OK, kid - this is where it gets complicated

[alexsarll]

After a week which at times saw the first three TV channels all simultaneously screening oafs in shorts bothering grass with their balls, thank heavens for Channel 4 which, while it may be airing the undignified death throes of Big Brother, an experiment superseded before it even began (on which more in a moment), brought back The IT Crowd. Still far from revolutionary or life-changing, still a good, direct, paradoxically old-fashioned sit-com. Not that the other three channels had entirely lost it, because right on time (and thank heavens, I couldn't have waited a minute longer) along came 'The Big Bang'. Which resolved almost nothing in the way that I'd expected but, unlike most of the RTD finales, provided alternatives that were equally acceptable, as opposed to cobbling together some nonsense and then covering for it with lots of soap opera emotionality (and that's not to say I didn't cry at most of them. But I cried at this too, without feeling afterwards that I'd been manipulated). It was neither heartless nor brainless, it got perfect performances from all the leads (including Rory, who I liked so much more as a Roman Auton; including Amelia, and I wonder if she'll be back again). Images like the stone Dalek, and the emptying museum, and the burning, whispering TARDIS. And the idea of a multi-season arc...that's new. And welcome. This is the first time the new series has held on to a Doctor/companion team past season's end, and I'm so glad about that, but we've got even more of a through line to make sure nobody drops the show next year. Who was piloting the TARDIS? Who's River? And why silence?
Conjuring the Doctor out of a dream was very Lance Parkin (the best Who writer not yet involved with the TV series), but most of all I got Grant Morrison echoes, and that's rarely a bad thing. The little girl who still believes in stars? A dream-reversal of the Star Conqueror story from his JLA, and the one boy who knows there's something missing from the world. The sense of having forgotten something terribly important? The fate of the hypnotised White Martians. Most of all, the Doctor surviving the destruction of everything by becoming fictional until the danger is passed is exactly the way the superheroes infiltrate our universe in Flex Mentallo, my favourite comic ever. Consider also that, after a while as a messiah figure, by kicking off the entire universe (again) the Doctor has now stopped being Jesus and moved on to being his old man. Though, semantically it's wrong to say that the Doctor is a Jesus figure. Jesus was a Doctor figure, or equally a Superman figure - the best a pallid, nasty, ersatz religion-substitute could come up with in the dark centuries between the fall of the old gods, and the creation (or discovery) of superheroes and Doctor Who. And just as christianity stole the festivals from the old religions, so Doctor Who is stealing them back. The prime significance of Easter? NEW SEASON! The prime significance of Christmas? SPECIAL!

That Big Brother comment above? Don't worry, I'm not watching the new series (and if anyone else is, they've not mentioned it, which is in some ways a shame as following it through my friends' posts was far more edifying than watching the real thing). Rather, I watched We Live In Public by Ondi Timoner, the maker of Dig!, and if you follow that link any time over the next 17 days then so can you. As in Dig!, she follows someone generally regarded by those around him as a genius/messiah, but who would in fact appear to be a loon. Internet pioneer Josh Harris is essentially Nathan Barley as played by Eugene Mirman. He starts off with Pseudo.com, an internet TV network, but is edged out after attending business meetings dressed as a scary clown. Instead he sets up Quiet, which is something between a Berlin squat and a cult bunker (and this in the run-up to the Millennium), but is also the Big Brother house, except less boring (there's loads of shagging, unlimited booze, and guns in the basement - what could go wrong?) and less humane (CIA-trained interrogators, cameras in the loos). And after that's run its course, he sets up home with his (first) girlfriend in full public view - there's even a camera in the bowl of the loo, pointing up, though mercifully the only footage we see from it is the cat having a drink. There's a bit of a rubbish coda, but the film is otherwise a fascinating look at a very damaged man - and proof that the Big Brother 'experiment' was outmoded from the off.

