23 November 2013: yesterday, someone assassinated President Kennedy. The papers are full of it. Somewhere in a back column, they mentioned that writers C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died yesterday - but of course JFK is the bigger news. And somebody told me that BBC Television will be starting some new science-fiction show tonight - science fiction on television, of all the strange things to do!
Well, fast-forward by precisly one-half of a century, and the dead guys are still (surprise, surprise) dead. The balance of attention between Kennedy and Lewis' death-days has levelled out a bit, which I'd say is a good thing, as Kennedy may have been 'the most important' on a materialistic scale but Lewis was far more significant from a spiritual perspective. Ultimately, though, they're both still dead. As is Huxley, but I know very little about him really.
Doctor Who, on the other hand, is very much alive and kicking, and since the beginning of this month or thereabouts, the entire BBC seems to have metamorphosed into a giant promotion-and-celebration machine for its own sci-fi brainchild. I haven't yet seen Mark Gatiss' drama about the show's origins, An Adventure in Space and Time, but it's waiting on the hard-disk recorder and I'm rather looking forward to it. Ditto The Science of Doctor Who. But the big news, of course, is the 75-minute anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, which will be airing tonight, precisely 50 years after the very first episode went out on 23 November 1963.
I've seen that first episode, An Unearthly Child (along with the next 12), and it makes for an intriguing comparision - most of the major components are already there half a century ago, but on many other levels the thing has progressed and reinvented almost beyond recognition. The acting has improved (thank goodness female roles no longer consist of "She sees the shadow of the monster. AAAAAAIIEEEGHH!!!"), as have the set design, the cameras, and the visual effects. It's not that the show has increased in ambition, necessarily, more that the technology has got to the point where the ambitions can be realised much more closely.
Tonight promises a huge, ambitious, monster-infested multi-Doctor story, and I for one am dead keen to see it. May or may not blog again afterwards, if I think my reaction to it was interesting enough to blog about.
Until 7:50 pm, then.
- The Colclough
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctor Who. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 November 2013
Monday, 3 September 2012
Daleks and Happiness
Yes: Daleks and happiness.
Not, I will admit, a combination that happens often. But on Saturday night, it did.
I liked Asylum of the Daleks. I haven't got round to my habitual re-watching on iPlayer with the subtitles on, but my impression (quite a distinct impression, at that) after the initial screening of the Season 33 / New Series 7 opener was a positive one.
As might have been hinted in previous posts on this blog, I was less than ecstatic with the way Doctor Who Season 32 / New Series 6 turned out. As time has moved on, and the first two Matt Smith seasons have become more and more a matter of hindsight, my liking for 31/5 has remained undiminished, but my dissatisfaction with 32/6 has become increasingly definite. Not to say it was without its moments - I thought The Doctor's Wife was mostly very good, and The Girl Who Waited was excellent (pleased to hear rumours that Tom MacRae has written another script, for the second half of 33/7) - but the season had some pretty naff episodes, and on the whole, I thought it was badly structured.
And then, there was the massive wait for the new season. All those months without Who.
But it was worth the wait. I think the fundamental problem with Moffat's episodes for 32/6 was that he was so busy trying to string together his massive River-centric arc that he forgot to make sure each individual story was satisfying in its own right. Some of them, in my opinion, definitely weren't, with the main culprits being A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song. I was therefore relieved when he announced a few months back that 33/7 would be a lot less arc- and cliffhanger-driven, with each episode being more of a standalone adventure - and that's exactly what Asylum of the Daleks turned out to be. Yes, it sets up some big questions for the rest of the season, but the story hangs together in and of itself, and I came away feeling that I had seen a proper, complete story, rather than only the first bit of something. It manages to be as intriguing as last year's opener The Impossible Astronaut, but without also being as frustrating.
Mixed feelings on the revised title sequence, but that's a minor thing. The point is that the episode itself works. I would rank it as Moffat's best script for the show since 31/5 finale The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, and - possibly - the best of the eight DW season opener episodes I've seen.
