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5 May 2016 at 16:25 #52143
@mersey The Authority. We do indeed see him differently! I’ve generally found him to be too quirky to be that, and also a bit too alien (on and off). To me, he swings between being on our wave-length and being — not; it’s like an extreme shift of focus, I think. Close in and fully engaged with us, his understanding is triggered. When his mind switches to the analysis/action polarity, which is at least half engaged with information, alternatives, puzzles etc., and particularly under time pressure, his understanding gets stretched too thin and may dim out for a while. To me, that’s part of the intriguing complexity of his nature as a TL. So that didn’t trouble me, maybe because I do something similar but on a human scale and shot full of holes, under those circumstances.
Reminds me of something similar, but funny too. An old friend of my sisters came to visit, semi-retired surgeon. He’s a lovely guy, European, warm and emotional and very easy to get right back in the groove with, even after several decades being out of touch with each other. He wanted to cook dinner for us (my sister and me), a somewhat complicated dish, and within two minutes my sister and I were transformed into what we realized later had been two nurses in an operating room (my kitchen), where he was instantly Captain Picard, giving firm, calm orders for — a bowl; a larger spoon; a collander, etc. — without once looking at either of us, all his thoughts clearly absorbed in the process he was engaged in. Then we sat down to a truly delicious meal, and he was again his smat, genial social self, playing music to entertain us after our meal.
When some circuits are full on, others are shouldered into the background until appropriate again; I see that as natural, in accomplished people called upon to bring their sharpest game to a project, and accustomed to both modes and shades between. But I do see your point, of course; strokes and folks.
5 May 2016 at 09:04 #521384 May 2016 at 07:49 #52118@missy Yes, I did and loathed it! However I did watch the series “The Murder Rooms” or “Doctor Bell and Mr. Doyle”- superb.
I’m drawing a blank on Murder Rooms — though I did catch one episode and enjoyed it. But then, it’s a UK production, right? The problems tend to arise, perhaps, when someone pitches a story about characters *who do not belong to them* — that is, characters not of the same culture as the pitcher — and the damn fools run with it. And the result is a often culturally tone-deaf, literarily clumsy mess, like “Houdini & Doyle”. It’s a once-over-lightly money-spinner, and every note is “off”. It’s like reverse cultural appropriation — and falls helplessly into the category of jokes about American “crime” series, e.g.: “It’s the pope and Calamity Jane — they fight crime!” This one comes across as “It’s a dumb cartoon version of Conan Doyle and a slightly less dumb cartoon version of Harry Houdini — they fight psychic charlatans!” Fingernails on a blackboard.
It’s an interesting premise, minus the cartoon element and the throwing everything in your face in ep. 1 (Houdini loves his mom; Conan Doyle lost a child (am I remembering that rightly?) and goes to mediums hoping to find a way back to her. There, that’s it for characterization; let’s have each man yelling a neat little summary of his beliefs about spirits and psychics at the other. And a fist fight, of course! Gag.
3 May 2016 at 19:00 #52096@mersey That’s my chief argument against 12. You can expect that 2000 years old man will be more stoic in the face of death and loss
Yes; but then, I wouldn’t care about the character. He’d be just another standard comic-book superhero — save ’em, lose ’em, all in a day’s work, and all forgotten by next week’s issue or episode — unless deaths become occasions for stories about revenge, and then it’s *all* about rage and revenge. Once the villains are accounted for, on to the next action adventure. Loss only figures as a short-lived motive for violence (or a long-lived one, ie the deaths of Bruce Wayne’s parents). Mourning is in short supply, which renders these “heroes” as shallow as puddles. One keynote of human identity is that we are time-binding creatures: we think, and feel, about out pasts; we think and feel about our futures. Remembering past losses and mourning them, brooding about them, or just feeling melancholy about them, gives fictional people human reality that we can connect with.
That the Doctor keeps his sensitivity about death even after seeing so much of it (let alone enduring a form of it himself when he regenerates) makes him “real” as a character and makes us care about him, IMO. But of course too much of that can slow the story down too much. What S8-S9 did was to attack that problem by putting him through the emotional costs of many deaths in his past and some in his present, and then *wiping his memory* of the most recent, most painful one — Clara’s death, revival, and departure — so that he *can* move on more lightly in S10, with a lighter, more comfortable emotional balance.
