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Ten Things I Love About Doctor Who Meme
Sep. 6th, 2007 08:13 pmSeen all over the f-list: Ten Reasons to Love Doctor Who.
1. It Exists. A show about an all-powerful man who travels in a magic phone box. Whodathunk it would be worth watching? And yet, it not just survives but thrives - four decades and counting. How cool is that?
2. It could teach Darwin some things about adapting. Most shows, particularly shows with a character whose name is in the title, are captive to their casts. Lose that, and they lose the show. (We can all name plenty of shows that have died when popular characters leave.) They are equally captive to their time - let's face it, doesn't it seem a little bit weird to watch those detective shows from the 80s not because of the fashion, but because it's so silly to watch them running around desperate to get information or to communicate without computers or cell phones? Even the sf shows display a vintage future.
But not Who. Who wrote its own limitations into its canon and, like a phoenix, rises from every change of cast or change in society.
This has had a bigger effect than just longevity. It means that the Whoniverse can support as many versions of "canon" as time lords have incarnations. Big Finish for the win! It also means that the fandom is so wide and diverse that while it may act like a bagful of wet cats pretty often, there is going to be no one thing that makes it rip itself apart. I've been through a fan war. The low simmer we've got going here is more like a pleasant sauna.
3. Behold the Power of Cheese People point and laugh at the bubblewrap monsters and the wobbly sets. But Doctor Who owns its limitations, and became the ultimate in making lemons out of lemonade. No money? Fine. Stick a pen cap on a toothbrush and call it a sonic screwdriver, get an old police box out of a junkyard and call it a TARDIS - and make them international icons. Then stick a plunger on a trash can and scare an entire generation into hiding behind the couch.
And New Who continues the tradition. Oh, the sets are stronger and the budget is better, but what's the first alien we get? Farting rubber suits. Yes, the fromage factor is strong in this one.
4. It is ambitious. Succeed or fail - and we're going to argue whether it succeeds or fails until the cows come home - Doctor Who is ambitious. It is unmistakable that it has been trying to shatter stereotypes from Day One, old and new. Even if I think the effort is riddled with subconscious mistakes, I give a LOT of points for trying. Minority characters, different sexualities, strong women, socially conscious storylines - Who has shied away from none of these.
5. Women aren't just clinging stupid things with big boobs and no brain, and never have been. Doctor Who wrote into canon Susan was smarter than the Doctor. Doctor Who projected a female Prime Minister years before it happened. Even when the actresses were put in tit-and-ass costumes (Zoe, Liz, Leela), their characters were so smart & strong that the Doctor relied on them to help him outthink or outfight his enemies, and occasionally save his bacon. Ace took on a dalek with a baseball bat - and won!
New Who has been more up front about bringing sex into the mix, but again, while we can argue their ultimate fates, it has also been pretty progressive about who is cast and how they're presented. Sarah Jane and Mrs. Moore, who would be the granny character in almost any other show, are action heroines - and not for the first time in Who did an older woman save the day. Billie and Freema are neither of them classically beautiful, but they are presented without question as sultry and sexual. Remember Xena? The casting director there thought there was something wrong with Lucy Lawless' body. The entire run of the show, she's either in a corset or a bag. But while both Billie and Freema have slight buck teeth, boobs, and generous backsides (someone in the New Who casting crew likes big butts and I do not lie) nobody is hiding them or playing them down. Nobody is covering up Freema's tattoos.
This is what a woman looks like, Doctor Who announces. They've got curves. They weigh more than 30 ounces. They're not cookie cutter identical. They don't give up their lives for knitting after they turn 30. They're sexy and kickass in all their variety.
6. Brains are best In any episode, even the ones where the cast is dying like flies, the message is never that Might Makes Right. It's all about outthinking the opposition. Science - more often skience, but still - is what will save the day.
7. The Future is Full of Hope. And Humor. How many science fiction shows are based on either a distopia (Blake's 7) or an unnatural utopia (Star Trek Next Gen.) (Yes, I know I just pissed off a chunk of my readership. I still didn't like either show.) Doctor Who shows the future as sloppy, patched together, and with multiple outcomes... but at the same time, there IS a future. And at least one person is going to be watching it with bright eyes and an unhinged grin saying "This is COOL!"
