Some holiday-cheer from Berke for these shortest days of the year (well, north of the equator).
Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Wars. Show all posts
20 December, 2015
Bloom County on Dem Holiday Blues
Some holiday-cheer from Berke for these shortest days of the year (well, north of the equator).
28 December, 2014
The Clara Oswald Hour
Below was originally written some weeks ago, before the 'Christmas Special.' After which I feel no reason to rewrite or retract any of the same...
Some few weeks ago, a lot of hot air was vented about the trailer for the New Star Wars movie. Now personally, I think the controversy over a black stormtrooper is just about equally as stupid and ridiculous as putting lasers on the hilt of a light sabre, but then again I never actually watched the trailer...or any of the post-ROJ films for that matter, and nor do I intend to. Fact is I don't really give a shit about Star Wars, or even Star Trek for that matter. I like them well enough, but I don't really have any emotional investment in them. Doctor Who is a different matter. Like so many, I grew up with Doctor Who. It was a part of my life as long as I can remember and it was an established cultural institution well before I was born. I still resent the fact that the BBC cancelled it, and I still see as an act of cultural vandalism the wiping of tapes that took place in the sixties and the seventies. When Russell T Davies brought the show back in 2005, I didn't care for many of his choices, but I stuck with it, and it got better as David Tennant was brought in, as we lost the chavvy companion, as old enemies returned, and as writers like Steven Moffat gave us the occasional compelling stories like Blink. I was initially sceptical of the casting Moffat chose as he took over the reins of 'showrunner' from Davies, but little Amelia Pond quickly won me over as did Karen Gillan as her older self, Arthur Darvill as Rory, and Matt Smith as an impossibly manic childlike Doctor. I thoroughly enjoyed Moffat's early tenure and even as the writing faltered over the two previous half-series, I wouldn't want to miss an episode. And then we had the fiftieth anniversary (with ridiculous number of special this, that, and the other) , followed by the revelation that Moffat was to give us a new darker more alien Doctor, played for the first time in decades by an older actor in Peter Capaldi, a throwback to William Hartnell's original. Brilliant ! So why, so long after the 'eighth' series of Doctor Who ended back in November can I still not get over how impossibly shite it all was ?
Not everyone would agree of course. Some people loved it. Many, more I suspect, hated it. It was if nothing else...divisive. So what you may ask did I dislike about it so much ? Was it Capaldi ? Nope. Jenna Coleman or Sam Anderson ? Nope. Was it the crap opening sequence (Hey, how can we symbolise time in a way that will be culturally relevant to millenials ? I know, antique clockwork timepieces, geddit ?!) or the shit theme tune ? That's not it. The cheapo budget, the almost total lack of multi-part stories, the refusal to use any of the characters created by Moffat's predecessor ? Not really. The writing, it must be the writing, right ? No, at this point, the substandard writing goes without saying, though this series did certainly produce some real stinkers (thinking of you, Kill the Moon). I know, it was Clara, right ? You think it's been turned into 'The Clara Oswald Show, guest starring the Doctor' ? Well...yeah, but it's more than just that.
See, I believe that as a rule, if you want an audience to invest emotionally in a character of yours they have to be either a)Interesting, b)Likeable, or preferably c)Both. Having created a character in Clara Oswald/Oswin/whatever that previously served merely as a sort of cipher, or arguably even a Macguffin, Moffat faced a lot of criticism over the lack of depth or character development in Clara. And he decided to follow up by making the next series of Doctor Who ALL ABOUT CLARA...ALL THE TIME. He turned the show into a sort of soap opera, with a central cast of just three (four, if you count Missy, blech), revolving around Clara Oswald and the conflicting relationships she had with the two men in her life: her new boyfriend Danny Pink and the Doctor. Forget spending more time exploring this newly mysterious and unpredictable Doctor, forget the monsters and the adventures, what we really need is a thorough exploration of the thoroughly toxic relationships between these three characters who spend much of the series lying to one another, threatening and insulting one another, and generally being assholes to one another. Moffat took a character in Clara Oswald who was ('Impossible Girl' not withstanding) not particularly interesting and mildly likeable, and gave us a character who was still not particularly interesting, and over the course of the series increasingly actively unlikable.
