Weekend viewing, April 30
May. 1st, 2005 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksWell, we've been busted. Turns out the BBC streams were only a unicast test - and they'll be up and down without notice as they test them. There is a multicast stream, but apparently that's only by arrangement with ISPs, and no ISPs in America are currently configured for multicast streaming with the BBC. So, pooh.
But... there was stuff to watch anyway.
Dalek
Ah yes. Dalek. Those of us who have had the pleasure of listening to Rob Shearman's Sixth Doctor audio play Jubilee knew we were going to have flashbacks to this one. However, the limitations of a 45-minute episode and probably Rob's desire not to imitate himself pared down the Nazi-in-popular-culture metaphor of the original to the simple basics: a lone Dalek. Chained up. Tortured. And the Doctor's companion thinks it's not all that bad.
Where Dalek has a good news/bad news thing over Jubilee is that it's for the visual medium. In Jubilee, you didn't have prolonged action sequences, just the Dalek psychologically manipulating the people around it, proving that even though it was unarmed, it was still bloody evil and dangerous. Here, we get the bang for our buck but we lose a lot of the subtlety. It's a trade off I was quite happy to make, though, as it meant it wasn't a rethread and that for the first time in a long, long while, the words, "For God's sake, RUN!" when faced with a Dalek didn't sound ridiculous.
The Dalek kicked ass. Watching Richard and Judy, I knew about the swivelling mid-section, the bullet-dissolving force field, the new exterminating effect, everything, but to watch it not as a clip but as part of a narrative, it was awesome. There weren't that many plot holes you couldn't explain away without a few minutes of thought. I for one, loved it, and it was probably the most satisfying episode of the series yet. People didn't act stupid. The Dalek didn't act stupid. Well, maybe Rose was a little stupid, but she'd never seen a Dalek before, the silly little moo.
And, oh yeah, the Dalek says to the Doctor, "What good is emotion if you cannot save the woman you love?" Note, however, for those of you who are about to go into apoplectic fits, that the Dalek has no actual knowledge of this apart from what it has absorbed from Rose. So it may be entirely in Rose's mind. Not that the Doctor doesn't love Rose - it's just that I seriously doubt it's in the "bang her like a shithouse door in gale force winds" way.
(I'll be in my bunk...)
5/5. First one I've given an episode this season.
In A Mirror Darkly, Part 2
It was... it was okay. There were really cool effects shots for the Defiant when it goes into battle, and reminds us what a great ship the original Constitution-class starships were. I tried to look for a deeper subtext, and I think they almost had it. Operative word being almost. But not quite.
A little scene setting. In the original Mirror, Mirror, the presence of the NCC-1701 crew — in particular the conversation our-Kirk has with mirror-Spock, brings up a few points. First, Spock is the constant in both universes, an honorable man trying to do his duty to the logical end. Second, Kirk corrupts Spock with the idea that things could be better. And this is a particularly powerful idea, not because of how good it is, but because that the very existence of Kirk means that the idea is not a hypothetical, but a reality somewhere else. Which means that the possibility of making it work in the Mirror Universe is that much more concrete. As we find out years later, in the Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episodes, this fails horribly, but that's not so important for this discussion right now.
In Mirror, Darkly, the idea comes from the historical records of the starship Defiant. Galaxy Quest jokes aside, it corrupts the Vulcans in the same way that it does mirror-Spock, and they try to make this "Federation" they read of become a reality, and again fail miserably. However, this corruption is diluted somewhat by the fact that there already is a rebellion going on, which means that people already are thinking of the possibilities of something better, not because of an intrusion from outside. But be that as it may, unfortunately they don't take it far enough. You see, mirror-Archer and mirror-Hoshi also see the historical records. It would have been truly fascinating if mirror-Archer had taken his counterpart's history (where he eventually becomes Federation President, mind you) to heart and wanted to change things for the better, or that mirror-Hoshi saw the possibilities of becoming something more than just a Captain's Woman.
This isn't just me wishing they could have done it this way. In the scenes of mirror-Archer suddenly being spoken to by an imaginary version of himself (Al-Archer?) and with mirror-Hoshi deciding to push mirror-Archer aside and become Empress herself, you can see the script straining towards this kind of take on it. But Al-Archer is just the voice of mirror-Archer's ambition, not change, and we don't see mirror-Hoshi emote enough or think enough to consider that she's being influenced by anything from the historical records. We get a fight with a Gorn which is completely gratuitous, despite the cool CGI work on the creature, and in the end, it kind of peters out, and even mirror-Hoshi's final betrayal, though not complete expected, just by the numbers treachery.
It could have been more. I think they wanted it to be more. But it got changed in the production to a fanboy romp. Which is a shame, I think, although I have to emphasize it wasn't bad.
