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Post by elkawho on Jul 5, 2019 12:13:32 GMT
Hi all,
I was watching The Zygon Invasion the other evening with my bi-weekly DW viewing group, and a few things about the Doctor's behavior hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. Mainly it started with something that I hadn't noticed before. During the scene with the stand-off at the church the Doctor is right there, yet lets all the UNIT soldiers be led into the trap without doing a thing. Not one thing! I can see any of the other Doctors stepping in between the soldiers and Zygons impersonating their loved ones and trying convince them to not walk in. Even if he failed to keep the soldiers from going in, at least it would show consistency of character. (I can actually see the scene playing out in my head, and all it takes is an extra line or two of dialogue.)
Thinking about this for a day or two, I started to think about another, more general issue that has bothered me for a while now. Why do the bad guys "get away" with death in Doctor Who? A villain shows up, kills a number of people, the Doctor defeats him/her/them, and then says "Go away". It seems that too often no one is held accountable for the death and destruction that they cause. It isn't always the case. Blon/Margaret is definitely punished for the misery she and her kin cause. And sometimes the villain brings about their own destruction or punishment, but it bothers me when it does happen.
Thoughts anyone?
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 5, 2019 13:06:42 GMT
Urgh. That huge plot hole in an otherwise great story. I never have been happy with that part of the Zygon Inversion. It just does not make sense in a lot of ways.
But back to the topic. Well, there is a reason I really appreciate British Pop Culture (as opposed to American). Things are much more frank, things are shown as they are, there is dirt and grit and there certainly is much less black and white storytelling. I got into British pop culture back in the day when I started to play Warhammer. Now, that is a great setting- there is basically no "good", everybody is just various shades of lighter and darker grey. Down the deepest pits of black. It is so much more believable and relatable. I always disliked "perfect" heroes. That has always, to me, been a lie- if something or someone looks too good to be true- he most certainly is. And this is something in British pop culture is always held high and a whole fountain of awesome stories. The Doctor would be an absolute boring hero if he were perfect. The best stories come from exploring his flaws and his darker side.
Just look at real life- how often do the real culprits get away with everything? On the other hand, the good guys, like the Doctor in the War Games, is put in front of a mock jury and put to summary execution. In a children's programme. I am pretty sure this would not have happened in American pop culture back then (not even sure about right now). Having this in your storytelling makes it much more real and believable and most importantly- relatable. It is just how the world works- often, the bad guys get away with it. And the good guys lose. However, in most of these pop culture examples, there is an important message.
It is up to US to still carry on and make the best of it. Never give up and never give in to the darkness.
So I think your question really addresses the difference between two different approaches of storytelling/ world building, the European approach (I just call it that, because the British way of story telling is very similar to what we do here in Germany) and the American approach, which has more black and white and more clear cut lines between what is "good" or "evil". I also think the Doctor would never have worked as a typical "American Hero" (I am talking about the stereotype here).
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Post by elkawho on Jul 5, 2019 13:17:57 GMT
Urgh. That huge plot hole in an otherwise great story. I never have been happy with that part of the Zygon Inversion. It just does not make sense in a lot of ways. But back to the topic. Well, there is a reason I really appreciate British Pop Culture (as opposed to American). Things are much more frank, things are shown as they are, there is dirt and grit and there certainly is much less black and white storytelling. I got into British pop culture back in the day when I started to play Warhammer. Now, that is a great setting- there is basically no "good", everybody is just various shades of lighter and darker grey. Down the deepest pits of black. It is so much more believable and relatable. I always disliked "perfect" heroes. That has always, to me, been a lie- if something or someone looks too good to be true- he most certainly is. And this is something in British pop culture is always held high and a whole fountain of awesome stories. The Doctor would be an absolute boring hero if he were perfect. The best stories come from exploring his flaws and his darker side. Just look at real life- how often do the real culprits get away with everything? On the other hand, the good guys, like the Doctor in the War Games, is put in front of a mock jury and put to summary execution. In a children's programme. I am pretty sure this would not have happened in American pop culture back then (not even sure about right now). Having this in your storytelling makes it much more real and believable and most importantly- relatable. It is just how the world works- often, the bad guys get away with it. And the good guys lose. However, in most of these pop culture examples, there is an important message. It is up to US to still carry on and make the best of it. Never give up and never give in to the darkness. So I think your question really addresses the difference between two different approaches of storytelling/ world building, the European approach (I just call it that, because the British way of story telling is very similar to what we do here in Germany) and the American approach, which has more black and white and more clear cut lines between what is "good" or "evil". I also think the Doctor would never have worked as a typical "American Hero" (I am talking about the stereotype here). Hmm, I get what you're saying, and I don't necessarily disagree. It's why I love Blake's 7, it would never have been produced here. And maybe that's how I should look at it. But it still doesn't satisfy. The Doctor is definitely a flawed character. One of those flaws is his tendency to leave the cleaning up to others. Maybe that's one of the reasons that I like Love & Monsters so much. (I think I'm the only one, LOL) I really like Elton and I adore Jackie in this, but I also like the fact that the Doctor is trying to deal with the devastation left behind. The Doctor comes to Elton's home after his mother died to try and apologize and help as he can.
