We're not a typical audience so I think occasionally it's worth us reminding ourselves that the BBC sees Dr Who as not only an institution but "classic family entertainment" and I think it probably worked well for the core audience they have in mind
This is probably one of the most sensible things I've seen written about Doctor Who around here since they resurrected it :-)
Yes. I do think we have to remember that Doctor Who is not SF in any meaningful sense, but a family-friendly adventure series with pseudo-scientific trappings. It may occasionally include genuine SF moments, but most of the time it's about as SF as Flash Gordon or Farscape (or even Robin Hood).
Also, I rather resent the implication that family-friendly adventure series will inevitably include such insults to common sense as the Thames filling a hole drilled to the centre of the Earth.
the Thames filling a hole drilled to the centre of the Earth
Several people have mentioned this so I'm starting to wonder if I just missed the bit where they said that the Thames *filled* the hole. Surely the point was just to drown the itsy-bitsy spiders? Which presumably happened, given all the screaming. Why would the hole need to be filled to achieve that?
Well, if the hole is filled I can allow myself to handwave away the fact that London presumably isn't now buried under several thousand tonnes of magma. Otherwise, not so much.
You know, pointing out more dumb things about that element of the plot is not the best route to making me like it more. :p
I can accept a certain amount of impossibility for the sake of the plot. Hole to the centre of the Earth: ok. But beyond a certain point, you can't keep dodging the consequences of the impossibilities you introduce with yet more impossibilities, because it just makes the story meaningless. If we know that every situation is going to be solved by some impossible method, why should we care about any situation? Hence, solving the problem by pouring the Thames down the hole to the centre of the Earth: much less ok. (Inventing a magic form of energy that has exactly the properties required by the plot, also a bit annoying.)
You know, pointing out more dumb things about that element of the plot is not the best route to making me like it more. :p
Even I'm not daft enough to try to make you like it more (why do you bother watching it at all - it's not really your cup of tea, is it?); I was just pointing out that sometimes you have to go with the plot they're giving you, or just give up completely. There's no point trying to fanwank the fact that the Thames cooled the magma and that's why London isn't buried, when there's apparently no magma to cool.
So either you sit there yelling at bad physics and geology and so on, or you just accept it and get on with enjoying the show about a time-travelling alien saving the planet from space-spider people-eaters.
But my point was that it isn't a problem that Who routinely violates scientific plausibility -- the problem is that this episode did it so excessively and clumsily that it ended up violating the principles of good storytelling.
So, the hole to the centre of the earth not covering London is magma that they used in this one episode is less plausible science than the bigger-on-the-inside phone box that can traverse time and space that they use in every single episode? OK then.
When did it start? It's no more SF than Star Wars is. It may occasionally waggle SF tropes like wormholes in front of our eyes but there's almost nothing in the show that obeys reasonable or consistent laws of physics. It's such a wild ride that I don't even think "space opera" adequately summarises it. It's a fantasy show set in outer space.
Just so with Doctor Who. There have been moments in the show's history where it dabbled briefly in scientific plausibility, and moments when they've dealt with impressively Stapledonian gulfs of time, but those are far outnumbered by the science-as-magic bits.
To be fair, what I'd like to see more of in Who is not so much scientific credibility as internal consistency and logic. For example this special featured a very neat use of the sonic screwdriver with the sound system, which works because anyone can grasp the idea of a sonic device and an amplifier. It makes sense even though the device has never been used in such a way before. Contrast this with the many contrived uses of the sonic screwdriver as an all-purpose deus ex machina.
We're using entirely different definitions of sf. I'm using it to mean "science fiction"; you seem to be using it to mean "hard science fiction". I agree that neither Farscape nor Who is hard sf, or trying to be, or needs to be. But the difference between them is, as you say, internal consistency -- Farscape had it to the extent that the miniseries picked up threads from across the show's four-year run (including apparent throwaways like lines from "... Different Destinations") and wove them into a more-or-less coherent whole. It wasn't perfect, of course, but the writers clearly wanted a story with large-scale coherency. Who is never going to even try to have large-scale coherency, but on its bad days, as in "The Runaway Bride", it doesn't even try to have single-episode coherency.
Well I believe that SF can be softer than pure hard SF implies, but is Farscape really SF? Is Star Wars?
Weird shit happens in Farscape but that's about as far as its SF credentials go. It has some (retroactive) narrative consistency and paints an epic tale over the long haul, but it contains zero speculation about the future and its science is a load of handwaving magical bollocks that does whatever the scriptwriter requires, shirley?
