Yes, I have a list of things to do, but this pre-empts it all.
For I just saw the ‘Global Frequency’ pilot…
Tag: On Writing Fiction
It’s New ‘Who’ and it’s possibly better than ‘Great!’
I’ve been sitting on ‘Doctor Who’ related posts for a while now; I’ve got a half-written review of ‘Rose’ the first episode of the 2005 season of ‘Doctor Who’ written that I am unlikely to finish, mostly because I’m enjoying the show so much that sitting down to analyse it without becoming absorbed in rewatching the episode is currently impossible.
No, really.
But now that it is confirmed that Christopher Eccleston will not be returning for the 2006 season and that David Tennant is to be the tenth Doctor I feel I can finally say something about just how good this show is, not just from the perspective of entertainment but also from that glorious thing called ‘writing.’
Oh, and there will be spoilers. Three episodes in and we have a spoiler of world-destroying proportions, so if you haven’t seen the show and want to watch it with a certain childlike innocence go away now.
Otherwise, press on.
One of the acknowledged problems with the Paul McGann telemovie of ‘Doctor Who’ is that it starts off with another actor playing the Doctor and then, about ten minutes in, presents you with Paul McGann. Now, those of us who love Sylvester McCoy’s seventh Doctor think that this first ten minutes is damn nifty, but it must have confused and alienated a lot of the new viewers. It was pure fanwank having a regeneration in what was meant to be the pilot for a new TV series. It’s so continuity that really, it should have been done as a flashback in a later episode. Present your new character strongly and quickly. Russell T. Davies, the Executive Producer behind the new ‘Who,’ and the shows primary writer, knows this. Thus, whilst the fans will pick up on some obvious hints that Christopher Eccleston’s new Doctor has only recently become the ninth incarnation of his good self, the new viewers are presented with an interesting and likeable character as soon as he appears on screen.
And what an entrance.
The first story actually focuses more on the new companions, Rose Tyler, played more than ably by Billie Piper, who is a wonder to watch. Despite constant jokes by friends and flatmates about her previous career as a pop starlet, she is actually a very capable actress, and the first story would have fallen flat if she hadn’t been up to the job. ‘Rose’ (that being the first episode’s title) introduces the viewer to the Doctor via the companion, so it simultaneously has to set up a continuation and fresh start for a well-known character, it has to do this whilst giving us a very real and modern companion all at the same time. This is, of course, a good idea that could have been very easily mucked up. It isn’t, however, and a good thing too.
The art to this, in retrospect, was simple, like all ideas; I suspect eyes bled in working it out. The first story has returning villains (the Autons, last seen with Jon Pertwee) and their virtue is that they look like they could be human. Thus the first act of the story has the new companion being believably attacked by strange humanoid figures and aided by someone who might be in on a somewhat disturbing prank. Thus we sympathise with Rose and the mystery of this Doctor character grows. Thus, by the third act, when we know that the Doctor is something special, we have to realise this through Rose’s reactions and thus we like and understand her already. Sheer genius, and only surpassed by the second episodes, which focuses a little on the almost unnatural ability the Doctor has for persuading people who don’t even know him to take up travel in the TARDIS.
It’s enough to make me want to relocate to the UK right now so as to find a low level job in the BBC and start working my way up.
Anyway, perhaps more importantly, Davies has solved a huge problem, one that I didn’t even think of. This problem is ‘Who is the Doctor?’ It’s a strange problem; until the end of Patrick Troughton’s tenure as the Doctor it hadn’t ever really come up, but once the Timelords appeared there was no going back. Davies is obviously aware that people want to know more about the show’s titular character, but like Andrew Cartmel, he doesn’t want to give the entire game away. So he’s done something really big.
You see, the Doctor is the last of the Timelords.
His world has been destroyed.
His people are gone.
There was a war.
We have had three episodes screen thus far and in each one we have learnt just a little more about the Doctor. The suggestion is that the Timelords got involved in a war that the eighth Doctor then became embroiled in, and that his entire species (and his homeworld) were destroyed, leaving him alone in the Universe. It’s the kind of thing that gets the fans anxious and very excited (this is, after all, big news, what with the Timelords being all high and mighty (and non-interventionist). It is also perfect for new viewers; we now know the Doctor really is something special and we’re being given packets of information about him all the time.
The show just keeps on getting better.
Christopher Eccleston is certainly a contender now for my of my three favourite Doctors, and it is a pity that he is not coming back for another year. Even so, I understand why. No one knew that the show would survive in the ratings (currently it averages about 8.6 million viewers per episode) and the BBC, being a publically funded corporation, probably couldn’t afford to keep a retainer on Eccleston (if the show had failed then they would have had to pay him for a second, non-existent, year and that would have been expensive). Eccleston is a good actor, and good actors get jobs. By all likelihood he had work lined up for the coming year, and with no guarantee he would have a second year of ‘Who’ he probably took it. I would have done. It was, as far as anyone could see, almost pure luck they were getting the 2005 season.
