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19 September 2017 at 15:55 #61963
I just wonder if it’s meant to be a metaphor for something specific and if so, what?
Given that this was written in the period when the various European Empires were collapsing – the British one being closest to home and most frequently in the news of the day – I did wonder if the definite ‘Roman Empire’ vibe was deliberate. (Rather than a case of ‘we have some lovely Roman Empire costumes in stock’).
The Roman Empire was an apparently wonderful, luxurious environment – except that was an illusion. The reality for most was poverty and/or outright slavery, maintained by brutality and force. That might have been the metaphor.
17 September 2017 at 23:41 #61952Weirdly, Babs kills the Morphotons by not breaking their jars
Not weird. I bet those jars came from the BBC Props department and they wanted them back. Unbroken.
It’s possible to play ‘spot the BBC Props goblet’ with BBC historicals between the 1960’s and 1970’s. Apparently all historical periods, from Elizabethan England to Claudian Rome, used a remarkably similar style of goblet. Almost identical, in fact. 🙂
Those colour photos are fantastic, by the way.
17 September 2017 at 23:32 #61951Black boots. Before Peter Capaldi’s footwear was positively identified as Loakes brogue boots, a lot of people thought he was wearing Doc Martens boots – so the precise make isn’t important, I’d say. Just look for suitable black boots in your size.
16 September 2017 at 23:09 #61943left poor old Donald Tosh to write the majority of the thing
According to Donald Tosh. It’s probably completely impossible now to work out the truth of that particular row, but the claim from the Nation side is that he did turn in about thirty pages of script per episode, and then Donald Tosh rewrote them.
The truth is probably somewhere in between – I can very easily see Donald Tosh deciding a rewrite was necessary (he also quite extensively rewrote the Massacre of St Bartholomew, which was the next story) and Terry Nation getting seriously pissed off because he’d been working on Who for longer than Donald Tosh.
But it does seem certain that there was a row, because Terry Nation didn’t write for Who for another eight years and Donald Tosh didn’t get another story editor job for two years afterwards.
16 September 2017 at 20:24 #61940Well, that was fun.
Much as I enjoyed seeing Barbara chew gum and kick ass (and the gum was an illusion), the acting that seriously impressed me was William Hartnell in the scene where Barbara wakes up and sees the reality. I’ll have to watch this again, later. How did Hartnell manage to make himself seem so very, very creepy?
@craig – the irony will increase next week, I suspect, as the final discussion sounded suspiciously like ‘let’s split up, you do ‘The Barbara, Ian and Susan Show’, and I’ll meet you to restart ‘Doctor Who’ the episode after next’. 🙂 This was still the era when the leading actors were given staggered holidays, rather than pausing the entire production.
Modern sensibilities – I suspect modern Who would be more instantly suspicious if they found themselves with a bevy of servants/slaves for no apparent reason, but it may have been Terry Nation’s little joke about the British national habit of arriving in strange places and expecting ‘the natives’ to provide hotel service.
@jimthefish I know you don’t like Terry Nation, but I’m in awe of someone who was confident enough of his professional scriptwriting abilities that he could commit to delivering six episodes which are, it seems, set in five different locations, with a different cast and different main story. I think Terry would have found himself entirely at home in the world of Post Gap Who. It’s also great that a male writer from the 1960’s is writing an episode where it’s the woman who saves the day. Though possibly he was just basing Barbara on Verity Lambert. 😀
The one bad note is that he appears to have decided that Susan is about twelve. She certainly doesn’t seem like a trainee Time Lord – but then, we’ve discovered since that not everyone on Gallifrey is a Time Lord. Perhaps the Doctor didn’t want her to join the army? 😈
The plot itself reminded me of The Puppet Masters, by Robert Heinlein – certainly the creatures reminded me of that novel, except that they stuck them in glass jars and used hypnotism rather than them needing physical contact to mind control. But while Terry Nation may have got his plot off the back of the SF lorry, he reworked it and made a distinctively Who story. Right down to not allowing Barbara to kill the ‘monsters’ until they’d demonstrated that they were monsters – by mind-controlling Ian to kill her.
16 September 2017 at 15:52 #61924@Thane15
Yes, Terry Nation definitely affected the show. 😀 He probably didn’t intend to, though. What he intended to do was another scriptwriting job; then he came up with a good idea for an SF story about some racist mutants. The rest is history – or rather, the start of taking Doctor Who away from that ‘educational’ remit and into ‘monsters, more monsters and added monsters’.
He’s disliked because he had what I’d call a ‘save the cat’ approach to plotting. That is, he’s got a standard story template and by golly, he’s going to follow it. However, following that template allowed him to produce some of the most memorable stories of BG Who, plus create two other cult series – Survivors and Blakes 7. Sometimes you’ve got to look at someone who continually produces music boxes and realise that they’re a genuine artist – if you want a music box.
But a lot of the resentment is due to the Estate, who’ve realised that the Terry Nation Estate has one big money spinner that can potentially spin money right up to the copyright expiry date – and so (it is persistently rumoured) insisted that they would not allow the BBC to reuse the Daleks for the story Dalek unless they appeared in every Who series produced thereafter.
It’s entirely possible, however, that they were thinking like everyone else – that Doctor Who had had its day and that new series would only last a season, maybe two if they were really lucky. If it was lucky enough to manage two, better have it in writing that the Daleks were in both. 😳 Certainly, if the rumours are true, they are now flexible enough to treat ‘appear in every Who series’ as ‘but one scene is acceptable if you want to rest them for a bit’.
14 September 2017 at 17:37 #61909In terms of the episode itself, there’s more than a bit of Nation hackery going on, even at this early stage in proceedings.
