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21 June 2015 at 10:30 #40754
@purofilion — Watched a bit of the first season of Peaky Blinders but just couldn’t get on with it at all. Nicely made, good performances and an OK script but seemed to me to be a prime example of what I was talking about above RE. the Beeb. Seemed commercially and suit-driven rather than out of a creative impetus. Someone sitting down and saying ‘we want our own Boardwalk Empire’ and this is what they came up with. Although I think I might resent it slightly because I believe it’s what knackered Ripper Street at the Beeb, as they feared the shows might look too similar, despite RS to my mind being the quirkier, more interesting, less cynically opportunistic of the two.
I’ve been enjoying the current documentary series How To Be a Bohemian on the Beeb though. Victoria Cohen can be a bit insufferably smug (and rather conservative) in her commentary but it’s still a fun little series so far.
21 June 2015 at 10:23 #40753@purofilion — I suspect it all comes down to numbers in the end. Neither Firefly nor I assume Farscape got high enough viewing figures (meaning that advertisers are reluctant to spend vast sums to advertise during these shows) and therefore that the suits can justify cancellation in favour of something more lucrative.
Genre TV has an added problem in that it still has a ‘for kids’ vibe to it, which is by no means as pronounced as it was, but of which the vestiges are still there. This means that a great many executives are reluctant to take a chance on it and are happier to let it die. As I mentioned on the Firefly blog, shows like this required nurturing and become hits by slow build-up and persistence. And that requires little things like not screwing with the order of episodes and making sure that viewers know where to find the show week on week.
Don’t forget that a lot of genre TV is a lot more expensive than, say, a detective show because it requires a higher VFX/SFX budgets, greater times in post and so on. Shows that went on to become ground-breakers like Buffy and the X-Files benefited, I suspect, from being set in ‘the present’, keeping costs down a little.
Game of Thrones is a little different. It’s been a bona fide hit for a start. And the HBO model is a little different. It’s not scrabbling around for advertisers and because of its subscription model it gets paid whatever happens. And this gives it a little more freedom creatively.
Theoretically the BBC has precisely the same freedom but I think it has weakened its dramatic output over the past decade or so by operating under what seems like a commercial mindset. Thus more non-commercial, more experimental drama of the kind that it used to make often just don’t get made anymore because commissioning editors are thinking in commercial terms that shouldn’t necessarily apply to them.
However, there are also signs that new paradigms are emerging. Netflix and Amazon — and others — are changing the way shows are funded and made, based on consumers’ evolving relationships with continuing drama (from the rise of the box set through to streaming video we are just watching stuff differently now). The example of Ripper Street is a good case in point of the difference between the old and new models. I think it’s likely that if Firefly and Farscape were shows of today that they both would have been saved by one of the streaming services.
18 June 2015 at 20:08 #40707@pedant — I think the only reaction to that story is ‘oh my giddy aunt!’
18 June 2015 at 20:07 #40706@fatmaninabox — congratulations!!
17 June 2015 at 09:43 #40689@purofilion — yeah, I think one big point of Firefly that even in the future, people are still people. It’s no more obvious than in the primary motivation of most of the crew — find a job, get money, keep living. Compare that to the Star Trek series where humans have moved beyond money and commerce and ‘live to better themselves and the rest of humanity’. It’s a fine aspiration and one that I definitely think we should be aspiring towards but in terms of drama, it does tend to distance the viewer slightly.
Sounds like Boy-lion is a true Browncoat.
Netflix UK have removed Farscape, the swine, so I’m maybe going to be a bit behind in the series blogs but will be reading with interest.. If it’s still on the US site I may be able to ZenMate it and watch it on my laptop.
16 June 2015 at 10:24 #40676@purofilion– here’s how it was:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/13/joss-whedon-criticises-jurassic-world-sexism
Basically the Twitterstorm around this has developed into a general ‘why Joss Whedon is a sexist jerk’ tirade on a number of sites. But it seems to me that these ‘criticisms’ only stand up if you don’t actually watch any of the shows in question.
15 June 2015 at 11:10 #40669@purofilion–
Yes, the marketing did foreground the River As Badass babe thing. Probably because they seemed to want to capitalise on Joss’s Buffy credentials. But it’s maybe interesting to bring up, bearing in mind the shitstorm that Joss has found himself at the middle of in the past month.
And just for yuks, here’s the Serenity trailer of the time, in case you haven’t seen it already. And while I remember a massive squee factor the first time I saw it at a cinema, it does have a slight cringe factor now it has to be said:
15 June 2015 at 10:20 #40665@purofilion — that’s a lot of cash. I’d say Netflix is definitely your way to go. It costs £6.99 a month in the UK, so I imagine it’s roughly the same in Oz dollars and for that you get an ‘all you can eat’ kind of deal, so yes, you can watch what you want when you want. Most of AG Who is on there, as is BSG, Firefly, Farscape, Orphan Black and, ahem, Daredevil. Plus oodles of other cool shows and lots of great movies. I just watched the old Hammer version of Hound of the Baskervilles in tribute to Chris Lee, for example. The obvious way to watch is via an app on your tablet or laptop but for £30 you can get a Chromecast, which plugs into the HDMI socket on your TV and allows you to stream direct to your TV from your tablet/laptop. (It also works for iPlayer too btw.) And it works pretty well.
The downside is of course no commentaries and suchlike.
13 June 2015 at 14:45 #40624@gamergirlavatar — Haven’t seen The Flash yet but I hear good things about it. Of course, I have an inbuilt bias towards Marvel over DC, so I have that prejudice to get over first.
13 June 2015 at 13:57 #40620@phaseshift — Yes, I think even if it goes south, s1 of Daredevil can always stand as a damn fine piece of TV and a good example of what the Netflix streaming model can possibly achieve.
