SF Televideo Celebrations: Doctor Who, Buffy, X-Files, Hitchhiker's Guide
(heavily edited reprints from old DTM with a new bit at the end)
Modern Mythic: Tom Baker and Sarah Michelle Gellar (2007)
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Doctor Who is an English science fiction series that initially ran from 1963 to 1989. The reboot was in 2005 and the franchise shows no sign of quitting. By now, discussing the show's entire history from 1963 to 2007 has gotten complicated. My shorthand designations are:
Doctor Who = the complete older show that ran from 1963 to 1989
new Who = the current series
TB = the years that Tom Baker played the Doctor; he was number four between Jon Pertwee and Peter Davidson
While I know a little bit about Doctor Who and new Who, this essay is only about TB. My expertise was acquired when still in elementary school: The most important event in my day was getting home by 4:30 to watch a half-hour episode of TB on PBS. Eventually in fifth grade, I took second-place in the Chicago Doctor Who Convention Costume Contest as the Doctor -- although I won as Jon Pertwee. I didn't feel worthy enough to imitate Baker.
After getting serious about music, I became pretty contemptuous of television and turned my back on Doctor Who. But in my early-twenties, prompted by my first trip to England, I rediscovered the show and started collecting the videotapes. I thought this was just harmless nostalgia and assumed that I was now too old to ever form a significant relationship with another fantastical television series. Hah. Ten years later, my wife showed me an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. To my astonishment, I was instantly hooked.
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The shows are very different.
++ TB is a kids' show. BTVS is for teens and up.
++ TB is firmly science fiction/space opera, and BTVS is firmly fantasy/supernatural. There is a TB that is about vampires ("State of Decay"), but it also involves space ships and takes place on a far-away planet. There is a BTVS that involves an alien ("Listening to Fear"), but it is called to earth by a local god.
++TB is not the product of any one imagination, but BTVS was created and overseen by Joss Whedon.
++ While there are companions who travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS, there is no one as remotely important to the plot as the Doctor. In BTVS, Buffy is surrounded by friends and enemies who get their own important story arcs.
++TB is highly English, and BTVS is extremely American.
++TB is formatted as half-hour episodes that make up two- to six-part serials. BTVS is made up of 45 minute episodes that, while usually complete in themselves, end up being part of the longer soap-opera of the season, and indeed all seven seasons of BTVS also comprise an arc. This is not at all the case with TB with the exception of its 5th year, the Key to Time.
There are also countless other differences, large and small, between the shows. However, there are also a surprising amount of similarities:
++ Both TB and BTVS ran for seven seasons: TB from 1974 to 1982 and BTVS from 1997 to 2003.
++ The first three years of TB were produced by one particular team: Philip Hinchcliffe (producer) and Robert Holmes (script editor). The excellent companion was Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen) and the look and feel of the show was very consistent. In year four there was a new producer and new companion, and the show opened up a bit, at times uncertainly. Most TB fans would consider the first three years "the classic years." Likewise, the first three years of BTVS took place at a high school. Joss Whedon was the hands-on producer at all times, and the look and feel of the show was very consistent. In year four BTVS changed networks, Whedon began looking after the spin-off Angel as well, the characters were now at college without the same place to go to every day, and the show opened up a bit, at times uncertainly. Most BTVS fans would consider the first three years "the classic years."
++ Season six of TB has a lot of broad humor installed by the new script editor, Douglas Adams (soon to become famous as the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). A lot of the humor is send-ups of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and often of TB itself. Likewise, season six of BTVS has a lot of broad humor from the Trio, spoofing the nerds who live for the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and often being jocular about BTVS itself. Some fans of both shows are incensed by this humor, and really hate Douglas Adams or the Trio for their lack of respect. I have always enjoyed the fun, and certainly find it infinitely preferable to the cheerlessness of the last season:
++ Humor vanishes in both shows’ final year. It’s a grim trudge to the end, often with a new level of incoherence in the story line (think of "Warrior's Gate," or Giles and Anya consulting the oracle). There is also a sudden overpopulating of the shows in the final season (Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa in TB, the potentials in BTVS).
