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Doctor WHO?!?
Yep. So. I marathoned all of first and most of second and third of the newest Doctor Who in a few days before my exams. It was pretty awesome. I say, you guys should definitely check out the streaming video application from veoh. It's kind of interesting, especially since Time Warner is one of their investors (O.o?).
Anyhow, Who actually surprised me a little. I was expecting a little more lame than I got (though, admittedly, I was kind of in the mood for lame, so that opinion might be subject to change). But there's something very interesting about the Doctor Who universe as it's re-imagined - I can't really speak for the old stuff, as I've never seen it.
See, sci-fi tends to change with the times, and reflect the current forces of social change. Often, that means subtly making points about social problems through the guise of sci-fi metaphors. But let's be honest here, people - Star Trek: The Next Generation is not the epitome of idealist, open-minded society. As my brother put it, it's kind of the atheist manifesto. Cultures that have religion are closeminded and wrong, usually. The Prime Directive is a directive for non-interference, but it's non-interference with the assumption that eventually these people will come to their senses and stop worshiping their silly little gods and goddesses.
There's a change, though, between TNG and Voyager. I can't really speak for this personally, as I haven't seen it for a while, but Voyager has more of an iffy message. When people in the show have religions, it's not dismissed out of hand. Instead of the Prime Directive being a lofty 'oh, they'll figure it out eventually', it's about those other cultures being right too.
For example, there's one episode of Voyager wherein people die voluntarily by going through portals on their world - they believe it's the next phase of existence. Unfortunately, this next phase consists of dying and being wrapped in some spiderwebby stuff. This seems like a perfect setup for a "haha RELIGION SUCKS" episode, but in the end there's a twist - apparently, during travel through the portal, there's a release of so-called 'neural energy'. Janeway remarks that maybe this *is* the next phase of existence, only we're not quite advanced enough to figure it out either.
A bit of a far cry from LOL WRONG. And, really, culture was changing at the time, too. We were moving from a science-based atheism-is-the-future subculture to a tolerant, everyone-is-right-their-own-way culture. It was reflected in the sci-fi.
This brings me to Doctor Who. Culture these days is moving in a very interesting direction, because of the internet. It's getting closer and moving further away all at the same time, which causes dismal and wrong social theories such as postmodernism to be a huge fad among people who are old and decrepit and don't get why wikipedia is useful. But there's such a depth of information, now, that it's impossible to know it all. You can know a lot, but there's too much, too many variables, and it's unlikely that you, as a person, are going to be the one to change the entire world. And I think Doctor Who reflects this kind of worldview.
There's so much in Doctor Who. Like, they jump a billion years into the future in the second episode. I mean, whuh? Pretty much no other sci-fi is going to take a leap like that, but Doctor Who does it in an instant. In other sci-fi, the show stays within the boundaries of things that those within the show understand. Like, in Stargate, the humans are always pretty triumphant, they always return back home to the SGC eventually, and they usually succeed in overthrowing people's silly primitive religions.
In Doctor Who, the universe is too big for that. There's too much to know. There's too much to do. You can't learn about the whole of the alien cultures, even if you did them planet by planet, because they don't just have culture, they have a billion cultures in a billion years of social development. Of course, Doctor Who can't achieve the full level of broad-mindedness that the universe could actually offer because humans stuck in one era of history can't really do that. And they do return to their cultural base - modern-day Earth - quite a lot.
This is one of the reasons I was a little wary of Doctor Who. I kinda figured that if I couldn't figure out the whole universe, and know all the parameters I was working with, I would be a little at sea in watching the show, and especially in writing fanfiction. But it's kind of the opposite. There's a looser attitude in watching Doctor Who, and more of a willingness to accept stuff that's crazy. Of course, Farscape did the crazy way more than Who does, but Farscape was 25% crap, 99% crazy, and 65% utter brilliance.
On the other hand, though, Doctor Who feels to me like it could be a good show, but that every episode I watch happens to be one of the bad episodes of the series. Like, there's nothing wrong with it, but every episode has a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Reptile Boy" or "Inca Mummy Girl" feel to it. Can't it do better than this?
Also, I think the beginning of the end of Rose's character was the introduction of Jack. I'm not sure if that's a popular fandom opinion or not, but as soon as Jack got into the picture, it was Rose the girl and her two boys, more preoccupied flirting with one another and being pretty than doing things like saving the world, instead of Rose the interesting character and her fascinating relationship with the Doctor. I don't like Jack's character on Doctor Who, though I'm a little more fond of him on Torchwood.
Um. So. In conclusion, I'm enjoying Doctor Who, and I have some meta thoughts on it, but I'm vaguely discontented with the quality of each individual episode. Plus, the way he treats Martha is completely unforgivable. I spent most of third season vaguely pissed off at him.
Anyhow, Who actually surprised me a little. I was expecting a little more lame than I got (though, admittedly, I was kind of in the mood for lame, so that opinion might be subject to change). But there's something very interesting about the Doctor Who universe as it's re-imagined - I can't really speak for the old stuff, as I've never seen it.