One thing though: I came away thinking that a new series set during the TOS period, using the retro sets, might not be a bad idea...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Let me start by saying that I am a fan of the books. And the radio series. And the television series. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was one of the first "adult" books I remember reading as a kid, and I can still do a pretty good imitation of Marvin's voice as well as recite most of the dialogue from the Guide entries. But I am not a devotee of Adams. The distinction is that I like the stuff, and I apply my usual degree of obsessive-compulsiveness to it, but I don't walk around in my bathrobe carrying a towel. Well, not all the time.
So I was perfectly willing to accept changes to the movie. After all, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamhouse pointed out over the phone to me, everytime Adams switched the story to a different medium, he changed huge chunks of it. The radio series is different from the books is different from the television series. Oh, the general thrust of the plot is the same, but there are also major differences. So that's okay. In fact, truth to tell, I liked the new stuff (with one exception) more than most of the way they handled the old stuff.
Ultimately, I found H2G2 The Movie schizophrenic. I felt like that Foxtrot cartoon where Jason is cheering and moaning alternately because he shot a rocket into orbit but he was going to get in severe trouble. Parts made me smile. Parts made me chortle. Parts even made me laugh out loud. But other parts made me wonder, "What the hell is wrong with this?" H2G2 suffers from a variation of the problem that Daredevil the movie had - where Daredevil tried too hard to cater to the fans, H2G2 falls down where it tries to appeal to the fans and appeal to the mainstream.
As a result, it satisfies nobody. The fan who goes in will wonder why they left out this element or that element from the books. The non-fan will wonder why he's supposed to be laughing, but isn't. He gets the vague impression that certain lines are supposed to be very witty and meaningful, but he doesn't know why. And so it falls flat. Part of this is the acting. Sam Rockwell is a good actor, but doesn't deliver Zaphod laid back enough. Zooey Deschanel is cute as a button, but never delivers the sheer intellect that Trillian exudes in the radio show and books, or even the kookiness of Sandra Dickinson who looked and sounded like a dumb blonde but was actually supposed to be a super-genius in the television series. Mos Def as Ford is a cipher, but it's okay - Ford was pretty much a cipher everywhere else, too. So, we never get a sense of what the characters are like, and that's death for a movie. If I came in knowing nothing, I'd be pretty lost after a while.
Some of it is the directing. The way some lines are tossed off lost a lot of the comic timing that was integral to the series. And some lines were lost that were begging to be completed. This sounds like I'm really nitpicking, but let's look at a couple of examples. The Vogon poetry reading, where the captain says, "So you're saying I recite poetry because beneath my cold, heartless exterior I want to be loved?" and then tosses them to the airlock. It would have been much funnier if they had completed the joke, which was, "I receit poetry to put my cold, heartless exterior into stark relief!" And it wouldn't really have taken very much, considering how much time they waste with stuff like the love triangle. If there was stuff that needed to be excised, it could also have been the whale thought sequence, unless they're really confident of doing the payoff in Life, the Universe and Everything.
The Deep Thought sequence. In the radio series, the suspense building up to the Ultimate Answer is milked very effectively. "The Ultimate Answer..." "Yes?" "To Life, the Universe and Everything..." "Yes?" "Is..." "Yes?" "Is..." "YES?!?" "Forty-two." (beat) "We're going to get lynched, aren't we?" Here, there's no build-up. "The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is... forty two." And aside from a few rumblings from the CGI'd crowd, that's pretty much it. On the plus side, using Helen Mirren as Deep Thought was quite a good choice, and the design of the computer was also cute.
The plot was erratic. The idea of using the Vogons more centrally was fun, but not enough time was spent on making them any more than an annoyance or, in the case of kidnapping Trillian, a plot device. Anna Chancellor's character - what the heck was that all about? Marvin dying then coming back to life - again, what the heck was that all about? And let's not even start on John Malkovich.
There were good bits. Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman, perfect. The use of Simon Jones as the voice of Magrathea and even the original Peter Jones bits from the start of the radio series (and the original theme!) were delightful. The showtune that begins the movie is pretty funny. Speaking of Magrathea, the factory floor was wonderfully realised, and Bill Nighy convinced me that he could have been a good Doctor Who. The best part of the whole movie had to be the Point of View Gun. That is such a classic Adams concept that it brought forth the largest laugh in the whole movie for me. But unfortunately, that was pretty much it.
I didn't hate it, but it was... blah. Again, it was good in spots, but it wasn't great, and it left me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, like In a Mirror Darkly did. Maybe there's missing scenes that will make it better in the DVD or something. But as a movie on its own, it didn't really work. Which is kind of sad, because I was really hoping it would.