That was Moffat clearing the decks for a rebound of optimism, hope, and lighter humor — think of the Doctor lying in the snow in “Husbands”, saying “I haven’t laughed like that for a long time.” Or, “Oh. My. God. It’s bigger — on the inside!” He’s ready for more laughter now, I think, having gone through a justified period of depression of his own instead of just swerving around it, and coming out the other side more like his old self. My bet is, you’ll like S10’s Doctor #12 much better. I’m ready for some cheer, myself — because it will have been earned. They pushed to an extreme of gloom, anxiety, and grief in order to bounce back to purge those feelings for a new start with a brighter outlook.
@cedarbranchtardis the new TARDIS looks like a carnival ride or carousel.
It is pretty spiffed up and shiny for an old model with faulty circuits, I agree. I hope we’ll get some dents and scratches in the future, but I suppose she’s doing her housekeeping better now that she’s actually manifested as a human person, at least for a bit, so restorative body work as we go along is to be expected.
3 May 2016 at 09:56 #52087Anybody watch “Houdini & Doyle”? I did, sort of. Trouble is, I’m dead spoiled — and while this involved the infamous Magdelane Laundries and a female cop with some feminist consciousness, there’s a nice psychic character that Doyle consults, and the idea of teaming up the spiritualist Doyle with the ghost-busting Houdini has promise, the problem is that it’s all simplified and thrown in your face. The writing is a centimeter deep. And Houdini probably had a Bronx (or maybe Brooklyn?) accent. And the actor playing Doyle is just the wrong physical type and face and has — an American accent?!! Crikey. I quit halfway through, thoroughly annoyed.
On the other hand, I saw the first ep of the new season of “Penny Dreadful” instead, and it’s very handsomely and grungily its ultra, outrageously gothical self, with the astonishingly strong addition of Patty Lupone playing, ah, well, Dr. Seward. She’s an “alienist” with a hard but not (consciously) cruel manner, and she has been given great lines, including an on the spot diagnosis of “Vanessa’s” condition, and bone-dry wit besides. This show already has the magnificent Eva Green, and now this! Good going, and more power to them, I say. Well worth a look, IMO, if you’re not already acquainted. Not so sure about the replacement of the “magic negro” sidekick, Sembene, by what appears to be a “magic American Indian” partner for Dalton . . . a bit creepy on a whole other level . . . than bugs and vampires. I eagerly await developments in this season. Everything else looks like 100% proof drek, so far this spring.
3 May 2016 at 09:37 #52086@puroandson Oh, I agree — you could say that he could be simply running away from the prospect of taking his expected place in that class-dominated society would be explanation enough for his escape in the Tardis.
“The Lives of Others” is gorgeous, isn’t it. Wonderful work.
Maybe do the dance *before* the vodka . . . ? Health and safety suggestion.
ichi
3 May 2016 at 07:32 #52084@dentistofdavros Thanks, and I do love “Whistle”, which scared the daylights out of me for years after I first encountered it. Will go find John Hurt’s take — is it a reading, or a teleplay?
3 May 2016 at 07:29 #52083@puroandson specifically Puro Solo: Yeah, you get me, I know. Thanks for that. I left the Russians out because they seem to be a special case, also adding in a perfectly understandable and reasonable but painful attitude of frustrated idealistic rationalism, and a particularly raw and persistent tragic sense of life. From what I’ve read, and seen in Russian films, I sometimes get the sense of an entire nation self-medicating on vodka etc. because the never-ending disappointment is just too much to bear. It all seems more *active*, somehow, than the word “ennui” can carry — if the resultant urge to destroy self or social order of human failure to be humane dissolves itself in drink? This is purely an outsider’s view, of course; never been there, myself.
So I dunno; and ennuie is a good word. It’s not the same as everything being so damn triste with the French, is it? Related, but . . . my French isn’t good enough to parse it well, and there’s no reason to inflict it on anybody anyway.
3 May 2016 at 07:18 #52082Oh, yikes — okay, that was a surprise! So not to worry about the other fanfic items on the original page I found this on. I *still* don’t know how to do anything on the internet . . . oh, well, never mind.
3 May 2016 at 07:16 #52081Somebody mentioned fanfic, and some of it being pretty damn good — not here, I think, but it’s late, so I’ll just plop this down here and hope for the best: one of good pieces I came across a while ago is here
Very short, but by someone interested in how time might function for a TL. The initial assumption here seems to be an alternative time line in which 12 and Clara stayed together instead of separating after DiH; the subject is one of my enduring interests — entropy. I find the writing good and the thinking interesting, and it’s a piece that comes to mind when people start trash-talking fanfic in toto and I feel my hackles stirring into defensive mode.