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While I suspect that most adults would find BTVS interesting if they gave it a proper chance, it is probably a mistake for someone who has never seen TB as a kid to try to watch as an adult. TB can be somewhat boring. In almost every serial, the first episode consists of the Doctor and companions wandering around the corridors of a cheaply-made spaceship set, a quarry, or unpopulated heath while a monster or alien lurks somewhere. As a kid I loved the slow "wandering about" intro episodes, probably since they let me slowly absorb the current serial's world. (I rather regret New Who's constant motion, which is more immediately engaging but far less distinctive. )
TB was made back in the day when the BBC brimmed with wonderful, blue-collar entertainment talent. They could make something out of nothing, and nothing was what they often had to work with. BTVS is comparatively high-budget and glossy.
Indeed, I thought I wouldn't like BTVS because it was glossy teen soap like The O. C. or even Dawson’s Creek. It turned out that was mostly not true. However, sometime it really is a teen soap, and at those times I cannot believe I'm watching it. Fortunately those scenes don’t last long. Soon a howling, vicious vampire will burst on to the set, chewing furniture and people alike, and the Slayer will draws her stake and kill.
Probably BVTS is the greater show overall. However, in the heart and mind of this author, TB does manage some kind of ineffable magic (a magic admittedly based in nostalgia) that puts it on the same playing field.
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TB and BTVS together: I have yet to meet anybody else who collated the similarities. But there is surely somebody else somewhere doing it. As of today there are 1,574 Doctor Who titles at Amazon.co.uk and 1,756 Buffy the Vampire Slayer titles at Amazon.com. The books range from simple episode guides to deep philosophical investigations, and also more fan fiction than you can imagine.
(I am uninterested in the non-televised fictional stories of either show except The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks. Dicks was script editor for the Jon Pertwee years in the 1970's before novelising some 70+ episodes of Doctor Who. He and the late Robert Holmes probably understood the "ineffable magic" of Doctor Who better than anybody. In The Eight Doctors, Dicks fixes several continuity errors and rights a few wrongs. There’s no sex, either, thank god, unlike in so much fan fiction.)
One of my guilty pleasures is reading the analytical books about TB and BTVS. This is from chapter four concerning TB, "Send up: Authorship and Organization," from Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text by John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado:
The disagreement over audiences and dramatic values between [Graham] Williams and [John] Nathan-Turner itself raised quite dramatically the ways in which and institution like Doctor Who can vary according to different production and professional practices. This chapter will look at ways in which variations within professional ideology materially affect production practices; and further, at ways in which professional values that are ostensibly identical can themselves be inflected differently according to pressure from within and outside the television industry.
And this is by Neal King, from his essay "Brownskirts: Fascism, Christianity, and the Eternal Demon" from the anthology Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale:
The quasi-fascist philosophy that justifies Buffy's slaying concerns me in my next discussion. I will outline the show's cosmology and by doing so, set up my imaginary Buffyverse, just to make my point about the show's potential for fascism. I conclude with a better solution to this problem, one that stretches credulity less and eliminates the show's nasty streak of racism. The important characteristics of the existing Buffyverse that prime it for fascism include elements of a Manichean racism (tempered by an Augustinian division of the world's evils), adherence to primal and state authority, and formation of citizenship in ritual combat. I consider these in turn.
Perhaps these are absurd pursuits. Nonetheless, if you want to keep me quiet and absorbed, just give me a new book of TB or BTVS analysis and you won't hear from me for several hours. In fact, that chapter in the Tulloch/Alvarado is one of the most interesting things I have ever read! The book as a whole is swollen with overly turgid prose, but in that chapter Douglas Adams is interviewed extensively in counterpoint with producers Graham Williams and Nathan-Turner, and it gets quite gritty and revealing.
