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Post by paulmorris7777 on Dec 4, 2016 15:30:39 GMT
I don't think I have a lot of specific expectations for the show (or the series) really. I don't need for it to be terribly mature or to do anything that would be inappropriate for children (even if the meaning of that may actually vary from household to household). I also don't think I need for the New Series to be so continuity heavy as to alienate anyone. Nods to the original series go a long way for me, like the occasional picture of Troughton or Pertwee in the background - I thought I'd died and gone to Nerdvana that time River opened her wallet. I do wish that one of the New Series' more important connections to the OS were to observe that not every classic episode dabbled in the just-plain-silly. I think Big Finish has been remarkably good at getting that right - an occasional Nev Fountain story or trip to the Land of Fiction make excellent additions, but of course not every story needs to be one of those, and probably shouldn't be. I don't know if the New Series thinks that constantly being just-plain-silly is appealing to children but I hope it doesn't end up creating something that kids can't go back to later in life because it's just too damned silly. I wonder if I could have had the renewed interest in DW that I've had if I'd started with the New Series, because of that very factor. Classic Who was rarely silly, and I haven't noticed much plain silly in NuWho!
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Post by barnabaslives on Dec 4, 2016 15:47:50 GMT
I think a lot of people's complaints about the New Series might fit in the category of just-plain-silly. I personally think the later half of Love and Monsters, the notion that The Weakest Link will still be on the air 500,000 years from now, the Adipose, Melody Pond, or the main premise of Kill the Moon are just-plain-silly. Others sound as if they may have thought basically same thing about the Cyber-Brig or love-conquers-Cyberman-conditioning concept, or what have you. I think the OS was always lighthearted and I think the New Series does that very important thing very well, but silly is a different thing. I think the New Series routinely goes over-the-top into such surrealistic silliness that it can undermine any sense of seriousness that the show is trying to achieve, whereas the OS and BF can get away it because they're not trying to do it constantly.
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Post by paulmorris7777 on Dec 4, 2016 16:13:58 GMT
I think a lot of people's complaints about the New Series might fit in the category of just-plain-silly. I personally think the later half of Love and Monsters, the notion that The Weakest Link will still be on the air 500,000 years from now, the Adipose, Melody Pond, or the main premise of Kill the Moon are just-plain-silly. Others sound as if they may have thought basically same thing about the Cyber-Brig or love-conquers-Cyberman-conditioning concept, or what have you. I think the OS was always lighthearted and I think the New Series does that very important thing very well, but silly is a different thing. I think the New Series routinely goes over-the-top into such surrealistic silliness that it can undermine any sense of seriousness that the show is trying to achieve, whereas the OS and BF can get away it because they're not trying to do it constantly. Sorry, I forgot about that! Melody Pond is more annoying, than silly. Having brought in the idea that River can "regenerate", Moffat decided to show her growing up. I suppose the Adipose is silly, especially since fat cells don't have eyes and mouths. I say the Cyber-Brig was just a bad idea, and the love-conquers-Cyberman-conditioning concept used too often! Forgot about the farting aliens!
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Post by Ela on Dec 4, 2016 17:27:51 GMT
Classic Who was rarely silly, and I haven't noticed much plain silly in NuWho! *raises eyebrow* I can think of some pretty silly episodes. I watched one last night. And it's not the only one my husband and I thought was rather silly. (Which isn't to say I don't enjoy it. )
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Post by paulmorris7777 on Dec 4, 2016 18:19:23 GMT
Classic Who was rarely silly, and I haven't noticed much plain silly in NuWho! *raises eyebrow* I can think of some pretty silly episodes. I watched one last night. And it's not the only one my husband and I thought was rather silly. (Which isn't to say I don't enjoy it. ) Don't bother telling us which episode it was, then!
