Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-02-02 03:08 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-02-02 03:08 pm
[ SECRET POST #2223 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2223 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 127 secrets from Secret Submission Post #318.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 04:40 am (UTC)(link)...you know, I may want to check this show out. All I know about Doctor Who is what I've accidentally gathered through occasional bits of osmosis in my brief time on this comm, and it was my understanding that time travel was mostly just used for traveling to historical time periods, or the far future, not for Trek-y stuff.
Also, while you're here, could you clarify to me whether there's any accuracy to my understanding that the show was mostly about romances between the doctors and various women in a sci-fi context? Or is that just the new show (is the new show a reboot? I'm not quite clear on that...)? Or is it just the fandom exaggerating things like with Harry Potter?
Wow. I probably look like a moron now. LOL. Uh...do you have any recommendations for good episodes that would kind of give me a quick feel for the show or is this one of those things where you have to start from the beginning to understand?
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Hahaha that is mostly fandom exaggeration. The old version of the show had zero romance between the Doctor and his companions, and so when the new series started tossing in the occasional romantic subplot, fandom screamed itself blue in the face and still tends to make mountains out of molehills. The show itself is just about the gen-est gen thing ever (albeit gen where the writers keep coming up with kinkmeme-esque excuses for characters to kiss the Doctor or flirt with their doppelgängers), but the Doctor does develop (mostly-UST) ~feelings for one traveling companion, and later ends up getting ambiguously space married to a 51st century adventuress he keeps meeting in the wrong order. Most of the time he just travels time and space with an attractive young woman for company, and is baffled in a 900-year-old-possibly-asexual-alien way whenever someone draws the obvious conclusion.
New show isn't a reboot--it takes place in the same continuity as the old series--but the writers have carefully arranged things so you don't have to be familiar with the classic show at all.
Good jumping-on points... um. I think the general rule is "you can watch random episodes out of order and they'll make sense, but it's richer if you watch in order because the season arcs are fantastic." The episodes where a new companion is introduced are usually good starting points--"Rose" for, um, Rose; "Smith & Jones" for Martha; "The Eleventh Hour" for both Amy and the Eleventh Doctor. Good standalones include "Blink" and "Father's Day" for time-travel shenanigans (though those are both atypical episodes in many ways), "Dalek" for iconic monsters, "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit" for the show's general spirit, "Gridlock" for offbeat WTF-ery in the good way, "The Fires of Pompeii" for classic use of predestination paradoxes, "The Eleventh Hour" for jak;lsjfs everything, "The Doctor's Wife" once you've seen a few episodes and can appreciate the feelings it will give you. That's one from each season.
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 07:48 am (UTC)(link)Oh wow thanks! LOL okay so I was way off about the show and romance. Just one companion huh? Fandom warps everything. Should've realized that by now.
I skimmed through the show's wikipedia page (jfc this show is confusing) and now looking at the totally-illegal uploads on 1channel and seeing by the descriptions that the Chris Eccleston Doctor only got one season (omg these seasons are fucking short...and I probably sound like such an American for saying that), I've decided to pick one episode from each version of the Doctor and based on your descriptions I have lined up Dalek, Gridlock, and The Eleventh Hour to watch tomorrow if my interest holds.
I don't have anything other new things I particularly feel like watching anyway, so I might as well dip my toes in a show that I know has a perpetually-active fandom and a bazillion old episodes that I can watch when I finish all of the new episodes. Anyhoo, this comment is pointless but if it works out, I'm going to credit you with introducing me. ^_^
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 07:59 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 08:23 am (UTC)(link)Thanks for the rec! I think I'll stay away from non-typical episodes when I'm just trying it out for the first time, but I'll definitely keep that episode in mind if I decide to get into the show.
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...I was going to warn you that "Gridlock" isn't as impressive an episode as the other two, it's just a planet-of-the-week adventure that happens to be nicely representative of how fucking weird and yet oddly sincere the show can be. But the first paragraph may have pre-empted me on the "Doctor Who writers smoke the best crack" score.
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 08:35 am (UTC)(link)Regarding your second paragraph...I'm actually kind of glad of that. I'd definitely like to see something representative, and I wouldn't want to watch all the very best stuff right at the beginning and set my expectations for the rest of the show too high. I did that with a show before (The X-Files) and it was hard to adjust to.
If I enjoy these eps, I'll try out the two-parter you mentioned.
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So uh. Yeah. Gridlock and its cat nuns are looking more and more representative.
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)Um, I only lurk here so I don't have a username, but I'll respond to this comment to ramble. Or gush. Or go "wtf was that?" Or ask questions. Or tell you you're stupid for liking the show (jk jk).