But... there was stuff to watch anyway.
Dalek
Ah yes. Dalek. Those of us who have had the pleasure of listening to Rob Shearman's Sixth Doctor audio play Jubilee knew we were going to have flashbacks to this one. However, the limitations of a 45-minute episode and probably Rob's desire not to imitate himself pared down the Nazi-in-popular-culture metaphor of the original to the simple basics: a lone Dalek. Chained up. Tortured. And the Doctor's companion thinks it's not all that bad.
Where Dalek has a good news/bad news thing over Jubilee is that it's for the visual medium. In Jubilee, you didn't have prolonged action sequences, just the Dalek psychologically manipulating the people around it, proving that even though it was unarmed, it was still bloody evil and dangerous. Here, we get the bang for our buck but we lose a lot of the subtlety. It's a trade off I was quite happy to make, though, as it meant it wasn't a rethread and that for the first time in a long, long while, the words, "For God's sake, RUN!" when faced with a Dalek didn't sound ridiculous.
The Dalek kicked ass. Watching Richard and Judy, I knew about the swivelling mid-section, the bullet-dissolving force field, the new exterminating effect, everything, but to watch it not as a clip but as part of a narrative, it was awesome. There weren't that many plot holes you couldn't explain away without a few minutes of thought. I for one, loved it, and it was probably the most satisfying episode of the series yet. People didn't act stupid. The Dalek didn't act stupid. Well, maybe Rose was a little stupid, but she'd never seen a Dalek before, the silly little moo.
And, oh yeah, the Dalek says to the Doctor, "What good is emotion if you cannot save the woman you love?" Note, however, for those of you who are about to go into apoplectic fits, that the Dalek has no actual knowledge of this apart from what it has absorbed from Rose. So it may be entirely in Rose's mind. Not that the Doctor doesn't love Rose - it's just that I seriously doubt it's in the "bang her like a shithouse door in gale force winds" way.
(I'll be in my bunk...)
5/5. First one I've given an episode this season.
In A Mirror Darkly, Part 2
It was... it was okay. There were really cool effects shots for the Defiant when it goes into battle, and reminds us what a great ship the original Constitution-class starships were. I tried to look for a deeper subtext, and I think they almost had it. Operative word being almost. But not quite.
A little scene setting. In the original Mirror, Mirror, the presence of the NCC-1701 crew — in particular the conversation our-Kirk has with mirror-Spock, brings up a few points. First, Spock is the constant in both universes, an honorable man trying to do his duty to the logical end. Second, Kirk corrupts Spock with the idea that things could be better. And this is a particularly powerful idea, not because of how good it is, but because that the very existence of Kirk means that the idea is not a hypothetical, but a reality somewhere else. Which means that the possibility of making it work in the Mirror Universe is that much more concrete. As we find out years later, in the Deep Space Nine Mirror Universe episodes, this fails horribly, but that's not so important for this discussion right now.
In Mirror, Darkly, the idea comes from the historical records of the starship Defiant. Galaxy Quest jokes aside, it corrupts the Vulcans in the same way that it does mirror-Spock, and they try to make this "Federation" they read of become a reality, and again fail miserably. However, this corruption is diluted somewhat by the fact that there already is a rebellion going on, which means that people already are thinking of the possibilities of something better, not because of an intrusion from outside. But be that as it may, unfortunately they don't take it far enough. You see, mirror-Archer and mirror-Hoshi also see the historical records. It would have been truly fascinating if mirror-Archer had taken his counterpart's history (where he eventually becomes Federation President, mind you) to heart and wanted to change things for the better, or that mirror-Hoshi saw the possibilities of becoming something more than just a Captain's Woman.
This isn't just me wishing they could have done it this way. In the scenes of mirror-Archer suddenly being spoken to by an imaginary version of himself (Al-Archer?) and with mirror-Hoshi deciding to push mirror-Archer aside and become Empress herself, you can see the script straining towards this kind of take on it. But Al-Archer is just the voice of mirror-Archer's ambition, not change, and we don't see mirror-Hoshi emote enough or think enough to consider that she's being influenced by anything from the historical records. We get a fight with a Gorn which is completely gratuitous, despite the cool CGI work on the creature, and in the end, it kind of peters out, and even mirror-Hoshi's final betrayal, though not complete expected, just by the numbers treachery.
It could have been more. I think they wanted it to be more. But it got changed in the production to a fanboy romp. Which is a shame, I think, although I have to emphasize it wasn't bad.