To me, Farscape is plainly science fiction, not because it has aliens instead of monsters, but because of the way it handles such elements. Point one is that they are handled with internal consistency (compare Buffy's changing treatment of demons -- D'Argo is an alien and not a monster because he's a character, essentially, and Buffy's demons don't really start being characters until quite late on). Point two is that Farscape's world is one that is susceptible to rational enquiry, as Crichton demonstrates nummerous times (in his inimitable fashion) -- the wormholes may be a form of magic, but they are a form of magic that can be investigated and understood and mass-produced. The equivalent in Buffy would be mass-producing Orbs of Thessula. (Arguably, The Initiative were science fiction characters wandering into a fantasy show and finding that their narrative protocols didn't work any more... :)
And please, let's not start saying sf has to have something to do with the future ... :p
Star Wars is a good bit closer to fantasy because it doesn't really do the things Farscape does -- you can't rationally investigate and understand The Force, its aliens (with a couple of exceptions) might as well be monsters, and it takes place in an anthropocentric universe. (Another of the things that I would say makes Farscape science fiction rather than fantasy is the sense that humans are not the centre of the story, or at least that the story is rather larger than the human race.)
I feel a Genre Discussion of Doom coming on, but by this definition The Lord of the Rings is SF.
I would say that the wormholes in Farscape, while superficially susceptible to rational enquiry on the part of one of the characters, are made up as they go along, gaining and changing abilities as it suits the writers. This is arbitrary magical science of the kind in which Doctor Who specialises.
I think for me the only thing that may make Farscape proper SF and not just Fantasy in Space is the way certain ideas are developed: the duplication of Crichton and the ideas about identity it throws up; the semblance of discussion of alternative timelines and roads not taken in an SF way; the contemplation of a Doomsday Device and the consequences of using it - or not using it - once it exists. But really these things are handled in a fairly Fantasy way so it's touch and go for me. Doctor Who touches on some Big Ideas about the future of humanity and doomsday devices too, and Farscape isn't noticeably more rigorous in its handling of such things. It's better at story logic, though, and at faking internal consistency.
I feel a Genre Discussion of Doom coming on, but by this definition The Lord of the Rings is SF.
Except I'm not defining sf -- I'm offering a number of things that I think are characteristic of sf. The more of those things any given story has, the more likely it is to be sf, but that doesn't mean a non-sf story can't also have some of those characteristics, because these are not impermeable walls we're talking about.
Point two is that Farscape's world is one that is susceptible to rational enquiry, as Crichton demonstrates nummerous times (in his inimitable fashion) -- the wormholes may be a form of magic, but they are a form of magic that can be investigated and understood and mass-produced.
I'll grant you the last point, but I'm not sure I'd say that Crichton's journey to understanding wormholes is wholly (or even mostly) rational. The process of decoding the knowledge the Ancients (a fantasy term if there ever was one) placed in his mind is coded in the vocabulary of a mystical quest. In order to decipher the wormhole equations as he does at the end of the third season, Crichton goes into what can only be described as a trance, from which he emerges with new knowledge. Later, he describes his ability to detect wormholes as a new sense, and in "Unrealized Realities" he learns that he needs to develop another sense in order to safely navigate wormholes (which, by the way, possibly puts a lie to your suggestion that once Crichton unravels wormholes, anyone can do it). This isn't science by any definition that I'm aware of.
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Date: 2006-12-26 11:04 am (UTC)This is probably one of the most sensible things I've seen written about Doctor Who around here since they resurrected it :-)
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Date: 2006-12-26 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 12:07 pm (UTC)*blink*
Er, when did Farscape stop being sf?
Also, I rather resent the implication that family-friendly adventure series will inevitably include such insults to common sense as the Thames filling a hole drilled to the centre of the Earth.
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Date: 2006-12-26 01:37 pm (UTC)Several people have mentioned this so I'm starting to wonder if I just missed the bit where they said that the Thames *filled* the hole. Surely the point was just to drown the itsy-bitsy spiders? Which presumably happened, given all the screaming. Why would the hole need to be filled to achieve that?
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Date: 2006-12-26 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 01:50 pm (UTC)And then I remembered I was watching Dr Who.
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Date: 2006-12-26 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 02:23 pm (UTC)I can accept a certain amount of impossibility for the sake of the plot. Hole to the centre of the Earth: ok. But beyond a certain point, you can't keep dodging the consequences of the impossibilities you introduce with yet more impossibilities, because it just makes the story meaningless. If we know that every situation is going to be solved by some impossible method, why should we care about any situation? Hence, solving the problem by pouring the Thames down the hole to the centre of the Earth: much less ok. (Inventing a magic form of energy that has exactly the properties required by the plot, also a bit annoying.)