Other work of this same fanfic writer, below the primary offering, could easily take you to territory not to your taste — it does me if I follow — but it does give an idea of some of the range of DW fanfic. If you hate “shipping”, best stay away from entries, below, that are heavily into it (you can usually tell right off the bat).
@theconsultingdoctor Thanks for TheGaroStudios tip. Gotta go find Hurt and “Whistle” — is it on Youtube?
3 May 2016 at 05:45 #52077@mersey I want to see the Doctor who enjoys being himself. He speaks a lot that he saves people but he failed to save major characters like Clara, Danny, Osgood, Ashildr.
Well, to be fair, he *did* save Ashildr from death, pretty permanently it seems. And he did end up working with revived Clara to save her and himself, in Hell Bent, and that worked out as he thought it might, so he’s not done *that* badly. When he broods and talks about the people he’s “lost”, though it’s not ennui he’s expressing, IMO. It’s more like being caught up in depression (not the clinical kind, the situational kind I think) about his failures and the nature of his life (being the one still alive while others fall away). Gloom, guilt, frustration, self-doubt, fear of the future being much like the past . . .
For contrast, Sherlock Holmes is plagued by a form of ennui — the dullness of days without a worthy challenge, the brilliant mind spinning its wheels and going to waste. And then there’s the original ennui, the French style of ennui: the waving away of everything as stale, dull, same old/same old, god-not-this-again-what’s-the-bloody-point-of-it-all, which to me has a taint of childish petulance and self-aggrandizing flamboyance to it. I think Goths — there are still Goths in black leather, chains, and spiky hair, yes? — confuse this with “cool” . . .
Ah, just rambling.
1 May 2016 at 05:34 #52016If I can’t have a Buddhist Doctor, why not a Buddhist companion, at least? Some one who doesn’t go in for prayer rituals (I can’t see the Doctor let that go by without a challenge, in some one who travels with him) but who has spiritual beliefs about the universe at large that would be a challenge to the Doctor in more general terms. Maybe an immigrant from Thailand?
1 May 2016 at 05:22 #52015@puroandson @thedentistofdavros I liked the herky-jerky mixed pickles of S8 a lot, myself — I felt “invited into” the headlong rush of newness and confusion that both leads were trying to get past, after him left reeling by a completely unexpected new set of regenerations instead of flat-out death, and her losing her Chin boy (after everything she’d done for him!) and getting stuck with this high-strung older guy trying to find his balance. Then in S9, their road has come together and smoothed out and they’re getting on well, but the road itself leads nowhere good . . . loved that, too. No ennui for me . . . And wherever they go from here, I’m happy to ride along.
30 April 2016 at 09:44 #5199929 April 2016 at 05:34 #51970@puroandson (Solo) Free the gryphons! Cages are lousy under most circumstances, but a well-designed zoological garden is more for protection of animals from crazy, greedy, desperate humans than v.v.
@craig @blenkinsopthebrave — heard from “carolyn” this morning. She has fallen in love with my profile. Do I even have a profile?
27 April 2016 at 01:30 #51930Link to the convention and Hugo link,
You don’t have to be an attending member to vote, in case anyone is interested.
27 April 2016 at 01:28 #51929Hey, guys — check out this link!
I’m off to buy my membership in this year’s World Con so I can vote in the competition for the Hugos!
25 April 2016 at 07:12 #51887Thanks for the story — very flavorful and of its time, reminds me of a phase when I read Machen and Lovecraft and Coppard, and of course James. Lovely, shivery days . . .
25 April 2016 at 06:14 #51886Looks good to me — change of pace, fresh air, just what the Doctor needs after going through the wringer of S8-S9 with that person he can’t quite remember any more. A closed chapter, that — but one that can be re-opened at a later date, if someone so chooses, when it’s the lighter style that needs a rest. And I’m all for it, either way. A little of what you fancy does you good! So it’s a good idea to be flexible about what you fancy . . .
24 April 2016 at 06:17 #51845@missy Thanks for the info on M.R. James! I’d no idea . . . Loved his stories, but I haven’t come across the one you name — must go find!
ichi
22 April 2016 at 05:51 #51770@puroandson Wish I did know, but I don’t, luv. Thanks for the info on AMC. It’s useful to learn about what causes the causes of the sudden fuck ups that fuck shows up. I don’t know the adagio you mean — but I mightily respect the form for what it can add to a film story. Thinking of the adagio in the film “Barry Lyndon” that cued the audience to this story as a version of the reality of an 18th c picaresque novel might be — brilliant work. Long, sad, full of Saturnian power.
