While I and many others, both fans and not, have been more impressed by the relaunch of a new, family-friendly Doctor Who there has been a wealth of online folk vomiting blood in their outrage.
You know the sort, the type that use "undergraduate humor" in casual conversation and wish everything was more like Torchwood: Children of Earth because it was all so gritty and serious with small kids dying and nasty things happening and no jokes or silliness like that.
These people bemoan the fact Capaldi isn't playing the cold-blooded sociopath of his first few episodes, that there are (spit!) jokes in it and that characters are allowed to have immature life-affirming existence instead of dying in their own stained and filthy bodily fluids.
Folk who think that Clara dying in a screaming agony before her corpse drops with a squelch onto cobblestones while the Doctor watches on in horror wasn't enough and should have happened a season sooner so it felt so much crueler.
This, coupled with the way fans only seem to enjoy episodes with small children being murdered (to the point an episode like Flatline has people pretend dead children are seen in it to make it) is enough to make you wonder whether or not it is DW fans rather than postal workers more likely to go on killing sprees. Was it because we were all bullied at school and now dearly desire all potential cool kids to be slaughtered before they can judge us on our life choices?
I dunno, but I feel there are two types of Who-fan.
Those who want Planet from Nowhere to be the norm, and those who don't.
"What are you talking about, you directionless hippy?" I hear you cry, reaching for the taser strapped to your thigh. "I've never heard of Planet from Nowhere!"
Yeah, you probably haven't.
Planet from Nowhere is the sixth of ten short stories in the 1969 Doctor Who Annual and written by either K. McGarry, J.L Morrissey or J.H. Pavey (seriously, no one is certain which of those did it) and illustrated by David Brian. It is one of the darkest, grimmest stories in the Whoniverse and undoubtedly the biggest downer in the franchise prior to The War Games.
Since there's little point (and much risk of legal trouble) in just reposting the page scans, here is a faithful adaptative transcript...
Do you want all Doctor Who like that? Dark and serious and nihilistic and mature?
You must be so unhappy now.
Good.
No comments:
Post a Comment