Recommendation
algorithms are a trip, aren't they? Take YouTube, a website I spend
hours on every week listening to podcasts, watching movie reviews and
subscribing to mainly liberal arts sort of channels. I watch Keith
Olbermann's Resistance videos, Moviebob's various series, a bunch of
wargaming series, let's plays and the two Extra Credits channels.
Somehow this
has led YouTube in the past to recommend me videos by white
supremacists, doomsday preppers, Alex Jones (you know, the right wing
commentator who claimed he lost custody of his child but we all know
that was just a child actor. I know, I was shocked when I found out,
too), and now, a video entitled “The Day Doctor Who Died”. The
thumbnail had Capaldi's angry eyebrows from the 50th
anniversary special on it.
Doctor Who
dies a lot.
I don't even
mean that maliciously. Okay, yes, we've all seen hysterical blog
posts and videos and forum threads with that very sentiment time and
time again since the day Russel T. Davies was announced as
showrunner. Hell, there's a very famous review of The Deadly
Assassin from 1977 that ends
with the author's overwrought cry of “What happened to the magic of
Doctor Who?” I'm not talking about that, that's the predictable act
of fandom, especially in this day and age.
What
I'm talking about is this: Doctor Who dies a lot. Its not a bug, its
a feature.
Doctor
Who kills its own premise on a regular basis. The original lead actor
had to leave because of heart problems and not only did they recast
the lead with a completely different actor but in Troughton's first
story they almost completely rebooted the Daleks and in his second
they completely dumped the pure historical model of stories. Three
years later the budget of the series was through the roof and the
production team decided to just drop the entire time travel aspect of
the show.
Doctor
Who without time travel! And its one of the most beloved eras of the
show.
Now,
I'm not going to begrudge anyone resenting that their favourite era
of a show they like has ended. I'm just, twelve years later, more
than a little ground down by the internet belief that “different”
equals “the show has died and what is being broadcast is a pathetic
sham that doesn't deserve the name”.
Its
just... different.
I
hated Enterprise. It
didn't mean Star Trek
had died. It didn't mean nothing good would ever come from the
franchise again, it didn't even mean that Enterprise
had no greater meaning. I know people who loved Enterprise
and good on them, it was a show that meant something to them and
that's great.
So
here we get to where the argument usually winds up. I don't think
people who like Enterprise
are bad fans or bad people. I don't think anyone deserves “internet
hate” for liking the show (or for making the show, let's not forget
that disgusting aspect of the modern internet). Its just a show I
don't enjoy and you know what that meant? More time for me to enjoy
things that I enjoy. I gave up after the first season and so that was
three more year of not dedicating about twenty hours a year to a
series I wasn't enjoying.
And,
the thing is, that was the time I was saving and putting towards
other things just by not watching. Not only do people waste their
time “hate watching” series they give up on in order to write bad
meta and complain about the SJW agenda of women and people of colour
existing at a higher than one in five ratio to white men. There are
people who dedicate endless hours not only to experiencing art that
makes them angry on purpose
but making themselves feel worse by reliving it again and again.
I've
said it before but this is a psychology I worry about falling into.
If I don't like the next season of Doctor Who
then my plan is just to give up, wait for someone I vaguely respect
to tell me its got better before trying it again. In the meantime?
I'll be enjoying things I like or trying new stuff. I have a backlog
of box sets and a massive stack of books.
So
I'll just be enjoying myself and let other people do the heavy
lifting on the declaration of Doctor Who's death.
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