Dead right on Gormenghast. A great adaptation too. I remember being quite bemused at the time at all the bad press it got. I thought it was nigh-on perfect with the only mis-step being the casting of Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Steerpike. Everyone else was perfect. Especially Lee as Flay. And McIntosh’s kooky, unbalanced Fuschia was great too in my opinion.
RE. Avengers. Let’s not forget that Ron Moody too put in a memorable turn in the show as the proprietor of Quite, Quite Fantastic. (In Honey for the Prince, I think?) Couldn’t find a clip but it’s a good episode and, again, perhaps gives some insight into what kind of Doctor he would have been.
And that brief glimpse of Into the Labyrinth takes me back. Didn’t watch it religiously but I do vaguely remember it.
13 June 2015 at 13:31 #40618@purofilion — funny you should mention it but I’ve been working on the blog today. Should be up later. Apologies for the gorram delay.
RE. Wallander. I really rate the Branagh version. Mrs Fish virulently disagrees with me, but, hey, Mankel agrees with me, so there. I thought the first season was pretty good too. I thought David Warner put in some career-best stuff as Branagh’s dad. For a detective show, I thought it was one of the best examples of a drama dealing with the sibling/ailing/dying parent dynamic that I’ve seen.
13 June 2015 at 10:16 #40614@purofilion and @phaseshift — Harness wrote all of s3 of the Branagh Wallander and two of the three upcoming ones in the final season this year. What with this, Jonathan Strange and Who, he’s certainly been a busy fellow of late.
12 June 2015 at 01:48 #40598This is mostly for @phaseshift, but also anyone who’s watched the Netflix version of Daredevil — and if you haven’t then I heartily recommend that you do. I can safely say is one of the best opening seasons I’ve seen since possibly BSG.
But some random and non-spoilery thoughts.
First of all as much as I’ve enjoyed The Avengers/Days of Future Past/Iron Man 3 et al of late, superhero fatigue was definitely setting in which is why I suppose it too me so long to get around to watching this and it’s refreshing to see all the hi-tech glitz of the big-screen MCU almost utterly stripped out. This is gritty as hell. The obvious reference points are The Dark Knight, I suppose, as a start but it’s also I think clearly influenced by The Wire. The slow burn of chasing the paper trail behind Fisk clearly came from that show, with Herc even showing up as Fisk’s dad and the show’s version of Ben Ulrich clearly channelling Lester Freamon. But at the end of the day while I liked that the show took this tack, it really didn’t have the cynicism or the journalistic smarts of the likes of David Simon to be able to pull this off. But I like that it gave the show another layer of sinew that a straight superhero story might not.
Something also learned from The Wire, I think, is the giving the ‘villains’ and the ‘heroes’ almost equal screen time. We’ve seen a lot of origin stories over the past few years — more than once in the case of Spider-Man — and it’s to the show’s credit that it essentially extend one over 13 episodes and keep it enthralling. (It is, of course, two intertwined origin stories, that of Daredevil and of Kingpin.) But perhaps that is its strength. Your average superhero movie has to race through the origin story, rendering it facile and more than a little ridiculous. The slow burn of Daredevil has the luxury of teasing out the story, of exploring the psychology of the characters in greater detail (Matt’s almost Greene-ian wrestling with his Catholic guilt is just something a movie wouldn’t have been able to convey) and perhaps in the end rendering his decision to don a red leather gimp suit almost logical.
But given that the show counts such a lot of Whedon alumni at the executive level, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s some residue of those shows in there. More of Angel than of Buffy, I would say but the camaraderie between Matt, Foggy and Karen did have something of the old Whedon touch to it sometimes. This version of Foggy particularly does have something of the Xander/Lorne/Wash comedic voice of conscience to him.
The action scenes though are clearly influenced by Hong Kong action flicks though, particularly the often viscerally bone-crunching fight scenes. We’re not quite in Game of Thrones levels of gore here but Mrs Fish especially was watching from behind her fingers a lot of the time, with added winces and squeals on occasion.
From a comic book perspective, it’s interesting that the show is happy to pick up aspects of the existing mythology and seemingly totally change it for its own ends (not unlike Game of Thrones and GRR Martin’s source novels). For instance, the Ben Ulrich thread has clearly deviated quite dramatically from what we saw in the comics. It looks very like the show’s Vanessa is going to be different from the comics version and I find it hard to believe that we’re going to see the heroin-addict porn-star version of Karen, although I could be completely wrong about that. Lots of nice hints though about where the show could be going in future. The Frank Miller iteration is clearly the big influence, although I’m not sure we’ll be seeing Elektra anytime soon.
Quick word on the casting, which is uniformly excellent. Charlie Cox does great work as Matt and behind the mask. I’m constantly amazed at how intimidating he can be despite his relatively slight frame, and with a black mask covering most of his face. Scott Glenn was clearly channelling David Carradine for his portrayal of Stick and Rosario Dawson (of whom I’m a big fan) was great as Claire (Cut Man is the episode where the show really steps up a gear.) Elmer Henson and Deborah Ann Woll also do fine work (although there was something about Karen that kept reminding me of Philomena Cunk for some reason.)
But it’s Vincent D’Onfrio as Fisk who really stands out. It’s a literally immense performance that’s clearly channelling a lot of Orson Welles — particularly as Harry Lime and maybe even Hank Quinlan — but also a bit of Brando as Don Corleone in there too. Fisk/Kingpin is one of the comic book villains that it’s really easy to get wrong. The likes of the Joker or Magneto have lots of props, lots of tics for an actor to play with. Fisk is just a big, bald guy. It’s easy for him to just become generic Evil Businessman. But again, the show took him in a different direction to the comics and D’Onfrio did some amazing work here. It’s not a career best (seek out his episode of Homicide Life on the Streets on YouTube for that). But his Fisk is genuinely — and believeably terrifying. He’s a monster but I also found I had a lot of sympathy for him, even by the finale (although I have to say Mrs Fish did not).