That’s a bit unfair, Jim. Keys of Marinus was apparently written because Malcolm Hulke’s The Hidden Planet was sent back for rewrites (it never made it to screen) and they needed something in a hurry to fill the hole. That probably explains why Terry seems to be drawing so heavily on his tropes from The Mutants (a.k.a The Daleks).
10 September 2017 at 19:51 #61894there is also the sexism in the script (or in the Doctor), which made me wince.
Yes, there were a few moments of serious wincing. Like the ‘we’re fine, because Ian is still free, so he’ll rescue us.’ At which point Barbara points out that Ian got captured before she did. Looking at Barbara’s characterisation, she’s making an incredible number of extremely sensible points – telling Susan she needs shoes with all this glass around, realising the wetsuit is protective, noticing the tear, spotting the footprints, asking why Arbitan doesn’t make some new keys. So the sexism is not in the script – it’s part of the Doctor’s characterisation. His granddaughter is a ‘silly child’ and he automatically asks Ian – even though Barbara is making most of the intelligent remarks.
@wolfweed
This episode seems to be a classic of Billy-fluffs. My personal favourite was:BARBARA: It isn’t frozen, is it?
DOCTOR: No, impossible in this temperature. Besides, it’s too warm.9 September 2017 at 23:09 #61887Well, since I made the suggestion, I’d better make a post. 😀
This is the first time I’ve seen this episode and I don’t know how Keys of Marinus ends – though I think I have seen one episode from the middle. So all my thoughts are genuinely unspoiled speculation.
First thought: I think Verity Lambert had spent all the budget on Marco Polo. No wonder they decided to keep Ian in that costume – get your money’s worth!
Even for early Who, this looks seriously cheap; apart from the regular cast they have precisely one speaking part. The studio sets also look a bit shoestring – actually, the Conscience of Marinus looks like it may have included literal shoestrings. However, the set builders did a really nice job with the acidic ocean and rock pool, and the props department managed a reasonable glass submarine.
You’d think that, by now, Susan would’ve picked up on the idea that the TARDIS appears to be taking them all on a magical mystery tour of the universe’s most dangerous spots. But no, she wants to go for a paddle. You can see why Carole Ann Ford decided to leave – Susan was supposed to be an intelligent child, but ends up holding the idiot ball in most episodes. She also has the most twistable ankle in the history of television.
Getting away from the production mechanics, the fundamental premise that Terry Nation came up with looks like it has interesting possibilities. Given that he invented an evil creature that has its free will designed out (what did happen to them? Anyone know?), I’m wondering whether Arbitan and his ‘force you to be good’ machine are actually the good guys and the Voords are actually the bad guys. It does seem to be the mirror image of the Daleks; an unbreakable totalitarian tyranny, but one which is ‘good’.
I’m also definitely on the side of the Doctor on this one – let’s get the heck out of here. Except Arbitan seems rather talented at forcing people to do his errands.
Ooh, and nice cliffhanger. 🙂
8 September 2017 at 19:04 #61848Keys of Marinus all right with everyone, if possible?
It’s your site – if you want the Keys of Marinus, then Keys of Marinus it is. 😀
Besides, it has the original team of Ian, Barbara and Susan with the First Doctor and Verity Lambert producing.
6 September 2017 at 23:48 #61841I was thinking along the lines of the rewatches we’ve done before. That is, we pick two or three stories and ‘watch’ as-it-happened, on Saturdays. I suppose we could binge watch if there were votes for more than three stories.
My preference is for Tenth Planet (4 parts, part 4 animated), The Aztecs (four parts) and The Web Planet (six parts). However, I’d like us to all suggest our choices – I’m well aware that The Web Planet hasn’t aged well at all, but it’s certainly an example of ambitious Sixties television.
5 September 2017 at 18:38 #61836@craig and everyone
Now that the nights have started drawing in, how about a William Hartnell retrospective? Especially since David Bradley’s take on Hartnell’s creation will be co-starring in the Christmas Special.
I would especially vote for The Tenth Planet, since that appears to be the story where we meet Bradley’s First Doctor. However, there’s easily 15 or 16 Saturdays between now and Christmas, so we could manage two or even three stories.
The BBC have been doing sterling work animating Hartnell’s missing episodes, so the following stories (with one or two animated episodes) are now available:
The Keys of Marinus
The Aztecs
The Sensorites
The Web Planet
The Rescue
The Romans
The Space Museum
The Chase
The Ark
The Gunfighters
The War MachinesAny takers?
2 September 2017 at 22:43 #61827@wolfweed, @janetteb and @lisa
It may just be that Murray’s after a pay rise. Announcing that you’re leaving is the traditional way of pointing out rather firmly that your contract is up and a new contract (with pay rise) will have to be renegotiated.
Or he may feel that he has, artistically, done as much as he can with Who. I realise that Murray has been brilliant (speaking as someone who has all his Who soundtracks), but the UK is developing quite a musical tradition in soundtrack composition – so it’s not as if he’d be leaving Who in the lurch.
28 August 2017 at 20:35 #6181423 August 2017 at 03:06 #61783Certainly. Bradley Walsh is an actor who came into the business through the ‘variety/light entertainment’ route. The shock/horror is because he’s been most successful as a quiz show/variety show host.
He is very, very good at being a quiz show host. And since he likes to work, he’s done a lot of presenter/show host work. But he has played several straight acting roles, including two years in a soap, and also including a guest role in the Sarah Jane Adventures. He’s been nominated (and won) a number of minor/popular awards for some of those straight acting roles.
I think the ‘shock, horror’ that is currently being displayed over at places like the Guardian is because he didn’t go to the right drama school (or indeed, any drama school). But then, a lot of Doctor Who leads/companions didn’t go to drama school, either. The other shock is that it’s so left field when compared to the ‘traditional’ young, usually female companion.
