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Werken van Russell T. Davies

Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale (2008) 255 exemplaren
Damaged Goods (1996) — Auteur — 165 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The Shooting Scripts (2005) 164 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The Complete Specials (2010) 137 exemplaren
Torchwood: Season 1 (2007) — creator — 125 exemplaren
Torchwood: The Complete Second Season (2008) — creator — 104 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Rose (2018) 99 exemplaren
Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009) — Creator — 93 exemplaren
Lost Souls (2008) — Series creator — 61 exemplaren
Queer as Folk: The Complete First Season [USA] [television] (2002) — Screenwriter — 56 exemplaren
Torchwood: Miracle Day (2012) 52 exemplaren
The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete First Season (2008) — creator — 47 exemplaren
Queer as Folk: The Complete Third Season (2004) — Screenwriter — 40 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest [2007 animated serial] (2007) — executive producer — 35 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 2, Volume 2 (2014) 30 exemplaren
The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Fourth Season (2010) — creator — 29 exemplaren
Queer as Folk: The Complete Fifth Season (2006) — Screenwriter — 28 exemplaren
The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Second Season (2009) — creator — 28 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 2, Volume 1 (2014) 28 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 1, Volume 1 (2005) 26 exemplaren
The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Fifth Season (2012) — creator — 24 exemplaren
The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Third Season (2011) — creator — 24 exemplaren
Casanova [2005 TV mini series] (2005) — Screenwriter — 21 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The End of Time, Parts 1 and 2 (2010) — writer/executive producer — 21 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead (2009) 19 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Dreamland [2009 animated serial] (2010) — executive producer — 18 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 3, Volume 1 (2014) 18 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 1, Volume 4 (2005) 18 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The Next Doctor (2009) — writer/executive producer — 18 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 3, Volume 2 (2014) 16 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 4, Volume 2 (2014) 15 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 4, Volume 1 (2014) 15 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars (2010) 14 exemplaren
Dark Season (1991) 13 exemplaren
A Very English Scandal [2018 TV mini series] (2018) — Screenwriter — 12 exemplaren
Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited: 9-11 (2013) — Writer (Bad Wolf, Parting of the Ways, Stolen Earth & Journey's End) — 11 exemplaren
Damaged Goods [audio drama] (2015) 11 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 3, Volume 4 (2007) 9 exemplaren
Years and Years [2019 TV series] — Screenwriter — 9 exemplaren
Doctor Who-Series 1-7-Complete (2012) 8 exemplaren
Doctor Who: Series 3, Volume 3 (2007) 8 exemplaren
Queer as Folk (2011) 6 exemplaren
It's A Sin [DVD] 5 exemplaren
Mind of the Hodiac (2022) 4 exemplaren
Bob & Rose: The Complete Series (2004) — Writer — 4 exemplaren
The second coming (2004) 3 exemplaren
Cucumber. 3 DVD 1 exemplaar
Dark Season (1991) 1 exemplaar
Torchwood [TV series] — Creator — 1 exemplaar
Banana. 2 DVD (2015) 1 exemplaar

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Let’s review: goofy bombastic romantic mysterious BRITISH people! 😸

You thought that the Irish leprechaun novel cottage industry was cool in a campy way? Wait until you see a London police box, Fly Through Space! 😮

I think this might actually be the kind of ‘sci-fi’ I like; there are good ‘sci-fi’ stories, although the presence or absence of technological irregularities doesn’t really classify something well. It doesn’t have much in common with RDM’s ‘Battlestar Galactica’, which is really more like the ‘Sopranos’ or something. This is kinda like Star Wars, I guess. I guess I always took Star Wars for granted, being an American—although, like that bad boy German band said, we’re all American now…. Unless you have a British police box that can FLY THROUGH SPACE 😸—but I think this sort of show shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s adventure TV. And it isn’t bloody, and it’s romantic. And girlie and the Mystery Man get to fly through space…. In a box. 📦

…. I like it. Much of my life has been a struggle against live action cartoon zombies/manikins with a magical pen; so instead of starting with WW2 in my head, and trying to transform it: it’s done for you. That saves time. It’s efficient, you know. ✅

…. It’s ok. But you know, instead of the classical stuff, they really should have played HAIM, right—I see it as, “Days Are Gone”, when the manikins are going nuts, slaughtering people, you know. There could be three bride manikins, right…. Ah…. 🦖😸

…. I guess that “The End of the World” wasn’t Too bad 😸, but it was a little too weird/cool for me, although I’m sure he thought he was trying to be good, albeit in a zero-sum sort of way. I was surprised that it was written by the same guy as the first episode. It had a very different feel….