In my opinion, RTD was at his best during his first season, and at his worst during his second, with the third and fourth recovering somewhat. Moffat's first two seasons followed the same pattern, and if Asylum is anything to go by, then it looks like he might be following the third-season-recovery pattern too.
Which is why, for me at least, Daleks and happiness have coincided.
- The Colclough
Not, I will admit, a combination that happens often. But on Saturday night, it did.
I liked Asylum of the Daleks. I haven't got round to my habitual re-watching on iPlayer with the subtitles on, but my impression (quite a distinct impression, at that) after the initial screening of the Season 33 / New Series 7 opener was a positive one.
As might have been hinted in previous posts on this blog, I was less than ecstatic with the way Doctor Who Season 32 / New Series 6 turned out. As time has moved on, and the first two Matt Smith seasons have become more and more a matter of hindsight, my liking for 31/5 has remained undiminished, but my dissatisfaction with 32/6 has become increasingly definite. Not to say it was without its moments - I thought The Doctor's Wife was mostly very good, and The Girl Who Waited was excellent (pleased to hear rumours that Tom MacRae has written another script, for the second half of 33/7) - but the season had some pretty naff episodes, and on the whole, I thought it was badly structured.
And then, there was the massive wait for the new season. All those months without Who.
But it was worth the wait. I think the fundamental problem with Moffat's episodes for 32/6 was that he was so busy trying to string together his massive River-centric arc that he forgot to make sure each individual story was satisfying in its own right. Some of them, in my opinion, definitely weren't, with the main culprits being A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song. I was therefore relieved when he announced a few months back that 33/7 would be a lot less arc- and cliffhanger-driven, with each episode being more of a standalone adventure - and that's exactly what Asylum of the Daleks turned out to be. Yes, it sets up some big questions for the rest of the season, but the story hangs together in and of itself, and I came away feeling that I had seen a proper, complete story, rather than only the first bit of something. It manages to be as intriguing as last year's opener The Impossible Astronaut, but without also being as frustrating.
Mixed feelings on the revised title sequence, but that's a minor thing. The point is that the episode itself works. I would rank it as Moffat's best script for the show since 31/5 finale The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, and - possibly - the best of the eight DW season opener episodes I've seen.
In my opinion, RTD was at his best during his first season, and at his worst during his second, with the third and fourth recovering somewhat. Moffat's first two seasons followed the same pattern, and if Asylum is anything to go by, then it looks like he might be following the third-season-recovery pattern too.
Which is why, for me at least, Daleks and happiness have coincided.
- The Colclough
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Excuses: A Luxury Assortment Pack
Pick an excuse; any excuse. I've got loads for why I've lost "First 12 for '12" so badly, and you can take your pick as to which (if any) you feel like accepting. What follows is a list of other stuff I've been doing instead of winning my own blog race...
Drawing big geometric doodles with Sharpie pens - as mentioned earlier. Iteration 4 is now in progress. No Sharpie yet, but I've plotted out the basic forms in pencil, and so far it looks more like a grapefruit than anything else. Might show you a WIP photo eventually, but not yet.
Trying to design aliens - part of an ongoing (if intermittent) effort to work out what the major races of Universe XGT look like, in collaboration with Tim. The designs range from ones sprung entirely from my own imagination, via some intermediate co-designed ones, to a few species where Tim has said what they look like and I've taken it upon myself to interpret that in pencil. I've got one or two species presenting headaches at the moment, but once they're sorted out I might do a post featuring a selection of the drawings. Maybe. Watch this space.
Occasional cooking lessons - I haven't set fire to the kitchen yet, but I've had a go once or twice. This afternoon's masterclass was in the preparation of pasta bolognaise, which turned out more or less edible. However, I can't say I did it all myself, and I've got my doubts over whether it'd have been anywhere near as non-poisonous if I had.
