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beccaelizabeth… ack, I just found where I wrote down the room for the room party I forgot to go to. Sorries!
There was a book quiz with book covers all over the hotel. I hunted them down Friday while learning to navigate rooms. There was only one I recognised. Unfortunately it was from one of the Dianne Wynne Jones Chrestomanci books, and it was the figure of Chrestomanci in a top hat that’s actually on the cover of every book in that edition of that series. I think it was from Charmed Life though, by the colors, because it didn’t match the ones I’ve already got in that version. But I never got around to writing it down and telling the answer. *sigh*
Thursday night I note ‘people laughed’. I think that was a good thing. Probably.
ANYway
1st panel
Doctor Who: New vs Old
New: actors, wasted, not being –illegible squiggle-
Talons as good DW? Er…
Standard complaint about wobbly sets and rubber monsters.
Someone at the back pipes up “As a blind person” never has to worry about that.
Door sounds… sound design, was more done with it in old series.
Kitchen vs Living room shows: listen from the kitchen or watch from the living room. Old series vs new series.
Old DW as radio show. Audio of –squiggle again-
Radiophonic workshop, new sounds
New series? Library effects.
New HD visuals on widescreen
Multicam studio show of the old series
TV technology progressed between series. Used to be tiny, blurry, and therefore mostly about sound. Is now huge and pretty.
New series: simplistic and one sided.
Example, New Earth. McGuffin solution. Doctor has no sympathy for the cat side.
[There’s only one right answer and one solution explored in a new series story, whereas old series could explore more angles]
Emotions. Character journey. Less emphasis on plot.
Less time for plot.
Audio FX were cheaper. Budget makes it more visual.
Attention span. Missed episodes.
[This I have to unpack at some length. A recurring complaint this weekend was about ‘kids today’. These were the section of the audience blamed for anything the speaker didn’t like about the new series. Apparently ‘kids today’ have shorter attention spans. This was stated as fact. I wanted one of those little signs like in the XKCD cartoon, ‘citation required’. The thing is, even just taking Doctor Who as evidence as they appeared to be doing, the assertion doesn’t hold up. The claim that a 45 minute episode is the result of the audience having a shorter attention span crashes into the thing where the old series episodes were, except for that one season, shorter, and only ever equalled it. People who think of Doctor Who stories as being longer than 45 minutes have been watching them on DVD for too long. Similarly the contention that new series lost the cliffhangers because ‘kids today’ haven’t the attention span to watch it two weeks in a row and would miss episodes. This ignores the fact that it’s the children’s series that still *has* cliffhangers! Sarah Jane Adventures has one every other week, because it’s the kids that *can* be relied upon to get interested enough they’ll be back next time. You have to blame ‘grown ups today’ for wanting to watch Doctor Who but not bothering to do so every week. I’d theorise that family audience needs a trade off because getting the whole family in front of the TV at once is more complicated and can’t be relied upon every week, and if a show is heavily serialised, as Trial of a Time Lord learnt all too well, very few bother picking up after one missed episode, so your audience steadily declines all season. The New series doesn’t have that problem, because it lacks cliffhangers. Sarah Jane adventures doesn’t have that problem because it has only two parters, so missing a story means you get to start a new one or see the exciting resolution. Old series, with much less competition for time and attention in a seriously thinner media environment, could have a lot more parts per story and keep its more or less captive audience between weeks. It’s not ‘kids today’, it’s the world today.]
[sorry, I wanted to say that all weekend. But I was quickly aware I’d have to say it over and over and over, mostly to older fanboys. Argh.]
Old & new monsters. Time to develop.
Supporting characters and minor roles.
Past elements that lead to it.
[unpacked: the longer time per story used to give you more time to develop backstory and a larger cast. This is the bit that I miss, though I’m aware not all old series episodes did much with it at all anyway. Because they were mostly running up and down…]
Corridors.
Monsters?
Repeats between episodes, less fun on DVD.
Sloooow.
Some multi parters really good. True.
[wanted to say: Infinite Quest! Multi part? Cliffhangers? For kids.]
ALIEN PLANETS! We miss them.
Learning new worlds.
Sara Jane Adventures. Old Who feel.
(partly because there’s a lack of ‘shipping.)
Donna = brilliant. Just mates.