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 5, 2019 13:26:24 GMT
Urgh. That huge plot hole in an otherwise great story. I never have been happy with that part of the Zygon Inversion. It just does not make sense in a lot of ways. But back to the topic. Well, there is a reason I really appreciate British Pop Culture (as opposed to American). Things are much more frank, things are shown as they are, there is dirt and grit and there certainly is much less black and white storytelling. I got into British pop culture back in the day when I started to play Warhammer. Now, that is a great setting- there is basically no "good", everybody is just various shades of lighter and darker grey. Down the deepest pits of black. It is so much more believable and relatable. I always disliked "perfect" heroes. That has always, to me, been a lie- if something or someone looks too good to be true- he most certainly is. And this is something in British pop culture is always held high and a whole fountain of awesome stories. The Doctor would be an absolute boring hero if he were perfect. The best stories come from exploring his flaws and his darker side. Just look at real life- how often do the real culprits get away with everything? On the other hand, the good guys, like the Doctor in the War Games, is put in front of a mock jury and put to summary execution. In a children's programme. I am pretty sure this would not have happened in American pop culture back then (not even sure about right now). Having this in your storytelling makes it much more real and believable and most importantly- relatable. It is just how the world works- often, the bad guys get away with it. And the good guys lose. However, in most of these pop culture examples, there is an important message. It is up to US to still carry on and make the best of it. Never give up and never give in to the darkness. So I think your question really addresses the difference between two different approaches of storytelling/ world building, the European approach (I just call it that, because the British way of story telling is very similar to what we do here in Germany) and the American approach, which has more black and white and more clear cut lines between what is "good" or "evil". I also think the Doctor would never have worked as a typical "American Hero" (I am talking about the stereotype here). Hmm, I get what you're saying, and I don't necessarily disagree. It's why I love Blake's 7, it would never have been produced here. And maybe that's how I should look at it. But it still doesn't satisfy. The Doctor is definitely a flawed character. One of those flaws is his tendency to leave the cleaning up to others. Maybe that's one of the reasons that I like Love & Monsters so much. (I think I'm the only one, LOL) I really like Elton and I adore Jackie in this, but I also like the fact that the Doctor is trying to deal with the devastation left behind. The Doctor comes to Elton's home after his mother died to try and apologize and help as he can. Haha, and I think you got EXACTLY the point there. It is NOT meant to satisfy. It is meant to make you think, to make you question. This is an unfair situation. What can I do to improve it? There are no shining heroes to put it right. It is up to me to at least try to make it a bit better.
This is all that we can hope for.
I actually also liked Gods and Monsters (the episode is NOT just a horrible oral sex joke, whatever people may say), for the reasons you mention.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 14:43:17 GMT
I think one of the most chilling scenes in modern Who is what happens to the Family Of Blood. It's something to see the Doctor punish them like that, even though they're the killers in the story. A hero who hates murder like The Doctor does (though who isn't averse to it when called for) can't defeat his enemies the way they do even on a relatively cerebral show like Star Trek. Kirk and Picard kill loads of their enemies directly ("Fire!").
Why does The Doctor let the baddies away with it though, even if s/he didn;t kill them, to find some form of punishment? Well, Who started out totally differently, it was a show about an old wanderer, a girl and two lost teachers. There was no real sense of it being specifically a hero-led show until Troughton's Moonbase speech. Hartnell would save the day where possible but only because he could, it didn't seem to be a hobby for him the way the character has taken it on in the last 50 years. But then Troughton said "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought" - that's really the first time we hear the show espouse a mission statment like that and I'd argue it's more influential on what follows than the attitude of the Hartnell era. When a lot of people write a standard Who ep...it's often a riff on a Troughton trope much more than a Hartnell one.
This is where it seemed The Doctor was becoming more a typical hero, not just exploring or adventuring but specifically righting wrongs. The historicals vanished and it became a more monster-centric show. Pertwee's era saw him become an ITC-like hero akin to A Man With A Suitcase or Jason King and in that era I think we see another part of the puzzle of why The Doctor will let enemies escape - he really had little choice a lot of the time, protecting Earth was about all he could do while stranded so driving them off became his only real option. By then the show was what? 11 years in and what it "was" was slightly sacred by then. You get anomalies (the pulping of a villain The Doctor causes in Seeds Of Doom, the rather horrible way Shockeye is murdered by Colin's Doc in The Two Doctors) but generally speaking the show likes the villains to cause their own demise, get away (with a "their crimes will catch up with them..." line usually following) or be killed but it made clear it's OK because they're "only" Daleks or Cybers etc and kids expect them to meet their demise.
