I’ve got family visiting from the U.S., and that’s sucking up my time. It will be days, at a minimum, before I’ll have anything to say.
Just wanted to keep you from obsessively reloading the page to see if I’ve posted…
dunno when I’m gonna get to Doctor Who: “The Snowmen”
share and enjoy
There’s no need to be so snarky. If you don’t want someone to engage with the detailed arguments you make, then why put them forward?
Coincidentally, since you admit to having read Who fanzines back in the day, I think you qualify as an “ubermensch” of fandom more than I (I got the gun/frock distinction from an academic paper, oddly enough). I don’t even rate Cornell and Roberts very highly as writers, when it comes to it…
Hey, Paul read an academic paper, and I read a fanzine! Paul wins again! Go, Paul!
Sorry for the snarkiness, but your rather sad game of continual one-upmanship deserves little better.
If you see one-upmanship in everything you read, I’m not going to deny it’s there. But are you so sure you aren’t looking in a mirror? Perhaps my “sad game” isn’t so much “one-upmanship” as “one-on-the-same-level-manship”, since you are as happy as I am to offer tit for tat?
This argument can run and run. The real achievement, on the internet, is actually to find an amicable resolution. I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s something of a rarity.
Why are you so unnecessarily abusive? This isn’t.
I was so amused by your response to Auntbellow’s perfectly reasonable change of heart, that I couldn’t resist taking a pop, there. You had just been lecturing me-at inordinate length-about how Dr Who belongs to no genre and that there are no right and wrong views about it. All perfectly reasonable and enlightened, until someone expresses a view with which you disagree-and then they can’t possibly be ”’serious”. The irony was delicious.
I don’t care if you thought it was abusive-belittlng the views of people who don’t agree with you is little better, and does not amount to ”constructive engagement”, on any level. The views of most of the people who’ve taken the time to post here are different from my own. When I chose to join in, I didn’t do so by attacking ,abusing or patronising any of them. If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noted that that I have ”engaged constructively” with others, who liked the show more than I did. I’m glad that they did. Perhaps there’s a lesson in there for you.
Oh, and if you’re going to engage constructively with someone, at least do them the courtesy of actually reading what they said first. You stated in one of your posts that the show was not ”to my taste” currently. I had already said that I was enjoying the show at the moment, before the Christmas edition. As your last detailed post seemed to be motivated more by a need to be clever at my expense, than by any desire to engage or communicate, I did not take the view that it merited a detailed response.
I am left with the impression that your initial crack about ”plebs” was perhaps a little more revealing about you than you intended it to be.
The points you make here are reasonable.
But there is a problem with accusing someone of lecturing you at inordinate length. Have a look at the two posts of yours that appeared before I weighed in. Not to mention the post I am now replying to itself. I am overly wordy, a fault I admit, and which I have not criticised in you. Do you admit this yourself?
There is also a risk involved in saying “When I chose to join in, I didn’t do so by attacking ,abusing or patronising any of them.” I fully accept that you sincerely believe that you didn’t do so (I can find this easy to believe, because I did not intend to do so either). Do you think that this therefore makes it certain that you didn’t?
My comment to Auntbellow was intended as a very similar sort to my comment to you: a sort of warped mirror. Your suggestion that my reference to “plebs” may have effectively been a Freudian slip is well observed: it may well be. On the other hand, if you track my profile, as I tracked yours, you may find that I am not likely to espouse right-wing views. Bat-shit crazy views, maybe (I’ll cheerfully accept criticism). But rarely views supporting the elite. To me “plebs” (whatever the truth of what Mitchell, the MP for my hometown, said) is a term I will take as describing me: a term of abuse hurled at those who do not occupy positions of power and privilege, in the same way that queer theory has subverted that term of abuse. I used it as a warped mirror of the “general public” you invoked.
Go back to our original disagreement and you may find less to dispute than you imagine. You opined, at length, on the faults of this episode, and developed it into a suggestion that, following last year’s Christmas episode, it might lead to the cancellation of the programme.
I agreed that the episode had faults, but argued that your suggestion was insupportable and excessive. By your own argument the recent series has been pretty successful. Christmas specials are hardly the standard on which to judge all Doctor Who.
There was an escalation in our argument, and I can certainly be blamed for that. But can you put your hand on your heart and claim that you did not also escalate? I provided facts as well as opinions to back up my case. In all the internet arguments you have observed, are you saying that is so egregious? And that you are so completely blameless? That the tone of my writing absolves you of any responsibility, and that your own tone has been impeccable?
Auntbellow’s comment consisted mainly of abuse directed at some particular Doctor Who. I echoed that back. It is entirely consistent with my points about Doctor Who’s genre-hopping (I didn’t say no-genre), and with my previous points about the programme’s reinvention and shifting centre.