Dr Who News (5)

[syzygy @thane16]

@ps1l0v3y0u @whohar

Sounds exciting, PS: Whilst I hadn’t followed this particular link back to the tender process I very much enjoyed your italicised comments. Absolute risk is expected but not too much!
And not too much Dr Who lore either ….And it can be a little expensive but it mustn’t ever look cheap….

Your mention of Salvor Hardin had me wondering about Apple+ Foundation series? I enjoyed season 2….

Puro

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16

Thank you!

I did actually copy the entire ‘Editorial’! With my humbly submitted commentary. You know my regrettable opinion of the Beeb. Though I do LIKE the Beeb… but…

I still haven’t tackled more than 10 mins of Apples’ ‘Foundation’. I must sound like a curmudgeon, but this IS a very grown up story. They fatally misjudged the tone.

In the books, Salvor Hardin (beautifully written) uses symbolic logic to get to the bottom of Lord Dorwin’s diplomatic, reductive meaning. Which is… NOTHING. Dorwin is a genius. His message is… NOTHING. Bye!

The Corp is under acute financial pressure; really, it’s like a charnel house.

WHO MAY return. But, should it bear any relationship to the show WE love, whoever has taken it on WILL be a hero.

But I’m not holding my breath. Ready to be heartbroken. Poison pen ready.

[syzygy @thane16]

@ps1l0v3y0u

I see where you’re coming from. But I was never a fan of Asimov’s writing -it felt like work & lacked, for me, the beauty of other quieter authors from Atwood, to Antonia Byatt or Mantel. In fact, surprisingly, I never read sci-fi or fantasy. My first & possibly only fantasy came from Who, though I recently read the recent Silo series which rambled & focussed so much on plot & theme that characters were muddy & confused.

I know, I know!! I have a lot to learn! However, in Foundation I do remember Hardin’s use of symbolic rationalism to be very interesting as he was focussed on how science “is” rather than something just learned & that it’s mostly a philosophy of the mind.

When you blend that with Hardin’s belief that an unwillingness to alter the past is just a worship of the past (a stagnation), I tend to think that any modern adaptation of Foundation is rather in keeping with Asimov’s philosophy & themes as outlined by Hardin?

I’m happy to have my opinion countered though! And whilst I enjoyed some of the TV show, it was probably the second season which held it together better -I didn’t find that with the most recent season on Apple+ which aired late last year.

Puro. xx

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@thane16

Female authored ‘speculative’ fiction, even May or LeGuin, does seem to be qualitatively different. How would they have written Bayta Darrel? Better than Isaac I’m sure. Though Issac is himself qualitively different to Samuel Butler say. Then you remember Azimov is as much removed from us as he was from Erewhon.

Scifi I like: Star Trek ToS and DS9 both problematic but rewarding, some worthy exceptions aside, I can leave the rest; WHO in patches; Dark Star and the original Alien; Hammer’s Quatermass & The Pit; the remake of Bodysnatchers… an element of horror perhaps? I used to be a big fantasy head but no more.

Azimov’s early writing is superior. More description and some dense dialogue but more balanced: he was drawing up a template. Foundation, of course, is the Decline and Fall in Space. General Bel Riose is Belasarius. So, Hardin is a technocrat Germanus or Patrick? Mind you, Ike was deeply uncomfortable with the fascistic turn the Second Foundation took… are they in fact Jesuits? Perhaps what we need is a Foundation/Godfather III crossover?

The point of Foundation is you can’t fight City Hall ie psychohistory. Unless you’re a mutant. Yes, Daneel Olivaw is immortal until his brain overloads but the protagonists have to do stuff in 50-60 years tops then hand over the baton; that’s the entire premise. But then you’d need new actors every other week. TV isn’t done like that! OK. And I don’t have to tune in, do I?

In fact I’m struggling to tune into<span class=”Apple-converted-space”> </span>Silo series 3. I had my doubts from the start: small town sheriff, deep state, birth control, heroic blue-collars but urban monocultures. Err? Who produced this? Oh! HE’s a MAGA Republican. Yes.

Series 3 has Iran and a new and terribly familiar ‘azure’ antagonist.

Don’t mind me: I suspect Trek’s Prime Directive is the Monroe Doctrine.

I WILL have another go. Maybe at both. Looking forward to the return of Severance.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

Just seen this. Probably clickbait… Jed Mercurio is in the running for WHO??

That might not be too sad…

[nerys @nerys]

Not really news, per se, but RTD reflects on his Doctor Who run with Disney in this memoir excerpt:

‘Goodbye Whoniverse. God, that was fun!’: Russell T Davies on writing the end of Doctor Who

[janetteB @janetteb]

@nerys thank you for posting the link. Interesting article. somehow I missed it when it was published.  He really does have a bit of a gripe with fandom, understandable perhaps for someone who is on the receiving end and the negatives always seem to outnumber the positives even if they don’t in reality. RTD needs to be a lurker here. “We’re nice.”

I don’t know if he is right about the impact of spoilers either but then, I like spoilers, so maybe I am not a good judge on that. I knew about the B.P regeneration surprise before watching the episode because we are always a bit behind in viewing. It did not spoil it for me, rather made it more interesting.

there was a lot of insight into the back room processes behind the making of the series too. It would be nice if RTD, Moffat and Chibnell all got a say in the final choice of tender, as previous show runners. I suspect they would have very different opinions though on what the series should look like going forward.

@ps1l0v3y0u Jed Mercurio does not seem like a natural fit for Dr Who to me, though not sure I have actually seen any of his work…

Cheers

Janette

[janetteB @janetteb]

Oh and I should add, how inspired was it to bring in Billie Piper at the end. I am not at all surprised that it was an after thought. It is a gift to the next show-runner. They can ignore it if they wish, or have her return for five minutes then move on. Her appearance is a glitch in the regeneration. it does not even need explaining. B.P. is also an audience magnet so it would be rather fooling not to make use of that.

I guess we are going to have to wait a long time to find out..

Cheers

Janette

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