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2 April 2015 at 01:22 #39391
@purofilion–
That’s well spotted. Yes, Alexis Denisof was suffering from Bell’s Palsy for much of this season and had to be shot from one side only….
1 April 2015 at 10:30 #39385@purofilion–
Yes, it’s a shame Charisma’s time in the Buffiverse ends on such a crappy note. But I guess that’s how these things go sometimes.
The parallels with the mass Slayerage in Buffy s7 are interesting. There’s lots of parallels with lots of Buffy themes here. Jasmine is an evil God, not unlike Glory. You already mentioned the similarities between the Wes/Lilah and Buffy/Spike relationships. And there are others. I think one of the things that is done in Angel is that the writers/producers take the opportunity to pass comment and question themes raised in the parent show. Thus we get the undying love of Buffy and Angel questioned through the lens of his longer, more complex, relationship with Darla — until it’s not longer quite as naive or innocent. We get the question of souls and demonhood put under the spotlight. It’s often a bit like seeing an enthusiastic and engaging undergraduate’s dissertation being torn apart by a kindly but still cynical and ruthless older professor.
And, yes, that’s Jonathan Woodward, one of the few actors to have done a Whedon triple, appearing in Buffy, Angel and also Firefly.
1 April 2015 at 10:13 #39383@scaryb — good to see you back in the ‘verse, to coin a Firefly-ism…. Yes, this election’s going to be a doozy, what with all the squealing about the rise of the SNP. All that love-bombing and ‘family of nations’ pish doesn’t seem to be quite so funny or heartfelt now apparently….
1 April 2015 at 09:30 #39382@purofilion — I’m about as far as you can get from a churchgoing type so no offence is possible. I’m pretty sure Joss is of the non-religious persuasion also (remember ‘note to self: religion, creepy’). But I’m thinking that if there’s any satirical intent in the Jasmine storyline then it’s at the more peripheral cult-ey end of the spectrum — the Scientologists and what have you.
Not aware that Gina Torres’s casting was intended to make any kind of comment either. I can’t help but think that if anyone had a problem with it, then those people are idiots. Like Nathan Fillion turning up in Buffy, she was a refugee from the implosion of Firefly and Joss was just trying to give her a short-term acting gig to make up for losing her regular one. She’s great, stunning, in fact but I always feel slightly wrong for Jasmine (not on issues of race at all but because I’m not sure passive-aggressive beatific is really quite her thing and that she’s much better at kickass Amazonian, as you’ll see if you move on to Firefly.)
Boreanaz has done well. If you look at him now compared to the callow, barely able to act young bloke we see in Buffy s1, he’s clearly come a long way. He’s never going to be Olivier but over the course of Angel, he’s definitely done some work he can be proud of (as well as some accents he really shouldn’t be).
31 March 2015 at 23:47 #39364@purofilion — ah, Release. So, you’re well into the little mini-Faith trilogy, which I think is one of the highpoints of this season. I really like seeing Wes and Faith finally getting that Watcher/Slayer relationship that has been thwarted since Buffy s3.
Good point about the stagecraft. Yes, it is a big old cheat and probably points to shonky writing and/or direction. The execs probably have to take some flak too. Tim Minear, David Greenwalt etc are great and highly talented but they ain’t Joss Whedon when it comes down to it. And again, you’ve got to cut them a bit of slack. This was an extremely stressful year for the Mutant Enemy crowd. They were making Buffy’s final season, had incredibly complicated and unforeseen issues on Angel. And Firefly was also imploding. But all that aside, it also serves to reinforce the estrangement of just about every member of Angel Inc from each other at the moment. They’re just unable to really spend that much time in each other’s company at the moment.
And yes the fights are great. It’s one of the things that separates Buffy and Angel, I think. The fights in Buffy are highly stylised, sometimes overly choreographed and tending towards the balletic. The ones in Angel are much more bone-crunching and painful-looking. Especially the knock-down, drag-out one between Angelus and Faith at the end of Release. Though they do tend to be a bit overly keen on using wires sometimes I think.
As to the whole Dark Cordelia thing, don’t worry, it will all be revealed. Imminently, in fact.
