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Happy endings: Dr. Who as metaphor

Started by fnord33, May 10, 2010, 05:31:25 AM

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fnord33


Fanatics please take no offense. I know that questioning the plot of a Dr. Who episode is blasphemy to some. I was married to someone like that for eight years. I hid Passolini's Canterbury Tales from her so as to not disillusion her with Tom Baker's stance towards artistic nudity (she was a bisexual, nympho-maniacal puritan with paranoid schizophrenia). Anyway, please don't shoot me for saying this. I'm a bit drunk so please disregard the following blasphemy.

Is it just me or would it not have been an interesting plot twist to have the sidekick girl turn into a vampire/fish? Why are all his sidekicks so safe? Sure, somebody gets killed off every few seasons, but (given the fact that he spends almost all of his time being chased by homicidal aliens) it seems to me that the show should have a higher body count. It feels like they are just writing to keep the fans happy at this point. I miss David Tennant, but even during his run it seemed that they were modeling the show after the Marvel universe more than the original series. I don't mean this to be a critique of the show. I enjoy it well enough. It just makes me wonder how long a show that is primarily action oriented can keep going when they take out the possibility of anything bad happening to the stars. Sure, they killed Mr. Tennant off a couple of times before replacing him with emo frankenstein, but how many of you really question whether or not he'll get out of whatever situation he's in? Dr. Who is as predictable and Disneyfied as Godzilla and Zatoichi, but people (I) still enjoy the show. So, my question is this: How do you write a story with an invincible hero and keep the thrilling aspects believable? I kill almost every character I create. Sometimes I follow them into the afterlife sometimes not. That way the reader really doesn't know what to expect. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on how I can be entertained by things when I know how they are going to end.   
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide it's basic mechanisms. - William Burroughs

Rev. Austin

That's an interesting question.  I guess, with regards to the Doctor, people know/expect him to survive so the scriptwriters get away with it.  I do really like how the new episodes have exchanges like:

Someone: I thought you had a plan, Doctor?
Doctor: I will have when I've stopped talking

so we're kept on the edges of our seats waiting to see how he 'gets out of it this time'.  I suppose the question could also relate to Superman, for instance.  He's survived as a entertainment product for so long thanks to a) a rabid fanbase and b) ace stories.  If he suddenly developed a tendancy to die a lot more easily I think sales would plummet, and likewise ratings for Dr. Who if he started suffering wounds etc (plus there are only like, what? two more regenerations he's allowed, is that right?  It'll be interesting to see how the BBC get past that one).

So in closing: we know the Doctor will survive but it's waiting to see HOW, that keeps him interesting.  :smiley:
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delboy

QuoteSo, my question is this: How do you write a story with an invincible hero and keep the thrilling aspects believable? I kill almost every character I create. Sometimes I follow them into the afterlife sometimes not. That way the reader really doesn't know what to expect. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on how I can be entertained by things when I know how they are going to end.   

It's a good question, and it could also be asked of 99% of first person narratives. Yet, I love first person narratives and, although somewhere inside I know that the narrator isn't going to die (especially if it's volume 3 in a series of about 20) I'm still usually hooked. As the Rev says, it can be about the how, not just the what.

But I think it's deeper than that. I think one of the key elements of story-telling is about reinforcing the defeat of evil, showing how good wins. There's something deep in our psyches that wants this, maybe that needs this, and when we read such stories we feel positive and reassured, happy and relaxed. It's almost as if we expect this from our stories - so it could be that we're always confident that a good author will deliver us that, and therefore it's always about the how.

Of course, there are always anarchists who will kill their heroes  ;)  But even then, they're normally killed in the process of defeating evil and leaving the world a better place.

How many movies or books are otherwise? And how many people buy more books or go and see more movies from the same franchise after seeing evil truly win?

S'far as Doctor Who is concerned - haven't watched it since the days of John Pertwee. I've heard it's back and I've heard that running upstairs is no longer a good defence against daleks.

Derek

"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

Pharosian

Sorry, I didn't make it past "she was a bisexual, nympho-maniacal puritan with paranoid schizophrenia"   :2funny:

Ed

Quote from: Rev. Austin on May 10, 2010, 07:35:36 AM
plus there are only like, what? two more regenerations he's allowed, is that right?  It'll be interesting to see how the BBC get past that one).


One word: PREQUEL ::)

I quite like the way a weedy honorary Brit takes on the universe, and wins, with nothing but a sonic screwdriver and a bit of brainpower.

The thing is, there are people like that, who make it all the way through wars unscathed, taking all the risks, coping through ridiculous adversity with uncommon luck, while other people die all around them. Occasionally you'll hear of the luck running out for one of these heroes, but even then, people don't seem to get overly sad about it.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

fnord33

You guys raised a lot of good points. I heard that they included a loophole for the Doctor and the master that pretty much grants them unlimited regenerations, but I can't remember if I heard how they were going to do it. If all else fails they still have the human David Tennant in the alternate universe that they can pull out if they want. Now that I'm sober, I think that the answer to my question lies partially in the badass principle. We like to see people pull off impressive stuff and it's possible for a hero to be so good that it's fun just to watch them do their thing. Zatoichi, for instance, makes me smile every time that he gets surrounded by a huge group of bad guys. It's a highly effective running gag, much like the self-mocking tongue-in-cheek humor of the new Doctor Who series.

Quote from: delboy on May 10, 2010, 09:19:23 AM
How many movies or books are otherwise? And how many people buy more books or go and see more movies from the same franchise after seeing evil truly win?

Actually, there is a ton of stuff with depressing endings. I prefer writers who throw some tragedy at me from time to time. There are two schools of thought on this:
comedic/humanist/escapist - these works make people feel better by distracting them from their crappy reality
and
tragic/anti-humanist/realist   - these works make people feel better by showing that others are worse off than themselves.