Developing a bit of a musical superiority complex - I was given two CDs for Christmas, little sister got one too, and I have to say I think I got the better end of the deal, not just quantitatively but also qualitatively. She had something by some chap called Michael W. Smith - whose parents, I can't help thinking, were rather clumsy to have missed out the 'H.' that everyone knows should come between the 'W.' and the 'Smith', but that's another story. I had Jurassic Park OST by John Williams, and Karl Jenkins' Requiem. From what I've heard of MW(H)S, he sounds like just-another-pop-singer sort of thing, and I can't say I'm especially impressed.
Jurassic Park, on the other hand, is John Williams at his finest. If you let me count a whole film series (e.g. all six Star Wars episodes) as a single musical opus, then I'd probably say JP is outclassed by SW, and maybe also Indiana Jones, but in terms of musical achievement within a single film, I think I'd vote JP as Williams' masterpiece.
Requiem, meanwhile, is a bit of an odd album, but quite a fascinating one. It actually comprises two unrelated suites of music, setting three separate text cycles in a total of four languages (Latin, Japanese, Welsh and English, in order of appearance). The first, and by far the longer, of the two suites is the eponymous Requiem, and I've found it fascinating listening: considering that a Requiem, by definition, is a funerary work, a mass for the souls of the dead, it's a lot less sombre than you might expect. Elegaic in places, yes, but in the end it's actually rather uplifting.
Keeping up with Sherlock and stuff - I've seen episodes 1.1 and 1.2 twice each, and 1.3, 2.1 and 2.2 once each, plus read the script for 1.2, so my do-list for the rest of this week includes catching up on 2.3 before it goes off iPlayer on Sunday evening. Between Moffat and Gattiss writing at their best, and the brilliant casting and acting of Cumberbatch and Freeman, I've found all five episodes so far to be very good. Much looking forward to the next one. Before you ask, I can't make any comparison to the recent feature films, as I haven't seen those. But I can compare Sherlock to Doctor Who, and I'd say the latest series of S (so far) has been much more rewarding viewing than the latest series of DW.
Completing the Root Hill DVD 2011! - yes, at long last. The discs are in the post (well, most of them; I ran out of disc labels so the last few copies will be sent in a few days)... after four-and-a-half months in the planning and execution 8p
Writing the pilot script for a new animated series which might be the successor to Arbitrary Stopframe - when I laid AS Series 1 to rest back in December, I don't think I'd even come up with this idea. It grew out of the production of Smells Interesting a couple of weeks later if I remember right. The general concept is that it will feature three characters (new ones created specifically for the show), paper-cutout animation, and dialogue, with less emphasis on technical virtuosity relative to AS, and more emphasis on strange, random humour. Maybe as much as 2 or 3 minutes per episode. No idea how many episodes (if any) will end up getting made. We shall have to wait and see.
Statistics:
- The Colclough
Drawing big geometric doodles with Sharpie pens - as mentioned earlier. Iteration 4 is now in progress. No Sharpie yet, but I've plotted out the basic forms in pencil, and so far it looks more like a grapefruit than anything else. Might show you a WIP photo eventually, but not yet.
Trying to design aliens - part of an ongoing (if intermittent) effort to work out what the major races of Universe XGT look like, in collaboration with Tim. The designs range from ones sprung entirely from my own imagination, via some intermediate co-designed ones, to a few species where Tim has said what they look like and I've taken it upon myself to interpret that in pencil. I've got one or two species presenting headaches at the moment, but once they're sorted out I might do a post featuring a selection of the drawings. Maybe. Watch this space.
Occasional cooking lessons - I haven't set fire to the kitchen yet, but I've had a go once or twice. This afternoon's masterclass was in the preparation of pasta bolognaise, which turned out more or less edible. However, I can't say I did it all myself, and I've got my doubts over whether it'd have been anywhere near as non-poisonous if I had.
