russell davies gets my therapy bill for a bad case of honors english flashbacks
Hi! I'm still alive. It's amazing, I know. I zoned out of humanity there for a while because I briefly skyrocketed from stressed to anxious to hysterical (in terms of internet communities and my writing, anyway). Had to leave the sane people alone so I could calm down. It's very annoying when it happens, but it happens. Much in the way that shit happens. I could have a psychological ramble, but I won't. So I'm back now.
(Two New Year's resolutions -- 1) Drink no carbonated beverages for a year. Status: 100% faithful. Bubble-free for six months now. Unfortunately a newfound coffee addiction has negated the benefit of ditching the carbonated caffiene. 2) Respond to all forms of communication immediately. Um. Well. I'm back now?)
List of Things I Am Doing (which does not include Having A Job, Learning To Drive -- though I finally got a learner's permit at the ripe old age of 19, I have been at least temporarily defeated by manual transmission -- Going To Study Abroad, Going On Trips, or even Enjoying The Outdoors, due to the fact that The Outdoors are 100 degrees and full of mosquitoes):
- Making a t-shirt quilt
- Cleaning/purging room in preparation for a yard sale of epic proportions
- Making little craft things in hopes of selling them at said yard sale of epic proportions
- Doing cross-stitch
- Watching massive amounts of TV shows on DVD (right now it's Stargate -- really I'm just trying to get to Ben Browder's bit, but the Jack/Daniel vibes are also entertaining)
- Reading as much Agatha Christie as I can get my hands on (I blame Doctor Who)
- Pretending to write while really having the block from hell
- Waiting impatiently for the CERN-themed Torchwood audio episode
- Making Venture Bros. costumes for myself and newtypeblue; we'll be pairing up as henchmen 21 & 24 for DragonCon
- Not spending money, except when I do
- Re-applying for all my scholarships and waiting for word back on the creative writing scholarship I applied for months ago
- Obsessively updating the iReads application on Facebook
- Being jealous of my friends who are in London right now
- Being jealous of my friend who is in Cuernavaca right now
- Attempting and failing to fathom the appeal of those Sparkly Teen Vampire Romance Goes To The Vatican books by Stephenie Meyer that are so popular right now
- Obsessively checking I Can Has Cheezburger, ihasatardis, ihazastopwatch and doctorwhy
So I feel the need to have a fandom ramble now. It's tradition, after all. (Standard spoiler warning for Doctor Who here. Up to Midnight, and for the rumors about the last 3 eps.)
Okay, so I don't hate RTD. But if ever there were a founder of his own fan club, it's him -- and his scripts suffer for it. I've been keeping up with this series and thoroughly enjoying it for the most part, but when it was finally time for the first of the four RTD episodes capping the series off, I admit to being highly unenthusiastic. Smith & Jones, Gridlock and Utopia were really good -- minus a few quibbles. Army of Ghosts/Doomsday was all right. (I won't go into whether or not I feel like its impact is being negated by bringing Rose back now. Or how much I dislike the romance story.) His stuff for series 1 & 2 was lackluster at best. It's hard to recover from a reputation that began with the Slitheen, but RTD's had a fair hand at it.
But the fact that the last few RTD eps have included DobbyDoctor & TinkerbellJesus, Bananacoffeelatte & Kylie Minogue, and monsters named after subcutaneous fatty tissue -- well -- really, I can't think of anything redeeming about any of those. Okay, Donna. Donna rules. Moreso when other people write her, though. Donna's grandpa, best companion sidekick since Mickey. And I loved John Simm's Master, but I can't tell if that's because of the writing or the concept or the acting or the after-the-fact fanfic or what.
