twoflower: Doctor Who in 5 Minutes

Stefan Gagne (

twoflower) wrote,
@ 2008-04-28 08:57:00

Doctor Who in 5 Minutes
I could rant here about how certain customers kept bugging me in the middle of DJing with unreasonable and pissy IMs about 7Seas, but frankly, reporting that I'm tired of being a support monkey has been the only thing I've BEEN reporting for the last two weeks in this LJ.

Instead, I give you A Summary Of An Unfortunately Large Number Of Doctor Who Plots.

Designated Victim: I've uncovered your evil plot / stumbled across your evil plot, and while I'm standing in front of you and completely defenseless and likely surrounded by your minions, I'm going to tell you that I plan to tell everybody about your evil.

Evil Alien: Have you told anybody YET, though?

Designated Victim: Well, no.

[A claw/tentacle/raygun emerges/is fired from offscreen, screaming leading into DUNDUNDUNDUNDUN theme song and title credits.]

[TARDIS appears]

Doctor: Well, here we are at a location all bright eyed and ready to explore, without the foggiest idea that our vacation is going to turn into running and screaming and explosions within the next 20 minutes, even though it always does!

Rose: Durr. *goofy grin*
Martha: Right.
Donna: Snide comment about your judgementalism / what's ethically wrong about this place goes here.

[Various cut-away scenes of the evil alien scheming and plotting.]

Evil Alien: My scheme which I've been running for months now relies upon these stupid humans buying fancy, trendy diet techniques/mobile phones/chips/GPS navigators/investing in my nuclear reactor/taking a trip on my fancy spaceship/etc. Little do they realize it's going to turn on them horribly! Bwahaha! It's a good thing nobody's puttering about slowly realizing something's afoot.

[Meanwhile,]

Doctor: I think I'll putter about and slowly realize something's afoot.

Rose: Durr. *goofy grin*
Martha: Mhmm.
Donna: Snide comment about your judgmentalism / what's ethically wrong about this place goes here.

[Evil aliens try to kill the Doctor and/or Rose/Martha/Donna. Running and explosions follow.]

[Running and explosions follow.]

[Running and explosions follow.]

Evil Alien: Enough of this! Engage the Evil Plan!

[All hell breaks loose, doom encroaches, various hideous things put the Doctor and Rose/Martha/Donna into immediate and inescapable peril]

[Cut to credits.]

[One week later, the Doctor and Rose/Martha/Donna easily and anticlimactically escape the immediate and inescapable peril within the first 20 seconds of the episode.]

Doctor: Well, now, let's set about stopping this thing. But not too quick, we need to stretch this thing across a two-parter.

Rose: Durr. *goofy grin*
Martha: Alright, then.
Donna: Snide comment about your judgmentalism / what's ethically wrong about this place goes here.

[Running and explosions follow.]

[Confrontation.]

Doctor: Angry speech about the obvious aesop we're trying to prove via the Evil Alien's Evil Plot goes here!

Evil Alien: Bah! I will underestimate you completely as I have been doing despite you thwarting my every turn.

[The Doctor proceeds to completely pwn the evil alien, often in an ironic way, turning their schemes against them, sometimes with the aid of some technical trick pulled directly out of Geordi LaForge's ass.]

Evil Alien: Noooo! My only weakness! [dies, but not really, so he can come back in the next season]

Doctor: Melancholic minispeech about what we've learned and the obligatory damage left in wake of the evil scheme to prove that the series has a dark undercurrent.

Rose: Teehee. *goofy grin*
Martha: Uh-huh.
Donna: Golly, you're marvellous!

[Credits.]

(Post a new comment)

raigne
2008-04-28 03:34 pm UTC (link)

Mind you I've only ever seen one episode of Doctor Who, but your synopses fits with it, and just about every episode of any sci fi/fantasy tv series episode I've every seen. Some are bigger budget and some are a bit more pretentiously clever and a lot are far more suspenseful, but they're mostly all like that. :x

Some of the repetitive plots are still enjoyable though.
Mine is Bond:

You expect me to talk?

No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

(Reply to this)

	annepackrat 2008-04-28 03:49 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I've only seen one episode too and that pretty much describes it perfectly. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	twoflower 2008-04-28 04:38 pm UTC (link)
	Fortunately, there are some GOOD Doctor Who eps in the new runs that don't fall into the Predictable Plot Parameters(tm). It's just funny as hell that the first four of the current series seem to match the pattern. (Pompeii a bit less so, but it's still stupid humans buying into some hot new life-changing thing without realizing it'll doom them all.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	annepackrat 2008-04-28 05:18 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, the fatbabies you mean? Haven't gotten to Pompeii yet. Ryan and I are a bit behind since we're following it on American TV. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	demigod 2008-04-28 05:08 pm UTC (link)
	Of course, every television show is based on some type of formula. (Reply to this)(Thread)

lirazel
2008-04-28 05:40 pm UTC (link)

Most stories are based on formulae. The problem here is that they are retelling the same story. There are others.

