John Toon
Autor(a) de The Black Archive: Full Circle
Obras de John Toon
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
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Membros
Resenhas
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Membros
- 19
- Popularidade
- #609,294
- Avaliação
- 3.2
- Resenhas
- 2
- ISBNs
- 3
John Toon had previously written the Black Archive volume on the Tom Baker story Full Circle; I commented then that it was largely about the intellectual ideas behind the story rather than on how the story was actually made, and why certain things were done or not done in the course of production, and the same is true this time. There are indeed a lot of ideas in this story, but they are not as well executed as they might have been; Toon does a good job of pulling them into the light, without going into too much agony about the story’s disappointments.
A short introduction talks about withholding key information from the audience, and conspiracy theories.
The first chapter, “Who World Order”, briefly looks at conspiracy theories around the Moon landings, Men in Black, Area 51, fake celebrity deaths, secret underground tunnels, government mind control, subliminal advertising, the Templars and Freemasons, and (at more length) Watergate.
The second chapter, “A Conspiracy of Silents”, looks at the general phenomenon of conspiracy theories, and in particular how they have fed into and been presented in Doctor Who over the years.
The third chapter, “Killing in the Name of the Doctor”, looks at the dubious ethics of the Doctor’s instruction to humanity to kill the Silents, and whether or not the audience is intended to question the Doctor’s morality. He doesn’t go on about it for fifty pages, at least.
The fourth chapter’s title is “‘Waste No More Time Arguing What a Good Man Should Be. Be One.'” It attempts to find a justification in plot terms for the Doctor’s actions against the Silents, looking also at other similar plot twists in the Moffat era. The discussion is interesting but the justification is not really found.
The fifth chapter, “Controlling the Narrative”, looks at the Moffat-era shift to the Doctor finding more aggressive solutions in general, and also speculates that the Silents are a metaphor for a particular type of fan, closing the main thread of discussion in the book.
The sixth chapter, “When the President Does It, It’s Not a Celebrity Historical”, switches tracks completely and asks if the story can be considered a “celebrity historical” story in the same was as The Unquiet Dead (Dickens), Tooth and Claw (Queen Victoria), The Shakespeare Code (I needn’t say) and Victory of the Daleks (Churchill), if we grant that The Girl in the Fireplace (Madame de Pompadour) may not fit that category. The answer is, probably yes.
So, I felt that the book is a valiant attempt to look at themes of interest in a story that doesn’t quite deliver.… (mais)