POSTED IN MEDIA...

May 21, 2007

Radio Free Skaro #35 - Forty-two

After a week of meandering discussion to fill time, we're back with an actual episode to ponder and pontificate about, and so we banter back on forth about 42, Doctor Who's stab at a sorta-kinda real-time episode. We also branch off into discussion of a couple of upcoming episodes, but stay remarkably on course, given our penchant for digression. (feed, web, direct download)

18 comment(s) so far (Post your own)

1

On May 22, 2007 12:51 AM, Chris Burgess said:

Ranked second behind Gridlock as best of the season... wow, quite the bold statement. I've ranked 42 5th best, behind Evolution of the Daleks and ahead of The Shakespeare Code. The episode deserved a solid 3 in my books... it's not good, but it's really not bad either.

The shots back to the clock were far too frequent in my mind. I could cope with the obscure times vocalized far more easily than I could handle the frequency with which the clock was shown.

And yet more stuff that's deadlock sealed... as much of a cheat and easy way out the sonic screwdriver is, this deadlock seal business is the opposite side of the same coin. Without the deadlock seal we'd not get the pub quiz questions I guess... which is worse?!?

Going back to the time/clock fracas, the worst part overall for me was how this thing was advertised as being in real time and what do we get? A countdown that starts at 42m27s initially, which is spoken at the 1m42s mark of the episode... at the 3m33s mark our counter is at 40m27s, so we're 9 seconds out there already... and that's only the second time the countdown remainder is spoken/seen! At 5m48s, a mere two and a quarter minutes after the previous countdown remainder, we're all of a sudden at 34m32s left. We've lost almost 6 minutes in that time! I mean, really, wtf? Do the editors not own a clock or something?

These are all cutaway shots and VOs, how hard is it to get the darn things correct? It's not like you can't *easily* fix that stuff in post! As soon as that time mark hit, the episode pretty much lost me and my interest. Get something as simple and easily fixed as that wrong and where can the episode go from there?

And the jiggery-pokery (albeit *different* jiggery-pokery) about the cell phone is a little tired. It would have been worse if Martha used the phone to call her mum straight away, as Rose did, but still... can we not think of a new device to meld the two worlds? Better yet, can we not just forget about the family?

The "monster" helmet... okay, there's one thing I did like about the episode. The solution was cheap, simple and effective, much like a good Doctor Who plot device should be. A bit much in appearance like Princess Leia's hat in her Return of the Jedi bounty hunter outfit, but that might be overly nitpicky.

As for the sinister woman, I'm thinking Warren hit it on the head as far as Saxon's team wanting to trace the calls from Martha. It seems to me if that was a possibility (after the fact no less!) why would they expect to see anything other than the source number of the call... which they would presumably already know? Does the universal roaming (ugh!) change the source mobile number? Please...

Steven is definitely right about the lack of classic series content in Confidential, and the throwback to some of the classic series ships was well received. The length of Confidential is, however, excessive even with the old series stuff thrown in this week's episode.

Human Nature... nope, it's not a dream... if you guys didn't see it, the BBC website podcast (the short clip from Confidential that gets posted every week) initially featured the snippet from Human Nature's DWC counterpart ("Alter Ego"), and it explicitly shows how things come to pass in Human Nature. I won't spoil it here, but suffice it to say the method in place really irked me and I look forward to ranting about it next week. I know you guys frequent Demonoid for most of your Who stuff, but let me know if that clip isn't there and you want to see it and I'll get it to you.

A word of warning, it shows a lot of The Doctor dancing... and no, not the sexual innuendo from 2 years ago... =)

Okay, I've just looked at Demonoid and a quick search of both 'alter ego' and 'human nature' yield no results. It is, however, on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3mwq7EU9_M if you want to check it out.

As for Torchwood, avoid the temptation!! =)

The Utopia clip looked silly at best, and Captain Jack sounds like such a whiny bitch in it, but yeah, I too think it'll be the cold opening for the episode, it just wouldn't fit elsewhere. As to Warren's assertion about Jack hanging onto the TARDIS, it's been shown (twice that I can think of at the very least) that objects have been attached to the outside of the TARDIS before a dematerialization and remained in place after rematerialization. The first was in Silver Nemesis, and the second was The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock, where in each circumstance an arrow was shot into the TARDIS and was still there after dematerialization and rematerialization. So, although it looks utterly silly to see Barrowman clinging onto the ship, there is precedent... not with living things, mind you...

2

On May 22, 2007 1:38 PM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

It does seem like you're in the minority amongst this crowd, Chris. "42" is in my top three for the season.

