The Lockdown Diaries (8)
And so, as the novelty wears thin, and we once again daub our doors with lamb’s blood, let us share links and bicker.
I’ll set the ball rolling with a woke prayer, some emotional scenes, and a reminder that size matters.
As some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.
It does help to keep this place here.
For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at.
There’s ‘when you’re so woke it hurts’ and then there’s this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/isabelzawtun/status/1344418319219236864
I did have Whedon’s smug mug in mind when writing that
Most of Buffy was written by Marti Noxon (cf. “cry for help”). If you rewatch Buffy through the lens of “Buffy is Marti Noxon, and Joss Whedon is whatever vampire she’s ****ing at the time”, the show makes much more sense.
I don’t think the character should be someone the audience could conceivably fancy.
IIRC, that was something the original creators explicitly said about the show: “teenagers should never fancy the Doctor”.
the idea of the series, its premise, is more engaging than what generally materialises on screen
There was a web magazine article I can no longer find that said the same thing about classic SF generally – that it was awful, but we all sort of agreed to forgive it because we were so enamoured of the potential of the Big Idea.
IIRC, that was something the original creators explicitly said about the show: “teenagers should never fancy the Doctor”.
It does seem a non-trivial part of the dynamic. Adding sexual or romantic tension, or the potential for it, seems both out of place and beside the point. And again, in recent iterations, the Doctor has to a large extent been made politically parochial and conformist, and so instead of looking askance at contemporary assumptions, as being very local and of their time, he (or she) very often parrots them enthusiastically. As Steve 2 quipped in an earlier thread,
They’ve taken the alien out of the alien.
and then there’s this
I do sometimes wonder if the world was always stuffed full of fuck-witted ass-clowns and I didn’t notice, or whether Twitter is actually conjuring them forth from the primaeval mud.
I hadn’t watched Doctor Who for some years, but decided to watch one recent episode to see if it was as terrible as everyone says it is (it is).
Jodie Whittaker is insufferable, but I wonder to what extent the ghastliness is her fault. She isn’t without talent. She’s very effective and likeable in, for example, Attack the Block. The problem seems to be more that the writers, having decided that this significant cultural figure should be played by a woman (because diversity), then went on to write her as a smug, finger-wagging grammar school head girl. One could almost feel sorry for Whittaker.
Anyhow, unless they cast Jeremy Clarkson as the next Doctor, I’m not going to waste any more time watching it.
then there’s this
The boy should put himself up for adoption as soon as possible and report his mother for child abuse.
if the world was always stuffed full of fuck-witted ass-clowns
I think it always has been but now the FWACs are far more successful due to support from corrupt media and have the ability to inflict their madness on the rest of us much more easily.
then there’s this
So woke white woman got knocked up by a white man then? What kind of racist is she?
Seems to me she should be birthing babies of color if her beliefs are that strong.
Put your womb where your mouth is, lady!
Put your womb where your mouth is, lady!
Either I need mind bleach or that is an intruiging new variation of oral sex.
“They’ve taken the alien out of the alien.”
I knew the reboot was doomed when that fat Welsh bloke Davies said he wanted to bring out the Doctor’s “humanity”. He actually said that.
I do sometimes wonder if the world was always stuffed full of fuck-witted ass-clowns and I didn’t notice
Please do not take offense, but did you go to college/university? In the last 30-40 years or so.
did you go to college/university? In the last 30-40 years or so.
Yes. Twice!
Oh God. I’m one of the fuck-witted ass-clowns 🙁
If I’m honest, I quite liked Eccleston as the Tenth Doctor. He was clearly enjoying himself, he wasn’t insufferably twee, but he nicely got across that “slightly bemused and seen all this before” air. Which is why the romance subplot with Rose felt so forced. There was no lead up, no chemistry, it just happens because the showrunner said so. The fact that Eccleston was fired because he wouldn’t twee the character up enough for Davies was when I stopped watching.
If I’m honest, I quite liked Eccleston as the Tenth Doctor.
