Random on my episode choices
Jan. 22nd, 2013 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe more I read essays comparing 1 and every other Doctor ever, the less I want to do that. Because half of them start out with the idea that it was proper Doctor Who at the start, when it was serious and the Doctor was mysterious and grumpy and put his friends in danger and said You Can't Change History. The way it was meant to be, *invoke Newman and Lambert here*! Even for things that were abandoned after one, maybe two years. Out of 50.
Seeing as I haven't had any new thoughts on The Aztecs since I looked at it and thought 'hmmm, I could write about The Aztecs' I could ignore it and move on with no actual waste of time.
I'm contemplating comparing 11 to proper Doctor Who, like it used to be, in the 80s!
... yes, this is the same impulse that leads me to vote for 8 in every 'who is your favourite Doctor' poll ever, isn't it.
... but I like 8.
And 5, and his Team TARDIS, though Nyssa was bland and Adric ended exactly as many of us hoped, but Turlough was awesome, because clearly cowardice is the correct response to most things the TARDIS encounters, and if the Doctor learns awesome from his human companions (like learning not to crush the skulls of prehistory people just because they do it to each other) then clearly having Turlough around had a lasting impact on his assessment of cowardice as a life choice. Coward, every time!
I also want to get in an argument about Ghost Light with this stupid essay book. It seems to think it's about the Victorian impulse to classify, box up, and stop history with them at the top of it, as a good thing. It talks about Light being semi divine and makes it sound like the story thinks he's cool. It writes that Light's opponent was hunting Queen Victoria. Did it in fact watch the episode? The whole point was evolution good, change good, progress good, racist hierarchical classifications pretty damn bad, and trying to stop history just makes you stop yourself. And then you are a collection of stupid empty husks. Plus the trying to be a ladylike, it doesn't start off at 80s urchin and do Victorian masculine evening wear for class-and-power lols and Victorian feminine dresses for being a proper girly girl and then call it quits. It ends up at 80s, heads back to the 80s, and adds a bit more wild to it. Ace is in fact an evolution of the proper ladylike, cause she can do all that and then blow stuff up and run properly. And then in Survival there's the cheetah people who are what happens if you think survival of the fittest equals outrunning your friends and killing things a lot, because we can 'improve' ourselves right into bestial barbarity if we don't watch out. Which was the point in Ghost Light too, being in a more proper looking shell doesn't stop anyone being a dick. It's never about stopping history, it's about visiting it and seeing all the different things. IDIC.
... I can't, writing about 11, just randomly get in an argument about Ghost Light.
Or about the thing where the Good Bits Version of memory is not always the good bits, because it gets distorted by the big black holes of suck that are stereotypes. Like, remembering that x character was a screamer, or y wore bikinis. In one book there's people writing to Radio Times to ask when Leela will go back to wearing a leather bikini. Leather I'll grant you, but does this look like a bikini? That's a vest and a slit skirt, or possibly an apron sort of thing, plus some very prominent weaponry. If Tony Stark was wearing that top nobody would call it a bikini. But stone age girls wear bikinis, apparently, so the outfit enters legend as such. Also I have heard actresses complain their characters never got any development (and also a demonstration of how many ways you can say 'what is it Doctor' that got kind of hilarious after the first bazillion) but that isn't the same as saying they all devolved into screamers.
One of these essays insists that girls in the TARDIS were sexless, as can be proven by Susan leaving to get married. ... how does getting a boyfriend equate with no sex? I think it was the same writing that reckoned Kinda and Snakedance were the only examples of adult sexuality in classic Doctor Who. ... this is the other reason I don't want to read psychoanalytic crit or anyone who has spent too much time thinking about Freud, you just learn far too much about the writer.
I have whole boxes of essays that insist there's no sex in space unless you're an alien, but then one of them thinks Princess Leia is a human, even though she's a long time ago in a galaxy far far away and therefore by the same standards that they've been calling women from Mars and Venus and the Moon aliens is very alien indeed. But they reckon Leia isn't sexy (I've mentioned this before but I'm still mind boggled. Generations of geeks of even vaguely relevant sexuality would disagree strongly). There's a lot in the box of notes about how only alien women get to be sexual and sexy, while human women get to be, like, demure and scientific and stuff. I'm reasonably certain Madame Vastra and Jenny do not fit this rule. Or indeed any of the other stuff about lesbian couples being there for the lipstick spectacle of it. Unless they're for geeks of very specific tastes. All the reactions I saw were about how they should have their own series, usually followed by making avatars and possibly doing cosplay. They are awesome cosplay. Presumably there's different reactions in the other fandom, the one where there's mostly men and they wonder where all the women have gone, rather than vice versa. Don't know what those would be though.
... how did we end up with a boy fandom that thinks it is All Of Fandom and has turned into the people making the show and then this fandom where I can assume anyone I talk to is default assumption a woman? There are males around, somewhere, sort of, but generally when asked the fandoms I've been in since the mid 90s have been women. Unless they're the fans who get paid for their activities, like the ones who write for magazines or do tie in books or audio plays or whatever. Those have only been women pretty recently and more rarely. And given the proportions of women I'm used to seeing around fandom it looks even more weird when the writers of say Big Finish are very nearly all blokes. We have writers! And some of them even can write gen or het mild enough to match the series! ... sometimes, though why we'd want to I don't know. Hmmm, don't have to posit sexism then, just that we're all more-from writers and only the more-of get paid.
Still, it's very weird reading descriptions of Doctor Who fandom, because even in decades when I'm pretty damn sure I was there, according to the little write ups in these books women was very rare indeed. Did we just somehow end up in different bars?
