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cirrus-grey · 1 month ago

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Hi! While listening to TMA and slowly going through some episode tags, I found your blog! I really like your TMA takes, and since some other people's posts from back when the episodes were airing surprised me, I was wondering if it's okay to ask you for your opinion on something 4 years late.

I just got to what looks like the end of a longer subplot - Jon and Martin talked at the end of episode 174 about how Jon feels like killing people makes him worse. While going through the tags of the previous episodes, I was pretty surprised at how divisive episode 169 was. I definitely didn't expect people to read Jon as forcing Martin to go with him into the burning building or disregarding his wishes; I wasn't expecting people to read Martin as manipulative either. It felt like they communicated as well as they could while not being in a good place, mentally speaking (and, well, physically too). Still, I feel like it was easier for me to put myself into Martin's headspace, and even though I know Jon doesn't like admitting to wanting to hurt anyone because he feels guilty (which is good of course, that he lets himself feel conflicted, and pretty expected that he doesn't like broadcasting wanting to kill someone), his level of evasiveness surprised me, especially with how long he didn't admit there was another way to go. There are a lot of things in his head happening simultaneously (not wanting Martin to be in distress, wanting to kill Jude, trying to communicate, being aware he should have communicated sooner) that I can't seem to make sense of, and I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on this, if you feel like sharing!

Hello and welcome! I’m always down to offer my opinions on TMA. Sorry this one took a few days to answer - I wanted to check a few details in the transcript and I haven’t had a chance to sit down with it until today. That being said, one major caveat before I start: I haven’t listened to this season in a while, so I may be missing some extra context from conversations that surround this episode. Take what I say with a grain of salt!

Most importantly: Jon does not realize his actions are causing Martin undue distress until the tape turns on and the episode starts. Martin hasn’t voiced any particular dislike of fire until then, and Jon has promised not to read his mind. He’s keeping that promise, so when he makes the decision to go after Jude he doesn’t see any reason why it should be different than smiting Not!Sasha, or going after Oliver. (There’s also something to be said here about the fact that Jon is so used to physical pain at this point that he doesn’t realize Martin sees it as a reason to avoid an area, but that gets into a different sort of character analysis.) As far as Jon is concerned, going after Jude is no more unpleasant an experience than crossing any other domain, so he doesn’t see a need to give Martin advance warning. It’s a failure of communication on both sides, but an understandable one.

As you say, he’s hesitant to admit he wants to kill Jude… but I think there’s also a level of assuming that Martin will be absolutely onboard with it. So far, he killed Not!Sasha and Martin proposed going full Kill Bill, he didn’t kill Oliver and Martin was disappointed… surely this is just getting back on track, right? Martin’s the one that really wanted to kill avatars, surely he won’t object to Jon picking which avatars they kill, right? (“It’s just – when you said –” “You said you were onboard.”)

All of which is to say, I don’t think he sees it as hiding something from Martin, or needing to ‘admit’ that there’s another way to go. He genuinely doesn’t realize that Martin might want to find another way to go until he asks (“You’re sure there isn’t another way?”) and then literally the first thing Jon says is “I’m sorry,” because it doesn’t hit him until that moment that he’s just assumed Martin’s willingness the entire way without asking him. As soon as he realizes Martin might not be willing, he tries his best to let him make the choice. (“Alright. If you really don’t want to do this, w-we can go another way.” “I should have told you before, so – I leave the decision to you.”)

…Which is, I think, the part of the episode that most people were arguing about after it dropped.

Martin throwing the choice right back at Jon… it isn’t deliberately manipulative, but he’s definitely making an opening for Jon to step in with the chivalrous boyfriend ‘I’d never put you in harm’s way, let’s turn around!’ thing. He’s assuming that Jon knows how he really feels (‘please let’s not go through the fire’), and is using that to avoid having to disappoint Jon by asking to find another way. He’s the one who proposed Kill Bill - he doesn’t want to be the one to call it off now, certainly not when Jon seems to have his heart set on it.

Jon, of course, takes his “It’s your revenge; your choice, not mine,” at face value and decides to go in. I’ve never seen it as forcing Martin to go in, it’s just… trusting that Martin is being honest with him when he says he wants Jon to make the decision. Jon said he wanted to go through, Martin said it’s his decision, surely Martin must know that means they’re going through. Yes, he’s failing to read Martin’s subtext, but… Jon has struggled with paranoia for a long time. He had to make a deliberate choice to trust people (end of season 3) and in many ways trust is still a deliberate choice. That includes trusting your boyfriend when he says “it’s your choice.” Jon’s not about to start listening to that nagging little voice in the back of his head saying ‘maybe he doesn’t mean that’ because it’s the same nagging little voice that used to say ‘maybe he’s trying to kill you.’ By now he knows that Martin will be distressed by going through, but Martin has told him that he’s willing to undergo that distress for the sake of Jon’s revenge, so it's okay. (He doesn’t and can’t know that Jude will take so long to die and make it that much more distressing in the process; I think both of them would have handled this whole conversation differently if they’d known they were going to end up in the middle of an inferno.)

Phew! That got long. Tl;dr, it’s communication problems on both sides (it always is with these two), not anything deliberately malicious. Jon’s not forcing Martin, he’s just making assumptions; Martin’s not manipulating Jon, he’s just being conflict-avoidant. Under any normal circumstances it wouldn't be a big deal (“You said you were okay with me painting the living room!” “I didn't think you meant purple, Jon!” “Okay, okay, if it bothers you that much we can pick a different color.” “No, no, it's your project; your choice.” “Purple, then.” “Oh.”), they just have the misfortune of being in the middle of the apocalypse, which blows all those normal couple problems way out of proportion.

#cirrus not ramble for almost 1k words about jon and martin challenge: failed #ask not for whom the bell tolls #anonymous #the magnus archives #my magnus archives stuff #magnus archives speculation/analysis #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #the dinghy #169 fire escape

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jacksgreysays · 7 months ago

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Extremely late, completely unnecessary opinion of the Watcher situation, (2024-04-24)

So this is a relatively belated post — several days after the initial “Goodbye Youtube” and one day after the “An Update” videos — and surely by this point there are more interesting/insightful op-eds (both in written form and video form, especially penguinz0’s fairly objective POV as, essentially, a YouTube expert) but there is something about the Watcher situation that made my brain itch. Thus, I wanted to write about it in order to make sense of it all as well as get into a philosophy that seems to be haunting me in recent years and which I think applies greatly here.

This may seem completely out of left field considering 1) definitely not fanfiction and 2) about Watcher Entertainment, a YouTube channel which—as far as this tumblr is concerned—I’ve not engaged with whatsoever, but I don’t know where else I would put this, and weirdly enough I think the general tumblr response to this whole predicament is maybe the… if not objective… then at least, most thoughtful?—or, perhaps, least immediately reactive?—amongst the various social media platforms, that I think some people might appreciate this anyway.

In terms of my relevant background: I majored in Management Science (which is just a fancy way of saying Economics + Business + Accounting because they are, weirdly enough, separate things) and minored in Film Studies in school, I am currently working in the stage tech industry (which, I know, is obviously different from film/video industry), and I like to think I am a fan/consumer of a wide variety of independent creators, some of whom I am lucky enough to be able to afford being a patron/subscriber. I won’t go into all of them—because it is a lot—but there are four in particular whose business models I want to analyze in comparison to Watcher’s admitted blunder:

A) RocketJump (known for Video Game High School and Anime Crimes Division; the core group which turned into the podcast Story Break, then became Dungeons and Daddies) B) Dropout (formerly College Humor, we’ll get into their discography later) C) Drawfee (previously an offshoot of College Humor, now fully independent) D) Corridor Digital (used to be mostly behind the scenes of how VFX studios work, have since become a mostly original content creator)

I will say, right off the bat, I am a patron of Drawfee as well as Dungeons and Daddies, and I am a subscriber to Dropout. I am not subscribed to Corridor Digital’s streamer, which I will get into why later. I understand that being able to sustain those two patronages and one subscription is a luxury that not everyone can afford and so my point of view is already skewed by being such a person who could theoretically afford another streaming service if I so chose. I also acknowledge that many fans of Watcher are not in similarly financially secure places as I am and that regardless of the business model, any monetization that comes from fans would have been a rough ask. However, I wanted to go into this essay in a way that accepts Watcher’s statement—that they needed more funding—in relatively good faith rather than assuming the worst (although that is another point I’ll get into later, largely related to the philosophy I brought up earlier.)

All four of the above listed content creators started or, at least, hit their stride on YouTube:

RocketJump and College Humor were, if not household names, then the digital equivalent of it in the “early days of YouTube.” They were part of the wave of content creators that made YouTube seem less like a bunch of eccentrics with cameras making videos on the side and more like a viable way to support yourself/your team with the art you create.

RocketJump’s Video Game High School went from short (less than 10 minutes) minimal location episodes in season one, to 30 minute plus episodes with full on fight scenes and car explosions by season three thanks to a Monster Energy brand deal. They also had two seasons of Anime Crimes Division, a literal TV quality show, thanks to a Crunchy Roll sponsorship. Unfortunately, RocketJump shut down not long after (their videos are still up on YouTube but they obviously don’t add anything new) but the core creative team behind that have been involved in several projects outside of YouTube (Dimension 404 on Hulu being one of the biggest ones so far) including the podcast Story Break (part of the Maximum Fun network) and now the independent podcast Dungeons and Daddies, the episodes of the main campaigns which are free with ads or, for patrons, ad-less along with additional mini-campaigns and other benefits.

I will say, during RocketJump’s decline, they did try their best to keep going. The partnerships with Monster Energy and Crunchy Roll were the big swings to get the funding to make those TV quality shows they wanted. I believe they lucked out with those brands in particular, or, at least, those brands didn’t seem to inhibit the creative process or ask too much of them that it felt like “selling out” but I also don’t have insight into why they didn’t pursue this model of, essentially, very weird but interesting season long commercials. Maybe they just couldn't find the right brands or maybe they did feel like it was too stifling. Regardless, before they shut down completely, they did also downsize—moving out of the actual city of Los Angeles over to Buena Park. Which is in Los Angeles county, and basically counts as LA still, but is way cheaper than literal Hollywood real estate. (I should have added to my relevant background that I’m born and raised LA county, and have relatives and friends in the film/movie industry, so trust me when I say literal Hollywood/city of Los Angeles is so overrated and unnecessarily expensive. There is a reason why LA traffic is the worst and it’s because everyone is commuting INTO the city. Respectfully and with affection, no one should live there. No one’s start up should be located there.) Obviously the downsizing didn’t necessarily work for RocketJump, but they also didn’t have multiple successful revenue streams the way that Watcher currently does.

