doctor who

There’s a fascinating academic study to be made out of how some facts stick and some don’t—how Jon Pertwee’s Doctor could say he was thousands of years old, and no-one listens to that, and yet someone once says he’s only got thirteen lives, and it becomes lore. It’s really interesting, I think. That’s why I’m quite serious that that 507 thing won’t stick, because the 13 is too deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. But how? How did that get there? It’s fascinating, it’s really weird. Anyway, that’ll be my book in my retirement!

Frankly, I sort of feel about it the same way I do when I read arguments like this, that Stephen Moffat’s characters are all Mary Sues. That’s an interesting and amusing idea, but it sort of ignores the fact that he — and in the case of the 507, Davies — is creating the show. It’s not fan fiction, it’s canon.

And it was a canon that was ridiculously, horribly, gloriously, convoluted when they were both just fanboys watching it from behind the couch.

Here we have Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a book written to tell ladies that if you’re not a submissive waif, society goes to hell and ungodly monsters are going to turn you into child killing horrors and someone is going to drive a bowie knife through your heart/cut off your head/etc. As you deserve! Thanks Bram! I wrote it down so as to remember it.

There’s a little more going on it the book, but yeah, she’s not wrong.

With this and the recent Arcade Fire concert webcast — as well the opera he’s reportedly going to stage — Gilliam does seem to be picking some very weird, much smaller projects. Maybe he’s just trying to keep busy until some new kind of funding comes along?