I don’t know, boys, atheists, geeks; it’s a little silly, although almost cute. It’s like, Money is bad, but prostitutes are good; it’s like, What do you suppose Motivates a prostitute, right? The desire to satisfy atheistical urges? 😸

…. But the Soft Cell and Britney Spears was okay. 😙….

But the plot, I don’t know, talk about playing to the base, right. 🦾

…. If only we could have an adventure without the action sequences; I can’t believe that there are going to be eleven more action sequences….

…. “The Unquiet Dead”: VERY different from the last episode. Although episode two’s Black lady who was a plant was great, nothing quite beats a psychic. And basically, just: Dickens + British television + ghosts = win. And there’s even that thing where it’s “two girls, one awesome conversation”, you know. And basically just, Blissfully simple. I’m sad that Mark didn’t write any other episodes in Series One.

…. The action end of ‘Unquiet’ was actually kinda a C+ instead of a D- like it is usually. I don’t normally “grade” things, but I don’t watch a lot of action sequences, either.

…. Cf “The End of the World” Again, bad stuff. That episode actually makes me think better of Taylor Swift—chronologically it’s not literally her, but you know what I mean. I mean, I get it: I’ve been angry at Taylor Swift. She’s an angry girl, and a popular white girl to boot. But she’s not /really/ a skin trampoline, you know; you don’t have to /dehumanize/ the pretty girl who’s…. Ugly, in a way. But I mean, she’s NOT a skin trampoline; she’s a Person, eh?

…. “Aliens of London”: I kinda liked the “drama” of the pre-spaceship part of the episode, really THAT could have been a whole proper thing, because it sounded like quite the fracaso…. But then 👽 happened, and it got all…. World-historical on me…. I don’t know; maybe I’m ‘too romantic’ for Doctor Who; truth is, he can be a bit of a dick; I’m not sure I’ll do any more series (ie seasons)…. And, I’m not like world-historical so I don’t like to crack them open for logic things, you know, but it’s like…. Talk about things that make //no fucking sense// the Doctor went from being an unknown prisoner basically to a British Army captain just because of a sudden loud noise, like, what? The fuck is that? 😹

…. God, the Doctor is such a dick. I don’t know whether it’s just a Series One Doctor who’s a dick, or all of them, but I’m pretty sure it’s not worth finding out. I’ll watch out the season, because it’s like, I don’t know, at least it’s not “I Love Lucy”, or something, you know. Lucy! You’re an imbecile! Don’t forget when you talking to me, Lucy, that my dick gives me the power!…. —The Doctor’s not good, either, though; he’s such a white boy’s white boy, you know…. Maybe adventure TV is general is trash; I dunno. Either give me a real drama, a romance, a sitcom or semi-fictionalized memoir-y thing, or a serious documentary, but none of this…. I don’t know. “I travel the world, being a white boy from the Uk…. You? How’d you get here? How’s you get here, with a name like Micky; sounds like you should be back in the Caribbean with a name like that. I’ll call you Ricky. Much easier to remember. It reminds me of, I Love Lucy!!” “And I thought I was assimilated! I thought I’d made it in this bugger country!” 👽👲🏾(“Hey, that bugger’s got a Chinese hat! I need a Rastaman hat.” (sigh) And I want England to win at tennis. /does action sequence/).

…. “World War Three”: This is not good television, even by campy adventure standards…. I’ve seen better episodes of “Star Trek”, you know, and in some of them they probably quoted Shakespeare…. And it’s just amazing really the number of secondary characters who can get unceremoniously killed off without so much as a sheet being drawn over the body in that or any subsequent episode, you know. I mean, I know it’s not drama. But even in the Mr. Monk show (obsessive compulsive detective), there’d be like at the end closure, “So that’s why Mr. Sad decided to kill his wife Elizabeth, it was because blah blah blah…. He wasn’t a good person!” It wasn’t like people would just drop like flies and they never get so much as a line, you know. I know Doctor Who isn’t //exactly// conservative because it’s just campy, right, but it is funny. Conservatives say they like talking about crime, but they don’t like it compared to war, because crime is a lot more personal, much more opportunity for humanization, right…. I don’t know how to explain it. Of course, either way the conservatives aren’t usually interested in doing it the right way, nor in general are the campy people, basically, right….