Which is the big thing about RTD. Concept. You know who RTD is? RTD is George Lucas. They are two men who should never, ever be allowed to write their own ideas to completion. Their flaws are always in the execution. All of this stems from the reactions I was reading to Midnight over at doctorwho -- there were a couple "this is crap"s and a couple "OMG DAAAAAAAAAAVID rtd 4eva"s, but far and away the broadest consensus I saw was that people were calling it "simultaneously the best and worst episode of the season," which I think is a fair description. How have RTD's episodes gotten so schizophrenic? While watching an episode written by him, it is the easiest thing in the world to separate the man from his ideas -- the former being pretentious asshattery and pop culture references, the latter being genius -- but it's so damn hard to pin down why I can't fully love him or fully hate him.
But on to praising Midnight instead of pondering its maddening writer. Brilliant filler. (Obvious filler, but brilliant nonetheless.) Great use of next to no budget for set & props, such as there were. Superb acting from Tennant and Lesley Sharpe as Sky. Everyone else held their own, too. The hysterical shouting got old, but I can't fault the actors -- that's RTD's script, and I won't go into his script. His concept is spot on, though. I loved that the scale was so small, that the setup was so simple, that no explanations were ever given, and that we finally get to see the Doctor rendered utterly helpless. (This is RTD's biggest leap in this episode, IMO, and it's about damn time, too. I don't think I could have taken another moment of messiah!Doctor. 'Voyage of the Damned' put the last nail in the coffin of messiah!Doctor for me.) But I think my favorite thing about the episode was the alien menace -- never seen, never even truly heard. It's a truly alien alien. The kind of alien which no scientist could understand why or how it exists, whether it's actually alive by any preconceived definition of "living" -- it exists on the surface of a world so toxic to humans that it is utterly impossible to conceive of the physiology of something which could survive there. It has no discernible motive. Even the Doctor questions -- To learn? To copy? To absorb? Is is trying to communicate, is it trying to multiply, is is trying to fuck around with anything it sees? (It succeeds brilliantly at the latter, if it was just some alien entity who delights in causing fear, pain & confusion. But hey, Star Trek already did that -- in the form of a Tasha Yar-killing oil slick.) I just love that idea of an alien so alien that there's not even a chance of ever being able to communicate with it -- there's simply no point of reference from which to translate or understand. I just recently read Andromeda Strain after watching the A&E miniseries version -- it reminds me of that, in a way. Also of I Am Legend, War of the Worlds, or M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. Any story where the best intentions of the protagonists to communicate peacefully are thwarted by sheer bloody incomprehension, and the protagonists are swiftly reduced to helplessness and a simple struggle to survive -- ending in a breathless, bewildering resolution where the Big Bad somehow removes itself and the protagonist is left alive but clueless.
There's never been a Doctor Who villain like that before, that I can think of. Doctor Who villains lean veeeerrry heavily towards the "mindless, faceless horde" archetype, which I think of as the "killer robot" type. And, well, duh. Between the Daleks and the Cybermen, it's a show that's made a name for itself through the killer robot market. But even beyond those two, there are a hell of a lot of large groups of aliens acting out of a uniform, destructive intent on this show. If it isn't that, it's usually a misunderstanding and the villain wasn't actually a villain at all. The only other time the show's gotten close to Midnight's villain was probably Satan in Impossible Planet/Satan Pit. (Also one of my favorite DW stories.) But even then, the Doctor communicated with it -- just barely, but he did. He understood its laughter.
I like that the Doctor's helplessness in this episode left him deeply shaken. I do think that this experience was different enough from everything else the audience has seen him go through to justify a different reaction than the ones we're used to (brushing or blustering it off, angsting alone in the console room, single emo tears, joking and laughing at the dark, going Old Testament Smite-y on some alien ass, etc). I like that he's left speechless (ironic, considering stealing-words thing) and unwilling to investigate further, both of which are completely new to him. It's rare that he has an adventure that goes so badly wrong that he actually loses his sense of curiosity, at least temporarily. I liken this episode of DW to Adrift in TW -- both the Doctor and Gwen are characters who I really think need to be kneed in their respective groins, as it were, every once in a while. Gwen needed to have her sanctimonious bone broken, and the Doctor needed to not be able to speed-talk or sonic screwdriver his way out of a problem for once. (Or be flown away heavenward by robot angels. Srsly, RTD. Shut up.) In both cases I think it was successful and has helped me to feel some sympathy for the characters again. (It's so hard to forgive either of them for past transgressions... the way Gwen treats Rhys and the Doctor treated Martha & Mickey, respectively. Rhys, Martha & Mickey are so much more unspeakably awesome than either of them, I have no words. I mean, Rhys, Martha, Mickey, P.C. Andy and the pterodactyl Myfanwy could team up and make the dense concentration of Pure Awesome, I think it might cause the universe to implode.