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-04 05:16 am (UTC)(link)Uh, general overview: I really really really liked all three episodes! I'm not sure about the show yet because I don't feel like I've quite got a handle on it, but those three I really liked! There was a lot of stuff that made me go "WAT" and a lot of weird moments that seemed like it was implying something and I should be understanding something that I didn't pick up on, which I think was just because I wasn't really familiar with the show.
Actually, that was kind of cool. It kind of gave me a feeling like this is a really big show with a lot of stuff and a lot of history and little tricks and continuity and recurring ideas and conceits that the people who have watched a lot of it would understand, which kind of reminded me of Star Trek and made everything very interesting. Some of it I think was deliberate, like the not-really-elaborated on discussion of the Daleks and the war and the talk about the Doctor's planet and the hologram with all the Doctors and aliens, but some just seemed like the kind of thing that was very vaguely referencing a load of stuff that I didn't understand and that was super-exciting and made the episodes seem like...they were about more than just what they showed? Like, more than the sum of their parts? Anyway, they made me want to see MORE so that's good!
Um. Other stuff. I was really not expecting what I got from 'Dalek'. Like, really not. I know that sounds silly because I've never seen the show so what should I have been expecting? But all the rage and angst and really really dark violent shit and the dozens of people dying was totally unexpected. It kind of reminded me of Star Trek in some ways, which caused me to kind of feel familiar with it, but then it would turn around and be nothing like Star Trek and would surprise me all over again. I liked that.
I really liked Eccleston's Doctor, but was totally surprised and not expecting that. Again, silly of me and all, but I didn't expect him to be so...in the middle of the story? Being the guy who was going through all the emotional stuff? I thought the Doctor would be kind of on the outside for some reason. And not that scary. He seemed seriously dark, like the rest of the episode. That scene where he was yelling at the Dalek in the cell was really amazing. It was the kind of thing that should've looked silly but it totally wasn't. I don't know. I'm just kinda rambling here. I really liked Rose though. I've heard people in fandom wanking about her in passing, and I guess she was kind of stupid what with touching the Dalek and everything, but I really liked her as a character. So, she's the one companion the Doctor was in love with? I didn't realize she was only nineteen, that was a bit of a shock.
Gridlock was so different though! That's something that made it hard for me to get a handle on the show, the episodes were so different. And I don't know if I just coincidentally picked an episode that happened to dwell on the same things as 'Dalek', but I liked that, it made it easier for me to connect the two episodes and the two versions of the Doctor. Right after 'Dalek' I was like "whaaaat come on he's the only one who can play him properly!" but then 'Gridlock' came and he was talking about his planet that got destroyed and mentioned Rose and I realized it was the same deal as in 'Dalek' and that was cool, and then by the time he started carhopping I had totally forgotten about Tennant being different than Eccleston and he was just The Doctor. I was actually surprised at how much I could believe they were the same person even though they looked and acted so totally differently. Also, he's kinda really hot in a weird way. I've seen pictures of him before and was kind of "eh whatever" but he was really hot with the way he talked and behaved in the actual episode. And oh he was all angsty and wibbly and I loved that so much because I eat angst up like ice cream. And he has those BIG EYES omg. And seems like he took a big shot of adrenaline before each take because he's all over the place crazy awesome. I like that about all the Doctors - even though they act so differently there's some things that I could definitely see stayed exactly the same throughout, one being that they all seem incredibly rude in a nice way, like," oh hi, I'm gonna barge in do whatever the hell I want without being afraid of looking stupid and fix everything shut up and listen to me", and how they're all like "well, of COURSE I can do this completely insane thing and save the whole planet and fight super-alien-death-machines, are you implying that's not normal?"
Gridlock was basically me going "lolwut" every five seconds (lolwut giant head in a jar, lolwut cat person, lolwut cat person married to human with actualfax kittens, lolwut six years to drive ten miles, lolwut giant crabs that are treated so matter-of-fact, like, yup, giant crabs) but I really liked it, and was kind of...surprised at how honest it was? The hymns, and the drugs, and the sacrifice, and the Doctor describing his planet. It was just kind of surprising to me. And all the really weird passengers in the cars were just great. I dunno why, but they were just really really great and I loved it. It reminded me of superhero comics quite a bit, with the worldbuilding and all the background insanity. If that's representative of the show in general, I like it a lot. At first I didn't like Martha as much as Rose (but that might have just been the episode I picked), until the end where she sat down and insisted the Doctor explain all the mysterious shit he was brooding about. I liked that a lot.
Also, I think I'm right in saying that some of the characters from Gridlock had appeared before? The head in a jar (forgot his name sorry) and the nurse cat seemed like non-one-off characters.