And listen, I know it must be scary if your country’s constitution is changing, and the British constitution is changing, but it’s like, The government can’t launch //nuclear weapons// at London without the UN’s approval, and I voted against that, thank you very much: I’m the heroic white girl major supporting character!…. It’s like…. You want, nukes, to solve the problem…. Even though the problem is //spies in London//, right…. And is there a reason that the Doctor doesn’t like Micky, other than that he unofficially stole his girlfriend, and that Micky, despite his Irish name, doesn’t have the Britpop look? Honest to God, people: it’s terrible! It’s worse than farting pigs trying to take over the world! It’s ugly white people who already HAVE taken over the world! 🐷 😹

…. I guess you just have to laugh, you know.

(Ross doing a crossword puzzle) A person who seems charming, but is a racist. Five letters.
(Chandler) “Friend”?
(Ross) No—five letters. “Friend” is six.
(Chandler) (snaps fingers) “LIMEY”!
(Ross) (writes in) Thank you.

…. It is kinda like whoever the British version of Trump would be, because it’s suspicious of the guys in suits (“elites”—they’re aliens who fart, which I guess is how the Trumpets see Biden), and also portrays the lovable blackcaveman with his baseball bat standing to the side uselessly while the white scientists and the white housewife combine forces to destroy the aliens. And the fact that consciously, they were planning this Trump-lite thing as an anti-Iraq War/WMD thing just makes it more weird. After all, Blackie the Idiot, sorry, Micky the Idiot, thing doesn’t go away quite as quickly as people forget about Iraq, you know. I also know they were probably trying to make a female-politician-with-housewife episode, you know, but the undertones of the episode seems to imply that “real men” of the same race identify with each other, even when one of them a leftist toughie, and one’s, you know, Limey the Racist; in the end, they’re often the same person….

But, “Victory should be naked!!” is a great line. Too bad the aliens are subhuman slugs who are ugly, lol. A line like that needs a hot bitch, lol.

…. “Dalek”— “Exterminate! Exterminate!” ~ random Doctor Who character

They always try to play such a big game, so macho; just once why can’t the rich guy be like Richard Branson, or maybe a music executive, and then give him a daughter with a drug problem—there! There’s some drama! You can’t always be Hitlering away the races, you know— Eight days a week! Eight days a week! Eight days a week, is not enough to exterminate, eight days a week…. Of course they have to make the rich guy this implausibly irrational and needlessly vicious loser, you know, who’s copyrighted arrogance, basically—Hey Doctor! I’ve copyrighted being a jerk! You’ve got to pay me if you want to do it too!…. And let’s not talk about the Doctor. “My balls are stronger than your balls, robot! My balls are balls of steel!” (robot) “My balls, are…. Metallic!” (does action sequence) And obviously pitying your enemy and/or being a woman, leads to death, basically. So let’s review: it’s like, Macho Limey and the Fans Desperate to be Unhappy by Bobby Bulldog (Doctor Who title sequence)….

…. (Limey Trump) (gets out to look at his car) (wipes snot with hand) I really need some offensive bumper stickers—really get up in people’s business. Let’s see—what social services do I value? The doctor who cured my cancer? The entrepreneur who loaned him his school money? Nah, too inspiring; too co-operative…. And you know, capitalism is really endangered by the rich. It’s either capitalism, or the system of the foreigner, the system of Jew blood, having a mother, being a homosexual…. (wipes snot with hand) I tell you, this is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptance: where there’s profits, there’s socialism….

It’s just bad television. I mean, it’s a little amusing, right, but after I’m done watching “Dalek”, (I always watch 40 minute episodes like 20 & 20, morning and evening, now), I’ll have to take a few days off and watch another show instead…. I mean, if they just //knew they were doing it, right//—I mean, it’s Limey Balls of Steel; it’s almost funny, except that they’re like: No, I’m agitating for a better world…. “You’re trying to get Rose in your bed without meeting her mother, ever.” No, I’m advancing the interests of the Trumpet Limey Empire. (smile) (starts turning levers and shit)

…. Someone should probably call this show Doctor Craptastic, basically.

