Iain J Coleman (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} iainjcoleman) wrote,@ 2008-02-14 11:46:00 |
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Doctor Who Mega-Meme
That Doctor Who Mega-Meme, brought to you by the words "tedious" and "fuck":
1. When did you start watching and why?
In my earliest childhood, because it was the most exciting and scary thing on telly.
2. What was your first serial/episode?
The earliest memory I have in my entire life is the bit in The Invasion of Time when the Sontaran leader removes his helmet REVEALING THE HIDEOUS MONSTER HEAD WITHIN! It gave me a nightmare that I still remember. Imagine the anticlimax when I saw it again on video.
3. Which serials/episodes have you seen?
There are some Hartnells, Troughtons and Pertwees that I have yet to see (or hear), and due to some cosmic conspiracy I have never managed to see Planet of Evil. Apart from that, I've seen them all.
3a. Favourite?
Oh, God.
The Reign of Terror, The Massacre, The Myth Makers, Power of the Daleks, The Mind Robber, The Enemy of the World, Inferno, Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, City of Death, Warriors' Gate, Kinda, The Caves of Androzani, Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Dalek, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Love and Monsters, Gridlock, Blink, Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords.
What, pick just one? OK, The Massacre.
No, City of Death.
No, The Caves of Androzani. Yes, definitely Androzani.
I think.
4. Are your friends/family interested in the show?
My wife is a major Colin Baker and Troughton fangirl, and we watch the show together. My mum and my brothers are casual viewers of the new series, though I don't know if they've seen much of it lately.
5. Which Doctor is your favourite?
I have to pick three: Hartnell, Tom Baker and Eccleston. Plenty of other excellent actors have played the role, but these are the three who really seem to be eccentric and mysterious aliens.
6. Which Doctor is your least favourite?
Pertwee. Smug git.
7. Which TV companion is your favourite?
Tricky, but there can be only one Sarah Jane Smith. An honourable mention, though, to the much underrated Steven Taylor: I think he's the only companion who has to carry an entire story (The Massacre) pretty much single-handed, and Peter Purves pulls it off extremely well.
8. Which TV companion is your least favourite?
Ooh, now that is a tough one. Vicki's a bit annoying, isn't she? The wooden spoon has to go to Victoria, though. What a drip.
9. Do you listen to the Big Finish audios?
I've heard a handful.
9a. If so, which is your favourite?
Deadline, with Derek Jacobi as the dying TV Writer reminiscing about that show called "Doctor Who" that he never managed to get off the ground.
9b. Also: which Big Finish companion is your favourite?
Evelyn, I suppose. Not that she doesn't deserve it, but she wins by default as I haven't heard any of the others.
10. Have you listened to any non-Big Finish audios?
Only the BBC Audio releases of the wiped stories.
10a. If so, which is your favourite?
The Massacre (see above).
11. Have you read any of the novels or short stories?
Loads. I only got into the Virgin novels after they'd been going for quite a while, but I read quite a lot of them, and I bought the BBC 8th Doctor novels religiously for a while until I realised I could be reading much better books instead.
11a. Have you written any of the novels or short stories?
No.
11b. Which is your favourite?
From the Virgin range, Just War by Lance Parkin and Human Nature by Paul Cornell are my all-time favourites (with the latter being much better than its recent TV adaptation). In the BBC range, Lawrence Miles towers above the rest of the authors, with Interference standing out for being fantastic, and for pissing off all the tedious grognards of fandom.
Although, if I'm allowed to stretch some definitions just a little bit, Lawrence Miles' post-Who Virgin novel Dead Romance is arguably the best Doctor Who novel ever written, despite not including the words "Doctor", "Time Lord" or "Tardis".
12. Have you read any of the comics?
I used to read the DWM strip back in the day. The Steve Parkhouse strips for the Fifth and Sixth Doctors were frequently much better than the televised show, with Voyager being the Sixth Doctor's finest hour.
12a. You guessed it--which is your favourite?
Ooh, now. I'm torn between Voyager and The Tides of Time for the best epic strip, so I think I'll have to go for the less flashy, more character-based The Moderator.
13. Do you watch any of the spinoffs (e.g. Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures)?
Both!
13a. Which is your favourite?
In their first seasons, The Sarah Jane Adventures was both better-written and more adult than Torchwood, so a clear winner. With the upswing in Torchwood's quality this season, though, it's much harder to pick a favourite.
14. Is there any particular episode/book/audio/comic you desperately want to watch/listen to/read?
The ones that have been wiped.