See, sci-fi tends to change with the times, and reflect the current forces of social change. Often, that means subtly making points about social problems through the guise of sci-fi metaphors. But let's be honest here, people - Star Trek: The Next Generation is not the epitome of idealist, open-minded society. As my brother put it, it's kind of the atheist manifesto. Cultures that have religion are closeminded and wrong, usually. The Prime Directive is a directive for non-interference, but it's non-interference with the assumption that eventually these people will come to their senses and stop worshiping their silly little gods and goddesses.
There's a change, though, between TNG and Voyager. I can't really speak for this personally, as I haven't seen it for a while, but Voyager has more of an iffy message. When people in the show have religions, it's not dismissed out of hand. Instead of the Prime Directive being a lofty 'oh, they'll figure it out eventually', it's about those other cultures being right too.
For example, there's one episode of Voyager wherein people die voluntarily by going through portals on their world - they believe it's the next phase of existence. Unfortunately, this next phase consists of dying and being wrapped in some spiderwebby stuff. This seems like a perfect setup for a "haha RELIGION SUCKS" episode, but in the end there's a twist - apparently, during travel through the portal, there's a release of so-called 'neural energy'. Janeway remarks that maybe this *is* the next phase of existence, only we're not quite advanced enough to figure it out either.
A bit of a far cry from LOL WRONG. And, really, culture was changing at the time, too. We were moving from a science-based atheism-is-the-future subculture to a tolerant, everyone-is-right-their-own-way culture. It was reflected in the sci-fi.
This brings me to Doctor Who. Culture these days is moving in a very interesting direction, because of the internet. It's getting closer and moving further away all at the same time, which causes dismal and wrong social theories such as postmodernism to be a huge fad among people who are old and decrepit and don't get why wikipedia is useful. But there's such a depth of information, now, that it's impossible to know it all. You can know a lot, but there's too much, too many variables, and it's unlikely that you, as a person, are going to be the one to change the entire world. And I think Doctor Who reflects this kind of worldview.
There's so much in Doctor Who. Like, they jump a billion years into the future in the second episode. I mean, whuh? Pretty much no other sci-fi is going to take a leap like that, but Doctor Who does it in an instant. In other sci-fi, the show stays within the boundaries of things that those within the show understand. Like, in Stargate, the humans are always pretty triumphant, they always return back home to the SGC eventually, and they usually succeed in overthrowing people's silly primitive religions.
In Doctor Who, the universe is too big for that. There's too much to know. There's too much to do. You can't learn about the whole of the alien cultures, even if you did them planet by planet, because they don't just have culture, they have a billion cultures in a billion years of social development. Of course, Doctor Who can't achieve the full level of broad-mindedness that the universe could actually offer because humans stuck in one era of history can't really do that. And they do return to their cultural base - modern-day Earth - quite a lot.
This is one of the reasons I was a little wary of Doctor Who. I kinda figured that if I couldn't figure out the whole universe, and know all the parameters I was working with, I would be a little at sea in watching the show, and especially in writing fanfiction. But it's kind of the opposite. There's a looser attitude in watching Doctor Who, and more of a willingness to accept stuff that's crazy. Of course, Farscape did the crazy way more than Who does, but Farscape was 25% crap, 99% crazy, and 65% utter brilliance.
On the other hand, though, Doctor Who feels to me like it could be a good show, but that every episode I watch happens to be one of the bad episodes of the series. Like, there's nothing wrong with it, but every episode has a kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Reptile Boy" or "Inca Mummy Girl" feel to it. Can't it do better than this?
Also, I think the beginning of the end of Rose's character was the introduction of Jack. I'm not sure if that's a popular fandom opinion or not, but as soon as Jack got into the picture, it was Rose the girl and her two boys, more preoccupied flirting with one another and being pretty than doing things like saving the world, instead of Rose the interesting character and her fascinating relationship with the Doctor. I don't like Jack's character on Doctor Who, though I'm a little more fond of him on Torchwood.
Um. So. In conclusion, I'm enjoying Doctor Who, and I have some meta thoughts on it, but I'm vaguely discontented with the quality of each individual episode. Plus, the way he treats Martha is completely unforgivable. I spent most of third season vaguely pissed off at him.
no subject
It's not for you.
Move along.
no subject
And mostly, what I say about being discontented with the episodes comes from second and third season. Some of first season - like basically all of Christopher Eccleston's performance - was AWESOME. I wouldn't have watched the show beyond episode one if he hadn't said "yes" to Rose's "Are you an alien?" question quite the way he did.
no subject
well, Tennant gets a lot better. His first season (season two) has a lot of shaky episodes, though it has some good ones, like Girl In The Fireplace and School Reunion.
Season Three, they figure him out, and put him some better episodes, like Gridlock, Human Nature/Family Of Blood, Blink...
no subject
no subject
See, the feeling I'm trying to describe here is that I have the gut instinct that Tennant is good, and that I would enjoy watching him, and that Rose is good, and that Martha is good, but that I feel like they're better than sometimes the episodes of this show lets them be.
no subject
Honestly, I prefer old Who to new Who. Episodes like City of Death and Castrovalva are goofy and dorky and filled with truly terrible special effects (and occasionally less-than-impressive acting), but I think the episodes are more fleshed out/consistent and the characters mesh better. Especially compared to the second new season, when all the characters seemed to be acting past each other.