As I said up above, if this isn’t silly season gossip, I’d think he’s more likely to have been cast as the ‘regular, supporting’ companion rather than the main full time companion (especially since the gossip is saying that he’ll still be presenting his most popular quiz show). But I could certainly see lots of interesting possibilities if they have cast him; it’s no more left field than casting Billie Piper, Catherine Tate or Matt Lucas.
22 August 2017 at 18:21 #61776True. But also a couple of awards for Best Soap Actor, and a nomination for playing the detective in Law and Order. I think one Chris Chibnall was the showrunner for Series One?
My instinctive reaction is that they’ve cast him in either a guest spot or maybe as a recurring character, and the Mirror is talking it up as ‘new companion’. He’s done a guest spot in the Sarah Jane Adventures, so it isn’t actually that big a leap.
Or he’s a companion in the sense that Matt Lucas and Bernard Cribbins were both recurring characters with Companion status, even though they weren’t the full-time ‘official’ companion.
22 August 2017 at 12:17 #61772The hilarious confusion would ensue when the middle-aged white male tried to take charge. I know some people didn’t like Broadchurch, but part of the dynamic between the two detectives was that the woman had just had the man promoted over her head.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Chris Chibnall decided to play with that from the other side – the dynamic when a middle-aged white male suddenly finds he’s got an (apparently) much younger female boss.
22 August 2017 at 12:12 #61771… playing a regenerated Susan?
I notice that other papers have now picked this up, so it’s either a deliberate false-flag, or he really does have a part.
16 August 2017 at 23:59 #61739It’s turning into a blog. I will confine myself to details about the Christmas Special that are known from the trailer.
16 August 2017 at 21:57 #61734Funnily enough, the moment you closed the thread, a bonkers theory about the regeneration into Jodie Whittaker stole into my mind…
… any suggestions where I should post it? Spoilers, maybe?
16 August 2017 at 21:53 #61733I remember getting into a flaming row with someone on the Graun – because they insisted that David Tennant was selling out by doing those Virgin Media ads. 🙄
Apparently Mr Tennant should have prioritised his artistic integrity over his mortgage, his three young children, and his complete lack of any kind of job security. As a jobbing actor myself, I begged to differ.
[And if anyone would like me to extol the virtues of cat food or saucepans, please feel free to contact my agent. 😀 ]
14 August 2017 at 08:38 #61713What about the fact that I’ve watched some of her shows, and to phrase it delicately, was less than blown away by her acting abilities?
What about the fact that she has seven more award nominations than Matt Smith had when he was cast as the Doctor? To say you dislike the roles she’s been in, or her acting style, is fine. But that’s not the same as being unable to act; she can act.
To put it bluntly, there’s no way of telling whether or not she can play the Doctor until we see her on-screen in more than one scene. All we know at the moment is that Chris Chibnall, Who writer, Torchwood showrunner, previous employer – thinks she can.
Oh, and that she took the role because she sees the infinite possibilities of Doctor Who as considerably more exciting than a future of playing housewives and nurses. 🙂
12 August 2017 at 15:17 #61701I too saw JW in Broadchurch, and it bothers me a lot that *I do not remember her from that show at all*. It’s also true that nobody much made an impression on me in Broadchurch — I found them all stiflingly dull and dreary and their story basically idiotic in any sort of real world terms, except the Woman With A Past living with her dog on the beach. So of course JW should get the benefit of the doubt, assuming a new role in a very different show etc.
Yes, it’s hard when you didn’t like the new showrunner’s previous show. The only thing I can say is that I found Jodie Whittaker’s performance as Beth Latimer very memorable. And I’ve liked most of Chris Chibnall’s work, from his early Born and Bred, to United, to Broadchurch. Plus I really like 42, and Hungry Earth (part 2 fell down a bit) and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (even though it was very obviously the ‘kids’ episode). I also liked Pond Life and P.S. – which showed an interesting appreciation of the Doctor’s effect on ordinary lives.
If anything, I’d say Chris Chibnall is a better showrunner for The First Official Woman Doctor simply because he’s a lot better at writing ‘ordinary’ women who do extraordinary things than Steven Moffat. Steven Moffat tends to write extraordinary women who do extraordinary things. 🙂 This may simply be a reflection of the sort of women they each know. 😈
Which has interesting implications for the way the Whittaker Doctor will go. In the finale, Steven Moffat was hinting that Missy may have had more empathy than the Master – which fits with longitudinal studies in humans, where females have measurably more empathy (on average) than males.
But the Doctor is already considerably more empathetic than most of his fellow Time Lords. Now it’s possible that one reason the Doctor might be regenerating as a woman is a subconscious feeling that the Capaldi Doctor was a bit lacking in the old empathy stakes – and it took him ages to get that back. But what would an increase in empathy do for the Doctor’s ability to fly off in his little blue box, as Father Octavian angrily tells him, leaving others to explain things to the grieving relatives? Does the Doctor need that ability?
‘Chibs’ is good at that sort of writing. Not just the event. The impact of the event.
11 August 2017 at 15:08 #61696I have not heard of this word retcon before please explain?
‘Retcon’ is short for ‘retroactive continuity’. It’s a piece of new information that allows you to re-interpret previously described events. For example, an SF author might decide that they don’t want a particular character to ever be a ship’s captain, but do want them to take on jobs normally only assigned to Officers – and so inserts a previously unknown ‘Warrant Officer’ rank into their SF navy.
You have to wonder why no one in the previous fifteen books had ever served with a Warrant Officer – but then again, no-one ever said there wasn’t such a rank. Retcon.