In contrast, College Humor was acquired by InterActiveCorp and was turned into CH Media which was three pronged: College Humor, Drawfee, and Dorkly. In 2018 they made Dropout, which had exclusive content separate from their YouTube videos which involved all three prongs. Then some financial shenanigans happened early 2020—IAC withdrew their funding—and there were a bunch of layoffs right before the pandemic which extremely sucked. It has been stated by multiple people involved that it was basically a miracle that Dropout survived through all of that, but there were definitely some sacrifices along the way to make that happen. Currently, Dropout seems to be thriving with mostly exclusive content with the occasional “first episode of a season” posted to YouTube, OR if Dimension 20 is doing a “sequel season” in an already established campaign they will put the entirety of the previous season on YouTube.

IAC withdrawing their funding did put CH Media in a bind. They had to layoff a lot of people right before pandemic and, understandably, a lot of trauma was had. There were also weird issues with who controlled certain IPs/brands/digital assets (I mostly come at this from a Drawfee POV, it took several years for them to own the Drawga series and be allowed to host all of the episodes on their YouTube, and there was also something about the sound file for their opening animation?) but mainly the difference is what kind of content they generate. Originally Dropout had multiple scripted shows with high budgets and pretty cool effects/animations/stunts (Troopers, Kingpin Katie, Gods of Food, Ultramechatron Team Go!, Cartoon Hell, and WTF 101) whereas now almost all of their shows are variations of improv comedians being put into different scenarios or given different prompts. I’m not just talking about Game Changer and Make Some Noise, because Dimension 20 and Um, Actually also technically fall under that description as well. Which is not to say that these shows are worse than the scripted shows—I subscribe to Dropout, so clearly I’m a fan of their current shows—and the budgets for them have since increased to resemble, if not match, those early shows, but it is a noticeable shift in their content creation strategy as a response to the lack of IAC funding. And I will say: Dropout releases at least three videos a week if not more and at least two of those are long form at 30 minutes plus (Dimension 20 being the longest, of course.)

So, these first two business models are not really the most applicable to Watcher Entertainment considering their origin was to get away from Buzzfeed—they’re probably not keen to be partnered with or purchased by a larger company—but there are some aspects to both that I believe are valuable in at least showing the strategy in how these former YouTube creators could successfully extract themselves from YouTube or how they still utilize YouTube even if it is not their main hosting platform or revenue stream.

Then there is Drawfee and Corridor Digital, both of whom are currently—if not primarily—on YouTube, whose situations are more comparable to what I believe are Watcher’s goals.

Drawfee had to rebuild themselves like a phoenix from the ashes of the CH Media layoff during the beginning/worst of the pandemic. Side note: I’m happy that Nathan (one of the four main artists of the current Drawfee team) at least has forgiven(? or let bygones be bygones) Dropout enough to be on an episode of Game Changer (although I will say that this happened after Drawga was “returned” to Drawfee, and after Dropout officially split from College Humor as a brand.) All that being said, Drawfee was a team of four artists plus their editor who wanted to stick together but basically had all of their support system taken away from them. They took a bit of a break to assess their goals and options, announced a patreon with several tiers with great perks, and stuck to their upload schedule. In addition to two videos a week, they also stream on Twitch weekly, have a patron only stream once a month, and a draw class (for one of the higher tiers) once month. After asking their patrons on the relevant tiers if they were okay with it, they began releasing the patron only stream and the draw class to the general public for free after a month. The patreon perks also include things like merch discount codes, high quality PNGs of the final rendered art, access to the draw class with live interaction/critique, and a commission from the artist of your choice. The only “ads” they run are for their own patreon and merch store and, even then, they’re usually at the end of the videos with a credit scroll of the patron names during their exit banter.

Admittedly, they only have MAYBE eight employees—that’s including their video editor(s?) and their discord mod(s?)—with the main four artists doubling/tripling up duties as additional video editors, CFO, and marketing/merch leads. It’s a very streamlined crew and their production costs are not very high since it’s mostly screen recording of their drawings with their audio recording overlayed onto that footage. Although the video editors do sometimes have clever cuts to relevant images depending on their vamping. Sometimes they will have a guest artist but, again, since it’s screen and audio recordings, there’s no travel/housing costs. So, very minimal expenses due to low production costs and small crew but, again, their only revenue source is the patreon/merch, they don’t do outside ads and they very rarely do live shows.

Corridor Digital is, I think, the most applicable to what Watcher would ideally do, which I suppose is somewhat ironic for this essay in particular considering they’re the only one of the four that I don’t financially support. They have two YouTube channels: their main one being where they show the “final product” videos, but I believe their Corridor Crew channel which started primarily as behind the scenes type of videos is where most of their views come from. Especially their React series (VFX artists, Stuntmen, and Animators React etc.) On Corridor Crew they usually upload two videos a week — one which is a React and the other which goes into fun projects/challenges (involving VFX or not) or using VFX to explain scientific concepts — as well as the first episodes of their exclusive content on their streamer. Also behind that paywall are longer and ad-less versions of the videos on YouTube. They also have merch. All of them have merch, I don’t know why I’m stating that. They don’t have a patreon as far as I know, but I also don’t know if their subscription to their website comes with similar perks like discounted merch or something similar.

Anyway, their studio seems to be about 15 to 20 people — not all of them are VFX artists, of course. I believe they have higher equipment costs than Watcher since, understandably, Corridor has to be on the cutting edge of video editing technology. They do occasionally travel for shoots, but it doesn’t require big teams, and that’s only when the local locations available to them don’t match the requirements for the “final product” videos. Otherwise most of their videos are set in the studio or in the alleyway outside their studio in Los Angeles (the city itself, not just the greater county, though they are in a rougher and thus probably cheaper part of Los Angeles). I personally don’t subscribe to their website primarily because their exclusive shows don’t appeal to me—either they’re too technical or a little too dry; to be fair, most of them are VFX artists first before they are performers—and I don’t particularly feel the need to see the extended cuts of the videos uploaded on YouTube. Also I sometimes get a little bummed out by their lack of diversity.

All of this to say, from these four different business models, a bespoke Frankenstein business model for Watcher could be cobbled together. But also, even with that bespoke Frankenstein, there are some changes that Watcher would have to make: primarily their upload schedule. As of right now, I think they do MAYBE one video a week if not, perhaps, one video every TWO weeks. If they want a monthly subscription model, their rate of content generation would ideally be higher to double/quadruple their current upload rate. Obviously they want to create videos with higher production value, but at that rate of generation, something’s got to give: supplement their TV quality shows with either a behind the scenes type series or an increase of “we get four episodes out of Shane and Ryan get increasingly drunk in someone’s backyard” or something similar. Leaning into shows like Worth A Shot (the first season in which Ricky Wang makes cocktails based on a random ingredient, the second season threw in some competitive aspects which I didn’t really find necessary) or the Beatdown which has relatively low production costs (no travel, one location, maybe two cameras at most therefore smaller crew requirements) but a higher polished look. Otherwise, for a separate streaming subscription service, 2-4 videos a month is not going to cut it.

As of right now they probably can’t back out of the separate streaming subscription service because those set ups usually require some level of contract/paying for servers for the website and whatever is hosting their videos for a set amount of time. However, what really strikes me is that I literally didn’t know they had a patreon until I scrolled through the comments of the first Goodbye Youtube video. Maybe it’s been linked "tactfully" in the descriptions of videos, but considering they claim to be lacking in funds, the fact that they weren’t plugging their patreon at the end of every video is not just strange, but also irresponsible considering they do have 25 employees that they don’t want to layoff.

Additionally, I understand artists needing to be in a space that promotes creativity, but there are cheaper places that must be comparable that aren’t in literal Hollywood. It’s an unnecessary expense. On top of that, other people have already brought up that it was fairly crass to introduce this paywall, attributing it to the increased production costs, when the next planned “new series” is a reboot of an old Buzzfeed series in which people travel and eat expensive food. I’m not even talking about the personal expenses of Steven, Shane, and Ryan; what kind of car they drive or the cost of their wedding venue doesn’t matter on a business model basis.

But getting back to the patreon: again, I literally didn’t know they had one. I’m looking over their tiers— they have $5, $10, $25, and $100 — and for the most part they seem okay, although I think they have more to offer that wouldn’t necessarily cost them more. Ie, something that has baffled me for a while: the fact they don’t sell the mp3s of the Puppet History songs; they already exist and it doesn’t cost them anything additional because they don’t need to put it on physical media. Or maybe they do and they’re not marketing it similarly to how they weren’t overtly marketing their patreon?

And, okay, maybe they didn’t want to seem desperate — in the early days of Dropout and independent Drawfee, they both were very blatant in getting people to subscribe/join their patreon. As they should be. Desperation maybe doesn’t look cool and sexy, but it is earnest in a way that conveys equal effort that fans who can afford it would want to see. The fact that we weren’t getting rotating ten second clips of Steven, Shane, and Ryan asking people to join the patreon at the end of every video — even if its the same clip every three videos — is wild. And yes, the $25 tier includes a shoutout every 3 months on Watcher Weekly+ (which I don't quite understand what that is,) but the fact that they weren’t doing a quick post movie credits scroll of all the patreon names is, again, wild. Once you have that initial list, it’s not too difficult to add any new names that join and put that title overlay on top of, again, those nonexistent ten second clips of the three.

As others have already stated, it seems like an extreme mismanagement of their existing successful revenue streams, if they are actually struggling to pay all of their employees. Which goes into the philosophy part of this essay: don’t assume malice when it might just be incompetence. It’s something that I have to remind myself of often because I do get paranoid about people’s intentions sometimes and I have to check myself. Am I being overly suspicious of what might be just an honest mistake? Am I assigning ill will to an action just because it inconvenienced me?

Yes, of course, a lot of this situation could be misconstrued as straight up greed. But, also, Watcher is a relatively young company, helmed by three people who certainly don’t have experience running their own company:

They like to travel. They like to bring a full crew around with them. They’re renting out a shiny office in the heart of Hollywood where everyone knows is where real show biz happens. They’re adding more employees to the team because surely more people means better. And they want better productions values because the prettier the videos the more people will like them right?

It’s naive. It’s a level of inexperience combined with giving responsibility to officers whose main priority is to entertain. And if that means entertaining themselves and their staff, then they might not know the difference. It’s the kind of mistake that first time managers make—trying to prioritize fun over getting the job done. Prioritizing making friends with their employees rather than making sure the work the employees put in is equal to (or greater than) what you spend on them whether that is in paycheck or bringing them to cool locations for fun shoots. It’s a mistake anyone can make, it's just unfortunate that they made this mistake in front of millions of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s solely a greed induced cash grab.

