Comment Feed for The Medium is Not Enough TV blog

Comment from George on What have you been watching this week (w/e November 20)

2009-11-21T06:58:11Z

Doctor Who, Doctor Who and Doctor Who! ! Great episode... can't wait for 'The end of time'. Also saw the clip on children in need and was whooping on the sofa.
Stargate Universe. Another good episode, pretty brutal and some good character work I thought. I just hope it doesn't do a Star Trek Voyager and resolve everything with a bow on in the next episode!
The Restaurant... I couldn't believe last weeks decision and this weeks decision was out of the judges hands as one of the couple closed their own restaurant! I was very disappointed. This years series turning out to be quite hollow (are the contestants given any support?)
Spooks - This weeks ep felt like a retread of one many years ago in series 1. However another shock at the end of the episode. All I can say is that the fringe benefits of their job must be good as the attrition rate is shocking!
and finally Mrs Espedair has inflicted I'm a celebrity on me... oh the horror. This really is end of the world tv.... at least I pray for the end of the world when I have to watch it (I guess I've just seen 2012 so I'm in an apocalypse kind of mood!)

Comment from Marie on Friday's Sitting Tennant (from Sister Chastity): Some festival or other

2009-11-21T00:08:56Z

The Glastonbury mud took David's instruction to "kiss my arse" surprisingly literally.

Comment from Marie on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T23:50:43Z

It's taken me for fricking ever but I finally reviewed it -

http://womanwhotalkedtoomuch.blogspot.com/2009/11/doctor-who-waters-of-mars-children-in.html

Comment from bob on What have you been watching this week (w/e November 20)

2009-11-20T21:15:55Z

Highlight of my week was without a doubt Merlin which had a surprisingly mature and emotional episode with Arthur at its heart and Merlin playing a strong role too. Amazing stuff. I still can't get it out of my head.

Another British delight was Misfits which I saw the pilot of after I posted in last week's whybwtw. I have just seen episode 2 and it is brilliant. Loved it. A really good use of the supernatural to look at people's behaviour.

And as we are in Brit-land, yeah I saw Doctor Who but oddly enough probably enjoyed Sarah Jane more. Phil Ford wrote the SJ story last week about the Mona Lisa and I thought it had very sharp dialogue and some great character stuff for Luke and Clyde.

Moving across the ocean, Dexter was okay but it's probably the episode that has me the least excited of all so far this season (which I do think is stellar). The season is kind of at the start where I would expect things to be a bit more pacy.

Missing Mad Men from my personal schedule, I tried V and was both repulsed by its cynical tone and bored by its barrage of "twists" that you could see coming.

This week's FlashForward (that was broadcast in Britland on Monday) was also a disappointment but since it delivered three brilliant episodes in a row until that one, I am not too worried.

I've watched a fair amount of Being Erica (the last one I saw had no time travel antics whatsoever) and am kind of annoyed that the mysterious Kai turned out to be *SPOILER*. Such a waste. Still, the show manages to entertain just through the strange charisma of Erica.

Finally... I guess I am one episode behind with Community and I read Rob's words above with a heavy heart because I was rather looking forward to last week's development gaining legs...

Comment from Anonymous on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T19:54:42Z

FWIW, I'm on the same wavelength as SK: you can't tell a good sci-fi story without a bit of arm-waving, but you need to be careful where you put it, and in this episode a very weak bit got put right at front-centre with the whole emotional weight of the piece hanging from it.

It's not really about logic - none of Who works if you start thinking about that too deeply - but for me at least it musn't feel so utterly arbitrary and trivial in its consequences.

The powers and vulnerabilities of vampires, werewolves and the like are equally arbitrary, but they have the weight of many years of storytelling behind them and for the purposes of creating drama they are as convincing as everyday things like gravity, taxes and tooth decay.

The dodgy time travelling logic of Blink didn't matter, because the prime power of that came from the very simple, very chilling idea that maybe statues move when you're not looking. And maybe they're out to get you.

