What-EVAH, Mad Larry

As an exclusive preview of my review of The Pandorica Opens, I thought it would be interesting to cut to the chase (so to speak) by heading straight for the What Those Other Losers Thought section. Hang on, it's actually Jared what does those bits. Oh. Ne'er mind.

Yes, Mad Larry the Pirate King returned to his blog, updated it, waited five minutes and then deleted it again. Reprinted here is that post.

JESUS!!!
Yeah... yeah, I tried to watch it today. Sorry.

And you people actually like this...? I recommend that you line up to form the back end of a Human Centipede. "Ooh, look! The Manga-faced girl who was set up to be something-cute-enough-for-everyone-to-care-about is apparently dead! Emote, you plebian scum! EMOTE!" I haven't seen such a sledgehammer attempt to make the audience cry since ET. The rest was Big Finish on a big budget.

When we were both Taverning, I used to joke that the difference between myself and Moffat was simple: I had an imagination. Now I know better: I have an imagination and a conscience.

Oh, for Heaven's sake, grow up! And learn basic storytelling skills. Because that was just... just awful.

He later admitted he actually only watched a few minutes as he was more interested in tuning in to a Poirot by Mark Gatiss, a statement that was such a backhanded compliment to the LOG-dude that I felt like defending him. I mean, it's like saying "I would rather be locked in a room with you than a child-molesting homicidal cannibal". Gee, thanks for that.

I can't believe that Lawrence Miles - the man who, it is well known, has sat through every episode from An Unearthly Child to The End of Time Part Two - went entirely apeshit over the cliffhanger to an episode he didn't fully-watch of a season he has repeatedly bigged up he hasn't watched a frame of. In 2008 he bemoaned the fact that any season finale by Moffat would be too intricate to appreciate without the previous thirteen episodes of build-up. So he deals with this by watching the last few minutes of a part-one episode of the season finale and then complains?

What did he EXPECT?!

To misquote Vincent van Gough, I knew he was Mad, I never thought he was stupid.

Let's have a detailed breakdown of this rant which makes Spara's critique look open-minded and reasonable (indeed, by the Emperor's standards, his comments were surprisingly lucid assuming we take as read that he hates his own work as much as we do)...

And you people actually like this...?
Yeah.

We do.

You got a problem with that? Oh, of course you do. You don't "like" anything. At all. And everyone who does is, by default, a mindless grunting chav with no critical faculties of any kind. Our opinion is "of no intellectual value" to use your own words. Dear God, I never felt a need to quote The Twin Dilemma before, but take it away Anthony "THAT TYPEWRITER IS TRYING TO FUCKING KILL ME!!!" Stevens...

PERI: Look at you. I never saw anyone who loved himself so much for no reason.

Indeed, Perpeguillium. Indeed.

We are all freaks for daring to have our own opinions. Mad Larry, ranting with rage about how Doctor Who was no longer about celebrating differences and xenophilia, is now disgusted that people disagree with him and he is somehow automatically beyond reproach. Well, reproach this, buster...

I recommend that you line up to form the back end of a Human Centipede.
I can only assume this is some homophobic abuse, treating anal rape as comedy.

Oh, how witty.

"Ooh, look! The Manga-faced girl who was set up to be something-cute-enough-for-everyone-to-care-about is apparently dead! Emote, you plebian scum! EMOTE!"
Yes. We are plebian scum. Not at all as good as his holiness, Master Miles.

I mean, I might have assumed that this literary Sir Gallahad who is unable to remember an actress's name or character, and hasn't watched her performance at all, was saying that we the audience are being insulted. Alas, his opening statement makes it quite clear it's not "Moffat" that's dissing us, it's the complete asshole who is too much of a coward to leave his blogposts up.

Now, the cliffhanger has Amy apparently dead. This is supposed to be upsetting - of course it is. It's a cliffhanger. What fucking cliffhanger works if it ISN'T upsetting? It's one of a hundred cliffhangers that apparently kill off companions or put people we are supposed to care about in peril. This is page freaking one.

Was Mad Larry similarly disgusted at the cliffhanger to part two of Planet of Giants? Did the conclusion to Blake's 7 revolt him to this degree? A man who goes on and on and on about how in the Olden Days of black and white TV every viewer had to deliberately suspend their disbelief to comprehened what the idiot box was displaying is now seemingly unable to do the same to Hi-Def plasma screens. Oh dear, we are being asked to care about the fates of fictional characters - is that an insult to our intelligence?

Maybe it is, but you can't honestly be surprised by it, can you?

I haven't seen such a sledgehammer attempt to make the audience cry since ET.
I boggle at this. It's not trying to make people cry. It's not presented as anything other than a cliffhanger - you're not meant to be crying beyond tears of rage it will be seven days until you find out what happens next. Were this the final episode, an ENDING, then maybe that complaint would have weight.

Doomsday was an attempt to make the audience cry. Journey's End was an attempt to make the audience cry. The Doctor's Daughter was an attempt to make the audience cry.

This was not. It was meant to scare, upset, alarm and outrage.

And "sledgehammer"?

How exactly subtle does it have to be for Mad Larry, the bloke proud of his belief all human beings are inherently worthless and easily replaced? Just how would Mad Larry go around trying to evoke human emotions? Come to think about it, when was the last time Mad Larry wrote a character that wasn't an insensitive wisecracking smartarse driven solely by self-interest? He can't even make the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith people you'd want to spend time with.

Quite simply, how is Mad Larry thinking that something has to work for HIM? He who admits he's not sound of mind, has no friends, no social skills and the only thoughts Moffat is likely to have about him are a weary "Oh, no not again?"

