The Doctah!
Dec. 14th, 2005 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinThis picture might possibly have the longest back story ever.
I have never seen Dr Who. Until I hooked up the IV drip of BBC to my brain this fall, all I knew of it was that a portrait hanging in our house looked kind of like him. Then, on BBC7, they started running promos for a Dr Who episode that had been written by Douglas Adams. I like Douglas Adams ... not as much as Terry Pratchett, and not enough to have read all his books yet (I'm saving them ... yes, that's it, saving them), but it was enough of a prod that when I was looking for something to listen to on Monday I clicked on it. And it was good! It was really really good. I don't know if it's the Whoness or the Adamsness (I suspect the latter) but ... I listened to it again yesterday.
Anyway, you're waiting for me to get to the picture. Okay. There's a bit of setup first. [adopts 'dream-narration' tone] There's this villain, right, and he's got this ... this sphere thing, that like sucks your brain out, but not really your brain, just your mind, sort of thing, and it can like fly and stuff. The Doctor went to Cambridge to visit a friend who's a professor and then had to get somewhere so he borrowed a student's bike, and then this shpere thing starts chasing him, and he's trying to get away on the bike, and ends up riding along the river with the sphere behind him. Okay. There's the actual story context. At about this part of the story there's some wonderfully Adamsy dialogue, including a bit where he's fighting traffic and someone objects, and he says 'Sorry, being chased by an alien machine, can't stop!' which, for some reason, really amuses me. (It's probably the affable way in which it's delivered...)
So, having finished my work for the day, I decided to express my affection for this line by doing a drawing. (Finally getting somewhere!) Last summer I'd read Good Omens and got a drawing of Aziraphale that actually wasn't all that bad. Someone commented that it looked like Dr Who, and since I liked the drawing, I figured I'd just use it as the model for this one. The little mind-sucky sphere, which I pictured about the size of a large grapefruit, didn't seem quite dramatic enough for the scene without establishing its eville powah, so I wanted to go for something bigger, and what's the first evil alien sphere anyone thinks of? The Death Star, obviously! So this picture is either an illustration of a scene in the play or Aziraphale trying to escape the Death Star on a bicycle. Take your pick.
If you want to listen to the show, click on SHADA. (dun dun dunnnn!) It's two and a half hours long, be warned; there are episode breaks, though. Requires RealPlayer, and is only around till Saturday (again). This scene can be found at 16:49:20. There's a documentary on the making of Daleks at the end. I think I'm going to listen to it again today, and count how many times the worst possible thing that could happen happens. Cor, good storytelling. : ) And if you listen to it more than once, you pick up all the little foreshadowings of plot twists!
I have never seen Dr Who. Until I hooked up the IV drip of BBC to my brain this fall, all I knew of it was that a portrait hanging in our house looked kind of like him. Then, on BBC7, they started running promos for a Dr Who episode that had been written by Douglas Adams. I like Douglas Adams ... not as much as Terry Pratchett, and not enough to have read all his books yet (I'm saving them ... yes, that's it, saving them), but it was enough of a prod that when I was looking for something to listen to on Monday I clicked on it. And it was good! It was really really good. I don't know if it's the Whoness or the Adamsness (I suspect the latter) but ... I listened to it again yesterday.
Anyway, you're waiting for me to get to the picture. Okay. There's a bit of setup first. [adopts 'dream-narration' tone] There's this villain, right, and he's got this ... this sphere thing, that like sucks your brain out, but not really your brain, just your mind, sort of thing, and it can like fly and stuff. The Doctor went to Cambridge to visit a friend who's a professor and then had to get somewhere so he borrowed a student's bike, and then this shpere thing starts chasing him, and he's trying to get away on the bike, and ends up riding along the river with the sphere behind him. Okay. There's the actual story context. At about this part of the story there's some wonderfully Adamsy dialogue, including a bit where he's fighting traffic and someone objects, and he says 'Sorry, being chased by an alien machine, can't stop!' which, for some reason, really amuses me. (It's probably the affable way in which it's delivered...)
So, having finished my work for the day, I decided to express my affection for this line by doing a drawing. (Finally getting somewhere!) Last summer I'd read Good Omens and got a drawing of Aziraphale that actually wasn't all that bad. Someone commented that it looked like Dr Who, and since I liked the drawing, I figured I'd just use it as the model for this one. The little mind-sucky sphere, which I pictured about the size of a large grapefruit, didn't seem quite dramatic enough for the scene without establishing its eville powah, so I wanted to go for something bigger, and what's the first evil alien sphere anyone thinks of? The Death Star, obviously! So this picture is either an illustration of a scene in the play or Aziraphale trying to escape the Death Star on a bicycle. Take your pick.
If you want to listen to the show, click on SHADA. (dun dun dunnnn!) It's two and a half hours long, be warned; there are episode breaks, though. Requires RealPlayer, and is only around till Saturday (again). This scene can be found at 16:49:20. There's a documentary on the making of Daleks at the end. I think I'm going to listen to it again today, and count how many times the worst possible thing that could happen happens. Cor, good storytelling. : ) And if you listen to it more than once, you pick up all the little foreshadowings of plot twists!
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 06:53 pm (UTC)And this picture is much better than the Adobe Illustrator paper-doll version of the Doctor being chased by a sphere that they did for the Shada animated webcast. Though the webcasts did have their own quirky low-tech charm, once you got over the sense of disconnection caused by it being neither just an audio drama nor quite a real episode.
Looking at your drawing, I find myself wishing that they'd made the Eighth Doctor look like that. Not only because I love me some scarves and greatcoats, but because then poor Paul McGann would have been able to keep his own hair (http://www.tilneysandtrapdoors.com/images/paulmcg.jpg) instead of wearing the much-hated wig (http://www.enduring-images.co.uk/8thdoc08.jpg).
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 07:11 pm (UTC)They got better at the Flash thing as they went along, but it was still more like the mutant offspring of an audio drama and a comic book than a real cartoon...
Oh, wait! The Scream of the Shalka (http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shalka/) webcast is still up! So now you can see exactly what I mean.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-14 10:40 pm (UTC)