And then I saw 'The Eleventh Hour' and THAT was really different again too. It might be my favorite so far, because there was just so MUCH stuff in it. The first scenes with the big empty house and the little girl and the garden and the Doctor randomly crashing there and being insane as though crashing in a garden and being insane and demanding food and eating disgusting crap in the kitchen in the middle of the night with a little girl and talking to her like an adult was the most normal thing ever, those scenes were so...I don't know how to describe it but there was this totally different feel, like something out of a kid's fantasy book or something. So not like a TV show episode. Reminded me of the first chapter of Harry Potter. It was a bit different when he came back twelve years later, but that was really awesome too. The whole running around the village with aliens floating overhead and the clock running down, and everything being in such a hurry and running around like crazy. Very Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, actually, which then made me think the Doctor = Ford Prefect which is probably totally inaccurate but it amused me to think about.
This episode was totally HILARIOUS, I was laughing almost all the way through it, and I think out of the three Doctors I've seen this one was the funniest and the most crazy entertaining and closest to what I had been expecting previously, and in some ways he seemed a lot like Tennant but in other ways he was totally different. And I remember thinking the Doctor in this episode, and this episode in general, was so full of wish fulfillment material. A little kid to have this funny guy come talk to her and hold her hand and fix this supposedly-harmless thing that was scaring her, and then for an older girl to have something she's wanted since childhood come true all of a sudden. And ohhhh the last scene when he comes back in the middle of the night and she steps into the police box and it's like a magic jewel-encrusted fairy box inside and so so so so pretty. I don't know why, I just loved how pretty and fantasy-ish the whole atmosphere and all the ideas of this episode was.
I liked Amy a lot too, but it was hard to compare her to Rose and Martha because it was an origin episode for her and I didn't see Rose and Martha's origins at all. And I really liked Rory too, "did he just save the world from aliens and then bring them back? Deadly aliens! Aliens of death!" I've heard him referenced lots of times by Doctor Who fans so I guess he's not going to be just a minor character, which is good.
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I'm also a fan of Trek, especially TOS, and I really get what you mean about it being alike and at the same time so unlike Doctor Who, heh. Both can be very dark or very light-hearted at different times, for example.
It really is a big show with a lot of backstory, but I started out with Nine (Eccleston) and that worked fine. And I've loved all the Doctors, and I agree that they've managed to be different and "Doctor-like" at the same time.
I really loved Rose in the first season, but I didn't like how she was written later on. Opinions differ wildly on her, though! I honestly think she was great all through S1, in any case.
Eccleston really made me understand how horrifying the Daleks were, despite me never having seen classic Who, and had no real knowledge about them, He was fantastic. XD
Yes, many of the characters in Gridlock have appeared before! One of them several times, even (at the end of S3 yu'll realise just how many, heh).
My favourite so far is Eleven, but that goes hand in hand with the style of his seasons being more to my taste than Nine's or Ten's (though I love them too). You're completely right about his era being more fantasy-like, sort of like a dark fairy tale. His seasons also have more... er sort of "fiddly" writing, and a lot of stuff happens in a very short time, so one has to pay really close attention to keep up!
And, you know, Douglas Adams actually wrote for Doctor Who back in the seventies! There's even a reference (blink and you'll miss it) in the Christmas special between S1 and S2 of New Who.
Speaking of which, the Christmas specials are sort of the "episode zero" of each season (except the first), and not all of them are good (though a few are very good). Oh, and between S4 and S5 there are five specials (three normal and a two-parter) that you'll need to watch for the story to make sense, and be sure to watch them in the right order!
Anyway, I hope you'll like the rest of Doctor Who. Happy watching!
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-04 09:23 am (UTC)(link)Thanks for the tips! I haven't really got an idea of what the general seasons are like yet, but I suppose I'll form an opinion when I watch more.
Oh so my reaction to the Dalek wasn't that off! I was kinda "oh right, goofy sci-fi villain ooooooh" but then the Doctor was totally panicking trying to get out and then went totally nuts on it and then it started killing everyone and it still looked goofy but it didn't seem goofy to me anymore.
Eccleston's my favorite so far, but I've only seen one episode of each so I have no idea if my ideas about them so far are that accurate. I really like all of them though.
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And oh man, now I am reliving my days of first getting into the show and making WILDLY INACCURATE guesses about how the plot would play out and who was going to die and what the theme would be and such. Because it does have a particular ethos and almost a formula behind it, but it's so idiosyncratic that it takes a while to figure out what makes the show tick.
