Thursday, September 25, 2014

The Long Doctor

Back in the tech mall. Here I am with my new laptop, but the wi-fi just doesn't seem to work at school anymore. Anyway, it's air conditioned in here.

Just came from Mythology class where instead of doing group work myself and five other students talked about television. Doctor Who came up, I said I'd seen every episode in existence. I explained I didn't binge watch it, just watched one episode a night for about a year and a half. "That's commitment!" said one guy as though binge watching is much easier. Everyone in the group said they binge watch television series. I think this has become a very normal way to watch TV shows. Among other things, it suggests to me that people in the U.S. have an extraordinary amount of time on their hands. But coupled with widespread assertions--I saw Terry Gilliam say it in an interview only recently--that all the creative talent in filmmaking is going to television, I wonder if what we're seeing is the beginning of the next stage in the evolution in film, analogous to the novel. Aside from some sporadic examples, the novel is generally considered to have emerged in the nineteenth century. With film being barely over a century old, perhaps it's already time to enter into its novel phase. Novels, in fact, originally appeared in serialised format, chapters of Charles Dickens novels appeared in monthly publications. Reading the novels of the nineteenth century could be described as binge reading serialised stories.

Most of the people I talk to at school are around ten years younger than me--I've also been talking to a Doctor Who fan in my Media Communications Class. She and the one I talked to to-day both say they don't like the new Doctor. The one in Media Communications says she hated the Eleventh at first so she's waiting for this one to grow on her. The one in Mythology class says she's already given up.

I do remember how there were people who didn't like the Eleventh Doctor so maybe it's just some growing pains. I keeping thinking about what my friend Brian said about the writers attempting with this Doctor what was attempted with the Sixth, which is basically to make him unlikeable and selfish. The contrast was marked in the transition from Fifth to Sixth as the Fifth, particularly in his final season was portrayed as particularly daring and self-sacrificing. Almost immediately after regenerating, the Sixth talks about how disgusted he was by memories of the Fifth Doctor's nobility. He refers to events in what has since become widely regarded as the best episode of the show's history, The Caves of Androzani. The Sixth's first story may suffer therefore for contrast but I think even isolated it's justifiably called one of the worst stories, if not the worst story, of the series, The Twin Dilemma. The Sixth Doctor displays more definite cowardice than the Twelfth who, seemingly abandoning Clara in "Deep Breath" is soon revealed of course to have not abandoned her after all. The Sixth unequivocally abandons Peri, his companion, in the face of danger.

The idea, from what I understand, was to make the Sixth become gradually nobler over time but he proved so unpopular he and the writing staff were jettisoned after a relatively short period.

It occurs to me that twelve is twice six. More than that, I'm thinking about how the Valyard was mentioned at the end of the previous season, supposedly an incarnation of the Doctor between his Twelfth and Thirteenth selves. He's introduced in the Sixth Doctor's final season where he puts the Doctor on trial. What if the theme of the Doctor wrestling with his guilt this season ends with him abandoning morality, effectively becoming the Valyard? It would be kind of neat.

Twitter Sonnet #669

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