20 April 2016 at 05:19 #51738@bluesqueakpip re Class: I do believe someone is an alien. This is, after all, a Doctor Who spinoff. 😉
Oh, Lordy, yes PLEASE!
18 April 2016 at 02:56 #51698@di-i-yana I have to hold back a bit on what’s my favorite, until I wind back to S8 and then run on up to current, probably this summer . . . need some of the perspective that time and absence provide. I do still see the pairing of CapDoc and Clara as particularly rich and successful, with its dips and doodles and miss-steps etc. I still see it as a great adventure story that’s also a great love story (on levels deeper than the usual and therefor much more interesting) that does something almost unthinkable for “family programming” that includes kids in its audience: it takes love through some strange and often tortured gyrations and then pushes it to the place where it’s grown as strong as ever, but also increasingly impossible to maintain, and so it is voluntarily ended. It’s wisdom a deux, rather than the folie a deux of shared suicide or even the prolonged heaven/hell of Heloise and Abelard, say. Two enamored adults take a look at the mounting consequences of their own actions, and agree to step away from the brink and go their separate ways, at high personal costs to both of them.
I’m trying to think of other examples of something like to this in fiction. So far, not finding . . . memory is asleep. Anyway, I think we’ve seen a grand achievement here.
18 April 2016 at 02:03 #51693re Class: I’ll certainly watch, hoping for the best (Moffat is, after all, Moffat).
12 April 2016 at 20:17 #51639@mudlark Thanks. A drone attack — so, current reality then, not SF. Sounds worth the wait, over here.
12 April 2016 at 08:32 #51631Helen Mirren on the Graham Norton show spoke a bit about Alan Rickman’s last film role, which is a movie called “Eye in the Sky”. Anybody know whether it’s been released yet? Has anyone seen it? Sounds very SFy.
12 April 2016 at 08:29 #51630@puroandson Like when guys buff up like mad to play boxers or beefy midwestern guys . . . I guess it depends on the reasons for “looking like” that character’s description, and how far you’d have to go for how much of an effect. Is there a bit of a double standard about this, too? Lots of “ugly duckling” movies with women dolled down to look homely, and then true love (or a makeover) blossoms them out into roses — as long as they’re thin throughout. The guys, not so narrowly controlled, maybe? Trying to think of examples. Nope. Brain flub. It’s late here, too.
@arbutus Yes, you’re right — they did a great job with covering lightness and gravity in “Husbands”, though I thought it was interesting that some fans complained that it was just goofy nonsense until that wonderful ending. Which it was, but why not? In this case, the shift in tone worked very well — the light ‘n’ silly set off the sweet and melancholy perfectly, I thought, leaving the door open for any tone Moffat chooses for S10. What a clever bunch they are, at the Doctor Who Factory . . .
12 April 2016 at 05:14 #51626@missy Ah, those “things” that happen — DW spark plugs! You don’t have to know exactly how they work, but they do keep the engine rolling onward. A great way to avoid having the characters explaining to each other what we’ve watched them doing an episode or twelve back.
12 April 2016 at 05:10 #51625@missy Peter capaldi kissing Clara’s hand is a real killer. Why is it, that such a simple act can break one’s heart?
Yes, that was inspired, wasn’t it? We needed something more focused and specific than a hug, since hugs had become ore common emotional currency between them. Apparently — I read in some commentary, maybe Rachel Talalay’s page, that he came up with that — guy’s got a great instinct for body language, doesn’t he? As in writing fiction, it’s the unique, telling detail more than the grandest gesture that illuminates a story with the illusion of life. I’m fascinated by the choices that creative people make in their work, and I don’ t have the musical education to reliably spot those choices in music (thinking of chamber music in particular), but with some actors it’s very clear: this, instead of that, and why, and how well?
Funny word, “acting”. To act is to *do* a thing or express something. But “acting” in the theatrical sense is to pretend to do or express a thing. I read something by a stage director, I think, in a book on stage acting, that struck me because it’s so opposed to the whole “method acting” theory (I think): that the job of the actor is not to feel the emotional weight of her lines herself, but waken those feelings in the audience, who have come to feel those feelings in as real a way as possible *without* actually murdering someone or having a nervous breakdown etc. I guess that’s what makes acting a craft as well as an art, although each actor has their own personal “box of tricks”.