And if something goes wrong... then it can be fixed. That's a subtle message in Who, but a very, very important one. When things go wrong they can be fixed if you just put your mind to it.
8. Story is all Yes, the acting was silly and the monsters were sillier. But nobody's going to hide behind the couch from a trash can with a plunger unless the story makes them believe. You can do magic with bubblewrap, tinfoil, and a secondhand phone booth, if you've just got the story to hang it on.
New Who has done one better. All hail the Mighty Moffat in particular, with his two well-deserved Hugos, and already on the shortlist for a third. Did you ever think you'd almost wet yourself with terror over a five year old and a gas mask?
9. The lunatics are running the asylum. Few shows are so extraordinarily fond of their own fandoms. The official stuff is now completely in the hands of fans - the producer, the lead actor, several of the writers, and the owners of the official "classic" line Big Finish are all fans. It shows.
Furthermore, since they were one of us, they are in many ways willing to treat us as one of them. While sometimes the kindest thing a producer can do is turn a blind eye rather than let the Cease and Desist letters fly, what does Who do? Embrace us.
It's been decades since Paramount was willing to give semi-official notice to the zines, such as reprinting The Best of Trek. Catch them taking the risk now! Doctor Who, on the other hand, has their writers endorse webzines. Lets Big Finish run contests. And what does BF do? Announce that they're not just picking one winner, but that they're so impressed they're going to do an entire anthology of fan-written stories, with contracts, payment, and all. There's some website out there that thought it was going to make money from fanfiction without offering any legal protection to the authors and in return for a measly advertising t-shirt. Big Finish and Doctor Who didn't pat the fans on the head and tell them to run away and play, it took us seriously.
10. It has a rock-solid sense of self. Doctor Who is amazingly comfortable in its own skin. It makes few apologies for the bubblewrap and none at all for the mangled canon, the unabashed Britishness, the fromage factor, or the tin dog.
And quite right, too.
1. It Exists. A show about an all-powerful man who travels in a magic phone box. Whodathunk it would be worth watching? And yet, it not just survives but thrives - four decades and counting. How cool is that?
2. It could teach Darwin some things about adapting. Most shows, particularly shows with a character whose name is in the title, are captive to their casts. Lose that, and they lose the show. (We can all name plenty of shows that have died when popular characters leave.) They are equally captive to their time - let's face it, doesn't it seem a little bit weird to watch those detective shows from the 80s not because of the fashion, but because it's so silly to watch them running around desperate to get information or to communicate without computers or cell phones? Even the sf shows display a vintage future.
But not Who. Who wrote its own limitations into its canon and, like a phoenix, rises from every change of cast or change in society.
This has had a bigger effect than just longevity. It means that the Whoniverse can support as many versions of "canon" as time lords have incarnations. Big Finish for the win! It also means that the fandom is so wide and diverse that while it may act like a bagful of wet cats pretty often, there is going to be no one thing that makes it rip itself apart. I've been through a fan war. The low simmer we've got going here is more like a pleasant sauna.
3. Behold the Power of Cheese People point and laugh at the bubblewrap monsters and the wobbly sets. But Doctor Who owns its limitations, and became the ultimate in making lemons out of lemonade. No money? Fine. Stick a pen cap on a toothbrush and call it a sonic screwdriver, get an old police box out of a junkyard and call it a TARDIS - and make them international icons. Then stick a plunger on a trash can and scare an entire generation into hiding behind the couch.
And New Who continues the tradition. Oh, the sets are stronger and the budget is better, but what's the first alien we get? Farting rubber suits. Yes, the fromage factor is strong in this one.
4. It is ambitious. Succeed or fail - and we're going to argue whether it succeeds or fails until the cows come home - Doctor Who is ambitious. It is unmistakable that it has been trying to shatter stereotypes from Day One, old and new. Even if I think the effort is riddled with subconscious mistakes, I give a LOT of points for trying. Minority characters, different sexualities, strong women, socially conscious storylines - Who has shied away from none of these.