To conclude, I really thought that the superhero genre had pretty much exhausted all its current possibilities. I’m happy to be proven wrong. I’m not convinced that they’ll be able to keep up the momentum, now that all the interesting origin story stuff has been done. But you never know — I would never have thought that a show about a high school teenage vampire hunter would have kept my attention or that that a 50-year-old teatime SF serial would still be appointment TV for me. But even if it doesn’t manage to keep up the pace, it’s still produced a really rather fine opening season.
10 June 2015 at 11:19 #40585@purofilion — Haven’t seen the new Mapp and Lucia, although was vaguely aware that it was out there. I also have vague recollections of the version from the 80s, which I’m sure I must have watched at the time but has left no bigger impression on me than a foggy memory of Maggie Smith and Prunella Scales in cloche hats. Never read the books but wouldn’t mind dipping into one. It’s a period of British life that I’ve become quite interested in these days.
7 June 2015 at 13:46 #405517 June 2015 at 11:48 #40549@phaseshift — I love that Gallifrey idea. And I think there’s probably something to it — as you say, I don’t think it’s likely that Missy would tell an outright lie to the Doctor.
The egg theory is nicely elegant too but as I said above I don’t think you need it. Like I said, I think the ‘moon is an egg’ thing is a bit of open defiance on the show’s part. It knows it’s a ludicrous idea — it just doesn’t give a toss. To me, this episode is a potent reminder that Who isn’t really a SF show and it never was. It’s a fantasy show that is sometimes set on other planets and time periods. I’m reminded of this from The Girl in the Fireplace:
DOCTOR: I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the universe. I think we just found the hole. Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink.
MICKEY: What’s that?
DOCTOR: No idea. Just made it up. Didn’t want to say magic door.Who often hides its fantasy core behind the trappings of SF, not unlike the TARDIS with its Chameleon Circuit. You could argue that KtM is an overly clumsy exposure of that disguise but I don’t buy it. Harness is too skilled and experienced a writer for that and the fact that he’s been asked back for an other two episodes suggests that he’s in no way considered to have ‘messed up’ with this episode.
I didn’t know that about him winning the Dennis Potter award. That makes me like him even more. (What an episode Potter might have made!) And what with him exec producing Jonathan Strange, he might even be limbering up to be a candidate for next showrunner in two years’ time.
6 June 2015 at 15:40 #40532@phaseshift — I think a series of Farscape blogs is an excellent idea and I’d be up for communal watch type thing. And just to add, as far as I’m aware the whole series is still available on Netflix UK
6 June 2015 at 13:53 #40530@phaseshift — not had the chance to look at Penny Dreadful yet, although Mrs Fish is piling the pressure on to do so.It’s getting a bit tricky these days, what with all the decent stuff that Netflix keeps piling on.
@ichabod — Don’t judge the LoEG based on the film, the original graphic novels are pretty damn excellent, much smarter and playfully metatextual to boot….
6 June 2015 at 13:38 #40529@ichabod–
He was much younger then, of course, so neither the face nor the man was as developed in terms of acting skills, or maybe he was trying to look enigmatic and grave
I think it’s definitely true that Capaldi who’s definitely been learning his trade as he went along and he definitely hit his stride in his later Tucker/Frobisher/Hour years and that his more lined, dare I say haggard, features give him some gravitas. However, I wouldn’t discount his work on Crow Road. It’s a rather subtle performance. As you say, he’s already a ghost but he’s also the ghost of a man perenially beaten and disappointed by life even before he was killed. I think Capaldi is very clever in the way he conveys that.
(Although I do wonder that as this is a production that was essentially made by and for Scots and the dialogue and tone seems to me to convey that — it’s one of the annoyingly rare examples of TV that shows Scots talking to each other the way that they actually do in real life — whether it might lose something to viewers beyond its borders.)
I have to say that scene with Rory and Prentiss at the standing stones was the first time I stopped and said ‘blimey, he would be an amazing Doctor’. I had envisaged a slightly different one to what we’ve got now but it’s all to the good.
4 June 2015 at 13:31 #40506@scaryb — welcome back!! Been wondering where you’ve been at.
4 June 2015 at 12:15 #40503This thread has sadly not seen a a lot of action of late. Hopefully it will pick up a bit after the so-called summer. In the meantime, this year’s Doctor Who Festival at the Excel has just been announced….
3 June 2015 at 11:58 #40496@ichabod, @bluesqueakpip @denvaldron–
I don’t believe that the episode is consistent with its own logic. It sets up its rules, and then it breaks them. That’s just bad storytelling.
No, it isn’t. Not in this instance. First off, Peter Harness is a seriously established writer who knows what the hell he’s doing. He’s got several episodes of the Branagh Wallander — which I rate highly and often above the Swedish original — under his belt and currently Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. He’s also doing two episodes of s9, so you might want to brace yourself.
What he is doing here is something slightly out of the ordinary. It’s a story about a perceptual shift in just about everyone in the story. And that includes the viewer. As Pip points out:
I think this is what really annoys people. Kill the Moon has space shuttles and nuclear bombs and astronauts – and then there’s a magical baby moon dragon, WTF?
The story makes it abundantly clear that it’s going to a different place about halfway through the episode and that it expects the viewer to get on board with that. This is not ‘breaking its own rules’. it’s saying ‘we’re changing those rules now’, or to put it another way ‘everything you think you know is wrong, just like very other character in this episode’. The viewer is put in exactly the same position as the psychological space as the Doctor or Clara and that makes this a bold episode, experimental even. You might not like that experiment but it can’t just be waved away as ‘bad writing’.