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Post by Ela on Dec 4, 2016 18:34:37 GMT
*raises eyebrow* I can think of some pretty silly episodes. I watched one last night. And it's not the only one my husband and I thought was rather silly. (Which isn't to say I don't enjoy it. ) Don't bother telling us which episode it was, then! I expected you to know, Paul, since you "liked" my comment in "What Doctor Who are you watching." For the record, it was Paradise Towers. Which is pretty darn silly.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Dec 4, 2016 19:26:01 GMT
Don't bother telling us which episode it was, then! I expected you to know, Paul, since you "liked" my comment in "What Doctor Who are you watching." For the record, it was Paradise Towers. Which is pretty darn silly. And to add to that: The Chase, and really, most Spooner work. Gunfighters The Mind Robber Time Monster Revenge of the Cybermen Invisible Enemy Season 17 Time Flight Warriors of the Deep Twin Dilemma Season 24 Battlefield
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Post by paulmorris7777 on Dec 4, 2016 21:43:19 GMT
I expected you to know, Paul, since you "liked" my comment in "What Doctor Who are you watching." For the record, it was Paradise Towers. Which is pretty darn silly. And to add to that: The Chase, and really, most Spooner work. Gunfighters The Mind Robber Time Monster Revenge of the Cybermen Invisible Enemy Season 17 Time Flight Warriors of the Deep Twin Dilemma Season 24 Battlefield How can anyone say The Mind Robber is silly? You're confusing some of those with the budget.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Dec 4, 2016 21:49:33 GMT
And to add to that: The Chase, and really, most Spooner work. Gunfighters The Mind Robber Time Monster Revenge of the Cybermen Invisible Enemy Season 17 Time Flight Warriors of the Deep Twin Dilemma Season 24 Battlefield How can anyone say The Mind Robber is silly? You're confusing some of those with the budget. Silly is not always a negative. You're confusing that with acknowledging a story's sheer absurdity, which Mind Robber has.
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Post by theotherjosh on Dec 4, 2016 22:08:41 GMT
I was watching Lord of the Rings with my wife, and every five minutes or so, I would pause the movie to offer some commentary or background information about the story. I love deep continuity and how it makes a world feel real. She just wanted to be entertained by watching a movie. I stopped editorializing after this exchange.
Me: I thought you’d enjoy the movie more if you knew more of the background information. Wife: Yeah, well, men always think they can tell when a woman is enjoying herself, but you can’t. Me: Um, are we still talking about the movie?
Anyway, I think a work of fiction should be accessible to a person encountering it for the first time. When he was editor in chief at Marvel Comics, Jim Shooter told the writers that every comic can be somebody’s first, so write like it. Obviously, you can relax this requirement to an extent when showing the culmination of a season-long story arc, but at its core, I think that story still needs to make sense. A new viewer should be able to understand, in basic terms, what roles the characters play in the narrative and why they’re doing what they’re doing.
I think the function of continuity is to enrich the story. Hemingway said that the author should know more about the story than he states explicitly, but by hinting about the larger world, one gives the impression of greater verisimilitude. I don’t think continuity should be a shackle. I think it works best when it supplements the story. When you see the Cyberman head in Van Statten’s bunker in Dalek, it’s great if you recognize what it is, but you still get the gist even if you don’t. Another example is the throwaway line in The Magician’s Apprentice, about the three versions of Atlantis in the database. I tend not to like the humor in the new series, but I laughed out loud at that. And yet, it’s fine if you don’t get it.
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Post by icecreamdf on Dec 4, 2016 22:12:32 GMT
And to add to that: The Chase, and really, most Spooner work. Gunfighters The Mind Robber Time Monster Revenge of the Cybermen Invisible Enemy Season 17 Time Flight Warriors of the Deep Twin Dilemma Season 24 Battlefield How can anyone say The Mind Robber is silly? You're confusing some of those with the budget. Remember the superhero that got his ass kicked by a tiny woman? And then he became her slave for no reason? Or that ridiculous/awesome fight that the Doctor and the Master had with the fictional characters? Or the Doctor putting Jamie's face back together but getting it wrong? The Mind Robber was very silly, but in a good way.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2016 0:04:17 GMT
As others have said, Who has always known how to spin it's mythology well. It just makes everything more epic and exciting for kids.
One point of view I can't subscribe to is about the new series novels not being 'adult' enough. Doctor Who now pitches for a family audience - the days of the NAs and EDAs are over.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2016 0:45:06 GMT
As others have said, Who has always known how to spin it's mythology well. It just makes everything more epic and exciting for kids.
One point of view I can't subscribe to is about the new series novels not being 'adult' enough. Doctor Who now pitches for a family audience - the days of the NAs and EDAs are over. The one thing that really gets me about family-orientated entertainment is the mistaken belief I've seen crop up in the past that "kid" = "stupid". I'm perfectly okay with that just as long as "for kids" doesn't mean "written down to". I hated when authors tried to talk down to me at that age, I always went for things like The Stealers of Dreams or Peacemaker. Stories that tried to challenge me with their complexity, if not with adult themes. One story was about what can happen when fantasy is taken too far and the other was about what happens when greed meets a living weapon. The NDAs did very well to remain within the ethos of the television series, but at the same time, they weren't afraid to occasionally take the more graphic route. Even if more adult subjects like torture and drug use were off the table. Interestingly, I just finished up watching another old episode of Thunderbirds called Cry Wolf. Aside from the gunplay, the plot has the main antagonist blow up a mine with the express intent of killing the two boys trapped inside. We see their bodies tumble down the shaft to the bottom. They're alive, but it's a while before we get back to them to find out they are. I don't think that would fly nowadays on ITV, even if it was with CGI or marionettes. Back then it was considered perfectly acceptable teatime television, so the idea of "for the children" is extremely relative to the circumstances. Doctor Who stretched that limit pretty far as well in the old days (circa ten or so years ago). I think the mentality was that as long as the characters don't bleed you can get away with it. That's why people got up in arms about *cough* a certain scene from Attack of the Cybermen.
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Post by elkawho on Dec 7, 2016 3:56:33 GMT
Classic Who was rarely silly, and I haven't noticed much plain silly in NuWho! "What's the point of being grown up if you can't be silly sometimes?" But seriously, I enjoy the fact that Doctor Who can be silly sometimes. Hey, I think the Second Doctor playing the recorder was silly. Awesome, but silly. What a great way to distance his personality from the First Doctor.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Dec 7, 2016 10:25:48 GMT
As others have said, Who has always known how to spin it's mythology well. It just makes everything more epic and exciting for kids.
One point of view I can't subscribe to is about the new series novels not being 'adult' enough. Doctor Who now pitches for a family audience - the days of the NAs and EDAs are over. The one thing that really gets me about family-orientated entertainment is the mistaken belief I've seen crop up in the past that "kid" = "stupid". I'm perfectly okay with that just as long as "for kids" doesn't mean "written down to". I hated when authors tried to talk down to me at that age, I always went for things like The Stealers of Dreams or Peacemaker. Stories that tried to challenge me with their complexity, if not with adult themes. One story was about what can happen when fantasy is taken too far and the other was about what happens when greed meets a living weapon. The NDAs did very well to remain within the ethos of the television series, but at the same time, they weren't afraid to occasionally take the more graphic route. Even if more adult subjects like torture and drug use were off the table. Interestingly, I just finished up watching another old episode of Thunderbirds called Cry Wolf. Aside from the gunplay, the plot has the main antagonist blow up a mine with the express intent of killing the two boys trapped inside. We see their bodies tumble down the shaft to the bottom. They're alive, but it's a while before we get back to them to find out they are. I don't think that would fly nowadays on ITV, even if it was with CGI or marionettes. Back then it was considered perfectly acceptable teatime television, so the idea of "for the children" is extremely relative to the circumstances. Doctor Who stretched that limit pretty far as well in the old days (circa ten or so years ago). I think the mentality was that as long as the characters don't bleed you can get away with it. That's why people got up in arms about *cough* a certain scene from Attack of the Cybermen. On 'writing down' we are agreed, but the NAs and 8DAs still produced plenty of titles that you wouldn't give a kid. I don't imagine, say, Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Timewyrm or Camera Obscura are the sort of book you'd given to a young'un. These were books definitely aimed at the older ends of the fandom, and I think some of the Virgin books came with an advisory warning.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2016 11:05:42 GMT
On 'writing down' we are agreed, but the NAs and 8DAs still produced plenty of titles that you wouldn't give a kid. I don't imagine, say, Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Timewyrm or Camera Obscura are the sort of book you'd given to a young'un. These were books definitely aimed at the older ends of the fandom, and I think some of the Virgin books came with an advisory warning. Oh, definitely. Transit is not something I would have given my eight-year-old self, nor would he have probably been comfortable with the Clive Barker-esque Falls the Shadow. Stories like Shakedown would have probably better suited me at that age, even if they did include things like decapitations and topless waitresses (I wonder if that was revised for the reprint?). To be fair though, just because they can't enjoy it then, doesn't mean they won't when they're older. I think sex was the great divider. Prisoners of the Daleks proved that you can do a fair amount of violence and dark themes, but that particular part of the human experience was definitely kept behind vaulted doors. It's kind of ironic now that the Doctor's asexuality has been transformed into fairly obvious bisexuality -- they went particularly all in with the Eighth Doctor if The Year of Intelligent Tigers is anything to go by -- there's even less of an opportunity to explore that aspect of the character. Not that I'm complaining mind, I'm a big fan of the older approach.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 7, 2017 0:58:43 GMT
On 'writing down' we are agreed, but the NAs and 8DAs still produced plenty of titles that you wouldn't give a kid. I don't imagine, say, Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Timewyrm or Camera Obscura are the sort of book you'd given to a young'un. These were books definitely aimed at the older ends of the fandom, and I think some of the Virgin books came with an advisory warning. Oh, definitely. Transit is not something I would have given my eight-year-old self, nor would he have probably been comfortable with the Clive Barker-esque Falls the Shadow. Stories like Shakedown would have probably better suited me at that age, even if they did include things like decapitations and topless waitresses (I wonder if that was revised for the reprint?). To be fair though, just because they can't enjoy it then, doesn't mean they won't when they're older. Good luck getting away with Transit or No Future on Saturday tea time. Nothing like bleak and violent dystopia over fish fingers.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2017 1:30:10 GMT
