jblum (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jblum) wrote,@ 2008-04-29 11:59:00 |
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Every so often Doctor Who fandom can still astonish me.
After this last week -- which was probably the most old-school story yet, UNIT verus a Sontaran invasion, familiar objects like satnavs and emissions controllers turned lethal, all the most charming cliches of the Pertwee era in one neat package -- I've seen old-school fans complaining that the new show has got it wrong because:
* the Sontarans are acting sneaky and stealthy instead of going for an all-out invasion (when in every single old Sontaran story for one reason or another they were being stealthy, and we never once saw an up-front invasion)
* the Doctor is being shamefully rude to his friends at UNIT, not at all like the old days (when he was CONSTANTLY rude to his friends at UNIT, and indeed anyone who disagreed with him ever from Romana to Ralph Cornish)
* the Doctor sometimes makes political comments (so, not at all like the days when Mac Hulke used him for Green Party political broadcasts, Robert Holmes had the workers of the world Pluto unite, or Andrew Cartmel went after everything from nukes to Thatcher)
* the Doctor is making a big deal about not liking guns (which he's been saying since 1966, while at the same time being happy to use them when he needs them)
Now, obviously Doctor Who appeals to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. But all these "my Doctor would never have done that" bits are just so, well, completely and utterly factually wrong that I'm finding myself resorting to the great cliche: What show were you watching again?
And I'm just wondering where some of those ideas could come from -- most of all, their idea that the Doctor used to be nice. (Sorry, folks -- he was brilliant, funny, caring, astonishing, brave, wonderful, and quite frequently an asshole.) I think a fan just gave me a bit of a clue with something they said about him: "He didn't go around judging people and he didn't hate people unless they were the baddies."
Now, this fan said that completely obliviously of the huge judgmentalism right there in that statement. But more to the point, it made me think of the kind of people they missed him judging, the ones who the Doctor saw as beneath him... who are quite often the ones the young fans would have thought were beneath them too.
And I think that might be the key. When they thought the Doctor was nice, what they really mean is that they thought he would be nice to them. Cause they were like him -- smart, geeky, a bit isolated, surrounded by a bunch of petty smallminded fools and all that. (Yep, the school system's got a lot to answer for.) They knew who the idiots and the baddies were in the world too. And they were sure the Doctor would only pick on the people who deserved it, the ones who'd pick on them.
But now, maybe, now that they've grown up, they can get an inkling of what it would be like if the Doctor's casual scorn were turned on them. To be a Ralph Cornish or a Brigadier or an Elton Pope or a Sir Colin Thackeray, just doing the best you can, even doing the right thing rather than the wrong one... and then this big-mouthed genius swans up and takes over and starts having goes at you and making smug little comments to the girl at his side. And they don't think you're wonderful, and better than all the others. And he might not invite you for a trip in the TARDIS.
That would be unbearable, wouldn't it?
(And I have to wonder how much of the venom directed at [insert companion of your choice] comes from a similar sort of primal scream -- what makes her more special than me?)
But of course those special bits of your childhood when you were sure you were the Doctor's best-friend-in-waiting couldn't have been a lie -- so he must have changed, not you. And that's how people can accuse the Doctor of having become "one of the cool kids" -- not recognizing that the arrogance of the cool kids and the arrogance of the geek squad are just two sides of the same coin.
This is rather a lot of words for Livejournal, so I'll try to compress this thousand into an icon: it would be a rotating series of pictures of the Doctors, from the first through the tenth, with text reading "CHANCES ARE HE WOULDN'T LIKE YOU". And I should probably throw House and Sherlock Holmes in there as well!
After this last week -- which was probably the most old-school story yet, UNIT verus a Sontaran invasion, familiar objects like satnavs and emissions controllers turned lethal, all the most charming cliches of the Pertwee era in one neat package -- I've seen old-school fans complaining that the new show has got it wrong because:
* the Sontarans are acting sneaky and stealthy instead of going for an all-out invasion (when in every single old Sontaran story for one reason or another they were being stealthy, and we never once saw an up-front invasion)
* the Doctor is being shamefully rude to his friends at UNIT, not at all like the old days (when he was CONSTANTLY rude to his friends at UNIT, and indeed anyone who disagreed with him ever from Romana to Ralph Cornish)
* the Doctor sometimes makes political comments (so, not at all like the days when Mac Hulke used him for Green Party political broadcasts, Robert Holmes had the workers of the world Pluto unite, or Andrew Cartmel went after everything from nukes to Thatcher)
* the Doctor is making a big deal about not liking guns (which he's been saying since 1966, while at the same time being happy to use them when he needs them)
Now, obviously Doctor Who appeals to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. But all these "my Doctor would never have done that" bits are just so, well, completely and utterly factually wrong that I'm finding myself resorting to the great cliche: What show were you watching again?
And I'm just wondering where some of those ideas could come from -- most of all, their idea that the Doctor used to be nice. (Sorry, folks -- he was brilliant, funny, caring, astonishing, brave, wonderful, and quite frequently an asshole.) I think a fan just gave me a bit of a clue with something they said about him: "He didn't go around judging people and he didn't hate people unless they were the baddies."
Now, this fan said that completely obliviously of the huge judgmentalism right there in that statement. But more to the point, it made me think of the kind of people they missed him judging, the ones who the Doctor saw as beneath him... who are quite often the ones the young fans would have thought were beneath them too.
And I think that might be the key. When they thought the Doctor was nice, what they really mean is that they thought he would be nice to them. Cause they were like him -- smart, geeky, a bit isolated, surrounded by a bunch of petty smallminded fools and all that. (Yep, the school system's got a lot to answer for.) They knew who the idiots and the baddies were in the world too. And they were sure the Doctor would only pick on the people who deserved it, the ones who'd pick on them.
But now, maybe, now that they've grown up, they can get an inkling of what it would be like if the Doctor's casual scorn were turned on them. To be a Ralph Cornish or a Brigadier or an Elton Pope or a Sir Colin Thackeray, just doing the best you can, even doing the right thing rather than the wrong one... and then this big-mouthed genius swans up and takes over and starts having goes at you and making smug little comments to the girl at his side. And they don't think you're wonderful, and better than all the others. And he might not invite you for a trip in the TARDIS.
That would be unbearable, wouldn't it?
(And I have to wonder how much of the venom directed at [insert companion of your choice] comes from a similar sort of primal scream -- what makes her more special than me?)
But of course those special bits of your childhood when you were sure you were the Doctor's best-friend-in-waiting couldn't have been a lie -- so he must have changed, not you. And that's how people can accuse the Doctor of having become "one of the cool kids" -- not recognizing that the arrogance of the cool kids and the arrogance of the geek squad are just two sides of the same coin.
This is rather a lot of words for Livejournal, so I'll try to compress this thousand into an icon: it would be a rotating series of pictures of the Doctors, from the first through the tenth, with text reading "CHANCES ARE HE WOULDN'T LIKE YOU". And I should probably throw House and Sherlock Holmes in there as well!
