tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post7933476727017676200..comments2024-03-17T11:05:22.464+00:00Comments on The Life And Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: The Problem Of SusanUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-84080979877894782232023-03-11T07:21:36.090+00:002023-03-11T07:21:36.090+00:00Jon 19-25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and ...Jon 19-25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; Richard Worthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10926026136161902000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-22003348475313899092023-03-08T18:43:35.717+00:002023-03-08T18:43:35.717+00:00“I wonder if this is why fandom became toxic? It l...<i>“I wonder if this is why fandom became toxic? It lost its original purpose as the repository of a tradition, and become focussed on dissecting presently available texts.”</i><br /><br />This is one of those classically Rilstonian comments which seems simultaneously revelatory and obvious, and leave me characteristically envious that I didn’t get to say it.<br /><br />One of my criticisms of fandom back in the day was how uncritical it all was, at times seeming to regard criticism as some existential threat. I suppose acting as a recording device and acting as a critic are in some ways at odds, but that wasn’t how I saw it then. Was today’s toxicity an inadvertent consequence of my lot’s actions? Perhaps in part it was.<br /> <br />Though, I recently started searching yonder net in search of more good writing about ‘Who’. I was surprised to see how many blogs were essentially plot summaries (“and then they defeat the Cybermen using nail varnish”, “and then they defeat the Zarbi by shouting ‘Zarbiiiii’ at them” etc), sometimes followed by a single line thumbs-up commentary. And while people are entirely entitled to do what they want, this seemed passing strange. They’re posting this on the net, so they’re presumably aware that info already exists there, in a thousand other places. But I suppose it’s one of those stuck habit things, the way my Dad would ceremonially unplug his Skybox every evening before bedtime.<br /> Gavin Burrowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-72165636387458329042023-03-06T23:59:34.762+00:002023-03-06T23:59:34.762+00:00I just had an exchange with someone on a completel...I just had an exchange with someone on a completely different forum in which I noted that one reason <i>The Simpsons</i> has survived (more-or-less) is that the writers understood (and understand) that there is no such thing as 'canon' - that every episode of <i>The Simpsons</i> (OK, with one or two specific exceptions) is entirely independent of every other episode because having a 'canon' would have interfered with the jokes.<br /><br />Classic Who and original Star Trek clearly work on that basis (that 'canon' is not really a thing.) Modern Who and more recent Trek mostly do not, possibly to their detriment (cough, yes, a lot of DS9 is a single story.) Fandom became a significant thing largely between those two eras.Scurrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15182486408258989295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-88043101347802290242023-03-04T00:54:40.442+00:002023-03-04T00:54:40.442+00:00Doctor Who fans have never played these metatextua...<i>Doctor Who fans have never played these metatextual games. You can't rewrite history: not one single line.</i><br /><br />…Say what now? The idea that the Doctor's timeline is watsonianly in flux was played with frequently in the 90s books — the wonderfully-titled <i>Unnatural History</i> is about little else. Indeed the Eighth Doctor spent most of his era getting rewritten by everyone from Faction Paradox to Rassilon himself. He was definitely half-human for a night in 1996, and always had been, but McCoy was full Time Lord and always had been, unless he was really the Other, unless he really wasn't. <br /><br />Not televised, you say? Well look, I'll start by going to bat for the fact that as of the 1990s, the books were the genuine article. Whether they lost the mandate later is another matter, but until 2003 or so, <i>Doctor Who</i> considered as a living media project was an ongoing series which had, a decade earlier, happened to jump medium from TV to books (or rather, had refocused itself solely on books after having spent thirty years being both at the same time; Targets and all that). <br /><br />I quite understand that you weren't in those segments of fandom, and that's fair enough, and I don't mean to delegitimise the experience of those for whom "the EU" remained a quaint and remote curiosity even in those TV-less years. My point is simply that what the Eighth Doctor books do with the continuity of the 60s TV show is as good a comparison for what 90s Marvel Comics do with the continuity of the 60s comics as anything. So I find it very telling they were in fact also playing in that territory — and pulling it off, I might add, with a lot more style.<br /><br />But secondarily, the Revived Series has largely followed in this approach (see Moffat's notorious quote about "it's impossible for a show about a dimension-hopping time-traveller to have a 'canon'"). Many of RTD's greatest-hits explicitly spent the Matt Smith era in a Schrödingerian state, erased from history by Cracks in Time but remembered by a select few. History does *in fact* get rewritten very frequently, all the way to “Day of the Doctor” (no, it's not an "it was always like this" loop). <br /><br />Nobody yet knows how the upcoming era will deal with the way Chibnall left the universe — by which I mean the Timeless Child, of course, but also half the Solar System having been destroyed by the Flux. But fully embracing a casual "history is fluid, sometimes it just changes for no particular reason" position is certainly a very plausible course for Davies to take if he wants a reasonably clean slate (i.e. not a world where everyone watched dog-aliens create a shield around the Earth last year), and yet doesn't want to acknowledge the Chibnall era long enough to rewrite it on-screen, lest new viewers be turned away by the perceived need for "homework" when all they want is to jump in with the new David Tennant specials.Achille Talonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11636339293230261724noreply@blogger.com