This was just a naked plot device: "it's important that you die, so that I can experience powerlessness and then the consequences of ignoring the rules". And of course so that he can become a tragic hero who must eventually die because he can go on no more. Yada, yada, yada. ;)

Comment from MediumRob on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T16:08:39Z

"The Blinovitch Limitation Effect was a throwaway line when it first appeared, so it's hardly surprising it wasn't explained (indeed, that was the joke: the Doctor says 'oh that can't happen because of the B.L.E.' as if Jo knows what he's talking about)"

Not exactly. It was throwaway, but it was designed to plug a gap. Jo asks the Doctor why, if they cock up, they can't just go back in time again and fix their balls-up as well. The Doctor says 'Ah, that's because of the BLE,' Jo asks 'What's that?' and before the Doctor can say, he's interrupted.

That's bigger handwaving that "fixed points in time" by miles and it was jokey and we accepted it, just as we accepted the first Doctor's "but you've discovered television, haven't you?" explanation for why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside.

Without timey-wimey things, there wouldn't have been Day of the Daleks, Mawdryn Undead, Remembrance of the Daleks, Blink, et al. Mawdryn Undead wouldn't have happened at all without an arbitrary made-up Timey Wimey rule. Ditto Father's Day - what happens when paradoxes happen as a result of time travel? Big beasties pop up, that's what. Who says? We do.

I don't think there's anything wrong with arbitrary rules in your entirely made up universe, any more than there's anything wrong with having your vampires not show up in mirrors, your werewolves allergic to silver, et al. It's your universe. Do you really need to explain exactly why your vampire hero can't go out into the daylight? Do you need to explain the photons and how they react with the dead cells in vampire skin, creating an exothermic reaction? Or can we simply assume that because the vampire says it will be bad, it'll be bad?

Fixed point in time could be explained by numerous bits of quantum mechanics if you really, really wanted (interference with the troughs in overlapping universal quantum wave functions simply causes them to go out of phase, creating destructive interfere that sums over histories to zero; if all of history is only here because we are the observers who observe the past and resolves the wave functions, interference with the observers at a fixed point causes all of the past to be rewritten as well, causing wave functions to no longer collapse).

But "bad, bad things, like the stuff we saw in Father's Day, Logopolis, et al" but worse were the general implication and I'm happy with that. It's implied, it's not spelt out, but that's okay. Maybe it will be one day, maybe it won't be. It's a Macguffin as bad as Notorious's uranium but I'm willing to go with it, at least.

Comment from SK on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T15:42:20Z

Generally we don't have to take it as read that when the Doctor looks a bit terrified bad things will happen, though: there's generally some suggestion as to what those bad things might be, like a monster rampaging around the place or some mysteriously dead bodies.

The Blinovitch Limitation Effect was a throwaway line when it first appeared, so it's hardly surprising it wasn't explained (indeed, that was the joke: the Doctor says 'oh that can't happen because of the B.L.E.' as if Jo knows what he's talking about). And in 'Earthshock' (or rather, 'time-Flight', which is where the 'can't we go back for Adric' discussion is) it's again not a major dramatic crux and swept under the carpet as quickly as possible -- which is the best thing to do with these kind of wibbly time-travel things, sweep them under the carpet and get on with a real story with real jeopardy (that's how the old series played it, most of the time) because if you look at them too hard -- as for example when you make them the focus of an episode -- it becomes all too obvious that they are just arbitrary made-up rules.

It's the same as how you don't do an episode about how the Doctor can't stop the holocaust. There's simply no dramatically satisfactory answer to that question (the novel which tried to address it only succeeded in proving that) so the best thing to do is just accept that your audience realise that would be in bad taste and move on.

The problem with the Ood at the end is that if it is foreshadowing universal disaster then it looks fearfully like that disaster will be another one of the Davies era's no-logical-causality 'this is what's happening now, we know it doesn't follow on from the last scene, but just accept it because Murray Gold is playing strings at you.'

Comment from bob on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T15:32:03Z

"But rescuing people is a clear and obvious good, while the 'Laws of Time' are abstract and arbitrary and the kind of thing the Doctor breaks all the time anyway."

For what it's worth, I was convinced of the wrongness in messing with time. For me, the choice between saving people and keeping the timelines the same wasn't at all clear cut (well, except that he could have saved them but taken them somewhere far from 21st century Earth and hence done both but nevermind). Actually I think I agree with the line Adeleide took- a good future is worth a sacrifice.