(Dalek) Encouraging suicide is wrong, Doctor Craptastic.

And he’s always blaming other people for his problems and throwing a temper tantrum, basically after every firefight….

God, what a craptastic group of people. Even the supporting characters. I guess that’s the unofficial end of Series One, Part One, of Doctor Suicide Inducement, you know.

From now on, no British person can mock me about any stereotypically American thing, lol.

…. I don’t think I’m going to keep writing a paragraph or two for every half-episode when I come back. There’s too much guck to muck through, you know. But rest assured: it was Doctor Dalek, in the police box, by suffocation, with his cold, metal ass. 🥶 But! I guess I get angry too. Like today when my roommate comes into the room to make some stupid phone call that doesn’t concern me, and I don’t want to leave the room because I’m comfy and I want him to leave the room and also I won’t know when he’s done, and he could be done right away or after many stupid things are said, so in my mind I’m using the words he uses late at night when he stubs his toe on the way to the bathroom, right—words that tough guys use to stigmatize sex. But we don’t have to go there, lol.

But yeah, Doctor Dalek was why the American colonists sought separation from Britain. —It does not satisfy our Needs, our Network, or our wonderful Brand! 👨‍🚀

…. It is seriously not worth it describing what’s wrong with Doctor Who, lol.

…. Maybe I can keep this to a sentence: it’s like Doctor Bollocks thinks that theblackpeople are so negative, that all they ask of him is opposition to the system—even when he perceives them as being part of the system!—and not any kind of warmth or light….

…. In addition to not caring about people’s feelings, they also don’t bother to write a plot that makes sense. Let’s see: no characters, no plot, which would leave us with….

…. This is more about me, but: sometimes I just want to take the anti-wealth, anti-Black, anti-positivity racist-leftie and just…. Make them feel the way they make me feel: Not Good. I’ve spent more of my life upset at the summon-up-the-ghost-of-Hitler-on-our-Sci-fi-Channel-special, because that’s personal stuff and not the internet, but it is easier to laugh at to some extent, because it’s more over-the-top and more consistently demonic rather than hypocritically so…. But, that’s not terribly important: I know that I can’t feel good, until I let go of that….

…. And why bother, right: it would just make him angry. “Another person against me, the white male Eight, the Man at the Center, [as they called it in the extreme South of British North America], why: they’re all against me! I guess I’ll have to fight! I don’t like to fight, although I find myself in fights all the time, so….” Although I guess I do it myself, “People Not Like Me”, the white male Eight—and I guess that’s what politics is for, so that the white male Eights can all get together and reassure each other that they’re not looking out for each other; and that everyone else is an enemy, an implacable foe set against all white male Eight-dom….

(deep breath) No, it doesn’t help them to explain….

…. (relax) I know that partly it’s me. When I was a young young adult and I was trying to be romantic, I had this neurotic fear and hate for all masculine men and boys, even at eight seconds old, trying to burn down the city and kill everyone in the whole world, and if it’s not the violence it’s the contempt, the utter contempt for everything and everyone feminine, or even responsible…. Anyway, I was buying into Doctor Who being different from that, and it’s not the most obvious candidate for it, but it’s not substantively different—the way he talks to people man; it’s like the world is his bitch dog on a chain at his feet, basically…. Anyway, I hope this is the end of the review….

…. Ok, last thing: I know, I get it; girls will lie to you and then brag about it behind your back: but boys are just such bollocks; even when they’re as about as big as small watch, they’re like: I believe in //death//!! (flies away). You know. You really do.

…. I don’t want to go episode by episode, but “Father’s Day” is like, 50% cynicism, 75% bollocks that makes no sense, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is Doctor Who.

…. “The Empty Child” is relatively good…. I know that sometimes the BBC doesn’t embarrass itself; there’s Beatles recordings and documentaries, and God knows I’m biased in favor of the Anglos of the world, which is why I notice when they do things wrong, instead of not having been aware that the party was on in the first place….

…. Yeah, I already think that the 2 ‘London 1941’ episodes are better than the 2 ‘Aliens Farting’ episodes. They’re like, horror instead of The Fast & The Furious (Lite), you know. And the thing about horror is, although it’s not quite romance, it also doesn’t quite overwhelm you, much of the time.