But then comes the catch-22 of the philosophy—is it worse to assume incompetence than it is to assume malice? Or, in this case, greed. Especially for the heads of a company that holds the livelihoods of 25 employees in their hands. At what point does it not matter if it’s incompetence or greed if the end result is the same?

Is it better to think that Watcher knew about the various other business models of independent creators and just ignored the efforts put into achieving those successes or is it better to think that they didn’t know and just stumbled into one of the worst moves they could have done. Again, other people have mentioned that Great Mythical Morning—which Watcher has had multiple collaborations with—has managed to make the YouTube subscription/tier system work to the point that they can sustain themselves as well as spinoff channels. Is it incompetence or greed that led to Watcher thinking they could bypass that completely in less time and with less content?

I’ve been at this mess of an essay for several hours when I should have been asleep. Ultimately I want to say, regardless of incompetence or greed… yes, Steven is CEO and yes he is ultimately the one who makes the final call but it is disheartening to see the pointed vitriol at Steven specifically and the infantilizing of Shane and Ryan in comparison. Either they’re all silly uwu boys who are messing around not knowing how to run a company, or they’re all complicit in a crass cash grab in an extremely busted economy.

I think what’s most frustrating to me in all this is that there were so many other channels and creators who have literally walked this path before them and, again, whether through incompetence or greed or arrogance, for them to just ignore it… It’s not betrayal because I don’t know them and so there’s no relationship to betray, it’s just so inefficient and convoluted that I don’t understand. Or, no, even if it was greed, it’s an incompetent greed because at least pure greed would have been pushing that patreon every second they could. Their ratio of YouTube subscribers to patreon members is less than 1% and I bet that’s because a lot of their audience, like me, literally didn’t know they had a patreon. I probably would have become a patreon member of theirs had I known earlier, ESPECIALLY if it included access to those Puppet History songs. Drawfee has half as many YouTube subscribers and nearly double the patreon members as Watcher. I’m just baffled, is all, and maybe by this point sleep deprived.

Anyway. That’s my extremely late, completely unnecessary opinion of this situation.

Edit (several hours later after some sleep): I forgot to mention, because they did walk this back almost immediately, even before their "An Update" video, but I believe the original plan was to put EVERYTHING behind that paywall and pull their content from YouTube entirely. Which is, again, extremely baffling, because if ALL of their content is behind a paywall, how would they possibly gain new fans? Even if all of their current fans were able and willing to pay for their separate subscription streaming service, how would a brand new person even stumble on their content enough to want to subscribe if there wasn't a significant amount of "proof of value" free content on YouTube? Again, extremely baffling, and a level of incompetence that overshadows a "cunning" greed. But, like I said earlier, they did walk this decision back almost immediately. If I've misunderstood this and that was never their plan, please let me know, I don't want to be spreading misinformation in a situation that is already so convoluted.

#jacksgreyson #writing #nonfiction #essay #watcher #op-ed #youtube #drawfee #corridor digital #dropout #rocketjump #dungeons and daddies

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niyalationz · 1 month ago

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my HONEST take on jhea + livdom 😛😛

(Again, assuming kayfabe. I dont wanna see any 'jey is married/rhea has a husband' shit !)

Written before the most recent UMMM episodes

JHEA

okay so lets get to basis of whag jhea (gee-uh) is

Their first interaction was like maybe a year ago i believe ? They were still enemies at the time, and rhea even went as far as physically attacking him with a brief case. She DID NOTTT want him at that point of time.

However, as time went on w Rheadom, jey found an opportunity to sliiidee in and he took it!

Good on him #king

Anyways

I personally rlly like them. AND HERES WHY!

RHEA herself is definitely a very playful and silly character. Even when she was with Liv, she was very silly and just had fun. As shown with Damian 24/7, she was ALWAYS playful sort of like a little sister! However, with Dominik, she sort of (what im assuming) started to behave in a way that would appeal to dominik's 'mami' thing. She became ruder, more dominant, and possessive. Also, i should add on, the relationship there was always very sexual. A relationship led by sexual tension will NEVER be a good relationship. Even the 'mami' title was meant to be somewhat sexual at the very least. With Jey, she doesn't have to be dominant or scary or possessive or wtv; she doesn't have to be MAMI. She can be Jey's girl, or just Rhea. She also subtly confirmed that Jey calls her BABY. THATS SUCH A HUGE DIFFERENCE IDC! She upgraded def.

Basically, im saying that Jhea is way better bcz rhea doesn't have to be reliable and the dominant one 24/7, and she doesn't have to play into this sexual character. Instead, she can just be herself with Jey.

However, they NEED to interact more on screen. WWE made them only to never develop their relationship anymore then a few casual glances and conversations.

HOWWWWEVVVERRRR ... ik yall see the way Rhea looks at that man. She is in elll ohh vveee eeeee eee eee and affection 🥴

That also culd technically play into sm rheadom angst if ur into that! Any woman who's able to stare at a man like that and have so much love in her eyes will never b able to truly get over an ex just like 🫰🏽 that!

Anywaysssss ....

Ok also i wanted 2 add that jhea also holds a special place in my heart BECAUSE its like chyna and eddie ykwim? Eddie reminded the world that chyna is still a lady and i feel like jey would remind US that rhea his still a lady and most importantly his lady!

LIVDOM

Yall are gonna be rrreeeallllyyy mad at this oouuu... oh well!

First of all, this is NOT a good relationship. And it's not js bcz of what u think I think it is. Lemme put yall on.

Liv constantly stalked and harassed Dominik for weeks. She touched him w/o his consent even if he told her not tew, but she didn't gaf! But, guess what, he fell inlove w her. Yall know what that is?

YH I SAID IT ! SOOOO WHATTTTT . Anyways!

The relationship also feels a little forced. Like Liv bragged abt getting w him and being a home-wrecker. Dom ykdw. Dpmo boy. It sort of feels like Liv only got w dominik because it was a way to get at Rhea. And when she realized rhea dgaf abt him no more, she brought in raquel; ANOTHER person who can fw rhea's mental. I also doubt Liv will stay with dominik for tooo long because 1. Dominik is not a good wrestler. Ok i said it his bookings are ass and he always cheats even if he is a heel! 2. He can genuinely not provide anything for liv. He can't fight the women's division for her, to protect her from any girl bigger than her because like.. not only is he a pussy but he also got bodied by rhea like three times? Raquel howrver, CAN fight the women's division. She can fight any girl rlly, bcz shes big asl and strong! Raquel is 100% more helpful to liv and she rlly dont need the judgment day or that clown dominik at all if she has raquel!

With that being said, let's look at the positives!

Ok there arent any! But hmo pls

I hated the relationship because, everything abt it is then being sexual. 24/7. Like, kissing, touching, holding each other, all these forms of pda and what not.

BUT ... that changed a bit when i seen that liv felt bad abt the cage and got him a gift! Ok we're getting somewhere w this relationship period!

Hopefully they'll keep going in this positive direction for livdom , and wont js keep having them everywhere while not building or adding onto their character/bond/ and relationship at all.

OVERALL ?

OVER ALL THOUGHTS ???????

Weelllllllll

Jhea is a solid 8.5/10, i'd make it 10/10 if it didnt feel like rhea was js using jey as a rebound since her man was gone. But, thankfully, it doesn't rlly feel like that and they both make it easy to forget she even dated dominik! Yayyyy!

Livdom is a 6/10. Not anything less than a five, but definitely not above an 8. Ykwim? I seen this clip of Liv sort of pushing dominik's hand away, and maybe that's a sign of her not rlly fw him OR maybe it's js him moving his hand away and didnt see liv's hand as she went to grab it. Idk who knows! Not me thats for sure!

In general tho, i'm glad rheadom broke up; even if it hurts my heart to admit. I deadass called them mama y papa & summerslam had my heart hurting for dayysss after.

the reason im glad they split is bczzz Dominik had always been somebodies sidekick, whether it be his dad, rhea, or liv. I wanna see dominik completely alone, and managing his way without help at all. Maybe for just a few segments or wtv! WWE has done a great job making his character look pathetic alr, but it seems a lil unrealistic as Dominik himself is REY MYSTERIO'S son. Anybody w rey's blood is gonna be somewhat good at wrestling okurrr ?

Okay i forgot what elese i wanted to add on bcz i wrote this like two(?) weeks ago and forgot all abt it thne i went to finish it but tumblr deleted what i wrote so i had to just go off the first draft .

Anyways yall have a good night its 8:29 and i spent my entire day out n about for my bday week 🫠 im DRAINED

Bye yall

#wwe #wwe raw #rhea ripley #mami rhea #jey uso #jhea #livdom #liv morgan #dominik mysterio #hot take #💗niiyah post

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lehhoh7822 · 8 months ago

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personal theory on how the wttt verse works in terms of states

hi gang

cw: i do mention some policy/politics as a referential thing because this is a satirical series about american politics so these issues appear within the series.

welcome to the table. gotta love it. so

i think states represent

their people

their policy

their environment

(there's more focus on the first two definitely however the last one is also relevant. i also like mentioning this because it allows for good fic content, frankly.)

and then the relevancy of this changes depending on whats going on. when a state reflects one of these very strongly and cannot represent another, then you get manifestations of that. alternatively, enough division within the state and you get things like new jersey (watch his intro episode) and texas (cmon gang we all know im talking about austin). you can also see regional differences if they're stark enough (nocal and socal).

because texas is, within canon, implied to have did and non healthy multiplicity ("i feel like i saw this on Moonknight"), my next point is that depending on how geniunely major a difference is and how poorly one of the things is being represented by the state, the more intrusive whatever is going on becomes. so while most of the gang is generally..... kind of... fine... texas, as a state that is a swing state but still making big discriminatory policy represents the policy well, and the rights and needs of the people less so, meaning that instead of the mostly functional/positive multiplicity seen throughout the series starts becoming less functional altogether.

the government also represents people, policy and a little bit of environment. it/he also represents the system and its needs/wants; such as explicitly benefitting from the industrial military complex over in america, or with the democratic party utilising big issues as part of a campaign (re, overturning roe v wade).

states also probably have some kind of magic to them; they're manifestations who are older than the states as they are part of the US, and we know that loui definitely got something going on there. mother nature tries to get florida and when she misses, both texas and louisiana are soaked from afar, again, representing environment, but also magic is an abstract property which is perfectly realistic in thsi universe. the government does the statehouse; which is a house which externally appears to be normal and holds over 50 rooms and somehow was not destroyed already. this is all to say, the idea of states being able to manifest shit is not beyond canon. go nuts. show nuts, even

yeah lol anyone got any agreeeing/disagreeing opinions

#welcome to the table #welcome to the statehouse #texas wttt #florida wttt #wttt #wttt headcannon