As an aside, I am not sure why the Dalek, intent on destroying reality, would spare Adeleide.

Comment from MediumRob on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T14:57:43Z

"But it is part of the crux. Both those things you identify rely on there being some reason why he shouldn't save them -- some 'bad side-effects' or some 'evil result'. But what these bad side-effects are or what that evil result might be is not convincingly shown."

We take it as red, generally, that when the Doctor looks a bit terrified, then bad things will happen. We've already had Father's Day show what happens when one law of time set up by the Time Lords gets broken. Isn't it kind of in the same area by implication?

The effects of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect weren't explained for a decade. Why Adric couldn't be saved at the end of Earthshock isn't explained without it and then only implicitly. Yet it takes until Mawdryn Undead for the explanation to turn up. Doesn't mean Earthshock or the ending of Earthshock was bad.

Who's to say (apart from Rusty and co until December 25th) that the Ood turning up at the end following the Doc's cock-up (a la The Watcher in Logopolis - we got the Cloister Bell later didn't we, or was that in the End of Time trailer?) isn't the herald of the universal disaster that's still to come?

Comment from SK on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T14:13:27Z

But it is part of the crux. Both those things you identify rely on there being some reason why he shouldn't save them -- some 'bad side-effects' or some 'evil result'. But what these bad side-effects are or what that evil result might be is not convincingly shown.

The crux is basically forcing the Doctor to choose between obeying the Laws of Time, and rescuing people. But rescuing people is a clear and obvious good, while the 'Laws of Time' are abstract and arbitrary and the kind of thing the Doctor breaks all the time anyway. So it's rather a one-sided dilemma, and means that rather than a big wrestle with his conscience leading to a momentous character shift (which is how Tennant plays it) the Doctor's walking away seems more like a petulant child playing by the rules of game that he's just made up.

It was just as arbitrary in 'Fires of Pompeii', so yes, it is still arbitrary, but at least 'Fires of Pompeii', for all its faults, did something more interesting: it forced the Doctor (who had been happy to stand by while everyone died) into the position where he actively had to make the volcano erupt and kill everyone, which is a rather more interesting dramatic crux because it says to the character 'okay, that thing you didn't like but were willing to just let happen? How about if it's YOU doing it for the greater good? That a bit more of a wrench now, eh?'

Comment from MediumRob on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T13:14:04Z

"for the dramatic crux it's better to have something non-arbitrary"

It's not really the crux though. The crux is two things:

1) whether the Doctor can actually walk away from something. Can a truly heroic character avoid doing something heroic if it means it'll have some bad side-effects.
2) whether the end justifies the means.

Interestingly, the "end justifies the means" is usually referred to in the context of doing evil to effect a good result. Here though the dilemma is whether to do good if it produces an evil result, and it's shown that that's not the case either.

"I doubt they'll be talking about 'fixed points in time' in the same way in thirty-five years."

Depends what you think of Fires of Pompeii, really. It was established there. Is something arbitrary once it's already been established in a previous episode?

Comment from SK on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T12:57:57Z

I've been going through this on a mailing list which is a far better venue than a comments thread, and even then it's fairly painful, so I'll just say: some things are arbitrary but that's BAD (eg, the 'magic red button') and for the dramatic crux it's better to have something non-arbitrary.

People still talk about the 'Genesis of the Daleks' wire scene because it avoids the wibbly abstract paradox issue, or relying on arbitrary 'laws of time, but instead poses basically a real, hard, question ('if you could go back in time would you kill Hitler, given that the consequences might be bad as well as good?') -- I doubt they'll be talking about 'fixed points in time' in the same way in thirty-five years.

Comment from MediumRob on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T12:36:45Z

Almost everything in Who is arbitrary. Why can't he mess with the Aztecs or anything else in an historical story? Why is there a magic red button that can destroy every single Dalek in the universe? Why can he reverse the polarity of the neutron flow? Why can't he meet his past selves except in times of dire trouble? Why can't he take his companions to Gallifrey?

Because the Doctor knows stuff that we don't.