(The Doctor) Huh. What’s his problem.
(Guest Female Supporting Star) He’s empty.
(The Doctor) (considers this, then) No. he’s just a bit daft.

I think that, like a lot of boy franchises, they have a problem where they play too big of a game for too small of a reason, or little to no reason at all, really, (and always encouraging people to bloody kill themselves! Twice in one season, wow! 🥺), so it’s nice when they can kinda make this Jazz Age Dickens-y jam and be happy with it, you know. And also I wonder if that main guy who writes most of the episodes is bollocks. Maybe he needs to go on a cruise to Antigua or something, get a little PTO, come back thinking that the world isn’t cursed. (Cursed, I tell you, cursed! 😱 😸).

…. ‘Tiny, poor, shitty little England against big, bad scary Hitler…. But England won, children! England won! Oh, poor m—I mean, yay!’ Incidentally the Crown-in-Parliament had several hundred million subject peoples outside the UK, but I mean, I know that 1941 was a romantic time for the English.

It’s actually not a bad episode, though.

…. Comedy-horror is good. If the show were consistently like the 1941 London duo, the show’d probably be worth the time and money.

…. “I need more days like this!”

Yeah…. It was a good day. They really put together two good episodes of this bollocks show! At least the next two or three episodes will be about farting pig aliens and other bollocks, you know. Crappy people doing good things threatens my sense of rightness/security. I guess I am a socialist/racist white liberal, after all. 😸 🐷 👽

…. (Big Hermes) Well, Athena, any sufficiently masculine show can bring together left-wing elements and right-wing elements, and superstitious elements and robot man elements, until they become one big indistinguishable from one another. However, it usually involves—
(Little Apollo) (gasp of delight) Farting pig aliens! Alright!
(Big Hermes) Apollo—No!
(Little Apollo) Screw you, Hermes—FARTING PIG ALIENS FOREVER! And screw you too, Athena: BOYS GOT GAME! BOYS GOT GAME! BOYS…. (continues)
(Athena) Is he gonna like, stop doing that.
(Big Hermes) Probably not, but he’s got his back turned now. Run! Quietly! (action sequence)

…. Yes, Micky, us white people do think that we’re so clever, even when, like Russel T Davies, we’re not.

…. What they do to the Welsh in this episode is not at all good—let’s really underline how off-center they really are—but, what the hell, they might as well, given how Micky is Icky, basically. (He’s blackie.) And the Doctor, just isn’t allowed to care—he’s a Western doctor. (Lots of planets have a west, I guess. 😸)

It’s also very unprofessional how they make a technobabble link with “The Unquiet Dead” even though really—thematically, stylistically, however you like—“Boomtown” is totally different, really.

…. I know it’s the perfect combination of comedy and hardboiled-ness, but I still don’t understand why they can’t just let her go, you know. Here’s an escape pod, off you go: don’t let the door bang you on the ass on the way out. But no. “I’m a hard-ass; I’m the Doctor.”

…. If the Daleks come back, all the Doctor has to do is convince them to commit mass suicide; he can be a cult-leader, like! 😉

…. An adventure is supposed to be a mix of danger/purpose and not-danger/love, but in Doctor Who it’s so light on purpose, you know—I mean, there is no purpose, “So you’re unemployed”—pretty much, you know, they just wander about and get into trouble, and it’s unclear how their actions benefit anyone else, or how they would support themselves or get a sense of accomplishment, right. (Aside from mocking fashion, which I guess for boys is an end in itself, although most of the important girl characters are pretty.) Clancy’s Cold War Chronicles is the opposite extreme, all purpose, you know—the purpose of your life is the American empire, right, and having fun is off-limits because the American cause demands that we limit the characters to humorless Dick and John, right, but Doctor Who tries to //seem// very different without //being// very different; it’s not a love story like the Hunger Games, even though that’s actually quite serious fiction for me, social and not an adventure, but it’s like, the Doctor leads you on this purposeless adventure and chooses some pretty girl to go with him, but the whole point of the adventure is to make fun of pretty girls, and there’s never like, emotional exchanges of any kind, you know—they’re not lovers, their family isn’t there, there’s no past life trauma to be healed, it’s just…. Nothing, you know. No tension, no point to it…. Nothing gets done and nothing gets enjoyed, they just kinda chill, and then they have the Pharisee skills to go up against television, you know—it’s like, Well that’s alright, mate, but what do you think You, are?

