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Change, my dear

I’m not sure that there’s much consequence to most classic Who stories. Ghost Light is maybe a little odd in that its events have less to do with plot than with theme. There is really no more or less carry-over than you get from Planet of Evil — except that maybe the themes will stick with the viewer more than the mechanics of who escaped from which prison in which order.

Ghost Light is about evolution in all of the ways that the concept could be applied to life, both literal and abstract.

It’s basically the same idea as Adaptation. That’s a really abstract movie about, well, adaptation. It uses the diversity of orchids and the desperation of species to propagate as a metaphor for the creative struggles of a screenwriter (indeed the very person writing the movie at hand), the tragedies and coping mechanisms of a weirdo plant poacher in the Florida Everglades, and the unfulfilled life of a posh magazine writer from Manhattan. And as with Ghost Light, the film doesn’t have much of a plot — at least, not until its shambling events reach the notion of tacking on a hackneyed Hollywood style conclusion of the sort that one of the story’s characters would have written. Instead, every element of the story exists in order to explore some aspect of its basic theme.

Ghost Light plays kind of loose with the literal mechanics of evolution, because it’s more concerned with the implications of change versus stasis. Change is embodied in Control and Ace. Anyone who fails to adapt to circumstances, like the policeman who refuses to wrap his head around what is happening, tends to perish. Nimrod is simple enough to roll with and accept whatever he is handed, so he turns out okay. Josiah’s whole interpretation of change is warped (in a very typical way, insofar as classical understanding of Darwinism), such that he views it as a narrow one-way journey to a static supremacy rather than a simple response to the needs of the environment. His reading doesn’t hold up in the end, so he also dies.

The way that I spell all of this out, I’m making it sound more complex than it is. Basically, it’s just 75 minutes of fantasy TV that dramatizes the notion of evolution in all its permutations.

(February 24th, 2012 @ 11:00pm)



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Mental graces

There’s this guy, Lawrence Miles — I think I might have mentioned him. He used to write for the Doctor Who novel range; these days he mostly grouses on the Internet and writes long, analytical books about the series. Some people love them. Others dismiss them, and Miles, out of hand because of his lack of attention to the facts. He makes the mistaken assertion that a sound effect was dubbed in after original broadcast; this means that his argument about the thematic content of a serial is invalid. Therefore his work is useless.

I don’t really see the big deal. What you get out of his writing depends on what you’re looking for — fact or insight. One is not necessary for the other. And if one has to prioritize, I’d say that for something as trivial as art and entertainment, facts are nice but not as interesting as insight.

The problem appears to be a matter of trust; if he gets a few obvious details wrong, then how can a person look to his writing as a source of viable information? What else might he have messed up?

That only strikes me as a problem if you’re looking for raw information, as opposed to an alternative thought process. I haven’t actually read his books, but I find some real value in the weirdest of Miles’ online ramblings. Even when he bases his arguments on false assumptions, or when his biases are glaring from the text, I am often amazed at the clarity of the connections he makes within those boundaries. He’s kind of brilliant in his analysis; all he needs is someone to check him on the details sometimes. As a reader it’s not too hard to do that along the way, and ignore or mentally shift some of his points to put them in line with reality. I think the perspective I gain is usually worth the ongoing translation.

I mean, you can get information anywhere — then once you have it, it’s kind of a dead end. What do you do with it? From madness comes a certain clarity, and Miles exhibits a very lucid madness. I feel it opens the mind somewhat.

There is also this idea that it can’t be insight unless it’s based on fact. If it’s not factual, then it’s fiction — or a flight of baseless fantasy.

That’s silly. Truth and fact are two very different things. Some of the greatest truth and insight comes from fiction. Likewise, facts can easily occlude the truth of a situation by shutting down thought — as if they mean something in and of themselves.

Facts come and go. The way that you process them, that’s universal.