I sat down and watched the episode with no preconceived requirement that the episode run in "real time". It was never officially advertised as such in the BBC trailers and commercials. Only obsessed fans, quoting production staff, claimed it so. The episode is set over a span of forty-two minutes, but does not progress linearly through those forty-two minutes. I'd say it's a bit extreme to dismiss the episode simply because of the inexact timing. If you are gonna nail it, please find some good narrative reasons for doing so.

Chibnall is very much hack, in more obvious ways than RTD. "42" recycles so much from past episodes (e.g. the universal roaming mobile phone), and borrows heavily from horror/action movies (e.g. countdown timers, picking off characters one-by-one). It also suffers from its fair share of bad science and logic. To its credit, I was on the edge of my seat; it kept me entertained, despite not being a classic example of the genre.

3

On May 22, 2007 5:20 PM, I am Steven said:

I can't believe I forgot to mention, in the podcast, my favourite bit of the episode - the "I'll save you" sequence. Spellbinding stuff, that.

4

On May 24, 2007 7:16 AM, I am Steven said:

I narrowly avoided wandering into spoilerville when I first started to watch that YouTube link, Chris - yikes! I hope somebody at the BBC was fired for that. I am going into to "Human Nature" completely cold, and I love it.

5

On May 24, 2007 2:06 PM, Chris Burgess said:

Yeah, there's a very nasty spoiler in that clip, and it's quite early on. It probably would have been best to just not have followed that link at all if you worried about the spoiler. =)

Nevertheless, 2 days... ish... to go... then everyone will know to what I refer... =)

6

On May 25, 2007 6:17 PM, I am Steven said:

Doctor Who was just referenced in, of all places, the pregame breakdown for the Vancouver Giants/Plymouth Whalers broadcast on Sportsnet!

7

On May 26, 2007 12:15 PM, jabberwocky said:

Well the youtube link is no longer valid. I have to say that I found it funny that they were trying to trace the phone call especially since the Doctor travel through time and Space and they seem to know a lot about the Doctor to begin with. Still They were probably hoping that he was on Earth at the time. Which makes me wonder what is it that they want with the Doctor and why didn't they try to grab him in the The Lazarus Project. Let it never be said that there is any common sense in DW.
As for the Count down through the episode, it didn't do anything for me I could have watched this episode with out it. I figure that they had that in there because they need to fill the episode with content. I have to say that my biggest complain is that there is so little to this episode. it had more fluff than substance. I really wish that there was more substance to the episodes for the most part it is almost as bad as ST Voyager, they just have a better tie in of each episode leading to next episode which few Sci-Fi shows do.
I honestly would like to see someone else given a try being the Executive Producer position and give RDT a break. At least for a little while.

8

On May 26, 2007 4:22 PM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

Not that I should put words in his mouth, but Chris was indicating to me that "Human Nature" may easily be the best episode yet. And the OG polls have it blowing past the previous most popular episodes in the rankings: "Doomsday", "Dalek", and "Parting of the Ways"...

I'm starting to feel a little excitied about the episode. Pity I won't get around to it for a little while.

9

On May 26, 2007 10:16 PM, Steven said:

Well, I won't spoil "Human Nature" for you, Jean-Paul, except for this brief comment : I was sure that Dalek Sec was dead. Amazing!

10

On May 27, 2007 1:15 AM, Chris Burgess said:

Mike: The cuts to the clock were there to remind the viewer the characters were racing against the clock. Nothing more, nothing less. As for the YouTube link, it's fairly moot now that 'Alter Ego' has aired, I suppose.

Jean-Paul & Steven: I watched the xvid but I had to go out for the day so I had to cut it off about 4:00 or whatever time it was and I didn't get to finish it. I've only just gotten home and still haven't watched the ending. I had about 5 minutes to go, but now that I'm grabbing the MPG2 copy, I'll just watch the good quality version from the start. It's almost prophetic "Just Begin Again" by Spinal Tap is playing on my iPod as I type this.

And yes, from what I did see, this is hands-down the best freakin' episode all season. Nothing comes close to it. I gave Smith & Jones a 4 on OG, and while I previously had it as the best of the season, I'm not sure it deserved a solid 4... it's a better-than-3 for sure though. As I said to Jean-Paul earlier on AIM, I wish the OG rating system went higher than 5 for this episode. It's absolutely phenomenal... and the part I was planning (all week!) to complain about (the part spoiled by the 'Alter Ego' slip-up, for those who saw it) really isn't worth complaining about. Now that I've seen it in context, I really think it works! I'm of course referring to the Chameleon Arch...

I'm rather anxious to see episode 9, where the Doctor doesn't not get married (as Tennant put it on the Graham Norton show). =)

11

On May 27, 2007 1:23 AM, Chris Burgess said:

There, I've even gone and left a comment on Cornell's blog post about Human Nature, which I've not done previously.