…. The whole ‘Bad Wolf’ thing is like the perfect-epic-fail way of not having an overarching plot for the whole season, while pretending that you do, you know…. Oh, wow, we re-did an earlier episode //from the same season//—not twenty years ago, within a year—wow, what a pay-off right; what a pay-off for some random phrase that doesn’t mean anything repeated occasionally by unconnected people who didn’t mean anything in particular by the phrase…. I mean, I know that it means that some doctor who’s in a bad TV show doesn’t like bad TV…. Yeah…. Inspiring…. I mean, it was a little different, but I don’t really care about the characters, so…. I mean, they’re meant to look like a couple, but they’re not a couple…. And they don’t have to work, but they can do whatever they want, although they hate rich people…. And they’re kinda antisocial people who never talk about how they feel…. Probably because of how much therapy they need, right…. But it’s ok, the Doctor can just get his enemies to commit mass suicide, right….

…. So the god-emperor of the Daleks is bad because he’s…. Ugly, and religious, basically. And pretty people are alright, unless they take too long getting ready, in which case they’re like the accomplice.

Of course, the gay kiss or whatever was kinda different and unique, and I guess that’s why he’s against religion, and…. Well, actually I don’t know why people can’t be ugly, or take too much time getting ready, you know.

Although it’s not really a parody of religion, so I can’t really support it, because religious people aren’t like Daleks, you know; Daleks aren’t like anything…. It’s just, I don’t know…. It’s television, is what it is.

Although really the secret of Doctor Who, children, is that just because you’re an influential man who travels time and space with a young woman, doesn’t mean you aren’t chauvie as fuck, you know. It’s just…. Bad. Welcome to the 21st century, children! It’s just like all the other centuries, except now we have killer robots! 😉😸

…. Wow, okay: whatever…. But no. Also, no.

Be sure not to let the door hit you on the ass on your way out!
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
goosecap | 4 andere besprekingen | Jun 29, 2023 |
An account of once and future Doctor Who/showrunner Russell T. Davies' work on the show from the 2007 Christmas special through the end of Season 5 of the new series. It's told in the form of a long-running, casual email exchange between Davies and writer Benjamin Cook, in which Davies answers Cook's questions about his job and his writing process, sends him drafts of the scripts he's currently working on, and generally offers up thoughts and reflections, as well as more than a few emotional outbursts about how stressed he is trying to get things finished.

I actually picked up my copy of this book in 2008, when it was first published, but for some reason I just kept never getting around to reading it. With Davies' return to the show, though, now seemed very much like the time for it.

I'll admit, at first I wasn't at all sure just how glad I was to finally be reading the thing. It seemed like this might be a deeper dive into Russell Davies' mind than I actually wanted. It's disconcertingly horny in there, for one thing, and he's prone to be a bit... wallow-y. Although, in fairness, he was kind of asked to be, and he's at least quite self-aware about it. And it didn't help, I'm sure, that the early parts of the book are mostly about his work on the script for "Voyage of the Damned,' which... well, let's face it, that's not really anybody's favorite episode, is it?

I did come to appreciate it at lot more as things went on, though. I always find it interesting to get a glimpse into a writer's thought process, and Davies does have some interesting and occasionally even insightful things to say about that process, and about working in television, specifically. It was also very interesting to get this much of a look into the nitty-gritty details of how a television script evolves from its first conception in the writer's brain through the actual filmed product that appears on our screens. I knew sort of intellectually how vulnerable the effective telling of any TV story is to the harsh realities of run time, and actor availability, and production schedules, and FX budgets, but seeing it unfolding in front of me here honestly leaves me boggling a little at the fact that any TV episode actually works and holds together and makes sense at all after it's been through all of that. Not that that's ever going to stop me nitpicking the ones that don't, mind you.