As far as Buffy and fascism goes, I have never studied philosophy. Someone who has will undoubtedly protest that I need to actually read Augustine for real, but that is just not going to happen. Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale is the closest that I am ever going to get.
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Looking though TB and BTVS literature, one gets the sense that some of the fans of both shows are occasionally a little resentful of the lead actors. Snarky comments abound. I’ll make up a couple of plausible quotes:
"Baker overdid his role, and at times his contempt and arrogance comes through. I mean, who was ever a better Doctor than Patrick Troughton?"
and
"Gellar was lucky to land the part, but really Nicholas Brendon and Alyson Hannigan are the heart of BTVS. I also think that Gellar's wardrobe is absurd most of the time."
Snarky comments are probably the hardcore fans's way of showing love for all the elements of the show. However, if they think that the stars get too much of the attention, I disagree. The leads are crucial. These shows are about heroes -- the titles of the shows are their names -- and Baker and Gellar were born to play these parts. I'd love to read a book that took a serious look at the acting performances of Tom Baker or Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Similarities between Baker and Gellar:
++ While neither was really famous at the time of landing their roles, they were both were seasoned acting professionals. Baker, 30 at the start of season one, had played countless stage roles like Macbeth and had one important movie credit, the villain in Ray Harryhausen's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Gellar, while only 19 at the beginning of season one, had been acting since the age of four and won an Emmy for her work on All My Children.
++ They both were divas, especially after the shows proved popular. When the stars are discussed with other members of the production teams, something guarded or even resentful appears -- an attitude that must feed the fans' resentment, too.
++ They were the ones to call a halt to production. While there are conflicting stories about Baker, it seems reasonably certain that he said to the producer, "Don't you think it is time for a new Doctor already?" (Whether he expected his bluff to be called is unclear.) Regardless, at the time, the British press were told that Baker wanted to move on. In the American press, it was made clear that the decision to end BTVS was Gellar's.
++ After the series were over, both would refuse to do more with the show, at least at first. "The Five Doctors" had make do with outtakes of Baker from a previous episode -- and a mannequin of him from Madame Tussauds was delivered for the photo shoot. The 100th episode of Angel, "You're Welcome," was initially written to conclude the Buffy/Angel story, but then Gellar pulled out. While we are told that both were simply too busy to participate, it is ridiculous to think that they couldn't have made time to do these small but meaningful projects if they had wanted to.
The main thing about both of them however, is this:
++ They transmit their character in a pure, natural fashion. Whenever they are on screen, the viewer can relax. Both actors take whatever the production crew has thrown at them that week in stride. Their total commitment keeps the viewer from disengaging.
After all, like all television ever made, these two shows have a constant collection of flaws and blemishes. Forget special effects: how about poor plotting or bum dialogue? Even in the best television shows, there is just not enough time and money to get it all right. The star needs to carry the day.
TB almost always flags when Baker isn't there to move it along. In BTVS, the situation is much more complicated, since there is so much invested in every character. Indeed, many consider the "multiple character story arcs" one of the most innovative and important aspects of BTVS. (Ironically, New Who emulates many details of BTVS, including giving the Doctor's companions their own story arcs.) One of the most lucky group castings in television history was Alyson Hannigan for Willow, Nicholas Brendon for Xander, and Anthony Head for Giles. Whedon called them, along with Gellar, the "core four," and I love them all.
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Overall, the person with the harder gig is Gellar. Baker simply needs to be a genial madman, first eating a jelly baby and then furiously accusing an alien of attempted genocide. Gellar needs to reach much deeper. She has to be (among other things) a perky girl, a lover, the bereaved, a seer, and of course, a fighter.