31 March 2015 at 22:45 #39355@purofilion — RE. Bond. I’d count On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as my favourite Bond film. I think Lazenby gets a bad rap. He starts off shaky but I’m totally sold on him by the end of the movie. And it has the best Bond girl in the mighty Diana Rigg — not just eye-candy by any stretch and more than a match for Bond — to the extent that he marries her. And that ending. Could you imagine Moore or even Connery pulling that off? OHMSS is a movie that I think the new Craig versions definitely had one eye on.
I can understand people not liking Bond. You shouldn’t like him. He’s an arrogant, snobbish near-psychopath with borderline rapist tendencies. The first couple of films had that unlikeability to them and Connery did play him as bastard but as they got more lucrative, the hard edges were ironed out and he was cutesified — a process complete by the time you get to Moore. By that time he’s just some GQ-wish fulfilment fop.
To be honest, I’m more a fan of the books and I like the Craig versions because they do try and use them as their template rather than the movies becoming copies becoming copies of themselves. But as to people liking him, or aspiring to be like him, I always think ‘why? You’re probably so much better than that’. But you’re right about the humour. It’s still there in the character. It’s just so much more subtle now.
RE. Angel. So, where are you up to then?
The whole ‘when did Cordelia go evil?’ thing will be explained but it is convoluted and goes back some way. But I don’t think it’s spoilery to talk about how Darla could get pregnant and Buffy couldn’t/didn’t (although I tend to assume that Buffy being a sensible girl was taking precautions.) Remember when Darla was dying of syphilis in s2 and Angel went through The Trial to give her a second chance at life? And that they wouldn’t give it to her because she was already living it? That means that they’d ‘won’ a ‘free’ mystical life that at that point remained unclaimed. Until they did the deed where it was then given a chance to be born. But there’s more to come on this particular line of thought, so we’ll return to it when you’ve got a bit further along.
@arbutus — do give Buffy a go. I can safely so that I’ve not met a single person who didn’t fall in love with the show after laying aside any preconceptions they might have and giving it a shot. As Puro says, there are some episodes that border on the duff, but a lot fewer than you’d find in many other series and more than made up for in the amount of ‘bloody hell that was awesome’ moments you’ll experience….
31 March 2015 at 09:47 #39332The whole Two Cultures debate is one I’m quite interested in and while that binary opposition is still too prevalent, it has waned slightly I think. But it is still kind of destructive and kicks in in most education systems too early I think. Certainly when I was in school decisions are made about which direction to send you down too soon. It was certainly drummed into me that I was an ‘artsy’ type and shouldn’t bother with science and it wasn’t until I went back and did a second degree in science via the OU that I realised that, no, I actually could do this stuff too.
And while it’s certainly true that the Humanities does engender an ability to analyse and think creatively, I think there are far too many Humanities graduates (and often in significant positions of power and influence) who could badly use some scientific training. Imagination without a facility for logic or deductive reasoning often leads to faulty analysis and flawed or woolly thinking. To quote Trousseau:
Every science touches art at some points—every art has its scientific side; the worst man of science is he who is never an artist, and the worst artist is he who is never a man of science.
It shouldn’t be an either/or kind of deal. Art/Humanities and Science should inform each other, not compete against one another.
On Craig’s Bond. I don’t get why people say he’s an unemotional Bond, as Craig has created the most emotive Bond we’ve had since Lazenby. He often seems cold and ruthless but that’s kind of the point. He’s a man deliberately shutting down his emotional responses because of the job he has to do. I think it’s the emotional aspect to him that many of the diehard fans don’t like — they just want the wise-cracking dude in a cool suit and car and none of this boring character stuff. It’s not unlike the stuck-in-the-past ARSE-ites who complain about Who being ‘too much like a soap opera’ or ‘turning into the Clara show’.
31 March 2015 at 09:29 #39331@purofilion —
I think you’ve got to cut Awakening a bit of slack as being deliberately hokey. It’s very much riffing on an Indiana Jones kinda deal, I think and the hokeyness is because Angel is, well, kind of a hokey bloke — remember how much part of him was attracted to the straightforwardness of the warrior life in Pylea? This is the same thing over again. He yearns for tangible, easy solutions that can be grasped and dealt with a la Buffy, not the endless shades of grey he’s had to negotiate in LA. But it does seem to be rather a lot of trouble to bring forth Angelus. Wouldn’t it have been easier to get Buffy to drive down from Sunnydale to give him a quickie?