What else? Well, I went to the N19 two nights in a row, and the Camden Head two nights in a row, but my life is in no way in a rut, honest. Oh, and then N19 again, but only after heading up Parkland Walk for a picnic and some art (a bunch of installations up the Highgate end, returning this evening from 6 if anyone needs the excuse for a summer's evening walk). Oh, and I read Evelyn Waugh's final novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. An autobiographical account of an ageing Catholic writer who mixes his medicines and starts hallucinating, it may only be 150 pages but that's still too long - like the genuinely insane, Waugh was clearly unaware of the need to edit, of how little illumination one sheds by repetition with minor variation. It has also that nasty Ricky Gervais quality, where the supposedly satirised autobiographical pratagonist is still sneakily presented as indefinably nobler than most of the other characters. And it comes in a book with two horrid, pinched little stories, 'Tactical Exercise' and 'Love Among The Ruins', which remind one of nothing so much as the weaker, more tiresomely reactionary writing of Evelyn's son Auberon - and if you don't know Auberon's work then put it this way - at his worst, he was Richard Littlejohn with the occasional good turn of phrase.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'm still watching Big Brother! It's quite good this year.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I suppose you have had rather more pressing blog topics...

Morrison and the Doctor

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The entropic collapsed-universe scenes in the museum were very reminiscent of the time-has-broken-down stuff in Final Crisis #7 too. IIRC you hated Final Crisis so maybe you never got that far!

Re: Morrison and the Doctor

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I regarded most of it as a failed experiment, but the final issue was more Final Crisis - Superman Beyond 3D #3 than Final Crisis #7, and I bloody loved Final Crisis - Superman Beyond 3D.
(Besides, even when a Morrison project isn't to my taste, I always keep reading. Even his worst issues have glimmers that make them worth it)

Re: Morrison and the Doctor

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Did you also spot the appearance of Key 23 in the hallucinogenic lipstick/River escape scene last week?

(Also, I think Moffat's conception of what's in continuity, what's not, what's remembered etc is quite Morrison-ish: I think if he did bring back the Time Lords they'd be a bit more like the yellow aliens than the Holmesian decadents of yore.)

Re: Morrison and the Doctor

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Didn't spot it, but you're quite right!

Now that we can assume, from the Chelonian cameo, that the New Adventures are in continuity, I can certainly see Moffat drawing on the portrayal in those of the Time Lords as the Clockmakers, who had ordered the universe out of chaos in a very similar manner to the yellow aliens, Seven Unknown Men &c. And indeed, the whole attitude to 'continuity' itself seems to draw a lot on Hypertime, which appeared in a Waid comic but was very much a Morrison concept.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

Hooray hooray, I'm so glad someone else has watched We Live In Public! I haven't seen Dig! all the way through and I didn't realise the films had the same Director til afterwards, though some of the Dandy Warhols do turn up in the underground house I think. Have you seen Join Us? That's Timoner too, and the film seems to be about some of her family, which makes me sort of goggle at her life - coming from where she has, and then joining in and living in the underground big brother project and stuff. What surprised me about We Live In Public was that it contained so much stuff (in fact everything) that I hadn't heard about before; I'd have thought that Harris would've gotten more of a mention in all the stories of internet people that've been written and mythologised over the years, or mentioned in articles about Big Brother and/or Microserfs/Gen X etc etc, but no. Or not that I'd seen anyway. All that time he spent trying to make himself famous, trying to make himself public, and yet somehow it made him more invisible than others who didn't even shoot for fame. It really did feel as if his own efforts had made him somehow more ficional than other people, less likely to be noticed. He seemed very much like a bit-part character in a hybrid Bret Easton Ellis/Douglas Rushkoff novel or something, the uncool guy that buys the drugs off the main character, that tries that little bit too hard.

