don't know what to call this O.O
The following post is a rant, more a less... about RTD.
I was doing a Doctor Who comment meme thing over at doctorwho and I started typing this but shelfed it because I rambled on to far for that comm.
But this is something I've been meaning to get off my fangirl chest for a while, and I think it's about time I made it public so here it is.
I'll make the point now, that I'm a very laid back girl who hates conflict, I hate it when people fight and I try to never take sides so I can make everyone happy... so when the Torchwood fandom imploded and went insane after COE I sat on the fence by myself for a long long time, mainly because I didn't want to cause fights by accident and because I was actually confussed about how I felt about COE and if I enjoyed it or not. (I'm still unsure to this day really)
So here it is. Again, I don't want to upset anyone (through I know I probably will) but again, I just need to get this off my fangirl chest and I hope I've done so in a way that's sensitive to both sides.
I have a love/hate relationship with the man, which has only really developed over the last 2 years.
Before I start ranting, I'll start with the positive.
Now I love him for what he's done, he brought back the series after such a long hiatus, which no one throught would be possible, and now it's turned into the BBC's flagship show because of him. He also, of course created two spin off series (Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures), and thus introduced me to this wonderful fandom where I've made so many life long friends... not to mention that his work on Doctor Who has done wonders for the state of LGBT representation on television in Britain.
Most of his Doctor Who work, while it was sometimes flawed with plot holes, silliness and melodrama, was enjoyable and often fantastic. For example, to this day my favourite new series story is still Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords... and I think that Midnight is a Doctor Who masterpiece, absolutely terrifying and a fantastic character study (RTD's strong point) which just proves that you don't need trucks loads of special effects and the universe always at stake to make great Doctor Who.
He virtually made the slash pairing of the Doctor and the Master canon and created so many fantastic characters, many of whom I loved so much that it hurt like nothing else when he killed/mind wiped them.
Within fandom, before 2009, I used to always defend him when people complained about him... because while he had his bad points, the good things he did out weighed them.
But then the gap year came.
I'll admit to being what RTD likes to call "a hysterical woman" I wasn't happy at all with what he did with Torchwood in 2009 and I still feel that way. Plus I also felt like the specials weren't that great either and for the first time, I started to feel like I couldn't defend him anymore, because my heart just wasn't in it anymore.
While I didn't like a lot of what happened in Torchwood that year, I generally enjoyed it (at the time, I can't watch it anymore without wanting to pull my eyes out) and during the aftermath and fallout within the TW fandom I became a fence sitter and kept my rage and grief to myself.
But then a few fans spured RTD to say some really stupid things that really hurt the fandom and a fair few people's feelings.
Fair enough, people were attacking him, but I felt that the way in which he basically told the fans "if you can't handle the 'drama' and don't like it go and watch Supernatural" was belittling and hurt our feelings.
Most of us upset fans were quite sane and willing to be completely civil towards RTD while expressing why we were upset in various places online (it's a free world afterall), but certain fans, caught up in the heat of the moment made the rest of us seem insane, and thus RTD began to dismiss us (and label us "hysterical") and told us where to go. And with that, I couldn't close my eyes to his faults any longer.
I started to see what everyone else had been seeing for years... the melodrama, the plot holes, the lazy writing disguised as 'drama', the dictating... telling people what to think what to feel and what 'drama' was, the constant battle with the fans, the same plot lines and character types used over and over again, etc.
While I will forever respect the man for what he has done, I really want him to fully move on and away from everything Doctor Who (or at least take a fair few years off) because he's only repeating himself (the episode of Sarah Jane he wrote just proves it) and it's tiresome.
Because while RTD is a good writer (Queer as Folk was fantastic), he just can't do Doctor Who/Torchwood/Sarah Jane anymore.
I haven't given up hope entirely regarding Torchwood series 4, and while I've more a less expected that the Torchwood I love is gone (and also denial is a fun and fab place to be and it doesn't hurt anyone ^.^) and that series 4 will be very different, I have enough hope that it doesn't mean that it will be terrible.
I am going to watch it, going to give RTD one more chance, and pending on how it turns out, I may be willing to change my feelings regarding all this.
But this is how my fandom heart feels right now regarding all this, and I can't keep it to myself anymore.
