(no subject)
Jun. 5th, 2008 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm still awake. Sleep is that distant thing that happens to other people. I'd be annoyed but I'm actually feeling pretty good about the world. I just don't think it's a good idea to head for London on cumulative six hours sleep rather than actual six in a row, so the big plan for the week is off. About which I feel less than good. Blah.
I have this weird full speed ahead sort of over revved feeling... and no clue as to direction. Or, possibly, some clue, poured in to my DW studies with a view to actually writing some. Just... don't know.
One of the hand outs from last night was from Doctor Who MAgazine 279 30 June 1999 and is an interview with Paul Cornell, Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Lance Parkin and Gareth Roberts. The theme is 'what would you do if bringing back Doctor Who'. Naturally this has become considerable extra interesting with passage of time.
The last word is from RTD: "God help anyone in charge of bringing it back - what a responsibility!"
Theres a bunch of bits of SM saying plans. Mostly focus on how it's a children's show that happens to appeal to grown ups, not an adult show with incidental children's viewers.
I don't know if this stuff is online somewhere. Is interesting though.
Also there's cute lego Cybermen and DW characters along the top. Cool.
Last night in class we watched a clip of Christopher Eccleston on Blue Peter exterminating a compost bin Dalek by using a Blue Peter badge.
It was suggested this was why serious-actor-is-serious decided not to do more than one season.
I was thinking though that stuff like Blue Peter and making your own Dalek is central and essential to what Doctor Who is all about. Because DW is a world with a way in. It's not realistic, you know that world is not this world, but you can get there from here. There's the glorious possibility of walking around a corner and finding the TARDIS, of course... but there's also the DIY approach. The cliche fan in a costume might get laughed at, but this sense of Doctor Who as a collaborative enterprise is part of what makes it so hugely popular, and it's just the same thing done by entire generations. It seems we're supposed to grow out of it. But some, like RTD et al above, rather grow into it instead. The writing team isn't some walled off entity, it's permeable too, and fan going pro isn't just a possibility, it's practically the way things work.
How cool is that?
It's like my feeling that BBC shows are a little bit more mine than something I just bought the DVDs for. I mean, I pay for the BBC. They're supposed to make stuff I like. It's different than some US show that's just trying to spread to new markets.
... granted, the only BBC thing I watch is DW+TW, but the thought is lurking in the back there.
Fandom does this stuff all the time, takes a story and bounces it around between us and makes it more story and gets more of and more from and then takes the next installment and layers it in with all the rest. Doctor Who feels a lot more like a really shiny expensive extension of fandom than most other things do. And in case anyone around here has to wonder, I mean that as a good thing. This is what stories are for! We make them and pass them on and know someone will pick bits up and other bits will sit there waiting for their right someone and that's just how it works.
I was comparing DW and long running comics in my head. Comics characters like Batman and Superman can't change a whole hell of a lot. There's things that can shift, and things that cannot. So the story arcs tend to be more cyclic. It reminds me of religious festivals, the story arcs that go with that, rise and fall and rise again. Batman or Superman or any other big name will get depowered, will lose their friends, will stand alone and find their mission again, will rise once more to their iconic appointed place.
Doctor Who... well, it doesn't depower him as often. The TARDIS, generally, is part of the story, and the Doctor has smarts, and that's the basic setup. It seems to me most of the change comes from his companions. Except if you compare any two Doctors they're massively different in some respects even while they hold on to some kind of essence of Doctor, so he does change, just in a different pattern. And it seems like personal growth, if you compare early Hartnell to most later Doctors, and see how much it seemed bizarre when 6 had some traits in common with a more callous version. Except making statements like that about Doctors I'm less familiar with can easily be completely untrue.
The thing with Bats or Supes though is a lot of their supporting cast have been developing in a more linear way than they ever can. Like the Doctor's companions. They get to grow up and move on, change in much bigger ways. The Doctor, for the series to retain its format, will always be the wanderer in the blue box... unless he's UNIT's scientific advisor.
There's nothing you can say that's 'always' about the Doctor, is there? Even if you try for anarchist pacifist scientist there will be times he's working for the establishment, uses guns, and wanders more to the spiritual.
Is interesting.
It has to be a lot of how the series survives. It has some kind of relation to the times it is made in, and to its own past, so it stays true to the spirit of Doctor Who by being the spirit of whatever people at that particular point in time think the Doctor should be about.
And by 'people' it can mean quite different demographics. Appealing only to the loud grumpy and ever ageing fanbase isn't really a ratings winner, legion though they are. Appealing to 11 year olds leaves a lot of loud grumpies complaining how it weren't like that when they were kids, despite the whole thing when it probably stood in roughly the same relation. And I think appealing to children but with enough layering and chewy bits for adults to have an excuse will always be a winner, cause we've all got inner children going yaay and doing Dalek voices really. Even if we think we're far too busy and grown up now. Here's an hour a week to not have to be busy, and to have kid-simple solutions while recognising big complicated existence. Appealing.
I'm trying to get at how to write Doctor Who. Because I want to. Make more stories that are about what I think is important, but presented in ways that other people will think it is important too. Well, interesting, more than important. Get a few million people to watch the idea, see if it sinks in and finds stuff in common with any percentage of them, maybe be important in a cumulative sort of way.