One of the most telling Gellar performances is in "I Will Remember You" from the spin-off show Angel. I kind of like David Boreanaz. He's fine. He was a great plot line on BTVS and I like the idea of him taking a vampiric place in the long line of "brooding Los Angeles private eyes" on Angel. But compared to Gellar, he is average. On "I Will Remember You," Buffy and Angel reprise their usual double-act of heartbreak and demon destroying. Gellar is phenomenal, going from stern ass-kicking to goofy immaturity to mushy love to further ass-kicking and, at last, deep heartbreak.
Seeing this episode made me realize I was not going to keep watching Angel. Television needs the power of a star to keep me interested, and Boreanaz is just not that kind of star. (You would need to put a gun to my head to get to me to watch K9 and Company, a spin-off of TB without Baker.)
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According to my rough calculations, there is about 70 hours of TB. My favorite Baker performances include
Ark In Space A desperate, almost action-movie type of performance
Genesis of the Daleks Even Baker-haters love him in this one. When he gives Davros the history of the Daleks his voice is chilling
Pyramid of Mars Casual callousness and heat really getting turned on in the final episode
The Deadly Assassin Poking fun of stuffy home-planet Gallifrey, plus getting tortured in a vivid dream
The Talons of Weng-Chiang Baker imitates Sherlock Holmes
The Stones of Blood The debate with the interstellar jailers is superb
City of Death 10 out of 10
State of Decay The presence of old-timers Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks means that this story is by far the best in the otherwise weak last season. Baker responds beautifully
Logopolis The last serial has a weak story and companions. However, Baker is absolutely King Lear
According to my rough calculations, there is about 108 hours of BTVS. My favorite Gellar performances include
Prophecy Girl Vulnerable and invincible
Innocence A bad morning and death everywhere
Homecoming Pure bitch-fest with Cordelia
The Wish The alternative universe episodes allow Gellar to shine
The Zeppo My all-time favorite non-singing episode puts Buffy on the sidelines in favor of Xander; still, the Gellar scenes have the juice, too. I said above that many scenes of BTVS could played on something like The O.C. Not this one! The Zeppo is the greatest meta-TV I've ever seen.
The Prom The normal girl and the heroine in dialogue
Hush Powerful acting by all concerned, with far fewer lines to deliver than usual
Fool for Love In James Marsters, Gellar has someone who can actually threaten to steal a scene from her. Of course, the Slayer triumphs
The Body As shocking as TV gets
Once More, With Feeling The greatest episode of TV ever broadcast. Gellar is not the best singer of the cast, but her segments are the most moving. Her identification with her character is just amazing
Normal Girl Again, the alternative universe episodes allow Gellar to shine
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The slightly sombre coda to this celebration is the guarded assertion that these were Baker and Gellar best roles. Baker is now over seventy, and while he has done plenty of work since TB, none of it is immortal. Gellar is of course much younger, and has already starred in some high-profile movies (she's good in them, too). However, there really hasn't been something with the electric charge of BTVS for her yet, and I sense that she and most of the members of the BTVS crew have gotten a little too slick and Hollywood for their own good. (David Boreanaz married a Playboy Playmate, for chrissake.)
It probably doesn't matter if neither ever get a genre-defining role again. They both were called to duty, "chosen" not unlike Buffy Summers herself. They should be honored as the caretakers of our modern myths.
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Far Out in the Uncharted Backwaters of the Unfashionable End of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy (2009)
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Televideo is a valuable analgesic for those incessantly on tour. For much of 2009, I have been watching Chris Carter’s celebrated The X-Files, mostly with great enjoyment. (Consuming pop culture about 15 years too late to be of much commonplace social use is a frequent “strategy” of mine.) iTunes vendored me the first four seasons. It’s been a great ride, but I think I’m done: I don’t need to watch the next five series or see the movies.
The steady amping up of the “mytharc” is why I am quitting. The Cigarette Smoking Man? Blah. I’ve already been tempted to skip episodes when William B. Davis is credited as guest. That big story - which I understand runs through all nine seasons and the movie(s) too - has already stretched to the point of logical nonsense. In coming seasons, there will surely be even more reversals and revelations to strain credulity even further.
