skywaterblue (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skywaterblue) wrote2011-04-24 11:10 am
skywaterblue) wrote2011-04-24 11:10 am
Entry tags:
I wish Game of Thrones was a little more like Doctor Who:
1. I am reading Game of Thrones, but very very slowly. It's not that interesting to me and often I will read one chapter and be like 'that was great' and then the very next chapter will have me saying 'and that was complete shit'. I think this may be one of those books where if I was LESS well-read in the genre I would be more impressed, because mainly what I keep thinking is that it's basically a Very Good YA Novel. I think many of the books fans would choose to object to me and say 'but you can't do that and that in a YA book' and a. that isn't true now and b. wasn't that true back then either.
Basically, most of the sex scenes would need to be toned down or otherwise alluded to, and frankly, they all suck anyway so it would be no big loss. They are creepy old man sex scenes and every time I read one I need a fucking shower.
Anyway, people told me that the female characters were awesome. They... are, I guess. Arya is awesome. I would have loved her a lot a decade ago. Sansa is pretty awesomely under-rated in that scheming to get married to the future King was how women got power in feudal situations - but you can tell the author isn't very sympathetic to this cause because all of the wommens who married up for the power are fucking evil. So far. Maybe they turn around by the end but I doubt it, because the foreshadowing is pretty heavy.
It's okay, is what I'm saying. It was probably really cool in... holy shit, this was from 1996?! I thought this was written in the mid-80s. Well, it was probably really cool in 1996. It's complex and gritty and there's magic but it's like, adult. Y'know.
2. I am sorry to say I thought the pilot episode for the Game of Thrones TV show to be poorly done. Very adapted by the numbers. One of the big problems with adapting this show is that all of the book is written via the perspective of a character. And that character (at least at the point of the book I'm in) is an obvious authorial stand-in. They observe which characters are evil slimy bastards and the narrating character is So Obviously Correct About It. And a lot of times I find that decision authorially boring. Like, wouldn't it be way more interesting to see that wedding from the eyes of Dany's brother?
This runs into even more problems in the TV show, which has some appallingly poor edits in the pilot that break up any tension the scene was developing. More than the info dumping, what the producers of this show need to develop is a sense of POV perspective when they write and film these scenes to match (or alter) the book.
It's not like the author's great skill is in dialogue here. There's some witty lines but it's not Mamet or anything, guys. (And tragically, the script and directing fucking /dumps/ all over what wit was in the book to begin with leaving the actors stepping all over the good lines.)
So anyway. It's got some problems besides its issue with the male gaze (inherited from the book) and awkward Race pony people.
Flat, flat, flat. Moments in the book imbued with great foreshadowing importance or drama are rendered inert and the problems clearly lie in the screenwriting and later overall direction. It can only improve, one hopes.
3. Doctor Who, "The Impossible Astronaut".
So much fucking better than the pilot episode of Game of Thrones for one clarifying reason: Steven Moffat understands how to navigate the audience/character POV perspective in television. In fact, there's no one in screenwriting I can think of right now who does this better than he does.
Go back through and watch this episode. Is River Song indeed, finally as sympathetic to the audience as the reviewers claim? (I think the answer is yes, but I was never against her from the start.) Why? Go back and watch this episode again - how many of the scenes are being expressly written from River's Point of View. The answer: almost the entire episode.
Are we in the Doctor's POV when he's being chased around a castle skirtchasing? Not really, because we learn moments later that this is a story being recounted from a big fairytale looking book by Amy.
We're not in the Doctor's POV at all for the first half - it's clearly a story that's going to involve a lot of time looping around itself, but the POV characters aren't privileged to know what plan the Doctor's involved himself in anymore than the audience at this point.
Watch the scene when the Doctor 'dies' (for surely he's not dead, despite the narrative) - whose grief are we in? Not Amy's, who is a crying heap. Not Rory's, who is trying to comfort her. We remain with River, an angry but relatively rational observer. In fact, there are very few scenes in this episode that don't have either River or Amy as the POV - when Amy comes back from her encounter with the Silence in the White House bathroom, the Doctor's already got the next step planned.
2. The Silence are in fact, creepy as fuck and a new spin on one of the universal fears of mankind. Good job, Moff. Not sure how I feel about lightening hands, but I guess they do need an offensive weapon.
3. So the Silence have built the faux-TARDIS last seen in the Lodger... or...?
4. Mark Sheppard's gravelly Batman voice, which one assumes is meant to match his father (playing the older version of the man) is super distracting.
5. I love that the Doctor provides for his own Time Lord funeral. And oh Rory, who has several great moments in this episode and quite comes into his own a bit here, spotting the boat.