As to Cordelia, well, Charisma Carpenter is just phoning it in this season really. This was not a happy set at this time and now is about the time it starts to show a little. Carpenter sprung her pregnancy on the production team kind of late in the day and the fact that it meant they had to run around dismantling and rebuilding a story arc they’d been working towards for two years apparently caused quite a bit of friction. There was, so the scuttlebutt goes, a major rift between Carpenter and Joss for many years over the whole thing.
But stick it out, there’s still some cool stuff to come, including some familiar faces. But I’d agree that it’s the characters that make this season rather than the arc, which had to be knocked about something fierce to accommodate Charisma.
Yes, Boreanaz has finally nailed Angelus this time around, hasn’t he? I think he was just too young and inexperienced as an actor to really ‘get it’ back in s2 of Buffy and didn’t really think he was a credible enough threat. Here we get an Angelus who truly is a bit more formidable in his unpredictability and viciousness.
30 March 2015 at 13:53 #39322@purofilion — no, no tuition fees for undergrads anyway here in Scotland. It’s one of the things that creates a bit of tension over the border where getting a degree can clock up to 30 odd grand now. But I’m glad that we’ve managed to hold on to the idea of seeing a value in education beyond a purely fiscal one.
HECS, that was it. Lived and worked in Oz a few years back and studied a distance-learning biology course at Monash. Seem to remember ending up paying for it myself but that there were various fairly reasonable funding opportunities available. It will be sad if Oz follows the unbridled capitalistic approach of both the US and England when it comes to education.
30 March 2015 at 13:23 #39320@purofilion — I’ll not have a word said against Craig as Bond. I think he’s done brilliant work in escaping from the comedy parody the part had become.
RE. education. I thought Australians already had to pay for their education. And it’s all bad news for higher education these days. Interesting, if long, piece on the Guardian about the Humanities being essentially screwed here in favour of STEM. It’s something I’m in two minds about as I think a greater emphasis on science education is still kind of needed. But in terms of fees at least, here in Scotland students are in a better position than the rest of the UK as tuition fees are not in place and are picked up by the Government.
30 March 2015 at 13:02 #39318@purofilion — yes, Wes now does kickass action hero quite well now. He’s certainly a far cry from the dweeb of s3 of Buffy, although that is still in the mix too. There was some talk that he was considered a serious contender to play Bond in Casino Royale, losing out to Daniel Craig in the end. I can kind of see it too — although he’s maybe a bit too close to Brosnan to really work, and an American which would have made for controversy.
30 March 2015 at 12:58 #39317@purofilion — there are times when the Fish just has to keep his gob shut. Just be prepared for some twisty, turny stuff….
The rift between Gunn and Wes is interesting, given that they were so tight in s2. I always felt that Gunn gave up on Wesley that bit too easily in s3, bearing in mind that the man took a bullet for him. I don’t really blame Wes for being pissed off with him. But again, this is something that’s still got a way to play out….
30 March 2015 at 12:51 #39315@whohar — a collaborative piece of creative writing could definitely work and be quite interesting I think. I did do a few installments of a kind of alternative first season of Who as a blog and as the fiction category has been set up, maybe we just set something up as a blog post which he can all add to in the comments? But initial pitches in the Creative Fiction thread is probably a good idea too….
30 March 2015 at 12:45 #39313@purofilion
Re. Connor and Cordy. I think people mostly say ‘ewwww’. It was to an extent forced on the production team because Charisma Carpenter was pregnant in RL and they had to find some fast narrative way to explain it.
Yes, Lilah’s great and, as you say, more vulnerable than Lindsay who was pretty much engaged in a macho pissing contest with Angel. And Lilah can still be bloody ruthless — witness how she calmly dispatches Linwood and essentially neuters Gavin (before his whole zombie phase) at W&H. But Wes is her achilles heel. It might have started off as a pragmatic attempt to get Wes on side for the team but it’s become a bit more than that now.
Good point comparing Giles and Gunn. And he is going to struggle to carry this death. He’s going to be on an interesting trajectory for the rest of s4 and especially s5.
30 March 2015 at 11:52 #39308@purofilion
Thought I’d redirect the telly chat back over here.
RE. Angel.
