parting of the ways

November 20, 2013

10

Jack Graham50th anniversary countdown, capitalism, culture industry, gothic, ideology, market, media, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, parting of the ways, religion, rtd, society of the spectacle, TV, war on terror, zombies1

“We waited here in the dark space,” booms the Dalek Emperor, “damaged but rebuilding. Centuries passed, and we quietly infiltrated the systems of Earth, harvesting the waste of humanity. The prisoners, the refugees, the dispossessed. They all came to us. The bodies were filtered, pulped, sifted. The seed of the human race is perverted. Only one cell in a billion was fit to be nurtured.”

So, In Russell’s rewrite of ‘Revelation of the Daleks’ (which would be a better title for this story than it was for Saward’s script), the Daleks are no longer harvesting the elite. Brought to the brink of extinction, they have been forced to resurrect themselves from the ‘dregs’… which seems to be synonymous with the contestants who lose game shows. The Daleks take the people who get knocked out before the finale. Because the Daleks have become TV producers. They’ve become the people who run Big Brother and Trinny & Susannah and The Weakest Link. They’ve become the bosses of reality TV. They’ve become Simon Cowell. (Which is kind of an insult to the Daleks, if you ask me.)

Big Brother, in our polity, in our system of media signs, is no longer Orwell’s omniscient totalitarian leader; he’s now the eternal, ever-watching viewer. He’s us. Just like the Daleks are now us.

“So you created an army of Daleks out of the dead,” says the Doctor.

Again, the gothic, the monopoly, and the zombie labour.

“That makes them half human,” mutters Rose… as always, she is straight to the quick.

“Those words are blasphemy!” bellows the Dalek Emperor.

The Daleks chant in unison…

“Do not blaspheme! Do not blaspheme! Do not blaspheme!”

“Since when did the Daleks have a concept of blasphemy?” asks the Doctor.

“I reached into the dirt and made new life. I am the God of all Daleks!”

The Daleks chant in unison…

“Worship him! Worship him! Worship him!”

Bringing back the Daleks in 2005, four years after 9/11 and the start of the ‘War on Terror’, two years into the conquest and occupation of Iraq, Russell T. Davies makes them religious fundamentalists. The world is in the middle of an apparent ‘clash of civilisations’, with religion as the supposed organising logic. But are these new fundamentalist Daleks – ‘Fundamentaleks’ – supposed to be Osama and Al Qaeda? Are they Bush and the neocon Christian crusaders? Both? Two sides of the same coin?

To me, they look more like another kind of fundamentalism, a more prevalent and destructive kind.

They run a massive media system based on ruthless competition. The housemates who lose the battle for popularity get ejected into nothingness. The Trinny & Susannah bots encourage people to carve into their own flesh in order to look right. The weakest links get zapped, and the strongest link is the one who most effectively and ruthlessly competes, who must callously fucks over his competitors. Society has become “a charnel house” in which people compete in competitions of spectacular triviality which are framed as epic battles. …

July 10, 2011

Childhood’s End

Jack Grahambad wolf, boom town, delta and the bannermen, doctor dances, empty child, father's day, greatest show in the galaxy, long game, mark gatiss, parting of the ways, paul cornell, rob shearman, rose, rtd, series 1, steven moffat, the master, unquiet dead1

Shabgraff does Series 1 of the revival. It’s my blather from Timelash II, plus a little new stuff. (I may do something separate about ‘The End of the World’ at some point.) This is about a series which works because its about a young woman growing up. I feel like I’ve grown up too, in a sense, since 2005… which is why my opinions about Series 1 have drastically changed since first viewing.

Rose

I have never been able to entirely make up my mind about this.

The characterisation is glib, sneering at ditzy blonde ‘chavvy’ people who say silly things about making legal claims and flirt with anything in sight, etc (admittedly, this improves later in the series)… not to mention having a LAD character who is OBSESSED WITH FOOTBALL (as are all men, obviously), probably looks at porn on the internet and is stupid (this doesn’t improve ever… though, in fairness to RTD’s writing, it might’ve helped if they’d cast somebody who could act, even just a little bit).

There are things about it that are puzzlingly wrong… just off somehow… like the way Rose calls for a lone store caretaker (!) and calls him “Wilson”, as though he’s an underfootman or something. Huh?

Plus, the music is absolutely awful. And about half the comedy bombs. I know we’re all supposed to look down our more-sophisticated-and-ironic-than-thou noses at people who hate the wheelie bin… but it’s still stupid.

There are some great things in it, however. They whole idea of the Autons being the first monster in the new series is inspired… and they’re quite well done… though, obviously, the priority was to use monsters that were on Earth in the present day, i.e. to make the initial setting as inoffensive to sneery meedja types as possible.

This really is the underlying logic of the whole episode: appease the meedja. Look meedja, it’s a “serious” actor… and he’s not wearing anything naff, he’s wearing a leather jacket, etc. Look meedja, a pop star/lad’s mag companion! Look meedja, London (the only place people like you think fucking exists).

Luckily there’s enough magic in the TARDIS and the Autons and Chris (who’s miscast but good anyway) and the excellent Billie Piper (who will be the unexpected jewel of the first series) to make the whole thing watchable and, often, fun.

Oh, and the ferocious, unrelenting, slavering meedja hype helped too, I imagine.

There’s a germ of something interesting in the Doctor’s appearance as a lone bomber (soon junked)… and the geeky internet bloke who’s somewhere between an obsessed fan, a conspiracy theorist and a cultural dissident. It suggests a support for the uncool, the obsessional, the underground that strangely belies the meedja-pleasing and brand-resurrecting surface priorities on display.

The Autons retain their original charge as emblems of commodity fetishism… products become autonomous and threatening because they represent alienated labour. Rose’s status as a wage slave only emphasises these undertones, as does the Doctor’s reference to a “price war” and the Auton’s imperialistic lust for our plastic (oil).…