Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

I like the man generally, big fan of League of Gentlemen of course, but his Doctor Who related projects don't tend to come out too great.

I really liked "The Unquiet Dead" and "Night Terrors", and most of "Cold War" and "The Crimson Horror" though

The Unquiet Dead was fantastic, granted.

Crimson Horror ok, Cold War had some good bits and some awful bits, I can remember next to nothing about Night Terrors. Something to do with a doll house?

Yeah, that was the one with the terrified kid and ppl getting zapped into a dollhouse populated with creepy mannequins that would hunt the trapped ppl down and mannequinize them

Rings a bell, I suspect I watched it drunk.

Was about to tap out why I don't like Gatiss involvement in who and then realised it's more or less the same reason why I don't like Gaiman

Actually:

There's a whole vast population of psychogeographers and people who read Fortean Times and people who like Iain Sinclair and people who like Doctor Who, and the problem with these people getting their hands on a franchise is that they're not actually weird, they're just interested in weird things, and what they produce often looks like a checklist of things you'd expect to see.

Gatiss is one of these people.

The League of Gentlemen TV show was a patchwork of references to Hammer Horror, The Wicker Man, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and when it worked it worked because it was written at a cultural-historical position - 1999 - where

a) a sense of dark millennial horrors was not out of place, but also

b) it was possible to look back on the whole of British 20th century horror-sci-fi-pop-cult and have an awareness of all these things as fitting a pattern, a pattern that might not have been so obvious actually *in the days of* Hammer, old Who, etc. And be able to laugh at them as being weird and old fashioned but also to be charmed by them and cherish them (and find in them a refuge if you were, in some way, queer).

The problem is that this stance of ironic distance is parasitic on earnest production. Even ... vampiric ... one might say.

It struggles to stay fresh, more than ten years after the first League of Gentleman tv show, as evinced by the piss-poor Psychoville and the annoying Gatiss contribution to the MR James Christmas Ghost Story and A Field in England (zzz). Gatiss and friends goofing around with their allusions and knowing winks seem thoroughly dated in a way that even Christopher Lee being the dark lord of Summerisle surrounded by grainy 70s nudity doesn't. The people putting together monster costumes for old Who out of bubble-wrap were sincerely trying to scare us.

Daleks used to be a reference to actual Nazis which, if not the kids watching, then at least their parents would have real, vivid memories of; this is why they were scary; now Daleks are merely a reference to Daleks; this is why they are not scary. Oh, and the too-quick schizo editing of new Who (qua new TV in general) really, really shuts down any attempt to lovingly recreate the atmosphere of old, weird, horror sci-fi pop cult, which relied on slowness and credulity to get its creepy effect. It leaves room only for knowing winks and chuckles.

Interesting! But also Gatiss's stories have just been a bit, you know, crap. Look at his Sherlock episodes, too - he's a really clunky writer.

Are X-Files and Buffy the last shows to successfully do both irony and earnestness? It does seem like a very 90s thing. Even those shows both kind of ended up combusting from being pulled in too many tonal directions at once.

You mean with X-Files being to the Twilight Zone and B-Movies and popular alien abduction and conspiracy theories, as League of Gentlemen is to Hammer Horror and etc?

I think I'd agree if so. Fringe, for example, probably is to the X-Files what Psychoville is to League of Gentlemen and there's a similar dilution going on in each transition

I preferred Psychoville to LoG, overall. It was the more focused Fawlty Towers to LoG's scattershot Flying Circus.

That's a great analogy and yep, I definitely agree.

Daleks used to be a reference to actual Nazis which, if not the kids watching, then at least their parents would have real, vivid memories of; this is why they were scary; now Daleks are merely a reference to Daleks; this is why they are not scary. Oh, and the too-quick schizo editing of new Who (qua new TV in general) really, really shuts down any attempt to lovingly recreate the atmosphere of old, weird, horror sci-fi pop cult, which relied on slowness and credulity to get its creepy effect. It leaves room only for knowing winks and chuckles.

This is really well put, and I feel this effect going on in a lot of contemporary film/tv. I associate it with Quentin Tarantino, among others. Maybe I'm wrong in this? I also feel like the trend of excess gore and "torture porn" is a technique to try and get around the distancing effect of referentiality, and to try and reinstate creepiness and horror.

Isn't he actually claiming that referentiality is what they lost, because it used to refer to something and now it doesn't? Not that I really buy that for two reasons:

One is that the kids were still terrified of the Daleks, if they were written correctly - I would suspect that they became effectively "shouting metallic idiots" before the end of the period which cardamon was a nostalgically remembered kid during.