12 April 2016 at 04:50 #51623@arbutus . . . .return to the Doctor of old, who said farewell to his companions with gratitude and affection, wished them well for the future, and then moved on, the carefree wanderer of old.
In some ways, I think that would be a great move, though maybe more suited to Chibnall than Moffat . . . ? They have, after all, pushed the heavy-duty entanglement with the companion as far as I think it can go without becoming too “adult” for “family viewing”. And Capaldi, who’s been a fan *forever*, might be enthusiastic about returning the character to the earlier style of the Doctor as a sort of magical chum, taking you for a ride on his magic carpet (with darker parts woven into its design, of course, but more upbeat and light-hearted.
On the other hand . . . I like the darker tones, and once you’ve struck that tragic chord such a strong wallop . . . but in TV, yes, I suppose you *can* un-ring a bell if you’re determined to, and skillful about it.
9 April 2016 at 19:54 #51603@missy For possibly the second time in his life, he is completely helpless.
Yes — and instead of frantic, when he realizes that Ashildr can’t help either, he goes still — and turns to look away from Clara, the doomed one who’s doomed because (in his mind, at least) he kept taking her into danger with him, to please her and enjoy her company. He’s come smack up against one of those Endings that has to happen; and once it’s happened, being the Doctor, he sets about breaking out of prison to reverse that ending. I think it was just brilliant, to have him succeed in bringing her back to a sort of life, not once but twice (in his mind-Tardis in Heaven Sent, and in a sort of reality in Hell Bent) — but the end of their traveling together is the price. So he also fails. It just gives me, as a writer and a fan, these chills of delight at the fine-handed cleverness of it, and deep appreciation for the creative team’s ingenuity in managing to give viewers who disagreed with each other about how to end it a similarly divided reward — it offers everyone *part* of what they wanted, but not all. Which is, after all, what the Doctor and Clara got, too.
As my lawyer husband used to say, the best settlement is one where everybody goes away dissatisfied — because no one got *all* of what they wanted, so each can look at an opponent and say, “I didn’t get it all my way — but neither did you, you bastard!” But then again, I’m a Libra; I see the beauty of compromise and at least an attempt at fairness.
@theconsultingdoctor I believe the Doctor put it such as the soup that is always full or the grave he always has to re-dig while other rooms do not which is why the wall continues to break down.
I hadn’t thought of a causal relationship between what the Doctor’s clues he leaves for himself and the way the wall has to give way to his long fight against it — I like it! Have the guts and imagination to upset the status quo set by your enemy, and you have a chance to destroy the closed system he has locked you up in! The alternatives being, of course, to yield — make up something you can convince him is “the secret” — or shut down and try to wait him out with passive resistance. The Doctor isn’t a passive kind of person, is he? That’s why he has adventures.
Now, a Buddhist Doctor — an enlightened one, mind you — what could happen then?
8 April 2016 at 09:46 #51597@kbranach Yes, great season, in my book. Loved Heaven Sent. Hell Bent, though, has caused much more dissention among the fans (at least those who post on discussion boards), so I’ll be curious to hear what you think of it. There’s a good deal of interesting commentary on Heaven Sent on Rachel Talalay’s blog. I found it fascinating.
29 March 2016 at 21:28 #51532@bluesqueakpip Glad to hear it — I wonder if Maplethorp will be a break-out role for Smith: the potographer’s name is pretty well known and touched with scandal and outrage, so I think the chances of lots of attention to the film are good.
@janetteb @dentistofdavros @pedant Thanks, all, for the acting career followups. Have the assistants/companions, by contrast, suffered career-wise, post-Doc? That would be sad . . . but not entirely unexpected.
@janetteb Well, people in general do seem to love the wash-rinse-repeat style of TV, where what’s already happened sort of melts away behind the lead so that he or she can go right on as before, into new situations of similar weightlessness. It’s comforting, I guess, that Columbo never changes his rumpled wardrobe, and Archie Bunker never alters his attitudes. *because of* something that happened last week — at least not for more than an ep or two after, where a little clean up might happen. I share your preference for more dramatic form (in my view) that comes with a closed-ended story, where the lead can end up changed as a person and that’s part of the satisfaction the whole story brings. It re-affirms the significance of the experiences we’ve had in our own lives.
