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Post by rushy on Apr 29, 2024 9:15:25 GMT
"Five hundred puppies with golden fur Orphan boys with jet black hair Circus clowns with a red balloon" What utter lyrical bile. Sounds like it was written by an AI. And to compare this to The Sound of Music, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Duck Soup, etc! I don't care what anyone says, I am so right on this one. I know, I know! It's shit. And the whole context is really disgusting (what's so funny about eating a baby??). But it's caaaaaatchy
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Post by The Yak Emperor on Apr 29, 2024 9:33:15 GMT
Unusually, I quite enjoy the baby-eating aspect. I really love it when Doctor Who is willing to get grimy and nasty with its subject matter, but of course here it's not played for anything at all except a cheap peril moment. There is a lot that could have been explored in this special, but then you realise that literally every line of the script is plot exposition of some kind. There is no genuine characterisation, or mood, or aesthetic. That's the sort of thing that pisses me off.
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Post by burrunjor on Apr 29, 2024 9:43:24 GMT
That's all irrelevant shit that's bugger all to do with the actual show though. I couldn't care less about any of that crap. It's the kind of nonsense that pervades Who fandom and dilutes people's views about the thing that matters - the program. "Oh JNT said that, oh so and so did that therefore this story/era is crap." I don't give a f*ck about any of it, I'm sorry. We don't know any of these people in real life. Better things to do than obsessing over shit like that... It's not irrelevant shit. You've said in the past that a script editor is a very important job when it comes to tv shows and that's why New Who where the showrunner does everything suffers so badly. The entire showrunner thing comes from the cult of personality that builds up around these creators and makes them think they are a modern day Orson Welles, rather than just professional writers doing a job. Both RTD and Moffat can actually write good sci fi stories when they are often forced too. IE Midnight is one of the best things RTD wrote because he had no budget and was forced to do a tight claustrophobic story, The Next Doctor is better than turd fests like New Earth as it was a last minute replacement etc. However when RTD has all the money and NO ONE on set is saying no and he gets away with things like the Jesus Doctor that would never get past a script editor because he is the legendary RTD. Similarly with others like Bruce Timm we get him indulging in his kinky fantasies about being chained to the bed LOL that he didn't get away with back in the day because others around him like Paul Dini would say NO. Buffy and Angel I'm sorry to say suffered from this. Obviously you do have to take into account that Joss Whedon was a better writer than RTD overall, and not a tedious twonk who was obsessed with heat magazine and celeb culture so it never fell as hard as New Who, and at least Joss was doing it with his own creation. Still Buffy more so than say Blake's 7 I think becomes self indulgent as time goes on thanks to Joss becoming the showrunner. Again Rushy who liked Iank's post, look at the contrast. The producers wanted Avon to become more heroic in season 3 which you can see a tiny snipped of in the first episode where he stops Dayna from killing that guy, but Paul Darrow refused and they listened and that's dropped basically after that one scene. Sarah meanwhile more or less quit because she hated how Buffy was going. To be fair I'm not saying you should listen to the actor completely. Obviously Paul had other decisions that they didn't listen too, but that's the point it's a team effort. Buffy and Angel are both great from the beginning because Joss wasn't as popular and was just another writer, but by about season 5 of Buffy, season 2 of Angel that's when the cult of Joss really took off and nobody dared question him and the quality starts to decline for the next two seasons after for both shows. Stories that the actors themselves aren't comfortable with. (Like that scene where Spike shags Buffy up the arse and she can't resist that Joss insisted on directing and both Sarah and James HATED doing.) Meanwhile Angel season 5 I think is the best season for a while because after the death of all three of his shows. (Buffy finished because Sarah couldn't take it anymore, Angel was axed until Spike was brought over, and Firefly finished.) Joss was humbled and became a proper writer again, resulting in the best season of either show for years. Classic Who was the same. JNT wasn't as bad as the later showrunners in that he didn't write all the scripts, but he still did get self indulgent and did things like Colin's coat as a result. However after he was also humbled for a few years, he was also humbled and became a good producer again for the last two years of the McCoy era.
