Oh no not again
Aug. 30th, 2006 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indriI appear to have contracted a new fandom or, rather, re-contracted an old one. I have all my usual symptoms: thoughts about the beloved fiction occupy most of my waking hours, I spend my evenings researching barely-relevant background material, I construct lengthy storylines and critiques in my head, everything I read or see or do is somehow related to the fiction. It's sad, it's obsessive, it's something I once thought I'd grow out of, and it sometimes brings me great joy.
Tonight's Wikipedia searches were for "chav", "emo", "Battersea Power Station" and "converse sneakers". And I also refreshed my memory on Time Lord society.
Twenty years ago now, my brother and I would sit our infant sister in front of copies of Doctor Who Monthly, teaching her how to distinguish between Cybermen and Daleks. We wrote and illustrated a few hundred pages of a never-completed choose-your-own-adventure book in which you tried to pass the practical section of the Time Lord university exams. We wrote poems about Peri and songs to be sung by the Master with Ogron chorus. I read every tie-in novel I could get my hands on, even the not very good ones by Terrance Dicks ("a smile like a piano keyboard"). I spent many of my school lunchtimes with my hands clasped behind my back a la Peter Davison, exploring planets with my best friend, Claire.
These days my sister has a degree in robotics. My brother's going through a Battlestar Galactica phase. When I'm not doing my actual science day job, I'm making up stories about the Rani in my head and pondering Gallifreyan population dynamics. (I no longer perpetrate filk.)
It's odd revisiting the show with an adult perspective (and the new script writers play with that, of course). It's obvious to me now that Gallifrey's modelled on Oxbridge and that the Doctor is one of those really smart people you met at university who were always too distracted with their own reading and researches to do well at exams.
I'm very glad that the new scriptwriters are content to give a nod towards of the old show's weaker aspects without repeating them: the new, shorter format means we only get five minutes of so of chase sequences in each story, for example. Pity many of the "sf" explanations are such tosh though. But yesterday I rewatched "New Earth", "Tooth and Claw" and "School Reunion" and liked them even more than I did the first time. So much fun.
It reminds me of the early seasons of Buffy -- witty scripts, an optimistic tone, yet shot through with darkness. I like happy shows, but only those ones which acknowledge the omnipresence of evil and loss.
Anyway, I'm only halfway through the second new series so far. Looking forward to the rest of it.
I realise that by now the number of people interested in my Drusilla fic is in the single digits; but, as I am one of those people, it will be done. Late October, most probably. And that will probably be my last hurrah with Buffy fandom, much as I have loved it.
Tonight's Wikipedia searches were for "chav", "emo", "Battersea Power Station" and "converse sneakers". And I also refreshed my memory on Time Lord society.
Twenty years ago now, my brother and I would sit our infant sister in front of copies of Doctor Who Monthly, teaching her how to distinguish between Cybermen and Daleks. We wrote and illustrated a few hundred pages of a never-completed choose-your-own-adventure book in which you tried to pass the practical section of the Time Lord university exams. We wrote poems about Peri and songs to be sung by the Master with Ogron chorus. I read every tie-in novel I could get my hands on, even the not very good ones by Terrance Dicks ("a smile like a piano keyboard"). I spent many of my school lunchtimes with my hands clasped behind my back a la Peter Davison, exploring planets with my best friend, Claire.
These days my sister has a degree in robotics. My brother's going through a Battlestar Galactica phase. When I'm not doing my actual science day job, I'm making up stories about the Rani in my head and pondering Gallifreyan population dynamics. (I no longer perpetrate filk.)
It's odd revisiting the show with an adult perspective (and the new script writers play with that, of course). It's obvious to me now that Gallifrey's modelled on Oxbridge and that the Doctor is one of those really smart people you met at university who were always too distracted with their own reading and researches to do well at exams.
I'm very glad that the new scriptwriters are content to give a nod towards of the old show's weaker aspects without repeating them: the new, shorter format means we only get five minutes of so of chase sequences in each story, for example. Pity many of the "sf" explanations are such tosh though. But yesterday I rewatched "New Earth", "Tooth and Claw" and "School Reunion" and liked them even more than I did the first time. So much fun.
It reminds me of the early seasons of Buffy -- witty scripts, an optimistic tone, yet shot through with darkness. I like happy shows, but only those ones which acknowledge the omnipresence of evil and loss.
Anyway, I'm only halfway through the second new series so far. Looking forward to the rest of it.
I realise that by now the number of people interested in my Drusilla fic is in the single digits; but, as I am one of those people, it will be done. Late October, most probably. And that will probably be my last hurrah with Buffy fandom, much as I have loved it.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-06 02:30 pm (UTC)When I posted this, I'd just seen three excellent episodes in a row. Two subsequent episodes have been quite naff, so I hope it picks up again.
It may not be sufficiently meaty for your highly analytic brain though.