Guest January 26th 2011, 12:49 am
Ah, somebody mentioned Doctor Who!
Excellent.
litera9, it's neat that you've discovered DW, I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's neat that it's so accessible on netflix.
Seen it, been following it for ages. New and old shows, and hundreds of books in between (I'm really not joking about the books).
On line forum discussions, and talk with the occasional person from England seems to indicate that Doctor Who hit it's heyday in the 1970's. It wasn't necessarily a matter of cool, it was a cultural thing that everybody watched...especially when it was the guy with that really long, multi-colored scarf. Here in the US, nobody ever heard of it...except me, and hardly anyone else I ever met.
The new show did well about appealing to older (and more reasonable) fans, as well as general audiences. The shocker for me these days is how the more prolific exchange of story material internationally has suddenly made me able to talk about it with a larger range of people. These days, Doctor Who is I suppose cool, but in the sense has approached the acceptance of audiences similar to the way it did for the British public in the 1970's.
The first new Doctor, Christopher Ecclestone, was quite extraordinary. The newest actor, Matt Smith, seems to be doing interesting things with his performance as well. The plastic window dummies, they were an interesting choice for villain to start the show, but they were more creepy in the first story they appeared in, long ago. They are the product of writer Robert Holmes, in response to a trend around the time were there was concern about the proliferation of plastic, and the health concerns that might arise from the production and use of plastic (Holmes was regarded as a very clever satirist).
The newer incarnation of the show has it's dark moments, and in some places approached closely some of the needlessly grim bloodbaths that are held up as an example of why the show was failing in the 1980's. The producer who restarted the show, Russell T. Davis, has talked about how he likes to undercut moments of seeming joy with what he describes as a certain sense of British grim realism or pragmatisim (if I am remembering the commentary correctly). Moments such as a miraculous snowing on Christmas Day, which turn out to be the ashes of an enemy alien spaceship destroyed a few hours prior. It's one thing to be dark, it's another thing to cleverly disguise undercurrents of darkness with doses of cheerfulness. It's a family show, but that's not a disadvantage.
Did I overdo it?
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