There was a brief period, early on, when I entertained the possibility that they might do something interesting with a seemingly exhausted premise. However, it didn’t last. I found David Tennant mildly aggravating, veering towards panto, and I rapidly lost any kind of interest. After that, every few years, I’d watch a random episode with something like morbid curiosity.
I did quite like the idea of John Hurt as the Doctor, though sadly that was confined to a peripheral gimmick.
I guess I’m the odd man out here, because I liked the Doctor reboots.
Right up until the Capaldi episode where the moon was really an egg for a dragon, and I said, “Nope. Can’t buy that.” So I missed the subsequent horrors.
And I liked the episode where the girl turned into a slab of concrete. It helped that I go gooey over ELO.
As for Eccleston, I thought he had demanded that he do only one series as the doctor, because he didn’t want to be doing Doctor Who conventions for the rest of his life (e.g., “I am Not Spock.”). That’s also why he didn’t want to do any of the subsequent Doctor gang bangs.
Now, he seems to be on his meds and has agreed to do new adventures for the audio market.
Maybe it’s also because I’m an Amurrican, but I enjoyed Tennant’s wild doctor, and assumed it was part of his alienness. That was the charm of the show, that every once in awhile, they’d do something to remind you that, yeah, you may want to shag him, but he’s NOT going to act like you think he should, because he’s not like you.
Nothing in particular:
Missus Slocombe: “Hello, Mister Akbar? I wonder if you wouldn’t mind peeking in my mail slot and telling can you see my pussy?”
Mister Akbar? Mister Akbar? Oh dear!”
Miss Brahms: “What’s happened?”
Missus Slocombe: “I think he’s fainted.”
There’s Jane Elliot … and then there’s this …
If the story is real, the mother might think about having to spend the next decade calling to her son in supermarkets and playgrounds and waiting rooms, and about the effect this might have on her reputation and self-esteem.
Promo for NPR “Finding Your Roots” with Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. –
Gates to Gayle King (CBS Morning Anchor): “According to the tests, you are one-third white.”
King to Gates: “You take that back!”
To quote Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances: “Oh, nice!”
My Ancestry.com profile pegs me as 100% European, from Glasgow and Birmingham to Northern France, Netherlands and Prussia (now Germany) Farm hands, loom tenders, and small merchants mostly. While nothing to particularly crow about, I don’t see anything to be ashamed of, either. Too much privilege, perhaps?
The fact that Eccleston was fired because he wouldn’t twee the character up enough for Davies was when I stopped watching.
I’m learning all sorts of illuminating trivia from Mr Ream in this thread. Eccleston got this American interested in the series (hadn’t watched since childhood) and Tennant hooked the wife. I bailed out when it was clear the MESSAGE was becoming more important than the nominal goal of making me say “hmm, that’s interesting”.
While Tennant and Smith had their fun aspects, Eccleston was an actual Doctor Who – (sort of) grumpy, aloof, not really approachable, but ruthlessly altruistic. Capaldi looked and felt the part but it was too little too late.
I guess its Psych re-runs again, it seems…
Pace President-Select Harris:
What do we want?
“Fweedom!”
What are we getting?
“Pwison!”
I liked Eccleston. He was my second favorite, after Baker. Tennant had one moment where something harder and darker peeked out from behind the goofy bow-tied mask, but it never recurred so I figured it for a fluke.
I’m learning all sorts of illuminating trivia from Mr Ream in this thread
I am an apostate geek in that I’m much more interested in how SF shows get made than the internal lore, which is generally determined by deadlines (the Stargate SG-1 episode Wormhole X-treme! is essentially one 45 minute long “we do not take this anywhere nearly as seriously as you do” screed from the producers to the fans).
Ecceleston’s original excuse was that the grueling schedule of TV production was overwhelming since he was used to film. To those familiar with the industry, this is the “leaving to spend more time with his family” bollocks excuse. He was fired. He kept mum for years, and eventually in an interview indicated that the real reason for his firing was that Davies wanted a more Received Pronunciation, middle-class London twee Doctor and not the working class Oop North mien Eccleston brought to the character. Eccleston wouldn’t budge so they canned him.