I was watching the first ep of Series 6 of “Vera” last night (on acorn.uk), and was disappointed that the program has never picked up on the lead’s discovery, back in an earlier series, that she had a sister or half sister she’d never met, living in Newcastle. Hints of new or hitherto hidden aspects of a character’s story and nature always intrigue me. It’s not necessary that the character behave very differently at the end of a heavy-duty story line than they did at the beginning, but that some sense be communicated that the character still carries that experience with them, thinks about it, maybe *does* sometimes say x instead of y, or do x instead of y, because of what they’ve been through or witnessed etc. in episode 5.
S9 of Who can be seen as a case in point: the Doctor returns to “himself” in his Tardis at the end, so it’s *like* a re-set. But but then in “Husbands”, his talk with River about the limits on their time together seems informed by his having stopped fighting Clara’s ending (with him, at any rate) and accepting it. That’s a hell of a story, IMO.
29 March 2016 at 06:51 #51509@puroandson Lansbury did damn near everything and was part of the hit phenomenon musical “Sweeny Todd”, with Len Cariou. I think she took on MSW as a sure thing and long-term earner, and had the chance to do that because her face was so familiar and people really took to her. I disliked the show, mainly because like damn near *everything* ever made about writers, it romanticized the writing life and fostered the foolishness that fiction authors all get rich and famous, which we do *not*. I watched when they had guest actors I liked for specific stories, some of which were okay. I think it was strictly a bread and butter deal and income for old age, and why not? And I do remember her in the Manchurian Candidate — bonkers character, evil and wonderful!
@stitchintime Exactly — I need to be enlightened on that score too! BG I can’t recall seeing any of them except Davidson outside of DW (but I don’t live in the UK, so could easily have missed entire careers there). AG, it doesn’t look that fruitful for the Docs. Tennant already had a fair amount of work behind him for a young guy when he became the Doctor, didn’t he? Was he RADA trained? They showed his tv Hamlet not long ago, perfectly respectable; and Broadchurch both UK and US (not for me), and now he’s apparently doing an impressive job as a sociopathic creep on “Jessica Jones”, a rough-hewn cop thing with a female lead on — Netflix? Haven’t seen it. Didn’t he got special royal kudos last year? Anyway, he’s the only I’m aware of who’s gone from playing the Doctor to serious star standing since (Eccleston gets recognition for what he does, but I don’t think he’s that recognized outside of the UK because not that much gets seen of him — picks his roles carefully, I suspect).
So I don’t think DW’s been that great for the actors who’ve taken it on, but for those who’ve been longtime fans, just getting to do it seems to have been enough regardless of where it does or doesn’t lead for them. Probably nobody thinks of it as a long-term gig, like Lansbury in MSW, because the regeneration thing is so integral to the show and to keeping it fresh-feeling. Funny — “Midsomer Murders” pulled a DW, sort of, by replace John Nettles with a different guy playing Barnaby’s cousin who takes over his job! Neat. Seems to have worked just fine, as the series continues unabated . . .
29 March 2016 at 01:26 #51500@stitchintime Some people have made their entire careers out of one role and done all right at it, others not. It probably takes a certain type of performer in a certain type of role to pull it off, but does not seem to work well for too many.
Yes, it’s an individual thing. How many years did Peter Falk play Columbo? Then there’s “Murder She Wrote”, with Angela Lansbury, still in re-runs and probably forever, John Nettles in “Midsomer Murders” for nearly ever, Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason, and many more — those are the frozen characters, the ones who never change, because no matter what happens in an episode, the character is automatically re-set to “normal” by the end of the show, or the next ep maybe. I think that’s a lifeline for actors with solid skills but lacking the charisma of the ones who get lured away to other (supposedly bigger and better) roles for better money, which can lead to a movie career instead of a tv soap opera or serial career. But it’s a risk. Some actors just come over better on a small screen than they do a bit one, though maybe that’s changed now that people have huge tv screens at home, and the big screen is commanded by huge action and SF pics starring special effects as much as actors . . . ?
Matt Smith got a role in a superhero film post Doc (as it were), but I don’t think it did very well, and not much has been heard of him since as far as I know . . . Eccleston’s doing a prominent role in “The Leftovers”, a sort of metaphysical SF series on tv that’s set to end after this upcoming season. It’s based on a novel (maybe two novels by now), though, so the main characters *are* supposed to be marked and changed by their experiences, not spring back from even the most extreme ones just as they were before and will be ever after . . .
