We interrupt this trip report to bring you... fannish squeeing!
Ah, this is what my LJ is all about, isn't it? As always, a little bit behind the fannish times... I finally got around to watching Doctor Who. Or some of it, anyway, since to watch the whole thing would be quite an undertaking. Namely, I've watched seasons 1-4 of the new series. I also watched the very first episode of series five, just to convince myself that there is life after Ten, though I think I'll wait a little while before getting into more of the Matt Smith episodes. I imagine I'll end up watching the classic series eventually too, though 27 seasons is a rather daunting prospect.
I'm not really sure why I'm so late to this particular party, since everybody I know who has reliably similar tastes to me is into DW. I think I was slightly put off by the sheer longevity of the series, and its apparent hokey-ness. I mean, time travelling in a blue police box, what? Clunky looking robot thingies with plungers for hands, huh? It seemed like the sort of thing you had to be into from childhood, or not at all. (Would I be a Star Wars fan if I hadn't watched it for the first time at the age of 9? Probably not.)
Anyway, luckily, the series got a nice modern re-boot that didn't rely on you knowing the details of the preceeding 27 seasons to understand what is going on. And even though it's still often somewhat hokey, there's enough real drama, good acting and seriously clever writing to make it enjoyable. What's more, it's that rather rare thing: a TV series where many, if not most of the episodes tell a stand-alone story. I mean, so far, apart from the season finales, it seems you could pretty much watch any of the new series episodes on their own. It helps to know the backstory of the characters, but most of the stories are largely self-contained - there's no need to start the episode with "Previously, on Doctor Who...". And that, to me, is clever writing. It takes skill to write a good one-shot. And DW is full of great one-shots.
But even with all of that, it took David Tennant to get me really hooked. What can I say? Original, I am not. I watched most of Series 1 wondering what all the fuss was about. Okay, The Empty Child was pretty awesome, but besides that, the series was okay at best. (Now that I'm properly hooked on the show, I'm going to re-watch it - I have a sneaking suspicion it'll go down better the second time.) It took me months to finally get around to checking out Series 2. And it's taken me just a few weeks to devour everything that Ten had to offer.
The truth is, I love being proven wrong about things I think I won't like. I love being surprised, not just by twists in a story, but by twists in the sort of story I'm expecting to see. When I expect a show to be silly and full of fake-looking monsters, there is nothing I love more than to discover real depth or emotion within that story. Comedy and farce can be great, of course, but as the wonderful Terry Pratchett once said, sometimes you need a bit of tragic relief.
Okay, so the "tragic relief" in DW maybe goes a little bit too far. This is a sad fact about TV - virtually all series become progressively more angsty as time goes on. I really didn't expect DW to go as far as it did though.
I blame David Tennant. The trouble is, he's at his most compelling when the Doctor is suffering, and the writers latched on to this pretty quickly. So we start with a fun, excitable, infinitely curious Doctor in Series 2... and then watch as he suffers through tragedy after tragedy. Just look at the succession of episodes leading up to the finale: "The Doctor's Daughter" (heartbreak); "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (breather episode - yay, back to fun times!); then "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" (a fascinating hope spot for the ever-lonely Doctor with the introduction of what looks very much like a future romance... dashed to horribble, horrible pieces by the end of the episode); and finally, just because he hasn't quite suffered enough before the shit really hits the fan in the finale, we get "Midnight" (the most pants-wettingly terrifying and traumatically cynical episode of the entire show). He keeps bouncing back, of course - the Doctor is wonderfully devoid of any tendencies towards emo-ness or self-pity - but by the end of Series 4 it's pretty obvious there's no coming back. Good God, and I thought this face was sad:
Anyway, so despite the fact that I will miss Ten terribly, it's kind of nice that this show has a convenient angst reset button. It was nice to watch the first episode of Series 5 and see a joyful, excited Doctor again - even if he's not David Tennant and even if he does have ridiculous hair. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the writers get to work breaking this Doctor too, but I expect there'll be some fun before we get to that.
Immortality is a bitch, huh?
I'm not really sure why I'm so late to this particular party, since everybody I know who has reliably similar tastes to me is into DW. I think I was slightly put off by the sheer longevity of the series, and its apparent hokey-ness. I mean, time travelling in a blue police box, what? Clunky looking robot thingies with plungers for hands, huh? It seemed like the sort of thing you had to be into from childhood, or not at all. (Would I be a Star Wars fan if I hadn't watched it for the first time at the age of 9? Probably not.)
Anyway, luckily, the series got a nice modern re-boot that didn't rely on you knowing the details of the preceeding 27 seasons to understand what is going on. And even though it's still often somewhat hokey, there's enough real drama, good acting and seriously clever writing to make it enjoyable. What's more, it's that rather rare thing: a TV series where many, if not most of the episodes tell a stand-alone story. I mean, so far, apart from the season finales, it seems you could pretty much watch any of the new series episodes on their own. It helps to know the backstory of the characters, but most of the stories are largely self-contained - there's no need to start the episode with "Previously, on Doctor Who...". And that, to me, is clever writing. It takes skill to write a good one-shot. And DW is full of great one-shots.
But even with all of that, it took David Tennant to get me really hooked. What can I say? Original, I am not. I watched most of Series 1 wondering what all the fuss was about. Okay, The Empty Child was pretty awesome, but besides that, the series was okay at best. (Now that I'm properly hooked on the show, I'm going to re-watch it - I have a sneaking suspicion it'll go down better the second time.) It took me months to finally get around to checking out Series 2. And it's taken me just a few weeks to devour everything that Ten had to offer.
The truth is, I love being proven wrong about things I think I won't like. I love being surprised, not just by twists in a story, but by twists in the sort of story I'm expecting to see. When I expect a show to be silly and full of fake-looking monsters, there is nothing I love more than to discover real depth or emotion within that story. Comedy and farce can be great, of course, but as the wonderful Terry Pratchett once said, sometimes you need a bit of tragic relief.
Okay, so the "tragic relief" in DW maybe goes a little bit too far. This is a sad fact about TV - virtually all series become progressively more angsty as time goes on. I really didn't expect DW to go as far as it did though.
I blame David Tennant. The trouble is, he's at his most compelling when the Doctor is suffering, and the writers latched on to this pretty quickly. So we start with a fun, excitable, infinitely curious Doctor in Series 2... and then watch as he suffers through tragedy after tragedy. Just look at the succession of episodes leading up to the finale: "The Doctor's Daughter" (heartbreak); "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (breather episode - yay, back to fun times!); then "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" (a fascinating hope spot for the ever-lonely Doctor with the introduction of what looks very much like a future romance... dashed to horribble, horrible pieces by the end of the episode); and finally, just because he hasn't quite suffered enough before the shit really hits the fan in the finale, we get "Midnight" (the most pants-wettingly terrifying and traumatically cynical episode of the entire show). He keeps bouncing back, of course - the Doctor is wonderfully devoid of any tendencies towards emo-ness or self-pity - but by the end of Series 4 it's pretty obvious there's no coming back. Good God, and I thought this face was sad:
Anyway, so despite the fact that I will miss Ten terribly, it's kind of nice that this show has a convenient angst reset button. It was nice to watch the first episode of Series 5 and see a joyful, excited Doctor again - even if he's not David Tennant and even if he does have ridiculous hair. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the writers get to work breaking this Doctor too, but I expect there'll be some fun before we get to that.
Immortality is a bitch, huh?