Lines, stuff to do, personality. Not solely about The Man.
Turn Left as V. Good new who. [later in bar heard complaints that it went fascist and they always go fascist. I say yes, but it went fascist well.]
Didn’t like her putting herself down.
Old Who independent women: Ace, Leela.
Martha lose: doctor aspects vanish; lovesick girl.
Going on about ‘relationship’ with the doctor reduces independence.
Now gay producer, more het show than ever and a lot of gay jokes.
Someone came out with the “how do you explain two men kissing to a ten year old”
Audience shushed speaker down
Mod said “Because they like each other” and moved on swiftly
[which was a great relief, especially as first panel of the weekend. At this point I didn’t know for sure if I was in happy LJ fandom or scary OG fandom. I think everyone I talked to this weekend has an LJ…]
Written by fans, fans love to ship
Fanfic clichés
Extra dimension, more 3D people.
Everyone groans at ‘the Doctors Daughter’
[this is one speaker with nodding and disagreement in audience]
Prefer ambiguous/asexual Doctor
Multi companions
Doctor+sidekick works less well
With multi sidekicks
Need a team
DW with no Doctor, Hartnell style. Blink.
And we’re up to arguing if production notes are canon. 45 minutes. [er, yeah, BE has a feel for how this discussion usually goes…]
Doctor: wisdom & ancient knowledge
BE wrote in notes ‘disagrees silently’. It’s a lot more complicated than that. I mean, he puts it on sometimes, but other times he’s daft.
Mystery. Doctor in danger.
Missing in New Who?
[another outbreak of Kids Today]
You don’t get the [character] journey if it’s just pretty images.
Stories had to be stronger to carry the show.
Now more frenetic to pack more in.
Feeling some episodes rely on fans wanting to see all.
Old who, tongue in cheek. Holmes & Adams scripts.
As Long As The Story’s Good.
DW acting as specific OTT school.
Miss the cliffhangers.
BE wanted to add audios to the discussion. Because they’re still doing all the things that get complained on, but do they got the audience? Even with advertising on BBC1 the BBC7 stories, not as much audience no. But the audios weren’t in the panel description, so, silent.
Panel ends on the Master beard joke.
/panel.
There was a book quiz with book covers all over the hotel. I hunted them down Friday while learning to navigate rooms. There was only one I recognised. Unfortunately it was from one of the Dianne Wynne Jones Chrestomanci books, and it was the figure of Chrestomanci in a top hat that’s actually on the cover of every book in that edition of that series. I think it was from Charmed Life though, by the colors, because it didn’t match the ones I’ve already got in that version. But I never got around to writing it down and telling the answer. *sigh*
Thursday night I note ‘people laughed’. I think that was a good thing. Probably.
ANYway
1st panel
Doctor Who: New vs Old
New: actors, wasted, not being –illegible squiggle-
Talons as good DW? Er…
Standard complaint about wobbly sets and rubber monsters.
Someone at the back pipes up “As a blind person” never has to worry about that.
Door sounds… sound design, was more done with it in old series.
Kitchen vs Living room shows: listen from the kitchen or watch from the living room. Old series vs new series.
Old DW as radio show. Audio of –squiggle again-
Radiophonic workshop, new sounds
New series? Library effects.
New HD visuals on widescreen
Multicam studio show of the old series
TV technology progressed between series. Used to be tiny, blurry, and therefore mostly about sound. Is now huge and pretty.
New series: simplistic and one sided.
Example, New Earth. McGuffin solution. Doctor has no sympathy for the cat side.
[There’s only one right answer and one solution explored in a new series story, whereas old series could explore more angles]
Emotions. Character journey. Less emphasis on plot.
Less time for plot.
Audio FX were cheaper. Budget makes it more visual.
Attention span. Missed episodes.