15. Do you write fanfic for Doctor Who?
No. Well, I did write something very short about eight years ago.
15a. If so, post a snippet of a work-in-progress (or several)!
Damned if I can find it.
16. Do you create Doctor Who icons?
Not habitually, but I have done a couple in my time.
16a. Let's see a sample!
You can see my favourite at the top of this post.
17. Recommend a fanfic/icon/fanvid/fancomic/fancreation!
Does the new Doctor Who series count?
18. Have you been to any Doctor Who conventions?
No.
19. Have you ever dressed up as a Doctor Who character?
Not intentionally.
20. Do you own any Doctor Who merchandise?
Oh yes.
21. Are you a fan of Russell T. Davies?
Absolutely, though for all his great work on Who I still think The Second Coming is his finest hour.
21a. Steven Moffat?
Exquisite. Simply exquisite.
(Jekyll was wank, though.)
21b. Paul Cornell?
He is capable of brilliance, and often delivers it. Unfortunately, this can be marred, sometimes fatally, by fanwank, schmaltz, religiosity and self-satisfied Decentism.
22. What say you to Season 6b?
After much reading, I have come to the conclusion that I don't care enough to have an opinion.
23. The UNIT dating controversy?
If you ditch the conceit (never stated on-screen) that the stories are set a few years into the future relative to the production date, and blatantly ignore Sarah's "I'm from 1980" in Pyramids of Mars, UNIT dating fits together quite nicely.
24. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect?
Also known as the Device of Plot.
25. Multi-Doctor episodes?
Thy're all shit, aren't they? Look, if neither a great nuts-and-bolts man like Terrance Dicks nor a master storyteller like Robert Holmes can write a multi-Doctor story that doesn't turn out to be a pile of poo, maybe it's best to just forget the whole idea.
26. What's your favourite Doctor Who technobabble?
"It goes ding! when there's stuff."
27. Have you watched other TV shows exclusively because of the presence of Doctor Who actors?
Not in general. The only exceptions that spring to mind are The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Tom Baker (shit), and The Cult of The Brothers, featuring Colin Baker (an interesting little documentary, but one that left me with absolutely no desire to watch the show that it was about).
28. Have you met any of the actors?
No. Actually, yes, I met Michael Sheard at a convention one time. (Hasn't everyone?)
28a. Traveled to any filming locations?
Do Paris and London count? Oh, and I've been to Culloden, which is more than Doctor Who managed.
29. What do you think of "The Curse of Fatal Death"?
Canon.
It was terrific fun, and the rapid succession of Doctors at the end threw up some real surprises. Hugh Grant was astonishingly good in his brief stint (and it wasn't just me who thought so: RTD offered him the role before it went to Eccleston), while Joanna Lumley in the space of about a minute blew away years of tedious scholasticism on the unfeasibility of a female Doctor.
30. Do you have any fannish opinions that you think are fairly unpopular?
JNT's "stunt casting" policy was pretty good, on the whole.
The only real failure (and I'm discounting Bonnie Langford from this discussion) was Leee John in Enlightenment. Hale and Pace give perfectly good performances in Survival, as long as you let them just be actors playing roles rather than "Comedy Duo Hale and Pace!", Ken Dodd may be just doing his usual schtick in Delta and the Bannermen, but it fits the character and the story, and I really really like Beryl Reid in Earthshock. Any other sci-fi show would want to be all serious and cast a female actor who exudes strength and competence. How many bosses have you had like that, of either sex? There's no reason why a slightly eccentric old woman shouldn't end up in charge of a cargo spacecraft in the future, but only Doctor Who would actually depict it.
Plenty of other famous faces from light entertainment give fine performances in the JNT era: it's traditional to mention Nicholas Parsons at this point, but Nerys Hughes in Kinda was stunt casting at the time too. Frankly, the success rate of this policy is no worse than the standard casting procedure. Even the most dependable casting can go awry - watch episode four of Paradise Towers while reading Richard Briers' CV if you want to see what I mean - and at least JNT managed to grab the programme some much-needed publicity at a time when the BBC management had lost interest.
31. What's your favourite pairing?
I really find this question utterly fucking tedious. Not that there haven't been some lovely couples in the series - Ian and Barbara, the Second Doctor and Jamie, the Third Doctor and Jo Grant, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith - but this recent import into Doctor Who fandom of judging the programme primarily on the validation or otherwise that it provides for some purported relationship just makes my want to pull my teeth out. Fuck this question, and fuck people who think it matters.
32. What pairing(s) won't you touch with a really long pole?
What the fuck? A good story is a good story, and a bad story is a bad story, no matter who might be intimately entangled with who. Fuck's sake.