I think the ‘Fred’ roleplay between Lilah and Wes is very much a power struggle — which is what their relationship largely is. Lilah tries to be the dominant one by mocking Fred and saying how unthreatened she is by her. Wes takes back that power by making her go through with it. I’m not sure she actually gets off on it (she probably does once they’re into it) because she’s clearly thrown by his actions and I think hurt too. As a scene, I like it a lot because it’s very indicative of the sort of constantly shifting power games that people tend to get caught up in when they’re in a relationship.
And it’s an interesting one too compared to the Spuffy stuff you alluded to because this a relationship between two people with souls. They know better than to behave the way they do. It’s just that they’re being driven by need, insecurity and also by love of sorts.
Fred is definitely growing up, or rather she is starting to reintegrate herself into life. We definitely start to see more of a strength now and a kind of ruthlessness too (yet another parallel with Wes maybe?). Certainly her relationship with Gunn is well on the rocks now and he’s going to suffer much more than she does over killing the professor. He’s not as tough as he makes out.
Did you enjoy Spin the Bottle. I think it’s a nice comedic respite in a season that shares a lot of the dark tone of Buffy s6.
Cordy and Connor is a lot more problematic. Will come to that a bit further down the line.
30 March 2015 at 11:33 #39306@whohar — No problem. Yes, Amazon is kinda prescriptive at the moment but if you’ve got a feature it’s worth popping it on — although if you’ve been able to find interest elsewhere then that should definitely take priority. You’re working on a WW2 drama? Me too at the moment. Maybe we should compare notes.
@ichabod — I loved the Red Riding Trilogy, and the books on which they’re based. Although I realise that they might be a bit too bleak for some tastes. And Hathaway in Lewis is of course non other than Billie Piper’s other half, so a kind of Who connection there.
@donnanoble — @WhoHar has given you some pretty sound advice. Think about structure. Is this meant to be an outline or a piece of flash fiction? If you post more in future (and feel free to) I would probably pop it in the Fan Creativity section if I were you.)
29 March 2015 at 20:15 #39289@frimann79 — sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Personally, I’m of the mind that it’s OK to put this kind of thing on On The Sofa. Memorabilia and merchandise is a big part of the Who experience — just so long, as you say, the forum doesn’t turn into a marketplace….
29 March 2015 at 11:32 #39280Sunday has all the best songs, it seems. Johnny Cash, Nick Cave and the Velvets all have strong contenders, but to me it really has to be the ‘Hungarian suicide song’ that wins out. Have a cheerful and jolly Sunday, everyone…
28 March 2015 at 18:06 #39274Happy Birthday, @craig…. Loaded is an awesome track. It’s one of those ones that seemed to represent a consciousness-changing moment for such a lot of people
Saturday — it’s either going to have to be Drive-In Saturday — but we’ve already done a lot of Bowie this week, so it’s got to be Uncle Tom Waits, back when he was a god-damned legend. Went for this one, but it could just have easily been The Ghosts of Saturday Night…
27 March 2015 at 10:39 #39254Fridays are a little easier. I realise I should probably have gone for The Specials’ original but I kind of like the Nouvelle Vague version, although their breathy ohh-la-la, we are so Freeench schtick gets a bit annoying sometimes….
26 March 2015 at 11:58 #39232@purofilion —
Connor’s and Cordelia’s relationship is definitely rather, how can one say it, iffy at times….
As to apocalypse(s), the best clues are probably gleaned from the Yeats poem from which this episode gets its title. Such as:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,and:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.26 March 2015 at 09:53 #39228@purofilion — Don’t worry. Cordy’s not out of the picture yet. Though you may yet come to wish she was.
Gwen is great. Though she’s more like something from the X-Men rather than something from the Buffiverse. But I think she does add something to the mix.
I think with Wes and Lilah — a brilliantly twisted and I’d say possibly the most grown-up relationship of the Buffiverse — the key is that line of Anya’s when she’s caught banging Spike — “it was solace”. I think Wes definitely does feel a bit lost though. But he’s still trying to project it through the screwed-up shell of reticence and self-reliance that the Watchers’ Council tried to drum into him.
I’m loving that Andy Hallett quote. I can just hear him saying it.
Lornettes are great. Best. Fred. Costume. Ever.