I think there's also the element of the show never being taken quite as seriously in the classic era in terms of consequence. I mean...The Master wipes out a chunk of the entire Universe in Logopolis but he's still presented as a funny, panto villain very soon after. Maybe this is something like Tuigirl was saying about cultural differences - if the Klingons blew up hundreds of thousands of planets killing untold billions, they wouldn't be shown as the silly baddie of the week anytime soon! Almost like there's something of the meta and the show knows...well, we never saw those places and it's fiction anyway so why does there need to be a consequence? I'm not sure about that point but I think there's something in it.
And then practically, I think a lot of Who writers are like myself and much prefer the Doctor to be wo/man in a box, helping where they can, passing through rather than any kind of self appointed space police. The day may be saved but justice is not always served. I kinda like that.
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Post by mrperson on Jul 5, 2019 16:45:58 GMT
Hi all, I was watching The Zygon Invasion the other evening with my bi-weekly DW viewing group, and a few things about the Doctor's behavior hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. Mainly it started with something that I hadn't noticed before. During the scene with the stand-off at the church the Doctor is right there, yet lets all the UNIT soldiers be led into the trap without doing a thing. Not one thing! I can see any of the other Doctors stepping in between the soldiers and Zygons impersonating their loved ones and trying convince them to not walk in. Even if he failed to keep the soldiers from going in, at least it would show consistency of character. (I can actually see the scene playing out in my head, and all it takes is an extra line or two of dialogue.) Thinking about this for a day or two, I started to think about another, more general issue that has bothered me for a while now. Why do the bad guys "get away" with death in Doctor Who? A villain shows up, kills a number of people, the Doctor defeats him/her/them, and then says "Go away". It seems that too often no one is held accountable for the death and destruction that they cause. It isn't always the case. Blon/Margaret is definitely punished for the misery she and her kin cause. And sometimes the villain brings about their own destruction or punishment, but it bothers me when it does happen. Thoughts anyone? I think part of the first example is explained by sloppy writing. The writer needed to move the plot to a certain place and simply didn't stop to think about how whether every characters' behavior made sense in light of their character. A more typical scene would have been him warning them not to go, and then they would ignore him, go ahead anyway, and get killed. (It's why I was very glad to hear about Chibnall's era using a writer's room. The more people paying attention to the details at once, the more likely these kinds of things will get caught.
As for the second, that's always been inconsistent. I don't think I can identify a principle that explains the differences. Sometimes, he destroys them. [(Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone - dumping them into the crack), Horror of Fang Rock, or perhaps flooding the pit to kill the young or was it eggs, in Runaway Bride); does Journey's End count?]. Other times, he provides a necessary link in the chain to their destruction (again, Runaway Bride).
Part of the inconsistency has to do with the writer's message. ie, Zygon invasion/inversion, being such an on-the-nose parallel to ISIS and other modern terrorist groups, wanted to say that it's better to try to talk things through rather than just kill the enemy. So the 'bad guys' have to get away with it. But then Journey's End didn't have any "message" to send, so alternate-him/Donna blow them all away.
There's also the obvious role of circumstances. If there's no opportunity to show mercy, that tends to leave two options: (1) run away, (2) kill.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 23:45:19 GMT
Hi all, I was watching The Zygon Invasion the other evening with my bi-weekly DW viewing group, and a few things about the Doctor's behavior hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. Mainly it started with something that I hadn't noticed before. During the scene with the stand-off at the church the Doctor is right there, yet lets all the UNIT soldiers be led into the trap without doing a thing. Not one thing! I can see any of the other Doctors stepping in between the soldiers and Zygons impersonating their loved ones and trying convince them to not walk in. Even if he failed to keep the soldiers from going in, at least it would show consistency of character. (I can actually see the scene playing out in my head, and all it takes is an extra line or two of dialogue.) Thinking about this for a day or two, I started to think about another, more general issue that has bothered me for a while now. Why do the bad guys "get away" with death in Doctor Who? A villain shows up, kills a number of people, the Doctor defeats him/her/them, and then says "Go away". It seems that too often no one is held accountable for the death and destruction that they cause. It isn't always the case. Blon/Margaret is definitely punished for the misery she and her kin cause. And sometimes the villain brings about their own destruction or punishment, but it bothers me when it does happen. Thoughts anyone? I think part of the first example is explained by sloppy writing. The writer needed to move the plot to a certain place and simply didn't stop to think about how whether every characters' behavior made sense in light of their character. A more typical scene would have been him warning them not to go, and then they would ignore him, go ahead anyway, and get killed. (It's why I was very glad to hear about Chibnall's era using a writer's room. The more people paying attention to the details at once, the more likely these kinds of things will get caught. As for the second, that's always been inconsistent. I don't think I can identify a principle that explains the differences. Sometimes, he destroys them. [(Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone - dumping them into the crack), Horror of Fang Rock, or perhaps flooding the pit to kill the young or was it eggs, in Runaway Bride); does Journey's End count?]. Other times, he provides a necessary link in the chain to their destruction (again, Runaway Bride).
