"Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!"
So settiai started uploading Doctor Who episodes, bless her soul, and I managed to get "Rose" working on my computer. (When I say "working", I mean that the sound was about ten seconds ahead of the image, but never mind that.) The next few eps promptly refused to play, so I coaxed axa into downloading them and letting me see them at her place. The resulting effect is that we're both nuts about the show - I'm more obsessive, but then, I always am.
I've only seen to episode 5 so far, but you guys know me - I'm a total spoilerho. I'm already dreading the loss of Nine (though they tell me Ten is fabulous and I believe it), and I'm very much looking forward to the Empty Child/Doctor Dances two-parter (which was one of the main reasons I wanted to watch in the first place). In part, obviously, because of what people keep telling me about Captain Jack. In part because Steven Moffat wrote it, and Steven Moffat is one of my personal deities.
In fact, if I may go on a detour, I don't understand why the DW fans who praise his eps don't come running to see Press Gang, or at the very least Coupling - the latter being available in the US and the former just in Europe and Australia.
There are good reasons to see both. Coupling has lots of jokes about sex, Sarah Alexander kissing Gina Bellman, and Jack Davenport playing a character who is essentially Mr. Moffat himself. It also has some direct DW references, including Steve's classic: "Susan, Sally, Jane, this is a sofa. It is designed by clever scientists in such a way as to shield the unprotected user from the risk of skin abrasions, serious head trauma, and, of course... Daleks."
Press Gang, on the other hand, has Julia "Saffron Monsoon" Sawalha playing a Slytherinesque bitch who's my favourite main character ever, Dexter Fletcher as a flirtatious, arrogant and surprisingly sweet American, and of course lots of weird, funny and tragic plotlines. Its DW references are more indirect, though - am thinking mainly of elements in the episodes Day Dreams and UnXpected.
Anyway, that was the digression. Back to the main topic.
Before I'd even finished seeing "Rose", I was in love the way I can only be in love with a new fandom. (I kind of wish I could fall in love with a human that way, except that it tends to be rather painful - days go by without seeing my love, and I draw meaningful doodles everywhere, thinking about it, dreaming about it, changing my wallpaper into a picture of my love.)
The weird part, as I discussed with jadelennox over AIM, is that I've actually seen a couple of old Doctor Who eps before - Kinda, Castrovalva, and the TV movie - and I never fell in love. I enjoyed myself, but I've only seen them once, I felt no urge to see more, and I've thoroughly forgotten the plotlines. (Though I seem to recall an Escher-like room, full of wrong angles.) Nice, cheesy fun, that's all.
I don't know what's different now. It's still cheesy, but somehow even the cheesiness has improved.
Some of my reasons may be very shallow. I've always hated "to be continued" and have a lot less of it here. The audiovisual quality is improved enough (even with the time delay in the pilot) that it actually helps me understand what's going on. The sets and effects are more elaborate.
Then again, there's also the characterisation. I don't think I ever got any good idea of what the characters were like in the old eps I saw. They seemed nice enough, that's all. I know what Rose and Nine are like. Maybe I couldn't describe it in words - I hesitate to try, because when you love someone, words can make it look all too trite - but I know what they're like. I know their expressions, the changes in their voices, what makes them tick. In general, I think genre television has gone soapier, and that it's a good thing. (As a kid, I was even more sentimental than I am now, and my favourite adventures were almost always the ones where someone cried - but it seemed to be a lot rarer then than it is now.) DW may not "read like fanfiction" the way, say, The Time-Traveller's Wife does, but it's close enough - it reads like inspiration for fanfiction.
I've been comparing DW to some other types of "weird shit" in my head, and what particularly struck me is that the Doctor reminds me a lot of Chrestomanci; or rather I suppose I should say that Chrestomanci is a lot like the Doctor. The similarities aren't extraordinary, but they're there: the many lives, the ability to hop from world to world, the arrogance, the way they can both seem completely inane but are so very powerful.
I like the Doctor - well, Nine at the very least - a lot better than I like Chrestomanci, though. I think it's in part because the Doctor stars in his own stories, while Chrestomanci keeps showing up as a Deus ex Machina in the last act of other people's. (Oh, sure, his appearances are always advocated in advance, but I still get the feeling that he steals the thunder from the actual protagonists.)
In part, it might be because the Doctor/Nine needs something. Needs someone. Rose is a vital part of the new DW series, but it's not just her - he reacts to some other characters like their presence matters, not to the plot resolution but to him personally. Chrestomanci doesn't really do that. Maybe with Millie back when she was the Goddess and he was Christopher, but not since then, and definitely not with his children. (It occurs to me now that even though Nine resembles Chrestomanci, Rose resembles Sophie a lot more than Millie - not a carbon copy or anything, but the same combination of good heart, stubborn courage, and sometimes bad judgement. *loves Rose*)
Nine is angstier than the other Doctors, jadelennox said, and I love that, but I also love that it never gets out of hand; emotional, but not maudlin.