I could understand him not liking this show, but that he is somehow expecting it to be specifically tailored to HIS desires? The man cheerfully noted that, if he were given control of Doctor Who he would make it an animated series of grim torture and social commentary that would be impenetrable for new viewers. A show that made the main characters (and I quote this verbatim) "really suffer".

In Alien Bodies he had Sam suffer an existential crises and then attacked by floating versions of herself as a baby that tried to kill her. Interference had the Doctor scrawl equations in his own blood in a prison cell and then had the Third Doctor shot dead by a deranged redneck. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street starts with a prostitute using her orgasm to corrupt history.

EMOTE DAMN YOU, EMOTE!

The rest was Big Finish on a big budget.
And what is wrong with that? Arguably the worst BF stories are those made with the mindset of a SMALL budget, like Creed of the Kromon, The Next Life, Vengeance of Morbius, Catch 1872...

BF do all sorts of things. To label it "BF with a budget" can only make sense if BF is 100% rubbish. And cheap rubbish at that. Obviously Mad Larry doesn't expect to be working for them any time soon (maybe Lisa Bowerman's restraining order came through?), as even assuming they'd put up with such behavior, he is OBVIOUSLY way better than they are.

When we were both Taverning, I used to joke that the difference between myself and Moffat was simple: I had an imagination. Now I know better: I have an imagination and a conscience.
And yet you cunningly hide any evidence of either.

"Conscience"? I assume this is a crude way of saying "I don't insult the audience's intelligence", because clearly it doesn't involve any kind of emotional maturity - he's still got a chip on his shoulder about Moffat dissing some nostalgia puppet show Miles liked ten years ago. And given how Mad Larry thinks us "plebian scum" don't have an intelligence, that's presumably how he's managed to avoid insulting it.

(Let us recall that Alien Bodies kicks off with the Doctor playing chess with a Russian soldier who turns out to be an evil communist, so the Time Lord dives out of a six-story building, is captured by a tractor beam and sucked into a TARDIS while the companion stands around doing nothing but bitching about how sweaty her breasts get when she sees an attractive Time Lord... Oh, my intelligence felt SO complimented.)

Just what is this imaginative, consciencous man DOING?

He's on Twitter. Making 140-character witticisms (on the few occasions he can cram them into one post). And that's it. His biggest output was to make a post on his blog making funny titles for Doctor Who stories, several of which clearly and blatantly stolen from Charles Daniels - those being the ones that are in any way humorous. Mad Larry has gone from making lengthy, halfway logical diatribes on TV and society to devoting his time entirely to making one-sentence puns.

I'm grateful in a way, he makes me look successful and motivated in contrast.

Oh, for Heaven's sake, grow up!
I won't do the predictable thing of quoting Robert Holmes' numerous one-liners about it being cool to be childish. I'll just wonder what Mad Larry defines as "growing up" as he tweets one-liners even his own fanbase consider infantile.

And learn basic storytelling skills.
This is particularly boggling. Even at his most hateful and bitter, Mad Larry made it clear he didn't think Moffat LACKED talent, he just wasted it.

I am personally of the opinion that if someone doesn't understand a given text and they've only read/listened/watched a scattering of random moments towards the end, then the fault is of the viewer. You need to see it from beginning to end. If it doesn't work AFTER that, you have a point.

Learn basic review skills, Miles you loser.

Because that was just... just awful.
What a vocabulary. Note how he doesn't specify ANYTHING? At all?

There's a reason for that and it's probably because he can't specify anything. He saw a few minutes and has ranted about all thing like the sort of internet troll that earlier, funnier Lawrence Miles would have been disgusted. This is not thought, this is not reason, this is childish abuse.

He might as well shout "Moffat, you smell!!" for all the justification he gave.

And this is interesting. Let's have a look at the 25-golden-rules Miles came up with a while back to save Doctor Who from RTD and Tennant.

I can't help but notice that Moffat followed some of them.

The companion doesn't fancy the Doctor, who is less of a sex object and a fallible, open-minded and ignorant alien who screws up occassionally, abandons technobbable and magic wands. There are less stories set in contemporary England, and the only alien invasion was a parody in a dream sequence. Budget was no longer being wasted on SFX, with even episodes focussing on emotions and people than monsters. Plus more historical stories. The Daleks have also been sidelined as much as the Nation Estate will allow, the story arc is half-thought out and the production team doesn't whore its secrets out to Confidential any more.

About the only things Moffat hasn't done are give us a non-contemporary companion and hire Miles as a writer.

But does he get any thanks? No. He gets called "the beast" and Miles makes obscene phone calls to him ranting he is better than Michael Moorcock.

Personally, I suspect that Miles is lying through his teeth. He sat there, watching the whole episode from start to finish and realized it was better than any of the pretentious crud he could off and had a pattented villainous breakdown.

Watch Luke Rattigan in The Poison Sky screaming "I'M BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU!!!"

That's Lawrence Miles, that is.

I am pleased I caught his mini review though, as he finally proves without a doubt that he is not worth my time. Or indeed anyone's time. The days when his little essays made depressingly too-much-sense are gone. The days when he was remotely interesting are gone too.

My respect for him has dropped to below-Ron-Mallett levels, and I expect all readers of this blog to gasp at the impact this announcement deserves. I'd like to walk off with a witty one-liner along the lines of "thanks for the fucking stupid quotes for my satirical works", but I can't be bothered.

Goodbye, Mad Larry. It was never pleasant.