For example, when Old Who replaced one Doctor with another, there was usually an adumbration of the "eucatastrophe" story--a word made up by Tolkien in which Ultimate Disaster is averted at the Last Minute, but not by beating up the bad guys... by the sacrifice of the good guy. Which is sort of hard to avoid in the case of constantly regenerating/resurrecting Doctors, but still, not at all a bad story. Just not one you can do every week.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	keikotakamura 2008-04-28 05:39 pm UTC (link)
	I think you've uncovered TV's OMNIFORMULA! Go now, and make your own scifi drama! ...I think this could be applied to Torchwood if you switch out the morality bits for [EXCESSIVE GAY SEXUAL TENSION]. (Reply to this)(Thread)

twoflower
2008-04-28 05:49 pm UTC (link)

Torchwood! Proof that you CAN have too much gay sexual tension!

Actually, TW settled down considerably in Season 2. By then the three key relationships were locked down -- Owen/Tosh, Gwen/Hubby, Jack/Ianto. They'd tease variations but the themes of needing stability in your life gravitated folks back to their partners eventually. (I find it funny that not a single mention has been given to the S1 midseries Gwen/Owen fling. It's like the writers realized it was a mistake and nixed it from continuity.)

I am a bit disappointed at TWs2's ending and the apparent kid-friendly direction S3's going to take. Torchwood was starting to find its stride in the scifi/paranormal investigation bender. If they drop the serious+levity in favor of adventure+wacky, it'll just be another Doctor Who. And one of those is enough chewing satisfaction already.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

keikotakamura
2008-04-28 07:26 pm UTC (link)

Oh my god, the Gwen/Owen thing made me want to scrape my eyes out with a spork. Gwen is too cute and too sweet to sink to Owen's level! I hope those writers learned their lesson.

I hope Torchwood a least doesn't cut out gratuitous snogging. Remember Tosh's lesbian alien fling? And that alien who did a sort of black widow thing and took all that orgasm energy from the men she bedded then killed? Those were great episodes. That's what kept me watching. Totally.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

twoflower
2008-04-28 07:32 pm UTC (link)

Hey, who can forget lesbian alien flings? *_* But at least they realized that's all they are, flings, and that the rockbed to build on is the actual relationships...

Spoilers in white, highlight to read.
I kinda liked Owen. I can't put my finger on why, given his primary gimmick is to be the Jerkwad of the series, but Combat and his death arc (so to speak) gave him a bit more depth. And that's the odd thing, they were just starting to go somewhere interesting with a previously thin character, then they knocked him off for reals. My GUESS is he'll be back in S3, but with Martha Jones confirmed as their new doctor, he'll probably end up being King of the Weevils or some other villain, which is just as much of a letdown. Ah, well. The WHOLE SERIES will be a letdown if they go with the kid-friendly approach planned, anyway.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cmdr_zoom 2008-04-28 07:48 pm UTC (link)
	Because going from nearly constant titillation and Ho Yay to BBC Kids! is a rather, um, wrenching shift in tone. (Reply to this)(Parent)

City of Heroes
(Anonymous)
2008-04-28 09:15 pm UTC (link)

So I don't know if you've seen the two big announcements today from City of Heroes. One is a calendar with important dates regarding COX. I haven't really looked at it yet other than Open Beta coming on May 6th.

The other shocker was in Positron's 4 year address:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now of course the boards are going nuts with the possibilities. I think you'll be limited it how much you can choose certain things but even then this is just an amazing feature.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: City of Heroes twoflower 2008-04-28 09:17 pm UTC (link)
	Initially I was OMG!OMG!OMG! but I think I need to hear more concrete details before I get my hopes up. It'd be amazing, but only if executed well, and there are a number of obvious pitfalls they need to avoid to show it's going to work. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: City of Heroes jenshikami 2008-04-30 12:47 pm UTC (link)
	Presumably they've already developed some robust internal tools for mission-building... if there's anything they have user experience with, it'd be that interface, eh? So hopefully they CAN do this right. I can see why you would reserve judgement though. Otherwise your brain will start plotting whether you want it to or not. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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