And secondly unless there were "meet a member of the German National Socialist Party" travelling sideshows that I don't know about, their parent are scared of depictions of Nazis in film and TV.

Hah, "shouting metallic idiots" is a quote of mark s being OTM elsewhere, which this piece for Freaky Trigger is a good example of even if it er doesn't include that quite.

Moffatt has done straight-up scary really well on several occasions, but I get the sense that everyone involved only includes Daleks very begrudgingly at this stage.

If I were a kid I'd have been pretty freaked out by the Dalek in the museum coming back to life, but as a general rule one Dalek is scarier than a whole army.

Isn't there some contractual thing that they've got to have at least one Dalek per season or something?

If I were a kid I'd have been pretty freaked out by the Dalek in the museum coming back to life, but as a general rule one Dalek is scarier than a whole army.

OTM. This was the best use of a Dalek since, er, Dalek.

Oooo wheee oooo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loGm3vT8EAQ

Fairly excited despite myself.

That made me far happier than it should

*squee*

Ned, do you actually watch Dr Who?

Not on any sort of constant basis -- marking one of the few clear differences between DJP and myself when it comes to general pop culture obsessions! But besides the steeped-in-it-all crew here and the other threads, both my girlfriend and a number of close friends are pretty dyed-in-the-wool, so I pick up on a lot of it by default, including the recurring characters/species/overall arcs, and I've seen a slew of old and new episodes over time (if anything I still think of Tom Baker as the default doctor thanks to endless PBS rebroadcasts in the late seventies/early eighties, though I do distinctly remember the Peter Davison episode where Adric dies from the first time it ran in America as well). Given how great Capaldi is in general I could well start watching regularly next season, though like a lot of folks here (and my gf et al as mentioned) a little Murray Gold goes a fuck of a long way, and as my sweetie put it the other week, "I think Moffat is hellbent on making the Doctor and his version of Sherlock the same character."

that last is p drastically reductive and inaccurate imo, but I guess it's pointless asking you to expand!

and ah right, I guessed from your view on Web in the other thread that, despite your regular posting and thread-starting, you might not actually have an engagement with the content

sic burn

Completely accurate, though!

The main problem is that Sherlock is keeping Moffat from giving all his time and energy to Dr. Who. I mean it's probably not to blame for the shorter seasons and the big breaks in episode blocks but I can't help but think it doesn't help.

Especially when you're trying to do the 50th anniversary season and only squeezing out the occasional episode

'squeezing out' seems accurate

The main problem is that Sherlock is keeping Moffat from giving all his time and energy to Dr. Who. I mean it's probably not to blame for the shorter seasons and the big breaks in episode blocks but I can't help but think it doesn't help.

He doesn't owe you all his time or energy, so it's not a problem. (And if he wants to see his children sometimes, or make three episodes of another show every two or three years, this is not a major imposition.)

Especially when you're trying to do the 50th anniversary season and only squeezing out the occasional episode

You mean eight regular-length episodes and one 75-minute episode and another one that'll almost certainly be over an hour? What an outrageous shortage, especially when you're having to work around ongoing budget cuts, the loss of facilities, and the non-availability of your lead actor in the title role.

Yes, i know he doesn't OWE ME ANYTHING, it's just a shame that from the start of 2012, through the 50th anniversary year and well into the 51st we get a total of one season, plus one special, and much of that season has been below par.

Three specials!

And he's said he tried to talk Smith into staying, but he wouldn't - they managed to get him to come back for the 50th and the Christmas special, obv, but that's all. It's going to make a far more cohesive 50th year to have the second half of S7 being so full of nods to the past, and then the big event specials, than to regenerate in March, then have the 50th special come shortly into the run of a brand new - and at that point uncast! - Doctor.

So, I guess, blame Smith if you want to hold someone responsible for there being a whopping 60-90 minutes less of new Who on telly in the 50th year than there were in the 20th anniversary year?


[my back-of-an-envelope: S20 = 22x23mins + 90mins, 2013 = 8x45 + 75 +[70?]. Add An Adventure In Space And Time though and we're totally on par.]

plus sherlock

the only affect that I perceive of sherlock having on Dr. Who is that there were a lot of episodes set in some vaguely Victorian era -- even though Moffatt's Sherlock is contemporary, I imagine he is spending time translating the Victorian era stories and characters into the present day

When is Murray Gold going to regenerate?

into Paul Hartnoll please

only two Victorian eps! and one of them was given to Gatiss to autopilot, it's totally Hammer vs Lucifer Box, not Conan Doyle

Moffatt should hire you to do his PR!