The Doctor’s conduct appears to be entirely inconsistent with everything we’ve ever seen of him or know of him
Tell that to Susan. Or Jo in The Claws of Axos. Or Sarah-Jane. Or Tegan. Or Peri. The Doc has a long history of form in companion-dumping, often at WTF moments. And as Pip points out, we’ve already see him do it in Deep Breath and if he could let his whole planet burn, it’s really not a stretch to think he might do this. Especially in the light of this from @ichabod:
It’s the character arc(s), taking regen shock (at the beginning of a partial re-set to a whole new sequence of future regenerations) seriously enough to use all of S8 to tell that story in an erratic series of very differing episodes, that’s the boldest throw of S8
Put very roughly, we start off with ‘Am I a good man? to ‘I am the Doctor’ in Flatline but he’s still not there yet (as Smith’s Doctor pointed out the name of the Doctor is not the point). It’s not until Death in Heaven that Capaldi’s doc finally gets it:
Thank you. Thank you so much. I really didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. You lose sight sometimes. Thank you! I am not a good man! And I’m not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I’m definitely not a president. And, no, I’m not an officer. Do you know what I am? I… am… an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver
That is the arc of s8 and it takes the Doctor all its episodes to get there. It’s the regeneration crisis Colin Baker wanted done properly. But in order for the Doctor to rise, to reach this self-realisation, he has to fall first. Kill the Moon is that fall, probably the deepest example of it. And let’s not forget, as ichabod’s quote above suggests, this is not just any old regeneration for the Doctor. This is something new. This is almost like a birth.
I am entitled to dislike it, I am entitled to say I dislike it
Absolutely right and as far as I can see, no one is disputing that. We’re just exercising our right to disagree and articulating the reasons why, which is kind of what we do here. But don’t mistake disagreement for personal attack. Because it’s not.
However,
I’m not stupid, I’m not an idiot
No, I daresay you’re not. But neither are many other people on this site. As I’ve said before, there are lots of seriously big brains here. Chances are they know a Shakespeare quote when they see one or what a deus ex machina is (for the record, Pip has written a whole blog on its use in Who). They really don’t need lectured at. It’s a good rule of thumb on here to assume that everyone you talk to is at least as smart as you are and quite possibly more so. If nothing else, it helps us all get along.
I find it slightly odd to be singing the praises of this episode so highly because of all the ones in s8 it’s one that left me the most cold, or at least took me a while to really ‘get’. On first viewing, I probably had many of the same reactions that Den had. And as ichabod said on the TV thread, this is definitely a season that requires a couple of viewings for it to really gel and it’s easy to underestimate just how ambitious this season is. It’s not the instant, kinetic rush of s5. It’s one of those season where the whole show is given a jolt — it’s the equivalent of BG s7 or s18. Kill The Moon is a difficult episode but it’s not a bad one — in the Boom Town/Fear her/Love and Monsters sense of the word. It’s not even the worst episode of s8 — for me I think that might well be Death in Heaven or Time Heist, both of which feel as if they belong at least a couple of years in the show’s past.
2 June 2015 at 11:55 #40481@bluesqueakpip‘s observation is spot on. This is an episode of everyone getting it wrong basically. And that’s what makes it interesting. @ichabod is also dead right when this is essentially about the Doctor’s regeneration crisis — the true arc of s8. The Doctor is just not himself here and this is a failure of nerve on his part and essentially re-learning who he is (‘am I a good man?’).
Having said that, this idea that the Doctor’s leaving is out of character is just wrong. Most, with the exception of Troughton, McGann and possibly Smith, could quite easily have done this. All have form on ruthless — and of basically wrong — decisions and all have ‘abandoned’ companions, often at crucial moments. It’s not as an essentially ‘un-Doctor-ish’ thing to do as some would like to think.
I wouldn’t say this is an episode I love in any way but it is one I’ve come to admire. It’s very much a statement of intent. It’s emphasising for a start that this Doctor is not going to be reliable, he’s not going to be particularly knowable and he’s not going to be an Authority, in the way that many of the previous older Doctors were.
It’s also the most direct statement of Moffat’s ‘fairytale’ take on the show. Or at least it’s ratcheting it up a notch. The jar between the hard-science of the first act and the mythic, almost dream-like conclusion is part of the point. It’s saying ‘here’s what you think the show is, but here’s also what it can be’. It’s not a mistake. It’s deliberate. To still be fretting over bits of moonshell is rather missing the point, I feel.
2 June 2015 at 00:45 #40470@gamergirlavatar — saw that. But Carole Anne Ford, who played Susan, is still with us at the moment, so there’s no reason why she couldn’t make a return. And, of course, there’s no reason why Susan couldn’t regenerate anyway.
2 June 2015 at 00:43 #40469Missed that quote from @barbaralefty before but it’s pretty damn fine. You win the internetz!!
1 June 2015 at 11:35 #40455@purofilion & @denvaldron–
I’m can’t really reply to Den’s thoughts on KtM because I didn’t really read them, only gave them a quick scan for compliance. But I wouldn’t get too exercised by the ‘sound and fury’ business as I’m sure you know it’s a quote from Macbeth being pressed roughly into service by Den.
On which note, however, can we make sure we stay on topic? While occasional asides are great if they progress the topic in question, extended ruminations on SF should go either in the Books thread or The Cloven Hoof. Lengthy discussions on KtM should go in the Kill the Moon thread, oddly enough. I’ll keep everything where it is this time as everything is kind of mashed in together but let’s try and keep it orderly.
You can always link to stuff posted elsewhere should it be necessary.
