No Good Deed

One of the undoubted side benefits to exile from GB is that I don't have to put up with the squeestorm over the latest NTA ceremony. Quite simply, Doctor Who didn't win. Nor did Sherlock. Instead, Waterloo Road won, a show I have previously expressed my admiration for with its demented cross of 7 Periods With Mr. Gormsby and Drawn Together.

The problem for the fans is that this is the first time Doctor Who has failed to win the competition since it was eligable enough to be nominated in the first place - ever since 2005 the show has hands-down won every bloody time. I personally find the ceremony (at least the bits shown on youtube) to be unutterable agonizing and painful to watch, even though my favorite show has won.

Now, if the Awards are held in the way I've seen them they are a shameful and greedy display of humiliation and shame for the poor sods who lose. The four or so nomated shows are listed with cuts to the buffet tables where the stars sit. Shameless is nominated, we see David whatisname at the table in his finest suit, then about three seconds of footage of Frank Gallagher before cutting away. Ashes to Ashes is nominated, we see Philip Glennister at the table, then a borderline subliminal flash of the Gene Genie. Doctor Who is nominated, we cut to David Tennant and his homies, and then we get a very, very long scene from the latest season finale showing the Tenth Doctor in all his glory.

And then, well, blow me down with a feather, guess who won?

But the cameras aren't interested in the high-fives amongst the crew from Cardiff, they linger voyeuristically over the losers. Worse, losers who were told at the last minute that they'd lost and had to list through the "tense" opening-the-envelope routine. Phil Glennister at the very least looked pissed off enough to play some naked snooker with some scrotes - I mean, he's probably not fussed about losing, but I know I would be annoyed at being dragged to a ceremony for the sole purpose of looking surprised at a foregone conclusion.

Especially since the Gene Hunt saga began and ended while Doctor Who was remorselessly stealing the BAFTAs or whatever completely meaningless trophies they hand out.

What bugs me is that all the haters - from spara to Mad Larry to Gabriel freaking Chase - will leap on this failure as proof that the Moff era is rubbish, the show is doomed, and men will turn to each other and say They Were Right All The Time. Obviously the public hate Matt Smith, Amy Pond, the new music, everything. Because it didn't win ONE award.

That it was won for the last SIX YEARS.

I can do no better than quote the film Cheaters... well, actually I can't quote it at all. But a line went something like this:

Why hold a competition where the same person always wins?

It's a good point, isn't it? What kind of message is being sent that no matter what do you do it won't be any better than Doctor Who? And after six years, it makes sense that the series has lost some of the "shock of the new". Frankly, I'm amazed it won last year when Doctor Who was only on three days and one of those was, frankly, beyond crap.

Seriously, what is there to complain about? The show got nominated, so it's at least as it was popular as before. It's not like it failed, since, as I said, six years in a row winning is ground to stop it winning. It failed because it was physically impossible for the show to win. If it was still RTD and Tennant, the same thing would have applied. Remember, in the Tom Baker era, the show won no awards or got any RT covers. This is not the end of the world, you emo fangirls.

If the tide really HAD turned against the show, then they'd hardly have filmed Dimensions in Time 2: This Time Graham Norton's SUPPOSED To Be In It, would they, with the Eleventh Doctor and some git visiting lots of soap realities - taking a moment for the Time Lord to say how much he vehemently despises Coronation Street and everything in it, prefering to gatecrash Eastenders, as well as revealing some blonde bint from the X Factor will become Prime Minister and start WW3 while Graham Norton is left reading the news.

...

Don't look at ME, dude, Moffat wrote it!