A Journey through Space, Time and TV

It really wasn’t so long ago that I didn’t know anything about Doctor Who. In those dark days I thought that it was about a time-travelling Doctor who was progressively getting younger (like I’m not sure I realised he had to die when a new actor came along? And I definitely thought he was a medical doctor of some kind). I had a niggling feeling for some years that I would probably enjoy it but just didn’t have the willingness to commit to such a well… commitment.

When I was at school, ABC used to play old episodes of Doctor Who at about 5 in the afternoon. They were always in black and white, I think, so they were all First and Second Doctor stories. I don’t remember anything about them except that the music made me scared and my mum would always say “oh I was so terrified of Daleks when I was a little girl”. I was pretty fearful myself to be honest and would usually subtly change the channel in an attempt to not seem like a scaredy-cat. 

In the years leading up to 2011 (when I became a massive fan) I saw parts of The Shakespeare Code in a second year drama class at uni. We discussed the historical accuracies (vulgarity, men dressed as ladies etc.) and inaccuracies (racial diversity, mostly, and also you couldn’t perform at night because there weren’t any lights). I thought to myself, “well that was silly” but also I was annoyed my lecturer skipped through parts because I wanted to know more. I also saw The Waters of Mars on the TV once. I suspect it was when it was actually released for the first time. I had *zero* idea what was going on, but I kept shushing people when they came into the room because it was good (the robot was not good though, the robot was dumb).

So, those of you who are long time readers (first time writers) will remember my first proper foray into Doctor Who. I decided to begin with Season 5 of the modern reboot because it was the start of the current Doctor and I didn’t want to make too big of a commitment. Hahahahaha. Hilarious. I was instantly hooked. And, of course, doing that introduced me to the mysteries of River Song and everyone was like “you have to watch back further to understand her” and I was like “oh no an excuse to watch more of this brilliant show” so instead of continuing on into Season 6 as I had originally planned, I went back to Season 1… and I took my housemates and my boyfriend with me.

We began marathonning the shit out of that show. I used to finish work in the afternoon and would basically run home across New Farm Park so that we could start as soon as possible. Whole weekends were devoted to Who. And we often had to rewatch episodes to catch up Boyfriend or others visitors to the house. We watched all of Eccleston’s run as the leading man in about 2 days, we hated Martha together, we loved Donna together, we watched Season 5 AGAIN (probably about my fourth time at this point) and finally moved on to Season 6.

And then suddenly, we were caught up. AND WE HAD TO WAIT. Just like every other fan, we had to wait for Let’s Kill Hitler. Admittedly, we didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long as others, but still, it was quite a shock to our systems. I’ve just checked the dates, I started watching in early June, 2011, and the second half of Season 6 started up again on August 27^th. So I think that gives you an idea of just how much TV we were watching and just how quickly we became fans.

Yesterday I got up at 5:30 in the morning to watch the live simulcast of The Day of the Doctor 50^th Anniversary Special with Boyfriend. I made TARDIS shaped biscuits for the occasion and almost hyperventilated when it started. I know there are fans who’ve loved this show since 1963, or who have watched every classic episode, or who waited decades for the reboot. I know. But I feel like the episode yesterday was for all of us, new and classic, young and old, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

My Doctor Who journey has been swift but intense. I loved it instantly and completely, and continue to love it every day. I have Doctor Who shirts and an apron and a mug, I have a Sonic Screwdriver and more TARDIS biscuits than I know what to do with right now. In just over a month I am visiting Cardiff, Wales, almost entirely because that's where they film it. 

And on Christmas day this year, I have to deal with my first ever real-time regeneration…

*Ugly sobbing*

Further Reading

If you like blogs and Doctor Who and blogs about Doctor Who I can highly recommend this post by Britt, and this, this and this, by Alex. 

Self-Indulgent Rubbish - Guest Post by Alex Neill

Today's Guest Post is by Alex Neill, thanks so much to Alex for writing the first in a series of blogs by a number of wonderful guests.

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Recently I’ve been reading the comics of Lucy Knisley because I luv her and she is great. Yesterday I finished ‘Radiator Days’, a self-published collection of miscellaneous comics that she wrote over a two year period while at grad school.

When I went to rate it on Goodreads (four stars, would recommend) I discovered that several people had given it no stars. Or rather, to quote, “I am giving this book one star because according to Goodreads that means I didn’t like it. And I did not like it”. Wow lady, that’s an articulate and well-thought out review you got there. A number of other reviews agree with this lady’s assertion that this book is whiney and self-indulgent. Apparently it’s all first-world-problems and “waaah why can’t I have a moped”.