Developing a bit of a musical superiority complex - I was given two CDs for Christmas, little sister got one too, and I have to say I think I got the better end of the deal, not just quantitatively but also qualitatively. She had something by some chap called Michael W. Smith - whose parents, I can't help thinking, were rather clumsy to have missed out the 'H.' that everyone knows should come between the 'W.' and the 'Smith', but that's another story. I had Jurassic Park OST by John Williams, and Karl Jenkins' Requiem. From what I've heard of MW(H)S, he sounds like just-another-pop-singer sort of thing, and I can't say I'm especially impressed.
Jurassic Park, on the other hand, is John Williams at his finest. If you let me count a whole film series (e.g. all six Star Wars episodes) as a single musical opus, then I'd probably say JP is outclassed by SW, and maybe also Indiana Jones, but in terms of musical achievement within a single film, I think I'd vote JP as Williams' masterpiece.
Requiem, meanwhile, is a bit of an odd album, but quite a fascinating one. It actually comprises two unrelated suites of music, setting three separate text cycles in a total of four languages (Latin, Japanese, Welsh and English, in order of appearance). The first, and by far the longer, of the two suites is the eponymous Requiem, and I've found it fascinating listening: considering that a Requiem, by definition, is a funerary work, a mass for the souls of the dead, it's a lot less sombre than you might expect. Elegaic in places, yes, but in the end it's actually rather uplifting.
Keeping up with Sherlock and stuff - I've seen episodes 1.1 and 1.2 twice each, and 1.3, 2.1 and 2.2 once each, plus read the script for 1.2, so my do-list for the rest of this week includes catching up on 2.3 before it goes off iPlayer on Sunday evening. Between Moffat and Gattiss writing at their best, and the brilliant casting and acting of Cumberbatch and Freeman, I've found all five episodes so far to be very good. Much looking forward to the next one. Before you ask, I can't make any comparison to the recent feature films, as I haven't seen those. But I can compare Sherlock to Doctor Who, and I'd say the latest series of S (so far) has been much more rewarding viewing than the latest series of DW.
Completing the Root Hill DVD 2011! - yes, at long last. The discs are in the post (well, most of them; I ran out of disc labels so the last few copies will be sent in a few days)... after four-and-a-half months in the planning and execution 8p
Writing the pilot script for a new animated series which might be the successor to Arbitrary Stopframe - when I laid AS Series 1 to rest back in December, I don't think I'd even come up with this idea. It grew out of the production of Smells Interesting a couple of weeks later if I remember right. The general concept is that it will feature three characters (new ones created specifically for the show), paper-cutout animation, and dialogue, with less emphasis on technical virtuosity relative to AS, and more emphasis on strange, random humour. Maybe as much as 2 or 3 minutes per episode. No idea how many episodes (if any) will end up getting made. We shall have to wait and see.
Statistics:
- First 12 for '12 status: 9 down, 3 to go - I've lost. Oh well.
- Latest book read: the end of 2 Samuel from the KJV
- Latest film/TV watched: Middlemarch (1994 BBC version), part 6 of 6
- Latest music listened to: Requiem by Karl Jenkins
- Latest edible item eaten: that spag bol
- Predominant colour of clothes: shabby blue-greys again
- Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook and Word 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post), Skype
- Webcomics posted today: Fort Paradox Backstage
- The Colclough
Monday, 29 August 2011
Arbitrary Again
So, I'm back from Root Hill (might blog about that later), and Doctor Who is back on the air (I'm still confused, but my gut reaction is that I liked Let's Kill Hitler better than A Good Man Goes to War, even though there wasn't as much bashing of the Fuhrer as the title might lead you to expect). However, it's gone half ten at night, and unlike certain other people, that's a bit late for me to be starting to write an ambitious blog post. So I'll just leave you with a couple of little videos.
I forgot to embed Arbitrary Stopframe 8 when I uploaded it a few weeks ago. I've just uploaded episode 9, so I may as well take the opportunity to rectify my mistake, and embed both at once:
Now that I've finished my big crazy glut of travellings, I might try and get back to doing these things on a weekly basis. Ooh, how ambitious.