And Connor is truly a little arse. It’s definitely a case of ‘if you thought Dawn was bad, wait till you meet…’. Am I the only one who goes ‘yas!’ when he gets tasered by Fred?
But my goodness, you’re really motoring through them now….
26 March 2015 at 09:32 #3922725 March 2015 at 10:56 #39204@whisht — yes, I was going to go for the Undertones too. Great minds and all that.
But how about?
25 March 2015 at 10:32 #39201@purofilion —
The humour in Angel is often a lot more dry, with the sometimes fecklessness of Angel, or more ironical comments. It was the pratfalls of Wesley, (or old Wesley), the bitchiness of (old) Cordelia and the wisecracks of Lorne who provide the big yucks.
I love that scene with Lilah. She’s such a great character and she and Wesley have a great love/hate chemistry together.
Good call on the analogy with the Melody Pond plan in Who. It is kind of what Holtz has been aiming towards really, isn’t it?
Your earlier point about the Terminator maybe does stand up here. Connor the destroyer comes through a portal from the future (or Quortoth in this case) on an assassination mission. There are kind of parallels…
25 March 2015 at 09:16 #39196Yes, Sahjahn, faked the prophecy because it originally foretold that he’d be killed by Connor.
Don’t worry. We’ve not seen the last of Wes. It’s just his dynamic within the show from here on in just might be not quite what you’re expecting.
And, yes, Fred’s moral compass is what you might call ‘unique’. But more of that next season.
I’d like to be able to tell you that there’s light and sunshine at the end of the tunnel. But we’re just not there yet. Not even remotely.
24 March 2015 at 13:09 #39178@purofilion —
Can I just say the idea of Fred as a companion for the Doctor is an awesome idea. That should totally have happened…. Someone give Steven Moffat Amy Acker’s phone number….
The Dawn allusion to Connor is not too far off the mark actually….
24 March 2015 at 11:42 #39176Blimey @purofilion, you’re coasting ahead now. Kudos.
The cutting of Wesley’s throat counts to me as one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in the Buffiverse. It’s not quite up there with Tara’s death but definitely made me go ‘bloody hell’ the first time I saw it. And yes, that and the kidnap of Connor are going to have major repercussions for, well, pretty much the rest of the show. It’s certainly not something Wesley is going to just bounce back from.
As to the air-con, straight, squinty, as long as it works, right? I myself have never managed to put up a bookshelf that didn’t look as if it were not designed by a German Expressionist…..
Granted, Spike does have the edge. And there’s some good knocking around of the concept of ensoulment later as he and Angel butt heads in s5….
24 March 2015 at 10:37 #39171@purofilion —
On the whole Connor thing. I guess it’s pretty obvious that Angel would give his son an Irish name. And it actually translates roughly as ‘lover of wolves’ or even ‘kin of wolves’ (or hounds or dogs), which I guess you could take to refer to Angel and Darla.
24 March 2015 at 09:56 #39170@purofilion — blimey, you’ve certainly picked up speed again and no mistake.
I never made the Connor/Terminator connection before but that actually might have some traction, for reasons we should probably wait a few episodes before discussing.
I love Darla’s demise and her whole character arc. Reams and reams are written about Spike’s journey towards a soul but hardly anyone does about Darla’s. She is dusted, comes back human with a soul, hates it so much she wants vamped again, then finally finds absolution and understanding through the soul by proxy of her son. To me that’s just as interesting as Spike’s, more noisy, and often more self-piteous journey to ensoulment. And Julie Benz has done great work here. And has a terrific death scene. That’s her with to my mind anyway two of the best death scenes on TV under her belt.
Waiting in the Wings is a Joss episode. I think his only one in s3. And, yes, it’s very much his take on The Red Shoes, isn’t it? Giselle was clearly chosen because it provides nice echoes of the plot and what was also going on in the regulars’ wider arc. I wouldn’t put it past him to have written his own ballet if he’d had the time. The ep also introduces us to Summer Glau, who goes on to become a regular in Firefly (and also later in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.)
Yes, a little happiness for Wesley would have been nice — but it just ain’t going to happen. Not yet anyway. I’d say he clearly counts as one of the most luckless characters in the Buffiverse.