Apparently some of the hardcore fans love the mytharc, going so far as to watch those episodes all in a row, skipping the standalone “monster of the week” stories. But for me, the standalone episodes - which have gotten fewer each season - are the reason to watch The X-Files.
Even more than the movies, television requires star power. A weekly show will always suffer from budget and time constraints. But we don’t need perfection if we get to watch a cherished hero do new stuff every week. In the X-Files, we have not just one hero, but two: Scully and Mulder. They are just so great. Two of the prettiest humans (Wendy Lewis pointed out to me how attractive just their mouths are; we could watch just the mouths forever) with mellifluous voices are placed in government suits, badges, and exhibit deliberately square acting styles. In particular, the expositional info dumps are magnificent: I’d happily listen to an audio-only mix-tape of Scully and Mulder “technical discussions.”
From “2Shy”:
SCULLY: It’s a metacarpal from Lauren MacKalvey’s hand. In life, bones have the tensile strength of forged iron. Even in death, they remain strong. But look at this. (she squishes the finger with a clamp)
MULDER: (referring to the vial of slime) What did this turn out to be?
SCULLY: It’s organic. Mostly hydrochloric acid similar to what is secreted by the gastric mugosa.
MULDER: It’s similar to stomach acid?
SCULLY: Almost identical only twice as acidic. I also found trace amounts of pepsin which is a digestive enzyme.
MULDER: So you’re saying that this did that?
SCULLY: I don’t know how else to explain such accelerated autolysis.
MULDER: (pointing at the remains in the drawer) What’s in here, Scully? Theoretically it should contain the same cellular components as her various tissues—skin, muscle, blood …
SCULLY: In some broken-down form, yes.
MULDER: In the results of your chemical analysis did you find anything missing?
SCULLY: (looks at him strangely) Missing?
MULDER: Yeah.
SCULLY: I don’t think so. (looks at chart) All the body tissues were accounted for …. except there were extremely low almost trace amounts of adipose.
MULDER: Fatty tissue. That could explain the weight discrepancy.
SCULLY: What weight discrepancy?
MULDER: The ME recorded Lauren’s weight at 122 but her driver’s license had her at 165.
SCULLY: She probably lost weight since the license was issued.
MULDER: No, actually Lauren’s roommate said she was quite nervous about meeting this guy because she put on some weight recently.
SCULLY: (stumped) What possible motivation could the killer have for removing his victim’s fatty tissue? I mean, who do you think we’re dealing with here?
MULDER: I don’t know.
Again, it is how Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny deliver this nonsense that makes it so wonderful. (I mean “nonsense” with love: this is really a very solid episode written by Jeffrey Vlaming.)
Another reason I dislike the mytharc episodes is they promote sentimental backstory at the expense of the stars' normally unruffled surface. Their personal - not investigative, but personal - involvement in conspiracy and extreme possibility is dangled in front of the viewer, presumably to make the viewer more involved. This has the opposite effect on me: dream sequences, abducted sisters, cancerous lesions, personal vendettas, go away! I want the sexy robots who are good with guns back.
The mytharc’s nadir so far was the crass hijacking of Native American spirituality in the interlinked episodes connecting seasons two and three. Mulder’s pretentious dream-musings while being saved by chanting tribesmen? Unforgivable. Mulder is not “spiritual,” he is a pod.
Going ethnic is usually wrong for the X-Files, anyway. The white worlds of medicine, the army, suburbia, business, etc. are the milieus where the show is most successful. Those comparatively bland backdrops show Scully and Mulder in their most subversive light. We keep looking at them, wondering what is really going on. When we aren’t told too much about them, they are engagingly mysterious.
A lot of the best episodes of the X-Files have as much darkness, suspense, and terror as I’ve seen on mainstream TV. This is why I watch the show, of course.