- The Colclough
I forgot to embed Arbitrary Stopframe 8 when I uploaded it a few weeks ago. I've just uploaded episode 9, so I may as well take the opportunity to rectify my mistake, and embed both at once:
Now that I've finished my big crazy glut of travellings, I might try and get back to doing these things on a weekly basis. Ooh, how ambitious.
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
Question 10: "You now have a type 40 TARDIS. Where and when would your top destinations be?"
Ooh, all of time and space... where do I want to start? A few of my destinations, in some semblance of chronological order:
My stats, at present:
- The Colclough
Ooh, all of time and space... where do I want to start? A few of my destinations, in some semblance of chronological order:
- ~4000 BC to watch the beginning of the universe. No need to skip ahead and watch the end, because one way or another I'll get to see that anyway. Spoilers...
- ~2400 BC to see what the Ark looked like.
- AD 1011, to see what my local area looked like a millennium ago.
- It's tempting to go to 1605 and give the Gunpowder Plotters a helping hand, just to see what would happen to history if they'd succeeded, but I don't think I'd go through with that one.
- I'd go to Skywalker Ranch circa 1994, pick up George Lucas, bring him to the present and show him how the world has reacted to the Star Wars prequels, and then take him back to 1994 so he could fix the scripts accordingly.
- There was this huge lantern exhibition in the local park when I was living in Hong Kong, and one of my lasting regrets is that I didn't take the time to try and appreciate the quieter, less OTT parts. I'd take my TARDIS back to Sha Tin Park in autumn 1997 and look at all the bits I missed last time.
- I'd go to 2005 and bribe Russell T Davies to not write Love and Monsters.
- Saturn, just because.
My stats, at present:
- Twenty Questions status: 16 down, 4 to go
- Days until Root Hill: 3
- Latest book read: Operation Mincemeat
- Latest film/TV watched: The Simpsons Movie
- Latest music listened to: Doctor Who Series 1 & 2 OST by Murray Gold - I scared myself when I hit 'play' because I'd turned the speakers up way too loud by mistake 8p
- Latest edible item eaten: beef burger
- Predominant colour of clothes: black
- Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Word and Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Fort Paradox offline archive; A White Horizon; Blogspot Create Post), Windows Media Player 11
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1338
- The Colclough
Saturday, 30 July 2011
What to Answer Next?
I started at the beginning and answered Question 1 first. Fair enough. But I don't think I'll be sticking to the order for much longer, mainly because Question 2 is the strangest and hardest-to-answer of the whole lot, and I need more time to chew it over. So where to go next? I don't want to do all the easy ones up front - some of them, maybe, but not all - so...
...um...
right, here goes: Question 4: "If you were a character in Doctor Who, who would you be?"
You know that green fellow with the giant pincers for hands, in Episode 257? I think that's probably me, because...
...no, I'm joking.
Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Rory Williams. Seems pretty obvious to me, anyhow. I'm proceding on the assumption that I'm supposed to compare the characters to my own actual traits rather than being idealistic. Part of me would dearly love to say the Doctor, of course, because he's ludicrously clever and all that, and he has a TARDIS. Tim and I have had... let's call it a discussion... of the relative merits of the TARDIS and the Enterprise. He maintains that by all objective standards of spaceship-ness, the Enterprise wins hands down. Which I suppose it does - it looks like a starship, it sounds like a starship, the crew all wear starship-ish uniforms, and so on and so forth. But that's all mere objectivity. I still think the TARDIS is subjectively better, in spite of everything. And it does have some objective advantages too, e.g. being able to travel through time just as easily as through space, and having about the same parking footprint as a Morris Minor, which is impressive for a vehicle with a library and a swimming pool inside.
But I digress. As much as I might like to compare myself to the last of the Time Lords, realistically I'd have to go with Rory. He's the one who I look at and recognise myself in. You know, the awkward, less-than-forceful personality, the way he gets the technically complicated stuff (e.g. the dimensionally transcendental TARDIS interior) but isn't always so much up to speed on dealing with the human beings, and so on.