I can rant for hours in the pub about stuff that shits me from S7, but seeing less-founded grumping than my own immaculate thought processes helps me KIP

A Doctor who was as rude and abrasive and thoughtless as Sherlock would be pretty cool actually. Not sure which old-school Doctor that would best map onto - maybe Hartnell or Colin Baker?

There's an argument that some of the Tom Baker era (specifically the Hinchcliffe era) is supposed to be directly Holmesian. The common argument is that this is made explicit in Talons of Weng-Chiang.

set of 11 Doctor Who coins, A$699 anyone?

http://www.perthmint.com.au/catalogue/doctor-who-50th-anniversary-2013-half-oz-silver-proof-eleven-coin-set.aspx

my morning:

In Lisbon, planning to buy tickets when they went on sale at 9am and head out to the first day of Amadora BD. Will be in Leeds on the 23rd, and a Vue cinema is the closest in walking distance - I need to leave a party and get back to it after the screening.

The cinema's page has a countdown for days beforehand, saying eg ON SALE IN 17 HOURS. Once it hits the morning, instead it changes to say that tickets are not available at this cinema - please try another one from a list of six or seven across the UK, none of which are in Leeds.

Eventually I discover on a message board that Vue are very gradually rolling out the cinemas available, but you can only tell by refreshing the page and seeing a new cinema added to the drop-down menu. Nowhere is the chain actually announcing this policy.

(It makes sense as a tactic, especially in light of Big Finish's site crashing when they surprise-released the Tom Baker / Davison / Colin B / McCoy / McGann 50th Anniversary story early the other day. It makes no sense to announce that there are never going to be tickets available, though.)

I spend 2 hours and 45 minutes periodically refreshing, and dicking around on the internets in between times. Another chain in Bradford has them on sale, frustratingly, but I want to be walking distance, not another town away. Especially somewhere I've never been, in another country.

I then refreshed and saw the site change, quickly clicked through.
WTF are VIP tickets? Better view? More comfy chairs? Well, I'd better get them in case they're actually better somehow.
Oh, the next screen pre-loads and then freezes. Refresh.
It won't refresh. Reload the session URL.
It takes me back to the previous page, now saying at the top that I want to buy two VIP tickets. Great! Click "continue."
It tells me I have to select at least one ticket.
I select another two, and continue. It pre-loads, then freezes.

I've been doing this in Firefox; click the Chrome icon and wait six minutes while it opens.
C+P my session URL from Firefox into Chrome.
It loads up, and shows me the seats its selected for me. They're in the front row of what's displayed, but it says Row E. I don't want to sit in the front row of a cinema at all, and especially not in 3D, but the only other option is the row behind. Hopefully there are really four rows in front of these. Click continue.

Enter my name and address and credit card details. It doesn't give me an option to enter my country. Continue.
It takes me to a secure code bank authentication thingy. I enter my code.
It takes me back to the previous page and says my bank refused authentication.
I enter all my name and address and credit card details again, then go through and carefully make extra sure I've entered the code correctly.
It takes me back to the previous screen with the same message.

I go back to Firefox and log into my bank account.
I definitely still have enough room on my card to buy over 100 tickets to the screening.

I go back to Chrome.
I enter all my address and name and credit card details again.
I use the little "find address" button beside the post code field, to see what it does.
It tells me to enter a valid post code.

So, all of this has been going wrong because Vue's website doesn't recognise an Australian postcode as being legit, and is telling my bank's security provider that I'm in the UK, apparently?

I use the help number that the message at the top of the page has been showing me, and the very chirpy girl on the technical assistance desk books me tickets on her system over the phone.

It's now past noon and I've been waiting to have a shower, get breakfast, and no longer be sitting in a hostel dorm room glaring at a netbook, plus it's now pissing down outside so I can't get to the Amadora BD, and there could still turn out to be something wrong with the booking once I get to Leeds in a month, but

HOORAH I HAVE TICKETS TO SEE THE DOCTOR WHO 50TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL IN 3D ON A BIG SCREEN WITH A CINEMA PACKED FULL OF EXCITED HAPPY PEOPLE HAVING FUN!!!

I once told my boss at a relatively new job that I was going to miss a meeting because it was vitally important for me to repeatedly call Ticketmaster so I could get tickets to see Prince in a nightclub so I say kudos to you, sir

I am so freaking excited for this. Gonna buy tix tomorrow.

my screening in New Orleans sold out in an hour :/

Wow, playing in 13 theaters in the metro Atlanta area. Hell yes.

did you get to see Prince in a nightclub?

Of course I did!

also just bought tix for Boston

I'll inform my wife later, lol

he did one aftershow in Sydney last year, where they sold about 100 tix for a 2000 capacity club bcz the owner is a multimillionaire cock who likes showing off

he did about five in Melbourne :(