Fannish5: Top Five Inhospitable Canons

[selenak]

Which five canons would you not want to live in, and why?

Great Maker, as Londo Mollari would say, only five? I wouldn't want to live in most canons of the films and shows I love. And even more not in shows I have only mild or no positive feelings for. But okay then, some of the worst cases of DO NOT WANT TO BE THERE. (Except as a reader/viewer

Comments

[veritykindle]

Heh. Looking at that list makes me think that it would actually be more challenging to ask which canon universes one would want to live in. I am not sure I can think of any that I would want to live in more than our current universe.

(Supernatural - OMG, NO; Merlin - not quite as bad as Supernatural, but really not a good time or place to live in, if you have a choice - especially not if you're a peasant, but it wasn't so great to be a noble, either; Farscape - I guess living on Earth wouldn't be so bad - it would be no different from living in our real universe, except that there would be the possibility of Peacekeeper or Scarran attack that we wouldn't even be aware of - but living in the Uncharted Territories sounds horrible. I guess there is Star Trek, especially The Next Generation. I think I might not mind living there! I don't think I could come up with four more examples, though.)

Now I can't stop thinking about this. *g*

As for Sherlock... I agree with most of that post, except where she criticizes the show for claiming that intelligence is power, and trumps everything else. One thing that really kind of frightens me about a lot of shows on TV right now (mostly in the US, but this applies to a lot of British shows, as well) is how anti-intellectual most of them are. As far as I am concerned, a show that really did hold up intelligence as a good thing would actually be really nice, right about now. Unfortunately, I don't feel that shows like the new Sherlock Holmes (or House, or any one of a number of similar shows) actually accomplish that, because they trick us into thinking that intelligence = not caring about anything except playing games with people's lives. I don't feel like we are supposed to see Holmes' intelligence as wholly a good thing, because I think we are supposed to see it as part and parcel of him being a (tame) sociopath. And that - not the fact that it somehow glorifies intelligence - is actually the biggest problem I have with the show.

It would be nice to have a show once in a while where being smart and competent didn't make one completely socially inept and unable to empathize with other people or understand the consequences of one's actions. I think Doctor Who and its spin-off family of shows at their best really come the closest to showing that, but even those shows are far from perfect in that regard.

[selenak]

TNG was my first thought for the reverse, too. (Hey, ability to travel to various worlds without having to pay money for it alone would be a huge incentive.)

Anti-intellectual: ah, yes, I see your point, especially the combination of intelligence and not caring. Thinking back, my example of a show which doesn't do that and presents intelligence as something positive would be The West Wing. Not that the WW characters can't be jerks as well on occasion, but not in the constant way House or Holmes are presented as such, they're definitely presented as caring passionately as well as being smart, and there is even the on screen discussion (which I guess was Aaron Sorkin venting his frustration about real life American politics) of how playing down intelligence for fear of being unpopular should NOT be done.