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Post by Aldebaran on Sept 28, 2008 1:10:30 GMT
Well even "Daemons" had science reasoning, and the Doctor made that clear to be the case. I think in the earlier episodes it was true moreso than today's who. Now, episodes like "The Satan Pit", it is never revealed weather it's magic or not and I start to agree with Magnusgreel.
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Post by jjpor on Sept 28, 2008 21:50:57 GMT
To be honest, I'm quite hypocritical on the magic/sufficiently advanced science bit - I am on occasion prepared to give them a pass when the story appeals to me. Lax and unprincipled of me, I know, but still...
Battlefield, for instance; here we have an actual sorceress from a parallel universe, who summons what very much appears to be a demon from hell to destroy the Earth, but which can be countered with chalk circles, silver etc. Now, I can explain all this away as some sort of psychic power thing, with extradimensional beings who just seem to be demons etc, but the actual serial doesn't appear to feel the need, so neither do I. In fact, the Doctor himself appears to be dangerously woolly on the issue, when he reverses the line about "any sufficiently advanced science" to "any sufficiently advanced magic".
Still, its possible ideological unsoundness (yegods, I sound like a Dalek!) is the least of Battlefield's worries - this is one flawed story, but I still kind of like it, for the goofy Arthurian stuff, and UNIT (far better portrayed here than in the NuWho Sontaran story), and the Brig saving the world, and Seven and Ace being all Seveny and Acey. So, er...to return to my original point, all of this good stuff makes me overlook the more dodgy aspects of the script/supporting cast/production, and also leads me to be less harsh on them for the whole magic thing. Same goes for the Daemons.
Whereas the Idiot's Lantern was just a stinker, sorry; like a lot of Season Two was, IMHO. The Satan Pit/Impossible Planet was good in the first half, very creepy actually, but not so good in the second half. And therefore I'll vindictively flog that dead magic horse when discussing them (metaphorically speaking, naturally).
Having revealed myself as something of an inconstant blackguard with no standards or guiding principles, I'll just say; read the Target novelisation of Battlefield, if you come across it; it falls into my triad of really, really good Seven-era novelisations (the other two being the ones of Remembrance and Fenric) - excellent reads, sort of New Adventures before New Adventures had even been invented, but unfortunately only half the length.
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Post by magnusgreel on Sept 28, 2008 23:14:03 GMT
I think Stupid Me gave them a pass on Battlefield because, one, all the magic happened "somewhere else"... maybe when I criticize I stick to my own universe. Two, there's that Seven era sense of mystery where you know the bulk of the real story isn't explained onscreen, so I have the luxury of being able to assume that it wouldn't all be simple magic if I were to hear the whole thing.
Three, I trusted Dr Who at this point not to do magic. If Who was doing it, it wasn't really magic. After all, how interesting would it even be to have magical Sword-in-the-Stone-like characters popping up in DW? That was done better elsewhere. It's only interesting if, in the unmagical world of DW, all this turns out to be real (and therefore based on real physics or something).
Now, I don't have that kind of faith in new TV called "Doctor Who".
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Post by jjpor on Sept 29, 2008 22:04:27 GMT
I find myself in the position where I watch something like the Daemons, or one of those tail-end Four stories that I love too much, or Battlefield, for that matter, and I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, to gloss over some of their dodgier moments. Obviously, this is easier with some old Who stories than others - something like the Horns of Nimon needs a lot more benefit of the doubt than something like The Curse of Fenric, for instance. However, when I'm watching NuWho, even a good episode of NuWho, I sometimes find myself almost looking for nits to pick and things to take issue with, and I wonder if that says more about me than it does about the show, but it's something I can't really deny doing.
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Post by clocketpatch on Sept 29, 2008 23:22:26 GMT
Eh? Horns of Nimon gets no benefit of the doubt since a man's pants got split while facing the camera. It's good fun and I love it - no complaints from this corner, and the man's pants spliting *is* my favourite part, but... yeah. lol
Curse of Fenric is awesome win, and on my shortlist of DVDs to buy when I get the money/can find them for under thirty bucks a story arc.
I know what you ean about occasionally watching the stories looking for nit-picks, though, it does depend on the episode. Some episodes, you just have to laugh your way through them and avert your eyes from the plotholes. Other times, you have to stare at the plotholes 'cause it's all there is to look at. Also, I find I'm far more critical of episodes when I'm watching with friends, or when there's been a big build up - second part of a cliff-hanger for example.
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Post by magnusgreel on Sept 30, 2008 5:27:20 GMT
Classic Who (that is to say, old Who, or perhaps Who Who, where the first of those two Whos is an adjective) built up an enormous amount of credit with me, and perhaps could get away with very shaky science and logic with me, because somehow I had grown to trust them. Who the Next Generation squandered that trust I think.