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Post by rushy on Apr 29, 2024 10:33:52 GMT
But people say 'no' even nowadays. David Lynch is a legendary master filmmaker, and served as the showrunner for the Twin Peaks reboot. But Sherilyn Fenn absolutely refused to go along with the storylines he wrote for her, and he ultimately caved, despite being upset.
If she can do that, then someone with sufficient authority can easily override RTD. Being a showrunner doesn't make him immune. Nor is the showrunner concept an inherently bad one. It exists to give television shows a more concrete creative vision.
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Post by The Yak Emperor on Apr 29, 2024 10:40:45 GMT
It's interesting that during the time when they knew the show was getting axed and morale was presumably at an all-time low, JNT made his best stuff. Perhaps him not giving a shit and taking a backseat really helped in that regard. The stories of seasons 25 and 26 feel a lot more driven by the writers themselves than by the producers, despite the overarching Cartmel plan, which was really more of a loose doctrine than anything.
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Post by burrunjor on Apr 29, 2024 12:37:48 GMT
But people say 'no' even nowadays. David Lynch is a legendary master filmmaker, and served as the showrunner for the Twin Peaks reboot. But Sherilyn Fenn absolutely refused to go along with the storylines he wrote for her, and he ultimately caved, despite being upset. If she can do that, then someone with sufficient authority can easily override RTD. Being a showrunner doesn't make him immune. Nor is the showrunner concept an inherently bad one. It exists to give television shows a more concrete creative vision. It IS bad, as it flies in the face of how tv should be done for the most part. It does not ensure a stability anymore than a team working together can. Indeed at certain points it can ensure the opposite as no one would dare say to the showrunner if he contradicts his own series. Sure there are exceptions with things like The Prisoner and Babylon 5 largely being one man, but even then, both shows still had script editors. Also no one can stand up to RTD on set.
" I do worry about being surrounded by yes-men. You’re right, it happens. […] I don’t think it’s happened to me yet. In the end, just as good writers are hard to find, so are good script editors, good producers and good execs. When you find good people like Julie and Phil, their sheer talent cancels out the risk of them yes-ing. I suppose the danger is not RTD And The Yes-Men, but a triumverate of people who are so similar that contrary opinions don’t get a look-in.”"It’s very hard for anyone to stop me doing these things,” he continues. “You’d have to be a pretty brave executive to say, ‘Don’t go there’ to me. I’m sure there are people thinking that, but I wouldn’t work with them, would I?"
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Post by burrunjor on Apr 29, 2024 12:39:42 GMT
It's interesting that during the time when they knew the show was getting axed and morale was presumably at an all-time low, JNT made his best stuff. Perhaps him not giving a shit and taking a backseat really helped in that regard. The stories of seasons 25 and 26 feel a lot more driven by the writers themselves than by the producers, despite the overarching Cartmel plan, which was really more of a loose doctrine than anything. It's like I said he was humbled and brought back down to reality after the fan worship had gone to his head circa Davison's last season, with poor Colin coming at the worst time. Again same with Joss. His cult reaches its peak during season 5 of Buffy/ two of Angel, and sadly the two years after that on both shows are definitely the weakest, with season five of Angel (long regarded as one of the best series of either show and a great end) coming after his empire similarly crumbled and he went back to just being a writer rather than this celebrity showrunner. Interestingly enough Angel season 4 and Trial of a Time Lord suffer from pretty much the same problems. I'm not sure which is worse? On the one hand Trial is so much more boring, but s4 Angel has got some creepy shit like Cordy/Connor? Anyway both are taken up by a big story that if you don't like that story, that is the season f*cked for you. Sadly in both cases the story was a jumbled mess that had to be rewritten about ten times during production, and made no sense. Parts of them are so nonsensical that even the actors didn't know what parts they were playing. Colin still doesn't know whether he was playing a mirage of the Doctor, the Doctor who was in league with Peri pretending to be evil, or a brainwashed Doctor. Similarly Charisma Carpenter had no idea if she was playing Cordelia who'd gone a bit funny, or Cordelia who was being possessed at certain points with no knowledge, or a demon femme fatale wearing her skin. All of those seem valid at certain points, but not in a way that works. On top of that her performance doesn't even match the creature that is possessing her, as when it emerges then it is more of a misguided, sympathetic evil than Charisma's sexy bitch. Finally both Charisma and Colin were fired which leaves both of their characters ending on a sour note that's not satisfactory for a character who has been there from the pilot and a Doctor. It's a shame but both are a mess and whilst in DW's case we can blame a lot of that on the BBC I think ultimately JNT had made himself too big a figure to be approached which resulted in it becoming the mess it was.