Well guess what? I relate to that shit. And if worrying about the instability of a career in the arts is self-indulgent, then that’s what I am. (Also Lucy Knisley does not just want a moped, she actually buys a moped online but does not receive a working moped. Thus she has both no money AND no moped. That is tragic you guys.)

Over on my blog this week, I wrote about memory and Doctor Who. While writing that piece it occurred to me that a lot of the emotions I was talking about were self-indulgent. So I was slightly miserable while having Christmas in England a couple of years ago? Boohoo. I also got to make snowmen in a blizzard. I had no real reason to be sad and, looking back, I realise that a lot of that sadness was pretty misguided. It’s easy to look at those emotions and think: “What are you complaining about? That problem is tiny. Suck it up.”

But I think sometimes it’s important to remember that there was a time when those feelings did matter. I don’t regret missing my school formal because I was in Italy, of course I don’t. But at the time I was a sad not to be there and I missed my friends on the other side of the world. Boxing Day that year I wallowed in homesickness and actual sickness while eating leftover turkey and watching Top Gear. I remember lying on the couch thinking over and over and over again that I did not want to fly to Spain. I didn’t want to get up at some ridiculous time the following morning and catch yet another plane. I didn’t want to go to another country, I wanted to go home.

That is quite obviously, a stupid thing to think. I ended up loving Spain, completely. The homesickness evaporated in light of their food and their maritime museums. I had the most amazing time. But I didn’t know any of that on that day in snowy Winchester.

Homesickness is an irrational emotion. And I think that a lot of the emotions that seem really dumb in retrospect fall into that category. They’re not the emotions we can rationalise or explain, we just feel them. And sometimes we feel them an awful lot.

Right now I spend an awful lot of my time worrying about the future. I’m about the finish university and next year I’m moving to Melbourne and (hopefully) getting a job. I worry about moving and packing and finding a place to live. I worry about making new friends and losing old ones. But most of all I worry about finding a job doing what I love. Maybe in twenty years I’ll look back and wonder why these thoughts occupied such a huge portion of my time. I hope so. That’ll mean the worries were ultimately unfounded.

And maybe Lucy Knisley’s work will be different when I re-read it ten or twenty years from now. Maybe I’ll be able to see a little of what those one-star reviewers are talking about. But I like to think I’ll be able to read them and remember what it feels like now, remember why these feelings mattered. Because, even all the way in the future, it will still matter a little bit if only because it matters now.

Alex Neill blogs at Adventures in TV-Land and tweets @paper_bag_girl. She doesn't like carrots or writing bios.

Loving the Problematic

I am, as you probably know by now, a consumer of media. I devour books, I mass watch TV shows, I obsess about things that “aren’t real”. This means I’ve read and watched a lot of good things in my time, but it also means I’ve encountered a lot of shit things too. Especially because, no matter how crappy something is, I will usually finish it. I persevered, for example, with four whole seasons of Smallville before final giving it up in frustration. I read the entire Twilight series in the vain hope that the writing might get better, or perhaps that the damage it was causing to my brain might lower my expectations.

As you also know from my ranting, and my overanalysis of such media, I am a feminist, and I believe in equality of all people regardless of race, culture, gender identity or sexuality. Unfortunately, most of the media I consume does not think like this. Most of the media I consume believes that “sex sells”, that putting women in revealing outfits means they are just “giving the people what they want”, that gay guys are funny, that Asian people all sound the same, that white, middle class, athletic American dudes are the “everyman” that we can all identify with. In short, media is a bit shit. Books are a bit shit. Stuff I enjoy is a bit shit.

So how can I justify this to myself? Well… by writing a blog about it and trying to make it ok, I guess is one way to look at it. The answer is, I can’t really. It’s important to me that I recognise that the last scene in the most recent Game of Thrones season has a problematic depiction of people of colour, that Sherlock doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, that Cho Chang from Harry Potter has a name that is actually two last names from the wrong culture. It’s important for me to register those things in my brain. And it’s important for me to discuss these things with other people, to talk about why they are problematic, to write blogs about them, because I think those are discussions worth having.

And yet… I still enjoy the books and TV that contain these problematic elements. How can that be? How can I reconcile myself with these things? Sometimes I worry it makes me a bad feminist or even just a bad person to consume some of the media I consume. Doctor Who for example, is pretty much all out hated by feminists these days. And I can, for the most part, understand why. But I don’t hate it. Yes I groan at certain parts, yes it shits me at times, but I still watch and enjoy it. It’s still a really good show. I like it for all the things that don’t shit me, for the amazing stories, for the silliness, for the drama, the music and the sets. I like it for Clara and for River and for Rory and for history and aliens.