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ducklooney · 2 months ago

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Hiya! Dunno if you're the right person to ask, but since you seem to like Gyro Gearloose as much as I do, do you think that he should have a love interest? Now, I know most people ship him with Fenton and I know he used to have multiple girlfriends in comics (like Dana Data or Mathilda) but none of them were used afterwards (they were just one-shot characters I think) nor were really his "type" in my opinion. I remember some years ago, I had an oc that was supposed to be Gyro's "female counterpart" (like most of Duckverse/Mouseverse characters' love interests are) and a girlfriend but it kinda failed, I plan on redesigning her soon. However I've seem some people headcanoning him as asexual what I'm fine with, but I still think it would be a fun idea to imagine what his actual love interest would look like if it was canon

Hi! Yes, Gyro is one of my favorite characters. No, you've asked a good question since Gyro doesn't have a longtime love interest like Donald has Daisy. Usually many Gyro fans ship Gyro with male characters and not only Fenton but also Donald, Fethry, Gladstone, Mad Ducktor and others. Yes, I know that there are mostly disposable girls in comics, but in my opinion Gyro has a corresponding love of the opposite gender. And that he has his own love interests that have appeared more than once. In my opinion, they would be some of these characters:

Dickie Duck - Paperetta Ye Ye Dickie is a college girl in her early 20s and she is the granddaughter of Goldie O'Gilt from the Italian and Brazilian comics. Gyro is roughly between 25 and 30, but the two can really relate. Gyro is mostly kind to Dickie and seems quite shy. It was best shown in the comic strip Ducks on the Road where Gyro, Dickie and Daisy go on a tour of the USA playing music from the 1960s and 1970s and there Gyro and Dickie literally love each other. I think they would work well.

2. Genialina Edy Son

Most people don't know who she is, so I'll just say she's mostly a seamstress and fashion designer and the lead costume designer for Super Daisy (She-Venger or Paperinika). Just as Gyro serves Duck Avenger for gadgets and his costume, so does she for Paperinika. I think in an Italian comic (it's called Topolino) that she and Gyro love each other, so they really have similar personalities and I think they can relate together. And they are the same age if I'm not mistaken. She was created by Giorgio Cavazzano and that she used to be a student of Gyro around inventing gadgets and as I said before they can really be together.

3. Unnamed female chicken from Sir Gyro de Gearloose episode from Ducktales 1987

Unfortunately, her name is not known, but in my opinion she is also an excellent partner for Gyro. She only appeared once to get her toaster fixed but it ended up breaking so she was mad at Gyro whom she called Gyro "Gadget boy". Later when Gyro and Donald's nephews came back from medieval times she came to apologize and Gyro fixed her toaster and she gave him a bouquet of flowers as a sign of apology. Or was it the other way around, I can't remember exactly, but she's certainly a great partner for Gyro, but unfortunately she doesn't have a name, so she could be called anything.

4. Dr Sara Bellum

Yes, that's her name, even before her namesake in the series The Powerpuff Girls and the same namesake in the Carmen Sandiego series. It's just that she's from Darkwing Duck and she's an extremely excellent scientist who is the head of S.H.U.S.H.'s research division and works for S.H.U.S.H. organization against F.O.W.L. She is also clumsy at times and her inventions go awry. Smart and stupid at the same time, but her desire is to win the Nobel Prize and she is really very pleasant. And somehow she reminds of scientists from the Far East who came to America. Of course she and Gyro never met or met except maybe in the Dangerous Currency comic (crossover Ducktales and Darkwing Duck comic), so I can't say for sure, but I definitely think she and Gyro would get along great and maybe Gyro would work for S .H.U.S.H. to have the opportunity to do so. Since I usually cross sometimes Darkwing Duck with Donald Duck as well as their characters so why not with Gyro with Dr. Sara Bellum. In my opinion, the same ideal pair, although more like my headcanon, but it depends how for whom.

5. Della Duck

It sounds twisted, but I can really make the two of them work. Granted, this was only in Ducktales 2017, where the two really didn't have a good relationship, considering Della was stuck on the moon for ten years and used Gyro's Black Licorice invention to survive and when she got back to Earth she was supposed to takes revenge but only one episode had Gyro almost attack Della (I think it's in the Timephoon episode but I'm not sure) so she fought back. Unfortunately, there was no interaction between the two of them in that series, but I could have made that couple work, even though I don't ship them. I'm wondering if Gyro is the father of Huey, Dewey and Louie from Ducktales 2017 since he took Della Duck's DNA and cloned them. Again this is purely theoretical and my hypothesis.

As for comic book Gyro and comic book Della, they get along very well, even Gyro managed to speak with Della Duck in a Dutch comic dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Donald Duck and his birthday. Although they didn't talk much, Huey, Dewey and Louie talked more with their mom, but certainly if Della Duck came back to Earth they could work together as a good couple, in my opinion.

Source: https://imgur.com/a/family-ties-della-duck-debut-comic-3iGqH

That Gyro has other girlfriends, although I can't remember exactly what their names are and which one would be right for him. It's not a problem if Gyro is with an OC (original character) either, so it all depends on who you pair him with.

These are just my suggestions and my views as I see it. I hope I helped you and I apologize to others if this bothers them, this is just my opinion. I hope you are satisfied with my answers and if something is not clear to you, feel free to ask me. :D

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vyingeyes · 10 months ago

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I believe in my heart of hearts that there are five clones per squad in Star Wars. Yes, I am using Domino Squad as my lone supporting evidence. They are arguably the most definitive example of a standard CT squad we get (at least in the TCW show).

According to Wookieepedia, though, this does not add up. The wiki claims that each corps had 36,864 troopers to be led. This, notably, does not divide by 5. It does divide by 4, but why would Domino Squad be the outlier? I find it much easier to justify why the canonical 4-trooper squads (specifically the Bad Batch and Delta Squad) would have 4 members rather than a "standard" 5. And contrary to all of this, the wiki purports the idea of each squad having nine members. Which... Yes, that adds up, but the idea of ALL THREE OF THE AFOREMENTIONED SQUADS being outliers somehow drives me up the wall.

Instead, I propose a corps of 40,960 troopers. Each corps has 16 regiments (each being 2,560 troopers). Each regiment has 4 battalions (of 640 troopers), and each battalion has 4 companies (individually 160 troopers). This is where we get into the units that we're more familiar with—such as Ghost Company and Torrent Company. Breaking the companies up gives us 4 platoons, such as the one headed by Waxer. Here is where I step out again from the trenches of division and multiplication.

I want a division between Platoons and Squads. This is where my "Units" come in. A unit is two squads squished together. Unlike a squad or a platoon, which are static, a unit might be a combination of clones best suited for the assignment at hand. Units would be referred to as their squad names combined (ie "Green-Crown Unit", "Orbit-Nexu Unit") and the mix-and-match nature would allow skills to be better distributed for the needs of the clones within. You could pair a squad with a medic with a squad that's going to be under heavy fire, or a squad with a heavy gunner can be put with a squad that needs to be covered while they try to help retrieve the wounded from the field.

There would be two "heads" of a unit, since each squad would have a single squad lead. Rather than pick between the two, they would be expected to work together and coordinate their squad members together.

A platoon would be 4 units, or 40 troopers in total.

EDIT 8/27: This just got reblogged again and for anyone interested I have made a few tiny changes based on some reblogs (which I did not see soon enough to reply to meaningfully). For one thing, I agreed with the comment that it's stupid to not have something between Corps and Regiments. In come Divisions. As far as I can tell (from Wookieepedia and memory, because I'm not going through every episode to fact check for a niche military unit type) Divisions were Not really used consistently in TCW era. For my worldbuilding purposes, a division is 1/4 of a corps and composed of 4 regiments. Every day George Lucas makes me do more work. Someone needs to pay me for doing math in my free time.

Also, I think there's been a good bit of critique on my idea of units having two leaders. I use the term "leader" very loosely. In terms of actual power, they have none. They're in charge of keeping their squads on task and coordinating with each other; some squads will naturally have chemistry with others, especially if they've worked together before, but for squads that don't get along, think of them as supervisors connecting two different work branches. Their only special job is to make sure the ACTUAL jobs (determined by higher ups [Lieutenants, Captains, Commanders, etc etc]) is done.

I liked the bit of commentary on backend workers (In TCW, this would include the troopers we see on the bridge of the Venators or in the security rooms in prison, etc) but I do think they're just specialized squads/platoons/etc. I do not have the willpower to give them any sort of special category in my already incredibly twisting Obsidian vault.

Also, the question of "how long did this take?": I am an English major :') Math is hard. Many hours. Many separate days. I am still changing it when it seems unrealistic. I have no actual military experience so a lot of research is involved. I THINK my numbers are approximately comparable to Life but I may be wrong. Sometimes I'll be writing and go "wow, this is bad" and then have to clarify ANOTHER section of unexplored worldbuilding. Why did you do this to me, George? Save me Dave Filoni.

#star wars clone wars #star wars #clone troopers #tcw #sw tcw #star wars tcw #the clone wars #clone wars #worldbuilding

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wanderersrest · 7 months ago

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Some Idle Musings on Patlabor

I've talked about Patlabor twice in some capacity, so I figured why not go for the hat trick, no? (EDIT: The hat trick was ruined because I got tilted by a certain bad take involving Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans)

Patlabor is probably one of my favorite anime series of all time, especially when it comes to mecha anime. Granted, a big part of that is due to me recently coming into ownership of pretty much the entire series on blu-ray, but still. And seeing as how the second post on here was about how people should check it out (among other mecha shows), I figured I'd dive a little bit deeper into at least Patlabor. Who knows, I might touch on all of the other series at some point. I'll definitely cover G Gundam at some point, that much is assured.

Anyways. Patlabor. This isn't going to be a super deep dive, but there are three things I want to highlight with this series that I really like.

The World is Carefully Crafted to Justify Its Giant Robots

A common point of praise for Patlabor is due to how the worldbuilding is set up to accommodate the giant robots. A quick synopsis of Patlabor: giant robots known as Labors were created to help with construction projects. Following the creation of Labors came Labor-related created crimes. To combat these crimes, a special type of Labor was created to stop these types of criminal activity: the Patrol Labor, or Patlabor for short.