But a few episodes jumped out as being not just suspenseful but credibly humorous besides. The internet revealed all: Darin Morgan was the writer of many of my favorite stories. As it turns out, Morgan is a cult hero among the die-hard fans.
Morgan’s history with the show is intriguing: he began by playing one of the series’s most memorable monsters, the Flukeman. Then he wrote “Humbug” for season two and “Clyde Bruckman,” “War of the Coprophages,” and “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’” for season three. He concluded his relationship with the show onscreen as the humble villain in season four’s finest episode, “Small Potatoes” (written by Vince Gilligan, another of the show’s best writers, and the man responsible for the current success Breaking Bad).
There’s a good article on Morgan by Jonathan Kirby at Popmatters which summarizes his importance. I’ll just add that in addition to Morgan’s dry humor, his spectacular command of meta, and his ability to generate dialogue which actors clearly love to speak, what really makes Morgan’s episodes remarkable is how he allows the stars to be even weirder than usual. Scully (fake) eats a cricket in “Humbug,” cleans her clothes and gun in “Coprohages,” and is a fanboy of thriller writers in “Chung.” These details don’t sentimentalize Scully: she’s still mysterious perfection. Morgan just makes her an even more interesting mysterious perfection.
I’m not sure what Morgan is doing now; apparently he is a consulting producer for Fringe but not writing for anybody. If he decided to get it together and work with the right creative team he could become one of the greats. Still, these few episodes of X-Files are already a major legacy, and already a major influence.
One of the reasons I like semi-commercial genre art like sci-fi TV, crime novels, or ’50’s bebop piano are their smooth, commonplace surfaces: surfaces perfect for expectation-defying explosions plotted by visionary talents. Morgan did this sabotage as well as anyone.
I began watching The X-Files because I’d read how influential it was to my favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I regard the "last" episode of Buffy to be the musical, “Once More With Feeling.” Sure, I acknowledge that there are good stories after that in season six and even memorable episodes of season seven. But the final song (and line) of “Once More With Feeling” is “Where Do We Go From Here?” This open-ended question is where I want to end Buffy, before that show implodes under a too-weighty mytharc.
Now with the X-Files, I declare the “real” final episode of the show to be “Small Potatoes” from season four. I don’t want to watch the grueling series of surprises and ham-fisted tying-off-of-knots sure to come. I want my last image to be Eddie Blundht (played by Darin Morgan) dressing down Fox Mulder. For all his obvious unattractiveness, Blundht is a “normal guy” who therefore has more success with girls than Fox Mulder:
EDDIE: I just think it's funny. I was born a loser, but you're one by choice.
MULDER: On what do you base that astute assessment?
EDDIE: Experience. (Eddie leans forward) You should live a little. Treat yourself. God knows I would if I were you.
(Mulder gets up and leaves. Scully is in the hallway. She has watched and heard the conversation on a TV monitor. He signs out with the guard.)
GUARD: Good day, sir.
(They walk down the hall together, neither looking very happy. Scully's arms are folded, but then she unfolds them and puts her hands in her coat pockets. Mulder is fiddling with his sleeves and looking down at the floor as he walks.)
SCULLY: I don't imagine you need to be told this Mulder, but you're not a loser.
MULDER: Yeah, but I'm no Eddie Van Blundht either. Am I?
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I’m in Manchester, England at the moment and will pick up the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book tomorrow - it came out yesterday. I’m against this thing on principle (can’t Douglas Adams lie in his grave in peace?) but I guess I’ll have to at least take a look.
A friend sent me this very excellent article on 30 years of Hitchhiking by Jenny Turner, which I endorse in every regard.
One of the wonderful things about the BBC TV version of HG2G (which Adams ended up disapproving of but I adore) is how it stops before it’s own mytharc gets bloated. At the end of the show, there are still as many questions left as answers given.
