Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Kylie Minogue?

15 comments:

  1. Keep repeating to yourself. She can only improve upon Catherine Tate... She can only improve upon Catherine Tate...

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  2. Dude, they cast Billie Piper as the first assistant in the renewed series. This should be absolutely no surprise to anyone.

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  3. She can only improve upon Catherine Tate... She can only improve upon Catherine Tate...

    Well of course, time has healed over the memories of Bonnie Langford.

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  4. Time, and an active campaign of high level drug treatment.

    The scars from seeing Kate O'Mara dressed as Bonnie Langford however, may never heal.

    *twitch*

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  5. Consider also Alexei Sayle, John Cleese, Eleanor Bron, and Peter Kay. (And no, I'm not sure that La Minogue Senior is intrinsically less credible than Billie Piper.)

    Or just don't take things so damn seriously. Because if you take this thing too seriously while most of the scriptwriters are treating it as lightweight science fantasy, it's your health that'll suffer, not theirs.

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  6. Keep repeating to yourself. She can only improve upon Catherine Tate... She can only improve upon Catherine Tate...

    And doesn't that comment take on a rather different meaning just a day later.

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  7. I feel almost responsible somehow.

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  8. I shall simply give up altogether. A review of season 29 is forthcoming, but to be honest, I'm past caring.

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  9. By the way: I am sure the meeting would like to join me in a vote of thanks to Phil Masters for his timely advise about not taking Doctor Who seriously. I look forward to other advise that will be appropriate to and edifying for (zeugma) readers of this website, for example:

    -- Aren't you a little bit old for funnybooks.

    -- It's very easy to criticize Mr. Blair, but I shouldn't think you could do any better, so you should just shut up about it.

    -- Opera's all fat ladies screeching out high notes.

    -- Really and truly it doesn't matter what you believe so long as it's true for you, so you shouldn't quarrel about religion

    -- Etc.

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  10. You're slightly missing my point. The real issue isn't whether anyone here is taking the thing seriously; it's whether the script writers and editors are. Which they aren't, much.

    Dr Who? was never exactly diamond-hard po-faced rigorous SF, but the old version sometimes made some attempts at coherent space opera of a sort (except towards the end). The new version is pretty much all science fantasy or even technofantasy, with at least one editorial eye always looking for whatever will maximise ratings. This is established as the point of the exercise now, whatever we might wish.

    And so, attempting to talk about the programme on other terms is just dancing about architecture. It might even be fun, but actually getting angry about it is unhealthy. If the use of the old name for the new product annoys anyone that much, the answer is to walk away.

    And by the way, I quite liked the season just gone. Probably merely because there were fewer egregiously stupid bits than in the previous two. It'd be nice if they ever matched the ambition of Frontier in Space or the intensity of Pyramids of Mars, though, I admit.

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  11. Andrew, as someone who gave up after the last series, because the show Russel Davies is writing isn't Doctor Who, I'd still be very interested in reading your opinions on it.

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  12. I think Phil is missing the point. No one expects Doctor Who to be rigorously-researched scientifically-accurate sci-fi. We would quite like it to be decent drama of a sort that can be watched by both children and adults, as the old series, in its best moments, achieved, and as series one of this new series seemed to be striving towards.

    That its genre is called sf, or telefantasy, or whatever you want to call it, is hugely irrelevant. It's supposed to be good drama. It has been, occasionally, in the past (though admittedly it has also been rubbish, for instance, most Jon Pertwee capture/escape/repeat stories) but it isn't, for the most part, now -- and, indeed, seems content to not try to be, but instead to play to the lowest common denominator with fart jokes and big scorpions that have the power to sap people's life force by writing bad parodies of early twentieth-century literature.

    Nobody actually wants it to be po-faced hard-sf except the saddest of sadfans, who can and should be ignored. After all, didn't someone involved with the early days of Doctor Who point out that science fiction is first and foremost about the fiction, not the science? If it's good fiction, the science can go jump. But if it's not good fiction -- and current Doctor Who isn't good fiction -- then none of the science matters.

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  13. It's supposed to be good drama. It has been, occasionally, in the past...

    Like I said, "he old version sometimes made some attempts at coherent space opera of a sort". Which is probably what made it "good drama". Coherence and a little flair.

    So we're probably not actually disagreeing about much. Though I do think that the season just gone had one or two good moments and images.

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  14. Having just watched The Runaway Bride again, I am now rather enthused about the idea of Catherine Tate reprising Donna. What was wrong with that episode was primarily the appallingly cobbled-together plot.

    Nowt wrong with a bit of shouting in a good cause. And considerably better than the third hero-worshipping pretty young thing in a row.

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  15. Kylie Minogue isn't that awful an actress if my memories of the odd Australian film she's been in are true.

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