And it's not just there that the series fleshes out the Labors. The titular Patlabors (specifically the Model 98-AV Ingrams employed by the main characters) require a whole team outside of the pilots who operate the Labors, including spotters, transport platform operators, and mechanics. The television series also makes it a point of highlighting that the important part of the Labor is not the Labor itself, but the pilot data stored in the machine's computer. The world is so thought out, that the television series even touches on Labor insurance (yes really, and it's probably one of my favorite episodes of the TV series, maybe out of every anime series I've ever watched). This is, if I understand things correctly, why a lot of people love the OVA timeline (which consists of the Early Days OVA as well as the movies).

Great Characters Part 1: Noa Izumi

If the OVA timeline has more of a focus on the worldbuilding and the politics at hand, then the TV timeline (consisting of the TV anime and the New Files OVA) hones in on the character interactions. It's a real shame too, because the main cast are a pretty likeable group. Our main character in particular, Ingram Unit 1 Pilot Noa Izumi, is a delight to watch in pretty much every scene she's in, especially in the TV series. To it's credit, the OVA timeline does keep a lot of the appeal behind the characters. If anything, I'd argue that the change in tone of the OVA timeline is both natural and an extension of the pessimism following the bursting of the Japanese Economic Bubble.

But back to Noa, part of what I like about her as a character is her resilience. There are moments throughout the various entries in the franchise where she gets knocked down, but due to the nature of her work, she gets back up to finish the job. That kind of attitude helps to round out her more usual cheery and kind of naive attitude to most things. Also, she's very hot-blooded. Which is great for any mecha series, regardless of the style of mecha show you're watching. Speaking of hot blood, I think I'd be remiss to not mention my other favorite character in the series (that's not Division 2 chief Kichii Gotoh, because that's cheating)...

Great Characters 2: Isao Ota

I think the YouTuber Argonbolt described Ingram Unit 2 pilot Isao Ota best: "...he's 50% gun nut, 50% [ego]." It's almost impossible for me to talk about how great Noa is as a character without bringing up Ota. I could just say that he works great as a foil to Noa, but I think I'd be selling our red-blooded gun nut short. Part of what makes Ota such a great character to me is the fact that, whereas a lot of Noa's growth pertains to her as a person, Ota's growth is essentially tied to how he handles his Labor.

This is because Ota is a hothead.

No, seriously. Ota's hotheadedness is a large part of what makes him such a great character, and that's just going off of the sheer entertainment value of it all. It also helps that Ota being an American-styled cowboy cop (even moreso than the American Kanuka Clancy, and she's already a bit of a cowboy cop) oftentimes has consequences. Heck, a lot of Division 2's notoriety stems largely from Ota's hotheadedness. But Ota's hotheadedness often hides aspects that betray the manly image he's crafted throughout the series. It's little things like how he frets over Noa like an older brother when she runs off on her own to chase down a bank robber, or the change in his demeanor when Kanuka and her replacement, Takeo Kumagami, start getting into an argument with each other. This depth of character is better explored in the episodes that focus squarely on Ota, with my favorite of the bunch being the aforementioned insurance episode (TV Anime Epsiode 37, "I'm Selling Peace of Mind/Safety on Sales"). Without getting into spoilers, part of what makes it great is how the episode highlights how hard it is to avoid a lot of property damage when it comes to piloting giant robots. But I'm now rambling a bit too much, so let me jump ahead to the last bit about what I like about Patlabor.

This Series Loves Giant Robots

More than anything else, Patlabor loves its giant robots. My first time learning about this series was seeing some random user on Reddit go "See, unlike Gundam, Patlabor is cool." And if there are two things that make me, as an ardent fan of mecha anime, really upset, it's one of at least three things:

Bashing series X in order to prop up series Y (Bonus points if its Gundam)

Saying X is unlike other mecha shows because X focuses on the characters (No 86/Evangelion/Code Geass/Gurren Lagann fans, 86/Eva/CG/TTGL is not special, especially when Fang of the Sun Dougram/Space Runaway Ideon/Mobile Suit Gundam/Getter Robo exist.)

Denigrating a series because it's not super realistic (Basically the whole "Real vs Super" debate. I'll touch on it when I talk about G Gundam.)

But after watching Patlabor on my own, I realized that this series really loves its giant robots. It's often shown through both the worldbuilding, which is really just an excuse to justify having giant robots in the setting to begin with, and also the fact that it's main character is, for all intents and purposes, a mecha otaku.

Final Thoughts

Off the top of my head, I don't really have much else to say about Patlabor for now. Granted, there were a lot of things I didn't get to talk about in depth like how the computer systems the Labors employ are, in my opinion, a great example of a seemingly realistic take on AI (not the generative kind, just AI in general), or how one of my favorite character interactions in the series is the pseudo parent-child bond between Chief Engineer Sakaki and Noa and how their relationship reminds me of my relationship with my dad. Most importantly, while I do have an overall preference of the TV timeline over the OVA timeline, I don't think it's necessarily better. The two timelines have their own strengths, but both timelines benefit from the other existing. It also doesn't cut down on the fact that there are still people out there who enjoy Patlabor, and that's really all that matters.

Anyways, I'm going to go crawl back into a hole and wait for any morsel of news involving Patlabor EZY.

#anime and manga #patlabor #mecha #noa izumi #isao ota

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where1endandyoubeg1n · 4 months ago

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money rock is definitely the most divisive season of schoolhouse rock. chances are you haven't seen it if you don't have the series on dvd or didn't tune into disney to watch, but the people who have seen it seem to hold a similar opinion.

on one hand, there's songs like tax man max and the check's in the mail that are top 10 material for songs in the whole series(which is ironic since they're both the most outdated in the season). a lot of them have very distinct instrumentals that hold an even wider array of instruments than songs of the original series- a good example is the steel pan drum in this for that. they really toy with fun musical genres, such as a bossa nova/elevator music vibe in 7.50 once a week that features a strange but catchy cowbell breakdown, or the showtuney feel of tax man max, or the country twang that adds some nice spice to dollars and sense. they were really willing to stretch their horizions a bit here, and that's also obvious with their experiments with the schoolhouse rock artstyle. you have the ones that stay faithful, like this for that, tyrannosaurus debt, and tax man max, but some slight departures that feel true to the originals yet very fresh. 7.50 once a week and where the money goes are stellar examples of that. the character design is still very shr, but the lines are cleaner and the animation is a little more adventerous due to their slightly bigger budget. becky sue of dollars and sense as well as her animals on the farm are good examples: still obviously schoolhouse rock, but a little more stylized in a different direction. then there's walking on wall street and the check's in the mail, which have extremely distinct animation that barely harkens to old schoolhouse rock. it's choppy, lineweight is played with lots, and character designs take larger departures from the old seasons. and it looks stellar. especially in the latter. everything feels fresh but familiar.

however, it's not without it's drawbacks. there's more forgettable songs than a normal schoolhouse rock season; i watched all the episodes in a big blend when i was little(i owned the dvd, hah) and couldn't tell the difference between old and new shr since i was a dumb lil baby. however, i could hum at least a few motifs or mention at least a couple interesting moments in the animation for every single song in every season. except this one. the only ones i could give you more than one thing on were dollars and sense(obviously, since that one was the big episode of the season), 7.50 once a week, and walking on wall street. and as much as i sing the praises of tax man max, it is the only shr episode i watched when i was younger and as of a month ago, before i rewatched, i could tell you nothing on. gun to my head i could at least remember the tuba opening to where the money goes or the first chorus to the check's in the mail, but i wiped tax man max from my memory. it's just not a sticky season, and i think that just comes down to the fact that it's teaching money. it's literally called money rock. those lessons have to be taught far more straightforward than any of the other subjects. it's very tough stretch it into anything really cool or revolutionary, a problem similar to a few songs in america rock. you can't personify the concept with a character like bill or verb or the prepositions, and you're hard-pressed to be able to twist and morph the concept like in telegraph line or conjunction junction. tyrannosaurus debt does it well enough with equating national debt to a dinosaur monster eating the money, but there's not too much wiggle room. this is little fault of the creators and just comes with the subject matter, however it negatively impacts the season. some instrumentals are also really bland, too. tyrannosaurus debt is a big offender, and while the steel pan drum in this for that is cool for a few seconds, it gets unimpressive quickly. the characters also aren't super memorable. like, i've not seen people putting the caveman from this for that or lester the investor from walking on wall street on a pedestal like lots of other characters(though becky sue and tax man max are icons). sometimes they get a little boring.

in conclusion: i yapped for about 30 minutes? holy crap. this is a long post. anyways, money rock good(but not great). feel free to tell me what you think.

#schoolhouse rock #yapping #rambles

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whoreviewswho · 5 months ago

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Only One Race Can Survive! - The Daleks, 1963

Part I - The Mutants

Sydney Newman, 1986: "Being a real aficionado of science fiction, I hated stories which used bug-eyed monsters, otherwise known as BEM’s. I wrote in my memo that there would be no bug-eyed monsters in Doctor Who. And after a few episodes, Verity turned up with the Daleks! I bawled her out for it, but she said ‘Honest, Sydney, they’re not bug-eyed monsters – they’re human beings who are so advanced that their bodies have atrophied and they need these casings to manipulate and do the things they want!’. Of course, the Daleks took off and captured everybody’s imagination. Some of the best thing I have ever done are the thing I never wanted to do. It’s true! It’s worked out that way".

Like most periods of the show's history, Doctor Who's inception was a tumultuous time behind the scenes. Script editor David Whitaker, in what would quickly become a desperate hunt for reliable writers and workable scripts, approached writer Terry Nation having seen some potential in his script for ABC TV's science-fiction anthology Out of this World. Despite having, by his now admission, no faith in the programme, Nation soon found himself out of work and committed to a six-episode serial that would air fourth in the season's run.

Initially entitled The Survivors, Nation's original pitch to Whitaker was quite different to the story that eventually made it to screen but kept a lot of the same themes and allegory intact. Nation's serial originally featured three races; the Daleks, the Thals and a third species whose ancestors were responsible for the neutron bomb that devastated Skaro and had returned to the planet to make amends. The set-pieces were more extravagant in initial drafts and the Daleks less definitively villainous but producer Verity Lambert was impressed with Nation's work, offering him a seventh episode to allow greater expansion of his ideas.

David Whitaker, 1979: "Terry Nation didn’t want to write for us, considering it rather demeaning that he’d even been asked." Terry Nation, 1987: "I had no faith in the show. It was the old writer’s axiom, ‘Take the money and fly like a thief’."

As Nation continued to work, the programme's production elsewhere became more fraught. The two serials commissioned for writer Anthony Coburn required increasing rewrites, the initial first story that would become Planet of Giants was deemed unworkable and budgetary concerns had ensured John Lucarotti's epic Marco Polo would not fill the intended third slot. Much to the dismay of Donald Wilson and Sydney Newman, two of Doctor Who's three founding fathers, Nation's The Mutants suddenly became the strongest contender for the second serial.

