Reading, reading
Feb. 1st, 2013 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIt is frustrating when the index makes it look like a book has a ton of relevant stuff all the way through it
but when I bring it home to read it turns out every references is either
Terry Nation (who wrote for Doctor Who)
Douglas Adams (who wrote for Doctor Who)
or Peter Cushing (who played Doctor Who in the movies)
and only the one chapter is in fact vaguely theory type stuff about Doctor Who.
On the one hand, I have finished reading the useful bits of British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide. Which is yaay. On the other, I could have photocopied pages 52-71 and instead I brought home a 300 page hardback. :-/
Also I'd forgotten I have already photocopied the interesting bits, and the reason I hadn't photocopied pages 52-71 was they were not in fact interesting. I've got a bunch of sticky notes in there but they're mostly the bright pink of pick a fight with this. Also they're mostly on statements about how rubbish the Doctor Who FX were (compared to what? Compared to Star Trek, apparently, but really? And the BBC used Doctor Who to try out new tech, like chroma key, so it was sometimes 'rubbish' in a really quite cutting edge way while trying to figure out what to do with it.), or contradictory statements where the Doctor kissing girls is weird American imposition one page, adult exploration of sexuality the next. Yes, the TV movie was egregiously awful, but that doesn't make kissing American.
Also it seems to be calling fandom the result of entrepreneurs seeing a marketing opportunity just like Star Trek. Fan organisations and conventions are marketing? It's possible it is talking about American cons and means to contrast with British ones, but it makes it sound like cons are in fact American, which, really, no.
... and having complained about this on the internet I can throw those markers out. Doesn't leave many.
The bit where it reckons casting Billie Piper was because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, rather than, say, twenty five years of Doctor Who companions, is just bizarre. What's the connection? Casting a pop 'starlet'? Is there something I don't know about Buffy stars? All the chapter offers is that RTD likes Whedon, and really, which writers don't now?
More useful to quote about 2005: "Themes that marked the programme as a product of its time included an unprecedented acknowledgement of the Doctor's sexuality and a marked emphasis on female agency. Strong female characters abounded and almost all the episodes were either resolved by female intervention or concluded with a female character in the position of power with responsibility for the future."
... that has both a green and a pink marker, because yaay, womens! But, er, this is new to 2005?
The bit right before it about the TV movie: "The Doctor was adrift in San Francisco and the plot now reflected American interest in action and romance and plot preoccupations familiar from Star Trek. For the first time, the Doctor kissed a woman and spoke about his family."
... and here precision ought to count, because he spoke about his family in Tomb of the Cybermen (a story arc mentioned earlier in the chapter), and talked to his family rather a lot due to travelling with his granddaughter.
Then it goes on to be all half human is a Spock thing, interest in Earth as mother's planet is Oedipal, etc etc
Though I'd think there's quite a long way between 'wishes to be friends with same species as his mother' and, you know, Oedipus.
But again, it skips the ways family had been (for at least one story) important in the classic series (Victoria, Nyssa, Tegan), and in the 2005 series, and calls it American to be interested.
That's just weird.
But the chapter starts off with saying "Doctor Who had found his niche as a British character living American B-movie adventures" so *big shrugs*
I need to read more and more substantial stuff. And I need to write something. Anything. Small things.
:-p
I'm looking forward to this course ending. Don't know what I'll do next, but is hard to find the fun doing this.
but when I bring it home to read it turns out every references is either
Terry Nation (who wrote for Doctor Who)
Douglas Adams (who wrote for Doctor Who)
or Peter Cushing (who played Doctor Who in the movies)
and only the one chapter is in fact vaguely theory type stuff about Doctor Who.
On the one hand, I have finished reading the useful bits of British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide. Which is yaay. On the other, I could have photocopied pages 52-71 and instead I brought home a 300 page hardback. :-/
Also I'd forgotten I have already photocopied the interesting bits, and the reason I hadn't photocopied pages 52-71 was they were not in fact interesting. I've got a bunch of sticky notes in there but they're mostly the bright pink of pick a fight with this. Also they're mostly on statements about how rubbish the Doctor Who FX were (compared to what? Compared to Star Trek, apparently, but really? And the BBC used Doctor Who to try out new tech, like chroma key, so it was sometimes 'rubbish' in a really quite cutting edge way while trying to figure out what to do with it.), or contradictory statements where the Doctor kissing girls is weird American imposition one page, adult exploration of sexuality the next. Yes, the TV movie was egregiously awful, but that doesn't make kissing American.
Also it seems to be calling fandom the result of entrepreneurs seeing a marketing opportunity just like Star Trek. Fan organisations and conventions are marketing? It's possible it is talking about American cons and means to contrast with British ones, but it makes it sound like cons are in fact American, which, really, no.
... and having complained about this on the internet I can throw those markers out. Doesn't leave many.
The bit where it reckons casting Billie Piper was because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, rather than, say, twenty five years of Doctor Who companions, is just bizarre. What's the connection? Casting a pop 'starlet'? Is there something I don't know about Buffy stars? All the chapter offers is that RTD likes Whedon, and really, which writers don't now?
More useful to quote about 2005: "Themes that marked the programme as a product of its time included an unprecedented acknowledgement of the Doctor's sexuality and a marked emphasis on female agency. Strong female characters abounded and almost all the episodes were either resolved by female intervention or concluded with a female character in the position of power with responsibility for the future."
... that has both a green and a pink marker, because yaay, womens! But, er, this is new to 2005?
The bit right before it about the TV movie: "The Doctor was adrift in San Francisco and the plot now reflected American interest in action and romance and plot preoccupations familiar from Star Trek. For the first time, the Doctor kissed a woman and spoke about his family."
... and here precision ought to count, because he spoke about his family in Tomb of the Cybermen (a story arc mentioned earlier in the chapter), and talked to his family rather a lot due to travelling with his granddaughter.
Then it goes on to be all half human is a Spock thing, interest in Earth as mother's planet is Oedipal, etc etc
Though I'd think there's quite a long way between 'wishes to be friends with same species as his mother' and, you know, Oedipus.
But again, it skips the ways family had been (for at least one story) important in the classic series (Victoria, Nyssa, Tegan), and in the 2005 series, and calls it American to be interested.
That's just weird.
But the chapter starts off with saying "Doctor Who had found his niche as a British character living American B-movie adventures" so *big shrugs*
I need to read more and more substantial stuff. And I need to write something. Anything. Small things.
:-p
I'm looking forward to this course ending. Don't know what I'll do next, but is hard to find the fun doing this.