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Date: 2006-12-26 02:41 pm (UTC)Even I'm not daft enough to try to make you like it more (why do you bother watching it at all - it's not really your cup of tea, is it?); I was just pointing out that sometimes you have to go with the plot they're giving you, or just give up completely. There's no point trying to fanwank the fact that the Thames cooled the magma and that's why London isn't buried, when there's apparently no magma to cool.
So either you sit there yelling at bad physics and geology and so on, or you just accept it and get on with enjoying the show about a time-travelling alien saving the planet from space-spider people-eaters.
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Date: 2006-12-26 10:24 pm (UTC)I haven't seen it yet, but that sounds all kinds of awesome.
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Date: 2006-12-26 11:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:22 pm (UTC)Dang. I agree with you about Doctor Who. I should go and watch "Father's Day" to restore the natural order of things.
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Date: 2006-12-26 10:53 pm (UTC)Also, the centre of the Earth is clearly not full of magma as it's full of giant alien spider spaceship instead.
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 06:16 pm (UTC)When did it start? It's no more SF than Star Wars is. It may occasionally waggle SF tropes like wormholes in front of our eyes but there's almost nothing in the show that obeys reasonable or consistent laws of physics. It's such a wild ride that I don't even think "space opera" adequately summarises it. It's a fantasy show set in outer space.
Just so with Doctor Who. There have been moments in the show's history where it dabbled briefly in scientific plausibility, and moments when they've dealt with impressively Stapledonian gulfs of time, but those are far outnumbered by the science-as-magic bits.
To be fair, what I'd like to see more of in Who is not so much scientific credibility as internal consistency and logic. For example this special featured a very neat use of the sonic screwdriver with the sound system, which works because anyone can grasp the idea of a sonic device and an amplifier. It makes sense even though the device has never been used in such a way before. Contrast this with the many contrived uses of the sonic screwdriver as an all-purpose deus ex machina.
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 07:10 pm (UTC)Weird shit happens in Farscape but that's about as far as its SF credentials go. It has some (retroactive) narrative consistency and paints an epic tale over the long haul, but it contains zero speculation about the future and its science is a load of handwaving magical bollocks that does whatever the scriptwriter requires, shirley?
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:39 pm (UTC)And please, let's not start saying sf has to have something to do with the future ... :p
Star Wars is a good bit closer to fantasy because it doesn't really do the things Farscape does -- you can't rationally investigate and understand The Force, its aliens (with a couple of exceptions) might as well be monsters, and it takes place in an anthropocentric universe. (Another of the things that I would say makes Farscape science fiction rather than fantasy is the sense that humans are not the centre of the story, or at least that the story is rather larger than the human race.)
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:49 pm (UTC)I feel a Genre Discussion of Doom coming on, but by this definition The Lord of the Rings is SF.
I would say that the wormholes in Farscape, while superficially susceptible to rational enquiry on the part of one of the characters, are made up as they go along, gaining and changing abilities as it suits the writers. This is arbitrary magical science of the kind in which Doctor Who specialises.
I think for me the only thing that may make Farscape proper SF and not just Fantasy in Space is the way certain ideas are developed: the duplication of Crichton and the ideas about identity it throws up; the semblance of discussion of alternative timelines and roads not taken in an SF way; the contemplation of a Doomsday Device and the consequences of using it - or not using it - once it exists. But really these things are handled in a fairly Fantasy way so it's touch and go for me. Doctor Who touches on some Big Ideas about the future of humanity and doomsday devices too, and Farscape isn't noticeably more rigorous in its handling of such things. It's better at story logic, though, and at faking internal consistency.
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:55 pm (UTC)Except I'm not defining sf -- I'm offering a number of things that I think are characteristic of sf. The more of those things any given story has, the more likely it is to be sf, but that doesn't mean a non-sf story can't also have some of those characteristics, because these are not impermeable walls we're talking about.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 08:38 pm (UTC)I'll grant you the last point, but I'm not sure I'd say that Crichton's journey to understanding wormholes is wholly (or even mostly) rational. The process of decoding the knowledge the Ancients (a fantasy term if there ever was one) placed in his mind is coded in the vocabulary of a mystical quest. In order to decipher the wormhole equations as he does at the end of the third season, Crichton goes into what can only be described as a trance, from which he emerges with new knowledge. Later, he describes his ability to detect wormholes as a new sense, and in "Unrealized Realities" he learns that he needs to develop another sense in order to safely navigate wormholes (which, by the way, possibly puts a lie to your suggestion that once Crichton unravels wormholes, anyone can do it). This isn't science by any definition that I'm aware of.
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:23 pm (UTC)