One thing though: I came away thinking that a new series set during the TOS period, using the retro sets, might not be a bad idea...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Let me start by saying that I am a fan of the books. And the radio series. And the television series. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was one of the first "adult" books I remember reading as a kid, and I can still do a pretty good imitation of Marvin's voice as well as recite most of the dialogue from the Guide entries. But I am not a devotee of Adams. The distinction is that I like the stuff, and I apply my usual degree of obsessive-compulsiveness to it, but I don't walk around in my bathrobe carrying a towel. Well, not all the time.
So I was perfectly willing to accept changes to the movie. After all, as
bedlamhouse pointed out over the phone to me, everytime Adams switched the story to a different medium, he changed huge chunks of it. The radio series is different from the books is different from the television series. Oh, the general thrust of the plot is the same, but there are also major differences. So that's okay. In fact, truth to tell, I liked the new stuff (with one exception) more than most of the way they handled the old stuff.Ultimately, I found H2G2 The Movie schizophrenic. I felt like that Foxtrot cartoon where Jason is cheering and moaning alternately because he shot a rocket into orbit but he was going to get in severe trouble. Parts made me smile. Parts made me chortle. Parts even made me laugh out loud. But other parts made me wonder, "What the hell is wrong with this?" H2G2 suffers from a variation of the problem that Daredevil the movie had - where Daredevil tried too hard to cater to the fans, H2G2 falls down where it tries to appeal to the fans and appeal to the mainstream.
As a result, it satisfies nobody. The fan who goes in will wonder why they left out this element or that element from the books. The non-fan will wonder why he's supposed to be laughing, but isn't. He gets the vague impression that certain lines are supposed to be very witty and meaningful, but he doesn't know why. And so it falls flat. Part of this is the acting. Sam Rockwell is a good actor, but doesn't deliver Zaphod laid back enough. Zooey Deschanel is cute as a button, but never delivers the sheer intellect that Trillian exudes in the radio show and books, or even the kookiness of Sandra Dickinson who looked and sounded like a dumb blonde but was actually supposed to be a super-genius in the television series. Mos Def as Ford is a cipher, but it's okay - Ford was pretty much a cipher everywhere else, too. So, we never get a sense of what the characters are like, and that's death for a movie. If I came in knowing nothing, I'd be pretty lost after a while.
Some of it is the directing. The way some lines are tossed off lost a lot of the comic timing that was integral to the series. And some lines were lost that were begging to be completed. This sounds like I'm really nitpicking, but let's look at a couple of examples. The Vogon poetry reading, where the captain says, "So you're saying I recite poetry because beneath my cold, heartless exterior I want to be loved?" and then tosses them to the airlock. It would have been much funnier if they had completed the joke, which was, "I receit poetry to put my cold, heartless exterior into stark relief!" And it wouldn't really have taken very much, considering how much time they waste with stuff like the love triangle. If there was stuff that needed to be excised, it could also have been the whale thought sequence, unless they're really confident of doing the payoff in Life, the Universe and Everything.
The Deep Thought sequence. In the radio series, the suspense building up to the Ultimate Answer is milked very effectively. "The Ultimate Answer..." "Yes?" "To Life, the Universe and Everything..." "Yes?" "Is..." "Yes?" "Is..." "YES?!?" "Forty-two." (beat) "We're going to get lynched, aren't we?" Here, there's no build-up. "The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is... forty two." And aside from a few rumblings from the CGI'd crowd, that's pretty much it. On the plus side, using Helen Mirren as Deep Thought was quite a good choice, and the design of the computer was also cute.
The plot was erratic. The idea of using the Vogons more centrally was fun, but not enough time was spent on making them any more than an annoyance or, in the case of kidnapping Trillian, a plot device. Anna Chancellor's character - what the heck was that all about? Marvin dying then coming back to life - again, what the heck was that all about? And let's not even start on John Malkovich.
There were good bits. Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman, perfect. The use of Simon Jones as the voice of Magrathea and even the original Peter Jones bits from the start of the radio series (and the original theme!) were delightful. The showtune that begins the movie is pretty funny. Speaking of Magrathea, the factory floor was wonderfully realised, and Bill Nighy convinced me that he could have been a good Doctor Who. The best part of the whole movie had to be the Point of View Gun. That is such a classic Adams concept that it brought forth the largest laugh in the whole movie for me. But unfortunately, that was pretty much it.
I didn't hate it, but it was... blah. Again, it was good in spots, but it wasn't great, and it left me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, like In a Mirror Darkly did. Maybe there's missing scenes that will make it better in the DVD or something. But as a movie on its own, it didn't really work. Which is kind of sad, because I was really hoping it would.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 11:48 am (UTC)Interesting to note, though, that the Dalek's words give the Doctor pause...
And we can forgive the Dalek for being confused on the matter. It *had* just swallowed the entire internet. All that 'shipfic... [SHUDDER] =;o>
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-06 02:12 am (UTC)