Similarly with the Gallifreyans. No one has ever said that this race of shape shifting aliens can’t change gender. It’s just that the possibility was first raised upon David Tennant’s regeneration into Matt Smith. 🙂
And why would Gallifreyans favour male identity over female?
Dunno. Why are you favouring a male identity for the Doctor over female?
Given that the Sisterhood of Karn appears to regenerate as entirely female, maybe choosing to regenerate as a female Time Lady hinted that you had Sisterhood sympathies. It was a suspicious, possibly political choice. [There’s an episode in that one…]
The ability to regenerate, existence of Time Lords and Gallifrey were all later additions to the story without contradicting what had gone before.
Check out the Sensorites, and you’ll discover that they all massively contradicted what had gone before; The Doctor in that story describes himself as human. Furthermore, the First Doctor has his heart listened to in several different stories and nobody, ever, refers to the double heart-beat. Because it wasn’t there; he was presumed to be a human scientist from a different planet and a different time.
Truthfully, there isn’t any logical objection to casting a female actor in the role of the Doctor. Male actors have been cast in female roles for over a thousand years, female actors have played men for a couple of centuries now, and roles get gender-swapped all the time. In the case of Doctor Who, the ability to gender-swap at regeneration isn’t that big a retcon – of the order of the ‘nobody ever mentioned that’ variety, rather than some huge contradiction to previous established events.
Even if it was a huge contradiction, the Whoniverse has been rebooted a couple of times now. Maybe Amy thought the Doctor was serious when he told her about his regeneration, and joked that he thought he’d regenerated as a girl. 😉
So I’d guess that your objections may be more emotionally based. It’s not unreasonable to say that you don’t want your childhood hero to change this much, but you do have to realise that the current generation of children are very unlikely to feel the same way. Conversations with any ‘bewildered’ five year olds are likely to be along the lines of:
Child: Why is the Doctor a girl now?
Adult: Because Gallifreyans can do that when they regenerate.
Child: Why didn’t he do that before?
Adult: Dunno. Maybe he liked being a boy? But he’s two thousand years old now, so maybe he wanted to try out being a girl? See if he likes it?
Child: Can he change back if he doesn’t like it?
Adult: Yup. He tried being human once, and changed back. Would you like to see that story?
Child: Yes!
[End of conversation as we haul out Human Nature].10 August 2017 at 17:30 #61690Earl’s Doctor Who connection is that he appeared in William Hartnell’s regeneration story: The Tenth Planet.
Not only was he a black actor playing an astronaut (in 1966), he was Zeus IV’s captain. Eat your heart out, Star Trek. 😀
10 August 2017 at 17:12 #61689The thing is I like narrative consistency
Are you sure you’re watching the right programme?
Just asking, given that the Doctor’s ability to regenerate was rather hurriedly shoehorned in to the Tenth Planet three years after the programme started. The Doctor’s race arrived another three years after that. Which wasn’t narratively consistent in any way, shape or form, because he had previously described himself as human.
Gallifrey doesn’t turn up until ten years after the programme started, and the Time Lords are apparently all male. If it hadn’t been for Susan we’d have been deeply convinced they were all male, because we don’t see any women on Gallifrey until The Invasion of Time (fifteen years after the series started) – and even then there seems to be a male/female ratio of about 6 to 1.
This may explain why Andred was so keen on Leela, of course. Poor lad hadn’t seen that many girls, then one turns up in a leather bikini. 🙂
But you basically appear to be complaining about a retcon of a retcon of a retcon. Possibly of a retcon.
Actually, the really good thing about the decision to make the already-shape-shifting Gallifreyans capable of gender-swaps is that it does explain the weird on-screen gender imbalances.
9 August 2017 at 14:02 #61678It’s worth remembering that until TV came along, working with a team over several productions was the normal way of doing things in drama. In some countries it still is.
TV adopted the West End/Broadway method of ‘one-show contracts’. That gradually became the norm as agents became more and more reluctant to have their actors stuck in Pitlochry for a year, unavailable and largely unseen.
Broadchurch was full-to-bursting with Who and Torchwood alumni. As you say, it works in a number of ways: firstly, it shows that Chris Chibnall’s production style is ‘team-builder’. Secondly, some very in-demand actors and directors are happy to be part of that team, and work with him through several different productions.
But thirdly, if Chris Chibnall is the sort of person who brings his Who and Torchwood ‘team’ over to Broadchurch, why is it surprising that he’s bringing his Broadchurch team over to Who? Especially since a lot of them came over from Who/Torchwood originally…
I think his ‘team’ is one of the big positives. He’s got a group of creatives who trust him and enjoy working with him. That’s a good sign.
9 August 2017 at 10:37 #61674Don’t forget that Chris Chibnall may be thinking that he needs to stick with people he already knows he can work with in his first season – before he goes a bit wider and re-invites other Who directors.
The directors he already knows include James Strong, Euros Lyn, Alice Troughton and Colin Teague. That’s a pretty strong, experienced Who team.
7 August 2017 at 18:51 #61662This is one of those ‘check location before issuing directives’ things:
Sports Direct puts up an ‘English-only’ notice in Bangor store.
For those of you who don’t know the UK, that’s a bit like putting up an ‘English-only’ directive in Montreal. 😀
7 August 2017 at 18:12 #61661Thanks for the links.
She comes across really well; aware that this is almost certainly going to be the role that defines her for the rest of her life, enthusiastic, and excited about the creative freedom the part offers.
Yes, let’s hope that ‘lots of planets have a Yorkshire.’ 😀
5 August 2017 at 02:00 #61624However I think there is a difference between something that can be proven to be factually correct in an absolute sense (evolution) and something which is subjective and unproven (unproveable even).