Part of the inconsistency has to do with the writer's message. ie, Zygon invasion/inversion, being such an on-the-nose parallel to ISIS and other modern terrorist groups, wanted to say that it's better to try to talk things through rather than just kill the enemy. So the 'bad guys' have to get away with it. But then Journey's End didn't have any "message" to send, so alternate-him/Donna blow them all away.
There's also the obvious role of circumstances. If there's no opportunity to show mercy, that tends to leave two options: (1) run away, (2) kill. Yeah, it's that conflicting statement which makes me think the Doctor -- the wider, broader character across all their incarnations -- is more anti-killing than anti-violence. He strives incredibly hard for a peaceful solution, but if someone has a gun to his friend's head, he's going to attack the gunman to save the other person's life. The ending to The Seeds of Death, for instance, where he doesn't act until Jamie is put in danger. Their life is not his to gamble with and I think Brian Hayles got it in one simple exchange from The Curse of Peladon: There's also this really interesting thread through American media (circa. 20th century) where fatal revenge is seen as a form of justice, which is what makes a show like The Equalizer so interesting. Very rarely is murder, even in self-defence, treated as a victory. It's always a failure and Doctor Who, more or less, follows in a similar vein. Harrison Chase being fed into the composter for The Seeds of Doom is down to the Doctor's failure to save him. Tempered somewhat by the fact that Chase was trying to pull him in, but he and Sarah are both really shaken by it. British storytelling in general, I've noticed over the years, asks quite pointedly: "Who are our heroes? Who are our monsters? Are the two mutually exclusive?" And the answer often is... No, so one of the bigger struggles isn't knowing your protagonist is "good" (they often don't believe that unless they're bad guys) fighting against evil, but instead keeping their balance. "I am not my enemy and I cannot--" Ah, but I can. I so very much can become like that. "I must not become my enemy, even though I fear that could've already happened." American storytelling is (or was, at least) a lot more sure in who its heroes are. That's part of what I seek out in that brand of escapism, sometimes you just want an evening of white hats and black hats. But, Doctor Who has never really been about straightforward good and evil, right down to the character of the Doctor himself at the beginning. It's what makes the show thrive, really, that sense of ambiguity and the various approaches taken to it. The Doctor tries to keep their balance and they don't always succeed.
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 6, 2019 0:08:26 GMT
Yeah, it's that conflicting statement which makes me think the Doctor -- the wider, broader character across all their incarnations -- is more anti-killing than anti-violence. He strives incredibly hard for a peaceful solution, but if someone has a gun to his friend's head, he's going to attack the gunman to save the other person's life. The ending to The Seeds of Death, for instance, where he doesn't act until Jamie is put in danger. Their life is not his to gamble with and I think Brian Hayles got it in one simple exchange from The Curse of Peladon: There's also this really interesting thread through American media (circa. 20th century) where fatal revenge is seen as a form of justice, which is what makes a show like The Equalizer so interesting. Very rarely is murder, even in self-defence, treated as a victory. It's always a failure and Doctor Who, more or less, follows in a similar vein. Harrison Chase being fed into the composter for The Seeds of Doom is down to the Doctor's failure to save him. Tempered somewhat by the fact that Chase was trying to pull him in, but he and Sarah are both really shaken by it. British storytelling in general, I've noticed over the years, asks quite pointedly: "Who are our heroes? Who are our monsters? Are the two mutually exclusive?" And the answer often is... No, so one of the bigger struggles isn't knowing your protagonist is "good" (they often don't believe that unless they're bad guys) fighting against evil, but instead keeping their balance. "I am not my enemy and I cannot--" Ah, but I can. I so very much can become like that. "I must not become my enemy, even though I fear that could've already happened." American storytelling is (or was, at least) a lot more sure in who its heroes are. That's part of what I seek out in that brand of escapism, sometimes you just want an evening of white hats and black hats. But, Doctor Who has never really been about straightforward good and evil, right down to the character of the Doctor himself at the beginning. It's what makes the show thrive, really, that sense of ambiguity and the various approaches taken to it. The Doctor tries to keep their balance and they don't always succeed.One has just to look at the Doctor's relationship with the Master- no matter how many atrocities the Master commits and how much the Master might inflict pain and suffering on him and and his friends, the Doctor would never even consider killing the Master. He let's him get away with much too much. No other villain is shown that much leniency and compassion, even in the face of the most horrific cruelty.