I found David Tennant mildly aggravating, veering towards panto
You’re not the only one. It’s a heretical opinion around here. I quite like the other stuff that he’s done so it’s nothing about the actor.
(Another heretical opinion I’ll cop to is that William Shatner is actually quite a good actor. Most people don’t realize that the breathy staccato delivery and exaggerated body acting was direction, not Shatner).
“FWACs”
Band name.
Davies wanted a more Received Pronunciation, middle-class London twee Doctor and not the working class Oop North mien Eccleston brought to the character. Eccleston wouldn’t budge so they canned him.
Well, you learn something new. Don’t know where I got the “one-year only” factoid from.
Speaking of Davies, he published a book about his tenure as a Who writer, and I read it greedily. Full of behind the scenes takes. The one I remember was when the first shows were broadcast, and some of the reviews were pretty harsh, especially those aimed at the music director. It seemed like for the next week he wandered about, picking up tea cups, putting down tea cups, and muttering “am I in the right business?”*
(* No actual fact implied, beyond that he was crushed by the criticism.)
I’d like to think that I would have borne the onslaught better, if I were lucky enough (and talented) to be doing the music for a major TV show, but like many other false correlations,** talent does not equal self-confidence.
** Wealth = happiness and beauty = security among them.
Don’t know where I got the “one-year only” factoid from.
When it happened there was a lot of speculation, precisely because it was so unusual for a Doctor Who actor to only serve a single season. Eccleston eventually settled on the “TV is hard” excuse and stuck to it for years.
Tennant had one moment where something harder and darker peeked out from behind the goofy bow-tied mask
He’s gotten a lot of work as a result of his stint on DW – Jessica Jones and Good Omens, specifically – and in both of those you get to see what a good actor he is when he’s given a bit more depth to play with.
I guess its Psych re-runs again, it seems…
We’ll see how Ghostbusters: Afterlife turns out, but I stand by my opinion that James Roday and Dule Hill could do a Ghostbusters legacy sequel justice. Shawn Spencer is basically a millennial Venkman.
“We’ll see how Ghostbusters: Afterlife turns out,”
The trailer was awesome.
Hi Daniel,
People who think Shatner’s a lousy actor who—talks with—strange—pauses should watch his two Twilight Zone episodes, especially the one where he plays a man recovering from a nervous breakdown who has to contend with a gremlin trying to sabotage the plane he’s on. At one point his wife and the pilot pretend they’ve seen the gremlin too. Shatner does a marvelous job depicting a man who’s first relieved, then realizes he’s being patronized by people who’ve written him off as a nut. The episode. Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, was written by Richard Matheson.
“He kept mum for years, and eventually in an interview indicated that the real reason for his firing was that Davies wanted a more Received Pronunciation, middle-class London twee Doctor and not the working class Oop North mien Eccleston brought to the character. Eccleston wouldn’t budge so they canned him.”
Which is odd, because at the time the impression was that that was why he was hired in the first place; an early foreshadowing of Dr. 13. But it would certainly explain Tennant’s accent. And why, although I was never 100% happy with the relaunch at all, I felt it had more or less burned itself out after one season.
Okay, this sequence made me smile:
…
…
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So when was the BBC safe?
I gave up listening to Radio 4 some years ago when every single programme became unbearably woke and preachy. But I still enjoy listening to “old” material on Radio4 Extra.
Yesterday I started streaming Conan Doyle’s Strangest Case, first broadcast in 1995. I honestly thought I’d be safe.
In the first 20 minutes having endured a lecture about the inherent racism of inbred British country folk, and a second about the equality of wimmins and the oppression they suffer(ed) under British patriarchy I had to turn it off.
1995!! How far back do I have to fucking go to just be entertained and not scolded?
Conan Doyle’s Strangest Case…
Thanks, I was not aware of that case.