Depends how you define ‘factually correct’ and ‘absolute’. Natural selection is definitely provable by observation and experiment, and the fossil record suggests that it’s one of the mechanisms by which evolution happens. But I believe (though my biology stopped at about first year undergraduate level) that the biologists are still arguing over exactly how to account for the giant evolutionary leaps. The natural selection we can prove seems much more gradual.
Nonetheless, I’d rate evolution as ‘proven for all practical purposes’, myself, together with ‘exact mechanics are subject to ongoing debate’. I think you’re a little over-confident about the factual nature of ancient history and the origins of Judaism, but that’s probably because you haven’t studied it at degree or post-grad level (I have) and don’t know just how much we don’t know. 😉
Yahweh had a wife at one time for example.
Which is where you get into problems of ‘factually correct in an absolute sense.’ It’s certainly possible that at least some sections of early Israelite society regarded Yahweh as having a consort, Asherah.
Unfortunately it’s also possible that the inscriptions referring to Yahweh and his Asherah mean ‘sacred pole’, because there’s an article involved. Not ‘Yahweh and Asherah’, but ‘Yahweh and his Asherah’ – are they talking about the goddess, or some kind of cultic shrine to Yahweh? It also doesn’t help that the pictures don’t seem to be the same date as the inscription.
Anyway, when Wikipedia says ‘ongoing debate’ they mean a) we don’t really know and b) the professional academics are right in the middle of a flaming row. 🙂
It evolved out of polytheistic religions that pre-existed it and merged elements of that and other middle eastern religions before it came into existence.
That’s the ‘Canaanite folk religion’ theory. Again, not exactly ‘factually correct in an absolute sense’. Another ‘ongoing debate’ and subject to archaeological discoveries wrecking what people had previously thought – trust me, this happens fairly often. For example, you mention that:
Even then, what is generally considered to be the key elements of the religion (The Torah for example) weren’t written in their current form until much later
Except that discoveries made in the late 70’s include fragments that predate the Babylonian exile – which is believed to be when much of ‘our’ Bible was edited into its current form. So again, the argument is between ‘old oral and written traditions collected together and edited’ and ‘completely rewritten’.
The problem with biblical history is that everyone has an agenda. And I do mean ‘everyone’. 😀
5 August 2017 at 00:06 #61621Except if that were actually the case we wouldn’t have Trump in the White House, the lacerating self-harm of Brexit, or here in Scotland those self-same Orangemen finding their way onto local councils.
Except how much of those things are at least partly due to a consensus that ‘all right thinking people’ will of course vote against Trump/vote against Brexit/not vote for Orangemen. So we don’t have to explain, find good, emotional, arguments why you should vote H. Clinton/vote Remain/Vote SNP. We just have to wait for people to roll out and vote. And laugh as those awful Trumpites/Brexiteers/Orangemen get a tiny proportion of the vote.
Oh, how we laughed.
Right now, there’s a wave of massive cultural change sweeping over the world – which is finding different expressions in different countries. The only common denominator is that a lot of people really, really want things to change from the status quo – and they’re not that fussy about any ‘acts of national self-harm’ if it bloody well changes things.
But it’s really difficult for people to even listen if you think that what you might call the ‘status quo’ values of ‘the liberal consensus’ are so obvious you don’t need to actually explain them. Like the Remain campaign, banging on about some kind of economic Armageddon – and failing miserably to explain what was good about the EU.
4 August 2017 at 16:27 #61611I think, that the Doctor’s character, in its fullest sense, is broad enough to encompass gender change. My point is that if someone else doesn’t believe that to be true, who are we to criticise them for thinking something different, let alone call them misogynist.
But you’re happy to criticise those who don’t believe that the theory of evolution is ‘true’? As I said on another thread, we’ve had men playing women’s parts for thousands of years. And yet a woman comes along to play a previously male role and it’s ‘who are we to call them misogynist?’ 😀
No, they might not be misogynist; they may simply not want that part of their childhood to change quite that much. They do, however, lay themselves open to charges of misogyny because the effect of ‘not changing’ is misogynist. It’s a bit like the people arguing that there are black people in Thin Ice – folks, did you not notice the time-travelling alien and the giant monster under the Thames? We’re really not talking about an accurate historical recreation …
The effect of saying that people of colour can’t turn up in historical episodes is to deny certain actors roles in a fantasy story – on the basis of their skin colour. Especially since what we think we know about the history probably isn’t true – like when Mark Gatiss discovered that there was at least one black British soldier in the Zulu wars (fortunately just before he fired off the email complaining about casting a black actor).
Similarly, to say that the Doctor cannot be a woman has the effect of denying any actor who is female the chance to even be seen – for a role in a fantasy drama. Or soft SF, if you like, but soft SF with a species of shape changing aliens. Apparently it’s okay for a man to play a Greek goddess, but not okay for a woman to play a Gallfreyan Time Lord … 😈
3 August 2017 at 01:58 #61594I really don’t think that there’s any group of Muslims who think that the Bible is the literal word of God. 🙂
One problem with talking about a particular group of people (such as Biblical literalists) within a much larger group of people is that you often end up implying that the particular group of people represent the larger group. Another problem with lacking a ‘common language’ is that it’s quite possible to make a statement that you believe to be accurate – but which is false, because you’ve misunderstood the technical language being used.
For example, up above you say that the underlying doctrine is ‘frozen’. Nope. Also that Christianity was ‘codified’ in the 300’s. Definitely nope, in the sense that you appear to be using ‘codified’. And that Islam was ‘codified’ in the 700’s. Seriously nope. Both religions have gone severe upheaval (and splits) – Christianity in the 11th Century, 15th and 16th Century, and the rise of ‘fundamentalism’ dates from the 20th Century. Far from ‘frozen’ or even ‘finally codified’, there’s a debate on about changing the Nicene Creed (which currently exists in at least two versions) at the moment.