Anyway. I'm getting really tired and have officially lost track of any point I was trying to make. My ultimate opinion of Midnight -- great. Would watch again. Will ignore pretentiousness, pop culture references, shallow stereotype characters and very thin, watery, obvious 'humans are monsters' moral lesson in favor of great acting, great concept and great ending.
On Rose returning: 'eh.' On Rose in general: 'eh.' On Rose and the Doctor: ... 'Eh,' with a side of 'no thanks.' On RTD writing all of the above: *cringing and watching from between closed fingers* On Davros, Daleks, the Doctor "dying" and general other excuses for CGI: *sigh of resignation*.
On Jack & Donna meeting, Jack returning in general, the wild possibility of a Gwen & Ianto cameo, and the hopeful appearances of Mickey and Jackie: WOO HOOOOOO! On RTD writing all of the above: Ehhhhhhh.
On anything bad happening to Donna: SILENCE, RTD. I KEEL YOU! (On the internet, no one knows you're a dog -- but everyone can find out where you live!)
In other fandom news, I'm super geeky excited about the CERN-themed Torchwood audio episode on BBC Radio 7, if and when the air date will ever be announced. Also, I totally called the ending of season 3 of Supernatural... but the "It's a GOOD Life"-y-ness of it was legitimately creepy, and the hellhounds are continuing proof that the lower the budget, oftentimes the creepier the monster. (Or rather, the less obtrusive the CGI, the creepier the monster.)
Now I go to read some Terry Pratchett and maybe poke at the big pile of dead weight that is my story again.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I write.
-rave
(Two New Year's resolutions -- 1) Drink no carbonated beverages for a year. Status: 100% faithful. Bubble-free for six months now. Unfortunately a newfound coffee addiction has negated the benefit of ditching the carbonated caffiene. 2) Respond to all forms of communication immediately. Um. Well. I'm back now?)
List of Things I Am Doing (which does not include Having A Job, Learning To Drive -- though I finally got a learner's permit at the ripe old age of 19, I have been at least temporarily defeated by manual transmission -- Going To Study Abroad, Going On Trips, or even Enjoying The Outdoors, due to the fact that The Outdoors are 100 degrees and full of mosquitoes):
- Making a t-shirt quilt
- Cleaning/purging room in preparation for a yard sale of epic proportions
- Making little craft things in hopes of selling them at said yard sale of epic proportions
- Doing cross-stitch
- Watching massive amounts of TV shows on DVD (right now it's Stargate -- really I'm just trying to get to Ben Browder's bit, but the Jack/Daniel vibes are also entertaining)
- Reading as much Agatha Christie as I can get my hands on (I blame Doctor Who)
- Pretending to write while really having the block from hell
- Waiting impatiently for the CERN-themed Torchwood audio episode
- Making Venture Bros. costumes for myself and newtypeblue; we'll be pairing up as henchmen 21 & 24 for DragonCon
- Not spending money, except when I do
- Re-applying for all my scholarships and waiting for word back on the creative writing scholarship I applied for months ago
- Obsessively updating the iReads application on Facebook
- Being jealous of my friends who are in London right now
- Being jealous of my friend who is in Cuernavaca right now
- Attempting and failing to fathom the appeal of those Sparkly Teen Vampire Romance Goes To The Vatican books by Stephenie Meyer that are so popular right now
- Obsessively checking I Can Has Cheezburger, ihasatardis, ihazastopwatch and doctorwhy
So I feel the need to have a fandom ramble now. It's tradition, after all. (Standard spoiler warning for Doctor Who here. Up to Midnight, and for the rumors about the last 3 eps.)