Ahaha I have belatedly realized I might have been a tiiiiny bit biased in my episode selection, because all the stuff about the Time War and the Doctor's home planet is endlessly fascinating to me. It started out as a simple plot device to pull off a revived series and cut ties with a whole bunch of continuity without actually doing a reboot, but then the writers realized it was a fucking goldmine of drama and characterization for the Doctor in its own right, and so it sort of lurks in the background until periodically the Doctor has to confront it and it just flattens him. Also there is just this wonderful cascading sequence of partial reveals about how and why the war ended the way it did, and IMO that arc is one of the biggest reasons to watch in order. It's like you said--yes, you can just sit down with a random episode cold and it'll make sense as its own story, but they hint at something bigger ticking away in the background. (I cannot keysmash enough about series 3 and the "you are not alone" arc. Holy SHIT.)
"Dalek" is... yeah, super intense. It establishes some really iconic parts of the series, like the Daleks and why they are actually scary, but it departs from the usual formula in ways that are meant to be shocking. Like the Doctor screaming at the Dalek in its cell--Chris Eccleston's Doctor is grittier and more stripped-down than any of the others, but he's usually got a wry comment and a shit-eating grin and a deep-running vein of delight at all the weird and wonderful life in the universe, so seeing him like that really drives home how serious the situation is. And Eccleston's acting is incredible. I'm glad you liked Rose, too--it took me a while to warm up to her, because all too often her leap-before-you-look tendencies result in the writers tossing her the Idiot Ball, but sometimes she's exactly what the episode needs and this is one of those times.
Hahaha oh "Gridlock." Like... "Dalek" is intense and amazing, but "Gridlock" is just kind of Doctor Who in a nutshell, the way it bounces manically between "what the FUCK?" and "ouch, my feelings" and doesn't shy away from awful things happening but maintains a sort of basic faith in people, and pulls it all off with total sincerity. Also, yes, David Tennant in action is one of the most bizarrely attractive people I've ever seen, and if you could eat his angst up like ice cream, hahahaha boy are you ever in luck because Ten's pretty, pretty, delicious suffering could power supernovae. (And, um, now that I think of it... yup, it literally did at one point.) This isn't Martha's best episode but she is my faaaaavorite companion, because she's nerdy and smart as hell and can totally hack it on her own.
Yup, the cat nun and the face in a jar were both in the cracky possession/bodyswap episode, and I think the Face of Boe put in an appearance as far back as Rose's second episode.
And again with the super-perceptive comments on "Eleventh Hour," because that entire season was very deliberately constructed as a fairy tale. The kind of fairy tale where the universe is full of monsters who'd happily eat you, but if you understand them you can trick them or come to terms with them, and the universe is also full of wonders and sometimes--just sometimes--miracles happen. (But beware Greeks--or Romans--bearing gifts that are too prettily wrapped.) And wish fulfillment and the way it interacts with the real world and aaaaah. Yes. And Matt Smith running around like a drunken giraffe that doesn't quite know what to do with its limbs.
In conclusion I AM SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT. :DDDD
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-04 09:03 am (UTC)(link)Haha um, I'm sure that my "perceptiveness" is more a case of both watching the episode with "hmm, what am I gonna tell tenlittlebullets about this after I'm done?" in mind, and being exposed to a lot of incidental impressions of Doctor Who from other fans on tumblr and this comm (including you, I think!) and kind of absorbing the opinions and ideas they talked about without really having any context to understand and remember them until now.
Like, I'd heard lots of throwaway descriptions about how the Doctor operates, and how David Tennant's era had aaaaannnngst, and Rose was irritating (ha, maybe I liked her so much because I had my expectations set very low?), but although I had never seen any examples of that so I wasn't really expecting anything specific, when I actually saw an episode I think some things I'd heard in the past kind of nudged my view of what was going on in the right direction.
I'm actually pretty excited about the show (asjkhdf why are you tempting me by dropping those hints about season 3?) and I suppose for a start I'll either watch season 3 in order, or go to the beginning and watch some more Eccleston episodes...unless whatever episode comes right after The Eleventh Hour is easy to watch all on its own before I go back to watch the earlier seasons. I just want to look at Smith's Doctor and Amy one more time because woooowwww the way they went off at the end of The Eleventh Hour with the wedding dress and all the waiting was kind of WHAT and I'd like followup.
But anyway, Eccleston interested me the most of the three Doctors, and what you say makes me want to see more of him because yeah, I remember being surprised at how he went from joking around and being all cocky at the beginning of the episode to yelling and laughing maniacally (sadistically? Maybe I'm jumping to off-base conclusions but that's what it seemed like) and how Rose had to make him snap out of it. Also Rose is my fave so far.
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(Anonymous) 2013-02-03 07:56 am (UTC)(link)one thing is that after you've looked at the new seasons (2005-present) if you like it you can then try some Classic Who; I love it but it's definitely not got the modern sensibilty of the new one, so if you go into it first you might be thrown off by the pacing/etc that is differnet from the new version. ^^