‘Codified’, in the sense of ‘what they did at the various Councils’ (like Nicea) actually means ‘agreed a consensus’. The bishops attending managed to just about decide on what Christians from all areas agreed on – and Christian theology has been been developing from that basis ever since.
There is a group of Christians (and Muslims) who do literally believe that the bible is the word of god, and everything it is is absolutely true (a 100 % fact) even when the whole sum of human knowledge, whether science, history, archaeology, textural analysis etc shows that it really can not be 100 % true.
To be precise, if a Christian Fundamentalist/Biblical Literalist sees a conflict between what’s in the Bible and the scientific view, their presumption will be that the science is wrong.
It’s a very popular view in the US, but isn’t generally mainstream elsewhere – because it goes against two thousand years of Biblical criticism. The usual mainstream view is more along the lines of ‘if there’s a conflict between the Bible and the ‘whole sum of human knowledge’, we’ve obviously misread the Bible.’ Given that the Bible is full to bursting of poetry, allegory and what we’d now call ‘religious novels’, that’s been the view from St Augustine and earlier. My knowledge of Islam is of the ‘comparative religions’ variety, but I know that Islam is very diverse. Mainstream Muslims believe the Qu’ran to be the Word of God. They also believe that God developed Islam as events progressed, and that the Qu’ran includes poetry, metaphor and parable.
The majority of Christians (and Muslims) are quite happy with evolution, thanks. The theory of the expanding universe (the Big Bang Theory) was proposed (with maths) by a Catholic priest who was also a mathematical physicist.
The kind of literalist reading of scripture that you find in Fundamentalist Christianity and and some sections of Islam is often a misapplication of the scientific worldview. Going back to your ‘common language’ thing, people learn that ‘true’ = ‘fact’ and then treat the Bible or the Qu’ran as if they were an engineering textbook. There’s certainly no simple relationship between ‘rejecting scientific knowledge’ and ‘literalist reading of a scripture’ – quite the opposite, in fact. One of the weird things about religious terrorism is the number of engineers involved…
3 August 2017 at 00:36 #61593Well, these days Dawkins is pretty much a bad example of everything
Definitely something we can agree on. 🙂
They weren’t interested in talking to someone but talking at them from an intractable unreasoning position
Sounds like a case of pot, meet kettle. 😈 Seriously, you don’t think it’s worrying that a prominent apologist for a particular point of view can announce that his opponents aren’t really interested in ‘proper’ debates – when the said opponents are actively requesting debates? Who was the person who decided what a ‘proper’ debate was?
I realise that you think it’s not the same as being silenced, but it follows the same kind of sequence as some of the women’s suffrage debates. That is, Dawkin’s side is presented as ‘sensible’, the other as ‘irregular’, because they’re not following the rules, – even though the ‘rules’ have been set up by Dawkins.
I don’t accept that such behaviour should be tolerated in any civilised society and I don’t accept that there is a need to enter into a sustained dialogue to explain that point of view.
Well, there is a need. Because if you think you don’t need to explain and justify your liberal and tolerant values you’ll discover that those values are being walked all over by people who don’t believe in them. Paraphrasing Nick, you might never convince those Orangemen, but you might convince someone else.
1 August 2017 at 23:51 #61579Prof. Dawkins is a bad example, Jim, because he’s actually employing ‘silencing’ as a debate tactic. That is, he’s defining ‘Creationist’ in such a way that it includes almost any Jew, Christian or Muslim – then refusing to ‘legitimise their arguments’ by even discussing them. This allows him to imply that such arguments are utterly worthless without the boring necessity of actual debate.
It’s a particularly bad example because women have been routinely subjected to the same ‘silencing’ tactics. In women’s case it tends to be of the ‘don’t worry your pretty little head’ variety, but it’s the same shutting off, refusal to accept that a certain segment of the population may have a valid point of view.
Basically, the question to be asked is whether your opponent respects your right to hold and express a point of view. They may think your point of view is wrong, but that’s quite different. As has been said up above, there’s been an increasing tendency to define those with different political or religious views to us as having NO legitimate arguments. That’s not a good direction for a democracy.
The point at which you worry about ‘legitimising their arguments’ is when you realise that their argument is in fact simply that you, or people you know, do not have a right to an argument. Because you (or people you know)are the wrong gender, or the wrong race, or hold the religious belief that God (or a god, or goddess) scheduled the Big Bang.
And that being any or all of those things means that there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can say that has any worth whatsoever.
31 July 2017 at 12:37 #61558@thane15
‘Vexing’ is anything likely to make you annoyed. A vexing topic is one where you know you’re likely to be annoyed in the first minute, be gritting your teeth within five and will have steam coming out of your ears after ten. 😈 Not because of the people you’re discussing it with, because the topic itself is so … vexing.
Mysogyny is definitely a vexing topic – and not one to discuss on a birthday. 🙂 Belated best wishes to your Mum, Thane. I hope she had a great day.
30 July 2017 at 16:58 #61552There have been comments made on here, (let alone on twitter or other forums) that are unaddressed, which definitely show no respect towards the “traditionalists” who view the Doctor as a male character and don’t want to see that changed, by badging their opinion as misogynist.
That’s because the traditionalists have a very tricky line to walk. They have to explain what, exactly, is so gender-specific about the role of the Doctor that a female actor can’t possibly play the role. If they can’t explain it, they do lay themselves open to charges of misogyny – even though they might just not want their childhood hero to change sex. 🙂
I think Peter Davison had a fairly good stab at it when he pointed out that boys have just lost a male role model who sorts stuff out with his brain, not his fists. And little boys in our society are, true, trained to look for male role models; it’s the girls who have learnt to look for role models from both genders.