31 May 2015 at 13:04 #40433@ichabod — RE. s8, absolutely. I was a definitely a little unsure of it at first. Capaldi’s Doctor was not how I imagined he’d play it and it took me a while to get used to him — compared to the instant shine I took to Matt, for instance. But now I think he really works. It was also not really until a second viewing tat I really got just how bold this last season was. It took risks, it give new writers to the show (and new even to this genre) their head and the results were often startling and interesting. I now think that Kill The Moon stands as one of the great episodes of AG Who, if not of the entire series. And I suppose somewhat ironically I consider Death in Heaven, which slipped back into an RTD-pastiche comfort zone to be weakest episode of an otherwise quite daring season.
30 May 2015 at 16:21 #40420@purofilion, @phaseshift and @janetteb —
A pretty spot-on summation from @phaseshift (hereafter known as the Glowing-Arse Argument). I find a little space opera goes a long way for me. I tend towards TOS, find TNG occasionally inspired but tediously humourless and pompous for the most part. Quite liked DS9 — and really do rate episodes like Pale Moonlight, especially as precursors for what Ron Moore would eventually do with BSG. Voyager and Enterprise are uniformally ghastly to my mind.
I never really got on with Babylon 5 as it just had way too many bumpy foreheads and funny names for me to get really into it. Also again with the lack of humour. It always strikes me as the epitome of what Whedon was reacting against in Firefly — ambassadors, diplomatic intrigue, stately, static FX and so on.
I think one of the interesting things about Firefly is that compared to many of these other series, the Alliance is not actually fascistic but rather more mindlessly bureaucratic . They’re not as malicious as, say, Nation’s Federation and it’s more that ordinary people just tend to get crushed in the machinery of their Government apparatus. And Phase does highlight something I’ve noticed in a couple of others. That it’s not until a second pass that many people really fall in love with it.
30 May 2015 at 14:19 #40416@phaseshift — I’m about halfway through Daredevil — hence Jonathan Strange getting put on the back-burner and so far I’m really impressed. I’ve been having definite superhero fatigue in terms of movies at the moment but this is really a breath of fresh air. I thought Henson took a couple of episodes to get really comfortable but I’m really enjoying the whole thing now. D’Onofrio — great in just about everything he ever does, to my mind — is an excellent Fisk.
I worry slightly with Ben Edlund moving on after s1 as Doug Petrie’s contributions to Buffy don’t exactly inspire me with confidence at him being the lead show-runner but I’ll be happy to be pleasantly surprised.
30 May 2015 at 13:54 #40414Not got around to JS&MN on TV yet, although it’s definitely on my list. I could never really get into the book, largely for the reasons @bluesqueakpip mentions, largely that Mr Norrell is such a boring old arse. Martin Millar is still my go-to guy for faeries really. Will give it another go soon though and the TV version looks as if it’s really nailed the atmosphere of the book.
Think someone mentioned Top of the Lake above. The Beeb is about to show a dramatisation of Iain Banks’ Stonemouth, starring everyone’s favourite Weegie Psycho Peter Mullan. I’d consider it one of Banks’ lesser novels, essentially a mash-up of The Crow Road and Complicity but I’m grateful for what I can get, bearing in mind the poor old sod is no longer with us.
Which reminds me, isn’t it about time that we got onto The Crow Road in our Capaldi retrospective?
28 May 2015 at 01:45 #40399@purofilion —
War Stories, another great one. But to me, it’s Zoe the gets all the cool stuff. She cuts off Niska in his big villain moment and doesn’t bat an eye when she’s handed Mal’s ear. She’s a scary woman. I also love that the growing bond between Kaylee and River is blown out the water because Kaylee is so freaked by River’s powers — which kind of segues into Serenity the movie.
Yeah, I tried swapping Nathan as Angel and David as Mal in my head tonight and it just doesn’t work. Both are perfectly cast as is.
That Firefly was cut off in its prime makes no sense. I just kind of stops. Though the last one, Objects in Space is kind of a special episode. It really does go out on a high. Your next move is Serenity the movie. I must admit that I don’t massively love it as much as some, for reasons I’ll talk about in the blog but it’s still well worth seeing and it does resolve at least some stuff. I think it’s also a testament to Firefly’s power that it managed to secure a movie, when Buffy or Angel couldn’t. But then it’s a much more filmic property than either of those.
For me, Firefly is the end of Joss’s real creatively fertile period. You can go on to Dollshouse, which ran for two season but I really, really don’t love it. But some do. Maybe someone else will try and convince on it. Basic premise: Eliza Dushku plays Echo, an agent who can be programmed to be anyone but who has her memory wiped after each assignment. It didn’t really do it for me basically because it’s hard to engage with a character who is a literal blank slate week after week.
Movies-wise, Cabin in the Woods is kind of worth a look, although I always think it’s kind of like a recycling of the idea of the Initiative from Buffy s4. It’s got some nice moments though. And you’ve got The Avengers Assemble too. Personally, while it’s a great superhero movie, it doesn’t really have enough of Joss’s individuality to it to be really worthwhile. But again it does have many cool moments.
27 May 2015 at 16:42 #40389@purofilion — yes, it’s a purely personal prejudice. You might love it.
And I’d echo @janetteb‘s endorsement of Fringe. It’s a great series with a towering performance from John Noble. Final season is a bit ropey but it’s still a great show.
27 May 2015 at 12:55 #40386I think the chemistry on Firefly is just a fluke of the cast really getting on with each other. If you listen to some of the commentaries with the cast involved, you’ll hear the same thing. Not to say that the teams on Angel or Buffy didn’t get on (and there were occasional problems going by the scuttlebutt) but there seemed to be a bonding here that you just can’t fake. Maybe it’s something to do with the show being made under such adversity that brought them all together.
