![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 )
I remember back in the day, circa 2002, when I used to have a sushi dinner once a week with
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 )