So, anyway. I am glad I finally got to it, after all. Although, boy, has it just made all my mixed feelings about RTD's return even more mixed. The depictions of how he finishes every script at or after the very last minute (whether or not he's had any sleep or, say, contracted chicken pox) may actually explain a few things about his stories, but it doesn't inspire huge amounts of confidence. And, on the one hand, this book prompted me to remember just how much I loved "Partners in Crime" and how entertaining Davies' particular brand of silliness can be when it comes off well. On the other hand, ye gods, "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" were more of a ridiculous mess than I even remembered them being, and reading about them just gives me a front row seat to what I still regard as probably the most infuriatingly bad storytelling decision in the history of television. But don't worry, I'll spare you my rant on that subject. And, hey, who knows? Maybe he'll finally fix it, leaving me blissfully free to send all my nerd rage elsewhere. I can hope, right?
… (meer)
 
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bragan | 7 andere besprekingen | Mar 9, 2023 |
This review will be some what chaotic, but it is what it is. I hope you're able to follow it.

First of all this book has a soundtrack:

Hunting High and Low by A-ha.
The song's playing in the background in the graveyard where poor Harry Harvey, a deeply conflicted gentleman, is nearly scared to death (literally) when something rises out a grave to kill a teenager about to threaten an old man's life with a knife. We'll follow him through his madness, interactions with the ghost of his dead wife and his acceptance of who he is finally.

It is questionable whether Harry's story is all that important to the book as a whole, but it is significant that both he, and his lodger, David Daniels, are in the book, along with the shadowy cruisers at Smithfield cemetery[1], and is mentioned in the UNIT logs at the end of the story[2].

It's a Sin by the Petshop Boys.

Wanted Dead or Alive the well chosen ending song by Bon Jovi.

And a poem by William Butler Yeats The Stolen Child

Though the book came out in 1996-97, the action takes place mainly in 1987 with trips back to 1977 and a brief glimpse of 1963.

======
What to say ...
I liked this book. Really. It's a real page turner and the characters, whether likeable or not, are well rounded and interesting.

However, this is not a nice book. It's probably one of the goriest books that I have ever read (Doctor Who or not), starting with the immolation of a drug dealer named Capper and ending in the deaths of more that 11,000 people, including those on a commuter train, a number of petty thieves and drug dealers, people who bought and subsequently consumed £ 50 packets of alien tainted coke and most of the residents of at least two apartment blocks.

The Seventh Doctor is really dark in this book, the number of people destroyed in his wake is amazing, his attempts to stop the tragedy unfolding around him too little too late. For all his knowledge, he's unable to help the people in desperate need and the situation falls apart around him. His frustration with the people he's dealing with is palpable, used as he is to having his finger on the actual pulse in any situation, only to be stymied by the petty silence engendered by small lives.

The basis for the story is that of two desperate women, one who wants to be a mother, the other who wants to keep her children safe.

Eva Jericho is, in a word, a nut-job, or psychotic, take your pick. Definitely 'damaged goods' and mental. She's a woman who can not take responsibility for her own actions she blames her school rival for convincing her to shoplift to gain entry into an elite clique whilst at school. The theft is petty at best and she got caught, so it's on her record, but it's such a minor offense it really has little real bearing in her life beyond the size it's taken on in her mind and she's had her life dream of having children torn apart by too many miscarriages. She is probably literature's (most certainly my) first serial shopper - she buys clothes only to mutilate them and return them as damaged goods to the shops. She's so desperate for children, she convinces her husband to purchase a child for her ...

Winnie Tyler is a woman with a problem. Her husband has run off and left her with two children and another on the way, and a pile of debt. Desperate, Winnie makes a bargain, for a certain amount of money, she'll sell her baby, pull her family out of debt and take off for better climes. Except she has a secret and it's going to set in motion a chain of events which will lead to family tragedy ... except it's about to be compounded by the arrival of an alien intruder determined to bring War.
=======

This book reads like a laundry list for some of RTD's favorite things when in comes to story telling, including, but not limited to:
The name 'Tyler'.
Housing estates, tenements or projects.
Big alien creatures to which a human can become attached: i.e. the Cyber-creature in The Next Doctor.
People caught up in a crisis.
Children caught in the crossfire.
=======

[1] Two significant gay characters in a Who book!
[2] It's hinted that, thanks to to events in the story, both carry a possible cure to HIV
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
fuzzipueo | 2 andere besprekingen | Apr 24, 2022 |
Fairly true to the original novel. Well adapted, though I do question the line about Torchwood.
 
Gemarkeerd
fuzzipueo | Apr 24, 2022 |

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Dave Hill Actor
Bill Donohoe Cover artist
Kate McAll Producer-director
Jacob Dudman Narrator

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