x_los | Neil Gaiman Writing for Doctor Who Sounds Like A Crap Idea To Me. (Reply)

me: Also neil gaiman might do an episode of Who. If so I will be SO PISSED.

9:33 PM L: o.O why?

9:34 PM me: he's a bad writer for Who. Whimsical even for that show, lazy, and his essay on the serial War Games was, if read carefully, a case study in Not Getting a show

9:35 PM "If I ever got a hold of that canon, I would un-happen so much" ...shut the fuck up. That is NOT how you approach a 40 yr old canon

L: Ah. Well, I spose. I'm not entirely sure he's too whimsical for that show, though. >.>

Okay, THAT is ridiculous.

9:37 PM me: This essay really proved to me he was? It's what Rachel bitches about re: his lack of political saliency, only translated into literature: he was like, "We should never ever ever have seen Gallifrey, b/c Time Lords should be from some unimaginable high, cold place beyond comprehension." And it's like: "Bitch: nothing is beyond art, k? You seem to like the IDEA of the story better than the story, and while that's at first glance charming it's actually an anti-narrative impulse. Also? In a long, developed canon? You pick out the threads you like and work with them. You don't UNHAPEN a canon."

9:38 PM L: Yeah. You don't just go "hey, I wanna write for this" and then proceed to say you'd entirely fuck up the canon.

Also, um. Not seeing Gallifrey? = weird.

9:39 PM me: yeah, it's his typical bullshit where he prefers mythic SUGGESTION to commitment to engagement with whatever he's working on

9:40 PM L: yeah. I can see both sides of that, though I don't think never seeing gallifrey would be a good choice (possibly because it's already happened).

9:45 PM me: I think that never exploring his cultural background would be a pussy move

9:46 PM

L: indeed. I can just say that there is an argument for Not Showing in most cases -- there are ways they could have explored the background without showing Gallifrey, though granted those might have been better explained in a book rather than on screen.

Wrong medium.

9:47 PM me: But I feel like in saying 'Never Show Gallifrey' what Gaimen meant was "I don't want to even hear about it ever, I want him to have dropped in from some sociological void which we never ever hear anything about b/c it's TOO MYSTICAL!"

9:48 PM L: ahhhh. THAT is a bit iffy, yeah.

9:49 PM me: I feel like sometimes in his mythmaking impulse Gaiman smothers all the other available narratives

L: Well, yeah, but that's what you get when mythmaking.

If that's what you do by trade, it's gonna happen.

me: in some ways Who is a long meditation on exile and return, and you couldn't have that if you never see Gallifrey?

9:50 PM yeah, I guess that's true

Also, I go in for worldbuilding: I LOVE the hints we get of Gallifrey's creeptastic class structure

and in war games, that /horrible/ trial scene? Awesome

9:51 PM L: I hearts me some worldbuilding as well, but I know the need for mythic (as quite a few of my stories' worlds want to be that instead of anything else, which is tres annoying in a few dif ways).

I....don't think I watched that scene?

me: and the suggestion that they might blot out the names and memories of their undesirables, to the self-destructive point that they've forgotten who the Master is in Trial of a Time Lord and by then and are helplessly unprepared against him b/c social coherence is THAT important to them? Is so creepy!

9:52 PM L: oohhh, that's creepy! :D <3

9:54 PM me: Um, it was horrible. They took the villain guy who wouldn't talk in his own defense and psycically did SOMETHING to him until he screamed and strated to babble out a defense, and erased him from ever having been, and then cordoned his entire planet off from the universe for eternity for his crimes,and then took the Doctor's companions and destroyed their memories of ever having traveled with him,and then they killed Two, forced him to regenerate into Three, burned the knowledge of how to operate or fix his TARDIS out of him and exiled him to Earth.

that was a scary ass scene

9:55 PM L: o.O Holy shit.

indeed.

me: yeah, this is a kids show how?

L: heh. it's WHIMSICAL, DAMMIT. That's how.

me: anyway: that kind of detail about how a planet works/is TERRIBLE? is so. so. creepy.