Interesting that you compare Fillion to Boreanaz as I believe Nathan Fillion came very close to being cast as Angel back in the day. Now, how would that have worked out? Personally I can no longer see it. He just is Mal to my mind now. And I find that watching Firefly does have me dropping into Firefly-speak sometimes — just not with the Chinese.
Some people like Suits but to me it’s just a meh, tedious legal drama. Mad Men is awesome (and yes Vincent Kartheiser is in it playing another little weasel). I haven’t kept up with it but I’m looking forward to doing the whole thing on a marathon watch soon.
Sarah Connor Chronicles is another short-lived SF series — one and half seasons this time — that is essentially a reboot of the whole Terminator movies. It’s got Glau in it as a Terminator and Lena ‘Cersei’ Headey as Sarah Connor. It starts off slow but then it really goes to some really interesting places, especially in s2, with lots of meditation on what it means to be human, are our lives and deaths pre-ordained and so on. Headey takes a little getting used to as Connor but for me now she is the definitive Sarah Connor. (Linda Hamilton. Pffft.)
It’s probably sacrilege to say this on these boards, but I’m afraid I’m with Tim Bisley on Babylon 5.
I’ve only ever really dipped my toes in Farscape but will be giving it a go soon. Maybe Mr @phaseshift could be prevailed upon for a blog to get us all going. Though have watched a couple of episodes of Daredevil on Netflix and that seems to be shaping up nicely. Lots of Buffy/Angel alum involved.
27 May 2015 at 10:51 #40384@purofilion
I have watched up to ‘Ariel’ which means the journey is nearly over. I’m enjoying a lot of it -I think I didn’t enjoy the train heist as much nor the selling of the cows to the bible belt planet with ‘witchy’ River (I’m terrible with ep names!). In fact, I’m finding River to be a little …well…I’m unsure of her. Simon seems to be the stronger character and that’s no doubt part of the brother/sister role and characterisation. Perhaps Glau doesn’t seem a visually clear or strong actress but I’ll have to think more about this -I’m probably quite wrong about it.
I like the fact there are 9 characters -they really do have a particular visual quality and see the world -the universe- differently to each other. And the bonding? I can definitely see that. I’m watching Haven -there are maybe 3 main characters, 26 episodes and I have no attachment to them. They don’t particularly move me or even seem to like each other. We get lots of long, straight looks at the camera. Everything is one-note.
But with Firefly there’s an unusual level of chemistry between the characters and the actors. All very charismatic people and it’s wonderful to see. Other than Fillion, though, I’m not sure I’ve seen many of these actors in other shows? But that could be my relationship with telly more than anything else.
You’ll remember Summer Glau from the Waiting in the Wings episode of Angel. I like her a lot and I think she does bring a lot of nuance to the part of River. Playing a mentally ill young woman could have gone all kinds of wrong and as someone who’s had to deal with this kind of issue at close hand, I think she’s judged her performance just right. She goes on to do great work in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a ‘good’ Terminator. (It’s actually a great show, big on the timey-wimey, and not half as hokey as you might think.)
Most of the others have shown up here and there. Torres, Fillion and Baldwin in Buffy and Angel, of course. Ron Glass was in Barnaby Jones — a blast from the past, but I’m sure you must remember that. Alan Tudyk has had tiny bit parts in lots of movies. Gina Torres is in Suits at the moment but I always think it wouldn’t have killed Larry Fishburne to get his missus some work when he was getting movie gigs. She’s born to be a movie star I would have thought. You’ll have met Saffron by now, playing by the great Christina Hendricks, who’s now mega in Mad Men.
Yes, I think the rapport between the cast and characters is one of the key points of the show. As an ensemble, I think it’s stronger even than the Scoobies. It was always painfully obvious to me that Torchwood desperately wanted that kind of bond between its characters but that the writers just didn’t really know how to make it happen. It always struck me that Torchwood suffered from Firefly-envy in general, actually.
If you’re watching them in order then with Ariel you’re just over halfway through. I think my favourite of all episodes is Our Mrs Reynolds — love me some Saffron. But also the little set you’ve just watched — Ariel, Out of Gas, Jaynestown. Shindig is also quite fun too.
Just got a couple to go myself. Time to start thinking about that blog.
26 May 2015 at 12:41 #40376Oh and just in case there are any non-Browncoats out there (does such a thing exist?) who would like to see said ‘Making of’, here it is. It’s well worth a watch.
26 May 2015 at 00:08 #40365@purofilion — just so long as it’s entertaining for you not some kind of chore. The whole being well thing should be the focus right now. But glad you’re enjoying it. Yes, Zoe is a bad-ass and another one of my definite Whedonverse crushes — though you’d definitely be kind of daunted by here. You’ll notice that the whole Train Job episode was kind of a second pilot with Mal’s character lightened up considerably.
But if you’re in watch-mode I’d recommend the making-of featurette on the final disc. It’s not spoilery so you can watch it any time and it really helps put the whole show in context. I watched it this afternoon and it once again brought a manly tear to the eye.
The ‘galactic language’ the characters eventually slip into is Mandarin Chinese.
25 May 2015 at 00:31 #40337There’s a whole thread on this thorny issue elsewhere on the site but god knows where.
Doctor Who writer says changing viewing habits not affecting ratings
‘Doctor Who’ Showrunner Steven Moffat Talks Ratings, Season 9
25 May 2015 at 00:18 #40334@purofilion — I’m very sorry to hear that. Do take care of yourself and be well. The ‘Verse will still be waiting for you.
25 May 2015 at 00:02 #40330@burrunjor–
I’ve fixed all the stray and unbroken html in your above posts. It’s something to watch out for when you’re cutting and pasting from elsewhere.
First of all, thank you for making your points in a less inflammatory and more thoughtful manner. It’s very much appreciated.
