KlaxonCow wrote:Well, it proves the point I was making to a few people who told me I shouldn't leave.
I pointed out that though I appreciated what they had to say, the problem was that those who hate me (for reason as yet remaining a total mystery. Though arrogant elitism springs to mind as likely) will still do so and would continue to react to whatever normal, perfectly innocent things I had to post.
I hate leaving things unresolved, therefore I just had to make that one last post. A post where I did nothing but make a positive remark about RTD's handling of the episode and state my personal opinion about the episode reasonably, just like everyone else on this thread.
You snapped at the bait. Proved my point. Clearly demonstrated where the problem really lies. Openly confessed that you were criticising things you haven't read (because there's no way, if you're skimming a post and not reading it in its entirity, to have any basis on which to say things like "hammering the same point home all the way through the post". If you didn't look all the way through the post - as you confess - then there's no possible way you could actually know that. Better yet, your guess was quite wrong and proved clearly that you're attacking and criticising things which aren't even there and haven't actually been said).
Never once did I have a problem with anyone. Despite vicious rumour, I never once intended to talk down to anyone and did not come anywhere near thinking I superior (no, you did that. When you thought having your friends around was licence to bully your prejudices).
You crucified me without even knowing who I was. You condemned me because I tried, for your benefit and mutual understanding, to write my posts properly and, like, you know, talk proper and shit, innit. You assumed by the way I expressed myself alone that I was "posh" or summit. Not the first or last prejudiced assumption that was absolutely wrong.
You've got me all wrong but you'll likely never even read this sentence because your prejudice won't allow it.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
It is because you make one point in a post and bash people over the
head with it 15 times in a post that is 400 times longer than it should be.
But you do seem to be using paragraphs.
The most important people in your life are taken away too soon and the arseholes never go a away.
Well, at least you bothered to read his post before commenting this time
Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke he exclaimed:
"I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine, or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!''
I could almost believe that it was not entirely sincere.
Irony tops sarcasm, I like it.
andym00 wrote:
Well, at least you bothered to read his post before commenting this time
I can't read that as ironic, you seriously think Harlequin was at fault here? I took the "Skims" remark to be humourous shorthand for "reads carefully".
For the record, I find KC's style irritating, but styles will change over time, and I can wait for that to happen. I don't think it's good when anyone leaves for whatever reason.
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
I suspect I liked it because of the absence of the Doctor and Rose, though. Since their bit of the episode was the only bit I didn't like much. Kind of made me realise how much I've gone off it. I still like it enough to keep watching, mind, but last year it was one of the best things on telly - this year, it's just ok. And the Doctor and Rose themselves are just getting annoying, frankly.
I liked this one because it was different. And the way the series is going atm, different is good.
I just lifted this review from a post on the OG forums.
I just want to say how absolutely ‘fun’ that episode was. Completely left-field and a total change of pace and most importantly Russell T Davies demonstrating how important the flexibility of the format is in its ability to accommodate entirely different modes of storytelling within one series.
This was a ‘Doctor Who’ story from a new perspective. This is the adventures of the Doctor and Rose told from the view of the outsider – not just Elton, Ursula and the gang but also, quite crucially, from Jackie’s point of view. Look at what this whole experience does to Jackie for starters and you will begin to understand what this episode is about. Camille Coduri was quite marvellous in showing us a parent so cut off from her own child that she desperately reaches out for relationships that are destined to fail and she is completely self-aware that they will. Her seduction and rejection of Elton was credible and touching. Her maternal protection of Rose and the Doctor shows us that she isn’t just some ‘cockney Eastend’ cipher. This is a woman in pain, frightened and alone and, finally, able to comprehend just what happens to human lives when they come into contact with the Doctor. I’m glad Russell gave us this as it really does add layers to the character and fixes her place in the narrative once and for all. And it is done with so much love for the character that it is cleverly poignant.
From the outset let me say that this would not work without the brilliant central performance of Marc Warren as Elton. A smashing tour de force that took us from a kind of grinning understanding of his need to meet like minded people to the sad revelation about his childhood and the death of his mother. Funny, often breathlessly exhilarating, often sexy, and then deeply touching. The majority of the performance being played out via a webcam was a fantastic device that immediately provided a one to one relationship with the viewer. How many television shows in prime time would face the viewer and tell their story so directly? And how many lead characters end up in a relationship with a paving slab?