That's not to say he doesn't have his strong points, e.g. his loyalty, which I would like to think applies to me too, although what with having never been anything other than single I've never had the opportunity to find out for sure about that one.
Did anybody think I was going to say someone else?
Statistically speaking:
- The Colclough
...um...
right, here goes: Question 4: "If you were a character in Doctor Who, who would you be?"
You know that green fellow with the giant pincers for hands, in Episode 257? I think that's probably me, because...
...no, I'm joking.
Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Rory Williams. Seems pretty obvious to me, anyhow. I'm proceding on the assumption that I'm supposed to compare the characters to my own actual traits rather than being idealistic. Part of me would dearly love to say the Doctor, of course, because he's ludicrously clever and all that, and he has a TARDIS. Tim and I have had... let's call it a discussion... of the relative merits of the TARDIS and the Enterprise. He maintains that by all objective standards of spaceship-ness, the Enterprise wins hands down. Which I suppose it does - it looks like a starship, it sounds like a starship, the crew all wear starship-ish uniforms, and so on and so forth. But that's all mere objectivity. I still think the TARDIS is subjectively better, in spite of everything. And it does have some objective advantages too, e.g. being able to travel through time just as easily as through space, and having about the same parking footprint as a Morris Minor, which is impressive for a vehicle with a library and a swimming pool inside.
But I digress. As much as I might like to compare myself to the last of the Time Lords, realistically I'd have to go with Rory. He's the one who I look at and recognise myself in. You know, the awkward, less-than-forceful personality, the way he gets the technically complicated stuff (e.g. the dimensionally transcendental TARDIS interior) but isn't always so much up to speed on dealing with the human beings, and so on.
That's not to say he doesn't have his strong points, e.g. his loyalty, which I would like to think applies to me too, although what with having never been anything other than single I've never had the opportunity to find out for sure about that one.
Did anybody think I was going to say someone else?
Statistically speaking:
- Twenty Questions status: 2 down, 18 to go (still winning...)
- Days until Root Hill: 21
- Latest book read: Operation Mincemeat
- Latest film/TV watched: Endgame (the 2009 film about the end of Apartheid in South Africa, not the other unrelated films of the same name) - I actually saw this before writing my last post, but I had the viewing order mixed up in my head and thought Sherlock had been later
- Latest music listened to: Doctor Who Series 5 main theme (appropriately)
- Latest edible item eaten: toasted muffin with bramble jelly
- Predominant colour of clothes: mid-dark blue (what did I say about a recurring theme?)
- Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Create Post; my last post; MatNav 6.1); The GIMP; Windows Media Player 11
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1323
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Mixed Stuff
Yay for anthology blogs! At least this time I've got a keyword that conveniently helps describe all of my points...
Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again. This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online. I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.
Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.
As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.
Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back? I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation. It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green. But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:
Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it. I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.
The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure. It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness. And that Sontaran was hilarious. But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode. Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time. Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.
Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church. Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing. Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.
Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary. Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all. I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage. I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.
So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about. And finally: anatomy. Yes, you read that right. The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures. I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense. As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology. You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well. The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches. You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see? Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties. Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant. My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads? Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.
Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.
And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.
Have a biscuit.
- The Colclough
Mixed Reactions: Tim told me yesterday that he has written the last-ever episode of Sidewards - again. This time, I'm told, it really is the end, and there are only a few weeks left before the final instalment of the strange but hugely enjoyable sandwich-assassin-fuelled weirdness is published online. I'm really looking forward to finding out how the plot resolves, but there'll be a little sandwich-shaped hole in my internet life for months afterwards.
Mixed Media: speaking of webcomics, yesterday I finished illustrating Fort Paradox episodes 67 to 70, using a technically complex art style that gives a parchmenty look (appropriate, considering the subject matter - you'll see what I mean when I publish the strips in a few weeks' time), which involved hybridising pencil sketches, an ink drawing, a failed attempt to incorporate oil pastels, and quite a lot of digital manipulation and arty-farty typography.