Okay, so I don't hate RTD. But if ever there were a founder of his own fan club, it's him -- and his scripts suffer for it. I've been keeping up with this series and thoroughly enjoying it for the most part, but when it was finally time for the first of the four RTD episodes capping the series off, I admit to being highly unenthusiastic. Smith & Jones, Gridlock and Utopia were really good -- minus a few quibbles. Army of Ghosts/Doomsday was all right. (I won't go into whether or not I feel like its impact is being negated by bringing Rose back now. Or how much I dislike the romance story.) His stuff for series 1 & 2 was lackluster at best. It's hard to recover from a reputation that began with the Slitheen, but RTD's had a fair hand at it.
But the fact that the last few RTD eps have included DobbyDoctor & TinkerbellJesus, Bananacoffeelatte & Kylie Minogue, and monsters named after subcutaneous fatty tissue -- well -- really, I can't think of anything redeeming about any of those. Okay, Donna. Donna rules. Moreso when other people write her, though. Donna's grandpa, best companion sidekick since Mickey. And I loved John Simm's Master, but I can't tell if that's because of the writing or the concept or the acting or the after-the-fact fanfic or what.
Which is the big thing about RTD. Concept. You know who RTD is? RTD is George Lucas. They are two men who should never, ever be allowed to write their own ideas to completion. Their flaws are always in the execution. All of this stems from the reactions I was reading to Midnight over at doctorwho -- there were a couple "this is crap"s and a couple "OMG DAAAAAAAAAAVID rtd 4eva"s, but far and away the broadest consensus I saw was that people were calling it "simultaneously the best and worst episode of the season," which I think is a fair description. How have RTD's episodes gotten so schizophrenic? While watching an episode written by him, it is the easiest thing in the world to separate the man from his ideas -- the former being pretentious asshattery and pop culture references, the latter being genius -- but it's so damn hard to pin down why I can't fully love him or fully hate him.
But on to praising Midnight instead of pondering its maddening writer. Brilliant filler. (Obvious filler, but brilliant nonetheless.) Great use of next to no budget for set & props, such as there were. Superb acting from Tennant and Lesley Sharpe as Sky. Everyone else held their own, too. The hysterical shouting got old, but I can't fault the actors -- that's RTD's script, and I won't go into his script. His concept is spot on, though. I loved that the scale was so small, that the setup was so simple, that no explanations were ever given, and that we finally get to see the Doctor rendered utterly helpless. (This is RTD's biggest leap in this episode, IMO, and it's about damn time, too. I don't think I could have taken another moment of messiah!Doctor. 'Voyage of the Damned' put the last nail in the coffin of messiah!Doctor for me.) But I think my favorite thing about the episode was the alien menace -- never seen, never even truly heard. It's a truly alien alien. The kind of alien which no scientist could understand why or how it exists, whether it's actually alive by any preconceived definition of "living" -- it exists on the surface of a world so toxic to humans that it is utterly impossible to conceive of the physiology of something which could survive there. It has no discernible motive. Even the Doctor questions -- To learn? To copy? To absorb? Is is trying to communicate, is it trying to multiply, is is trying to fuck around with anything it sees? (It succeeds brilliantly at the latter, if it was just some alien entity who delights in causing fear, pain & confusion. But hey, Star Trek already did that -- in the form of a Tasha Yar-killing oil slick.) I just love that idea of an alien so alien that there's not even a chance of ever being able to communicate with it -- there's simply no point of reference from which to translate or understand. I just recently read Andromeda Strain after watching the A&E miniseries version -- it reminds me of that, in a way. Also of I Am Legend, War of the Worlds, or M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. Any story where the best intentions of the protagonists to communicate peacefully are thwarted by sheer bloody incomprehension, and the protagonists are swiftly reduced to helplessness and a simple struggle to survive -- ending in a breathless, bewildering resolution where the Big Bad somehow removes itself and the protagonist is left alive but clueless.