RE. Holtz. I don’t think there’s a contradiction between Holtz and Justine. And I wouldn’t call her normal or remotely well adjusted. Holtz has chosen her because she’s consumed with grief for her sister and burning with the need for revenge as he is. He’s just moulding it to his own ends. He’s radicalising her basically. I think the point of the knife scene is that Justine is essentially wedded to her own pain, has allowed it to define her. She needs it and Holtz is creating an association between himself and that pain, so that need transfers to him.
It’s an interesting dynamic, I think. And those scenes of him training her in the graveyard made me think that they’re like some twisted parody of a Watcher and his Slayer.
As to Sahjahn (no, I don’t know how to spell it either), his motives won’t become clear until a good few episodes down the line, where I think you can safely say he picks up The Anthony Ainley Award for Convoluted Nefarious Schemes.
Glad you’re not sweltering into discomfort anymore…. 🙂
24 March 2015 at 00:05 #3915023 March 2015 at 23:55 #39149@whohar — don’t forget as well as writers’ room (next drama window is not till October, I think), you can also try and submit it to Amazon Studios which has an open submission policy at the moment…
Or you can try adapting it to radio, which I believe tends to accept open submissions more easily…
23 March 2015 at 19:28 #39143@whisht — well, if you’re going to get picky about it 😉 Did no one tell you that time was relative?
23 March 2015 at 13:44 #39137Tuesday songs, you say?
22 March 2015 at 12:42 #39094@purofilion — yes, buffeted is probably the better word. Still bloody cold though.
Yes, Angel s3 pretty much stands alone from Buffy, apart from the already established central characters but both s4 and s5 have significant overlaps, with s5, because it comes after Buffy s7, also serving as a ‘sequel’ of sorts, or at least filling in many ‘what happened next’ moments for Buffy and the Scoobies. Certainly the triangle between Buffy, Angel and Spike and the long-standing resentments between Spike and Angel get a lot of attention.
22 March 2015 at 12:03 #39084@purofilion — sounds cosy, if a little sweaty. Here we’re constantly blasted by winds from the Irish Sea, even on a good day.
But not meaning to rush you or anything. In your own time and all that. But I must admit I’m really on tenterhooks to hear your opinions of s5 of Angel, which I love as much for how it informs the Buffy mythology as it does the Angel one.
22 March 2015 at 09:42 #39074Just wondering if anyone’s been watching Grimm? I’ve just started dipping into it, largely because I’m jonesing for something similar after having finished the mammoth Buffy/Angel rewatch. It seems to have a nice mashing-up of fairytale and crime procedural but I’m wondering if it’s worth sticking with.
Talking of which, how’s the Angel watch going, @purofilion?
22 March 2015 at 09:39 #39072@bluesqueakpip — just realised going back over this very interesting discussion that you raised the Doctor as Ulysses thing first. Apologies for not acknowledging that.
And to add that this whole discussion has served to illustrate just what a special little corner of internet this is. Barring the odd bridge-dweller, we definitely do have a pretty unique set of courteous, interesting, witty and highly intelligent contributors here. And that’s not nothing.
21 March 2015 at 16:12 #39033@craig, @bluesqueakpip, @purofilion et al–
I’d also give a shout-out to the Booker tome, although it is a serious doorstop of a book. I think there’s a danger that the Campbell approach gets overstated, particularly in Hollywood circles, and, like everything, it doesn’t apply to every single story. But it’s still ground-breaking, massively important work. I’d also recommend Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, which breaks down Campbell’s book and applies it directly to writing narrative, particularly screenplays.
But it’s definitely true these tropes seriously pre-date Christian myths, so it’s not really on trying to appropriate them in that way. You could equally argue that the Doctor is a Ulysses figure as he is a Jesus one — leaves his home land, accrues companions along the way, fighting strange beasts and hideous evil as he does so. As the key motivator for the Doc now is finding Gallifrey, it surely has that bit extra potency too.
As an aside, I also remember reading a few years back a theory (by Steve Pinker I think) that this myth of the outsider coming into a community to help/heal the populace has such continued relevance to us because it has an evolutionary advantage, subliminally reinforcing the need/desirability for regular influxes of fresh genetic material to freshen up the gene pool, fend off in-breeding, maintain diversity and so on. The argument being, I suppose, that we’re hardwired to find these stories appealing. They’re part of our software, regardless of the way their dressed up with Classical/Biblical/SF window dressing….