Deep down, he must really love his old friend and believe in him still, as he shows time and again.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 0:52:36 GMT
Yeah, it's that conflicting statement which makes me think the Doctor -- the wider, broader character across all their incarnations -- is more anti-killing than anti-violence. He strives incredibly hard for a peaceful solution, but if someone has a gun to his friend's head, he's going to attack the gunman to save the other person's life. The ending to The Seeds of Death, for instance, where he doesn't act until Jamie is put in danger. Their life is not his to gamble with and I think Brian Hayles got it in one simple exchange from The Curse of Peladon: There's also this really interesting thread through American media (circa. 20th century) where fatal revenge is seen as a form of justice, which is what makes a show like The Equalizer so interesting. Very rarely is murder, even in self-defence, treated as a victory. It's always a failure and Doctor Who, more or less, follows in a similar vein. Harrison Chase being fed into the composter for The Seeds of Doom is down to the Doctor's failure to save him. Tempered somewhat by the fact that Chase was trying to pull him in, but he and Sarah are both really shaken by it. British storytelling in general, I've noticed over the years, asks quite pointedly: "Who are our heroes? Who are our monsters? Are the two mutually exclusive?" And the answer often is... No, so one of the bigger struggles isn't knowing your protagonist is "good" (they often don't believe that unless they're bad guys) fighting against evil, but instead keeping their balance. "I am not my enemy and I cannot--" Ah, but I can. I so very much can become like that. "I must not become my enemy, even though I fear that could've already happened." American storytelling is (or was, at least) a lot more sure in who its heroes are. That's part of what I seek out in that brand of escapism, sometimes you just want an evening of white hats and black hats. But, Doctor Who has never really been about straightforward good and evil, right down to the character of the Doctor himself at the beginning. It's what makes the show thrive, really, that sense of ambiguity and the various approaches taken to it. The Doctor tries to keep their balance and they don't always succeed.One has just to look at the Doctor's relationship with the Master- no matter how many atrocities the Master commits and how much the Master might inflict pain and suffering on him and and his friends, the Doctor would never even consider killing the Master. He let's him get away with much too much. No other villain is shown that much leniency and compassion, even in the face of the most horrific cruelty.
Deep down, he must really love his old friend and believe in him still, as he shows time and again.
And, there's that great contrast again. The incarnation who let him burn to death... was the Fifth. Sweet, gentle and forever compassionate Five. Arguably, the most upright of incarnations. There's a lot of anguish in that decision, Peter Davison plays the emotions out on his face -- please don't die like this, not begging, not swearing revenge -- but he doesn't walk away or attempt to cancel the reinjection at the last moment. He takes responsibility for the action and watches it happen through to the end. Yet, that potrayal isn't at odds with what we see later or what's come before. It's an evolving friendship with two very complex characters. Moving from the Third Doctor who looked forward to their next encounter, to the Eighth who was so ferociously angry with him it could be easy to mistake for hate... To the Tenth through Twelfth, who didn't have the energy to carry on that hatred anymore. It's all of these things, all at once, and that's the great strength of it.
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 6, 2019 1:03:02 GMT
One has just to look at the Doctor's relationship with the Master- no matter how many atrocities the Master commits and how much the Master might inflict pain and suffering on him and and his friends, the Doctor would never even consider killing the Master. He let's him get away with much too much. No other villain is shown that much leniency and compassion, even in the face of the most horrific cruelty.
Deep down, he must really love his old friend and believe in him still, as he shows time and again.
And, there's that great contrast again. The incarnation who let him burn to death... was the Fifth. Sweet, gentle and forever compassionate Five. Arguably, the most upright of incarnations. There's a lot of anguish in that decision, Peter Davison plays the emotions out on his face -- please don't die like this, not begging, not swearing revenge -- but he doesn't walk away or attempt to cancel the reinjection at the last moment. He takes responsibility for the action and watches it happen through to the end. Yet, that potrayal isn't at odds with what we see later or what's come before. It's an evolving friendship with two very complex characters. Moving from the Third Doctor who looked forward to their next encounter, to the Eighth who was so ferociously angry with him it could be easy to mistake for hate... To the Tenth through Twelfth, who didn't have the energy to carry on that hatred anymore. It's all of these things, all at once, and that's the great strength of it. Totally agree. For someone who did not like the Master at first (this was just the Simm Master, however) he has really grown on me and has to be one of my favorite villains. And back to my earlier argument about the differences in story- building. I somehow doubt we would have ever gotten as complex a relationship as Doctor and Master if this had been an American Show. However, it turned out well the way it did and I am very grateful for it.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 2:53:43 GMT