But you have to realise, Nick, that if you’re a woman you’ve probably been here before. It’s difficult to ‘show respect’ when the back of your mind is muttering that the last time you heard this was when women couldn’t possibly be bishops/front line soldiers/priests/serve on board ships (except as stewards)/do the same police work as men/be paid the same as men/be a TV presenter into their eighties. Except they could.
I am sympathetic to people struggling with their childhood hero changing quite this much; I am sympathetic towards those with thoughtful arguments. But sometimes the problem really is just plain old misogyny.
28 July 2017 at 22:24 #61515I shouldn’t worry too much about the ratings – the problem with a ‘streaming’ model is that people are getting more and more used to the idea of binge watching. For example, I’ve watched every episode of Series 10, but wouldn’t be in either the overnights or the consolidated ratings, because I often watched the two and three parters as one story, when all the parts had been broadcast. Not only are the overnight ratings becoming increasingly inaccurate, the consolidateds are becoming inaccurate as well.
Furthermore, if you check out the ratings of all the stories, you find that Who has always had these ratings/cultural peaks and troughs. In addition, as @jimthefish says, the old ‘mainstream media’ is dying on its feet; instead of getting to define popular culture they seem to be running to catch up as a growing cultural shift gathers momentum.
It’s easier to try something new when you’re starting a new show. Sherlock was incredibly experimental, but didn’t have any previous fans to piss off. On the other hand, if you try something different and experimental with Capaldi’s Doctor you are going to get a bunch of people who preferred the Shakespearean comedy crossed with philosophical paradoxes that was the Smith era, or the action-adventure of the RTD/Tennant run.
That’s the way it works; ask any long standing professional SF writer and they’ll tell you that a lot of their fans aren’t fans of them as a writer – they’re fans of a particular series. Step outside the straitjacket of that series to try something new, and a lot of readers would rather you’d stuck to the old. The problem is when they then confuse their personal taste with the writer’s (or actor’s) ability, and scream loudly about it on the Internet.
28 July 2017 at 14:38 #61508But the First Doctor didn’t want to regenerate. Or, rather, the actor who played him didn’t. Nor did the producers really want to take that terrible risk of changing their leading man.
No Doctor has ever wanted to go; it’s always been a last-ditch effort to save their lives. Just as the very first regeneration was a last ditch attempt to save a very popular programme, when the equally popular leading actor didn’t understand just how ill he was.
What about the section of the audience…
Personally, I’m a section of the audience that rates the Capaldi Doctor as an experiment that failed. I don’t like his Doctor, and I think, myself, that dragging out that struggle to be the Doctor was a mistake. They should have kept it to one series, not extended it over his entire run.
However, I don’t confuse my dislike of Peter Capadi’s Doctor with either the quality of the acting or the quality of the writing. Nor am I so full of hubris that I look at a show runner with a string of highly successful shows and awards to his credit – and announce that my personal dislike of his most recent story arc and character choices for the leading role means he must be prey to “poor writing and pretentious nonsense”.
Moffat, let loose, has a very particular style. If your gut reaction is that you don’t like it that’s fine; just as my gut reaction was against the Capaldi Doctor. But my pain does not give me the right to dictate to the many millions who do like his Doctor.
Or to put it another way; given a choice between reading a Thomas Hardy novel and suffering a migraine, I’d seriously consider the migraine. But it doesn’t mean I think Hardy was a bad writer.
27 July 2017 at 23:40 #61495None of these involved adding new scenes or changing the basis of the original TV story years later.
The various Star Treks have done it quite a lot.
27 July 2017 at 23:26 #61494Basically, I’d need to see the original contract, but if it’s anything like the modern contracts then Doctor Who was probably classed as a ‘long running series’ and the BBC has the right to make any alteration, add scenes etc. The needs of a weekly serial like 60’s Who meant producers might need to make rapid script changes and not be able to get hold of the writer – so they usually had such a clause.
There’s also a clause in the modern agreement which deals with commissioning someone to make massive changes in source material. The normal thing would be, even though the BBC probably still has the legal right to make massive changes, to enter into good-faith negotiations with either the original writers or their heirs. They may well have done something similar with the family members of the original actors.
27 July 2017 at 13:50 #61477Moff and RTD certainly haven’t with Who and Sherlock for example.
Uh, of course RTD has handed over artistic control of Who to someone else. He handed it over to Steven Moffat, just as Steven Moffat is about to hand over artistic control to Chris Chibnall. RTD also ignored any previous ‘canon’ that got in his way – witness Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis’ invention being transferred to an alternate reality and recreated as Cybus Cybermen.
‘Artistic control’ in the Whoniverse ends with the producer/Head Writer’s tenure – unless you have copyright on an original monster. And at least Moffat generally explains his retcons.
Why then should Moff want to mess around with Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler’s story … [it’s] is a complete mess.
I think you may have just answered your own question. William Hartnell does not deserve to have that version of the Tenth Planet as his regeneration story. It’s a mess. The tragedy is that you can see in that mess flashes of the wonderful character actor he really was.
If Moffat’s decided to do a clean up, so that the messiness is ‘explained’ for younger fans, that’s fine by me.
26 July 2017 at 23:32 #61470“Impossible” Clara is a “Mary Sue” character if ever there was one
Actually, I’d argue that she’s an allegorical character, or maybe an avatar – which is suggested by the dates of her life on her introduction all corresponding to important dates in the history of Doctor Who, the programme. The whole point with S7 Clara is that we were supposed to wonder why she was always exactly what the Doctor ordered… made explicit in the She Said He Said short. No, she wasn’t a ‘real girl’ – but from the very start it was made explicit that she was something very odd indeed. If she’s a Mary Sue, she’s one with a great big arrow pointing at her Mary Sueness.