[This I have to unpack at some length. A recurring complaint this weekend was about ‘kids today’. These were the section of the audience blamed for anything the speaker didn’t like about the new series. Apparently ‘kids today’ have shorter attention spans. This was stated as fact. I wanted one of those little signs like in the XKCD cartoon, ‘citation required’. The thing is, even just taking Doctor Who as evidence as they appeared to be doing, the assertion doesn’t hold up. The claim that a 45 minute episode is the result of the audience having a shorter attention span crashes into the thing where the old series episodes were, except for that one season, shorter, and only ever equalled it. People who think of Doctor Who stories as being longer than 45 minutes have been watching them on DVD for too long. Similarly the contention that new series lost the cliffhangers because ‘kids today’ haven’t the attention span to watch it two weeks in a row and would miss episodes. This ignores the fact that it’s the children’s series that still *has* cliffhangers! Sarah Jane Adventures has one every other week, because it’s the kids that *can* be relied upon to get interested enough they’ll be back next time. You have to blame ‘grown ups today’ for wanting to watch Doctor Who but not bothering to do so every week. I’d theorise that family audience needs a trade off because getting the whole family in front of the TV at once is more complicated and can’t be relied upon every week, and if a show is heavily serialised, as Trial of a Time Lord learnt all too well, very few bother picking up after one missed episode, so your audience steadily declines all season. The New series doesn’t have that problem, because it lacks cliffhangers. Sarah Jane adventures doesn’t have that problem because it has only two parters, so missing a story means you get to start a new one or see the exciting resolution. Old series, with much less competition for time and attention in a seriously thinner media environment, could have a lot more parts per story and keep its more or less captive audience between weeks. It’s not ‘kids today’, it’s the world today.]
[sorry, I wanted to say that all weekend. But I was quickly aware I’d have to say it over and over and over, mostly to older fanboys. Argh.]
Old & new monsters. Time to develop.
Supporting characters and minor roles.
Past elements that lead to it.
[unpacked: the longer time per story used to give you more time to develop backstory and a larger cast. This is the bit that I miss, though I’m aware not all old series episodes did much with it at all anyway. Because they were mostly running up and down…]
Corridors.
Monsters?
Repeats between episodes, less fun on DVD.
Sloooow.
Some multi parters really good. True.
[wanted to say: Infinite Quest! Multi part? Cliffhangers? For kids.]
ALIEN PLANETS! We miss them.
Learning new worlds.
Sara Jane Adventures. Old Who feel.
(partly because there’s a lack of ‘shipping.)
Donna = brilliant. Just mates.
Lines, stuff to do, personality. Not solely about The Man.
Turn Left as V. Good new who. [later in bar heard complaints that it went fascist and they always go fascist. I say yes, but it went fascist well.]
Didn’t like her putting herself down.
Old Who independent women: Ace, Leela.
Martha lose: doctor aspects vanish; lovesick girl.
Going on about ‘relationship’ with the doctor reduces independence.
Now gay producer, more het show than ever and a lot of gay jokes.
Someone came out with the “how do you explain two men kissing to a ten year old”
Audience shushed speaker down
Mod said “Because they like each other” and moved on swiftly
[which was a great relief, especially as first panel of the weekend. At this point I didn’t know for sure if I was in happy LJ fandom or scary OG fandom. I think everyone I talked to this weekend has an LJ…]
Written by fans, fans love to ship
Fanfic clichés
Extra dimension, more 3D people.
Everyone groans at ‘the Doctors Daughter’
[this is one speaker with nodding and disagreement in audience]
Prefer ambiguous/asexual Doctor
Multi companions
Doctor+sidekick works less well
With multi sidekicks
Need a team
DW with no Doctor, Hartnell style. Blink.
And we’re up to arguing if production notes are canon. 45 minutes. [er, yeah, BE has a feel for how this discussion usually goes…]
Doctor: wisdom & ancient knowledge
BE wrote in notes ‘disagrees silently’. It’s a lot more complicated than that. I mean, he puts it on sometimes, but other times he’s daft.
Mystery. Doctor in danger.
Missing in New Who?
[another outbreak of Kids Today]
You don’t get the [character] journey if it’s just pretty images.
Stories had to be stronger to carry the show.
Now more frenetic to pack more in.
Feeling some episodes rely on fans wanting to see all.
Old who, tongue in cheek. Holmes & Adams scripts.
As Long As The Story’s Good.
DW acting as specific OTT school.
Miss the cliffhangers.
BE wanted to add audios to the discussion. Because they’re still doing all the things that get complained on, but do they got the audience? Even with advertising on BBC1 the BBC7 stories, not as much audience no. But the audios weren’t in the panel description, so, silent.
Panel ends on the Master beard joke.
/panel.