Sunday, December 22, 2013

Jingle Blogs...

Lo my poignant friends, Christmas is rapidly approaching and with it the end of the Eleventh Doctor. Well, the Twelfth Doctor. Well, the Thirteenth Doctor. Well... look, Matt Smith's finale is shown next Thursday and I feel like I should be doing some kind of honorable blog thing, especially given the reams and reams of bandwidth I filled up around the last changeover. Alas, I am so damn tired. Not in a "sick to death of everything" way, but a "good god, I could sleep for another two eternities I am so weary". There just doesn't seem to be enough time to blog like crazy, especially as no one else seems to be up for it.

Anyway, posted below is another music video - are you sick of those? do you even watch them? I honestly don't know - to cover An Adventure In Space And Time. Now, having been unwillingly privy to some of Monsieur Gaytiss's early ideas, I can at least confirm that this minidoco could have been much, much, much worse than it was. Unspeakably awful and uncomprehendingly bizarre, as bad if not worse than his Dr Who Night skits which - atrocious insults aside - are utterly meaningless and unfunny.

True, huge liberties were taken with the history of the show to make its labyrinthine history even halfway palatable and yes, maybe the characterization of the figures portrayed were a bit family friendly (Mad Larry Miles went off one that Sydney Newman should have been a nigh-mute visionary being all imaginative and innovative while Verity Lambert should have been a chainsmoking Spartha Jones - though why anyone would want to watch two such unpleasant and undramatic characters beggars belief, which is probably why he ended the year with his "I AM THE ONE TRUE DOCTOR WHO FAN AND THE REST OF YOU HEATHANS CAN GO SUCK A HAMSTER!!").

So yeah. Could've been worse. Definitely could've been better and I think the biggest mistake was emphasizing how utterly miserable Hartnell was at leaving when we only got vague exposition of why he wanted the job in the first place. Certainly he was shown to be a patronized, disrespected workaholic who apparently had no real friends, crippling anxiety issues and... actually, I'll stop there because it sounds more and more like I might be describing myself.

Mind you, odd that the Doctor Who Annual (with Zarbi and Menoptera on the cover) came out two years before they wrote The Web Planet. Odd.

Anyway, below is another perspective on AAISAT with musical accompanyment by Mark-Callahan-formally-of-Gangajang-but-now-performing-as-"Cal" (which was how James Valentine insisted on referring to him every single time when he was performing on The Afternoon Show before Delta and the Bannermen).

Oh, Happy December and all that bollocks.



4 comments:

Tommy said...

"Mad Larry Miles went off one that Sydney Newman should have been a nigh-mute visionary being all imaginative and innovative while Verity Lambert should have been a chainsmoking Spartha Jones"

Irony of all ironies, eh?

Lawrence Miles of all people charging the docudrama with character-assassination.

Youth of Australia said...

Presumably it's down to intent - if Gatiss had despised Newman and Lambert and was trying to blacken their names for all time, Lawrence would probably have hailed it as a masterpiece.

Mind you, why he thinks anyone cares what he says nowadays (apart from voyeuristic whats-the-idiot-said-now tupe of way) after his repeated mindless abuse of Matt Smith.

Jared "No Nickname" Hansen said...

I really, really enjoyed Adventure in Space and Time. I think the one flaw was that to get any sort of structure they had to end it with Hartnell leaving, and since Sydney, Verity and Waris didn't have much to do past the first year it made it awkward for them stretching the cast out to cover it. Well, that and Reece Shearsmith being really un-Troughton. And I guess 'William Russell's' gigantic forehead..

Youth of Australia said...

Yeah.

Reece wasn't bad, until you actually see Patrick Troughton and realize they didn't even look similar...

Well, Time of the Doctor was on.

I didn't mind it, yet I feel absolutely no desire to watch Capaldi and Clara.