John Cleese: I think, one of the most curious things about this piece is its wonderful "afunctionality."
Eleanor Bron: Yes, I see what you mean. Divorced from its function, I think, purely as a piece of art, its structure of lines and color is curiously counterpointed by the redundant vestiges of its function.
John Cleese: It has no call to be here; the art lies in the fact that it is here.
Eleanor Bron: Yes, I see what you mean. Divorced from its function, I think, purely as a piece of art, its structure of lines and color is curiously counterpointed by the redundant vestiges of its function.
John Cleese: It has no call to be here; the art lies in the fact that it is here.
Doctor Who, "The City of Death"
Introduction to the main part of this post
I have created a bunch of self-imposed rules for writing this blog. Some, I think, are common sense. For example, I will never write about my work here. I don't think a potential audience of seven billion should see my personal thoughts on my job. I also try to update it at least weekly; if I don't keep some momentum, it would just fade away.
I have created a bunch of self-imposed rules for writing this blog. Some, I think, are common sense. For example, I will never write about my work here. I don't think a potential audience of seven billion should see my personal thoughts on my job. I also try to update it at least weekly; if I don't keep some momentum, it would just fade away.
Others are just a reaction to what annoys me with too many internet posts. I try to avoid turning into an encyclopedia entry. I figure if you want to know about something, you'll highlight the terms, right click on them, and use the option that says "Search Google for..." I also try to avoid too many hyperlinks. Used sparingly, they can be interesting, but used aggressively, they just divert the reader from this page onto others.
Consider these two paragraphs:
I just finished the novel "Declare," a supernatural spy story by Tim Powers. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I didn't realize that one of the major characters, Kim Philby, was a real person until I read the author's afterward. I don't know if that's because the Cold War was never a major part of my life, or because the weak American education system made history really boring.
I just finished the novel "Declare," a supernatural spy story by Tim Powers. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I didn't realize that one of the major characters, Kim Philby, was a real person until I read the author's afterward. I don't know if that's because the Cold War was never a major part of my life, or because the weak American education system made history really boring.
The first one encourages you to stick around on CaveFelix and follow my thoughts on the novel. The second one encourages you to look at LOLcats and Wikipedia and whatever the random words I linked to remined me of.
My mini-review of the novel, by the way: This story, set in the Cold War, with flashbacks to World War II and earlier, tells the story of Andrew Hale, a British agent, and his involvement with a mysterious operation known as "Declare," that the Russians are working to prevent. Complicating the matter is that Declare doesn't just involve the British and Soviet agencies, or even just numerous international agencies. It also involves non-human creatures, alien things that humans sometimes call djinns, sometimes angels, sometimes fallen angels. It's a good spy thriller story, and I like how Powers handles the supernatural in his story; it's not people waving their arms and throwing fireballs; it's people following astrology and subtle superstitions and scared to death of what it might bring. While it's good, I feel that it's a bit too long. Some of the repetition in necessary for the plot and theme, but some of it feels like padding. It's almost 600 pages long, and could have been brought down to 500.
This intro is a little bit longer than I anticipated. I'd planned to just start writing about Doctor Who, and why I like it so much. But I wanted to start out by mentioning something about movie critics, which refers to an essay by Roger Ebert. And if I linked to the Ebert essay, you'd be leaving this site to read his work, and he's got a lot more experience writing interesting things than I do, so you might not come back, and then I'd be sad, just like this lolcat.
The Main Part of this post: Thoughts on seeing the new episode of Doctor Who
One of the late Gene Siskel's favorite movies was "Saturday Night Fever." I'm sure most of you would consider it a decent film, but wouldn't rank it up there with Citizen Kane, and wouldn't make it a point of pride to purchase the white suit from the film at an auction, like he did. Roger Ebert, in a reminiscence on his old partner, said it was because Siskel saw the movie at a particular time in his life, and empathized with the dreams of Tony Manero because of that. It's like the fact that, although the best pop music of all times clearly came out in the 1980s, people of my parent's generation would say that it was the 1960s that had the greatest songs, because that time period holds fond memories for them.
So, while it's possibly just because of when I first saw it, I'd say Doctor Who is the most important television show in history.