21 March 2015 at 11:34 #39019@johnathan (or dronexi) —
No one’s attacking anyone. What has happened is that dronexi has put forward a claim that several other contributors have found completely unconvincing and have gone on to dismantle through cogent argument backed up by proof and example. Which is what we do here.
Similarly, I just don’t find this whole ‘hey, Newman and Lambert were Jewish, so Doctor Who must clearly have some religious subtexts even if they didn’t know they were writing them’ argument convincing. First of all, neither Newman nor Lambert wrote a single word of any episode of Who — they weren’t showrunners in the modern sense of the word. Who in those days was made in a much more regimented, bureaucratic fashion than shows are made today. Their role was much more managerial, overseeing a department, as it were. (Which is not to downplay Lambert’s especially creative role. She guided the early years of the show, vetted scripts, but in real terms of the themes and tropes of those early years, you’d be as well citing script editor David Whittaker as a more formative influence as her.)
Which is by the by, because up until recently most writers/producers etc had a religious background of some kind or another. Does that mean at the heart of every show created until, say, 2000 when creatives with a more agnostic/atheist/humanist/ background begin to emerge more prominently, that every TV show, every film, has a religious message, whether the creator intended it to be there or not? Lambert also went on to be involved in the creation of both Budgie and Minder. Care to interpolate a religious subtext into those, rather than them just being about dodgy geezerdom?
Add to that the fact that Who is not an auteur show in the way you seem to want to suggest. It’s creative team changed every few years, bringing new ideas, new influences. It’s more like that game you used to play as a kid, where someone draws a head, fold the paper, someone else draws a body, fold the paper etc. Aside from the TARDIS and the Doctor, there’s really not that much remaining of the ethos of the early years of Who in the current programme. If you wanted to talk about there being a Who auteur, then it makes as much sense to talk about Terrance Dicks and Bob Holmes being them as much as Newman/Lambert/Webber. It’s they who brought in Time Lords, Gallifrey and so on.
Basically it comes down to the old ‘if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage’. The Moffatt fairytale aspect can be quite clearly identified because it’s clear from much of what’s in the script ‘imaginary friends/raggedy man etc’ but also in the mise-en-scene and in interviews and commentaries by SM himself. RTD clearly plays with religious imagery but it’s open to debate to just what kind of level he’s being playful with it. (My own feeling is that RTD is, like Larry in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, actually ‘a deeply religious man who can’t bring himself to believe in God’.)
But prior to that, there’s absolutely nothing solid in the show’s scripts or how it’s presented to support a religious subtext to any great degree. You might want to interpret it like that but that to me smacks of trying to appropriate the show to prop up your own world view. And on the most spurious of evidence. Don’t be surprised when people come up with their own evidence to shoot it down.
Actually the current rewatch of the Daemons is a good one to discuss in this context but I think I’ll save my thoughts on that for when I finally get around to watching it.
19 March 2015 at 13:54 #38973@purofilion and @summersmith —
I think it’s possible to overstate the religious symbolism in Who. Yes, RTD plays with it a lot but as has been said above, I think there’s an element of playfulness, of irony, about it. Plus it’s riffing on the McGann regeneration in the TV movie slightly.
As @purofilion says, the Doctor tended to define himself as a scientist/man of reason until the fourth Doctor when Tom Baker jettisoned that for something a little more quixotic, a little more offbeat and once again veering into fairy tale rather than out-and-out religious. Again, trickster might be about right. Always felt there was something slightly Brer Rabbit about the fourth Doc.
19 March 2015 at 00:31 #38950@dronexi –There are certainly ways to bring to discuss theology in the context of Who — although I’d bear in mind that RTD is avowedly atheist and SM from what I can gather veers towards agnostic/atheist. And certainly @bluesqueakpip is far better qualified than I to engage you on this topic. However, there are ways to broach such subjects and I’d say that the way you’re bringing them in is almost entirely the wrong one, being unnecessarily confrontational and clearly making some members uncomfortable.
Speaking of which, yes, you are welcome on the site, provided you can manage to remain civil towards all its members. Do please behave.
17 March 2015 at 23:12 #38917@craig — Thought that was very funny. And they got the tone of a certain type of fanboy turned professional reviewer ARSE-i-ness just right in my opinion.