That Doctor Who Mega-Meme, brought to you by the words "tedious" and "fuck":
1. When did you start watching and why?
In my earliest childhood, because it was the most exciting and scary thing on telly.
2. What was your first serial/episode?
The earliest memory I have in my entire life is the bit in The Invasion of Time when the Sontaran leader removes his helmet REVEALING THE HIDEOUS MONSTER HEAD WITHIN! It gave me a nightmare that I still remember. Imagine the anticlimax when I saw it again on video.
3. Which serials/episodes have you seen?
There are some Hartnells, Troughtons and Pertwees that I have yet to see (or hear), and due to some cosmic conspiracy I have never managed to see Planet of Evil. Apart from that, I've seen them all.
3a. Favourite?
Oh, God.
The Reign of Terror, The Massacre, The Myth Makers, Power of the Daleks, The Mind Robber, The Enemy of the World, Inferno, Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, City of Death, Warriors' Gate, Kinda, The Caves of Androzani, Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Dalek, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Love and Monsters, Gridlock, Blink, Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords.
What, pick just one? OK, The Massacre.
No, City of Death.
No, The Caves of Androzani. Yes, definitely Androzani.
I think.
4. Are your friends/family interested in the show?
My wife is a major Colin Baker and Troughton fangirl, and we watch the show together. My mum and my brothers are casual viewers of the new series, though I don't know if they've seen much of it lately.
5. Which Doctor is your favourite?
I have to pick three: Hartnell, Tom Baker and Eccleston. Plenty of other excellent actors have played the role, but these are the three who really seem to be eccentric and mysterious aliens.
6. Which Doctor is your least favourite?
Pertwee. Smug git.
7. Which TV companion is your favourite?
Tricky, but there can be only one Sarah Jane Smith. An honourable mention, though, to the much underrated Steven Taylor: I think he's the only companion who has to carry an entire story (The Massacre) pretty much single-handed, and Peter Purves pulls it off extremely well.
8. Which TV companion is your least favourite?
Ooh, now that is a tough one. Vicki's a bit annoying, isn't she? The wooden spoon has to go to Victoria, though. What a drip.
9. Do you listen to the Big Finish audios?
I've heard a handful.
9a. If so, which is your favourite?
Deadline, with Derek Jacobi as the dying TV Writer reminiscing about that show called "Doctor Who" that he never managed to get off the ground.
9b. Also: which Big Finish companion is your favourite?
Evelyn, I suppose. Not that she doesn't deserve it, but she wins by default as I haven't heard any of the others.
10. Have you listened to any non-Big Finish audios?
Only the BBC Audio releases of the wiped stories.
10a. If so, which is your favourite?
The Massacre (see above).
11. Have you read any of the novels or short stories?
Loads. I only got into the Virgin novels after they'd been going for quite a while, but I read quite a lot of them, and I bought the BBC 8th Doctor novels religiously for a while until I realised I could be reading much better books instead.
11a. Have you written any of the novels or short stories?
No.
11b. Which is your favourite?
From the Virgin range, Just War by Lance Parkin and Human Nature by Paul Cornell are my all-time favourites (with the latter being much better than its recent TV adaptation). In the BBC range, Lawrence Miles towers above the rest of the authors, with Interference standing out for being fantastic, and for pissing off all the tedious grognards of fandom.
Although, if I'm allowed to stretch some definitions just a little bit, Lawrence Miles' post-Who Virgin novel Dead Romance is arguably the best Doctor Who novel ever written, despite not including the words "Doctor", "Time Lord" or "Tardis".
12. Have you read any of the comics?
I used to read the DWM strip back in the day. The Steve Parkhouse strips for the Fifth and Sixth Doctors were frequently much better than the televised show, with Voyager being the Sixth Doctor's finest hour.
12a. You guessed it--which is your favourite?
Ooh, now. I'm torn between Voyager and The Tides of Time for the best epic strip, so I think I'll have to go for the less flashy, more character-based The Moderator.
13. Do you watch any of the spinoffs (e.g. Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures)?
Both!
13a. Which is your favourite?
In their first seasons, The Sarah Jane Adventures was both better-written and more adult than Torchwood, so a clear winner. With the upswing in Torchwood's quality this season, though, it's much harder to pick a favourite.
14. Is there any particular episode/book/audio/comic you desperately want to watch/listen to/read?
The ones that have been wiped.
15. Do you write fanfic for Doctor Who?
No. Well, I did write something very short about eight years ago.
