, but this year I'm more pointedly not following them. I'm sure I don't need to say why. I guess the most positive part of it is that they have a cooler-looking logo than 2012 will, although that's not difficult. Did catch a few clips while we were on holiday, though. The least tedious out of the events I saw (mainly swimming) was the men's 4x100m relay, because wow. And the women's one, I've forgotten which one but it was where we got both gold and bronze, that was pretty cool.
In other non-news, earlier today I was thinking about the Whoniverse. I do that more than I should. Specifically: I've always seen it taken as a given around fandom that the main character in Doctor Who is, surprise, the Doctor. It seems obvious - he's the man with the police box and the tiemcock, the only character who's constant, etc. And similarly, the main character of Torchwood is Jack with the rest of the team orbiting around him, the main character of SJA is Sarah Jane because she's in the title and all.
Except... well, for new-school!Who at least (I've only watched Seven+Ace serials of oldschool and it doesn't feel quite the same there), I've never actually been convinced of that. The Doctor's still the central character, yeah, but the main characters are his companions. Almost everything we see and learn about Ten and I guess Nine is from somebody else's viewpoint.
I get this feeling even in scenes where he's not currently with a companion. Maybe not the best example, but off the top of my head? The opening of Partners in Crime. The Doctor and Donna are pretty obviously mirroring each other, they're initially in the building for the same reason and doing exactly the same things... but with Donna, straight after that, it's back home with Sylvia and Wilf and we already have a strong impression of her current character motivation, backstory, whatever. The story is Donna trying to find the Doctor; it's her story.
And now I'm stretching, but another vague example - Smith and Jones. (Yeah, another pilot, but I think the pilots kind of have to set the tone of the upcoming series, if you know what I mean.) We open with Martha, and within a few minutes her backstory, her current life and her personality have been firmly established. The story here is her meeting and getting a little crush on the Doctor, a plot which follows her all the way through. There's at least one scene where the Doctor is doing Doctor-y things by himself - when he pretends to be a milkman in front of the plasmavore - but he remains enigmatic. We don't know when and why he decided on a milkman instead of, say, a postman, so we're just a little bit detached. Whereas, earlier in the episode when Martha runs into the plasmavore, we can tell she's frightened and we can make a pretty good guess at what's going through her mind when she closes Stoker's eyes - because we're watching her story, not the Doctor's.
Rrrgh, I'm still crap at explaining, but I think I got my point across. I always thought the same applied to the spin-offs, too, to some extent. Sarah Jane is the central character in her eponymous series because without her there'd be no haven for aliens on Bannerman Road, but it's not often we have scenes from her point of view - for the most part, we're looking through Maria's eyes. Which might be one reason why those series 3 spoilers have me so annoyed, but. In Torchwood, Jack is the boss and the guy who stands on top of tall Welsh buildings with his coat swishing, but he doesn't introduce himself to us like that - it's the impression he leaves on Gwen. (Although it's less clear-cut in series 2; I'm not trying to claim that she was still the main viewpoint character in 2x08.) Adrift is an example which comes to mind of an episode where Jack's motives are almost entirely opaque, because Gwen has no idea and we're following her.
This is really nothing more than a pointless and pretentious observation which doesn't say much about new!Who itself, but maybe it's the reason why I don't hate Ten with the fury of a thousand suns. Among other things.