28 March 2016 at 19:00 #51495The more I think about it, the more I want to see the Engineer from the Orient Express as a companion, at least for a while . . . Or someone else who can provide not the spiral of increasingly dangerous energy with Clara, but its opposite — someone who is calm and steady and can offset-ground-contrast to the Doctor’s fizz-whiz-bang! aspect, that racing mind.
What if he had a young stowaway from Gallifrey on board, a version of himself but with a “quest” drive beyond just “wanna go home”? That might be interesting, and give us a window into Gallifreyan history and society and a way for the Doctor to examine his own growth and changes as a spacetime traveler . . . ?
28 March 2016 at 07:09 #51485@winston I expect “they” are people in the entertainment biz, and I think they’re mostly right about that. I can remember feeling uncomfortable about Tom Baker’s Doctor toward the end of his run — the feeling that his performance had become hollow in some way, and a bit forced. Running on fumes, you could say, or “phoning it in”. A recent book about movies and actors (“Why Acting Matters”) has a section on why actors pursue work that might pan out as paying well and continuing for a long time (like a hit stage play, or or “Star Trek, TNG”), but can then become very restless stuck in the same character for ages, feeling increasingly stale and prevented from grabbing onto other, fresher opportunities that come along. I’m thinking of, say, Richard Kiley as the lead (forever, it seemed) in “Man of La Mancha”, a character repeated endlessly going over and over through his poses and crises and triumphs; or any of the Star Trek TNG foreground crew, who are specifically *forbidden* to be written as being noticeably changed by their experiences from their basic natures. Challenge, rich supporting structure, or paralyzing strait jacket? Sooner or later, the last one. Best to break outta there before that point, I think (you see it in long-running series of crime and mystery novels as well, only the eventual prisoner is the author, for example the final Dexter novel, “Dexter is Dead”, recently published and clearly gasping toward the relief of its conclusion).
27 March 2016 at 11:03 #51464@winston There’s another side to it, too: I don’t think many actors with serious talent *want* to stay in a single role long enough to get stale, bored, or permanently typecast as only this sort of character. It must be great to have a steady paycheck (or as steady as that can be in the TV business), but still. I’m thinking of Bela Lugosi, who was famous in his homeland for his “Hamlet”, came to America to be Dracula on stage and then on film, and so far as I know never did much after that except monster flicks of declining quality. Of course he was handicapped by his persistent heavy Hungarian accent and a heroin habit . . . Well, maybe not an apt example after all . . .
27 March 2016 at 09:14 #51460@puroandson — love right back, our very own Hybrid. Astrologer pal tells me the moon is “void of course” (??) tomorrow, so a day best used for calm reflexion, daydreaming, friendly conversation and turning loose the tiller to let the tides carry us where they will.
That’s all bosh though, right? Search me, but I never mind being advised to be lazy and free for a day, especially after handing off the effing tax into to my accountant a couple of weeks early!
Best, all —
Ichi
27 March 2016 at 02:38 #51456@winston Nothing wrong with fickle. Fixating like a looney on one actor’s version, like certain crazies on tumblr etc., to the exclusion of all others seems pretty self-defeating, not to mention a teeny bit — adolescent? Well, “youth audience”, so no surprise there, I guess . . .! My faves are Eccleston, Capaldi, and Tom Baker, though I think I was a bit infatuated with Pertwee’s Doc back in the day and I was well past adolescence at the time, so . . .
27 March 2016 at 02:34 #51455@arbutus Thanks! Yeah, Smith to me was Old but ignoring it (mostly) and very “boyish” and physical as part of that act. At times CapDoc remindsed me of Peter O’Toole, specially playing T.E. Lawrence — as a man who’s missing some invisible but protective layer of skin, so he tends to recoil from physical contact as a form of self-defense.
Which, in the case of CapDoc, makes the character’s growing physical ease with Clara — light touches, her steering him away from the Far Too Merry Men in RoS, etc. — a part of demonstrating the trust in her that he verbalizes as, “Do you think I care for you so little — “ Compare with how casually cuddly Capaldi and Coleman were off the set. Friendship vs. acting choices. When that kind of thing is done well, you barely notice since it just blends into the tone and pace of the story. So part of the enjoyment is chewing over those details later (“overthinking” to some).