There's never been a Doctor Who villain like that before, that I can think of. Doctor Who villains lean veeeerrry heavily towards the "mindless, faceless horde" archetype, which I think of as the "killer robot" type. And, well, duh. Between the Daleks and the Cybermen, it's a show that's made a name for itself through the killer robot market. But even beyond those two, there are a hell of a lot of large groups of aliens acting out of a uniform, destructive intent on this show. If it isn't that, it's usually a misunderstanding and the villain wasn't actually a villain at all. The only other time the show's gotten close to Midnight's villain was probably Satan in Impossible Planet/Satan Pit. (Also one of my favorite DW stories.) But even then, the Doctor communicated with it -- just barely, but he did. He understood its laughter.
I like that the Doctor's helplessness in this episode left him deeply shaken. I do think that this experience was different enough from everything else the audience has seen him go through to justify a different reaction than the ones we're used to (brushing or blustering it off, angsting alone in the console room, single emo tears, joking and laughing at the dark, going Old Testament Smite-y on some alien ass, etc). I like that he's left speechless (ironic, considering stealing-words thing) and unwilling to investigate further, both of which are completely new to him. It's rare that he has an adventure that goes so badly wrong that he actually loses his sense of curiosity, at least temporarily. I liken this episode of DW to Adrift in TW -- both the Doctor and Gwen are characters who I really think need to be kneed in their respective groins, as it were, every once in a while. Gwen needed to have her sanctimonious bone broken, and the Doctor needed to not be able to speed-talk or sonic screwdriver his way out of a problem for once. (Or be flown away heavenward by robot angels. Srsly, RTD. Shut up.) In both cases I think it was successful and has helped me to feel some sympathy for the characters again. (It's so hard to forgive either of them for past transgressions... the way Gwen treats Rhys and the Doctor treated Martha & Mickey, respectively. Rhys, Martha & Mickey are so much more unspeakably awesome than either of them, I have no words. I mean, Rhys, Martha, Mickey, P.C. Andy and the pterodactyl Myfanwy could team up and make the dense concentration of Pure Awesome, I think it might cause the universe to implode.
Anyway. I'm getting really tired and have officially lost track of any point I was trying to make. My ultimate opinion of Midnight -- great. Would watch again. Will ignore pretentiousness, pop culture references, shallow stereotype characters and very thin, watery, obvious 'humans are monsters' moral lesson in favor of great acting, great concept and great ending.
On Rose returning: 'eh.' On Rose in general: 'eh.' On Rose and the Doctor: ... 'Eh,' with a side of 'no thanks.' On RTD writing all of the above: *cringing and watching from between closed fingers* On Davros, Daleks, the Doctor "dying" and general other excuses for CGI: *sigh of resignation*.
On Jack & Donna meeting, Jack returning in general, the wild possibility of a Gwen & Ianto cameo, and the hopeful appearances of Mickey and Jackie: WOO HOOOOOO! On RTD writing all of the above: Ehhhhhhh.
On anything bad happening to Donna: SILENCE, RTD. I KEEL YOU! (On the internet, no one knows you're a dog -- but everyone can find out where you live!)
In other fandom news, I'm super geeky excited about the CERN-themed Torchwood audio episode on BBC Radio 7, if and when the air date will ever be announced. Also, I totally called the ending of season 3 of Supernatural... but the "It's a GOOD Life"-y-ness of it was legitimately creepy, and the hellhounds are continuing proof that the lower the budget, oftentimes the creepier the monster. (Or rather, the less obtrusive the CGI, the creepier the monster.)
Now I go to read some Terry Pratchett and maybe poke at the big pile of dead weight that is my story again.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I write.
-rave