And, there's that great contrast again. The incarnation who let him burn to death... was the Fifth. Sweet, gentle and forever compassionate Five. Arguably, the most upright of incarnations. There's a lot of anguish in that decision, Peter Davison plays the emotions out on his face -- please don't die like this, not begging, not swearing revenge -- but he doesn't walk away or attempt to cancel the reinjection at the last moment. He takes responsibility for the action and watches it happen through to the end. Yet, that potrayal isn't at odds with what we see later or what's come before. It's an evolving friendship with two very complex characters. Moving from the Third Doctor who looked forward to their next encounter, to the Eighth who was so ferociously angry with him it could be easy to mistake for hate... To the Tenth through Twelfth, who didn't have the energy to carry on that hatred anymore. It's all of these things, all at once, and that's the great strength of it. Totally agree. For someone who did not like the Master at first (this was just the Simm Master, however) he has really grown on me and has to be one of my favorite villains. And back to my earlier argument about the differences in story- building. I somehow doubt we would have ever gotten as complex a relationship as Doctor and Master if this had been an American Show. However, it turned out well the way it did and I am very grateful for it. Likewise, because the result of it has been so much variety to the kinds of storytelling that can be told. Things like The Silurians where it's not about blocs, it's about people and people are complicated. Nowadays, in a time where series like say, Deep Space Nine, are more prominently regarded as being innovative to mimic, it could turn out very different. That's a series that has episodes like "The Darkness and the Light", which takes a prominent main character and shows just how ugly and ultimately paradoxical some of their values are. Despite Kira's claim that she didn't enjoy killing, when she's telling that story of an ambush on the Cardassians as a kid, she's grinning and proud. So, when she's pushed by the man that killed her friends, she starts shouting: "I don't care if you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living! You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!" Her prejudices are never quite shaken, but by the end of the series, she is willing to put them aside to help the Cardassians and the show is full of that kind of deconstruction. It's glib because it adopted that war genre of something like Combat! or MASH, but everything is put under scrutiny. From the Federation to the Cardassians to the Bajorans. It never quite doubles down on the ambiguity because of those preexisting tropes, but it did strive to overturn quite a number of them. Had a bit of a think on this and I think a common mistake is that it always has to be a punch. It's not good people doing bad things with no remorse ( punch-punch-punch). It's much more complex with individuals falling prey to temptations, making choices they don't want to make, making mistakes and living with all those consequences. The more I think about it, the more it's about allowing your audience to draw conclusions about a person's character themselves, rather than telling them outright. Edit: This has really got me thinking. I decided to go back and have a look at some of the notes I took from university, trying to puzzle out why there'd be such a difference between the two styles and "serialisation" is a word that's leapt out at me. (TL;DR: How television changed, changes and will change thanks to technologies and traditions.) From the production end, the pressure was on the show's focus. In an American season of twenty-six or thirty episodes, I think the characters were treated as static in order to maintain a sense of consistency. If you tuned in for a single episode in the middle of the series, you weren't left in the dark. For a British serial with a total of six sequential episodes, that intimacy meant that writers more closely examined how their characters changed and reacted. An expectation which became engrained in British television because came from its very beginning with The Quatermass Experiment being 1954. In some ways, it's the difference between going to the cinemas or going to the theatre. For British television, I think it seeped in by osmosis into even standalone shows because of how long-reaching and influential these miniseries were. American television didn't have the same touchstones, so they evolved along differing lines. However, when home media releases began in the 1980s, television becoming a lot less temporary, those trends started to change. Hence why the 1990s leans quite heavily on things like continuity and intertextuality. It was this brand new opportunity in American series for storytelling, but it didn't quite take off until after the millennium. Once it did we got lovely series like Persons of Interest which were capable and permitted to pursue longterm story and character arcs Over the course of... twenty, thirty years (?), we've now crossed over into an era of television where -- almost universally -- serialisation isn't only accepted, but it's actively expected and so are many of the tropes that go with it.
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Post by tuigirl on Jul 6, 2019 11:10:05 GMT
Totally agree. For someone who did not like the Master at first (this was just the Simm Master, however) he has really grown on me and has to be one of my favorite villains. And back to my earlier argument about the differences in story- building. I somehow doubt we would have ever gotten as complex a relationship as Doctor and Master if this had been an American Show. However, it turned out well the way it did and I am very grateful for it. Likewise, because the result of it has been so much variety to the kinds of storytelling that can be told. Things like The Silurians where it's not about blocs, it's about people and people are complicated. Nowadays, in a time where series like say, Deep Space Nine, are more prominently regarded as being innovative to mimic, it could turn out very different. That's a series that has episodes like "The Darkness and the Light", which takes a prominent main character and shows just how ugly and ultimately paradoxical some of their values are. Despite Kira's claim that she didn't enjoy killing, when she's telling that story of an ambush on the Cardassians as a kid, she's grinning and proud. So, when she's pushed by the man that killed her friends, she starts shouting: "I don't care if you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living! You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!" Her prejudices are never quite shaken, but by the end of the series, she is willing to put them aside to help the Cardassians and the show is full of that kind of deconstruction. It's glib because it adopted that war genre of something like Combat! or MASH, but everything is put under scrutiny. From the Federation to the Cardassians to the Bajorans. It never quite doubles down on the ambiguity because of those preexisting tropes, but it did strive to overturn quite a number of them. Had a bit of a think on this and I think a common mistake is that it always has to be a punch. It's not good people doing bad things with no remorse ( punch-punch-punch). It's much more complex with individuals falling prey to temptations, making choices they don't want to make, making mistakes and living with all those consequences. The more I think about it, the more it's about allowing your audience to draw conclusions about a person's character themselves, rather than telling them outright. Edit: This has really got me