(also, I'm watching Big Brother this year. Not obsessively, but if it's on I'll watch it. I think it's right that it's ending now, but I reckon it's been an important and interesting part of culture for the last 10 years. In general I find watching real people (for whatever value of real, though actually that's part of the enjoyment of it, the head-mess of knowing something's supposed to be true or real but knowing it can't be, because it's on telly) more enjoyable than watching fiction, which is why I'm been having such a phase for documentaries lately.....though in the past when I've been stressed/lost/glum/etc someone's prescribed me 'a good big dose of imaginary worlds', so I'll be going back and watching Doctor Who on the iplayer at some point too)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Courtney Taylor makes a brief appearance - I didn't spot any of the others but they'd have been right at home. I don't know Join Us, but it would make an interesting companion piece to Quiet.

It is weird not to have heard of Harris, especially given how many dotcom failures, mad net prophets and so forth I *have* heard of. I would almost have wondered if she were exaggerating his significance, except for all those magazine covers &c.

I did like the first series of Big Brother, in part because they felt more like real people - there was a wonderful discussion among the housemates of whether anyone was even watching. But after that, they all knew what to expect a little too much, and the various fiddles with the format never did enough to dispel that predictability. Additionally, by doing stuff like not showing/breaking up that fight which broke out, they made clear that nothing genuinely unpredictable would be allowed to happen.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

the one boy who knows there's something missing from the world

Good call, that's exactly what it reminded me of.

I wasn't entirely sure of the nuts and bolts of how he came back, but it made enough poetic sense that I was happy just to go along for the ride.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

In essence, it wasn't that different from the 'Last of the Time Lords' resolution (which I personally didn't mind) - it was just structured and written in such a way that it didn't wind up the majority of the fans. With 'Believe!' as with 'Power of Love', it's not that they're inherently cheating as resolutions - you just have to be very, very careful about the specifics, so that it has enough emotional weight to feel satisfactory.

[electrodeserter.livejournal.com]

As a number of my friends have pointed out, the paradoxical manner of his first escape (from the Pandorica) was lifted directly from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I think I approve of this.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Bogus Journey, surely? And yes, but Moffat had already used it in his first televised Who, the Comic Relief special Curse of Fatal Death. For a show about a time traveller, there have been surprisingly few stories which used the time travel as anything but a way to get around between scenarios. I love how Moffat's changing that.

[electrodeserter.livejournal.com]

Definitely Excellent Adventure - loosely, our heroes find themselves arrested, and unable to go and present their report, before realising that they can escape using a number of elaborately pre-arranged things that appear as soon as they mention them, as long as they remember to go back in time and set them up afterwards once they've escaped. (Most notably some keys that were already established, in passing, as being missing at the beginning of the film - because, as it turned out, Ted had travelled back in time and stolen them - which fried my ten-year-old brain at the time, I concocted some sort of explanation about us the viewers not seeing the "first pass" through the timeline, when the keys weren't missing, but rather the altered time "re-run" or something. Unbelievably, I didn't notice the similarity with Who until it was pointed out to me.)

I wholeheartedly approve of the use of time travel gadgetry for plot advancement, I'm a sucker for time travel stories generally. (This was the first rollicking one I've seen since Bender's Big Score.) My favourite thing about the whole episode, though, and cementing how much I heart the Eleventh Doctor, was still Smith's delivery of "I wear a fez now", for which he should receive a knighthood.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

'I wear a fez now' was glorious, and built wonderfully on the slightly defensive catchphrase 'bow ties are cool'.

I was thinking of the resolution to the fight with the evil robot doubles, but you're quite right, it was in the first film too.

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Ah, here we go, someone's made a Primer-style timeline for the characters:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bladewood/4745071483/

Dr Who

[willjsm.livejournal.com]

...but but but... as the re-creation of the universe goes backwards, Amy's exposure to the universe decreases over time. And then when the crack in her wall seals, she shurely loses those powers entirely. Thus meaning that her remembering the Doctor too late is, well, too late.

Re: Dr Who

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

She remembers him on 26/06/2010. A different 26/06/2010, certainly. But it's only a few hours - if any time at all - since the explosion. Which was in any case everywhere, all at once.