Unfortunately, that’s not really true of the books: While there are brilliant passages in Life, the Universe, and Everything and the following two volumes of the saga, the first two books (which make up the material of the televideo), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaruant at the End of the Universe are the immortal displays of effortless spun gold. After that you begin to see the seams and (especially) the recycling. I cannot believe that there is a fan out there that really approves of how Adams “ties-off-the-knots” at the end of the depressing Mostly Harmless. That’s the real appeal of Eoin Colfer’s sequel: to see if there is life after death after all.
However, Adams’s knot-tying in Mostly Harmless is infinitely more acceptable than the gross violation perpetuated by the Hollywood movie, which ties the knots off so completely and happily that the greatest surrealist dark-humored sci-fi work in history is rendered as what? A romantic comedy!?! The producers should have been fed to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
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Before HG2G, Adams spent a season as script editor for Doctor Who. He even contributed one of the most beloved stories of the era, "City of Death." My own personal “arc” in the 1980's was not unique to a certain kind of geeky American boy, one who loved early, “scary” Tom Baker Who around 8-9 yrs; loved Adams-era “funny” Baker Who at 10-11; and loved the BBC TV HG2G at 12-13. It was a logical progression!
I’ve finally checked in with the wildly successful Who reboot. (Televideo is a valuable analgesic for those incessantly on tour...) It’s a lot better than I feared and David Tennant is an authentic TV star. However Tennant is leaving and so is Russell Davies, the mind behind the coup.
The good news is that Davies is being replaced by Stephen Moffat, who wrote several of the best episodes of new Who. I'm worried that this show is suffering under the weight of too much mytharc like The X-Files. Let's hope Moffat senses the danger and just promotes great new plots for his first season, refraining from digging for more backstory and connecting links to every character that ever was on the show, etc., etc.
I was reminded of Moffat’s "Blink" (season three Doctor Who) last week when watching Howard Gordon and David Greenwalt’s "Synchrony" (season four The X-Files; Greenwalt also wrote several of my favorite episodes of Buffy). Both episodes deal with Douglas Adams’s favorite sparring partner, time travel and its uncomfortable paradoxes. Both superbly show how limitless genre entertainment can be in the hands of the right technicians.
Darin Morgan; Stephen Moffatt; David Greenwalt; Howard Gordon; Vince Gilligan. I began this rambling post by praising TV stars, and its true I tune in to see Gillian Anderson, David Duchnovy, David Tennant, and Sarah Michelle Gellar give me a thrill. But it’s the technicians - technicians of the sacred, really, the witnesses of the heroes - who give the stars the fuel to entertain us. A cup of Douglas Adams-brewed tea raised to them, those writers who never get the name recognition accorded those who are lucky enough to speak their lines.
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Don’t Even Blink (2010)
(The following was just written to follow up on the above)
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Regrettably, Steven Moffat did not take Doctor Who in a less sentimental and overblown direction, but rather the reverse. The only thing I really like about the recent season is Matt Smith as the Doctor. He’s great.
How sad that the Weeping Angels of Moffat’s previous success “Blink” have become a part of the current season’s mightily emotional mytharc in such a banal way. In “Blink” the Angels were a superb one off. Part of what made them unsusual was how they never apologized or explained anything. They also didn’t kill anybody. Now, in “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone,” the Angels not only talk, but even taunt the Doctor while breaking neck after neck of fearful human victims. Wow, like we’ve never seen that before.
I wonder what that old technician of the sacred, Terrance Dicks, thinks of the current show? Dicks kept his characters more or less within the frame of possibility. Now the Doctor is a superhero who solves everything through magic and fantasy (and more soulless CGI than can be believed). Probably Dicks can’t speak up, but another Terrence, writer Terry Pratchett, has, in a blog post that was roundly condemned by Who fandom. I heartily endorse Pratchett’s criticism -- and also his capitulation with the inevitable: "I will watch again next week...After all, when you’ve had your moan you have to admit that it is very, very entertaining, with its heart in the right place."