As a random side note, the new episodes are the longest consecutive run of FP strips to use the Candara font - the previous record being three, for strips 26 to 28.
Mixed Shades of Green: remember that pencil-on-canvas sketch of a kingfisher in action, which I mentioned a couple of posts back? I said in my last post that I'd painted the sky in, and this morning I've done a second, rather more involved round of painting, this time focussing on the vegetation. It took five different tubes of paint (only one of which was green) and five different brushes to create what could be described, in a reductionist analysis, as a big blob of green. But I'm quite pleased with my big blob of green, so I've decided it's time to take another photo and show you my progress:
Untitled Kingfisher Painting (still a work in progress... but this time with more progress!)
Mixed Quality: I saw the Doctor Who 'mid-series finale' A Good Man Goes to War the other day, and I feel compelled to comment on it. I'm amazed that a certain sheep-liking ginger person hasn't blogged on this topic yet, what with her well-documented obsession with all things Whovian, but that's beside the point.
The point is that for me, AGMGTW was a very mixed bag, brilliant and depressing in equal measure. It had some excellent lines (I found Rory's final remark before the title sequence particularly funny), and lots of lovely VFX stuff, and so on and so forth, and in several places it showcased the usual Steve Moffat cleverness. And that Sontaran was hilarious. But there were problems, on a scale I haven't seen before in a Moffat-scripted episode. Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it yet, you might want to skip the rest of this post - if you're going, then take a biscuit, and I'll see you next time. Otherwise, you're in for some ranting and railing.
Moffat, like Davies before him, seems to have something against the Church. Yes, I know, that's common enough, but it does get depressing when one's favourite science-fantasy telly show feels it has to join in the bashing. Granted, Moffat's bizarre depiction of the 51st-century 'Church', as a pseudo-faith-based interplanetary military organisation, seems to be stabbing mainly at Roman Catholicism (what with a reference to 'the Papal Mainframe') and high-church Anglicanism rather than the smaller, more down-to-earth Baptist congregations like the one I belong to, but it still irks a bit.
Some of the supporting characters were frankly unnecessary. Lorna came across (IMO, anyway) as an insipid example of the 'person who is in awe of the Doctor and desperate to meet him' archetype, and I really couldn't work out for the life of me why 'Thin One' and 'Fat One' had been included at all. I don't think they added anything interesting to the plot whatsoever, and they should have been cut from the script before the episode got anywhere near the filming stage. I've written some screenplays, and I know a thing or two about writing out unnecessary side characters, and I'm sure AGMGTW would have been better off without those two.
So, that's the thematic and narrative problems whinged about. And finally: anatomy. Yes, you read that right. The thing is, I'm a great stickler for basic anatomical plausibility in fictional creatures. I can accept the hypothetical existence of a faun, a unicorn (provided you assume the horn doesn't grow until after birth, so the baby doesn't rip the mother apart from the inside), a dragon, and many other things, but there are some fantasy critters out there whose anatomy just doesn't make any sense. As I explained in this post back here, I dislike centaurs on the grounds of their badly-thought-out physiology. You try to figure out the skeletal structure or the position of the major organs, and you'll quickly find out that they just don't fit! Which is where the Headless Monks go wrong as well. The phrase 'Headless Monks' does sound rather funky, but the literally-headless chaps in AGMGTW have a few fundamental anatomical glitches. You've got to wonder: how do they eat, drink, taste, breathe, smell, hear or see? Most known higher life-forms do all those things with their heads, and if the Monks don't have a head then they could face some serious difficulties. Well, not 'face' the difficulties as such, since the face is part of the head and they therefore don't have one, but you know what I meant. My suspension of disbelief can stretch to cover the Weeping Angels, the Vashta Nerada, the Star Whale, the Pandorica, Sardick's sky machine, the Silence, and many other things, but people who stay alive without heads? Sorry, Steve, you've lost me.
Here's hoping the monsters in the next few episodes make a bit more sense.
And, for those who are still reading: sorry about the whinyness.
Have a biscuit.
- The Colclough
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