Of course it's a lot more complicated than that. To me, tragedies have always seemed more believable than comedies. It's all a matter of taste though.
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide it's basic mechanisms. - William Burroughs

delph_ambi

Shakespeare's tragedies don't have happy endings, and people go back again and again to see them.

Some years ago, I took my ballet fanatic daughter and her friend to the ballet. The Kirov was doing 'Swan Lake' at the London Coliseum. We booked into the matinée so that we could get there and back in one day (500 mile round trip). Now, I don't know if you know 'Swan Lake', but basically it's a tragedy. The nice swan dies. However, because this was a matinée, so they knew there would be a load of children in to see it, they gave it a 'happy-ever-after' ending. I could have wept.

I love the new Dr Who, btw. Didn't think I would, as I was a big Tennant fan, but then I was a big Hartnell fan too, and you don't get much more different. The only doctor I really couldn't stand was Colin Baker.

fnord33

Nobody liked Colin Baker. I always thought that George Clinton would be a great Doctor Who. As I understand it, he can regenerate into any shape. So, why does he always come up as a white British man? People would probably get mad if he regenerated into a Japanese female dwarf, but technically it's possible, right? 
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide it's basic mechanisms. - William Burroughs

delboy

I wasn't talking about happy ending or avoiding tragedy - I was talking about good triumphing over evil. This is usually manifested in a happy ending, but of course there are books, films, plays where the lead characters either sacrifice themselves or are killed in order to make that pattern work. In such instances we may, on the surface feel like it's a sad or depressing ending, but deeper down our need for good to defeat evil, for light to shine again upon the darkness is once more fulfilled - and it's that which makes for a satisfying tale.

To be honest, right now I can't think of a novel or a film that I've read where evil really does triumph (*). Which again reinforces the original answer to the original question - it's about the how this happens, not the whether it happens.

(*) You may get the occasional score-draw in the early books of a series or a trilogy, but even then the pattern holds true by the end of the tale as a whole.

Derek
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

delph_ambi

One of the most popular books/films of all time is 'Gone With the Wind'. In that, everyone ends up either dead or miserable. People still lap it up.

On the whole though, I would agree with you Del. 'Romeo and Juliet' may have an unfortunate ending for the protagonists, but at least their deaths bring two warring families to their senses. In most Shakespearean tragedies, the 'good' people die, but those who are left learn lessons, otherwise these plays wouldn't be so cathartic.

Ed

I remember the film Cold Mountain leaving me feeling miserable. The whole thing was an ordeal from start to finish, and by the end I was left wondering what the point was of any of it. I'm not trying to make a point here - I just searched my memory for films that had unhappy endings and found it in a dark corner. That said, the bad guys died, so there was some resolution, but so did the heroic MC, which seemed to leave the moral of the tale as you're fucked if you do, and fucked if you don't. Nothing new there, then :grin:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Rev. Austin

I had the misfortune to watch KNOWING recently, and that was completely and utterly pointless, since everyone dies*

*well sort-of.
facebook.com/waynegoodchildishaunted
Stay in touch! I don't mean that in a pervy way.

fnord33

What about "In the Mouth of Madness"? Everyone is either dead or an insane monster at the end. I haven't read much Lovecraft, but I get the impression that he wasn't big on happily ever afters. At least 70% of horror movies end with a twist where the killer is still alive or there's someone or something to take it's place. Then there are my own books. In one, the MC is about to be killed in a snuff film that his best friend is producing and all the shit in his life gets to be so much that his consciousness detaches itself from that reality and swaps with a version of himself in a different reality. He wakes up in a perfect world where everyone treats everyone else with respect and lives happily together. The thing is that he can't deal with things not being shitty. He has this nagging feeling that there's going to be some twist and he's going to realize that it's all a dystopian lie. He deals with his feelings by writing his memoirs which get published as science fiction and introduces the poisonous philosophies of his first world to the perfect one. This new way of thinking is like a hand grenade in the hands of a child and soon the society is tearing itself apart. When the MC sees what he's done he kills himself in his bathtub. It's kind of a happy ending because the vengeful ghost of his ex-girlfriends cat finally got it's way. This one probably isn't going to be a big mainstream hit.
Life is an entanglement of lies to hide it's basic mechanisms. - William Burroughs

Pharosian

Quote from: Rev. Austin on May 11, 2010, 04:43:12 AM
I had the misfortune to watch KNOWING recently, and that was completely and utterly pointless, since everyone dies*

*well sort-of.

This from the author of White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits...  :scratch:

I thought you *liked* it when everyone dies or ends up mutilated a la Grease Paint and Monkey Brains (or whatever its new title is)

Caz

Quote from: fnord33 on May 10, 2010, 06:26:15 PM
Nobody liked Colin Baker. I always thought that George Clinton would be a great Doctor Who. As I understand it, he can regenerate into any shape. So, why does he always come up as a white British man? People would probably get mad if he regenerated into a Japanese female dwarf, but technically it's possible, right? 

I'm not sure if the Doctor can regenerate into any shape, but I guess he always appears as humanoid because that's what the time lords are. There was some talk as I remember that one day the Doctor could regenerate as a woman, the consensus of opinion at the time of this idea was No F***ing Way. I mean some things are sacred. I can remember back to when John Pertwee was the doctor and the appearance of the Tardis change from a police call box and into something that look like a white coffin. Sad times indeed.

I don't want to give the game away but the ending to 'The Road' ain't what anyone would call happy. And for depressing films you can't do much better that Pink Floyd's The Wall. What the hell was that ending all about?
Some may say slaughtered is too strong a word...but I like the sound of it.