Last Friday night's episode of Doctor Who, in America, was "The Girl in the Fireplace". My first thought, after watching the episode, was "I have just seen the winner of the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation next year."
Now, before Kevin or Tom or anybody shows up to point out that I don't actually know anything about the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) or what sorts of shows win it, so I will amend my thought to this: It is highly unlikely that I will see a better hour of television SF this year.
I never saw Doctor Who prior to going to college, and I didn't see it afterwards until the new series, so I have seen probably fewer than 40 episodes featuring Baker, Pertwee, Davison, and McCoy (who I rather liked). Doctor Who is not part of my Golden Age of SF.
The new series is good. It has modern television storytelling and acting, and FX are now cheap enough that even cheap looks pretty good. BBC-standard directing, lighting, and sound have been improved to American standards.
"The Girl in the Fireplace" is emotionally rich and satisfying. It lacks histrionics; it praises reason. It is beautifully designed. Its principal guest star, Sophia Myles, is exquisitely beautiful, and, moreover, deft enough to show deepening maturity as her character ages through the episode.
If the plot verges on the nonsensical; if a horse appears on the spaceship solely so that the Doctor can later ride it through a mirror; well, it may suffice to say that the nonsense and contrivances neither disappointed nor confounded me, but indeed thrilled me. I don't need every moment carefully explained; I need a story compelling enough that I don't mind what's unexplained, or that I want to explain what's left over to myself.
Anyway, I know most of you don't watch Doctor Who, so I don't want to inflate your expectations too much; I know far well that I am idiosyncratic. I will merely say, "The Girl in the Fireplace" worked for me, and I highly recommend it, and I doubt that I will see a better hour of SF in the next year.
Posted by Greg at October 23, 2006 8:55 AM
I also really love Doctor Who, and I almost never like the same sci-fi that Greg does. However, we have cancelled our cable so I guess I won't be watching it. I expect it will eventually show up on Netflix.
Season 2 of Dr. Who comes out on DVD in January, so, yeah, Netflix'll have it.
I respectfully disagree. Apart from the fact that "The Girl in The Fireplace" is not as good as "Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel" and "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday," it's also not any better than "School Reunion" or the Battlestar Galactica episode "Downloaded." I grant you, however, that apart from the BSG episode, I am somewhat influneced by the fact that I am a huge Dr. Who fan since early childhood. I also think "Tooth and Claw" was right up there with Fireplace.
The new series Doctor Who has generally quite high quality to be sure, but "School Reunion" depends fairly strongly on history with the character, and "Tooth and Claw" doesn't have nearly the emotional impact. I haven't seen the two-parters you mention, of course.
And I don't watch BSG. The opening movie was too dull to watch. I mean, it was really fucking dull, so serious, not fun at all. So I never watched the series. I gather it has enough partisans that think it's the greatest thing since Russell Crowe's ass dimples that its groupthink is a serious threat as a bloc vote in the Hugos, but me, I like my SF to laugh and have fun.
The BSG miniseries was pretty awful. I only watched the BSG tv show because a) it was on with Stargate and b) Jayembee told me too. It's worth watching.
I don't think "School Reunion" depended that strongly on knowing the character. There was more emotional impact if you do know the character, but there's also more emotional impact in Fireplace if you know who Madame du Pompadour is. Certainly "School Reunion" has a more upbeat ending. The new series of Dr. Who is very, very, very good indeed at introducing new viewers to old concepts without jettisoning the history of the show, and I think that's a strength of the show.
I liked "School Reunion" a lot, and it was effective at delivering emotional impact even to me, who doesn't have anything invested in SJS.
But I also didn't know anything about MdP, so it's not that which made me respond so strongly to the show. TGitF has a similar, but not identical melancholy to SR, and I may just like the flavor better.
In any case, I will certainly agree that the new series is very, very good indeed at using the history without alienating new viewers.
Well, the nominees for this year's Dramatic (Short Form) Hugo were
72 Doctor Who "Dalek" Written by Robert Shearman.
49 Doctor Who "Father's Day" Written by Paul Cornell.
38 Battlestar Galactica "Pegasus" Written by Anne Cofell Saunders.
37 Doctor Who "The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances" * Written by Steven Moffat.
21 Prix Victor Hugo Awards Ceremony (Opening Speech and Framing Sequences) Written and performed by Paul McAuley and Kim Newman.
21 Jack Jack Attack Written & Directed by Brad Bird.
21 Lucas Back in Anger Written by Phil Raines and Ian Sorensen.
[The * indicates that due to how the definitions are specified, it could've gone into either short or long form, but the nominators tended to place it in short, thus its placement. The Prix Victor Hugo Awards was the previous year's Hugo Ceremony wrapper material, which was hysterical. Lucas Back In Anger was a Star Wars spoof performed at the 2005 Worldcon]
So three of the top four nominees were Who episodes. Admittedly possibly biased by last year's British Worldcon members getting to nominate (but not vote) and Worldcon being in LA, which has probably the most active US-based Who fan group.
In the actual voting, which uses the Australian elimination ballot, we had for first place;
first place:
Doctor Who "Child/Dances" 112 112 114 116 148 168 247
Battlestar Galactica "Pegasus" 137 138 141 154 167 184 195
Doctor Who "Dalek" 70 70 70 75 95 107
Jack-Jack Attack 67 68 72 85 89
Doctor Who "Father's Day" 64 64 65 72
Prix Victor Hugo Awards 42 43 61
Lucas Back in Anger 34 34
No Award 29
Note that most of the Who episode votes went to the other Who eps when eliminated. In fact, Dalek placed second and Father's Day third on the count to determine those positions.
Let's just say I don't think Who eps will have a problem being on the ballot next year. But since Worldcon's in Japan (for the first time), I'd be more worried about some anime competition than Galactica.
Oh, one thing I didn't catch in the episode. While Rose and Mickey can't use the TARDIS, was there any reason given why, for his final trip back, the Doctor couldn't use the TARDIS to have shown up just after his last fireplace conversation?
Well, I'm slowly catching up on Season 1 (or whatever real number it is) and I love Eccleston as the doctor. I saw Unearthly Child, but not the second part, and I must say, the first episode creeped the hell out of me.
Glad none of the kids were around.
Tom:
The Tardis has never been particularly precise, as I recall.
In "Tooth and Claw", he was aiming for 1979 (London?) and hit 1879 Scotland. The Tenth Doctor appears to be significantly worse at controlling the Tardis (possibly due to Rose's exposure to its core) than the Ninth Doctor was.
Time goes on for billions of years. Space is really big. Scotland 1879 is right on top of London 1979. Well within the margin of error.
Now if the Tardis had only landed on Queen Victoria, putting Edward VII on the throne 22 years earlier, we might've had something...
I don't recall ever seeing them land the TARDIS on anybody Dorothy-Gale-style in any Doctor Who ever. I may have seen them all (except for some of the last two seasons, and also I just couldn't handle Sylvester McCoy - see my earlier comment) but I have a very bad memory for, well, for everything actually, so that doesn't say much. The Doctor should then say "K-9, I don't think we're on Gallifrey any more." (They've missed the perfect spot for that episode, which is when they first went color.)
To answer Tyg's question on your TGITF post about why the Doctor couldn't use the TARDIS to go back right after his last fireplace chat with Renette, once he knew that she died never seeing him again, he can no longer go into that time. It would change his personal history which he can't do. (It would basically cause the kind of stuff that happened in Father's Day to happen again).
It's a shaky premise--especially considering he's constantly changing things he would know about history-- I grant you. But it's why, for example, he couldn't go back and save Adric (a 5th Doctor Companion who dies trying to save the Earth).