Teevee, part I

Doctor Who: we're up to S3E9. Yeargh, I vaguely remember there being wank about this arc in the vast spaces of the internets, and now I see why. It sort of feels like the writers came up with [basic idea for two-parter plot and Doctor's emotional arc] which is very good, then picked [setting of ineffable Britishness] so the show can do its national character thing for [presumable planned air date of episode], which led to the logical treatment of Martha for said setting, where racism and classism happened to be at their near-worst. And yes, maybe they wanted to make their points** and/or felt it'd be disingenuous to always dodge that bullet while Martha remained in the picture, but 1) logical doesn't mean pleasant to watch by any means and 2) it's Watsonian-illogical, because if the Doctor had the choice of time-space locale for that gambit why wouldn't he pick one where Martha's ability to take action when required wouldn't be hampered by others not treating her like a real person. (Not to mention make her life easier, but that's semi-believable because dude can be that inconsiderate. XD;)


** One of which being that racism-as-we-know-it-now didn't always exist as such, even if something else existed in its place (the Shakespeare ep); and two - I think - that class can trump race in practice [nb expand on this]. I'm not British and can't parse the other side of this, i.e. what they thought they meant by making Rose go undercover as a maid in S2. I suppose one depressing but not completely dismissible possibility is that there was no thought put into it and we're just seeing the result of someone's French maid fetish. XD; What happens when you leave fanboys in charge.

Teevee, part II

Star Trek TOS: 1/3 of the way through the first season. I've been finding this mentally taxing - I keep losing track of the first few minutes of each episode gawking at the "tech", the outfits and the general decor, and the acting is hard to parse. One assumes TV acting was more theatrical back then but sometimes I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be getting, and I can't tell if it's the actors or the scripts at issue (particularly in these early eps where everyone involved was sounding things out, incl. q. obv. the costume dept XD;), or the intervening 40(!) years of shifts in mores and convention. Or, why not, the editing: come to think of it one of the things that's throwing me off is that by 21st-century standards reaction shots are too long. And the things they do with dramatic lighting. XD

Anyhow I think all of it is starting to come together slowly, Charlie X was the first ep where I felt I was rolling with the punches the way I was meant to at any given moment. It's a good story, too.

The decor comes across as less cheesy now than when my friend made fun of it during the 90s. Everything was sleek molded black plastic then, remember? But Apple singlehandedly brought candy colours back, then a sort of retro analog cool mentality took hold, 60s classics became the new antique furniture, and faux-budget-brand functional minimalism is now cutting-edge design thanks to the economic crisis (the generic solution seems to be colour blocks + explanatory text in big font - if you can get a number series in there so much the better). One of the things I find hard to tell is if the conference and recreation rooms and such are supposed to look futuristic too, because they look like normal (and slightly depressing) office spaces on earth today. SF FULFILLS ITS OWN PROPHECY?!

Meanwhile the new movie is all soft white floor lighting and transparent freestanding screens that I suspect will look dated in a decade because they're too now!cool, like the pics I took of that marketing agency in São Paulo - I think it's even got the same flooring. XD; The yellow is very Jeffries tube as well. Love the yellow. That was the first time I saw a rug like that and now they're in all the Urban Outfitters.

The navigator is like the DADD professor of the Enterprise bridge. XD;