One peculiar thing about Doctor Who Series 11 is that it feels…. almost too carefully constructed. Like, casting Jodie Whittaker is the One Big Risk they could take and everything else has to be a carefully distilled amalgam of stuff that has already been proven popular.
Not to say that that they haven’t taken any other “risks” (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab both being a bit “controversial” amongst the stealth racist and imperialist crowd) but even those were tempered by a sort of caution, a fear of making the audience TOO uncomfortable, confronting TOO much at once
And there are a lot of elements to the “formula” and feel of Series 11 that give me the impression that they’re trying to do Tennant Era 2.0 (minus the Time War angst and melodrama) and I don’t know how to feel about that
Don’t get me wrong, I am really enjoying Series 11, it’s been pretty fucking solid so far, a lot of really interesting ideas being introduced, and I’m excited to see where they’re going with it, I just feel like it’s not going as far as it could?
Kerblam! could easily have been a really effective and scathing critique of Amazon and late capitalism as a whole (indeed it seemed like it would be at first)
but at the last moment they had to pull back and make it an incoherent milquetoast “eghh…. systems arent bad actually it’s individual people being naughty…. what can ye do?”
Say what you will about the Moffat era’s many flaws (and the RTD era too for that matter) but the one thing you can’t deny is that they did take risks. Thinking in particular of the EXPLICITLY anti-capitalist themes in Thin Ice and Oxygen last year.
Can’t help wondering if this newfound caution is just a temporary aspect of the Playing-It-Safe And Regaining The Audience approach for Series 11 that might go away next year or if we’re just doomed to be stuck in a One-Step-Forward-Two-Steps-Back spiral
Sometimes I get the feeling that Chibs and co. are making creative choices based on what it feels like they’re supposed to do.
Like, obviously casting a female Doctor was a gamble, but the conversation online and in the media was that the time was right for it to happen and not doing it would seem backward. Which was totally true! It was time for it to happen. It would’ve felt wrong if it was another white guy. And it drums up new interest in a show that seems long in the tooth. They made the right call there.
But it was the right call that they were supposed to make. Likewise, the polished aesthetics and more grounded storytelling were the right call when the public perception was that the show had gotten too convoluted and byzantine. These the are stories that you’re supposed to tell to get people back.
I know that Chibnall knows what he’s supposed to do. But for the life of me, I can’t tell what he WANTS to do.
RTD wanted to tell stories about big emotions. He wanted melodrama and angst. He wanted to tell stories about how people were sometimes nasty and brutish, especially in groups, but were capable of more. He wanted goofy aliens and deadly Christmas trees and all that shit.
Moffat wanted to tell stories about big ideas. He wanted twisty time traps and clever reveals. He wanted to tells stories about what it means to be a good person and how nothing is hopeless. He wanted closed time loops and meta narratives and all that shit.
There are moments in both of their versions of Who where I can imagine them sitting back in their chair after writing something and cackling with delight. And that’s why you take risks, because if you try something and it works, it’s gonna be amazing. And you really want it to be amazing.
I never get that with Chibnall’s writing. I never get that feeling that he’s doing something that he’s really excited about doing. Like, Doctor Who is this huge sandbox and he’s making a row of small, standard castles in it, aesthetically immaculate but still generic. Because castles are what you’re supposed to make.
Evelyn Smythe, a Big Finish companion to the Sixth Doctor, taught at Sheffield Hallam University and I’m picturing her getting onto Graham’s bus every night after teaching and them having a sorta friendship/rapport.
At some point Six and Thirteen meet and Graham and Evelyn are like “Oh hey, it’s you from the bus!”
Things I want to see: Thirteen putting snacks in her fanny pack and eating during the most inappropriate times and her companions looking at her like “really??” And then she’s like “yeah I brought snacks (:”
That would be iconic 😂
Davros: People and planets and stars will become…
Thirteeen: CRONCH
Davros: Will…will become…DUST
And the dust will
Thirteen: CRONCH CRONCH CRONCH
Davros: the dust will…are you…eating monster munch while I monologue
Thirteen: no…..
Davros: You have the bag in your hand
Thirteen: no I don’t
Davros: Your holding it right now
Thirteen: (Very very slowly lifts a monster munch to her mouth while keeping eye contact the whole time)
“There’s no good taste, there’s your taste” is a nice sentiment, but let’s not pretend there isn’t media that we enjoy precisely because it offends our aesthetic sensibilities, not in spite of it.
I’m tempted to say that “offends one’s aesthetic sensibilities” is yet another aesthetic sensibility
alright don’t be mad but. i never read the great gatsby. i know i was supposed to. yes, it was assigned to us. i even know, more or less, what happens in the book. technically, i wrote an essay about it, i think, once or twice.
at the time, i hadn’t read any book assigned to me. ever. it wasn’t that i didn’t like to read. i loved reading. but homework took place in a function of my brain that i couldn’t access. i would sit in libraries or at my desk and just. not do my homework. i spent hours like this, days like this, years like this. just not doing what was assigned to me, no matter the consequences, no matter how badly i wanted to be doing it. i just wouldn’t. and i wouldn’t go to class because i didn’t want to deal with the fact i didn’t do the homework. and then i wouldn’t get the homework. so i didn’t do it.
i remember realizing while i was doing college applications that i had actually, real-life fucked up. that it was permanent, what i had done. that i had a C- of an average and no future to look rosy at. and i still couldn’t make myself do things. i tried to submit applications only to realize i’d shoved off the date to the very last moment. and i was fucked.
it takes me three years and two transfers and three new starts before i am actually real-life trained how to study, how to read, how to enjoy being assigned things.
and i watch parents of my students yell at students for being the same person i was six years ago: screaming at an A-, confused at skipped classes, punishing missed homework. and these students don’t have an answer. they just don’t do things. even if they want to. and they look at me, confused and defeated and without an answer for their parents. “i just can’t,” i hear a lot, and i understand.
parents don’t like “executive dysfunction” as a reason. “anxiety” and “depression” are often misdiagnosed as “procrastinating” and “lazy”. kids just learn they’re like this. that they’re always going to be. that it’s their fault, permanently. they are surrounded by books they didn’t read. and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like suffocating.
today i started “the great gatsby.” i promise. one day, it’ll feel easy.
One of the reasons I feel so comfortable using Tumblr over other social media is because this site is clearly too incompetent to be evil.
The basic business model of a social network is to harvest commercially valuable personal data and sell it, most famously via targeted ads. Anyone visiting my blog can clearly see that I am a queer furry who’s into video games and art. And yet I am only served ads for funeral homes, Bible story DVDs, and the current president’s reelection campaign (in 2018 for some reason)
Needless to say my click through rate has not been very good
So i went on a date to a haunted house and made friends with the girls behind us. As we’re going through, one of them is holding my hand and a guy leaps out and separates us. I panic as my date is pulling me along, I reach back for her and grab her hand in a group of three other performers and start getting out if there. After a bit I look back to check on her and I discover I’m holding the hand of a six foot tall zombie creature and not a 5'2" girl.
Cue the most terrifying realization of my life.
I had basically kidnapped this performer from his section and abandoned the girl and her friend behind us.
Yes, I screamed. My date thought it was Hilarious.
Yes, we found the girls. Turns out when I grabbed the performers hand, he grabbed theirs so our group wouldn’t be separated. So there was just this zombie in the middle of our group line for like fifty feet
Unfollow me now if you support the royal family, I don’t need that kind of drama in my life. Supporters of the Jacobite rebellion can stay but you’re on thin fucking ice