So... now back I go to angsting over things that really matter... like my early mid life crisis. -_-
I was doing a Doctor Who comment meme thing over at doctorwho and I started typing this but shelfed it because I rambled on to far for that comm.
But this is something I've been meaning to get off my fangirl chest for a while, and I think it's about time I made it public so here it is.
I'll make the point now, that I'm a very laid back girl who hates conflict, I hate it when people fight and I try to never take sides so I can make everyone happy... so when the Torchwood fandom imploded and went insane after COE I sat on the fence by myself for a long long time, mainly because I didn't want to cause fights by accident and because I was actually confussed about how I felt about COE and if I enjoyed it or not. (I'm still unsure to this day really)
So here it is. Again, I don't want to upset anyone (through I know I probably will) but again, I just need to get this off my fangirl chest and I hope I've done so in a way that's sensitive to both sides.
I have a love/hate relationship with the man, which has only really developed over the last 2 years.
Before I start ranting, I'll start with the positive.
Now I love him for what he's done, he brought back the series after such a long hiatus, which no one throught would be possible, and now it's turned into the BBC's flagship show because of him. He also, of course created two spin off series (Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures), and thus introduced me to this wonderful fandom where I've made so many life long friends... not to mention that his work on Doctor Who has done wonders for the state of LGBT representation on television in Britain.
Most of his Doctor Who work, while it was sometimes flawed with plot holes, silliness and melodrama, was enjoyable and often fantastic. For example, to this day my favourite new series story is still Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords... and I think that Midnight is a Doctor Who masterpiece, absolutely terrifying and a fantastic character study (RTD's strong point) which just proves that you don't need trucks loads of special effects and the universe always at stake to make great Doctor Who.
He virtually made the slash pairing of the Doctor and the Master canon and created so many fantastic characters, many of whom I loved so much that it hurt like nothing else when he killed/mind wiped them.
Within fandom, before 2009, I used to always defend him when people complained about him... because while he had his bad points, the good things he did out weighed them.
But then the gap year came.
I'll admit to being what RTD likes to call "a hysterical woman" I wasn't happy at all with what he did with Torchwood in 2009 and I still feel that way. Plus I also felt like the specials weren't that great either and for the first time, I started to feel like I couldn't defend him anymore, because my heart just wasn't in it anymore.
While I didn't like a lot of what happened in Torchwood that year, I generally enjoyed it (at the time, I can't watch it anymore without wanting to pull my eyes out) and during the aftermath and fallout within the TW fandom I became a fence sitter and kept my rage and grief to myself.
But then a few fans spured RTD to say some really stupid things that really hurt the fandom and a fair few people's feelings.
Fair enough, people were attacking him, but I felt that the way in which he basically told the fans "if you can't handle the 'drama' and don't like it go and watch Supernatural" was belittling and hurt our feelings.
Most of us upset fans were quite sane and willing to be completely civil towards RTD while expressing why we were upset in various places online (it's a free world afterall), but certain fans, caught up in the heat of the moment made the rest of us seem insane, and thus RTD began to dismiss us (and label us "hysterical") and told us where to go. And with that, I couldn't close my eyes to his faults any longer.
I started to see what everyone else had been seeing for years... the melodrama, the plot holes, the lazy writing disguised as 'drama', the dictating... telling people what to think what to feel and what 'drama' was, the constant battle with the fans, the same plot lines and character types used over and over again, etc.
While I will forever respect the man for what he has done, I really want him to fully move on and away from everything Doctor Who (or at least take a fair few years off) because he's only repeating himself (the episode of Sarah Jane he wrote just proves it) and it's tiresome.
Because while RTD is a good writer (Queer as Folk was fantastic), he just can't do Doctor Who/Torchwood/Sarah Jane anymore.
I haven't given up hope entirely regarding Torchwood series 4, and while I've more a less expected that the Torchwood I love is gone (and also denial is a fun and fab place to be and it doesn't hurt anyone ^.^) and that series 4 will be very different, I have enough hope that it doesn't mean that it will be terrible.
I am going to watch it, going to give RTD one more chance, and pending on how it turns out, I may be willing to change my feelings regarding all this.
But this is how my fandom heart feels right now regarding all this, and I can't keep it to myself anymore.
So... now back I go to angsting over things that really matter... like my early mid life crisis. -_-