Probably my worst crime of the problematic at the moment is Supernatural. I just marathoned all eight seasons of that thing. And holy freaking shit it’s the most misogynistic piece of crap I’ve watched in a long time. Women are killed every few minutes, one of the main characters uses the words, “bitch”, “whore”, “slut” etc. to describe pretty much every woman they come into contact with, and the series of sexual encounters of both Dean and Sam are described like conquests all the time. But I still liked the show. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? I’m not even sure. Yes, I would definitely enjoy it more if I didn’t spend large portions of the viewing experience with my fists on my forehead in what I like to call the “god damn it misogyny!” pose, but I didn’t hate the show. It has action and fighting and comedy and good characters and ghosts and vampires and angels and increasingly, Felicia Day. I am in fact looking forward to the 9^th season.

So what am I saying? I guess… that we live in a problematic world, and our media reflects this? It’s nigh on impossible to find a book, TV show, movie, comic etc. that doesn’t have problematic elements. It doesn’t mean we should accept it as “normal”, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be angry, or frustrated, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have discussions about how the things we love could be better but it doesn’t mean we can’t love those problematic things. In fact, I would argue that loving these things means there’s a better chance of them getting better.

I think there’s something to be said for being a discerning audience member, an involved reader. Watch and read what you like, but do so cleverly, do so with nous. Because it’s intelligent discussion and discerning analysis that bring about change, just as much as revolution and boycott. If something offends you, switch it off, if you want, but if something is problematic but still enjoyable, keep watching. Register the problematic elements, talk about them, blog about them, write to the writers, make a video. Say “I love ______, but it worries me that the following things keep happening”. The show runners and writers aren’t going to change their product for the people who turn it off; they are going to change it for the people who keep watching, for the people who keep reading…. For us. 

The "Goddamn it Misogyny!" face, copyright L. King 2013

The Fall of the Eleventh

If you’re not a Doctor Who fan, I’m sorry for your life, and also sorry that this post might not be overly relevant to your interests. (This post is not 100% spoiler free, but it’s also not super spoilery, so if you’re not up to date with Doctor Who, make your choice…. Now).

Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who. Just announced. Hot of the presses. I guess what you need to know before I go any further is that Eleven is *my* Doctor. If you weren’t around when I first discovered Doctor Who, feel free to go back and read this post, which is a literal transcription of my first Who experience. Please enjoy my first reaction to River Song which was "Who's this wench?" - charming, Lizzy, charming. The first episode I watched was The Eleventh Hour, and I was hooked right from the very start. I watched all of Season 5, and then went back and watched everything from the start of Eccleston, working my way back through again until I caught up with everyone else, who were still reeling from A Good Man Goes to War - in which we all learn the big secret about River Song. The first episode I had to wait for was Let’s Kill Hitler in which, unfortunately, no one kills Hitler.

Let me say now that Matt Smith is making the right choice. He is a very good actor, and he should go off and do all sorts of excellent things with his career. Let me also say that I am sure I will love the Twelfth Doctor. It’s just that, with my watching history, this will be the first regeneration I will watch not knowing what’s coming next. When I went back to watch Nine, I knew he only had one season, and I knew that Ten was coming next. I knew everyone loved Tennant, that he was everyone’s favourite, and that he said “Well” a lot. (Actually, I lied earlier; the first episode of Who I ever saw was The Waters of Mars. It was just on one time. I had no idea what was going on, everything was super dramatic and at the end a tentacle-faced dude appeared and sang the song of his people.) When I watched the Tennant seasons through in sequence, I thought he was great, but I was still waiting for Smith. One season of his was enough, he was my Doctor. And now I am staring down the end. We get two more episodes and then… he’s gone.

And I think this is what is freaking me out the most. It’s not that he’s going, because they all have to leave us in the end, it’s not that we’re getting someone else, because that will be brilliant I’m sure, it’s that we have just two episodes left to enjoy him in. The 50^th Anniversary special isn’t really going to be about Eleven. It’ll be about Ten, and Rose, and wtf is happening with John Hurt and celebrating the show’s history. It shouldn’t be all about the current Doctor, of course, but that means we get just one proper Matt episode. And it’ll be his last. And it’ll be on Christmas Day. For crying out loud BBC, I was just starting to get over my hatred of that holiday, are you trying to crush my soul?

One amazing thing about all of this is that Boyfriend and I are actually going to be in the UK on Christmas Day. So instead of watching the regeneration on the ABC on a hot Boxing Day’s night, we’ll be watching it on the Beeb, in England (probably) and on actual Christmas Day. There might even be snow, if we’re lucky, and a fireplace, and I don’t know fucking mead or something. The point is it will be super British, and just a really different experience to what I’m used to. We will meet a new Doctor in the home of Doctor Who. One of my bestest friends, Amy, will be there, and afterwards we can sit around eating pudding and dissecting what we just saw and what kind of Doctor Twelve will be and weeping for the loss of Eleven. It’ll be great.

