which forums? there's people on many forums who, in my opinion, can be bastards. even this one.
The Writer's Tale
- Thread starter Remy
- Start date
The Doctor Who Forum.
Indeed. I lurk there but rarely ever post for that reason. And the mods there do next to nothing to control it. Rather a shame actually.
Well quite. Even here someone described one writer with a word colloquially related to the one you mentioned, which seemd a bit OTT... but apparently we're pretty restrained here compared with some others.
I feel empathy for people being the butt of online wrath, even if their work was rubbish.
Not really. If anything, that makes the fact that her Sontaran two-parter was better somewhat remarkable; most people I know would not be able to perform if they thought that the slightest loss in quality would result in them being absolutely savaged so viciously.
And I was surprised how viciously some "fans" reacted. Someone around here had a post calling her a "bitch" on the basis of the Dalek two-parter, which is absolutely ridiculous and not a little bit sexist. I don't see anyone running around personally insulting Gareth Roberts or Matthew Graham or Chris Chibnal, even though their works are often unpopular -- but somehow Helen Raynor, in the eyes of many fans, deserved to be personally insulted instead of just reserving their insults for the quality of her work. Calling her a "hack" would be one thing, but for some reason people called her a "bitch," too.
But, hey, it's all good. After all, "that Raynor bitch" produced two wonderful episodes in Series Four, thoroughly proving all those sexist and mean-spirited morons wrong!
I've seen plenty personal insults for Chris Chibnall...
I haven't. Every insult that I've seen towards him has been directed towards his work, not the man himself.
To be fair, though, I have seen a lot of venom spewed at Russell T Davies personally rather than professionally, though I presume that this has more to do with his greater public visibility as the (ex-)showrunner of Doctor Who - though I'm not unmindful of the fact that every now and then, one runs into some fairly disgusting bits of homophobia against the man.
Still, Raynor struck me as attracting a lot more personal attacks than any other writer of bad Doctor Who episodes, and her Dalek two-parter wasn't the worst story the revived DW has yet produced. (That particular honour still belonged to "Fear Her" at the time her episodes aired, though "42" later surpassed it.) Nor was she a more publicly visible personality than other writers -- Mark Gatiss, for instance, is far more publicly visible as a writer than anyone save Davies himself from what I understand.
But given that Raynor's episode was bad but not THAT bad, and that she does not have a high public profile, I can only presume that she came under personal attack because she's a woman and some "fans" are very sexist.
I may have to pick that book up.
I like this:
I like this:
You know, I would really have to sit down and watch it again, which I am loathe to do. But I just remember not enjoying that episode much at all -- it was a well enough way to kill an hour, but not something that was worth watching again except for a few of the Martha scenes.
"42" was ok - I hated "Fear Her" and still do. I think the problem was that she was using the Daleks, and yeah, they've had their share of crap stories over the forty-five years of Who, but they are still kind of a big deal - a crap Dalek story was always going to attract more negative attention than a crap monster of the week story.
Which would be fair enough, if people restricted their attacks to the work itself.
Oh, I totally agree. Anyone who attacks a writer personally because they don't like their work is mentally unbalanced and the worst kind of idiot. I don't like that two-parter at all, and have undoubtedly said some pretty harsh things about it, as is my right as a consumer, but when I read that she was literally shaking after reading the reaction on the internet I felt really uncomfortable - and personal insults are way out of line.
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