The Randomiser: Kinda
Jan. 30th, 2017 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI'm sure I must have seen Kinda since it was first broadcast but I don't recall when and my memories of it were distinctly hazy. At the time of broadcast it came bottom of the season poll in DWM but shortly thereafter it was placed front and centre in Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text which attempted* to apply academic media criticism to Doctor Who. It would be tempting to say that Kinda is an interesting failure but I'm not sure it is a failure. It's more something completely to one side of main stream Doctor Who and isn't really even attempting to play by Doctor Who's normal rules.
Almost everything (quite possibly everything apart from Nyssa's quiet sidelining at the beginning) that happens in Kinda is laced with symbolism and, to be honest, occurs more to convey some idea or concept than it does to advance a coherent plot. That said, the plot coherence, once you strip aside a lot of the bizarre trappings is no worse than a lot of Doctor Who. This is a story that has things to say about colonialism, concepts of primitive versus civilised, the military, gender and communication. It does so with, well, not quite the earnestness of a thirteen year-old on Tumblr who has just discovered social justice but its ideas look, I suspect, a lot more obvious now than they did then. Possibly one of the reasons it seems quite so puzzling is that it refuses to actually make a neat preachy statement about what is right and wrong but just throws a lot things at the screen with a definite lean towards a position but one it doesn't actually clarify.
Episode 2 is both particularly bizarre and possibly the best of the four focusing, as it does, on the survey base under the control of the dangerously unhinged Hindle. Doctor Who often seeks to explain the erratic behaviour of its miscellaneous base commanders on the grounds that they've gone mad, but this is the only one I recall where the character is quite so unhinged and his high level of unpredictability both makes him seem more dangerous while, at the same time, giving the Doctor, Adric and Todd more room for maneouvre. I can see why the childish mayhem of the episode was viewed with puzzled incomprehension by much of the audience.
Hindle's madness is one of the plot points that is less well explained (Sanders' is explained by his exposure to the the Box of Jhana). Similarly the actual fate of the missing base members is never really explained, nor is Hindle's control of the Kinda on the base. But Kinda gives the impression that it doesn't really care about this.
The snake at the end is somewhat naff and was widely derided at the time but, to be honest, I don't think it is much naffer than a lot of Doctor Who monsters and I wonder if it was such a focus of opprobrium simply because it was easy and straightforward to criticise where everything else here is simply a little baffling and, in some cases, a little poorly acted, but delivered with a kind strange conviction that make the flaws hard to get a grip on.
I actually really enjoyed this and was surprised that I did. It is like nothing else Doctor Who has ever attempted before or since. In Doctor Who terms it is mostly a mixture of over-earnest, naff and silly, but on its own terms it is grippingly frightening in places, surreal and rather beautiful.
*I've not read it so, for all I know, the attempt was a success even if it was regarded with bemusement by most Who fans of the time.
Almost everything (quite possibly everything apart from Nyssa's quiet sidelining at the beginning) that happens in Kinda is laced with symbolism and, to be honest, occurs more to convey some idea or concept than it does to advance a coherent plot. That said, the plot coherence, once you strip aside a lot of the bizarre trappings is no worse than a lot of Doctor Who. This is a story that has things to say about colonialism, concepts of primitive versus civilised, the military, gender and communication. It does so with, well, not quite the earnestness of a thirteen year-old on Tumblr who has just discovered social justice but its ideas look, I suspect, a lot more obvious now than they did then. Possibly one of the reasons it seems quite so puzzling is that it refuses to actually make a neat preachy statement about what is right and wrong but just throws a lot things at the screen with a definite lean towards a position but one it doesn't actually clarify.
Episode 2 is both particularly bizarre and possibly the best of the four focusing, as it does, on the survey base under the control of the dangerously unhinged Hindle. Doctor Who often seeks to explain the erratic behaviour of its miscellaneous base commanders on the grounds that they've gone mad, but this is the only one I recall where the character is quite so unhinged and his high level of unpredictability both makes him seem more dangerous while, at the same time, giving the Doctor, Adric and Todd more room for maneouvre. I can see why the childish mayhem of the episode was viewed with puzzled incomprehension by much of the audience.
Hindle's madness is one of the plot points that is less well explained (Sanders' is explained by his exposure to the the Box of Jhana). Similarly the actual fate of the missing base members is never really explained, nor is Hindle's control of the Kinda on the base. But Kinda gives the impression that it doesn't really care about this.
The snake at the end is somewhat naff and was widely derided at the time but, to be honest, I don't think it is much naffer than a lot of Doctor Who monsters and I wonder if it was such a focus of opprobrium simply because it was easy and straightforward to criticise where everything else here is simply a little baffling and, in some cases, a little poorly acted, but delivered with a kind strange conviction that make the flaws hard to get a grip on.
I actually really enjoyed this and was surprised that I did. It is like nothing else Doctor Who has ever attempted before or since. In Doctor Who terms it is mostly a mixture of over-earnest, naff and silly, but on its own terms it is grippingly frightening in places, surreal and rather beautiful.
*I've not read it so, for all I know, the attempt was a success even if it was regarded with bemusement by most Who fans of the time.
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Date: 2017-01-30 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2017-02-01 09:26 pm (UTC)The words dereliction of duty come to mind.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-02-02 03:43 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that the government is honour bound to make an honest attempt at some kind of Brexit. I think it is the nature of the attempt and whether the country should have a second say once the details are on the table that are legitimate subjects for debate and that wasn't really what was on the table here.
I think it will be a disaster (or at least hardest possible Brexit), if only because of the 2 year time limit on negotiations and the difficultly of consensus decision making within the EU. In my ideal world (assuming you are starting from this point and not somewhere better) then the main emphasis of the initial negotiations should be achieving an extension of the 2 year limit so there is enough time to actually hammer out a sensible deal that the 27 remaining nations will sign up to. But I'm not sure, at this juncture, we could even get agreement for an extended negotiating period from Europe, even assuming May et al were willing to push for it.
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Date: 2017-01-30 09:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2017-01-30 09:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-31 11:37 am (UTC)I don't think any of that is necessarily a negative, but I can see why, at the time people were just bemused and, as a result, didn't rate it much.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-31 02:57 pm (UTC)I really like 'Kinda' and 'Snakedance'. I appreciate 'Kinda' more as 'Snakedance' being simpler doesn't stand up to as many re-watchings. The snake is OK, usual DW quality! The CGI snake on the DVD looks iffy itself now. 'Kinda' is a bit 'I've been reading books and I now I'm going to put it all into a script' which is what I think happened. I do have the DWM with the interview with the writer around somewhere.
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Date: 2017-02-01 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2017-02-03 11:20 am (UTC)