Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it is.

[Starkers]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

You really do have to wonder what the point of Sci-fi is then in that case? Why invent Sontarans, and Daleks and Timelords, time vortexes and gasmask children. Why not just make nice simple tales about an everyday man who goes around everday earth solving mundane mysteries...

 

[ITL]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

If I enjoy a show/episode/arc I don't really give a flying donkey's arse-nuggets where it's set.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

If I enjoy a show/episode/arc I don't really give a flying donkey's arse-nuggets where it's set.

I agree, though alien worlds being more prevalent in the last season was a bonus for me.

 

[ITL]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

Oh, absolutely. I do like a good alien world location if it's done right.

 

[Sci]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

You really do have to wonder what the point of Sci-fi is then in that case? Why invent Sontarans, and Daleks and Timelords, time vortexes and gasmask children. Why not just make nice simple tales about an everyday man who goes around everday earth solving mundane mysteries...

It depends on what your goal is, ultimately. RTD-era Who's goal, in using its sci-fi elements, was to use them to juxtapose the fantastic with the familiar, to put ordinary people -- a working-class shop assistant, a middle-class medical student, and older woman struggling financially and looking for love -- into extraordinary situations, and to explore the history and future of humanity via the Doctor. RTD says in his original pitch for the revived show:

ADVENTURES IN THE HUMAN RACE

If the Zogs on planet Zog are having trouble with the Zog-monster... who gives a toss? But if a human colony on the planet Zog is in trouble, a last outpost of humanity fighting to survive... then I’m interested.

Every story, somehow, should come back to Earth, to humanity, its ancestors and its descendants. Rose will experience the entire history of her race. And we will celebrate it.

Every day, we’re told that comets will crash into the earth, the food’s gonna kill us, we’ll be sterile and extinct and replaced by machines. DOCTOR WHO will say otherwise. For all the danger and darkness, this is a fundamentally optimistic series; the human race will survive. With the Doctor’s help!

So RTD-era Who's goal was not to be a space opera, not to be a show that explored alien societies in order to comment on real life, was not to do a huge amount of world-building in each episode; its goal, from the onset, was to use time travel and the occasional bit of space-ness to explore society today, to use future or past humanity in order to comment on real life today.

I suspect this is a reaction both to the realities of television production -- meeting a few too many aliens-who-happen-to-look-just-like-humans starts to undermine verisimilitude -- and to the realities of trying to make a show that's popular in the mainstream. Like it or not, the mainstream has rarely embraced shows that were primarily about alien societies (or, rather, shows that tried to be about alien societies but undermined their own verisimilitudes with human-looking aliens); they tend to embrace shows where humanity is front and center.

There's nothing wrong with what you seem to be looking for -- and I for one would tend to agree that RTD should have done a bit more aliens, if only in the context of doing more stories about how humans and aliens relate to one-another over the centuries. But it wasn't his goal to do a Star Trek-style "explore strange new worlds" thing.

 

[Cutter John]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

You really do have to wonder what the point of Sci-fi is then in that case? Why invent Sontarans, and Daleks and Timelords, time vortexes and gasmask children. Why not just make nice simple tales about an everyday man who goes around everday earth solving mundane mysteries...

I think of it as the 'Wizard of Oz' syndrome. Why travel or learn about other cultures and places when everything we need is right here?

Honestly, a show like Who should be working to broaden young viewers horizons, not teach them to stay home and protect what they have from outsiders (aliens) who only want to come here and take it away from us.

 

[Sci]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

You really do have to wonder what the point of Sci-fi is then in that case? Why invent Sontarans, and Daleks and Timelords, time vortexes and gasmask children. Why not just make nice simple tales about an everyday man who goes around everday earth solving mundane mysteries...

I think of it as the 'Wizard of Oz' syndrome. Why travel or learn about other cultures and places when everything we need is right here?

Honestly, a show like Who should be working to broaden young viewers horizons, not teach them to stay home and protect what they have from outsiders (aliens) who only want to come here and take it away from us.

I think that's a severe mis-reading -- if not an out and out false twisting -- of RTD's stated creative intent.

 

[Cutter John]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

Oh I know that wasn't the intent, but after five years it does seem to be what the show implies, intentionally or not.

 

[PorthosShadow]

Re: Getting back into nuWho again, still bugged at how small scale it

Maybe it's just me but what Doctor Who has taught me is took look beyond the present. To understand that history is about good and bad moments, ups and downs. So no matter how good or bad your present might be, you are certainly not the first nor the last person who feel like that. Basically, Doctor Who has given me a slightly larger view of the world. To quote Captain Picard from Best Of Both Worlds part 1...

This is really just another page of history, isn't it? Will this be the end of our civilization? Turn the page.