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I'm in a hotel in Pennsylvania for a few days, being distracted from getting work done by Christmas shopping and wifi (and, to my credit, going for walks in really cold weather). Yesterday, I watched "The Day of the Doctor," which was fun (I guess I will watch at least the Christmas special to see where they're going with this and how Peter Capaldi makes his debut), and then, because it made me miss Nine dreadfully, followed that up with "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," which are still absolutely and completely my favorites (the days when I could trust both Davies and Moffat!) and make me shiver and smile and all those good things.
"Everybody lives!" An underused mantra. Though one wouldn't want to be predictable and use it all the time, I guess.
And speaking of which, Person of Interest. Which I may be able to watch live tomorrow after all, depending on traffic and weather, both of which look to be awful. Ice pellets, they say. Followed by snow, changing to rain as we get further north. Driving through New Jersey and Connecticut two days before Thanksgiving. Oh hurray. Anyway, not to conjure fate by summoning metaphors about crashes and wrecks… I may be too tired to stay up to 11, and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to trust them on following up last week's episode.
There was this brief moment last Wednesday when it looked like the fandom (as represented on DW and Tumblr, anyway) was coming together to call bullshit, but since then I've seen a shift back to the unfortunately-typical, with the Careesers posting lots of emotional gifs and Watsonian elaborations of Doylist occurrences (my favorite is the whole "How can anyone say Reese didn't care for Carter? Look at how distraught he is in the previews for this week's episode!" argument. To which there are so many replies I can't even begin), and celebrating the brief sailing of their ship despite its ignominious sinking. And then the Rinchers call up the traffic camera footage of the abrupt left turn made by canon, and yes that's two different means of transportation but I don't care. I still think it was cheap and lazy writing, and in a Watsonian sense they didn't need to kill anybody, but if in a Doylist sense it was necessary, it could all have been done so much better. So. Much. Better.
My brain keeps wanting to tie Taraji P. Henson and Christopher Eccleston together (not literally, although anyone who wishes to follow up on that fantasy has my blessing), although I don't think their absences are equivalent. I'm not really in Who fandom, so all I know is that Eccleston wanted nothing to do with the 50th anniversary but not why. I think it would have been difficult to explain Nine's absence from that story (aside from perhaps "he was too close to it"), so all they could do was leave him out (except for the glimpse of facial morphing at regeneration) and let it be, and I'm willing to give them a pass on that, much as I missed him. Whereas writing Carter out of POI, with all the lead time they had, should have been a beautifully subtle work of development, and… it could have been, if they hadn't insisted on making her last episode so much about Reese. The kiss may have been unscripted, but the dialogue and scene-building were still meant to set up personal bereavement, and… oh, trust the fans, will you? We would have missed her fine on our own, and we would have believed that all the other characters missed her too, and wanted her avenged. Reese didn't need a special reason.
Henson herself explained the kiss as one of those spur-of-the-moment things, in both Watsonian and Doylist ways, and… okay, I can see that as character development, but then a) there would have been a lot more passion to it, and b) they should have had a chance to either regret it or decide to go further with it. I would have believed a scene the next day full of mixed embarrassment and curiosity; I could have sailed on that ship until it got blown out of the water. Or the one in which Reese decides he loves Carter and Carter wants nothing to do with it.
This is, of course, assuming that the horrible dialogue (including the total erasure of everything that Finch had done for Reese) had been axed. But the episode aired with that intact, and I'm just not sure how they're going to fix that. I mean, one could write the fic where Shaw sits Reese down and gets him to confess everything and then tells him what an idiot he's being, but it's not going to fit in with the action plan as it seems to be standing (I actually kind of like the apparent moral dilemma, especially if what Finch is afraid of is the Machine's disapproval if he doesn't save Simmons) and besides Shaw has even less patience with Reese's emotions than I do.
Actually, that's kind of the heart of all this: I hated the Jessica Plot; I have never had much patience with Reese's self-castigation; and I really don't want to see him stuck in a holding pattern. Jessica was fridged to feed Reese's pain; Carter had a different arc that was about to reach a satisfying conclusion, and then at the last minute she was stuffed into the fridge too, and it was just so unnecessary. And it serves Reese even less than it serves Carter. It diminishes both of them. And Finch while we're at it. And, in fact, Cal and Jessica. And probably Quinn and Simmons.
Oh well. Anyway, it makes me examine my own writing choices with a magnifying glass, and… I don't think I've pushed anyone into the fridge, not in a stereotypical way at least, and I try hard not to kill characters off gratuitously, and thank goodness book authors don't have to face the problem of actors wanting out of a project.
"Everybody lives!" An underused mantra. Though one wouldn't want to be predictable and use it all the time, I guess.