15a. If so, post a snippet of a work-in-progress (or several)!
Damned if I can find it.
16. Do you create Doctor Who icons?
Not habitually, but I have done a couple in my time.
16a. Let's see a sample!
You can see my favourite at the top of this post.
17. Recommend a fanfic/icon/fanvid/fancomic/fancreation!
Does the new Doctor Who series count?
18. Have you been to any Doctor Who conventions?
No.
19. Have you ever dressed up as a Doctor Who character?
Not intentionally.
20. Do you own any Doctor Who merchandise?
Oh yes.
21. Are you a fan of Russell T. Davies?
Absolutely, though for all his great work on Who I still think The Second Coming is his finest hour.
21a. Steven Moffat?
Exquisite. Simply exquisite.
(Jekyll was wank, though.)
21b. Paul Cornell?
He is capable of brilliance, and often delivers it. Unfortunately, this can be marred, sometimes fatally, by fanwank, schmaltz, religiosity and self-satisfied Decentism.
22. What say you to Season 6b?
After much reading, I have come to the conclusion that I don't care enough to have an opinion.
23. The UNIT dating controversy?
If you ditch the conceit (never stated on-screen) that the stories are set a few years into the future relative to the production date, and blatantly ignore Sarah's "I'm from 1980" in Pyramids of Mars, UNIT dating fits together quite nicely.
24. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect?
Also known as the Device of Plot.
25. Multi-Doctor episodes?
Thy're all shit, aren't they? Look, if neither a great nuts-and-bolts man like Terrance Dicks nor a master storyteller like Robert Holmes can write a multi-Doctor story that doesn't turn out to be a pile of poo, maybe it's best to just forget the whole idea.
26. What's your favourite Doctor Who technobabble?
"It goes ding! when there's stuff."
27. Have you watched other TV shows exclusively because of the presence of Doctor Who actors?
Not in general. The only exceptions that spring to mind are The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Tom Baker (shit), and The Cult of The Brothers, featuring Colin Baker (an interesting little documentary, but one that left me with absolutely no desire to watch the show that it was about).
28. Have you met any of the actors?
No. Actually, yes, I met Michael Sheard at a convention one time. (Hasn't everyone?)
28a. Traveled to any filming locations?
Do Paris and London count? Oh, and I've been to Culloden, which is more than Doctor Who managed.
29. What do you think of "The Curse of Fatal Death"?
Canon.
It was terrific fun, and the rapid succession of Doctors at the end threw up some real surprises. Hugh Grant was astonishingly good in his brief stint (and it wasn't just me who thought so: RTD offered him the role before it went to Eccleston), while Joanna Lumley in the space of about a minute blew away years of tedious scholasticism on the unfeasibility of a female Doctor.
30. Do you have any fannish opinions that you think are fairly unpopular?
JNT's "stunt casting" policy was pretty good, on the whole.
The only real failure (and I'm discounting Bonnie Langford from this discussion) was Leee John in Enlightenment. Hale and Pace give perfectly good performances in Survival, as long as you let them just be actors playing roles rather than "Comedy Duo Hale and Pace!", Ken Dodd may be just doing his usual schtick in Delta and the Bannermen, but it fits the character and the story, and I really really like Beryl Reid in Earthshock. Any other sci-fi show would want to be all serious and cast a female actor who exudes strength and competence. How many bosses have you had like that, of either sex? There's no reason why a slightly eccentric old woman shouldn't end up in charge of a cargo spacecraft in the future, but only Doctor Who would actually depict it.
Plenty of other famous faces from light entertainment give fine performances in the JNT era: it's traditional to mention Nicholas Parsons at this point, but Nerys Hughes in Kinda was stunt casting at the time too. Frankly, the success rate of this policy is no worse than the standard casting procedure. Even the most dependable casting can go awry - watch episode four of Paradise Towers while reading Richard Briers' CV if you want to see what I mean - and at least JNT managed to grab the programme some much-needed publicity at a time when the BBC management had lost interest.
31. What's your favourite pairing?
I really find this question utterly fucking tedious. Not that there haven't been some lovely couples in the series - Ian and Barbara, the Second Doctor and Jamie, the Third Doctor and Jo Grant, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith - but this recent import into Doctor Who fandom of judging the programme primarily on the validation or otherwise that it provides for some purported relationship just makes my want to pull my teeth out. Fuck this question, and fuck people who think it matters.
32. What pairing(s) won't you touch with a really long pole?
What the fuck? A good story is a good story, and a bad story is a bad story, no matter who might be intimately entangled with who. Fuck's sake.