Right so I want to tell you guys what my plan for the blog is going forward. But I’m still kind of working it out. So far I have confirmed a designer, the wonderful Finbah Neill, to redesign the page. Go and look at his stuff, he’s very good. Like, wow, I just went and looked over some of those posts again and damn boy. I’m thinking I will keep the dodgy, DIY vibe some of you seem to love but I want to revamp it a bit. Fin is good at lots of things and I’m confident he and I can work something out. The other thing I know for sure is that I won’t be starting any new projects til I’ve finished this semester. So that would be late June/early July. At the moment I think what will happen is I will make overanalysing media a bigger part of what I do from now on but it won’t be all I do. I also would like to take suggestions for things to watch, probably via facebook, so if you aren’t a fan there yet, dooooo it. 

The Feel-lympics

I feel feelings

I feel them all the time

I feel them with my heart and I feel them with my mind

Hey!

- A poem by Lizzyish

Sometimes blogging can be a bit of a walk down Special Snowflake Lane. It’s like, ‘here are the ways in which I am special and different to you, they are so special, I put them on the Internet’. I know other people feel feelings; I’m not trying to imply I feel more or bigger feelings than you. But I know, from observable evidence, that most people don’t get weepy while watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony. 

I am a sucker for spectacle. It’s probably much cooler to watch big events like the Opening Ceremony or the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular or… you know… my little sister’s choir performance at the fete and not get all teary. But I’m not cool. I think we can all agree that my coolness exists only in the minds of my own imaginary childhood friends.

We watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony last night. We don’t get Channel 9 because our aerial is a pile of poo, so we watched it on my laptop many hours after the event. I already knew that the Queen was going to parachute in, that there were going to be smoke stacks that looked like Mordor, that sadly the 10^th Doctor did not get to light the flame and that motherflippin VOLDERMORT was going to be there.  Some of it was cheesy, lots of it was slow and boring, and there was a real emphasis on bad things (a whole segment on DEATH has got to be the foremost one here) but I still welled up. I welled up right at the start, when that small child mimed Jerusalem, and it just got worse from there. Every time I tried to regain my composure, something else dramatic would happen, and I’d be trying to hide my face from Boyfriend again.

I think it’s the music that does it, really. I don’t really give a shit about the importance of the industrial revolution. Not more than anybody else who really loves electricity and their laptop does. I’m not British. I’m descended from British people (I’ve got everything except Scottish in me I think) and I’ve been to England once, but I don’t have any particular fondness in my heart for the British Isles. And yet still, the music swells and the drums go bang and I care. Oh yes I care. And my heart seems to fill up with emotion and feels and pour out of my eyes.

I cry in movies too. Pretty much all the movies. Anything with a remotely sad moment and I’m gone. For those people who say, “I never cry in movies”, let me just tell you, it’s a really strange sensation. Because the emotions aren’t yours. You aren’t weeping for the death of a loved one, you’re weeping for the death of a fictional character you’ve spent less than 2 hours getting to know. And yet, for that fleeting moment, you are completely wrapped up in that emotion. And it feels great, but also awful.

I think my absolutely most ridiculous weeping over spectacle moment has to be the aforementioned Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular in Melbourne. I’d gone with a largeish group of people. We walked across half of Melbourne to get to the convention centre. And the whole walk, my excitement was mounting, but also a growing doubt. I own the DVD with the “Doctor Who at the Proms” special feature, and I’d watched it twice, and I suspected this was going to be almost the exact same thing minus the most famous actors. As we walked I kept thinking, “it’s going to be good, but not that great, don’t get too excited all you’ll be disappointed.”

And then we got there. And the foyers were completely full of Doctors and Roses and Marthas and Amys. There were TARDISes and sonics, masks and camera flashes. The excitement was palpable, but the foyers were giant, so by the time we got to our door there were only a couple of minutes to spare before the start time. The lights went down just as we sat in our seats. A Judoon told us over the PA to turn our mobiles off, and then suddenly a woman started singing Amy’s theme and I burst into tears. Just like that. Or it was less “bursting into tears” and more “letting out a constricted sob”. I just wasn’t ready, not prepared for it, and it was so beautiful. I think I proceeded to sob or get weepy 7 or 8 more times during the performance.

So anyway, it’s probably for the best that I can’t get the Olympics on my TV, because otherwise I’d be sobbing every day over every amazing Olympian who wins a race or gets a goal. Especially because Channel 9 will undoubtedly replay the good bits to dramatic music every hour.