But the Clara half of S7 used quite a lot of allegorical references to the history of Doctor Who – and Clara’s role in those allegorical references seemed to be to represent the writers/producers. Who, of course, are the people who always do make sure the Doctor lives (or at least regenerates).
Once she’d done her job in S7 there was room to both explore a more real Clara and also to play around with the ‘control freak’ nature that’s inherent in being an avatar for a group of people who script the Doctor’s life. 🙂
26 July 2017 at 18:58 #61463However, nothing I’ve seen so far, suggests that Moff is doing anything like that.
I accept that you don’t think the Tenth Planet needs ‘fixing’; it’s just that I’d disagree.
Episode 4 of The Tenth Planet has a mysterious bit where the Doctor wanders off by himself muttering that he must get back to the TARDIS, leaving Ben and Polly behind. They then arrive at the TARDIS, and have to bang on the door to be let in. Inside the TARDIS, an invisible force is moving the TARDIS controls and the Doctor is struggling to get to that door. Once he manages it he collapses.
As I understand it, we never find out what the force was, why the Doctor rushes off by himself seemingly abandoning his Companions out-of-time, and why he then had to struggle to let Ben and Polly in to the TARDIS. We’re left to assume that it may have been ‘weird regeneration stuff’, but I don’t think it was ever actually explained. Maybe the writers were just trying to make this brand-new ‘regeneration’ idea seem spooky, alien and mysterious.
But to me, that screams that there is indeed a massive black hole of unresolved plot-gap in Episode 4, concerned with the unresolved strange behaviour of both the Doctor and the TARDIS. Which can easily be resolved by another writer – in a later story.
26 July 2017 at 14:19 #61459Yes, eighteen of the less popular plays are only found in the First Folio and one (Pericles) only turned up in the Second Folio.
The rest have Quarto versions and Folio versions. Generally, the Folio version is considered the ‘best’, and most official. The Quarto (s) are often considered to be cobbled together by the actors, from memory, maybe because they’ve lost the prompt copy and needed a script. Some (Bad Quartos) are very bad indeed; others allow us to correct Folio mistakes.
What you get in a modern printed edition is generally based mainly on the Folio, but with corrections and amendments from the Quarto – and directors can and do justify alterations based around the argument that what the actors remembered as being performed seems to be different from the final script.
Anyway, comparing it to the Tenth Planet. What we’ve got is three episodes of video, plus the fourth episode in audio. The third episode was hastily rewritten, because William Hartnell was too ill to film it, and the fourth episode exists as either an animation, or as production stills over audio.
There is also an odd moment in the fourth episode where the Hartnell Doctor wanders off by himself, then comes back and regenerates in the TARDIS.
So our present Head Writer has got quite a lot of options. Myself, I think the most likely one is that he’ll freeze time (or extract the Hartnell/Bradley Doctor) during that moment of wandering off by himself. He could, however, legitimately argue that the events of the third episode that we saw on screen were re-written for an in-story reason, and redo the scenes as originally scripted – then come up with an in-story reason for the change. Time is being rewritten, etc.
He can also legitimately re-stage the events of the fourth episode because it’s lost, anyway.
Finally, he can do what I’d love to see done; treat early Who as scripts, not holy relics, and permit David Bradley and the actors playing Ben and Polly to interpret them within the established characterisations. Judging by the subtle differences in the trailer scene, that’s what’s happening- this is going to be David Bradley’s First Doctor, just as you get David Tennant’s Hamlet or David Suchet’s Poirot. Each of the Doctors becomes a role, not the personal possession of the actor who originally created it.
25 July 2017 at 22:44 #61442We frequently have two or three versions of Shakespeare’s plays, and we also know that scenes were reordered, omitted or added by Shakespeare at different times. Given that, shifting scenes around is considered perfectly okay – why get antsy when we’re often not sure whether the Folio or the Quarto order is the ‘right’ one? Or maybe they’re both right.
Film’s a different medium to stage; it’s very rare that a play can transfer to screen without some rewriting.
With regard to the Tenth Planet, they might be recreating missing scenes, or they might be working in-between the original scenes. Either is perfectly fine – I’d never say, for example, that Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is disrespectful to Shakespeare just because it chooses to tell its story in scenes that take place in-between the original scenes from Hamlet.
Mind you, it might be good to have a rewatch/discussion of Tenth Planet.
23 July 2017 at 17:06 #61316Maybe he’s playing Susan. 😀
22 July 2017 at 01:57 #61277Okay, I wander off for a week to places where you have to stand on a hill and wave your phone in the air to get a signal, and the BBC has the sheer temerity to announce the casting while I’m away. 😀
I’m sympathetic to those struggling with the gender change. When you have a show like Doctor Who, often a much loved part of people’s childhood memories, you will get some people rejecting a major change. The head-logic of casting a female actor to play the role gets overruled by the heart, which doesn’t want that much loved part of childhood changing quite so much.
@antaus
One of the peculiarities of the acting business is that two thirds of the available roles are for males – in an industry where two thirds of the available actors are female. Furthermore, male actors had and have number of ‘gender-swap’options available. If you’re a bloke, you can play female Shakespearean roles quite easily. Or Classical Greek drama, if you prefer. There’s an entire ‘drag’ genre – the recent production of Matilda has a male actor playing the headmistress. David Suchet has done Lady Bracknell … I could go on.So if there’s a very long tradition of male actors playing female roles there is no logical reason not to cast a female actor in a male role. None. We’ve gender swapped roles for literally thousands of years; the only change is that now the gender swaps include female to male, as well as the traditional male to female.
22 July 2017 at 01:09 #61274Congratulations! Very well deserved – and I say that as someone who got to read some of your assignments. Well done. 🙂
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