And what a season thus far.
More on this, much more on this, later.
Zombies
I like zombies. I like zombie fiction… Well, I like one kind of zombie fiction, which is the cinematic telling of a zombie story. The written fiction, by and large, interests me not.
(Caveat; there is now a growing genre of zombie fiction in the world of comics, and some of this is good. I’m going to exempt it on the specious grounds that comics are, to some degree, closer to screenplays than short stories/novels. I know this is a bad argument and one day I might propound upon it more fully. Just not today.)
Zombie fiction, in the Romero age, is apocalyptic fiction in which the flesh-eating undead are a metaphor for social issues. For the most part written zombie fiction ignores the utility of the zombie as metaphor and replaces it as a killing machine that produces gore. And gore, for the most part, is actually quite hard to write.
It is not that difficult to cover an actor in strawberry syrup and blobs of bread to make someone look vaguely gory. If you want to be more impressive you can add prosthetic appliances (of various quality). Even badly done effects work in a limited way. Not so the written word. You can describe gore but that will not make it necessarily effective (which is to say disturbing and fearsome). Indeed, often it reads more as comedy and less like tragedy. It needs pacing, it needs context and it needs to occur to someone that you have an emotional response to. Someone biting a chunk out of a nobody does nothing for me; a zombie biting the hero’s mother (who she has been fighting to get to) does.
For the most part this is because zombie fiction is a sub-genre of horror mostly written by fans. Fan tolerance of writing is, unfortunately, high. Fans like the genre and will, for the most part, read anything in the genre. Thus, with nothing close to peer review, the writing focuses on the easy stuff to write; people biting other people. This is, I fear, the reason why Star Wars fan films consist mostly of sabre duels; they are easy to direct (by and large) and the fans like to watch them. This does not a good genre make.
Which is why I must shamefully admit that I write zombie fiction. Two stories thus far. I’d like to think that I am doing something more with the genre than people biting other people (I don’t make Star Wars fan films, however…) but perhaps I am not. Perhaps I am just writing more fan wank and indulging in that usual ego-stroking activity of ‘I understand the genre, unlike those sub-human fools!’ I would certainly like to think that I am trying to be telling story that happens to have zombies in it rather than writing about biting that tries to tell a story.
Oh well, at least I am trying to get the stuff published. That means something, doesn’t it?
DVD Reviews
Due to the tactical advantage of living with the Designer of the University of Auckland’s Student Magazine (Cracuum) I have now become a DVD reviewer.
It is an interesting task, writing a 200-400 word review of a film/DVD. Being rather fond of the New Journalism (which is starting to show some great things in the area of videogames (more on this later)) I like to mention my take on things, but to do that and give prospective buyers something to work with is not exactly easy. Give me a thousand words, I say.
The DVD job technically means that I get review copies of films, but in reality the flat gets them. The fact that we are gifted the DVDs makes me wonder what would/will happen if/when I tell the student populace to avoid a film like the plague. More on this later (and, I suspect, soon).
You’re watching Fox, where coming in third is a triumph!
Anyone who knows me knows that I love Jaye Tyler, ably played (to perfection) by Caroline Dhavernas, the major character in the series ‘Wonderfalls’ and that, despite the fact it ran thirteen episodes, is my favourite TV series in a very long time.
I am not here today to write a review of ‘Wonderfalls;’ it is good and I think you should pick up a copy of the complete series. No, today I am here to say a little on discontinued series.
In the UK an in-production sitcom will have between six and eight episodes per year, whilst in the States it is a solid twenty-two. A one hour drama in the States will also have twenty episodes whilst in the UK it can vary. Somtimes six episodes, sometimes thirteen or any, really, any old number. Thus, any show that only runs for thirteen episodes in the States can be deemed a failure on some level whilst in the UK that might make it a success.
Two different countries, two different economies of production.
Still, it makes me wonder.
