Jul. 13th, 2008

shadowkat: (noble)
Okay, an apology to the Doctor Who fans out there, I get now why you are nuts about this show - its not just for the little gems such as The Empty Child/the Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, and the brilliant Blink. But most notably the best two hours of sci-fiction on television that I've seen in years, entitled: Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead. I thought Blink was brilliant, but Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead blew my mind. There's so much there. So many layers of meaning. Watching it is a bit like reading one of those very intricate and meaty novels by your favorite novelist - the ones in which no word, phrase, or sentence is wasted. Or like eating a five course meal, with every morsal having it's own distinct taste and texture and is important to the meal - if you miss one, you miss it all. Every word, every character, every phrase is important. That's good writing. Few people can write like that. And with great writing, comes brilliant acting. I fell head over heels in love with David Tennant's portrayal of the Doctor in these episodes. And Alex Kingston of ER fame, has never been better, as the mysterious Professor River Song. Nor for that matter has Catherine Tate who portrays Donna Noble.

I remember back in the day, circa 2002, when I used to have a sushi dinner once a week with [livejournal.com profile] cjlasky. He used to rail off at the top of his head all the names of the writers of every series he adored or episodes he adored. Telling me over and over in television it was about writing. He didn't follow actors around like I did, he followed writers. He said that it did not matter how great the actor was, in tv, the writer ruled and if you had bad writing - it showed. In film, he used to say, it was all about the director, although writing mattered there as well. And in theater - actors ruled, the writer and director had zip control once the curtain rose. But in tv? It's writing. To prove his point, he'd list off episodes of Ds9 or Buffy, pointing to the one's I liked and disliked, and ask what changed? The directors are the same, the actors are the same, the makeup, lighting, etc is - but the writer changes. I remember when BSG started - and cjl looked who was writing it - and said, "Ron Moore - who did the best episodes of DS9, and the guy from Farscape? COOL!" I thought it was cool that it had Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnelle. But he pointed to the writing staff. Don't get me wrong, cjl and I didn't agree on everything, we argued quite a bit, but on this point? He was absolutely correct. [Sometimes I miss those dinners, okay maybe not the dinners so much as the conversations.]

Steven Moffat was one of cjl's favorite writers - he'd been watching Coupling on PBS for a while, and suggested I give it try. I did and he was right. It basically made Friends seem like a highschool production by comparison. The writing was smart, witty, and relevant. I never laughed so hard in my life. Now, it turns out that Moffat, who'd at one time written an fantastic parody of Doctor Who, got a job writing for the revised series. And according to an interview reproduced in wiki, Russell T. Davies states Moffat is the only writer on the series that he does not rewrite or fix the scripts of. "For Moffat," he states, "I do not touch a word." And well he shouldn't, Moffat is a better writer than Davies. Luckily for me, it also turns out that Moffat is going to take over the role of head writer for the fifth revised version of the series starting in 2010. Other things Moffat has written include the excellent Dr. Jekyll tv series on last year, and a series of TINTIN films for Stephen Speilberg, which should be quite good.

If you have never watched Doctor Who, you probably won't be interested in the following reviews. It is however a series that you can jump into the middle of, without too much trouble - has a definite anthology aspect to it. Many of the episodes feel a bit like short stories or interconnected short stories in a science fiction anthology, some written brilliantly, some...skippable. Television is a bit like that, actually. It's hit and miss most of the time. I've yet to see a television series that does not have a few crappy episodes from time to time. Which may explain why a lot of people don't have much patience for it.

Silence in the Library & Forest of the Dead [interesting titles by the way, since forest of the dead has at times been used in reference to books - dead trees containing dead writers words and memories. And Silence in the Library is what we are told we must have and is desired, yet here it has horrific connotations.]

cut for major league spoilers )
shadowkat: (noble)
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is a classic episode of the Twilight Zone that aired in the early 1960s. It is about what happens when a bunch of citizens hear that human looking aliens have invaded their neighborhood and paranoia strikes. They start pointing fingers at each other, believing anyone who is different must be one of them, the others. Until the others literally have no voice.

This is a common trope in horror, Stephen King did it in The Langoliers, The Mist, and in Storm of the Century, where the people themselves become far more frightening than any demon in their wake. And it is a common theme in social psychology - the group or tribe mentality. And it has not just happened in sci-fi, the Zimbarda Prison Experiment showed what happened when people are placed in certain roles. War World II demonstrated what happens when we start demonizing others - both in the US and abroad. Italians, Germans, and Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps in the US during WWII, believed to be the enemy. And during the 1950's, McCarthy imprisoned numerous Americans for potentially being Communist traitors. Today, the US detaines and tortures people who it suspects of being terrorists, many of whom are not. I know, one of my co-workers husbands at the video developer company in which I worked last year, had her husband detained, with threat of deportation, and torture, because he was Arabic, from Egypt. He was told he would be set free if he agreed to join the US and go to Afghanistan or Iraq, and act as an interpreter. If he refused, he'd be cast out and deported back to Egypt, even though his American wife resided here, in New York.

Often science fiction will find a way of presenting real nightmares in a story format, as a means of understanding the moral complexities of what we've done. Battle Star Galatica, the most recent version, has devoted an entire series to exploring the themes discussed above.

Midnight - the most recent Doctor Who episode shown in the US (not shown in UK or downloaded online), directed and written by Russell T. Davies, concentrates on this issue. It's not quite as innovative or layered as Steven Moffat's episode, but it is a memorable one.
cut for major spoilers )
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