And speaking of which, Person of Interest. Which I may be able to watch live tomorrow after all, depending on traffic and weather, both of which look to be awful. Ice pellets, they say. Followed by snow, changing to rain as we get further north. Driving through New Jersey and Connecticut two days before Thanksgiving. Oh hurray. Anyway, not to conjure fate by summoning metaphors about crashes and wrecks… I may be too tired to stay up to 11, and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to trust them on following up last week's episode.
There was this brief moment last Wednesday when it looked like the fandom (as represented on DW and Tumblr, anyway) was coming together to call bullshit, but since then I've seen a shift back to the unfortunately-typical, with the Careesers posting lots of emotional gifs and Watsonian elaborations of Doylist occurrences (my favorite is the whole "How can anyone say Reese didn't care for Carter? Look at how distraught he is in the previews for this week's episode!" argument. To which there are so many replies I can't even begin), and celebrating the brief sailing of their ship despite its ignominious sinking. And then the Rinchers call up the traffic camera footage of the abrupt left turn made by canon, and yes that's two different means of transportation but I don't care. I still think it was cheap and lazy writing, and in a Watsonian sense they didn't need to kill anybody, but if in a Doylist sense it was necessary, it could all have been done so much better. So. Much. Better.
My brain keeps wanting to tie Taraji P. Henson and Christopher Eccleston together (not literally, although anyone who wishes to follow up on that fantasy has my blessing), although I don't think their absences are equivalent. I'm not really in Who fandom, so all I know is that Eccleston wanted nothing to do with the 50th anniversary but not why. I think it would have been difficult to explain Nine's absence from that story (aside from perhaps "he was too close to it"), so all they could do was leave him out (except for the glimpse of facial morphing at regeneration) and let it be, and I'm willing to give them a pass on that, much as I missed him. Whereas writing Carter out of POI, with all the lead time they had, should have been a beautifully subtle work of development, and… it could have been, if they hadn't insisted on making her last episode so much about Reese. The kiss may have been unscripted, but the dialogue and scene-building were still meant to set up personal bereavement, and… oh, trust the fans, will you? We would have missed her fine on our own, and we would have believed that all the other characters missed her too, and wanted her avenged. Reese didn't need a special reason.
Henson herself explained the kiss as one of those spur-of-the-moment things, in both Watsonian and Doylist ways, and… okay, I can see that as character development, but then a) there would have been a lot more passion to it, and b) they should have had a chance to either regret it or decide to go further with it. I would have believed a scene the next day full of mixed embarrassment and curiosity; I could have sailed on that ship until it got blown out of the water. Or the one in which Reese decides he loves Carter and Carter wants nothing to do with it.
This is, of course, assuming that the horrible dialogue (including the total erasure of everything that Finch had done for Reese) had been axed. But the episode aired with that intact, and I'm just not sure how they're going to fix that. I mean, one could write the fic where Shaw sits Reese down and gets him to confess everything and then tells him what an idiot he's being, but it's not going to fit in with the action plan as it seems to be standing (I actually kind of like the apparent moral dilemma, especially if what Finch is afraid of is the Machine's disapproval if he doesn't save Simmons) and besides Shaw has even less patience with Reese's emotions than I do.
Actually, that's kind of the heart of all this: I hated the Jessica Plot; I have never had much patience with Reese's self-castigation; and I really don't want to see him stuck in a holding pattern. Jessica was fridged to feed Reese's pain; Carter had a different arc that was about to reach a satisfying conclusion, and then at the last minute she was stuffed into the fridge too, and it was just so unnecessary. And it serves Reese even less than it serves Carter. It diminishes both of them. And Finch while we're at it. And, in fact, Cal and Jessica. And probably Quinn and Simmons.
Oh well. Anyway, it makes me examine my own writing choices with a magnifying glass, and… I don't think I've pushed anyone into the fridge, not in a stereotypical way at least, and I try hard not to kill characters off gratuitously, and thank goodness book authors don't have to face the problem of actors wanting out of a project.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-25 07:48 pm (UTC)From:I'm really looking forward to Peter Capaldi. I do love Eleven (God, do we have to start calling him Twelve now? I hope not), but I think Capaldi is going to be great.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-25 09:30 pm (UTC)From:From what I've seen the fandom has perhaps settled on the War Doctor as 8.5? So no shifting of numbers; that would just be too confusing.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-25 09:01 pm (UTC)From:Fingers in ears for all the PoI stuff, though, since we're on S2 here and having a great time. Not that I'm trying to remain unspoiled, but I'm just choosing to ignore it until it actually happens here.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-25 09:31 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-11-25 10:05 pm (UTC)From:no spoilers for tonight's episode
Date: 2013-11-27 09:19 am (UTC)From:Re: no spoilers for tonight's episode
Date: 2013-11-27 03:56 pm (UTC)From: