Have a big cup of Meh.
Jul. 2nd, 2007 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6I don't know what's with me lately. I guess I'm technically depressed, but in terms of objective feeling, 'numb' is more accurate. Everything feels like meh. I feel withdrawn and bored and don't feel like doing the things I normally do when bored. Can't work up the enthusiasm. And I feel out of touch with people, unconnected.
Technically on a writing cycle this week. I took Canada Day off, in part because it just wasn't flowing and in part because I had to go out to do family stuff for a good chunk of the day. The first two writing days of the cycle I met the quota, but I felt I was more plugging along, not really doing my best work, and I haven't really had a good, exciting idea I want to explore in a while. See, Meh.
And speaking of Meh, I should probably talk about Doctor Who, spoilery thoughts on "The Last of the Time Lords"
I knew as soon as they showed 'One Year Later' I'd have problems with the episode. Actually, I kind of felt that at the end of last episode. But here I really knew it. Because you know what One Year Later means in a story like this? It means "HEY A BIG FAT RESET BUTTON IS COMING, AND NONE OF THIS 'COUNTS'". And, of course, that's exactly what happened. And especially worse that we wasted the Master on a stupid reset button episode. Oh, sure, the ending implied that he'll be back (probably in the body of the Master's wife who'll now become a female Master. Hopefully she'll regenerate immediately so I won't have to look at that vacant expression anymore).
And come on, didn't we just have this exact same kind of reset button pushed on Torchwood? Big apocalyptic event, huge swathes of people die, it gets undone and they all come back to life. No. Just shut up. This is all worse because this kind of plot could have worked perfectly, without reset button, if they'd only set the whole thing 10-15 years in the future. That's one of the beauties of Doctor Who. When you can time travel throughout the universe, you don't _need_ a huge reset button (or for that matter, a huge deus ex machina) to counter mass death or an invasion. You can just set it on another planet or another time, and the fact that the human race is decimated is sad, but you can be confident they'll survive and repopulate. The reset button is a lazy storytelling device (again like doctor ex machina), okay once in a while for fun, but should not be the basis of your major plots. RTD, have you learned _nothing_ from the failures of Star Trek?
As for the rest, like a hell of a lot (far too much) of the new Who, and especially RTD's stuff, I was very mixed on it, when I wanted to be OMG that was cool. I liked some stuff, but not others.
The Master was just an idiot too many times, keeping Martha's family alive when the sensible evil genius thing to do would have been to kill them on TV, one by one, to break her spirit, maybe keeping one on hand with the suggestion that if she comes back to fight him, they'll die. But no, that wouldn't have been 'nice', and wouldn't have been as easily undoable. And what was the point of having her brother escape? He played absolutely no role in the episode. I've heard they just couldn't have the actor for the last episode so they didn't want him captured with the rest, but in that case I'd rather at least have had a mention of him, maybe that he died off panel (so the rewinding time can bring him back).
Simms as the Master did a little better this time around in terms of not being silly, at least (he was at times, sure, but it was of the low-key level I'd liked from the last episode), and the deviousness at his 'escape' was at least something.
Magic deus-ex-machina doctor again. Bah. Vaguely nice explanation for how they got to that point and what Martha was doing, and I liked the idea that she was getting captured deliberately to be at the right place and time, and if they hadn't used Deus ex machina far too much in this series already I might have let it slide. Or if he didn't suddenly generate clothing in his size. Speaking of which, shrunken doctor was dumb. Hell, old Doctor was kind of dumb, but at least it was acceptably dumb and they should have left it at that. Still, the Tinkerbell effect was dumb. Now in addition to all his other
magic powers, millions of people thinking about him at the same time makes him a superhero. Yay. :P.
Revelation of the Toclafane as Utopians? Okay idea, verging on cool with the idea of
people deciding to escape the end of the universe by travelling to the past where they
know they can set up an empire of a hundred trillion years of dominance (and with the
Master in charge of it all, finally felt like a real Master plan). But the actual
mechanics of it? The one Tocladrone Martha _happens_ to destroy _Happens_ to be the
same little kid she was friendly with while he was on the way to Utopia? I mean,
come on, that's stretching coincidence to the ultimate limits. I wanted to throw
something at the screen.
Oh, and remember what the Doctor did to the Tardis to thwart the Master? "I fused the coordinates. It's permanent." Or, well, permanent until the doctor decides to fix it, then it gets fixed before the end of the episode, including the huge Paradox machine the Master put in its place. But someone just as smart as the Doctor? NO HOPE EVER OF FIXING IT, apparently. See, this is the kind of idiot plotting that really bugs me about the series. They don't seem to think things through. Not even a little bit.
Jack as the face of Boe? Totally lying! Well, probably not. But with the doctor's explanation of why he can't die, it makes no sense. Then again, with the doctor's explanation of why he can't die, not much makes sense, so maybe that's not so big a deal.
I liked Martha, but I'm kind of glad she's leaving, time for some new blood. Only wish they'd follow it up with new blood on the showrunning side. I'd almost hope they pick up the new companion on the Titanic, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
donna_c_punk suggested, get a person from the past as a fresh perspective. If you can't write a character to be relatable unless they're from the 'present', then you can't write.
Titantic hitting the Tardis was okay, but didn't thrill me. Of course, the Doctor's supposedly already _been_ on the Titanic, so I wonder if they're going for something _very_ special, or if they're just blithely ignoring their own continuity. I'm betting on the latter. It seems more in the spirit.
So that's the last Who until Christmas. What's up with British television that they can't manage to make a full season? I say let's cancel the crappy Torchwood and use that effort to make more Who. Feh. Anyway, I think I'll help fill up some of the rest of the summer hours by continuing watching the old school Who from where I left off, and see if I can complete the rest of Pertwee's run (I'd just gotten up to the Master's first appearance), and maybe get to the Fourth Doctor finally.
In other news, meh.
Technically on a writing cycle this week. I took Canada Day off, in part because it just wasn't flowing and in part because I had to go out to do family stuff for a good chunk of the day. The first two writing days of the cycle I met the quota, but I felt I was more plugging along, not really doing my best work, and I haven't really had a good, exciting idea I want to explore in a while. See, Meh.
And speaking of Meh, I should probably talk about Doctor Who, spoilery thoughts on "The Last of the Time Lords"
I knew as soon as they showed 'One Year Later' I'd have problems with the episode. Actually, I kind of felt that at the end of last episode. But here I really knew it. Because you know what One Year Later means in a story like this? It means "HEY A BIG FAT RESET BUTTON IS COMING, AND NONE OF THIS 'COUNTS'". And, of course, that's exactly what happened. And especially worse that we wasted the Master on a stupid reset button episode. Oh, sure, the ending implied that he'll be back (probably in the body of the Master's wife who'll now become a female Master. Hopefully she'll regenerate immediately so I won't have to look at that vacant expression anymore).
And come on, didn't we just have this exact same kind of reset button pushed on Torchwood? Big apocalyptic event, huge swathes of people die, it gets undone and they all come back to life. No. Just shut up. This is all worse because this kind of plot could have worked perfectly, without reset button, if they'd only set the whole thing 10-15 years in the future. That's one of the beauties of Doctor Who. When you can time travel throughout the universe, you don't _need_ a huge reset button (or for that matter, a huge deus ex machina) to counter mass death or an invasion. You can just set it on another planet or another time, and the fact that the human race is decimated is sad, but you can be confident they'll survive and repopulate. The reset button is a lazy storytelling device (again like doctor ex machina), okay once in a while for fun, but should not be the basis of your major plots. RTD, have you learned _nothing_ from the failures of Star Trek?
As for the rest, like a hell of a lot (far too much) of the new Who, and especially RTD's stuff, I was very mixed on it, when I wanted to be OMG that was cool. I liked some stuff, but not others.
The Master was just an idiot too many times, keeping Martha's family alive when the sensible evil genius thing to do would have been to kill them on TV, one by one, to break her spirit, maybe keeping one on hand with the suggestion that if she comes back to fight him, they'll die. But no, that wouldn't have been 'nice', and wouldn't have been as easily undoable. And what was the point of having her brother escape? He played absolutely no role in the episode. I've heard they just couldn't have the actor for the last episode so they didn't want him captured with the rest, but in that case I'd rather at least have had a mention of him, maybe that he died off panel (so the rewinding time can bring him back).
Simms as the Master did a little better this time around in terms of not being silly, at least (he was at times, sure, but it was of the low-key level I'd liked from the last episode), and the deviousness at his 'escape' was at least something.
Magic deus-ex-machina doctor again. Bah. Vaguely nice explanation for how they got to that point and what Martha was doing, and I liked the idea that she was getting captured deliberately to be at the right place and time, and if they hadn't used Deus ex machina far too much in this series already I might have let it slide. Or if he didn't suddenly generate clothing in his size. Speaking of which, shrunken doctor was dumb. Hell, old Doctor was kind of dumb, but at least it was acceptably dumb and they should have left it at that. Still, the Tinkerbell effect was dumb. Now in addition to all his other
magic powers, millions of people thinking about him at the same time makes him a superhero. Yay. :P.
Revelation of the Toclafane as Utopians? Okay idea, verging on cool with the idea of
people deciding to escape the end of the universe by travelling to the past where they
know they can set up an empire of a hundred trillion years of dominance (and with the
Master in charge of it all, finally felt like a real Master plan). But the actual
mechanics of it? The one Tocladrone Martha _happens_ to destroy _Happens_ to be the
same little kid she was friendly with while he was on the way to Utopia? I mean,
come on, that's stretching coincidence to the ultimate limits. I wanted to throw
something at the screen.
Oh, and remember what the Doctor did to the Tardis to thwart the Master? "I fused the coordinates. It's permanent." Or, well, permanent until the doctor decides to fix it, then it gets fixed before the end of the episode, including the huge Paradox machine the Master put in its place. But someone just as smart as the Doctor? NO HOPE EVER OF FIXING IT, apparently. See, this is the kind of idiot plotting that really bugs me about the series. They don't seem to think things through. Not even a little bit.
Jack as the face of Boe? Totally lying! Well, probably not. But with the doctor's explanation of why he can't die, it makes no sense. Then again, with the doctor's explanation of why he can't die, not much makes sense, so maybe that's not so big a deal.
I liked Martha, but I'm kind of glad she's leaving, time for some new blood. Only wish they'd follow it up with new blood on the showrunning side. I'd almost hope they pick up the new companion on the Titanic, as
donna_c_punk suggested, get a person from the past as a fresh perspective. If you can't write a character to be relatable unless they're from the 'present', then you can't write. Titantic hitting the Tardis was okay, but didn't thrill me. Of course, the Doctor's supposedly already _been_ on the Titanic, so I wonder if they're going for something _very_ special, or if they're just blithely ignoring their own continuity. I'm betting on the latter. It seems more in the spirit.
So that's the last Who until Christmas. What's up with British television that they can't manage to make a full season? I say let's cancel the crappy Torchwood and use that effort to make more Who. Feh. Anyway, I think I'll help fill up some of the rest of the summer hours by continuing watching the old school Who from where I left off, and see if I can complete the rest of Pertwee's run (I'd just gotten up to the Master's first appearance), and maybe get to the Fourth Doctor finally.
In other news, meh.