Meantime, I’m watching stuff on Youtube — more “Midsomer Murders”, and last night a 3 ep ghost story with Michael Palin as a Yorkshire elder with a haunted past — “Remember Me”. Very dark and murky visuals, but worth the eyestrain, IMO. New set of “Vera” on Acorn — headed for that next. Finding these pockets of treasure makes it easy pass the time waiting for the return of the Doctor. So much fun stuff to be found!
Ichi
25 March 2016 at 23:22 #51449@kharis He is like someone with Aspergers who is somehow concealing he is an Empath, or protecting that side, almost burying it. He is complex and lovable.
Yep, that puts it very well. I had a couple of teachers like this, in high school and college, strict and often really tired but caring, and they were the best. As for Asperger’s — well, maybe; or more like ADD? Coupled with (and maybe partly caused by) a brilliant mind, going so fast when it’s revved up that it’s like 5-D chess in there sometimes?
24 March 2016 at 16:49 #51426@winston – Ooh, yeah — except he *did* go, and I know I’m far from the only one who felt badly let down by his too-early departure. I’d quite taken to his tougher (on the outside) Doctor, and Tennant just didn’t click for me (I just can’t connect with this actor — didn’t like him in Broadchurch either, but yes, I did watch, because people raved about it and I wanted to see if I could cotton to him in a different set-up; no joy, though). I wanted Eccleston back so badly!
My Doc was Tom Baker — that man could do larger-than-life flare (and bombast) because he seemed to have a recklessness about him — do anything, try anything, roar right along — that swept me up. I wonder whether that’s a thing — that people whose Doc was Baker liked Eccleston too, because of that sense of risk: “Yeah, here’s me, come along if you like it, don’t if you don’t, any case I’m taking off”. But could just be the effects of memory distortion and hindsight . . .
24 March 2016 at 05:07 #51418@missy — so much nasty rumor flies around about everybody, thanks to chat rooms and cliques and weird politics etc. that I think it’s helpful to highlight this kind of off-stage inter-action to help keep our balance amid some of the crazy toxicity you run into sometimes. Eccleston sounds like a mensch to me; but I am simple and easily pleased . . . <grin>.
23 March 2016 at 05:40 #51413Something lovely, from over on Reddit:
Hope it works!
21 March 2016 at 04:08 #51400@puroandson Sorry, I didn’t get back to you about this! I’m not all that sure about tumblr myself — I signed up because some of the sites there have interesting poetry and art, and then I found some sites run by admirer’s of Peter Capaldi where there are sometimes interesting observations and some great photos etc. There are also some crazy cliques of rabid fans, anti-fans, and nut-brains of all kinds, so mooching around there is chancey at best — but interesting. People set up sites there to circulate pictures etc. to others with similar interests.
I don’t hang out there much — too much craziness for me, and I don’t know how to put pics up or music or whatever and frankly I don’t care enough about it to learn that stuff. That’s about all I know about it, and I won’t pretend it’s much . . . Anybody else know more?
20 March 2016 at 07:11 #5139916 March 2016 at 03:55 #51370Ah, Spike — some nasty crap would be sure to be flying around whenever he popped up!
15 March 2016 at 22:43 #51358@pedant Right, sure made me laugh! Spike, as I recall him, could be a sort of inverted Doctor — generally bad, but with a romantic heart(s) and flashes of goodness . . . ? What’s Marsters up to these days, anybody know? He had presence, that guy — well, they all did, didn’t they? Loved Willow . . . also the werewolf boy, and Giles the Patient, and Faith . . . Haven’t seen any of that in a long time.
Right now, enjoying a series called “The Magicians” from a set of books I couldn’t stand; good example of how casting interesting looking young actors with a bit of range can rescue a bad (but best-selling) print series. On the page, all the lead characters were kind of cold and repulsive, but on the screen it’s brought to life with some very appealing gusto.
Dunno how it will work, though, when they get to some of the nastier stuff in the books (4 vols I think, though I only got to skimming V.2). I think the author tried to do a sort of GoT thing with the “Magic School” template that Rowling treated so successfully, and the result was just icky on paper. On the screen, the nasty edge is diffused by everything else that you can see going on, and it’s a lot more fun. And (so far) none of those stupid Lord Thingamjig-and-his-brothel-of-mindless-sex-bots scenes in GoT. I don’t know if “The Magicians” is accessible in the UK — it’s shown on the Sci-Fi channel here (along with “The Expanse” and a few other watchable series).
15 March 2016 at 02:24 #51346@fatmaninabox Good Lord! That’s *insane*!
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