Lis Sladen, my Sarah Jane, has died. Well, she’s been dead for over a week now. I’ve been wanting to do a post in her honor since I heard the news, but I’ve hesitated. Why? Well, because I don’t feel that she is my Sarah Jane.
I am primarily a fan of New Who. Slowly I’m getting around to watching the Classics, and have mostly seen episodes with Four. But only a few, and only three of those have featured Sarah Jane: Seeds of Doom, Pyramids of Mars, and The Five Doctors. Many of the tributes to Sarah Jane talk about her character, how important she was to the series, to the fans, what it meant to have a Doctor Who girl who wasn’t going to conform to sexist stereotypes. And it’s all true.
And yet, I feel that I’m preaching to the choir - a more experienced choir - when I say those things. After all, I only met Sarah Jane in School Reunion. We saw her again in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. But by then she had her own show, yet the only episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures that I’ve ever seen is The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, primarily because Ten was in it. So even in New Who, how can I claim to know Sarah Jane?
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Impossible Astronaut review
First of all, wow. That was no calm, fun series opener. I’m not going to spend too much of this talking about plot, because I want to see what Moffat does with the second part of this story. Here, he threw an incredible amount of information at us, and while I want to criticize him for that, I think I’ll wait until it’s wrapped up to pass judgement. I also have some huge issues pending with Amy's final statement before the cliffhanger, but I will also leave that till next time.
That said, I have to give him points for sheer nerve. Who kills off the Doctor and ensures that he doesn’t regenerate in the first ten minutes of a season? Yes, this road had been sort of paved by RTD in Turn Left and The Stolen Earth. Yes, in some ways every viewer knows he won’t be dead in the end. But that didn’t stop it from being an incredibly powerful and arresting moment. I sort of cried. The scene where they meet his past self in the diner almost hurts. And the scene in the TARDIS, the companions trying to get the Doctor to trust them instead of the other way around, had incredible acting from all of them. You could almost taste the tension. For once, the audience is in the know, and the Doctor was out, and the reversal of that normal situation is so striking.
That said, I have to give him points for sheer nerve. Who kills off the Doctor and ensures that he doesn’t regenerate in the first ten minutes of a season? Yes, this road had been sort of paved by RTD in Turn Left and The Stolen Earth. Yes, in some ways every viewer knows he won’t be dead in the end. But that didn’t stop it from being an incredibly powerful and arresting moment. I sort of cried. The scene where they meet his past self in the diner almost hurts. And the scene in the TARDIS, the companions trying to get the Doctor to trust them instead of the other way around, had incredible acting from all of them. You could almost taste the tension. For once, the audience is in the know, and the Doctor was out, and the reversal of that normal situation is so striking.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Finally Filming the Red Book
It seems fitting, somehow, that our first post on this blog is going “There and back again”--back to Tolkien, Jackson, and Middle-Earth. It’s a place we never really left--but with the production of the Hobbit, suddenly everyone is going back.
Though we didn’t know each other back then, both of us were lucky enough to have been bitten by the Tolkien bug as Peter Jackson’s films were being released--films that proved to be the highlights of our misbegotten middle-school years. I, for one, can remember obsessively watching Two Towers and Return of the King trailers in horrible quality with my slow, dial-up Internet--the process for watching a 2 ½ minute length trailer took about fifteen minutes. And yet, we did it. Every day. We checked forums, read fansites, learned Elvish, and made more pilgrimages to the theater than we care to admit.
Time has proven that stories such as Tolkien’s have a power over us far, far after the movies are over and their initial popularity fades away. Even as particular chatrooms died out and the trickle of fanfiction slowed, our love for Middle-Earth’s sagas never diminished. But it was a different kind of love. It was the love of discovering the Silmarillion, re-reading the trilogy, and--in Laura’s case--writing college papers about Gandalf. Of course, this has happened with all the stories we truly love--Harry Potter, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica have all had their finales, even as they have never faded from our hearts. Still, the days of active excitement and anticipation were done.
Though we didn’t know each other back then, both of us were lucky enough to have been bitten by the Tolkien bug as Peter Jackson’s films were being released--films that proved to be the highlights of our misbegotten middle-school years. I, for one, can remember obsessively watching Two Towers and Return of the King trailers in horrible quality with my slow, dial-up Internet--the process for watching a 2 ½ minute length trailer took about fifteen minutes. And yet, we did it. Every day. We checked forums, read fansites, learned Elvish, and made more pilgrimages to the theater than we care to admit.
Time has proven that stories such as Tolkien’s have a power over us far, far after the movies are over and their initial popularity fades away. Even as particular chatrooms died out and the trickle of fanfiction slowed, our love for Middle-Earth’s sagas never diminished. But it was a different kind of love. It was the love of discovering the Silmarillion, re-reading the trilogy, and--in Laura’s case--writing college papers about Gandalf. Of course, this has happened with all the stories we truly love--Harry Potter, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica have all had their finales, even as they have never faded from our hearts. Still, the days of active excitement and anticipation were done.
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