More tv writerly links

[selenak]

Joss 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 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.

Comments

[intrigueing]

Oh my, and I thought I was the only one who thought The Long Game was glaring evidence that Nine/Rose was on the same path as Ten/Rose. IMO, what saved Nine/Rose from evolving into proto-Ten/Rose before the regeneration was that Jack sailed in at exactly the right moment and was exactly the right thing they needed at that moment.

Also argh, my The Long Game hate. It burns. More for the ending (was that actually supposed to be funny? It just made me long to see an episode set in the year 2020 or something where Adam is now an understandably bitter seething Evil Scientist^TM who captures the Doctor and does horrible experiments on him in revenge) than anything else, but the whole episode was ugh. And really kind of antithetical to the general idea of companions -- they're not "only the best", they're ordinary people given a chance to become the best they can be. Bleh.

I remember that way back in high school, my English class wasted about half a session arguing over that line after the teacher kind of off-handedly mentioned that controversy. A bunch of people thought it was a huge game-changer that totally made everything else different, another bunch thought it wasn't that big a deal and didn't make much of a difference either way, and the teacher looked rather insultingly shocked at the idea that high schoolers could argue about Shakespeare. Then again, they did use a bunch of examples of sitcom romances to compare Benedick/Beatrice to and to illustrate their argument...

[selenak]

You've named all the main reasons why I loathed - err, loathe, still do - The Long Game. (But I do think the essay is fascinating.)

[intrigueing]

Oh yes! I especially like how he points out what I think a lot of fans don't like to acknowledge -- that the simple identity of a fictional character is, actually, often sufficient to warrant special/different treatment by the narrative. Because...uh...it's true. It can definitely be done poorly (like in The Long Game), but it's done to some extent in basically every fictional story ever and fans who get too super-Watsonian like to forget this and pretend it only happens in Bad Stories as an excuse to invalidate the author's claims.