I was probably about nine years old when I saw my first episode. My father was watching the show on New Jersey Network. We were watching in the den, the only set in our house at the time with cable. (It was actually possible to watch NJN on UHF. I had an old black and white TV in my room. The main knob had 15 settings, from channels 2-13, and 'UHF.' Once set to ultra-high frequency, you chose the channel you wanted, and hoped the antenna sticking out of the back of the set was up to it. Primitive, yes?) I was only watching with half an eye.
I know it starred Tom Baker, but I don't know which episode it was. All I remember is that the Doctor, and possibly his companion, had to race against the clock to complete a task, or the villain would win. Even at that young age, I was sure what would happen: the clock would get down to one second, and the Doctor would pull the lever or whatever to save the universe. I knew, because TV scripts are horribly formulaic.
So my little pre-teen mind was absolutely blown away when time ran out. The Doctor had to find a completely different way to save the universe. It was like watching an episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk fails to get the people who have pink makeup and the people who have blue makeup to realize they're the same species, and they wind up annihilating their planet. It was like watching an episode of a sitcom where someone overhears a snippet of conversation, and rather than jumping to a ludicrous conclusion, just walks in and says "I'm sorry, but did you just say that you're planning to kill someone?" only to be told "No, we're making a surprise party for Helen." In short, it was the most exciting script I'd ever seen on television.
Doctor Who aired in England on November 23, 1963. (In the first episode of the show's reboot in 2005, they showed a photograph of Christopher Eccleston standing in Dallas on that day as a nod to this fact.) Almost immediately, the show was a large hit; the second plotline featured creatures known as the Daleks, homicidal monsters that look like saltshakers on wheels armed with laser beams with the trademark, robotic cry of "Exterminate!"
The basic formula for each show has remained the same over the years: The Doctor and the people he's traveling with at the time, known as his companions, travel in a machine called the TARDIS, which can go anywhere in time and space (unless the plot dictates otherwise). They arrive somewhere and discover a mysterious danger. It might be an alien invasion in the Andromeda Galaxy in the year 2567, or a peasant who found a dangerous alien artifact in 10th century France. In the end, they beat the bad guys, mostly because the Doctor is one of the most intelligent people in the universe.
One of the most interesting parts of the show started in 1966, when William Hartnell, the first man to play the Doctor, became too ill to continue the part. Rather than shutting the show down, or finding a lookalike, the script writers decided that the Doctor was an alien who happened to look human, and had the alien ability to change bodies (called regenerating). So they replaced Hartnell with the completely different looking Patrick Troughton. And it allowed them to write the Doctor with a new personality; Troughton was a lot more mischievous than Hartnell's crotchety old man.
It's something that's kept the show very fresh over the years. I read one interesting analysis which said that they've always hired first rate actors to play the Doctor. When the show is in a slump, it's more likely because of so-so script writers.When I started watching, NJN was airing shows written by Douglas Adams, author of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
When I started watching, the USA was way behind the curve in Doctor Whos. I was watching episodes that had originally aired in Britain in the 1970s, and the order Americans saw them in depended on how their local public television station negotiated with the BBC to buy the rights. Although the show went off the air in 1989, I probably saw the last episodes sometime in the early to mid 1990s.
When it came back, they had made a few changes to modernize it. To my mind, the biggest difference is not the actual special effects, but the fact that the companions have a totally different relationship with the Doctor. Not only is there sometimes romantic interest, but the original shows almost always had a scene like this:
Doctor (to Companions): I'm going to investigate this. Stay here.
Companion 1 (10 seconds after the Doctor leaves): Let's go wandering off and get captured by aliens!
Companion 2: Great idea!
Now the Companions are much more likely to be useful; often they're needed to keep the Doctor from doing something stupid.
Last night, I watched the first episode of the latest season, which introduced Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor. (Anyone reading this from Britain saw it two weeks ago. I don't know why BBC America delays it for two weeks, but it's better than when I started watching, and there might be a 25 year delay.) If I had to grade it, I'd give it a B or B-. It was enjoyable, but I felt like I'd seen some of it before.