thinking. I decided to go back and have a look at some of the notes I took from university, trying to puzzle out why there'd be such a difference between the two styles and "serialisation" is a word that's leapt out at me. (TL;DR: How television changed, changes and will change thanks to technologies and traditions.) From the production end, the pressure was on the show's focus. In an American season of twenty-six or thirty episodes, I think the characters were treated as static in order to maintain a sense of consistency. If you tuned in for a single episode in the middle of the series, you weren't left in the dark. For a British serial with a total of six sequential episodes, that intimacy meant that writers more closely examined how their characters changed and reacted. An expectation which became engrained in British television because came from its very beginning with The Quatermass Experiment being 1954. In some ways, it's the difference between going to the cinemas or going to the theatre. For British television, I think it seeped in by osmosis into even standalone shows because of how long-reaching and influential these miniseries were. American television didn't have the same touchstones, so they evolved along differing lines. However, when home media releases began in the 1980s, television becoming a lot less temporary, those trends started to change. Hence why the 1990s leans quite heavily on things like continuity and intertextuality. It was this brand new opportunity in American series for storytelling, but it didn't quite take off until after the millennium. Once it did we got lovely series like Persons of Interest which were capable and permitted to pursue longterm story and character arcs Over the course of... twenty, thirty years (?), we've now crossed over into an era of television where -- almost universally -- serialisation isn't only accepted, but it's actively expected and so are many of the tropes that go with it. Again, I totally agree with you. I think Deep Space Nine and to a lesser degree Babylon 5 have changed the way of story telling in American television. It still does not come eye to eye with the European approach, but man did it get gritty and the good/ evil sides of characters got blurred.
Some episodes in Deep Space Nine were seriously depressing.
As for the serialisation- it is a blessing and a curse. Of course ongoing longer plotlines are very enjoyable and draw you in, however, sometimes one is just in the mood for some quick one-off stories which have become rarer.
I am not sure which I prefer- I think it depends on my mood.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2019 11:50:53 GMT
Likewise, because the result of it has been so much variety to the kinds of storytelling that can be told. Things like The Silurians where it's not about blocs, it's about people and people are complicated. Nowadays, in a time where series like say, Deep Space Nine, are more prominently regarded as being innovative to mimic, it could turn out very different. That's a series that has episodes like "The Darkness and the Light", which takes a prominent main character and shows just how ugly and ultimately paradoxical some of their values are. Despite Kira's claim that she didn't enjoy killing, when she's telling that story of an ambush on the Cardassians as a kid, she's grinning and proud. So, when she's pushed by the man that killed her friends, she starts shouting: "I don't care if you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living! You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!" Her prejudices are never quite shaken, but by the end of the series, she is willing to put them aside to help the Cardassians and the show is full of that kind of deconstruction. It's glib because it adopted that war genre of something like Combat! or MASH, but everything is put under scrutiny. From the Federation to the Cardassians to the Bajorans. It never quite doubles down on the ambiguity because of those preexisting tropes, but it did strive to overturn quite a number of them. Had a bit of a think on this and I think a common mistake is that it always has to be a punch. It's not good people doing bad things with no remorse ( punch-punch-punch). It's much more complex with individuals falling prey to temptations, making choices they don't want to make, making mistakes and living with all those consequences. The more I think about it, the more it's about allowing your audience to draw conclusions about a person's character themselves, rather than telling them outright. Edit: This has really got me thinking. I decided to go back and have a look at some of the notes I took from university, trying to puzzle out why there'd be such a difference between the two styles and "serialisation" is a word that's leapt out at me. (TL;DR: How television changed, changes and will change thanks to technologies and traditions.) From the production end, the pressure was on the show's focus. In an American season of twenty-six or thirty episodes, I think the characters were treated as static in order to maintain a sense of consistency. If you tuned in for a single episode in the middle of the series, you weren't left in the dark. For a British serial with a total of six sequential episodes, that intimacy meant that writers more closely examined how their characters changed and reacted. An expectation which became engrained in British television because came from its very beginning with The Quatermass Experiment being 1954. In some ways, it's the difference between going to the cinemas or going to the theatre. For British television, I think it seeped in by osmosis into even standalone shows because of how long-reaching and influential these miniseries were. American television didn't have the same touchstones, so they evolved along differing lines. However, when home media releases began in the 1980s, television becoming a lot less temporary, those trends started to change. Hence why the 1990s leans quite heavily on things like continuity and intertextuality. It was this brand new opportunity in American series for storytelling, but it didn't quite take off until after the millennium. Once it did we got lovely series like Persons of Interest which were capable and permitted to pursue longterm story and character arcs Over the course of... twenty, thirty years (?), we've now crossed over into an era of television where -- almost universally -- serialisation isn't only accepted, but it's actively expected and so are many of the tropes that go with it. Again, I totally agree with you. I think Deep Space Nine and to a lesser degree Babylon 5 have changed the way of story telling in American television. It still does not come eye to eye with the European approach, but man did it get gritty and the good/ evil sides of characters got blurred.