Look, there’s a place for everything. Facts and figures are the intellectual equivalent of brushing your teeth, combing your hair, and choosing a nice shirt in the morning. They make it easier to approach you and listen to what you have to say, but they don’t substantially change what you bring to a conversation.

It is useful to have the right facts when entering a discussion, much as it is useful to wear the right tie and trousers to a function. It cuts down on the amount of parsing required of the other party.

Compare:

“Who is this guy? Does he know where he is? Who does he think he is? Who does he think we are?”

“What is he talking about? That’s not true at all. Where does he get these ideas? This is nonsense.”

So there is a social grace to being cautious with the details. What’s important in the end isn’t the facts that a person waves around; it’s what a person does with the facts.

Reason is a template that stands apart from its context. If a person is totally arbitrary and inconsistent in his argument, then his conclusions would never have a ring of truth regardless of the facts. If a person is totally arbitrary and inconsistent with his facts, there is still a reasonable conclusion to be made with the materials at hand. Straighten the facts, and if the reason is sound enough it will tend to adapt and hold.

I have no idea where Miles gets his starting notions about things. Sometimes they’re kind of bewildering. Given those assumptions, though, I often am inspired by the clarity of his vision.

Then again, it’s not hard for me to compensate for the warped lens that he uses. Maybe you don’t think it’s worth the energy. I don’t think it takes much energy at all. I guess I just lack those social graces.

(February 23rd, 2012 @ 1:24pm)



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Bringing back the Who

People often criticize the last few years of Doctor Who’s original run. I get the surface complaints. The show had no budget or support from the BBC. It was produced in a rush. Nobody outside the core creative team wanted to work on it. Often the scripts overreached the talent and money available. It looked cheap. It felt neglected. Some people just don’t like Sylvester McCoy as an actor. Fair enough.

What confuses me is when people complain about Cartmel’s vision for the show. They say it’s “just not Doctor Who”, as if the show had ever been static. Well, beyond the doldrums of Tom Baker’s era and the early-mid 1980s. I’m guessing that’s what they mean, but that’s not how they explain it.

Their problem, as I often hear it, is in the portrayal of McCoy’s Doctor. Suddenly the Doctor is a puppet master; his mind is all in the future rather than the present, as he winds huge schemes around everyone and everything to achieve some goal of his own. This is overstating the case, of course; although the novels go nuts with this concept, in the show McCoy’s Doctor is more of an awkward professor. He tries to plan or anticipate situations, but he only ever sees the big picture and so spends most of his time reeling from the unexpected. The result is a strange little man who always seems to know more than he should, and who rarely steps forward to explain himself.

Thing is, that characterization has always been there to some extent. There’s a great deal of the Columbo to Troughton’s and Tom Baker’s portrayals, for instance; their Doctors allow everyone around them to underestimate them wildly, to allow them the space to explore or manipulate the situation behind the scenes.

Take Troughton’s handling of Klieg, in Tomb of the Cybermen. He allows the man to rant and assert his ego, while the Doctor scurries in the background to press buttons and work his own solutions. With his understanding of the situation, the Doctor could well have asserted authority and taken control — but that’s not his style. He would rather observe, and insert himself at key moments to change the course of events.

This is actually the trait that has always attracted me to the character; you never quite know how much the Doctor knows, and the supporting characters know even less of it. All you know is that he’s the most observant person in the room, and that his brain has already extrapolated things many steps beyond what’s in front of him.

McCoy’s portrayal just seems like a pointed example of this characterization — which may be why, for me, his Doctor feels like one of the most definitive. This is also probably why it has taken so long for me to accept more authoritative portrayals like Pertwee’s and Tennant’s; they lack that subversiveness, or at least neglect it by comparison.

This may be the first time I’ve compared Tennant to Jon Pertwee. Good grief.