I've seen Nimons countless times over a quarter century and have never noticed anyone's pants splitting. Strange. When does it happen? Anyway, where does it require the benefit of the doubt, jjpor? There are mythology references but no actual magic, right?
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Post by jjpor on Sept 30, 2008 21:51:36 GMT
Anyway, where does it require the benefit of the doubt, jjpor? There are mythology references but no actual magic, right? Oh, I rather veered off the topic of magic above; I was speaking generally, I suppose, observing that a lot of old Who stories have elements that we could (and to be fair, do) criticise them for, be it scriptwise or productionwise, or whatever, but that because they have, as you observe, built up a lot of capital with us over years of repeated viewing, we can forgive them a lot. The new series maybe doesn't benefit from the same sense of goodwill from relative old-timers such as ourselves. It must be very different for people who have come to the old series via the new series, and quite often I envy those who are coming to all of these great stories for the first time, and seeing them with fresh eyes. I'm probably unfair to Nimon; it just popped into my head as a story that I've heard getting a lot of stick (as we say here) in the past. Certainly, riffing on classical mythology is absolutely legitimate, to my mind. Battlefield is actually a much better example, probably. Not the Twin Dilemma, though, because I still haven't forgiven the Twin Dilemma for anything... And Clocket does make a good point regarding the second halves of two-parters in NuWho - but I'd argue that in that case, it isn't so much the nitpicking effect as the fact that a lot of new series two-parters seem genuinely flawed, especially the season finales, which regularly seem unable to wrap up the situations created in their first halves with any real drama or coherency. The mid-season two-parters fair better, I feel.
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Post by primsong on Dec 3, 2008 1:46:20 GMT
This was such an interesting episode, and in spite of my own shying away from the whole 'black magic' thing, the rest of it has grown on me and I find it among my favorites - plenty of good moments in here, Popsicle!Doc, lots and lots of Bessie and the scrumptious purple-lined cloak on a motorcycle... his drawing the schematics for the clueless tech guy on the bike's windscreen and then riding away with it, lol! Plenty of good showcasing for Benton and Yates, too, a real treat in itself. I read somewhere that this episode wasn't shown in some country (Australia, maybe?) because of the occult references. It is definitely quite different from the 'typical' Who.
My other 'great moment' - the demon declaring it would hand over all that nice juicy POWER that the Master's been jumping innumerable hoops to get but it will only give it to THE DOCTOR! Who doesn't even want it! Oooooh, you almost feel sorry for the Master, all his sugarplums snatched out of his grasp once again, poor chap.
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Post by magnusgreel on Jul 15, 2012 2:04:27 GMT
Startlingly, someone just sent me this, in color. While it's fresh in my mind.... At least at this point, it was considered a given that since it was SF, any apparent magic in the story had to be justified. Every so often, they go back to Three imperiously lecturing on how it's all science, not magic. So here they do take the stand they refuse to take in current DW, where the boundaries between magic and tech are fuzzy and they like it that way,and it might as well be Harry Potter... In Daemons they even seem aggressive about it. "Science!" Three shouts to the town witch, inbetween shouts of "Magic!" from her.
Unlike in other 70s stories, though, they're sloppy about justifying it. I paid close attention to every bit of this, this time. Every SF explanation for this or that was half-hearted and apathetic, even when they just barely got away with it, sort of. The town witch, the most interesting and possibly the most sensible character, called Three on his fuzzy yet righteously-delivered science sermons... apparently greed gets all sorts of useful psychic energy going, and she points out that this is exactly what "Black Magic" is. In the fictional world of this story (though not in the larger fictional world of DW), I say she's right. She's just yanked the carpet out from under him. He goes on to claim that even though ceremony and the chanting of spells is needed to complete the raising of the Daemon, that of course this is scientific too, and then they just move on quickly so you don't get a chance to think about it...
Daemons has lots of great character moments, but when they don't hold up the SF end of the story, I feel betrayed, and why not, it's a science-fiction series. Not every viewer has to care about that, and I don't expect them to. It's one of several standards to hold the series up to, even though only one segment of the audience will care. In SF terms, it's a mess.
Factor in that I just came off of watching Face of Evil, with a new, even greater appreciation for it coming out of age, I think. This may be my new favorite, though not a fan favorite. Totally adult, and unimpeachable SF. Every few moments there's some thought-provoking tidbit with SF or sociological or political implications, hints of intriguing backstory, clever jokes from Tom... gut-level life-and-death PLUS existential motivations... it was finely-crafted highly-original SF, and it was a sort of miracle that it got onto television.
Then Mary Whitehouse said oooh, this is too much for the kiddies, and that was that....
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