Verity Lambert, 1980s: “The crisis came when Donald Wilson saw the scripts for the first Dalek serial. Having spent so much time defending ‘Doctor Who’, he saw the Daleks as just bug-eyed monsters, which went against what he felt should be the theme of the science-fiction stories. There was a strong disagreement between us, in fact it went as far as Donald Wilson telling us not to do the show. What saved it in the end was purely that fact that we had nothing to replace it in the time allotted. It was the Daleks or nothing."

David Whitaker, 1979: "Actually, that Dalek story was educational in a subtle way – it showed the dangers of war, pacifism and racial hatred. It contained many admirable and idealistic truths in it, and it was also a jolly good adventure story."

To this day, Terry Nation is somewhat of a divisive figure in the Doctor Who fandom. On the one hand, we have the man who penned what is arguably Doctor Who's most important, formative and defining serial. He is the creator of, not just an iconic monster but, iconic worlds and the core spirit and characterisation of Doctor Who itself and its leading ensemble. Yet, on the other hand, we have a writer who made no bones about his disinterest in the scripts he was writing. It has not become controversial among fans to condemn Terry Nation as a lazy, even hack, writer. One of these things is probably true; Terry Nation was a very lazy writer. But to call him a hack? Not in my opinion. Terry Nation is a very simple writer, certainly. The man's approach to structure was very traditionally rooted in the sci-fi serial format, his style of dialogue would not seem out of place in then contemporary comic books and his plots could never be described as complex or involved stories.

But why should any of these things be flaws? So, the man could write in the mould of classic sci-fi serials? Doctor Who was in the mould of a classic sci-fi serial and what Nation understood so well was that week-to-week structure that so many of his successors, and a good deal of his contemporaries, failed to get a hold of. Sure, Terry Nation serials are awkward stories to binge but they were never designed that way. Ever tried reading Oliver Twist more than one chapter at a time? It is horrible. Every individual chapter is truly an episode unto itself with great moments of character and action that effectively recap the story and move the grander plot forward. This is why, despite the unusual length of seven episodes, The Daleks still holds my attention for the whole runtime. Possibly more than any other writer's work on the original programme, Nation's episodes are consistently great to jump into just as single episodes. This also goes hand in hand with the very direct and simple dialogue really works as well. It is never subtle but it is always efficient and perfectly compliments the flavour of adventure serial that Nation consistently captured. Terry Nation is a good writer. Obviously. He is so good that even when he could not care less, and most of the time he did not, he could always deliver fun and beyond competent scripts.

Terry Nation, 1978: "It was quite a good eerie beginning and, at the end of it – the last frame of the picture – we saw a bit of a Dalek. We didn’t see a whole Dalek. And the phones started to ring. People saying, “Christ, what is that thing? A week later, the Dalek appeared."

The Daleks is a masterful blend of serialised action/adventure, thought provoking science fiction ideas and positively chilling horror that is well beyond the brief that Nation was given. From the moment it begins, this serial is unsettling. There is, of course, a brilliant dramatic irony baked into the premise that operates as both a clue to what is really going on and a genuinely compelling danger for our heroes. There is a school of thought that has concluded that The Daleks is too long but, again, I feel that this is a very contemporary mindset that somewhat misses what this story is going for. Say what you will about Destiny of the Daleks, for a not-at-all random example, but the first episode of this story, titled The Dead Planet, is not an exercise in killing time until the Dalek shows up to menace Barbara at the end. Despite what we know now, The Dead Planet does not have a reveal at the end. There is no frame of reference for the audience to project onto what is happening at all. Instead, the episode is a slowly rising crescendo of intrigue and tension that spans from the sparseness of a silent, dead forest to the gradually more claustrophobic and unfamiliar terrain of the city until Barbara gets cornered in an unknown corridor by an unknown terror. It is beautifully constructed adventure fiction that plays on the natural marriage of primal horrors, being the least creatures alive on the planet, and the imagery of contemporary nuclear warfare.

An Unearthly Child is a story defined by juxtaposition and survivalism which are both ideas that Nation picks up on beautifully in his story but he also brings themes of morality, identity and action. The Daleks is an almost biblical parable. With An Unearthly Child and The Daleks, the two core identities of the show appear to emerge. The former is a cynical and unrelenting programme that believes in unstoppable forces of nature that, no matter how hard we try to escape them or destroy them, will always be there at the core of our beings. With the latter, it is something more optimistic. A programme that is insistent, no matter how devastating the situation, that we can affect our destinies and help those around us to strive for better lives where we learn from our mistakes, can change and move forward. It is this version of Doctor Who, unsurprisingly, that the majority of the franchise believes in.

One thing Wilson did insist upon this serial was an experienced director whom he could trust to steer the ship and Christopher Barry was called in to take the job. Barry, however, was in the midst of other commitments leading to the unique situation where he only directed part of the story – episodes one, two, four and five. Richard Martin made his directorial debut with episode three and went on to direct episodes six and seven as well as the following serial and the Daleks' immediate next two appearances. Barry would also return to the series directing serials infrequently until 1979. As excellent as Martin's work in this serial is, and he realises some pretty spectacular imagery and visual effects for a little programme and with no experience, I could sing the praises of Christopher Barry all day. His choice of camera shots are incredibly dynamic throughout the episodes he helms with some particularly creative uses of angles and composition that really get the best out of these tiny sets. So many classic Doctor Who stories are hampered or even ruined by flat and uninspired direction (and eventually Barry will be the culprit of such a thing) but The Daleks, for my money, stands proud as one of the most cinematic serials of its era.

The cast are all excellent with great moments to shine. William Russell is always on good form and one of my favourite moments of the serial is when he smashes Susan's flower. It's a brilliant and revealing character beat for him. Jacqueline Hill is great and has some epic girl bossing toward the end ("Do you always do what Ian tells you?" "No."). Carole Ann Ford sells the desperation of Susan's mini-quest very well but let ustake some time to single out for praise is William Hartnell who turns in possibly the defining performance of at least his first year in the leading role and steals every single scene that he’s in. Considering the overly aggressive and immoral characterisation of An Unearthly Child, it was not necessarily a given that Doctor Who would be a likeable character any way moving forward but this is the story that first truly defines him. He is still arrogant, selfish and perhaps a little morally ambiguous but he is also shown to be deeply passionate, delightfully witty and shows more than a handful of moments of genuine charm. I love how character driven the plot ultimately is with little more than the Doctor's selfish, stubbornness to please himself that puts the whole crew in danger. It is worth mentioning too how the fluid link saga things on the TARDIS' identity as a machine, in the literal human understanding of the word. Very rarely beyond this serial would the TARDIS actually be treated in this way by the narrative, as opposed to simply being a magical element that carries us from A to B. The Doctor's actions are cruel and self-interested but by the time he is encamped among the Thals and one can see his delight in getting to know their people and their science, he suddenly becomes such a fully realised person in ways that he was not before. The Doctor is a scientist and an explorer, not some vindictive wizard with indefinable motives.

While the presentation, and perhaps core value itself, is a little dated, I also appreciate the Doctor's, and the rest of the main cast's, push for the Thals to be proactive as a peoples. It is a little clunky on the whole and comes off as a pretty pure endorsement against pacifism (though Ian's line "Pacifism only works when everybody feels the same" is a difficult claim to refute) but the nature of the message, insisting that standing up to oppressive forces and taking control of one's own life, is one worth conveying and an essential step in the development of the Doctor's morality. We are not entirely there yet, this is not a heroic character (indeed, he actively causes the Daleks to die), but this is the biggest leap we will get until the Daleks' next appearance.

Speaking of, let's get into the Daleks themselves. It is remarkable how close they are to being fully formed in their debut story. It disappoints me no end that this version of the Daleks, the calculating Nazi scientists allegory, is so ill-frequently represented in subsequent media appearances. The Daleks barely kill anybody at all in this script, largely seen just deliberating and experimenting in the labs of their cities, making the few uses of their weaponry a genuinely awesome shock for the audience. It is also a lot of fun seeing the original educational edict play out, for the only time with the Daleks; they cannot leave the floor of their city for they are powered by static electricity.

The true unsung hero of this production continues to be Ray Cusick, the BBC designer who somewhat infamously took over from a young Ridley Scott who was too busy to take on the job. Before even getting to the main event, we should note that the production design all around is stunning on this story. All of the sets and costumes that are dripping in glorious futuristic aestheticism that would make Star Trek jealous. The Daleks look incredible and, again, it is too easy to take for granted how truly iconic they are. The most radical redesign in the entire barely strays at all from their original realisation here. Even watching them today, it is unbelievable watching them in action. Just how smoothly and freakishly the creatures glide around their home world. They are just so thoroughly alien and it was one of the best choices of the production that their true nature is never actually revealed. How is it possible for the Daleks to be so far from anything resembling humanity? It is left purely for the imagination and to great effect. While Nation was very keen on the image of a gliding creature, allegedly inspired by the the Georgian State Ballet, Cusick was the one who really created the visual identity of the Dalek creature.

Terry Nation, 1987: “Raymond Cusick made a tremendous contribution and I would love to be glib enough to put it into percentage terms, but you can’t do that. You start with something that’s a writer’s dream, that he’s put down in words, and amended, and added to in conversations. Something starts there... I think they may have given him a hundred pound bonus, but he was a salaried employee... The copyrights resided with the BBC and myself... he made a tremendous contribution. Whatever the Daleks are or were, his contribution was vast."

Ray Cusick, 1992: "Everyone was rushing around corridors saying ‘Oh, there’ll be Dalek films, Dalek soap, Dalek tea towels’, they thought there’d be lots of money. I was very friendly with Terry Nation and we appeared on a very famous show called ‘Late Night Line-Up’, and I remember asking him after the show ‘What about the films, Terry?’. And I never saw him again!"

