Tuesday 27 February 2007
I’ve been paying a good deal of attention to the revival of Doctor Who and its various spinoffs. It hasn’t all been brilliant - some has been downright terrible, in fact - but I keep on watching just to see how it develops. I guess I look at it as kind of a controlled study: seeing what happens to the show under different production teams (it’s been through lots, over its almost thirty seasons), what happens when they go for a completely different tone and audience (as with Torchwood, its supposedly more “adult” spinoff), and how they face other challenges along their way. So here are some of my impressions so far, drawn from the big jumbled stack in my brain.
Part one: the TV series proper. Spoilers ahoy!
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Friday 16 February 2007
Last night we had one of our coffee chats, for the first time in months. There are about half a dozen of us, including everyone in the house, and we get together to talk about life and issues and philosophize a bit. And since the office where most of us work now shares a building with a coffee place, we’ve got a great place to do it. The talk last night centered mostly on “truth” and “letting go of things”, and it really was refreshing.
Among other things, I think it jarred something loose in my brain, something that had been blocking my writing on this on-again, off-again audio play podcast. It’s been percolating for months now, if not longer, and I think I’d grown very attached to a certain arrangement of the characters, a certain approach to the story and the world… and I think I’d set it up to be too big a deal, way more work than it had to be. As usual, I was trying to run before I’d even got the hang of the crawling thing.
The main viewpoint character, for example, was originally an amalgam of several cool, funny people I know. But I wanted to get her right, to make her believable / cool / funny / worthy / whatever. I couldn’t get into her head, into her life. I couldn’t get her or any of the other characters to sing.
So I tossed out all my notes for the characters, along with Aborted Episode One Draft, Version Eight. The characters and their roles have shifted several times along the way, but this was the biggest shift yet.
The premise still holds: it pretends to be a real podcast about life in Toronto, but it’s a fictionalized, slightly fantastic Toronto. And podcasts tend to be personal things, so I’m making it a lot more personal. I’ll host the thing (in character), and there’ll be more room for music and commentary on local issues.
I realize part of me was worried about seeming egotistical, since I’m already filling so many roles (writer, lead, engineer, composer, producer, director?)... but deargod, why? This isn’t a big show on stage or radio. If I think of it instead as just a fun little project, a way of learning all those different roles, a seed that can grow into something bigger, involving more people, everything snaps into place. I get to play with new voices, new aspects of characters. I don’t have to worry so much about it being “good enough” to drag other people into helping.
It’s fun again.
Sunday 14 May 2006
Russell T. Davies is the man the BBC turned to to kick-start and produce the new Doctor Who series. From the start, everyone involved in the program showered him with praise, calling him “brilliant” and “a genius” and “the best TV writer in Britain today”. But his Who episodes have been generally the weaker ones. I think of him as a bit like (former Who script editor) Douglas Adams - bursting with neat ideas but seemingly unable to string them together into a coherent, satisfying plot.
So, here’s the first edition of the Oh No Not Another Russell T. Davies Episode Drinking Game. Contains spoilers, of course. Suggestions welcome.
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