The editing also must be praised as this is an integral mechanism that enables this first person narrative to work so well. It also justifies some of the more risible elements in the episode. Looking at the opening ‘comedy chase’ it could be seen as rather silly and farcical. But the viewer must understand that we are seeing events through someone else’s eyes whilst Russell T Davies is also turning the whole ‘corridor chase with monsters’ trope, so indicative of ‘classic’ Doctor Who, on its head in a surreal, slightly mocking, homage.
We could approach the whole episode as a complete love-letter to the series and its fans. The LINDA organisation is fandom. A fandom not governed by rules, a fandom that not only understands its primary function ( e.g. enjoying Doctor Who as a group/connecting with other humans who know about the Doctor) but also by dint of that association socialising, eating together, forming a band as secondary functions. These ‘fans’ enjoy themselves. And then uber-fan Victor Kennedy arrives and suddenly there are rules, goals, expectations thrust upon the group. The original group lose sight of why they got together in the first place. Victor Kennedy is a creature with no complexes. He is absent of complexes and where they are repressed, life is vacuous, lonely and empty. The complexes that make us human are about our centres of feeling, they are the inner source of relating to other people and making contact with the outside world. Victor Kennedy is about stifling those desires.
LINDA was a group of normal people who were aware of slightly extraordinary things going on in the world around them. This emphasis is important because if they are representative of fandom then what Russell is saying, and which is neatly summed up by Elton’s final speech, is that these people understand that the world is exciting, different and challenging and that their mutual quest for the Doctor is instrumental but not exclusive in their realisation of this. Is he saying ‘fans’ have got lives too?
When we recognise these complexes and feelings we often transform them into helpful archetypal figures (Mr. Skinner seems to be doing a lecture on the Doctor as an archetypal figure in the episode) and the archetypal figure helps the individual to fulfil his/her potential. Hence, not only is the Doctor a figure around which individuals can articulate their complexes (Bridget grieving about a child lost to drugs) the Doctor also explains to Elton about his presence at the death of Elton’s mother and thus allows him to properly grieve and move on and close that expectation in favour of some other life affirming action.
The strength of a group is also apparent when the absorbed members of LINDA make one final effort to vanquish the Abzorbaloff. They are representative of that continuous tension between social disintegration and dissolution, the tension between your distinction from society as an individual and your relation to the human race as a whole. Without that effort to group together, the victims of the Abzorbaloff are just simply the by-product of a self-destructive urge where no one individual has managed to make a stand.
Peter Kay as Victor/the Abzorbaloff pitched this about right. I feared it would end up as another ‘Ken Dodd’ but found the performance worked well. The prosthetics veered between being really quite excellent, particularly the articulation of the faces on the body, to being ‘rubber suit of the week’. However, I do think that there was an inherent playfulness in the episode that actually acknowledged that this was ‘rubber suit of the week’ because in the past that’s what Doctor Who was perceived as. My view was that Davies was taking this and playing with our perceptions a bit. Kay’s performance helped sell this idea and there were some genuinely laugh out loud moments. Was Davies saying that we all know this is an actor in a rubber suit but actually it’s symbolic and has some interesting things to say about our perceptions?
Musically, I thought the use of ELO was inspired and the re-use of certain motifs by Murray Gold was also welcomed. The remounting of the Auton attack and the Christmas Invasion from Elton’s point of view were also very amusing and served as another way of bringing the viewer into his world view. It would be churlish to quibble about the re-use of sequences from previous episodes to flesh this out. Only the Aliens In London flashbask depended more or less on existing footage.
A daring episode, not entirely successful, but not the disaster some were predicting. In fact, it has probably a lot more to say about the Doctor and his world, Rose and Jackie’s world, and the implications when those collide, than many other episodes in this series as a whole. And Elton’s prediction about the fate of Rose and Jackie is a subext so very clearly underlined by the events of this episode too.
Jac wrote:She is - Shirley Henderson. She's also in the Bridget Jones films, the recent BBC Shakespeare adaptations (Taming of the Shrew), and used to be in Hamish Macbeth, if you remember that. You wouldn't think from looking at her that she's 41 this year, would you? She passes for a 14 year old pretty well in Harry Potter...
Nice one Jac
//goes to check more on IMDB
It's Hamish Macbeth I remember her face from, though her voice IS what made me initially think I knew her from someway, and yes that was Harry Potter.
Last edited by Mayhem on Sun Jun 18, 2006 11:24 am 0, edited 1 time in total.