Some episodes in Deep Space Nine were seriously depressing.
As for the serialisation- it is a blessing and a curse. Of course ongoing longer plotlines are very enjoyable and draw you in, however, sometimes one is just in the mood for some quick one-off stories which have become rarer.
I am not sure which I prefer- I think it depends on my mood.
Oh, absolutely. I think DS9 took what the original Battlestar Galactica did in the late 70s and helped pave the way for the American take on serialisation in sci-fi, something very distinctive from its British counterpart. Babylon 5, on the other hand, is this wonderful, beautiful oubliette where it took a costume drama like I, Claudius and melded it with the values of Blake's 7 and Doctor Who (Straczynski was a big fan of Terry Nation and his creative consultant, Harlan Ellison, had a lot of good things to say about Who). B5 is one of those shows like The Prisoner where individual writers can place their hand on it and say: "This taught me how to do it." DS9 would be more what producers use as a yardstick, I think, it's comparatively a lot more flexible than JMS's model. Yeah, I could go either way sometimes. I think it's a lot harder in some respects to write a standalone story because it has to survive under its own power. A definitive beginning, middle and end. With serials you get a lot more freedom and potentially a lot more of a reward, but you have to balance that very carefully. Doctor Who's great in that regard because we get a mix of both styles. In the classic series, you get a handful of episodes (typically an hour-and-a-half) to explore the narrative, but by the end, there's this expectation that everything will be resolved. We get to have our cake and eat it too.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Jul 7, 2019 11:08:04 GMT
Nowadays, in a time where series like say, Deep Space Nine, are more prominently regarded as being innovative to mimic, it could turn out very different. That's a series that has episodes like "The Darkness and the Light", which takes a prominent main character and shows just how ugly and ultimately paradoxical some of their values are. Despite Kira's claim that she didn't enjoy killing, when she's telling that story of an ambush on the Cardassians as a kid, she's grinning and proud. So, when she's pushed by the man that killed her friends, she starts shouting: "I don't care if you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living! You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!" Her prejudices are never quite shaken, but by the end of the series, she is willing to put them aside to help the Cardassians and the show is full of that kind of deconstruction. It's glib because it adopted that war genre of something like Combat! or MASH, but everything is put under scrutiny. From the Federation to the Cardassians to the Bajorans. It never quite doubles down on the ambiguity because of those preexisting tropes, but it did strive to overturn quite a number of them. Had a bit of a think on this and I think a common mistake is that it always has to be a punch. It's not good people doing bad things with no remorse ( punch-punch-punch). It's much more complex with individuals falling prey to temptations, making choices they don't want to make, making mistakes and living with all those consequences. The more I think about it, the more it's about allowing your audience to draw conclusions about a person's character themselves, rather than telling them outright. and that in itself is an interesting counterpoint to the Season 1 episode with the Clerk at the prison camp. How sad she was at his death because he was trying to make Cardassia admit it was wrong and his tragic death at the hands of another Bajoran. The sad look of despair on her face as he dies and her words to the killer
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2019 11:20:53 GMT
Nowadays, in a time where series like say, Deep Space Nine, are more prominently regarded as being innovative to mimic, it could turn out very different. That's a series that has episodes like "The Darkness and the Light", which takes a prominent main character and shows just how ugly and ultimately paradoxical some of their values are. Despite Kira's claim that she didn't enjoy killing, when she's telling that story of an ambush on the Cardassians as a kid, she's grinning and proud. So, when she's pushed by the man that killed her friends, she starts shouting: "I don't care if you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living! You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!" Her prejudices are never quite shaken, but by the end of the series, she is willing to put them aside to help the Cardassians and the show is full of that kind of deconstruction. It's glib because it adopted that war genre of something like Combat! or MASH, but everything is put under scrutiny. From the Federation to the Cardassians to the Bajorans. It never quite doubles down on the ambiguity because of those preexisting tropes, but it did strive to overturn quite a number of them. Had a bit of a think on this and I think a common mistake is that it always has to be a punch. It's not good people doing bad things with no remorse ( punch-punch-punch). It's much more complex with individuals falling prey to temptations, making choices they don't want to make, making mistakes and living with all those consequences. The more I think about it, the more it's about allowing your audience to draw conclusions about a person's character themselves, rather than telling them outright. and that in itself is an interesting counterpoint to the Season 1 episode with the Clerk at the prison camp. How sad she was at his death because he was trying to make Cardassia admit it was wrong and his tragic death at the hands of another Bajoran. The sad look of despair on her face as he dies and her words to the killer Oh, god, Duet. Can we talk about Duet? There are stories that transcend the best of series and become the best of television, that episode is definitely one of those. It's fundamentally beautiful storytelling for showing how terrible and how remarkable ordinary people can be. It is, quite fittingly, the light to the darkness and the kind of human storytelling that you only ever achieve occassionally. The tales that can send a shiver up your spine no matter how many times you watch it.
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