We quickly tire of discussing imported television -

Phylum · #61 08-13-2014, 05:07 PM

Doctor Who is a nostalgia trip for 99% of the viewers. I've talked to my friends at great length about it, and at the end of the day we're all waiting for it to be as good and exciting as it was to us when we were 9-10.

Slog Bait · #62 08-13-2014, 05:15 PM

I don't have the nostalgia factor with Doctor Who. I only watched it when Nep convinced me to late last year.

We started with the new series, and I think it started out nice. Really silly, but there was a lot to like about it. Some episodes were fantastic, while others were a steaming pile of shit. The thing that appealed to me most were the alien designs. I like seeing what people come up with and how they portray it. There were alien designs that felt genuinely alien, and not just humans cut and paste with different skins, and that was nice. And I really loved getting to see different worlds from time to time, even if it was just a description of the world.

However, by around the 5th series, the novelty started to wear off. None of the story arcs were nearly as interesting, and there were seldom any new aliens popping up. What's the fun in that?

Watching Classic Doctor Who, I found a lot of the stories hard to follow. Overall though, my opinion of it was the same as watching series 1-4. Really silly.

I basically like Doctor Who for the same reasons I liked Star Wars.

Phylum · #63 08-13-2014, 07:18 PM

Vintage Dr Who is fun to watch, just because it's so outdated.

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I basically like Doctor Who for the same reasons I liked Star Wars.

Quote of the year, every year.

Connell · #64 08-13-2014, 07:50 PM

I saw the first episode of the reboot with Christopher Eccleston at 9 years of age and loved it. I now hate what the show has become but still watch it every week because that 9 year old inside me needs me to watch it forever and ever. The show definitely needs a massive kick up the arse, and I hope Peter Capaldi's Doc Martens will do the trick.

MeechMunchie · #65 08-14-2014, 07:11 AM

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Donnie Darko was not a dream!

No, it was even worse than that. It didn't just happen in someone's head, it never happened at all.

As much as you might hate Mars's conceit, you have to admit it had real-world connotations - when Sergeant Coma woke up, he was changed by the experience. The events of Donnie Darko had no impact on anything or anyone.

I don't care if they live or die - if not a single character in the fiction takes anything away from the events of the story, for any period of time, I will wonder what I'm supposed to be taking away from it.

It just feels... pointless. Pointless for the characters to experience, pointless for the artists to make, and pointless for me to consume.

EDIT: This extends to more mundane stuff, too. A while back me and Joe talked about some anime faggotry that revolved around a high-school boy chasing his cold, untouchable girl. They dated, they shagged, and then she dumped him without a moment's hesitation. Her attitude had changed in no discernible way, and he didn't have any more of a clue about women than when they started, either. All in all, they both learned absolutely nothing from their time together.

If the message it was trying to give was "hey, sometimes you invest in something and it turns out to be an utter waste of time", it portrayed that very well. Probably better than the creators intended.

STM · #66 08-14-2014, 07:44 AM

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I saw the first episode of the reboot with Christopher Eccleston at 9 years of age and loved it. I now hate what the show has become but still watch it every week because that 9 year old inside me needs me to watch it forever and ever. The show definitely needs a massive kick up the arse, and I hope Peter Capaldi's Doc Martens will do the trick.

I'm exactly the same way. I hate how stupidly complex the show has become; you need to be following all these running threads to get the whole story. When it was just Bad Wolf = Dalek escape mechanism thingie, that was tolerable, but come on...it's a kid's show. Why can't you make it simple enough for my puny 19 year old brain to understand?

OANST · #67 08-14-2014, 08:30 AM

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No, it was even worse than that. It didn't just happen in someone's head, it never happened at all.

As much as you might hate Mars's conceit, you have to admit it had real-world connotations - when Sergeant Coma woke up, he was changed by the experience. The events of Donnie Darko had no impact on anything or anyone.
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But... there were real world consequences in that movie. Everything he did in the days he ended up erasing caused sometimes subtle, and sometimes not so subtle (Swayze's character killing himself) affects to the people in his life. That, and he also sacrificed his own life to repair the damage done to the universe. Donnie Darko is not a perfect movie, by any means. In fact, the original release of the movie makes very little sense, and the parts that do kind of make sense are a lot of bad pseudo-science. The directors cut explains a ton more about what is happening, but it also just about ruined the pacing of the movie, so I still prefer the original cut.

Littleleeroy · #68 08-14-2014, 08:47 AM

OANST, Are there any TV shows you do like?
Scrabtrapwoman, I agree but basically blame Steven Moffat for ruining the last 3 seasons.
Wings Of Fire, I really like your opinions.

To answer the question posed by the OP: Yes, but I can't think of any noteworthy shows that were originally American and were remade by the British. (Not including reality TV. I'm sure there is Survivor UK or something like that, not that that's noteworthy)

OANST · #69 08-14-2014, 08:56 AM

STM · #70 08-14-2014, 09:34 AM

He likes Friends.

MeechMunchie · #71 08-14-2014, 09:55 AM

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Everything he did in the days he ended up erasing caused sometimes subtle, and sometimes not so subtle (Swayze's character killing himself) affects to the people in his life. That, and he also sacrificed his own life to repair the damage done to the universe.

Exactly. He erased the events of the film from existence. All that stuff we watched never happened. Apart from the last forty seconds where Donnie dies, literally nothing of consequence happens. And by "literally nothing of consequence", I mean there were literally no consequences. All the consequences got erased.

From the point of view of everyone in that film, a piece of wreckage killed a teenager, and that was that. And they're right.

OANST · #72 08-14-2014, 09:59 AM

No, they didn't. The events had a kind of echo effect on the people involved in them. Plus, it still told a story. He had to do those things to get to a place where he could keep the universe from collapsing on itself. Those things mattered because without them you couldn't have arrived at the end result. Plus, again, those events did have an effect on the people in them, even though they couldn't say why. That was actually an important plot point, and was demonstrated fairly well at the end of the film.

I'm not really trying to defend the movie that much. It had a lot of problems. But what you're mentioning isn't one of them.