Surely Some Mistake...?

[jjpor]

I think it's pretty much a truism of Doctor Who fandom that everybody's - everybody's - favourite story is some other fan's most hated. And the reverse, of course.

For me, this bit of news is yet more proof that that truism is, er, true. Once again I am given cause to reflect what a long shadow, for better or worse, the Ten/RTD era still casts

Comments

[persiflage_1]

What a load of bollocks Davies continues to talk!

"Everyone can identify with it".

Hell they can!

I've lost literally over a dozen people in my life since the age of 6 (so that's over 40 years), and I can't identify with that scene. It doesn't speak to me of loss, but over-blown emotional guff...

There's nothing TRAGIC about it, except how badly written it is. And how bloody attached Rosefen still are to it and her.

/rant

If I was going to pick a "best moment" from DW, I'd pick all the Doctors flying in and putting Gallifrey in a Time Lock - as a starting point.

Martha laughing at the Master's stupidity. Fivey saving Peri's life. The Brig's "Five rounds rapid" moment is also iconic. Three's reaction to the Brig blowing up the Silurians. Nine's "Everybody lives" moment.

I could go on, but I won't.

Actually one more - Sarah Jane finding the TARDIS in 'School Reunion'...

[jjpor]

Indeed - I've softened a bit in my attitude to RTD and his era as the years have gone by, but only a bit. He continues to be - and always has been - an accomplished salesman and bullshitter mind you (as is Moffat, in his different way). Everything is the greatest whatever ever to listen to them

[persiflage_1]

Yes! All of those work for me, too. It was late (for me) and I was tired and migraine-y so struggling to think of things - AND not wanting to write you an essay, of course!

It's weird how utterly stuck on Ten's era people are. Not saying Tennant's not a good actor, 'cos he definitely is and he had some good moments, but that wasn't one of them. And Eleventy's had some good moments of his own.

And yes, both Moffat and RTD are class A bullshitters.

[jjpor]

It's weird how utterly stuck on Ten's era people are. Not saying Tennant's not a good actor, 'cos he definitely is and he had some good moments, but that wasn't one of them. And Eleventy's had some good moments of his own.

I think that's the thing. I just think some people must want different things out of their Doctor Who than I do.

[lost_spook]

Who voted for that over Darth Vader's "I am your father?" *shakes head*

I enjoyed watching Doomsday, but I spent the last ten minutes timing how long Billie Piper cried for. (The whole ten minutes! I considered writing in to RTD to complain and claim compensation for wasting valuable minutes of my life!)

Excuse me, I'll be hiding back in the 70s, when they knew how to make you weep buckets by tiny little unsentimental details, instead of having the characters weep buckets at you until you start finding the whole thing funny/highly annoying instead of moving.

(We must all be wired wrong, it seems. *sigh*)

[aralias]

i had exactly the same reaction - what the hell is 'luke - i am your father' (one of the most iconic moments of EVERYTHING) doing at number 5 - after a scene that i admittedly like at number one, and a quick joke from firefly at four??

[jjpor]

It is a pretty strange list - I think about three of those would count as genuine iconic moments for me, and I have no idea how they ended up in that order.

Trying to think of my favourite Firefly moment. I don't think that was it, anyway. Probably the bit when they come across Jayne's statue on that planet where everybody thinks he's a hero; that always makes me laugh.

[lost_spook]

People are always just wrong on the internet, even about massively iconic moments that you'd think they couldn't get wrong. I can only imagine the poll (if they had one) was discovered and hijacked by a militant group of Ten/Rose shippers. If SFX did it themselves, then presumably they've been hijacked by a group of militant Ten/Rose shippers and forced to do, while they wept over the sorry position of Luke and Darth Vader. *nods*

But then the real world out there seems to imagine that End of Time was a moving, brilliant end to Ten's reign. This always cracks me up no end. It's like some Emperor's New Clothes trick that RTD has pulled on the world and is probably still laughing himself silly over. And why not, I suppose? :lol:

(EoT, I mean, not of course his whole era, which probably is a thing I need to say when I'm being silly and slightly mean. ;-D)

[ravenskyewalker]

OMG, I HATE that scene. Rose cried for an eternity. Maybe this says something bad about me, but I haven't even cried for that long about my father's death and he meant a lot to me. So, no, I can't identify with anyone who spends an entire scene melodramatically sobbing her eyes out because she can't stay with the Doctor forever and ever. Piss off, Davies. *snort*

[jjpor]

I think we are in agreement on this one. The only thing that makes me sneer even more than the memory of the scene itself is the SFX write-up quoted in the attached article - still playing the "emotional resonance" card after all these years...?

[gonzo21]

It definitely went on way too long. THe episode ends, what, effectively 25 minutes before the end? And then the whole second half of it is dedicated to this tear-filled farewell.

[jjpor]

Endings taking place up to half an hour before the end of the actual episode are something I've come to associate with RTD's "event" stories. End of Time has to be the most egregious example, but Journey's End does it too, almost as badly. And yeah, so does this one. I would have thought a writer of RTD's undoubted experience would have avoided that sort of thing, but maybe he just didn't care. ;)

[betawho]

I think it's kind of weird that something that got voted the best "scifi moment" actually has so little scifi about it

[jjpor]

I think you're right - a lot of those are moments that happen in genre works, but can't really be considered to be in and of themselves "science fiction/fantasy/horror moments". I think possibly the closest would be the John Hurt/exploding chest scene from Alien, which is a genuinely iconic moment of body horror and very influential in the genre ever afterwards. Similarly, Roy Batty's dying speech in Blade Runner is *about* a science fictional idea - namely that "artificial" beings can have the same emotional and life experiences as "genuine" people - which is also the central theme of the whole film (and the novel it's based on

[scifi_mel]

I LOVE Roy's speech. Everything about that is so beautiful. The way Roy looks, the rain, the birds. How a movie that's been all about violence and prejudice turns around and has that moment of beauty and loss at the end is just perfect.

[shannonsequitur]

[jjpor]

Aw, nice of you to say so. :) Clearly we are on a similar wavelength or something like that, at least where it comes to Doctor Who.