Status Report

[nonelvis]

Current fic status: Just over 4,000 words, with only one major scene transition and the last bit of the ending left to go.

Current hatred level for Russell T Davies: High, due to the following factors:

1. He has given fandom a character whom it is almost impossible to write without emphasizing her Mary Sue-ness.
   
2. He allowed Toby Whithouse to get away with emasculating Sarah Jane in "School Reunion," thereby making a rather important line I've written sound insulting to her when that's not my intention.
   
3. "Gridlock" is on tonight, and though I'll probably watch it out of inertia, it will undoubtedly continue to suck.

Urge to Kill: Surprisingly low. Maybe it's the nice weather outside.

Comments

[iainpj.livejournal.com]

He allowed Toby Whithouse to get away with emasculating Sarah Jane in "School Reunion," thereby making a rather important line I've written sound insulting to her when that's not my intention.

Wait ... do you mean that part where she told the doctor how she felt about him leaving? Because otherwise, I thought she was pretty much in line with how she's generally been. (... Well, in line with Tom Baker's Sarah Jane, anyway, who was considerably less spunky and somewhat more frequently distressed damsel than Pertwee's Sarah Jane, but that's a slightly different issue.)

[nonelvis]

No, the part where she's been sitting around for 30 years waiting for him to come back. While I can certainly understand Sarah Jane feeling unrequited lust love for the Doctor, I have a harder time believing that she put her life on hold for that long after he left her behind. I mean, Whithouse doesn't explicitly state that Sarah Jane spent 30 years pining away for him, but he certainly makes it clear she never had any significant romantic relationships.

[platypus]

I'm curious how I'm going to feel about rewatching Gridlock. I really like the bookend scenes, and, well, kittens. It's possibly the Year Five Billion story that I hate the least, but that's not saying much. I love RTD's general vision for the show, but loathe 90% of what he personally creates for it. And he actually thinks he is funny. I think I died around "and in the year five billion, traffic jams will last for YEARS! Because everything in the future is just like now, only EXAGGERATED!" But Gallifrey perked me up. Too bad it seemed to mark a growing trust and honesty in the Doctor/Martha relationship that NEVER PAID OFF. Er.

Yay fic. I think I need to set mine aside for a few days, because there is a necessary point-a-to-point-b bit that I simply cannot write. I may write about writing, rather than actually writing, if I need to distract myself later.

[nonelvis]

Oh, my god, YES to everything you said in your first paragraph, except that "Gridlock" is my least favorite Year Five Billion story.

"and in the year five billion, traffic jams will last for YEARS! Because everything in the future is just like now, only EXAGGERATED!"

"And if we just move our main character from car to car, he can encounter all sorts of Amusing Personalities and have Wacky Hijinx instead of a plot! Plus we can just re-dress the same set over and over, we'll save a ton of money, and those dumb fans won't even notice because they'll be too busy squeeing over MACRA!"

sigh.

You also remind me that I need to burn the Confidential to CD for my sister, because it is vitally important to share the kitten cuteness.

The fic -- well, I wrote the ending, so now I just have that transitional bit to go, and then I have to go over it again and add sentences here and there, because it feels too sparse to me in spots. Most likely I'll just rip those sentences out again in a couple of weeks, though, once I move into hardcore editing mode.

[nonelvis]

For the record: "Gridlock"? Still sucked.

[iainpj.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, pretty much every show has to have a "box" show once per season to save money. Mind, most shows don't actually build an entirely new box to have it in -- they just use the main set -- but I can only remember one show EVER that was a main set box show for Doctor Who, and they wound up building a basement cloister for the Tardis to do that. In any event, for this show, all they would have had to build would be the alley and the car. They could use the pre-existing bits of New New York from previous shows -- for that matter, I'm pretty sure the alley set was likely around from some show or another.

I've found the Confidentials to be really ... annoying, for some reason. Or, no, not for some reason, but because more often than not, a 10-20 minute show would really do it. I mean, the DeClassifieds, if they did a bit more of the "how we did this" instead of "how the actors felt about how we did this", would be almost perfect. The Confidentials are both overlong and smug.

[iainpj.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, from what little I've seen,it looks like the BBC's "Sarah Jane Adventures" may attempt to do a partial retcon (very partial) of Big Finish's "Sarah Jane Smith" into continuity, in which case, sitting around is not precisely what she's been doing. (They can't do a complete retcon, in part because they're using children, and in part because fandom would never ever forgive them for using the complete story.)

And I can sort of see the Doctor being a really hard act to follow.

[nonelvis]

Oh, I don't object to a "box" show per se, and in a show as expensive as Doctor Who, it's unavoidable if you want to pay for special effects in other episodes. My objection to the box in this case is that it was so obvious it was just the same re-dressed set, and worse, it made the episode feel claustrophobic. Also, at least some of that alley wasn't a set -- it was part of a building atrium in Cardiff. (Yes, an actual useful fact from a Confidential.)

The Confidentials have been overly long this season, but there have been a few notable moments, especially all the scenes of Tennant bonding with the kittens. I mean, you already know how attractive I find him, and seeing cute geek-boy with kittens crawling all over him just kills me dead.