The plot was fine (and I feel this is a relatively spoiler-free summary; it shouldn't affect your viewing pleasure too much): the newly regenerated Doctor discovers a crack in reality in a young girl's room. It leads to an interstellar prison where the guards are on the lookout for an escaped "Prisoner Zero." Unfortunately, since the Doctor has just regenerated, the Tardis is unstable, and he needs to take it on a trip to stabilize it, telling young Amelia he'll be back in five minutes.
One of the staples of the show has been the Doctor always had trouble with fine steering of the Tardis, and this is no exception. The minutes turn out to be years, and Amelia Pond has become plain Amy, a disillusioned young woman, crushed that the mysterious Doctor did not take her away from this boring little town to fairy tale adventures.
This is pretty effective, and a good reason to explain why this companion is interested in the Doctor. But unfortunately, they did something very similar a couple of seasons ago, where the Doctor promised to show a young lady miracles with the Tardis, and miscalculated how long it would take to return.
There was also a bit of foreshadowing that felt formulaic, when the Doctor is told that the season's big bad is coming and will threaten the entire universe. Since the last time we saw villains whose existence threatened all of reality was the preceding episode, where Doctor 10 gave his life, it felt a little unnecessary. An alien monster on the loose and Earth in jeopardy was enough excitement.
While things may have been a bit by the numbers, they were executed well. The acting was good, the action kept moving. Despite some cosmetic changes to the interior of the Tardis and the Doctor's favorite gadget, the sonic screwdriver, I'm not yet sure how Smith is different from his predecessors, but I'm willing to give him time.
This intro is a little bit longer than I anticipated. I'd planned to just start writing about Doctor Who, and why I like it so much. But I wanted to start out by mentioning something about movie critics, which refers to an essay by Roger Ebert. And if I linked to the Ebert essay, you'd be leaving this site to read his work, and he's got a lot more experience writing interesting things than I do, so you might not come back, and then I'd be sad, just like this lolcat.
The Main Part of this post: Thoughts on seeing the new episode of Doctor Who
One of the late Gene Siskel's favorite movies was "Saturday Night Fever." I'm sure most of you would consider it a decent film, but wouldn't rank it up there with Citizen Kane, and wouldn't make it a point of pride to purchase the white suit from the film at an auction, like he did. Roger Ebert, in a reminiscence on his old partner, said it was because Siskel saw the movie at a particular time in his life, and empathized with the dreams of Tony Manero because of that. It's like the fact that, although the best pop music of all times clearly came out in the 1980s, people of my parent's generation would say that it was the 1960s that had the greatest songs, because that time period holds fond memories for them.
So, while it's possibly just because of when I first saw it, I'd say Doctor Who is the most important television show in history.
I was probably about nine years old when I saw my first episode. My father was watching the show on New Jersey Network. We were watching in the den, the only set in our house at the time with cable. (It was actually possible to watch NJN on UHF. I had an old black and white TV in my room. The main knob had 15 settings, from channels 2-13, and 'UHF.' Once set to ultra-high frequency, you chose the channel you wanted, and hoped the antenna sticking out of the back of the set was up to it. Primitive, yes?) I was only watching with half an eye.
I know it starred Tom Baker, but I don't know which episode it was. All I remember is that the Doctor, and possibly his companion, had to race against the clock to complete a task, or the villain would win. Even at that young age, I was sure what would happen: the clock would get down to one second, and the Doctor would pull the lever or whatever to save the universe. I knew, because TV scripts are horribly formulaic.
So my little pre-teen mind was absolutely blown away when time ran out. The Doctor had to find a completely different way to save the universe. It was like watching an episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk fails to get the people who have pink makeup and the people who have blue makeup to realize they're the same species, and they wind up annihilating their planet. It was like watching an episode of a sitcom where someone overhears a snippet of conversation, and rather than jumping to a ludicrous conclusion, just walks in and says "I'm sorry, but did you just say that you're planning to kill someone?" only to be told "No, we're making a surprise party for Helen." In short, it was the most exciting script I'd ever seen on television.