Even if someone had argued with him on the spot, what would have happened?
"Why do I have to die?"
"Because something terrible will happen."
"Who says?"
"I do."
"And you know how?"
"I just do."
"Well, you're wrong."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"Oh, well now you put it that way, let's go."

Of course, simply because the Doctor says something is true, doesn't mean it is true. He can be mistaken, too, as he was in this case. But if everyone were right at the beginning, where would the drama be?

Comment from SK on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-20T12:00:25Z

Oh, finally! Someone else who saw that the whole 'you have to die because I SAY SO!' thing was arbitrary and generally undermined the whole drama!

I was beginning to think I was the only one with, you know, eyes.

Comment from Marley on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-19T21:11:56Z

Er, feeble I thought. I like dark (nu-Who could do with more of it), but while Russell T Davies consistently strives to achieve a sense of the epic and the tragic, what he generally achieves is a sense of sentimentality and rushed, unconvincing story telling.

It's a generic base-under-siege tale which tries to inject some gravitas via the Doctor's random assertion that Adelaide's death is crucial to the whole history of the universe. Ever. Although in Davies' 21st century human-centric view, all Adelaide's death really guarantees is that humans make it out there to the stars a little earlier than they might otherwise. Big freaky deal and not worth anyone dying for.

The only interesting element is the idea, brought in very late, of what the Doctor might become if he believed Davies' hype of godhead.

The trailers for the finales look like more of the usual tosh we get at season end. 'The End of Time'. Really? Really the end of Time? I suspect not.

I'll miss Tennant, but roll on Moffat. Hopefully we'll get some more genuinely interesting science fiction writing, and perhaps less of Davies' horribly narrow-minded obsession with 21st century Britain.

Comment from Joe Bua on Question of the week: which franchise do you really hate?

2009-11-19T20:42:30Z

Twi ... wait for it ... light!

SUCKS!

Vampires that don't have sex? Ridiculous.

Also, all torture porn. And ... anything with Courtney Thorne-Smith, of course.

@Stuart Douglas -- Blasphemy!

Comment from Jane Henry on Friday's Sitting Tennant (from Sabine): David Tennant in the bath

2009-11-19T11:36:26Z

Eureka! I've discovered the laws of gravity. David practices for his next part and pleases Marie in the process

Comment from TemplarJ on Question of the week: which franchise do you really hate?

2009-11-18T19:15:41Z

There are so many! Stargate springs to mind, but to be fair I've seen so little of it that it's a prejudice I can't back up with anything other than an instinctive dislike of US 'military porn' sci-fi. I hate 'Saw' (again though, I've only seen one a half of them), mainly because it seems to be the sort of thing that idiots think of as 'clever'.
But the clear winner will always be the retarded offspring of Star Trek.

Comment from Virginia Moffatt on Review: Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-18T16:42:31Z

I'd like to stand up for RTD on women. I agree that Donna's mum is foul and Martha's is a bit of a pain (though you do understand her a bit more when you realise she thinks she is helping Martha), but Jackie really develops as a character and I love her. Particularly because she is not above teasing the Doctor.

Re the fate of companions. I thought Rose's first departure was brilliant, so poignant, and should have been left there. The second didn't work for me, but I agree with Anna, it was bittersweet and she did sort of get what she wanted. I was furious at the way RTD made Martha fall in love with the Doctor, because I felt it detracted from the strong character she was in Smith and Jones. But, when she left, she did it on her terms, and I for one was cheering. What woman hasn't been in that position? I was pleased she realised she was as good as he was and deserved better. As for Donna, think she's a great character & her story a really good one. Very painful, but true, in that being with the Doctor has difficult consequences (as Martha warned her). And if you think RTD mean, look at what's happened to others in the past - Sarah Jane was left unceremoniously nowhere near Croydon, Tegan got cross and the doc went off without her, I'm sure there are loads more. So I think it isn't the writer being horrid to women, more that there has to be a very good reason for a companion to leave, otherwise none of them would, they'd all stay forever...

And I agree with the person who said River Song's ending sucked...

Comment from Rullsenberg on Friday's Sitting Tennant (from Sabine): David Tennant in the bath

2009-11-18T13:41:02Z

"I'm double-jointed you know: those are my toes resting on my shoulder"

Marie passes out.