…the inherent racism of inbred British country folk
I looked that up on Wikipedia: the two real life cases both involved wrongly accused/wrongly convicted members of minorities, a half-British, half-Indian lawyer and a German Jew. I have been re-reading the Sherlock Holmes stories and have noticed that a woke critic could carefully select quotes to show that Conan Doyle was a racist and Jew-hater. And he worked very hard on behalf of these two people, showing that such a claim would have been false and reminding us to be careful of how we interpret the fiction we read.
I gather the Russell T Davies ‘Dr Who’ reboot was always going to be about sex. It’s kinda his thing. That was certainly one of the things that lost me in the Dr Who reboot, considering the template – which the original Dr Who team (Terrance Dicks and so on) was the William Hartnell type, a crazy old chap who took his young friends on wOnDrOuS aDvEnTuReS. (It worked!)
I’ve just watched Eddie Izzard on ITV’s Lorraine show moaning on about Trump’s “lies” (giving, of course, no examples). Izzard now wishes to be known as “she”.
You can’t make this shit up.
William Shatner is actually quite a good actor
Too late this year I know, but an excellent Christmas movie emetic is A Christmas Horror Story. Featuring. William. Shatner’s. Acting.
I’ve just watched… ITV’s Lorraine show
A twisted pleasure, if ever there was one.
Where, oh where are the Zarbeee’s of yesteryear.
“So when was the BBC safe?”
I remember thinking as a kid (although obviously not in so many words) that Blue Peter and Newsround were about 50% environmentalist propaganda. It was all acid rain and endangered tigers back then, but they never bloody shut up about them. And both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meant “nuclear power bad”, with never a mention of the former’s safety measures sparing us a disaster on the scale of the latter, or the communists cutting corners on that score because if anyone spoke up it was hi-ho, hi-ho off to the salt mines.
I think you have to go back to the ’50s or early ’60s, pre-TW3 and Play for Today. Sure, the likes of The Goon Show poked fun at the establishment, but it did so without any real sense of malice. And, more to the point, it was daring for it to do so. There’s nothing daring about today’s po-faced BBC agenda and turgid preachy “comedy”. The Corporation’s basic attitude is exactly the same as it was 95 years ago; all that’s changed is the nature of the Iron Truths which may not be questioned and the Establishment which must be defended. If Lord Reith were alive today, he’d be as woke as the next Common Purpose “graduate”.
“A twisted pleasure, if ever there was one.”
True. I was flipping through the channels, and thought, “Wait… that looks like Eddie Izzard in a bad wig”. And lo, it was.
I was flipping through the channels, and thought, “Wait… that looks like Eddie Izzard in a bad wig”. And lo, it was.
I had a similar experience last week while in bed half-asleep. I’d left Radio Four Extra on and at some point in the early hours became aware of someone reading what sounded like the dreariest autobiography imaginable, ineptly written and quite childish in construction. I thought to myself ‘This is so shit it could almost be Eddie Izzard’. And lo, it was.
I thought to myself ‘This is so shit it could almost be Eddie Izzard’. And lo, it was.
I don’t know much about him.
I don’t know much about him.
He could be quite funny, decades ago, as a stand-up comedian who told bizarre, rambling, largely improvised yarns. But I don’t think his comical schtick could be sustained, and so, in order to maintain public attention, he ramped up the politics and transvestism. And now, it seems, some flavour of transgenderism.
in order to maintain public attention, he ramped up the politics and transvestism
Ouch. Tiresome and harmful.
A Christmas Horror Story.
Santa’s elves turning into killer zombies?
I don’t know much about him.
Be glad. Once you know, you can’t un-know.
He could be quite funny, decades ago…
Cultural archaeology is yet another of your many talents.
Cultural archaeology is yet another of your many talents.
And David does it all without a big hat and a whip.
And David does it all without a big hat and a whip.
Says you.
Says you.
Didn’t you delegate all the leather-related duties to the henchlesbians?