Oh, definitely. Transit is not something I would have given my eight-year-old self, nor would he have probably been comfortable with the Clive Barker-esque Falls the Shadow. Stories like Shakedown would have probably better suited me at that age, even if they did include things like decapitations and topless waitresses (I wonder if that was revised for the reprint?). To be fair though, just because they can't enjoy it then, doesn't mean they won't when they're older. Good luck getting away with Transit or No Future on Saturday tea time. Nothing like bleak and violent dystopia over fish fingers. I think there's a happy medium tucked away in there, I used to watch reruns Blake's 7 at that time. Bleak and violent dystopia was rad, I had a lot of fun. That's not even counting things like the old Sonic the Hedgehog television series where people got roboticised against their will and their world is an environmental catastrophe or Captain Scarlet which was about the attempted genocide of the human race by another (at first, sympathetic) species that was completely wiped out over a misunderstanding. It's just a natural part of the setting, people die and it's sad because we care that they've been lost. It's much the same with ten-year-olds watching horror films to scare themselves. Nowadays... There's a lot more policing around this fact, but I think that the New Captain Scarlet proved that you can still go dark (hell, even darker, I remember seeing Scarlet be tied up and hit by a truck) and make it appropriate for youngsters to watch. They like it, it makes them feel more mature because the subject matter is darker. It's a byproduct of children not being liked talked down to, they like to seek out things that make them feel like adults. My first reaction to Lytton getting his hands crushed in Attack of the Cybermen wasn't fear, it was a sense of awe because the Cybermen really meant business. I was more affected by Flast's death when she's tossed out into the corridor to boil to death, I rather liked her and was sad to see that she got discovered. Even though in the end, she won. Honestly, I found the original Dalek story a great deal more grim because of what it implied rather than what it showed. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan slowly dying of radiation poisoning, prisoners on this desolated alien world at the mercy of these paranoid, jingoistic monsters in their gleaming city.
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shutupbanks
Castellan
There’s a horror movie called Alien? That’s really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you.
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Post by shutupbanks on Jan 7, 2017 1:47:01 GMT
Oh, definitely. Transit is not something I would have given my eight-year-old self, nor would he have probably been comfortable with the Clive Barker-esque Falls the Shadow. Stories like Shakedown would have probably better suited me at that age, even if they did include things like decapitations and topless waitresses (I wonder if that was revised for the reprint?). To be fair though, just because they can't enjoy it then, doesn't mean they won't when they're older. Good luck getting away with Transit or No Future on Saturday tea time. Nothing like bleak and violent dystopia over fish fingers. Aside from the language, Transit could be adapted quite easily: the sex could be dealt with by a discretion shot and almost all of the 'objectionable' scenes happen through POV thoughts and authorial inserts. The violence is - IMNSHO - not out of the ordinary for DW, just played up by the author to show some actual consequences. I really enjoyed it and couldn't get what the fuss was: it filled the series brief of "too broad and too deep" ably and tried to do something new and mostly succeeded. Obviously, YMMV.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2017 8:17:19 GMT
Good luck getting away with Transit or No Future on Saturday tea time. Nothing like bleak and violent dystopia over fish fingers. Aside from the language, Transit could be adapted quite easily: the sex could be dealt with by a discretion shot and almost all of the 'objectionable' scenes happen through POV thoughts and authorial inserts. The violence is - IMNSHO - not out of the ordinary for DW, just played up by the author to show some actual consequences. I really enjoyed it and couldn't get what the fuss was: it filled the series brief of "too broad and too deep" ably and tried to do something new and mostly succeeded. Obviously, YMMV. Mmm. Benny's infamous line when she nearly blows off the Doctor's head could easily be turned into -- "I've just been taken over by a crukking alien intelligence." She's said worse in her own Big Finish stories in the traditional Anglo-Saxon. The Angel Francine's club with joyboys in Ice Warrior get-ups isn't really that far afield from say Nyssa getting really badly beaten up by the guards in Creatures of Beauty or Rosa and Turlough's implied encounter in Loups-Garoux. Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart's got to be one of my favourite characters, I really enjoyed the student-mentor dynamic she has with the Doctor. It's one of the very few books where I was disappointed that we didn't get to stay longer in this wonderfully inventive environment. Of all the ones I've read, it's my favourite of the New Adventures. How can you not like a book that has lines like this: Balanced out with lines like this, spoken in ancient Japanese:
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