As well we know, Terry Nation is not a subtle writer. In a lot of ways, Terry Nation's scripts seem to defy analysis. Funnily enough, this is something that he has very much in common with, a remarkably different Doctor Who writer, Russell T Davies – neither of them are particularly keen on subtext. As noted above and well documented at this point, there are parallels to be drawn between the Daleks and Nazi scientists. These cold and calculating survivors of a long and brutal war who skulk about in their underground bunkers, preparing to exterminate an entire race that poses no threat to them. As Ian describes them; "They're afraid of you because you're different from them" These are parallels that Nation was very intentionally drawing in his work (and would draw even more intently come Genesis of the Daleks)but there is a particular quote from Nation about his creations that I find deeply tantalising;

Terry Nation, 1978: “I can’t isolate one character [that the Daleks are based upon]. But I suppose you could say the Nazis. The one recurring dream I have – once or twice a year it comes to me – is that I’m driving a car very quickly and the windscreen is a bit murky. The sun comes onto it and it becomes totally opaque. I’m still hurtling forwards at incredible speed and there’s nothing I can see or do and I can’t stop the car. That’s my recurring nightmare and it’s very simply solved by psychologists who say you’re heading for your future. You don’t know what your future is. However much you plead with somebody to save you from this situation, everybody you turn to turns out to be one of ‘Them’. And there’s nobody left – You are the lone guy. The Daleks are all of ‘Them’ and they represent for so many people so many different things, but they all see them as government, as officialdom, as that unhearing, unthinking, blanked-out face of authority that will destroy you because it wants to destroy you. I believe in that now – I’ve directed them more that way over the years."

This is a deeply interesting and revealing excerpt, in my opinion. Nation was a child during the Second World War, a fact that he often mentioned in interviews and something that continued to permeate his work. It would be hard to describe him as anything other than a man with liberal political values, many of which are on display in The Daleks. That being said, it is incredibly easy to read The Daleks as a condemnation of Nazi fascism, totalitarianism and racial hatred. Perhaps not is too easy. Let us take moment to consider the politics of The Daleks as a condemnation of, not the Second World War but, the post-war climate and even more directly on the UK itself. After all, it is not without note that the Thals are of typically Aryan physicality and even had German names in earlier drafts of the story. In real-world history, we all know that it was not the Nazis who dropped the first atomic bomb – it was the Allies and, while the plight of the Thals has a great deal in common with the Jewish in World War II, it is not especially difficult to shift the lens of the Dalek allegory onto the 'good guys' watching the programme. When considering this with the above quote, there becomes something almost anarchistic about The Daleks. Nation's story is a survivalist thriller in many respects (with a lot of the natural horrors, of course, being directly resultant of man-made atrocities) but his self-confessed anxiety for the future perhaps fuels the story's optimistic insistence that when everything is torn down and destroyed, life will prevail and we can begin again, better than before.

The Daleks presents strong ideals of community which makes perfect sense given the quote above. Nation's self-proclaimed fears seem keenly tied to isolation and that paranoia runs rampant in the terror of The Daleks. Take the sequence in The Survivors where Susan is racing back to the TARDIS on her own. The journey is horrifying and tense as she has no support or reassurance on her side. She is a young woman who is already dying and anything could be out to get her.The person who does find her, of course, is Alydon, a man from a kind, supportive and united community. The kind of community that could take on the Daleks. There are a lot of problems with this too though. The Thals are presented as, in Susan's words, perfect. They are peak physical performance, they look like humans and the villains, the irredeemable monsters, are physically inhuman.

Terry Nation, 1978: "[Survival] is a theme that’s actually gone through my work enormously... I’m in that aeroplane and I’m waiting for the moment when they say, 'Can anybody fly this aeroplane?' – And I can’t, but I know that finally I’m going to be the one that has to do it."

On Saturday the twenty-first of December 1963, the fifth episode of the BBC's new science-fiction adventure serial, Doctor Who, aired in front of an audience of 6.9 million viewers. The episode was penned an up and coming Welsh comedy writer named Terry Nation and it was the first of seven chapters in a saga entitled The Mutants. Following a thrilling cliffhanger and the unexpected reveal of the serial's bizarre antagonists, something unexpected happened – Doctor Who suddenly became incredibly popular. Between episodes two and three, 2.5 million more viewers tuned in for the adventure with another 1.5 million accumulated by the serial's end. Doctor Who might have debuted four weeks earlier with An Unearthly Child but The Daleks, as it came to be known, is where the programme that has lasted sixty years actually premieres.

David Whitaker, 1979: "When it was shown, not very long after being recorded, we were, and I don’t mean this to sound smug, proved quite right."

Peter Cushing, 1970s: "I thought it was very good. Very well made."

David Whitaker, 1979: "The Daleks were a smashing invention, and I took to them at once. I would say they’re worthy of Jules Verne."

Verity Lambert, 1980s: "What was very nice, though, was Donald Wilson coming up to me after the Daleks had taken off and saying ‘You obviously understand this programme better than I do. I’ll leave it to you’."

Part II - Dr. Who and the Daleks

Terry Nation, 1987: "After the Daleks, I was for a short time the most famous writer on television. The press interviewed me, there was mail arriving in great van loads. There was stuff coming to my house that said ‘Dalek Man – London’, and I was getting lots of them. Almost all the kids wanted a Dalek, and nobody was quick enough... My God, was that to change! Within the year, there were Dalek everythings."

As we all know, the Daleks were incredibly popular with the British public. In a manner cheekily compared to the Beatles, the Daleks dominated pop culture with all assortments of merchandise and spin-off material quickly emerging on the market. Between Nation and Whitaker's The Dalek Book, TV Century 21's comic strips (also credited to Nation), Whitaker's novel adaptation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks and any number of toys, costumes and promotional tie-ins, the impact and legacy of the Dalek serial was immediately felt. Nation was swiftly commissioned for a second serial, the decidedly less culturally penetrating The Keys of Marinus, and eventually asked for a sequel Dalek story but what could have been the most high-profile exposure for his creations that one could ask, strangely enough, came without much involvement from Nation at all.

In late 1964, American film producer Milton Subotsky approached Nation and the BBC about purchasing the film rights to The Daleks. For a fee of £500, Subotsky secured the rights and set about producing Dr. Who and the Daleks. As well as co-producing with Max J. Rosenberg, Subotsky was also credited for the screenplay with not insubstantial uncredited contributions from David Whitaker. The film was one of ten theatrical efforts by prolific television director Gordon Flemyng and marks the first of only two times (to date) that Doctor Who has been adapted exclusively for the silver screen.

Tom Baker, 1975: "There have been two Doctor Who films in the past, both rather poor."

I find Dr. Who and the Daleks to be a deeply fascinating cultural oddity but that fascination surrounding its existence ultimately fails to translate to the screen itself. Even if it was just rolled into production as a quick attempt to capitalise on the enormous success of the Daleks in yet another form of media, it is admittedly impressive how much of the picture really works. Bill Constable’s art direction is quite breathtaking at times, working beautifully with the luscious technicolor presentation. This is a gorgeous film just to look at and it really effortlessly realises the fullscreen, explosive world of the Daleks that previously only truly existed in the aforementioned comic books and annuals. I particularly love the latter sequences as our heroes scale Skaro's landscape amongst some gorgeous matte painting work. That being said, there is still something that speaks to me more about the 4:3 black and white glimpses offered in the TV version. The feeling of peering through your TV screen into these small corners of what feels like a larger, more dangerous world behind and beyond the camera is much more captivating for me than these much grander sets presented without ambition or flair.

Since I neglected them in my main review, let me quickly sing the praises of Peter Hawkins and David Graham as the voices of the Daleks. With the assistance of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Brian Hodgson, the pair created the unique electronic tones of the creature's voices using a ring modulator. Their voices are immediately recognisable and they put in great performances though it is clear, in hindsight, that the sound of the Daleks still had some work to do. Hawkins and Graham's initial Daleks are much more monotone than they would later become with the pair only later landing upon the rising pitch and angry tones that would truly define them. They are excellent in the film as well but, it has to be said, the story is not served by how many scenes they have of dialogue amongst themselves. Obviously it makes sense to showcase the full-colour, enormous Dalek props at every possible opportunity in your big screen Dalek film but there is just no way around the reality that Daleks rolling about and talking amongst themselves as slowly as it seems possible they could is not compelling cinema.

Worse than just looking at Daleks are the flaws of Terry Nation’s incredibly serialised storytelling being put on full display here. While the screenplay effectively trims the fat, save for the Dalek scenes, the general structure of this story does not work well as a single feature film. It is a similar problem that a lot of novel adaptations have where the filmmakers just cannot get the chapters to effectively translate to scenes and sequences. Dr. Who and the Daleks also has a bit of a bland core cast. Barrie Ingham is a good Alydon and Peter Cushing works magic with his dottery version of the Doctor but Roy Castle's doofus take on Ian leaves much to be desired and Jennie Linden's Barbara feels so surplus to requirements that she just gets folded into Susan's character and then a generic love interest. The film is entertaining but a bit of a lacklustre watch on the whole. It is not a poor or even unnecessary addition to the Doctor Who canon. This is as good a 90 minute adaptation of The Daleks that could possibly exist. It is just also true that the best version of that story is, regrettably, not this.

Roy Castle, 1990: "[I]t was quite unusual. Very unlike anything I’ve ever done... [The Daleks] were brilliant. I think if you’d said to the producer, you must get rid of the humans or the Daleks, he’d have got rid of us humans in a flash."

Peter Cushing, 1990s: "Those films are among my favourites because they brought me popularity with younger children. They’d say their parents didn’t want to meet me in a dark alley but ‘Doctor Who’ changed that. After all, he is one of the most heroic and successful parts an actor can play. That’s one of the main reasons the series had such a long run on TV. I am very grateful for having been part of such a success story.”

In 2024, the prevalence of Dr. Who and the Daleks in the greater story of the programme has dwindled but it is worth remembering just how significant an event it was. While not a critical darling, the film was a box officer smash in the UK and was often repeated on television over the following decades. For so many fans, Dr. Who and the Daleks was more readily viewed than great swathes of the television show itself. Even though The Daleks is the story that happened on television, it is not unfair to say that Dr. Who and the Daleks is the story many of us remember happening.

Part III - The Daleks in Colour

Russell T Davies, 2023: "I've got to be blunt, I've watched this, as a fan, a hundred times as a black and white show andI've never enjoyed it so much as in colour."

And so, we fast forward, to 2023 and the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has made the entire back-catalogue available for streaming in the UK, three new specials are about to air and the boldest, most publicised attempt to bring the original series to the general audience since 2005 is taking place. Thanks to the work of fans such as Rich Tipple and Benjamin Cook, RTD spearheaded an all-new colorisation and re-edit of The Daleks down to a seventy-five minute length to offer an alternative "blockbuster" version for potential new fans. How many of the uninitiated took any notice of its appearance on iPlayer and sprucing on breakfast television remains to be seen but, nevertheless, Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour arrived in our screens on the 23rd of November, 2023.