Some few weeks ago, a lot of hot air was vented about the trailer for the New Star Wars movie. Now personally, I think the controversy over a black stormtrooper is just about equally as stupid and ridiculous as putting lasers on the hilt of a light sabre, but then again I never actually watched the trailer...or any of the post-ROJ films for that matter, and nor do I intend to. Fact is I don't really give a shit about Star Wars, or even Star Trek for that matter. I like them well enough, but I don't really have any emotional investment in them. Doctor Who is a different matter. Like so many, I grew up with Doctor Who. It was a part of my life as long as I can remember and it was an established cultural institution well before I was born. I still resent the fact that the BBC cancelled it, and I still see as an act of cultural vandalism the wiping of tapes that took place in the sixties and the seventies. When Russell T Davies brought the show back in 2005, I didn't care for many of his choices, but I stuck with it, and it got better as David Tennant was brought in, as we lost the chavvy companion, as old enemies returned, and as writers like Steven Moffat gave us the occasional compelling stories like Blink. I was initially sceptical of the casting Moffat chose as he took over the reins of 'showrunner' from Davies, but little Amelia Pond quickly won me over as did Karen Gillan as her older self, Arthur Darvill as Rory, and Matt Smith as an impossibly manic childlike Doctor. I thoroughly enjoyed Moffat's early tenure and even as the writing faltered over the two previous half-series, I wouldn't want to miss an episode. And then we had the fiftieth anniversary (with ridiculous number of special this, that, and the other) , followed by the revelation that Moffat was to give us a new darker more alien Doctor, played for the first time in decades by an older actor in Peter Capaldi, a throwback to William Hartnell's original. Brilliant ! So why, so long after the 'eighth' series of Doctor Who ended back in November can I still not get over how impossibly shite it all was ?
Not everyone would agree of course. Some people loved it. Many, more I suspect, hated it. It was if nothing else...divisive. So what you may ask did I dislike about it so much ? Was it Capaldi ? Nope. Jenna Coleman or Sam Anderson ? Nope. Was it the crap opening sequence (Hey, how can we symbolise time in a way that will be culturally relevant to millenials ? I know, antique clockwork timepieces, geddit ?!) or the shit theme tune ? That's not it. The cheapo budget, the almost total lack of multi-part stories, the refusal to use any of the characters created by Moffat's predecessor ? Not really. The writing, it must be the writing, right ? No, at this point, the substandard writing goes without saying, though this series did certainly produce some real stinkers (thinking of you, Kill the Moon). I know, it was Clara, right ? You think it's been turned into 'The Clara Oswald Show, guest starring the Doctor' ? Well...yeah, but it's more than just that.
See, I believe that as a rule, if you want an audience to invest emotionally in a character of yours they have to be either a)Interesting, b)Likeable, or preferably c)Both. Having created a character in Clara Oswald/Oswin/whatever that previously served merely as a sort of cipher, or arguably even a Macguffin, Moffat faced a lot of criticism over the lack of depth or character development in Clara. And he decided to follow up by making the next series of Doctor Who ALL ABOUT CLARA...ALL THE TIME. He turned the show into a sort of soap opera, with a central cast of just three (four, if you count Missy, blech), revolving around Clara Oswald and the conflicting relationships she had with the two men in her life: her new boyfriend Danny Pink and the Doctor. Forget spending more time exploring this newly mysterious and unpredictable Doctor, forget the monsters and the adventures, what we really need is a thorough exploration of the thoroughly toxic relationships between these three characters who spend much of the series lying to one another, threatening and insulting one another, and generally being assholes to one another. Moffat took a character in Clara Oswald who was ('Impossible Girl' not withstanding) not particularly interesting and mildly likeable, and gave us a character who was still not particularly interesting, and over the course of the series increasingly actively unlikable.
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