More tv writerly links
May. 16th, 2013 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakJoss Whedon and the Much Ado About Nothing cast answer questions about the film. There are jokes (there would be with the Usual Suspects involved), but also serious discussion. I think the first time I came across the "Beatrice and Benedick had a brief fling in the past which ended badly and that's what Beatrice's cryptic line to Don Pedro refers to" was in the PR materiall for the 70s BBC production, though it's probably older, but I haven't seen a production using that theory since then, so I'm intrigued Joss goes with it. (So that you don't have to brush up your Shakespeare, here's the exchange that caused said theory:
DON PEDRO
(to BEATRICE) Lady, you have lost Signior Benedick’s heart.
BEATRICE
It’s true, my lord. He lent it to me once, and I paid him back with interest: a double heart for his single one. Really, he won it from me once before in a dishonest game of dice. So I suppose your grace can truly say that I have lost it.
Also, good point about Margaret and Borraccio.
*****
The Long Game is probably my least favourite episode of the first New Who season. (It's also my evidence a when people assume that if Christopher Ecclestone had agreed to more than one season, the Nine/Rose relationship would have developed differently - read: less cliquey - than the Ten/Rose did. Leaving aside the obvious Doylist rejoinder about the same writers involved either way, my Watsonian would be: Oh no, it wouldn't have, see: The Long Game.) However, I found this essay about it absolutely fascinating. Both for the background info - I didn't know it was based on a script the young RTD had presented in the 1980s to Andrew Cartmel! This means it was originally a story featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace! - and for the analysis, which manages that incredible rarity in current DW fandom:
1) It's critical without ever devolving into attack and hyperbole.
2) It analyzes an RTD era (and RTD written) episode without even once mentioning Stephen Moffat, either in a positive manner ( a la "....but how much better the Moff did such and such") or in a negative manner (a la "...since then, we have experienced the likes of Moffat misdeed #11333"). Since the complete inability of a great many fans to talk about one era/writer without slamming the other is something that regularly drives me crazy, I value and appreciate it all the more.
3.) It does something I've otherwise only seenzahrawithaz do in Merlin fandom: take a weaker episode and analyze what works and what doesn't in a way that also analyzes larger narratives of which this particular episode is a part of.
In conclusion, very much worth reading.
DON PEDRO
(to BEATRICE) Lady, you have lost Signior Benedick’s heart.
BEATRICE
It’s true, my lord. He lent it to me once, and I paid him back with interest: a double heart for his single one. Really, he won it from me once before in a dishonest game of dice. So I suppose your grace can truly say that I have lost it.
Also, good point about Margaret and Borraccio.
*****
The Long Game is probably my least favourite episode of the first New Who season. (It's also my evidence a when people assume that if Christopher Ecclestone had agreed to more than one season, the Nine/Rose relationship would have developed differently - read: less cliquey - than the Ten/Rose did. Leaving aside the obvious Doylist rejoinder about the same writers involved either way, my Watsonian would be: Oh no, it wouldn't have, see: The Long Game.) However, I found this essay about it absolutely fascinating. Both for the background info - I didn't know it was based on a script the young RTD had presented in the 1980s to Andrew Cartmel! This means it was originally a story featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace! - and for the analysis, which manages that incredible rarity in current DW fandom:
1) It's critical without ever devolving into attack and hyperbole.
2) It analyzes an RTD era (and RTD written) episode without even once mentioning Stephen Moffat, either in a positive manner ( a la "....but how much better the Moff did such and such") or in a negative manner (a la "...since then, we have experienced the likes of Moffat misdeed #11333"). Since the complete inability of a great many fans to talk about one era/writer without slamming the other is something that regularly drives me crazy, I value and appreciate it all the more.
3.) It does something I've otherwise only seen
zahrawithaz do in Merlin fandom: take a weaker episode and analyze what works and what doesn't in a way that also analyzes larger narratives of which this particular episode is a part of. In conclusion, very much worth reading.