Needless to say, I don’t really agree with them but there’s room for all schools of thought on this site provided they are expressed with care and consideration, which I think you have this time. And for what it’s worth, I do understand some of your objections in terms of tradition but in the end I think have to reject them.
I won’t go through your two lengthy posts above but just to raise a couple of points:
1. I honestly don’t see a problem with a female Doctor. I can understand your point about continuity and that it’s taken an entire new regeneration cycle for the Doctor to become human but I don’t see that as insurmountable. In fact, it could easily be explained. The Master has already been given a new regeneration cycle and now so has the Doctor too. Perhaps its a replication error that can sometimes creep in when this unusual step is taken, or possibly even a necessary requirement for it to even work.
In RL terms, Who never had a long-term plan, or anything like a series bible. Regeneration was originally thought up on the hoof to solve a particular production problem. Then Robert Holmes threw a curveball into it with A Deadly Assassin because he honestly didn’t think it would matter. There is no plan to Who. It evolves rather like an overgrown, unwieldy garden but is no less the beautiful for it.To my mind, there’s no question that Holmes/Letts/Dicks wouldn’t have totally gone for a female Doctor if they had felt social mores would have supported in back in the 70s. The reason it didn’t happen then was that social mores might still have had something of a problem with it and there were still places for the narrative of a male Doctor to go. I think it’s increasingly obvious that this is no longer the case now. Having a continually male Doctor is looking more and more like an anachronism and it will help take the show in directions that it now needs to go.
2. You make some interesting points about Time Lord gender. Again, there’s no reason why Time Lords can’t be born genderless. It would make an interesting angle to look at just how the Doctor views his companions. It could well be that it wasn’t until Ecclestone that he didn’t even recognise them as female or male, thanks to his prolonged exposure to them. It’s not unlike when we see pretty much any kind of other animal. We see the animal first and then once we’ve assimilated that information then we start assessing things like gender. But you’re right, that a Time Lord attitude and a human attitude to gender and gender change will likely be completely different. Which is also why we can’t make any assumptions at all how the Doctor might or might not feel about it.
3. Your argument about the Doctor’s dress always following an Edwardian template only really holds up until Colin Baker, I think. Sylvester McCoy’s dress wasn’t really Edwardian, McGann’s was essentially of a well-heeled cowboy dandy, so not really English, and none of the AG Doctors were remotely Edwardian — all took their cues very much from later 20th century dress.
4. RE. The Master. I also think you’re looking for logic and consistency in a character that just doesn’t have it. Never had. Look at The Terror of the Autons. A contrived — and successful — plan by the Master which is only foiled after 5 mins of talking round from the Doctor. Can it really be that the Master really hadn’t thought through the implications of the Nestene Invasion or is it not more likely that the chance of working again alongside his old friend was much more attractive to him? I think the latter and it lends credence to @phaseshift‘s whole take on the Master/Doctor relationship above.
With regards to Death in Heaven and the failed plot points that you correctly bring up. I really don’t want to defend what I consider to be the weakest link in an otherwise strong and pretty audacious season. DiH was essentially Moffatt trying to do an RTD-style ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ epic and he thankfully is just not that kind of writer. Missy’s plan was incoherent and rubbish but, frankly, it wouldn’t be the Master’s most incoherent or rubbish plan ever (stealing Concorde back to the dawn of time anyone? Rewriting Magna Carta?)
The Master has never made sense really. The only time I think the character has ever really worked was back in the 70s and that was because Delgado brought a real charm and panache to it. You’re possibly right that the lack of backstory helped him as a character then. But the show is 50 years old now and that’s just no longer an option.
And I’d say that there’s a definite flirtatious aspect to the Pertwee and Delgado relationship. Davison and Ainley had a rather flat dynamic but there’s definitely a slightly unsettling animalistic, almost eroticism, to McCoy and Ainley’s tussles in Survival (or that’s possibly the Freud talking). I think it’s always been there and it’s certainly there in the Simm/Tennant and Capaldi/Gomez iterations too. And it doesn’t necessarily have to mean ‘want to shag each other’. I’d say that it’s really rather common that we’ve all had best friends over the years where there was a sublimated physical attraction, regardless of the gender of the parties involved.
I think @phaseshift is right that the Missy character does follow a clearly recognisable through-line from Delgado through Pratt through Ainley through Simm, in a similar way that Julian Bleach’s Davros successfully integrated the various performances of the BG version of the character. And I think Gomez works far better as the Master than as the Rani (a character I’ve always thought was absolutely awful anyway. I don’t understand the appeal of wanting her back. Crap villainess in two of the crappest stories of the show’s original run). She great because she brings a long-simmering aspect of these two characters into sharp focus at last.
Hey @purofilion — how’s Firefly coming along?
24 May 2015 at 01:43 #40305Hear, hear, @purofilion.
@denvaldron — there’s no doubt in my mind that @burronjor was engaged in a trolling exercise and merely sock-puppetting the same crappy views that he’d been espousing on other sites.I believe @phaseshift and others were 100% correct in the way they treated them and I certainly make no apology for any of my posts on this thread. Indeed, it’s part of our role as Mods on this site to police it. If anything, we’ve probably erred in not being firm enough at the outset.
burronjor was clearly intending to sow discord and start arguments because that’s what trolls do and by dragging this on and on, we’ve all been ensuring he succeeded.
23 May 2015 at 20:50 #40291@gamergirlavatar — I don’t think there’s any reason why it can’t come back and be interesting. Casts and concepts can always be reinvented. The two things that always stymied the original Torchwood the most was that Chris Chibnall had too much of a head on it and he’s an undisciplined and often lacklustre writer. The other was that John Barrowman just didn’t have the acting chops to carry a show in the heroic mould. Torchwood’s finest moment was Children of Earth because the script was strong and it had a good ensemble of supporting characters, especially Capaldi.