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Post by The Yak Emperor on Apr 29, 2024 12:42:59 GMT
With the way things are going, the Doctor will be masturbating onscreen to gay porn in 20 years' time. With the breakdown of taboos as instigated by the internet and how everything is consumed facelessly now, so arrives the death of any sort of structure or boundaries in our entertainment landscape. I wouldn't even be surprised if age-ratings were abolished in the near future.
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Post by rushy on Apr 29, 2024 12:53:03 GMT
It IS bad, as it flies in the face of how tv should be done for the most part. It does not ensure a stability anymore than a team working together can. Indeed at certain points it can ensure the opposite as no one would dare say to the showrunner if he contradicts his own series. Sure there are exceptions with things like The Prisoner and Babylon 5 largely being one man, but even then, both shows still had script editors. Also no one can stand up to RTD on set.
" I do worry about being surrounded by yes-men. You’re right, it happens. […] I don’t think it’s happened to me yet. In the end, just as good writers are hard to find, so are good script editors, good producers and good execs. When you find good people like Julie and Phil, their sheer talent cancels out the risk of them yes-ing. I suppose the danger is not RTD And The Yes-Men, but a triumverate of people who are so similar that contrary opinions don’t get a look-in.”"It’s very hard for anyone to stop me doing these things,” he continues. “You’d have to be a pretty brave executive to say, ‘Don’t go there’ to me. I’m sure there are people thinking that, but I wouldn’t work with them, would I?"Well, you can say it IS bad, but that doesn't make it bad. Nor does it fly in the face of how TV 'should' be done. TV is done the way TV is done, and has been for years. Movies have big-name directors, and TV shows have big-name showrunners. Of course people can stand up to RTD on set. Eccleston did. And he left. That's RTD's fault for being incapable of working with criticism, not an issue with the showrunner position. The Prisoner had no script editor towards the end. McGoohan got rid of him. He was a mad micromanager. I went off him after I learned how he stole a young writer's script on Columbo and replaced the name with his own. But again, that's just him being bonkers instead of any flaw with the idea of showrunning. There have been perfectly fine showrunners and perfectly horrible producers/script editors.
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Post by burrunjor on Apr 29, 2024 16:54:18 GMT
Okay I'll admit I LOVE this song. It might be sappy as can be, and Joss perhaps was having a bit of a wank when he wrote the lyrics LOL. Still it's fabulous. Amber Benson has such a beautiful singing voice. Shame she hasn't done an album. She basically just vanished after Buffy, barring a tiny role in Supernatural where she was wasted.
(She was really good as the vampire babe. She even looked completely different. As Tara she was more of a cute ducky type, but as the vampire she seemed like a powerful matriach, and was a bit sexy.)
I suppose for this song alone, call me a softy but this song alone is better than anything in other genre musicals.
I do like Anthony Head and James Marsters voices as well, but this is the best. Again not to sound weird, but I think lesbians often make the best duckies. (I'm using it in my definition, which is the nice, dorky girl who goes out of her way to make everyone feel welcome, not the old one which ironically was gay slang.) It's hard for men and women to become really close platonic friends. I'm not saying it's impossible and I don't want it to be that way as I LOVE female friends, but yeah obviously that is a problem for lots of people. Imagine if say you went on holiday with a female friend who was a straight, unmarried, single woman, then it's fair to say most wives would be jealous and vice versa.
However obviously lesbians don't have that problem with straight men, and though female sexuality can be a bit more fluid, for the most part they don't have it with straight women either. Meanwhile women make better duckies overall not because they are necessarily nicer, but because again guys I don't think can be that friendly. For instance a guy can't greet everyone with a hug without people feeling uncomfortable LOL.
So yeah to me lesbians are often the duckiest of ducky's and Willow and Tara in the above clip remind me of soooo many I've known who've helped me in bad times. I mean I know she brainwashed Tara there so it's actually kind of sad and tragic if you watch the full episode LOL, but out of context then yes it's a nice song.
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