17 March 2015 at 14:31 #38908@bluesqueakpip — good point. They’re all milestones of one kind or another. So I suppose it’s fair enough that they get placed.
But to my mind there’s an awful lot of outstanding episodes that have been passed over in favour of ones that are bordering on mediocre to bad. I truly hate Journey’s End for all its hubristic fanboy bombast and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday is only really redeemed by its Bad Wolf coda.
17 March 2015 at 13:29 #38906Radio Times has put up its top 10 episodes of the modern era.
Personally, I think it’s veers towards the crap and I suspect has been hijacked by the Tennant fanboys. The End of Time, Army of Ghosts and even feckin’ Journey’s End get placed but The Eleventh Hour, The Pandorica Opens/Big Bang and The Lodger don’t? Pah! I call pish to that.
17 March 2015 at 11:14 #38904@purofilion — that line of Wes’s is going to have call-backs later on in the season. But you’re definitely looking at a character in evolution with Wes this season. And it ain’t all going to be good.
Billy’s a great episode. Compare Gunn, who has already has a deeper, instinctual understanding of the darker side of his masculinity as opposed to Wes’s uber-repression and as a consequence is better able to deal with Billy’s influence.
It’s one of the things I like about Angel, that it can look it some pretty heavy stuff like domestic abuse and latent misogyny and filter it through a fantasy lens. Buffy only really went there in Ted and it quickly glossed over that angle by making Ted a stuck in the 50s robot. Angel as a show is more willing to look the subject in the eye, even though it makes pretty everyone less than comfortable.
17 March 2015 at 10:39 #38901@purofilion — yes, they can’t say they weren’t warned… 😉
@ichabod et al — given its effect on the Master, I think a better name for it would be the bad-tempered schism….
good word, schism….
16 March 2015 at 10:28 #38886At the risk of playing the heavy here, can we make sure that we try to stay on topic as much as we can? By all means, let us know who your favourite doctor is, as most of us have already done, in the Faces of the Doctor or the Doctor Who Memories thread. I think you’ll find them both worth a visit.
Any Who-related tidbits that don’t actually qualify as news should be posted in On the Sofa, so that’s probably the best place for cast videos and such like. Any casting rumours and so on that you want to share should almost definitely go into Spoilers to avoid incurring the wrath of others who don’t want to see them.
With regards to getting to see more BG Who, well, we’re deep into our between-season retrospectives at the moment. Why not dive into The Daemons parts one and two? It’s a bona fide classic and as good a place to get acquainted with Pertwee as any.
But let’s keep a semblance of order about the place. Otherwise chaos ensues…
14 March 2015 at 22:22 #38792@pedant — good to have you back. Where you been, man? Hope the move is working out OK.
@tenthdoctorftw — apologies if you’re offended but that’s about as much of an olive branch as you’ll get. I hope you do stick around but the most cursory flick through this site will make clear that no one — no one — gets to make unsupported assertions, especially if they’ve got demands for the head of the showrunner attached, without being able to back them up. By all means think that Death In Heaven ain’t all that — if you’ll look above, you’ll see that I was kinda critical of it myself. By all means, think there are plot holes. But you sure as hell better have good reasons to back up your arguments. And plot holes or any other narrative failing never, ever translate into ‘the showrunner should be sacked’ in my book. That just ain’t our call to make.
Stick around. But engage with us. Debate with us. That’s why we all hang out here. And to lob unargued assertions around is as impolite to us as anything you might have got back. You shouldn’t be surprised if it elicits a reaction. But, seriously, do stick around. And put some thought into your posts before you press send. We all do.
Well, mostly. 90 per cent of the time. Well, 85. Well, probably more than 80 per cent. Probably.
14 March 2015 at 10:26 #38751@purofilion — Just to add that I don’t think you’ve got anything to apologise for in the slightest. I suspect that you were probably right in your earlier asseertion that @tenthdoctorftw had come looking for a fight. Certainly they should have realised that making unsupported assertions about nonexistent plot holes and then calling for Moffat’s head were going to get short shrift here. That ain’t what happens here. So, if they’re genuine in their desire to discuss and debate the show they’re going to have to bring something a bit more to the table. (Something you’ve already clearly done.)
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