...More to be said when I've seen more than five eps.
I've only seen to episode 5 so far, but you guys know me - I'm a total spoilerho. I'm already dreading the loss of Nine (though they tell me Ten is fabulous and I believe it), and I'm very much looking forward to the Empty Child/Doctor Dances two-parter (which was one of the main reasons I wanted to watch in the first place). In part, obviously, because of what people keep telling me about Captain Jack. In part because Steven Moffat wrote it, and Steven Moffat is one of my personal deities.
In fact, if I may go on a detour, I don't understand why the DW fans who praise his eps don't come running to see Press Gang, or at the very least Coupling - the latter being available in the US and the former just in Europe and Australia.
There are good reasons to see both. Coupling has lots of jokes about sex, Sarah Alexander kissing Gina Bellman, and Jack Davenport playing a character who is essentially Mr. Moffat himself. It also has some direct DW references, including Steve's classic: "Susan, Sally, Jane, this is a sofa. It is designed by clever scientists in such a way as to shield the unprotected user from the risk of skin abrasions, serious head trauma, and, of course... Daleks."
Press Gang, on the other hand, has Julia "Saffron Monsoon" Sawalha playing a Slytherinesque bitch who's my favourite main character ever, Dexter Fletcher as a flirtatious, arrogant and surprisingly sweet American, and of course lots of weird, funny and tragic plotlines. Its DW references are more indirect, though - am thinking mainly of elements in the episodes Day Dreams and UnXpected.
Anyway, that was the digression. Back to the main topic.
Before I'd even finished seeing "Rose", I was in love the way I can only be in love with a new fandom. (I kind of wish I could fall in love with a human that way, except that it tends to be rather painful - days go by without seeing my love, and I draw meaningful doodles everywhere, thinking about it, dreaming about it, changing my wallpaper into a picture of my love.)
The weird part, as I discussed with jadelennox over AIM, is that I've actually seen a couple of old Doctor Who eps before - Kinda, Castrovalva, and the TV movie - and I never fell in love. I enjoyed myself, but I've only seen them once, I felt no urge to see more, and I've thoroughly forgotten the plotlines. (Though I seem to recall an Escher-like room, full of wrong angles.) Nice, cheesy fun, that's all.
I don't know what's different now. It's still cheesy, but somehow even the cheesiness has improved.
Some of my reasons may be very shallow. I've always hated "to be continued" and have a lot less of it here. The audiovisual quality is improved enough (even with the time delay in the pilot) that it actually helps me understand what's going on. The sets and effects are more elaborate.
Then again, there's also the characterisation. I don't think I ever got any good idea of what the characters were like in the old eps I saw. They seemed nice enough, that's all. I know what Rose and Nine are like. Maybe I couldn't describe it in words - I hesitate to try, because when you love someone, words can make it look all too trite - but I know what they're like. I know their expressions, the changes in their voices, what makes them tick. In general, I think genre television has gone soapier, and that it's a good thing. (As a kid, I was even more sentimental than I am now, and my favourite adventures were almost always the ones where someone cried - but it seemed to be a lot rarer then than it is now.) DW may not "read like fanfiction" the way, say, The Time-Traveller's Wife does, but it's close enough - it reads like inspiration for fanfiction.
I've been comparing DW to some other types of "weird shit" in my head, and what particularly struck me is that the Doctor reminds me a lot of Chrestomanci; or rather I suppose I should say that Chrestomanci is a lot like the Doctor. The similarities aren't extraordinary, but they're there: the many lives, the ability to hop from world to world, the arrogance, the way they can both seem completely inane but are so very powerful.
I like the Doctor - well, Nine at the very least - a lot better than I like Chrestomanci, though. I think it's in part because the Doctor stars in his own stories, while Chrestomanci keeps showing up as a Deus ex Machina in the last act of other people's. (Oh, sure, his appearances are always advocated in advance, but I still get the feeling that he steals the thunder from the actual protagonists.)
In part, it might be because the Doctor/Nine needs something. Needs someone. Rose is a vital part of the new DW series, but it's not just her - he reacts to some other characters like their presence matters, not to the plot resolution but to him personally. Chrestomanci doesn't really do that. Maybe with Millie back when she was the Goddess and he was Christopher, but not since then, and definitely not with his children. (It occurs to me now that even though Nine resembles Chrestomanci, Rose resembles Sophie a lot more than Millie - not a carbon copy or anything, but the same combination of good heart, stubborn courage, and sometimes bad judgement. *loves Rose*)
Nine is angstier than the other Doctors, jadelennox said, and I love that, but I also love that it never gets out of hand; emotional, but not maudlin.
...More to be said when I've seen more than five eps.