Heh, and someone in the comment thread had the gall to ask Cornell what the writing job pays. =)

Some time ago, Jean-Paul mentioned the rumour that there are certain writers who have riders on their contracts that prevent RTD and other executives from altering their scripts. Cornell is a fairly established writer, certainly moreso than many of the others who've written for the show, and I wonder if perhaps his contract prevents tampering. Given the oomph factor of this episode, I'm thinking it does.

And holy classic series references, Batman! At about the 9 minute mark we (for the first time in the new series) see images of previous incarnations of the Doctor; at the 25 minute mark we have the same ditty playing for the girl with the balloon as we hear for the girl in Remembrance (it sent chills down my spine!); at the 30 minute mark we find out John Smith's parents' names -- Sidney and Verity! I busted a gut laughing at that one, it was so casual and so damn funny. Fans of only the new series will likely have that one go well over their heads, but for us old timers it was so wonderful.

12

On May 27, 2007 3:53 AM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

I, of course, missed most of the in-jokes that Chris noticed.

And having now watched the whole of "Human Nature", I can say that it is perhaps the best piece of Doctor Who I've seen penned by Paul Cornell. But it does seem to exhibit the same perplexing issues I always have with Cornell's work. Something just doesn't seem to gel in the plotting, the realization of the aliens.

While the concept of humanizing the Doctor is brilliant and creates for an interesting situation, the details are revealed way too quickly, taking away from the mystery. The monsters are also inexplicably contrived. Why scarecrows? In the end, it turns into a standard aliens running around shooting people and taking hostages. It's corny, not menacing. It seems to me that Cornell has resigned himself to embedding run-of-the-mill monster action into a much greater and more deserving premise. I think this really could have been done better. That said, the acting is top notch.

So yes, I think Chris likes Human Nature way more than I do. It's pretty good, but not "on a scale of one to five, it's a six" kind of good.

Oh, and people will be happy that that off-the-cuff but notable remark made by the Doctor in "Fear Her" seems to be coming true...

13

On May 27, 2007 11:49 PM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

Well, Chris, I don't think Paul Cornell is above having his scripts tampered with by RTD. In fact, your favourite Sydney & Verity joke was added in by RTD himself. Did you catch the girl in the fireplace joke in "Human Nature"?

14

On May 28, 2007 2:17 AM, Chris Burgess said:

I have yet to watch Confidential to know if RTD lays claim to that gag in there, nor have I heard the commentary to know if RTD gets credit there, but I quote the following from Paul Cornell in his blog post comment thread:

"Invin: Verity, in the book, is who Smith thinks of as his earliest love, but who turns out to be something more than that in his mental landscape."

So, it would seem that the name Verity was in the New Adventure, so RTD can't get full credit. =)

15

On May 28, 2007 7:06 AM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

I believe Paul Cornell is well known for using names of characters in his stories taken from real life, including, on occasion, members of fandom.

16

On May 28, 2007 7:11 AM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

I've realized that the baddies from "Human Nature" share much in common with the Slitheen.
1. They are a family.
2. They seem to occupy and retain the bodies of humans.
3. They have a keen sense of smell.
4. Their behaviour is hammy.
If it weren't for the fact that half the family is thin, I would expect to see them unzipping their foreheads in the next episode.

17

On May 28, 2007 7:43 AM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

I've realized that the baddies from "Human Nature" share much in common with the Slitheen.
1. They are a family.
2. They seem to occupy and retain the bodies of humans.
3. They have a keen sense of smell.
4. Their behaviour is overtly hammy.
If it weren't for the fact that half the family is thin, I would expect to see them unzipping their foreheads in the next episode.

18

On May 28, 2007 9:50 AM, Jean-Paul Samson said:

A few more observations and opinions from me, just to fan the flames.

"Human Nature" seems to me to be a very fanwank episode. Note Chris being tickled by the obscure in-jokes.

Another indication is the lavish praise fans bestow on the story. That it qualifies on many a person's "best episode ever" list suggests that it would be an ideal one to show a new viewer, to demonstrate the appeal and quality of the show and try to get him/her hooked. But of course, it's a terrible choice for this purpose. Much of what occurs would be confusingly inexplicable, improbably, and silly to a layman.

Interestingly, this "best Doctor Who ever" is, unofficially, a Doctorless episode. In discussions with Chris, he praised David Tennant's performance as John Smith, whereas normally he finds Tennant's role as the Doctor to be grating. So if people so dearly love a story that does not feature the character of the Doctor, it makes me wonder why they even watch Doctor Who at all. Therein lies the real joke of "Human Nature" and fandom. It seems that there is a missed opportunity here, a market for Doctor Who-like spinoff that mirrors the style of its source, but simply does not feature the Doctor.

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