Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Smug Overload 2

"Thanks for that, I remember reading this in the old forum and thinking how good it was, and a shame at what could've been....Good to see it again."

Yes, on the day this blog has apparently been flagged for objectionable material (come on, "spack off" isn't THAT bad) we discover that not only has someone read my work, but actually thought it worth recommending to others!

Indeed, in the Enlightenment section of OG, a lovely bloke called Simon Cooper I can't honestly recall knowing spoke at length on my genius:

One of the most galling things about The Twin Dilemma is that there are actually some good ideas in the script, that got swamped by the surrounding nonsense and the ridiculously bad production. Nearly three years ago now, Ewen Campion-Clarke (who used to post here as Youth of Australia) produced a thread called "If *I* had written The Twin Dilemma..." in which he posted a brilliantly "reimagined" Twin Dilemma script.

Since the original thread is now languishing in the archived forum (and the script is hard to read when formatted as many small posts in a message-board format, anyway), I've gathered together all the pieces into a PDF version, which also incorporates various "writer's commentary" notes posted at the time by Ewen.

If you want to see how
The Twin Dilemma could have been a good story instead of an embarrassment, have a read of this script. There's no cheating, either -- all the stuff like the ridiculous costumes, the po-faced twins, the Doctor's mood swings, his prior history with Azmael, even the dreaded strangling scene, are all incorporated logically into the story, with some excellent twists. The motivation of the villain is also dealt with properly, and the three cliffhangers effortlessly outclass the rubbish ones we actually got (the Episode Two one in particular caught me by surprise, and left me thinking, "Why the hell didn't JNT or Saward think of that..."). And there are some good jokes in there, too (I think the celery one's my favourite).

Admittedly, it's somewhat overwritten in places, and if you actually timed the episodes they'd probably be closer to 45 than 25 minutes, but having too much material is nothing to complain about, particularly with this story. This script shows how
The Twin Dilemma could have worked as an excellent sequel to the previous classic (in Ewen's words, "I wanted The Twin Dilemma to be the Castrovalva to Androzani’s Logopolis, not The Underwater Menace"), and I thoroughly recommend it.


Having read the pdf with my commentary in nifty footnotes, my thoughts are:
a) Simon missed a trick not including my Shada-esque reconstruction hastily pasted there after my initial banning
b) God I was pretentious back then.
c) Hah! Let's ever see Spara get a serious review THAT good...

6 comments:

Cameron Mason said...


Yes, on the day this blog has apparently been flagged for objectionable material


When I had a look a couple of days ago it popped up with "Flag blog?".

Somewhat amusingly, it did the same thing with Sparra's, but not Jared's...

Cameron

Youth of Australia said...

Obviously the presence of New Morning material is the key factor.

Jared "No Nickname" Hansen said...

And now, direct to you from 7.30 last night when his internet gave him a big fat fuck you, it's Jared Hansen:



..`Ang about, my blog has NOT been flagged? How many times do I need to swear my head off and bring up the subject of pornography? God, I get snubbed for everything. I'll have to start naming underage witnesses in criminal trials to get noticed..

Good to hear that you're still checking it out despite the complete lack of new material for effectively the whole month, though.

I myself have been too busy working myself up into an apoplectic rage that people saying that Doctor Who and the Silurians is unarguably the intended title to check out the TD Enlightenment, so missed your glowing review. Good stuff and well-deserved - as you know TD was what really inspired me to write seriously because it made me understand the potential there was in what even seemed to be the epitome of mundane.

Did Cooper get any responses?



Damned unreliable ethernet.

Youth of Australia said...

I myself have been too busy working myself up into an apoplectic rage that people saying that Doctor Who and the Silurians is unarguably the intended title
Despite Barry Letts' well-documented "for fuck's sake!" when he saw it for the first time, followed by the sacking of the captioning dude?

Good stuff and well-deserved - as you know TD was what really inspired me to write seriously because it made me understand the potential there was in what even seemed to be the epitome of mundane.
Aw. Cool.

Did Cooper get any responses?
Hardly any, and one of those was This Strange Engine refusing to read the script on the grounds he thought the original was fine... apart from the acting, music, design, costume, direction. But the script was perfect.

Yeah. Thanks for that TSE.

Jared "No Nickname" Hansen said...

Despite Barry Letts' well-documented "for fuck's sake!" when he saw it for the first time, followed by the sacking of the captioning dude?

Yeah, that's irrelevant. The fact that that title was on the TV screen is apparently the only important factor. I wonder what they would have said if the Beeb had a heavily disgruntled employee who made the caption "Everybody watching this is homosexual"?

Hardly any, and one of those was This Strange Engine refusing to read the script on the grounds he thought the original was fine... apart from the acting, music, design, costume, direction. But the script was perfect.

I wish people would learn one or two things about critical readings and script writing before making retarded comments like that.

Youth of Australia said...

I wonder what they would have said if the Beeb had a heavily disgruntled employee who made the caption "Everybody watching this is homosexual"?
Fled to New Zealand and hid there with Adam Rickitt.

I wish people would learn one or two things about critical readings and script writing before making retarded comments like that.
Don't we all?