Anyway. Cartmel’s era feels to me like an attempt to return the show to its 1960s roots — the subversive and ambiguous protagonist, who acts more as a supporting character to the companion; the ambitious scripts that explore broad social or theoretical concepts. I believe that Cartmel has said a few times that this was his intention, and I think it shows. Take out everything from Pertwee through Colin Baker, and I think the show progresses pretty seamlessly.

(December 8th, 2011 @ 9:45am)



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Bob Holmes

Robert Holmes has long been held as the ideal of Doctor Who scriptwriters. He was in charge of the early Tom Baker era, and wrote many of the most popular stories of the 1970s and early ’80s. These are the stories that never budge from the top of popularity polls, and that in established fan circles it’s almost heresy to criticize.

The thing is, I find his work tedious and smotheringly middle-class. True, he did have more of his own to say than Eric Saward (who was in charge during the early ’80s). And when he hid or diverged from his references, I rather like the results. The Deadly Assassin is probably his most progressive set of scripts. Although people talk up the Manchurian Candidate parallels, it has basically nothing to do with that story and it brings the show somewhere it had never been before. The closest that it’s come since is probably “The Waters of Mars”, which again is one of the best stories of its era.

Doctor Who has always had an aspirational middle-class sensibility, and since its very first episode always has been a jumble of cultural and genre references — particularly Welles and Verne. At its best, though, the pastiche has been subtle and practical. It’s not like The Daleks lingers around, rubbing your nose into parallels with The Time Machine; it uses the basic framework of that story to explore some fresh ideas and move the show’s concept forward. The first few years of the show (and indeed the last few) make great pains to be socially and culturally progressive. The show is aspirational, but generally toward new ideas and complex values (rather than security and leisure). If that means borrowing a few props from the cultural vault, then fair enough.

With Robert Holmes, though, the middle-class values become stifling and the pastiche becomes shameless. That middlebrow sense of entitlement and smugness shows far more than normal, and it rather puts me off.

Under Holmes, there’s always a false sense of superiority lurking just beneath the show’s skin. In every story there has to be a comedy lower-class or regional character (Milo Clancey, the Spearhead poacher, Vorg and Shirna) or lazy stereotype (Talons). Similarly, to me all of the overt pastiche hints at a false erudition; you spot what the show is referencing (Frankenstein! The Thing from Another World! Sherlock Holmes!), which makes you feel clever and superior even though neither you nor the writer has done anything to warrant the impression. It’s just a pat on the head for being of the right demographic. And then there’s the whole jolly imperial tone to the proceedings, with the Doctor as the cultured white man who knows everything — just, ick.

Again, it’s better than the creativity vacuum of Saward’s stewardship. At least Holmes was a confident and competent writer. His work just makes me feel icky. Combine it with Tom Baker’s attention-hog performance, and my mind begins to glaze over.

(November 21st, 2011 @ 10:22am)



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In the Dollhouse

Okay. Mark Gatiss is capable of writing an episode that I enjoy. So far so good for the second half, here. If Tom MacRae can impress me, and Gareth Roberts keeps up to his level last year, this last stint may well redeem the show for me.

My wife made the comment that this episode is more or less “Fear Her” done right. It also strikes me as Gatiss trying to do his own “Girl in the Fireplace” insofar as it boils down and narrates the show’s themes as a fairy tale from a child’s perspective. Also, the awkward porcelain-faced antagonists from a window reality. Considering “The Doctor’s Wife”, which was overtly a pastiche of “Fireplace”, I guess this year we’re seeing the Moffat Style Guide in full force.

Come to think of it, from a distance MacRae’s episode also seems to draw on Fireplace themes — popping into a girl’s life at various times, while she rapidly ages and confronts awkward… not porcelain but opaque white antagonists. Hmm.

As with last week very little here stands up to the slightest analysis. A logical breakdown seems beside the point of the episode, though. Smith is on the best form since “The Lodger”. Decent direction, though I could lose a few of the horizontal wipes.

Anyway. A weird sort of status quo, executed well.

(September 4th, 2011 @ 3:44pm)



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