Okay, that's a lot of random.
I should go do something productive.
Even if it is get in arguments with essays. As long as I can make them specifically about my chosen text I can argue happily for thousands of words.
Seeing as I haven't had any new thoughts on The Aztecs since I looked at it and thought 'hmmm, I could write about The Aztecs' I could ignore it and move on with no actual waste of time.
I'm contemplating comparing 11 to proper Doctor Who, like it used to be, in the 80s!
... yes, this is the same impulse that leads me to vote for 8 in every 'who is your favourite Doctor' poll ever, isn't it.
... but I like 8.
And 5, and his Team TARDIS, though Nyssa was bland and Adric ended exactly as many of us hoped, but Turlough was awesome, because clearly cowardice is the correct response to most things the TARDIS encounters, and if the Doctor learns awesome from his human companions (like learning not to crush the skulls of prehistory people just because they do it to each other) then clearly having Turlough around had a lasting impact on his assessment of cowardice as a life choice. Coward, every time!
I also want to get in an argument about Ghost Light with this stupid essay book. It seems to think it's about the Victorian impulse to classify, box up, and stop history with them at the top of it, as a good thing. It talks about Light being semi divine and makes it sound like the story thinks he's cool. It writes that Light's opponent was hunting Queen Victoria. Did it in fact watch the episode? The whole point was evolution good, change good, progress good, racist hierarchical classifications pretty damn bad, and trying to stop history just makes you stop yourself. And then you are a collection of stupid empty husks. Plus the trying to be a ladylike, it doesn't start off at 80s urchin and do Victorian masculine evening wear for class-and-power lols and Victorian feminine dresses for being a proper girly girl and then call it quits. It ends up at 80s, heads back to the 80s, and adds a bit more wild to it. Ace is in fact an evolution of the proper ladylike, cause she can do all that and then blow stuff up and run properly. And then in Survival there's the cheetah people who are what happens if you think survival of the fittest equals outrunning your friends and killing things a lot, because we can 'improve' ourselves right into bestial barbarity if we don't watch out. Which was the point in Ghost Light too, being in a more proper looking shell doesn't stop anyone being a dick. It's never about stopping history, it's about visiting it and seeing all the different things. IDIC.
... I can't, writing about 11, just randomly get in an argument about Ghost Light.
Or about the thing where the Good Bits Version of memory is not always the good bits, because it gets distorted by the big black holes of suck that are stereotypes. Like, remembering that x character was a screamer, or y wore bikinis. In one book there's people writing to Radio Times to ask when Leela will go back to wearing a leather bikini. Leather I'll grant you, but does this look like a bikini? That's a vest and a slit skirt, or possibly an apron sort of thing, plus some very prominent weaponry. If Tony Stark was wearing that top nobody would call it a bikini. But stone age girls wear bikinis, apparently, so the outfit enters legend as such. Also I have heard actresses complain their characters never got any development (and also a demonstration of how many ways you can say 'what is it Doctor' that got kind of hilarious after the first bazillion) but that isn't the same as saying they all devolved into screamers.
One of these essays insists that girls in the TARDIS were sexless, as can be proven by Susan leaving to get married. ... how does getting a boyfriend equate with no sex? I think it was the same writing that reckoned Kinda and Snakedance were the only examples of adult sexuality in classic Doctor Who. ... this is the other reason I don't want to read psychoanalytic crit or anyone who has spent too much time thinking about Freud, you just learn far too much about the writer.
I have whole boxes of essays that insist there's no sex in space unless you're an alien, but then one of them thinks Princess Leia is a human, even though she's a long time ago in a galaxy far far away and therefore by the same standards that they've been calling women from Mars and Venus and the Moon aliens is very alien indeed. But they reckon Leia isn't sexy (I've mentioned this before but I'm still mind boggled. Generations of geeks of even vaguely relevant sexuality would disagree strongly). There's a lot in the box of notes about how only alien women get to be sexual and sexy, while human women get to be, like, demure and scientific and stuff. I'm reasonably certain Madame Vastra and Jenny do not fit this rule. Or indeed any of the other stuff about lesbian couples being there for the lipstick spectacle of it. Unless they're for geeks of very specific tastes. All the reactions I saw were about how they should have their own series, usually followed by making avatars and possibly doing cosplay. They are awesome cosplay. Presumably there's different reactions in the other fandom, the one where there's mostly men and they wonder where all the women have gone, rather than vice versa. Don't know what those would be though.
... how did we end up with a boy fandom that thinks it is All Of Fandom and has turned into the people making the show and then this fandom where I can assume anyone I talk to is default assumption a woman? There are males around, somewhere, sort of, but generally when asked the fandoms I've been in since the mid 90s have been women. Unless they're the fans who get paid for their activities, like the ones who write for magazines or do tie in books or audio plays or whatever. Those have only been women pretty recently and more rarely. And given the proportions of women I'm used to seeing around fandom it looks even more weird when the writers of say Big Finish are very nearly all blokes. We have writers! And some of them even can write gen or het mild enough to match the series! ... sometimes, though why we'd want to I don't know. Hmmm, don't have to posit sexism then, just that we're all more-from writers and only the more-of get paid.
Still, it's very weird reading descriptions of Doctor Who fandom, because even in decades when I'm pretty damn sure I was there, according to the little write ups in these books women was very rare indeed. Did we just somehow end up in different bars?
Okay, that's a lot of random.
I should go do something productive.
Even if it is get in arguments with essays. As long as I can make them specifically about my chosen text I can argue happily for thousands of words.