It's like the Textual Intervention book where you start poking at something and realising what this bit over here does, because you take it out and everything falls down. Stories are complicated and fascinating.
I have this weird full speed ahead sort of over revved feeling... and no clue as to direction. Or, possibly, some clue, poured in to my DW studies with a view to actually writing some. Just... don't know.
One of the hand outs from last night was from Doctor Who MAgazine 279 30 June 1999 and is an interview with Paul Cornell, Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Lance Parkin and Gareth Roberts. The theme is 'what would you do if bringing back Doctor Who'. Naturally this has become considerable extra interesting with passage of time.
The last word is from RTD: "God help anyone in charge of bringing it back - what a responsibility!"
Theres a bunch of bits of SM saying plans. Mostly focus on how it's a children's show that happens to appeal to grown ups, not an adult show with incidental children's viewers.
I don't know if this stuff is online somewhere. Is interesting though.
Also there's cute lego Cybermen and DW characters along the top. Cool.
Last night in class we watched a clip of Christopher Eccleston on Blue Peter exterminating a compost bin Dalek by using a Blue Peter badge.
It was suggested this was why serious-actor-is-serious decided not to do more than one season.
I was thinking though that stuff like Blue Peter and making your own Dalek is central and essential to what Doctor Who is all about. Because DW is a world with a way in. It's not realistic, you know that world is not this world, but you can get there from here. There's the glorious possibility of walking around a corner and finding the TARDIS, of course... but there's also the DIY approach. The cliche fan in a costume might get laughed at, but this sense of Doctor Who as a collaborative enterprise is part of what makes it so hugely popular, and it's just the same thing done by entire generations. It seems we're supposed to grow out of it. But some, like RTD et al above, rather grow into it instead. The writing team isn't some walled off entity, it's permeable too, and fan going pro isn't just a possibility, it's practically the way things work.
How cool is that?
It's like my feeling that BBC shows are a little bit more mine than something I just bought the DVDs for. I mean, I pay for the BBC. They're supposed to make stuff I like. It's different than some US show that's just trying to spread to new markets.
... granted, the only BBC thing I watch is DW+TW, but the thought is lurking in the back there.
Fandom does this stuff all the time, takes a story and bounces it around between us and makes it more story and gets more of and more from and then takes the next installment and layers it in with all the rest. Doctor Who feels a lot more like a really shiny expensive extension of fandom than most other things do. And in case anyone around here has to wonder, I mean that as a good thing. This is what stories are for! We make them and pass them on and know someone will pick bits up and other bits will sit there waiting for their right someone and that's just how it works.
I was comparing DW and long running comics in my head. Comics characters like Batman and Superman can't change a whole hell of a lot. There's things that can shift, and things that cannot. So the story arcs tend to be more cyclic. It reminds me of religious festivals, the story arcs that go with that, rise and fall and rise again. Batman or Superman or any other big name will get depowered, will lose their friends, will stand alone and find their mission again, will rise once more to their iconic appointed place.
Doctor Who... well, it doesn't depower him as often. The TARDIS, generally, is part of the story, and the Doctor has smarts, and that's the basic setup. It seems to me most of the change comes from his companions. Except if you compare any two Doctors they're massively different in some respects even while they hold on to some kind of essence of Doctor, so he does change, just in a different pattern. And it seems like personal growth, if you compare early Hartnell to most later Doctors, and see how much it seemed bizarre when 6 had some traits in common with a more callous version. Except making statements like that about Doctors I'm less familiar with can easily be completely untrue.
The thing with Bats or Supes though is a lot of their supporting cast have been developing in a more linear way than they ever can. Like the Doctor's companions. They get to grow up and move on, change in much bigger ways. The Doctor, for the series to retain its format, will always be the wanderer in the blue box... unless he's UNIT's scientific advisor.
There's nothing you can say that's 'always' about the Doctor, is there? Even if you try for anarchist pacifist scientist there will be times he's working for the establishment, uses guns, and wanders more to the spiritual.
Is interesting.
It has to be a lot of how the series survives. It has some kind of relation to the times it is made in, and to its own past, so it stays true to the spirit of Doctor Who by being the spirit of whatever people at that particular point in time think the Doctor should be about.
And by 'people' it can mean quite different demographics. Appealing only to the loud grumpy and ever ageing fanbase isn't really a ratings winner, legion though they are. Appealing to 11 year olds leaves a lot of loud grumpies complaining how it weren't like that when they were kids, despite the whole thing when it probably stood in roughly the same relation. And I think appealing to children but with enough layering and chewy bits for adults to have an excuse will always be a winner, cause we've all got inner children going yaay and doing Dalek voices really. Even if we think we're far too busy and grown up now. Here's an hour a week to not have to be busy, and to have kid-simple solutions while recognising big complicated existence. Appealing.
I'm trying to get at how to write Doctor Who. Because I want to. Make more stories that are about what I think is important, but presented in ways that other people will think it is important too. Well, interesting, more than important. Get a few million people to watch the idea, see if it sinks in and finds stuff in common with any percentage of them, maybe be important in a cumulative sort of way.
It's like the Textual Intervention book where you start poking at something and realising what this bit over here does, because you take it out and everything falls down. Stories are complicated and fascinating.