5. Women aren't just clinging stupid things with big boobs and no brain, and never have been. Doctor Who wrote into canon Susan was smarter than the Doctor. Doctor Who projected a female Prime Minister years before it happened. Even when the actresses were put in tit-and-ass costumes (Zoe, Liz, Leela), their characters were so smart & strong that the Doctor relied on them to help him outthink or outfight his enemies, and occasionally save his bacon. Ace took on a dalek with a baseball bat - and won!
New Who has been more up front about bringing sex into the mix, but again, while we can argue their ultimate fates, it has also been pretty progressive about who is cast and how they're presented. Sarah Jane and Mrs. Moore, who would be the granny character in almost any other show, are action heroines - and not for the first time in Who did an older woman save the day. Billie and Freema are neither of them classically beautiful, but they are presented without question as sultry and sexual. Remember Xena? The casting director there thought there was something wrong with Lucy Lawless' body. The entire run of the show, she's either in a corset or a bag. But while both Billie and Freema have slight buck teeth, boobs, and generous backsides (someone in the New Who casting crew likes big butts and I do not lie) nobody is hiding them or playing them down. Nobody is covering up Freema's tattoos.
This is what a woman looks like, Doctor Who announces. They've got curves. They weigh more than 30 ounces. They're not cookie cutter identical. They don't give up their lives for knitting after they turn 30. They're sexy and kickass in all their variety.
6. Brains are best In any episode, even the ones where the cast is dying like flies, the message is never that Might Makes Right. It's all about outthinking the opposition. Science - more often skience, but still - is what will save the day.
7. The Future is Full of Hope. And Humor. How many science fiction shows are based on either a distopia (Blake's 7) or an unnatural utopia (Star Trek Next Gen.) (Yes, I know I just pissed off a chunk of my readership. I still didn't like either show.) Doctor Who shows the future as sloppy, patched together, and with multiple outcomes... but at the same time, there IS a future. And at least one person is going to be watching it with bright eyes and an unhinged grin saying "This is COOL!"
And if something goes wrong... then it can be fixed. That's a subtle message in Who, but a very, very important one. When things go wrong they can be fixed if you just put your mind to it.
8. Story is all Yes, the acting was silly and the monsters were sillier. But nobody's going to hide behind the couch from a trash can with a plunger unless the story makes them believe. You can do magic with bubblewrap, tinfoil, and a secondhand phone booth, if you've just got the story to hang it on.
New Who has done one better. All hail the Mighty Moffat in particular, with his two well-deserved Hugos, and already on the shortlist for a third. Did you ever think you'd almost wet yourself with terror over a five year old and a gas mask?
9. The lunatics are running the asylum. Few shows are so extraordinarily fond of their own fandoms. The official stuff is now completely in the hands of fans - the producer, the lead actor, several of the writers, and the owners of the official "classic" line Big Finish are all fans. It shows.
Furthermore, since they were one of us, they are in many ways willing to treat us as one of them. While sometimes the kindest thing a producer can do is turn a blind eye rather than let the Cease and Desist letters fly, what does Who do? Embrace us.
It's been decades since Paramount was willing to give semi-official notice to the zines, such as reprinting The Best of Trek. Catch them taking the risk now! Doctor Who, on the other hand, has their writers endorse webzines. Lets Big Finish run contests. And what does BF do? Announce that they're not just picking one winner, but that they're so impressed they're going to do an entire anthology of fan-written stories, with contracts, payment, and all. There's some website out there that thought it was going to make money from fanfiction without offering any legal protection to the authors and in return for a measly advertising t-shirt. Big Finish and Doctor Who didn't pat the fans on the head and tell them to run away and play, it took us seriously.
10. It has a rock-solid sense of self. Doctor Who is amazingly comfortable in its own skin. It makes few apologies for the bubblewrap and none at all for the mangled canon, the unabashed Britishness, the fromage factor, or the tin dog.
And quite right, too.