The film in question is an interesting but flawed experiment. Certainly, the possibility of colourising the ancient history of Doctor Who has been a tantalising one for decades now and something many fans, myself included, have been eager to see. In and of itself, this is a fine thing to strive for and, in this respect, The Daleks in Colour is incredibly successful at it. The colourisation is breathtaking. Not only is the colourising itself incredible but the choice to eschew real world reference points for the sets, costume and lighting in favour of the most vibrant, almost psychedelic options that they could possibly think of is the correct choice. The entire production has a sense of 1960s pop and visual style that slots in seamlessly with then contemporary productions to the extent where it looks like this could always have been the plan.

What feels very much not like it was planned, however, is the runtime. On paper, chopping up the serial makes a good deal of sense. Seven episodes is a big commitment to somebody uncertain of the original show and with 1963 pacing being what it was, the decision to pare things down matches well with the mission statement. Alas, the editing in this film does not work but not because the idea is bad. Dr. Who and the Daleks has proven that paring down the script can lead to a generally well-received and, for many, preferential product. Yes, Dr. Who and the Daleks is, in many ways the elephant in the room. While the decision to choose the debut of the Daleks as a story to hook in new fans makes a lot of sense on paper, the fact that the Subotsky adaptation exists at all makes it a little difficult to justify.

The direct comparison is ultimately unfavourable and not just because of how many of the colour choices seem direct inspired by it. The Subotsky film's existence awkwardly lampshades the fact that what one is watching here is not an eighty-two minute feature designed to watched in one sitting. This is an almost three hour one awkwardly cobbled together with jarring new musical cues. Many of the technical choices employed such as speeding up the film, tightening up gaps in the dialogue and recording new Dalek dialogue to disguise swathes of cut material all amount to a very obviously cobbled together experience.

Still, this experiment was necessary and this is a great little curio of the franchise but the awkwardness of the production and its core appeal as an alternative proves it unlikely, in my opinion, to ever actually attain its goal – enticing new viewers to watch the Hartnell era. What The Daleks in Colour is is an alternative to the original and a glimpse into an alternate history for a captive fanbase. It could have been an amazing leap forward but remains, instead, a noteworthy first step into uncharted territory.

But what of that original serial then? Well, in my opinion, The Daleks still holds up today as one of the best stories in the history of Doctor Who and a landmark moment in science fiction storytelling. But this is not for everyone. BBC television of the 1960s is certainly not for everyone; I watched this with my partner and we both did feel the length when watching the episodes in close proximity. Even so, I do strongly implore checking out the first two episodes in the serial for some of the most intriguing and moody sci-fi adventure storytelling you might ever see in Doctor Who. In December 1963, Terry Nation and the Doctor Who team created some wonderful episodes of television. And that was not the end of the story.

Terry Nation, 1987: "I don’t know to this day what the enormous appeal of the Daleks was. I’ve heard all sorts of ideas about it, but they were slightly magical, because you didn’t know what the elements were that made them work."

Sydney Newman, 1986: “Someone once told me that there was a question in Trivial Pursuit, ‘Who created Doctor Who?’. You turn the card over and it says the answer is Terry Nation! I wrote a rather stinging letter, demanding the destruction of all the Trivial Pursuits that had that mistake in them, hinting at some fabulous compensation that they should give me for demeaning my contribution to (laughs) world culture! I got lawyers and everything, but I didn’t get anywhere. They just said they would withdraw the card. I even wrote to Terry Nation for his support, and he sent me a very nice letter back.”

*This title would be adopted by fans despite not appearing on any documentation at the time. It became officially endorsed with the 2001 VHS release

#doctor who #analysis #behind the scenes #culture #tv #history #actors #review #classic who #daleks #doctor who dalek #tardis #dr who #time lords #william hartnell #first doctor #1st doctor #susan foreman #william russell

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regicidal-defenestration · 9 months ago

Note

If you were to write a Frankenstein episode* of doctor who, how would you do it?

*episode here includes radio plays etc. Your choice of doctor, companions, and format

(Also there probably has been a Frankenstein episode of doctor who at some point that I'm not aware of so please also include your opinion on it if you so wish!)

I would not be surprised in the slightest if there’s something in the Doctor Who verse with the plot of “guy puts together dead body parts to bring a creature to life”, but if it’s out there it’s not one I’ve encountered I don’t think.

The Doctor has met Mary Shelley a minimum of twice (TARDISWiki assures me there are more), both of which happen on the same series of nights funnily enough, the ones where Frankenstein got written. The Haunting of Villa Diodati is a Thirteenth Doctor episode in which the inspiration for Frankenstein’s Creature is made to be a Cyberman. The Company of Friends (Mary’s Story) is an Eighth Doctor audio where the inspiration for the Creature is this time the Doctor himself. Both are very good episodes! Haunting has a fucked up house, Thirteen getting a moment of rage and loneliness, and one hell of an ending shot; Mary’s Story has time travel shenanigans and unethical science being performed on Eight.

Neither of these are Frankenstein adaptations though. They get a bit Frankenstein-y around the edges, because you would, if you in the present day was writing a story featuring Mary Shelley, but the focus is always more on the ghosts/Cybermen/Doctor/Percy Shelley wanting to electrocute Eight. We can do more than that, in a move I’m going to call

Jodie Whittaker Is A Strong Actor And Thirteen Doesn’t Have To Always Be Cheerful.

It’s set vaguely around the events of The Timeless Children, definitely before Flux, and the main purpose is to give us a moment to let the RevealTM settle in, before half the universe gets destroyed (more on that later). The Timeless Child was a move which has made a lot of different people have a lot of different opinions! Personally I think it was Fine and Not That Awful and will probably get forgotten about and retconned in a few years anyway (also as a noted Doctor “I’m half human on my mother’s side” Who TV Movie fan I am in no position to complain about plot twists that upend canon as we know it or whatever), but I do think we can use it to make Thirteen worse. Both Timeless Children and Flux (and maybe Power of the Doctor) would be slightly different, mostly with the Division being gone, but also I haven't re-watched either since they were broadcast and don’t remember every plot beat, so adjust them in your mind as necessary

ANYWAY

What this isn’t is a “guy goes to uni, drops out of uni, makes another guy, has life ruined by that guy” adaptation. What it is is a “can you imagine if you were the creature and you were given life only to be abandoned and hated by both your creator and also most of the universe I think that’d suck” type story.

We open with the Doctor waking on an autopsy table. No bindings hold her down, but she has no coat, no sonic screwdriver, and no memory of how she ended up here. The laboratory setting around her is unfamiliar but appears to have been abandoned in a hurry - papers left out, computers not shut down, smashed glass and split liquids.

Slowly, she begins to explore. It starts inconsequential enough - there’s a hat stand with a dark coat hanging on it. She puts it on, has a look in the mirror to the side, it fits! It looks good!

We will, though, start to put together what’s going on here: creating bodies; life after death ("Oh Mary," she says, "you'd love this one!"); experiments on people, or maybe only the one person. Regeneration. The Timeless Child.

The realisation has a physical force behind it. This is the place Tecteun took the Timeless Child apart to learn the secrets of regeneration, and put them back together to make the Doctor.

I have made the executive decision to equate Thirteen and Frankenstein’s Creature

They are both alone, made by a parent-creator-god and abandoned when they’d served their use. They are both a bit fucked up. They both deserve better!

Back to the mirror, smashed now, though we never heard nor saw anything happen to it. Thirteen sees herself again… but not quite herself. In every shard is a different face, all reflected back at her, reflected back twisted and shattered. Bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification indeed.

HYPOCRITE SIDEBAR Thirteen is a hypocrite! The Doctor has always been a bit of a hypocrite, it comes from being a 60 year old character written by hundreds of different people, but Thirteen especially is a hypocrite. No guns, but she’d let the spiders suffocate and die. A flat team structure, until she needs to be at the top. This is slightly related to what I'm about to say I'm also just saying it

She speaks to herselves then, in a move that’s a bit more metaphorical than what will happen in Power of the Doctor, but will lead into that. It’s a “I never told anyone my name, I never ate pears, I don’t know if I always managed to be kind but I tried to do my best.” type confrontation. A “was I too cruel? Too cowardly? Did I run too far to return to a beginning they hid from me?”

Jodie Whittaker did Antigone one time I think. Thirteen can have a brief flash of rage, all this advice from her past selves none of them could have seen this one coming, an “in this desolation I am alone, what would you have me do?” that could be fun

The Guardians of the Edge (1/5/6/7/8) will assure her she's doing fine, in time. For now, she is alone, and there's no-one to allay the doubt.

A computer beeps a warning. Flux deployment a success, warning, en route to your location.

We might reasonably assume this is a bomb, or missile, or something, programmed by Tecteun to destroy all evidence of what they did here. The Doctor certainly does, jumping into action to try and determine what this Flux is and how to stop it. (Her sonic screwdriver is in her pocket now. It definitely wasn't there earlier)

And then, she slows. Stops. Thinks.

Would it be so bad, to see all of this destroyed? (You may think this sounds a lot like the Master, and you’d be right. We’re laying the groundwork for the better Power of the Doctor that exists in my mind, where the Master and the Doctor do a Proper full body swap and perhaps they’re not always as different as they think)

It’s not like there’s anyone else here, she tries to justify. It’s not like she cares if Tecteun loses all this work. It’s not like she doesn’t want it to all burn down, just this once. (We are reminded of Ten, who doesn’t kill the Racnoss in The Runaway Bride because Donna stops him. Eight, in Terror Firma, wanting to unleash Davros’ death virus and only stopping because his friends could remind him of who he was. The War Doctor, preparing to use the Moment. We are reminded that Thirteen is alone)

Maybe the Doctor does a half hearted search through some documents for any sign that might sway her (Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit etc) and maybe there was never going to be anything to change her mind.

“I tried to inspire love,” she says. She doesn't finish the line.

(“Oh Mary,” she’ll go and mutter under her breath. “What'd you make of that one?”)

The clock is still ticking, alarms getting more urgent. The Doctor legs it to the exit - we don’t have time to wonder at how the lab has fallen apart even more, mould crawling over the ceilings and a lightshow of sparking, dying, machines. She reaches the door, throws it open-

Through it, space.

Thirteen looks behind her, frowns, looks back. We zoom out, see the TARDIS hanging in the void, the Doctor leaning out the doorway.

The alarm is still beeping, the Flux, and we know, now, that it's nothing so simple as an explosive, still approaching. The agony of the torturing flames.

Something terrible is coming.

#i tried to write this once and my laptop had a moment and lost the whole thing #then after emotionally recovering from that for a few days i realised i had So Much more to say djfkdsgdf #also i have no idea when thirteen began wearing the coat dark site out rather than light and tardis wiki didn't note it on her costume #section so that clip is one time i definitely remember it #doctor who #thirteen #ask

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