6. Nice to see the old West Wing Oval Office set again. This episode seems to be going for a much kindlier Nixon than we usually see - as Nixon was a huuuuge racist. I am pretty sure there were no black Secret Service men in 1969, and the 'West Wing' was very fake looking - also, I think the version of the White House from the outside is wrong as well, as the West Wing expansion had already taken place, hadn't it?
Anyway, I thought this episode of Doctor Who was structurally fabulous from top to bottom with everyone from the main cast giving a perfect performance. Great television.
Basically, most of the sex scenes would need to be toned down or otherwise alluded to, and frankly, they all suck anyway so it would be no big loss. They are creepy old man sex scenes and every time I read one I need a fucking shower.
Anyway, people told me that the female characters were awesome. They... are, I guess. Arya is awesome. I would have loved her a lot a decade ago. Sansa is pretty awesomely under-rated in that scheming to get married to the future King was how women got power in feudal situations - but you can tell the author isn't very sympathetic to this cause because all of the wommens who married up for the power are fucking evil. So far. Maybe they turn around by the end but I doubt it, because the foreshadowing is pretty heavy.
It's okay, is what I'm saying. It was probably really cool in... holy shit, this was from 1996?! I thought this was written in the mid-80s. Well, it was probably really cool in 1996. It's complex and gritty and there's magic but it's like, adult. Y'know.
2. I am sorry to say I thought the pilot episode for the Game of Thrones TV show to be poorly done. Very adapted by the numbers. One of the big problems with adapting this show is that all of the book is written via the perspective of a character. And that character (at least at the point of the book I'm in) is an obvious authorial stand-in. They observe which characters are evil slimy bastards and the narrating character is So Obviously Correct About It. And a lot of times I find that decision authorially boring. Like, wouldn't it be way more interesting to see that wedding from the eyes of Dany's brother?
This runs into even more problems in the TV show, which has some appallingly poor edits in the pilot that break up any tension the scene was developing. More than the info dumping, what the producers of this show need to develop is a sense of POV perspective when they write and film these scenes to match (or alter) the book.
It's not like the author's great skill is in dialogue here. There's some witty lines but it's not Mamet or anything, guys. (And tragically, the script and directing fucking /dumps/ all over what wit was in the book to begin with leaving the actors stepping all over the good lines.)
So anyway. It's got some problems besides its issue with the male gaze (inherited from the book) and awkward Race pony people.
Flat, flat, flat. Moments in the book imbued with great foreshadowing importance or drama are rendered inert and the problems clearly lie in the screenwriting and later overall direction. It can only improve, one hopes.
3. Doctor Who, "The Impossible Astronaut".
So much fucking better than the pilot episode of Game of Thrones for one clarifying reason: Steven Moffat understands how to navigate the audience/character POV perspective in television. In fact, there's no one in screenwriting I can think of right now who does this better than he does.
Go back through and watch this episode. Is River Song indeed, finally as sympathetic to the audience as the reviewers claim? (I think the answer is yes, but I was never against her from the start.) Why? Go back and watch this episode again - how many of the scenes are being expressly written from River's Point of View. The answer: almost the entire episode.
Are we in the Doctor's POV when he's being chased around a castle skirtchasing? Not really, because we learn moments later that this is a story being recounted from a big fairytale looking book by Amy.
We're not in the Doctor's POV at all for the first half - it's clearly a story that's going to involve a lot of time looping around itself, but the POV characters aren't privileged to know what plan the Doctor's involved himself in anymore than the audience at this point.
Watch the scene when the Doctor 'dies' (for surely he's not dead, despite the narrative) - whose grief are we in? Not Amy's, who is a crying heap. Not Rory's, who is trying to comfort her. We remain with River, an angry but relatively rational observer. In fact, there are very few scenes in this episode that don't have either River or Amy as the POV - when Amy comes back from her encounter with the Silence in the White House bathroom, the Doctor's already got the next step planned.
2. The Silence are in fact, creepy as fuck and a new spin on one of the universal fears of mankind. Good job, Moff. Not sure how I feel about lightening hands, but I guess they do need an offensive weapon.
3. So the Silence have built the faux-TARDIS last seen in the Lodger... or...?
4. Mark Sheppard's gravelly Batman voice, which one assumes is meant to match his father (playing the older version of the man) is super distracting.
5. I love that the Doctor provides for his own Time Lord funeral. And oh Rory, who has several great moments in this episode and quite comes into his own a bit here, spotting the boat.
6. Nice to see the old West Wing Oval Office set again. This episode seems to be going for a much kindlier Nixon than we usually see - as Nixon was a huuuuge racist. I am pretty sure there were no black Secret Service men in 1969, and the 'West Wing' was very fake looking - also, I think the version of the White House from the outside is wrong as well, as the West Wing expansion had already taken place, hadn't it?
Anyway, I thought this episode of Doctor Who was structurally fabulous from top to bottom with everyone from the main cast giving a perfect performance. Great television.