Doctor Who aired in England on November 23, 1963. (In the first episode of the show's reboot in 2005, they showed a photograph of Christopher Eccleston standing in Dallas on that day as a nod to this fact.) Almost immediately, the show was a large hit; the second plotline featured creatures known as the Daleks, homicidal monsters that look like saltshakers on wheels armed with laser beams with the trademark, robotic cry of "Exterminate!"
The basic formula for each show has remained the same over the years: The Doctor and the people he's traveling with at the time, known as his companions, travel in a machine called the TARDIS, which can go anywhere in time and space (unless the plot dictates otherwise). They arrive somewhere and discover a mysterious danger. It might be an alien invasion in the Andromeda Galaxy in the year 2567, or a peasant who found a dangerous alien artifact in 10th century France. In the end, they beat the bad guys, mostly because the Doctor is one of the most intelligent people in the universe.
One of the most interesting parts of the show started in 1966, when William Hartnell, the first man to play the Doctor, became too ill to continue the part. Rather than shutting the show down, or finding a lookalike, the script writers decided that the Doctor was an alien who happened to look human, and had the alien ability to change bodies (called regenerating). So they replaced Hartnell with the completely different looking Patrick Troughton. And it allowed them to write the Doctor with a new personality; Troughton was a lot more mischievous than Hartnell's crotchety old man.
It's something that's kept the show very fresh over the years. I read one interesting analysis which said that they've always hired first rate actors to play the Doctor. When the show is in a slump, it's more likely because of so-so script writers.When I started watching, NJN was airing shows written by Douglas Adams, author of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
When I started watching, the USA was way behind the curve in Doctor Whos. I was watching episodes that had originally aired in Britain in the 1970s, and the order Americans saw them in depended on how their local public television station negotiated with the BBC to buy the rights. Although the show went off the air in 1989, I probably saw the last episodes sometime in the early to mid 1990s.
When it came back, they had made a few changes to modernize it. To my mind, the biggest difference is not the actual special effects, but the fact that the companions have a totally different relationship with the Doctor. Not only is there sometimes romantic interest, but the original shows almost always had a scene like this:
Doctor (to Companions): I'm going to investigate this. Stay here.
Companion 1 (10 seconds after the Doctor leaves): Let's go wandering off and get captured by aliens!
Companion 2: Great idea!
Now the Companions are much more likely to be useful; often they're needed to keep the Doctor from doing something stupid.
Last night, I watched the first episode of the latest season, which introduced Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor. (Anyone reading this from Britain saw it two weeks ago. I don't know why BBC America delays it for two weeks, but it's better than when I started watching, and there might be a 25 year delay.) If I had to grade it, I'd give it a B or B-. It was enjoyable, but I felt like I'd seen some of it before.
The plot was fine (and I feel this is a relatively spoiler-free summary; it shouldn't affect your viewing pleasure too much): the newly regenerated Doctor discovers a crack in reality in a young girl's room. It leads to an interstellar prison where the guards are on the lookout for an escaped "Prisoner Zero." Unfortunately, since the Doctor has just regenerated, the Tardis is unstable, and he needs to take it on a trip to stabilize it, telling young Amelia he'll be back in five minutes.
One of the staples of the show has been the Doctor always had trouble with fine steering of the Tardis, and this is no exception. The minutes turn out to be years, and Amelia Pond has become plain Amy, a disillusioned young woman, crushed that the mysterious Doctor did not take her away from this boring little town to fairy tale adventures.
This is pretty effective, and a good reason to explain why this companion is interested in the Doctor. But unfortunately, they did something very similar a couple of seasons ago, where the Doctor promised to show a young lady miracles with the Tardis, and miscalculated how long it would take to return.
There was also a bit of foreshadowing that felt formulaic, when the Doctor is told that the season's big bad is coming and will threaten the entire universe. Since the last time we saw villains whose existence threatened all of reality was the preceding episode, where Doctor 10 gave his life, it felt a little unnecessary. An alien monster on the loose and Earth in jeopardy was enough excitement.
While things may have been a bit by the numbers, they were executed well. The acting was good, the action kept moving. Despite some cosmetic changes to the interior of the Tardis and the Doctor's favorite gadget, the sonic screwdriver, I'm not yet sure how Smith is different from his predecessors, but I'm willing to give him time.
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