‘Wonderfalls’ ran for thirteen episodes and its production was shut down due to low ratings (in the States they tend to make shows as they are being broadcast whilst in the UK they tend to wait until everything has been shot before they screen it) after only four episodes had been shown; shows now, apparently, need to rate well on the opening night or its doom and gloom time (no longer can American TV producers argue that you need to wait for the audience to grow and appreciate a show as advertising dollars are everything). Bryan Fuller and Todd Holland, the creators and producers of ‘Wonderfalls’ were aware that the show might not resonate with the viewing public and so they did their best to wrap most of the major questions of the storyline up in the thirteen episodes they produced. Thus ‘Wonderfalls’ does tell a complete story, and it turns out to be a fairly interesting one in that the overall arc of the story is not about the ‘gimmick’ but rather about the characters. This telling of a complete story is fairly novel in some ways; most shows that get canned mid-season over in the States tend to leave the viewer wanting (but never being able to get) more, and so I commend Messrs. Fuller and Holland in doing the right thing by their viewers (rabid fans that we are). I suspect that wise producers will be doing this more; many shows get enough funding for half a season and then are at the mercy of the fickle public… A little judicious planning and suddenly you could make a virtue of not going to a full or second season… Still, that’s neither here nor there.
I suppose what I am clumsily getting at is that, perhaps, we should look upon these half-seasons as mini-series. I would dearly love to see what a second season of ‘Wonderfalls’ might have been like. I imagine it could have been very good or that the gimmick might run out of steam and it would all break down. I am sad that the producers were not able to delight or disgust me with the continuing exploits of Jaye and her friends and family. But if I were a producer I would be thinking that thirteen episodes is a good run. That if this were a series in the UK I might not have been given even that number. That having a show run for seven years at twenty-two episodes per year might be an unrealistic expectation.
What I seem to be trying to say is that a story is a story is a story and that a writer (or writers) know that the medium can impose limits upon that story. If you are aware of those limits then it is quite possible to make virtues of them. And, sometimes, those imposed limits can do your story a lot of good. ‘Wonderfalls’ tells a story that I am going to return to again and again.
Pity that I won’t get to spend as much time doing it again and again as I would have liked to, though…
The State of the (Local) Art
I must admit that when I see the words ‘Local content’ in re TV I tend to run for the hills (or valleys). For, you see, I have been burnt by local content. However, this has meant that I have not allowed myself the pleasures of recent note that have graced our screens.
I should have known better; two of my favourite films of all time are New Zealand productions, and many New Zealand television shows, in the past, have captured my attention and made me think ‘Wow; we can compete with the bigger markets.’ Unfortunately, a few modern sitcoms have found me contemplating the state of my navel, or, in extreme cases, inspecting the back of my occipital socket with a rusty screwdriver.
Thus I have seen only one episode of ‘The Strip’ and only heard the good news that is ‘The Insider’s Guide to Happiness.’
Of the former I had had doubts; having been to school with Jodie Rimmer and knowing her family has made it difficult to adjust to her as an actress. All I can keep thinking is that her grandfather is a good Catholic and that the fruit store Bill owned in Belmont was down the road from a butchery I have very fond memories of. Hardly the kind of critical appraisal you want to stick with you when her character goes off chasing some businessman’s third leg. Of the latter show I just didn’t even consider giving it a chance, condemning it ‘Category: Crap’ without a by-your-leave.
Which is all very bad of me, since as a writer I really should be seeing what my country is producing.
Believe it or not, but New Zealand is a good place to be a writer. Oh, it has vices if you are interested in researching particular genres and the arts elite here is far more British than American, but New Zealand, as a location, is well regarded when it comes to produce drama. The Cinema of Unease, our particular speciality, is sufficiently different from the world’s fare that it has a cult status overseas. Not mainline success, true, but try and find a university student from the UK who hasn’t spent several weekends in a row watching ‘Bad Taste’ religiously and you will be in for a hard time. This extends, somewhat naturally and unnaturally, to the editors and producers of the media itself. ‘Postmark New Zealand’ can often mean the difference of ‘Won’t read’ to ‘Might read’, and when you consider just how much more opportunity that gives in the marketplace it suddenly takes on great value.
Still, location is not everything; mundane stories are mundane stories wherever you are from, and even the following line, ‘As far as I can tell, you may be the reason why God and the little baby Jesus cry at night’ remains better than Stilton sauce sex no matter which country you are from.
Back to TV.
‘The Insider’s Guide to Happiness’ was a show I was convinced, having seen or read nothing about it, would be a fluffy romantic drama. It turned out not to be, seeing that it dealt with time travel, resurrection from the dead and reincarnation. Brave stuff for prime time TV, and handled, so I hear (my watching of the show was limited seeing that it had an overarching plot and I came in late), with ease and a careful balance of pathos and bathos.
New Zealand, it seems, has matured (again) in re its TV production. Like all countries we continue to produce large amounts of fluff, but now you have the option, on at least one channel, to see quality Kiwi unease in 4:3 (or, for the more adventurous producers, 14:9 or 16:9).
Pity that it is somewhat harder to get into that writing game than it would be in Blighty…
Also, someone needs to hurry up and start releasing more local content on DVD.