There’s no reason why it couldn’t hit that level of quality again on audio.
23 May 2015 at 16:06 #40280Basically, what @phaseshift said. First class post.
21 May 2015 at 12:40 #40254All this copyright chat ended up reminding me of this, which I’ve included in its entirety because it’s really rather fun anyway….
20 May 2015 at 16:01 #40248@pedant — yeah, I was just roughly paraphrasing but thanks.
After Nation making a mint out of the Daleks and Lincoln and Haisman causing all kinds of chaos with the Yeti and also the Quarks the rights to any monsters created during a serial stay with the Beeb and I’m sure, as you say, the writers got an extra payment as compensation. Haisman and Lincoln had grand plans for a Yeti TV series in the US, which always struck me as bizarre and I think the Quark’s appearances in TV Comic had to negotiated with them, rather than solely the Beeb. They also kicked up a storm about a Yeti appearing on the back of an annual of the time. After that, the Beeb made sure they had any new monsters ‘locked in’ to them. But, no, it wouldn’t have affected their other standard rights to residuals and what have you. Just prevented them from causing mayhem by taking their creaations elsewhere.
20 May 2015 at 15:07 #40246@pedant — yes, I’m aware of the issue with residuals and the often labrynthine nature of contracts. I’d be interested to know if just having a clip of Liz Sladen etc gasping ‘Doctor’ in Logopolis would have been enough to trigger a residual payment or whether clips under a certain length are exempt, much like the ‘fair use’ policy for quotes in book reviews etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
The complexity of contracts was, I believe, the reason the Beeb shied away from out-of-Doctor reruns for a long while because of the costs involved. It’s also the reason why the likes of Netflix are stymied from putting as many classic movies and TV shows available for streaming as they’d like because the rights issues across the various territories are so nightmarishly complicated.
I’m sure I also read somewhere that one of the reasons it took the show so long to get back on the air was the necessary unweaving of the tangled web of rights issues that had developed around the show. Although I think the Beeb had learned its lessons in the 70s and any writer lost all rights to anything written in a Who script unless otherwise agreed because of all the bun-fights with Nation, Lincoln and Haisman in the 60s.
20 May 2015 at 11:04 #40238@purofilion et al–
@pedant is right that Doc 11’s tenure has lasted centuries. It’s suggested in a few stories but most explicitly in Time and the Doctor.
With regards to being able to mention or allude to old companions in the series, Pip is probably the one to ask, but I’m pretty sure there’s no legal of financial issue. Copyright of a character remains with the show. I’m not sure what the situation would be with actual flashbacks and use of previous footage and stills. I don’t think payment or a credit is required in such a situation, as it’s work already covered by a previous contract. For instance, Baker’s companion flashbacks in Logopolis didn’t require credits for all the actors shown and I don’t imagine they had to be paid for their likeness being used either. I could be wrong about that though.
I think it’s probably a more creatively proprietorial. A showrunner or producer will be wanting to make their own mark on the show and to constantly be alluding back to the glories of their predecessor might be considered self-defeating. RTD’s placing of Rose on a lofty pedestal essentially handicapped all of Tennant’s later companions.
In terms of how it works in the show, maybe each Doctor does consider himself compartmentalised in some way. He undoubtedly still has the memories but perhaps the ones outside of his immediate experience are hazier, like fragments remembered from a dream almost. 1,000-odd years of memories must be a lot to retain so there must be some kind of coping mechanism — much the same as ours. We don’t retain everything at our fingertips. Some memories are more vivid because they’re reinforced by association, some become hazy or forgotten altogether until triggered by a random association. Maybe the Doctor is even able to download old regenerations into a TARDIS databank somewhere too.
19 May 2015 at 12:39 #40221It might be worth lobbing in (in a what if the Master were the Doctor’s bruv kind of way) that we’re never really given any idea of the mechanics of regeneration, except in Marc Platt’s novel Lungbarrow, which suggested that Time Lords were grown in Looms rather than born. But as Lungbarrow was rejected as a TV series and only exists in the world of the Virgin novels then that’s hardly canon and can’t be relied upon.
19 May 2015 at 10:29 #40214@fatmaninabox — congratulations and it was definitely remiss of me not mention the botanically inclined in that post. Well done. Now we know who to turn to keep those Krynoids at bay….
19 May 2015 at 01:33 #40200@purofilion — First 3 seasons of BSG are top-notch, the final two, not so much. It veers from ‘serious’ into the merely ‘pretentious’ later on in its run. But it is very earnest. There’s not much of the light touch of the Whedonverse going on there. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
RE. Firefly. The analogy with Midnight is probably a good one and it is a similar dynamic. I’m sure that if the show had continued we would have got a great deal of nuance and detail from the characters. (I also suspect the regular line-up would have changed over time. There’s at least one semi-regular you’ll meet who I think could well have ended up being a permanent fixture on Serenity had the show continued.) Unfortunately you should brace yourself for the fact that Firefly does get cut off in its prime and we barely really get to know these characters before they’re gone.
19 May 2015 at 01:27 #40199@lisa and others — I agree that the Mary Poppins persona of the Mixmaster and Clara’s previous occupation are no coincidence. It did make me wonder in a more fanciful moment if this Claricle isn’t going to turn out to be a chamaelon-arched future Missy. But that’s probably too much.
@arbutus — I’ve wondered many of the same things about regeneration and Time Lord marriage. Their attitudes to sex and love must be quite different. I did used to wonder whether ‘irreconcilable regeneration’ might be a recognised ground for divorce on Gallifrrey. Not unreasonable I would have thought.
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