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Earthbound
I've posted a couple of times about earth-bound Doctor Who, pleading that it get off earth. The news (thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
britgeekgrrl for the link) is not good: Cost 'keeps Doctor Who on earth'.
RTD said that:
he would not be using forests and quarries as stand-ins for alien landscapes, as was often the case in classic Doctor Who episodes. "The mockery we would get walking into a forest and saying that we're on the planet Zagfon!"Oh, come on! Give the viewer a little credit for imagination. And besides, SG1 does that all the time. I've seen a lot of big-budget CGI but I'm happy to believe that a quarry with some unusual plants made of polystyrene in it is on another planet. And the old methods might be cheap but a painted screen can be surprisingly effective.
Davies [...] admitted the series had become London-centric, despite being produced by BBC Wales. "For your ordinary viewer, it's the default setting," he said. "You've got big vistas and things, and it's good for the image of the programme."Eh? Mate. Not to me, it isn't. And here's another little trick. You don't have to go outside to be somewhere else; much of 'The Girl in the Fireplace' proved that.
However, the writer said he would "love to shoot on the streets of Manchester".Sigh. It's still yer basic England, innit. If you can't afford proper SF, then why do it? Oh but wait.
Two spin-off series, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, are currently in production.Let me guess where they're set.
OK, there have been some excellent stories in pseudo-London--'The Empty Child'/'The Doctor Dances' were among the best--but my other favourites, 'The Girl in the Fireplace', and 'The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit'; were off earth--at least partially in the case of 'Girl'. What used to be a space-and-time-spanning series has become very cramped and insular. It's just the TARDI now?
Bring back the quarries and the polystyrene, I say.
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Davies [...] admitted the series had become London-centric
Er, yes, I did notice. 16 episodes out of 27 to date, isn't it?
OK, I wouldn't mind if they came to Manchester. But hasn't the man heard of sets?
What's really cheap is that Rose kept telling us they'd been to exciting planets somewhere else that we never got to see.
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That few, huh?
Rose kept telling us they'd been to exciting planets somewhere else that we never got to see.
Maybe it's time to make it a radio series. Your imagination's the limit on radio.
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OK, my London-set episodes: Rose, bits of The End of the World, Aliens of London, World War Three, possibly bits of Dalek, Father's Day, The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances, substantial bits of The Parting of the Ways, The Christmas Invasion, I assume though I don't remember it being spelled out School Reunion, AU Rise of the Cybermen, AU plus final scene in Our U The Age of Steel, The Idiot's Lantern, Love and Monsters, Fear Her, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday.
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I want some science in my fiction.
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And honestly? I'd kill for an all or mostly Tardis based episode - a ship show. Flesh it out! Show us the other rooms! Sure, it'll cost, building those sets - but you can keep using them!! Dammit, spend now so you can save later! How is it possiple that the series of the show with a fraction of your budget evoke so much more of a sense of wonder?
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A TARDIS-based ep would be really cool. And how hard would it be, really? It's just rooms and they're relatively easy to assemble as sets.
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An informant of David Langford's Ansible newsletter alerted him to this, which is bound to cause more contact between foreheads and keyboards:
"[b]Others See Us[b]. Russell T Davies congratulates himself on resisting the fatal temptation to commit sci-fi: `I've always got a much more complicated, science-fictiony version of each episode in mind, and I always filter that out, and go for the more straightforward version -- the more emotional, honest version. For example, there was a great, complicated version of "Tooth and Claw" in my mind where, at the end of the episode, Queen Victoria is killed, and that creates the parallel universe which becomes the world of "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". It would have been the most brilliant ending, because the Doctor and Rose would have stood there and gone "That's not supposed to happen!" But it's very subscription channel, cult audience, male sci-fi. It's a brilliant moment, but its legacy is too complicated, and too dark in a boring way.' (Doctor Who Magazine #373)"
No wonder I'm annoyed. Also, apart from the cost at the newsagency, no wonder I don't read DWM anymore...
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And female! [spork] Apart from the sexism, IOW it would be too intelligent. Sigh. I for one would have liked to know how the parallel universe was created. No wonder we don't get proper SF any more if it's considered purely cult.
Actually I'm craving some SF. BSG is more politics than anything else, and besides it and SG1 and SGA are off air here. What else is there? Just the library.
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Just a hunch I've got, given how the phrase was used in the Beeb article, also...
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Here, here to the above and every thing else you say.
(and I can copy and paste in IE again, Yay)
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Silly Twits ...
SO what's wrong with Son-of-Betchworth - and where did @suspension of disbelief@ go?
Yes there may have been wobbly sets and quarries but they did cracking good stories in the old days.
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and where did suspension of disbelief go?
Snap! I mentioned just that further up. :-)
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me too
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They sneered, but they're way better than fake London.
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While we were hunting The Devils Pulpit on Horizon / Planet Goth (this was actually in the Forest of Dean) he said how amazing and unworldly these places were. He'd never even have known they existed if I hadn't been clued in through BBC locations and gone looking. He was pleased he had come along for the ride.
During my time looking at things I've been in searing heat in deathly white chalk quarries, stamping about in sand pits with strange coloured sand, up to my knees in leafmould and ferns, in dark pine forests, down in damp caverns full of stalegtites (sp?), in the grounds of Presidential Palaces ... well the list is endless.
Is there an address I can e-mail to send a telling off to that stupid stupid man?
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It seems like the production philosophy of the show has reverted to the early 1970s - it's preferable (ie, cheaper) to shoot on location than it is in the studio. But combined with RTD's strangely anti-alien stance... GAH!
I think THAT is the problem
I work at a college where they teach film studies and I was having a convo with a tutor over the summer and he said SciFi don't necessarily say anything about the future.
What it does is say things about what we are bothered about at the time of writing / film making.
Star Trek in the 1960s had the Klingons who we Knew were actually the Russians in makeup.
The new writer of Dr Who is making it into a Soap Opera. Whenever that happens to any series I follow I jump ship.
I LOVED the old Dr Who (well not Davison or Baker Mark II but that is my taste) and am watching DVDs to see episodes I missed as I wasn't born. I even got to pat K9 (the OLD K9) on the head and give him a dust at a convention I was at not so long ago.
TPTB really need to get their heads round stuff and work out what really matters. If they are just showcasing London (which is really somewhere in Wales) that is as daft as CSI:New York filming in Los Angles - and yes that does happen.
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This is a problem too, for me anyway. I don't want this world reflected back at me. I want escape and SF and speculation and entertainment. This is one of the reasons I haven't been bothered to finish watching SCG S2 yet. I don't want terrorists, dirty politics, and paranoia. I want to enjoy my viewing.
I miss Star Trek (despite the Palestinians in DS9) and Red Dwarf.
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Yes, there are places--and plants--that look very otherworldly; B7 managed well on its tiny budget. Strange things called Chinese Toons are popular here: pink feather dusters the size of small trees; very odd. But you can also filter light to change it, colourise film digitally to give vegetation an odd colour; there's lots you can do to give a place a different look and feel.
And there are always inside sets.
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People do that all the time....
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