NuWho Rewatch: Love and Monsters

[purplecat]

I warned NLSS Child before we started watching this that a lot of people hadn't liked it. At the end she wanted to know why people had disliked it so much and, to be honest, it is difficult to understand the vitriol it created in some quarters.

I think the dislike can be attributed to three overlapping causes:

1. The Doctor and Rose don't appear much.
   
2. The story is basically about fandom and although it is portrayed with much affection, there is criticism of the obsessive BNF.
   
3. The monster was designed by a child in a Blue Peter competition and could be considered a bit rubbish, if you were so minded.
   

So, if you think that Doctor Who should be focused on the Doctor, or you feel protective of the way fandom is portrayed in the media, or if in some sense you think Doctor Who is sufficiently serious that it should not be influenced by kids competitions (and there are a lot of fans who think or feel one or two things on that list) then it is easy to be alienated by Love and Monsters.

Which is odd really because it is, I think, a rather lovely, bittersweet and mostly affectionate piece of story-telling. It's not just about fandom, but in general about being in a group of friends and how groups of friends can get disrupted and torn apart by one individual. It has some great funny moments. NLSS Child loved the scene were Jackie works her way through Victor Kennedy's list of infiltration moves and even though NLSS Child has no real comprehension of fandom, she understood and was saddened by what happened to LINDA.

The monster is a bit rubbish in appearance, but no more so than the Slitheen which, to be fair, lots of people didn't like either.

We're obviously well-used, now, to Doctor-lite episodes. That said, I note that recent seasons have tended to opt for a pair of episodes, one of which is Doctor-lite and one of which is Companion-lite which suggests that the powers that be are not entirely convinced of the show's ability to present stories in which the main characters only appear tangentially (the success of Blink presumably notwithstanding).

I liked this as much second time around as I did the first. Compared to the previous time Dr Who had attempted to portray fandom (The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) it is much more generous. It also has a much wider resonance for anyone who has watched a group of friends fall apart.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I think producer Susie Liggat acknowledged one of the flaws in that the actors' portrayals of socially awkward people can come across sometimes as rather mannered. Otherwise I was happy to enjoy it as an affectionate tribute to the fan world and a warning about the personalities who can cause damage to friendship circles.

[eve11]

I know lots of people didn't like Ursula's fate, nor the suggestion that she and Elton had a physical relationship with her being just a face in a slab. That was the hardest part to swallow for me. I wasn't hugely enraged about it, but some were. it's one of those things that takes on darker perspective in an adult context than from a kid's perspective.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

Aside from Ursula's fate, I really liked this. It makes me nostalgic for the Doc Soc! It's clever and funny and moving and is virtually the last time Russell T Davies and I were on the same page about what makes good Doctor Who.

That said, repeated viewing did make it clearer that LINDA are happiest when NOT thinking about the Doctor, which might be assumed to be telling fans to grow up and get some friends/romantic partner, which would be somewhat offensive.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I hated it, and for none of those reasons. I thought the portrayal of fandom quite hideous and unrecognisable. If Who fandom is like that - I am not a Who fan per se - then it is not place I want to be part of.

I also loathe both Tennant's Doctor and Rose, so their absence actually would be a plus for me.

The ending was entirely inappropriate for a family show. Or, in my opinion, for any show before the watershed.

The script was unfunny and illogical and crap.

These are, you understand, the memory of my reactions at the time. I have not watched it since and have no intention of doing so. It is on my list of "episodes where I'd rather watch 'The Horns of Nimon.'

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I have only seen the episode once, and that I'm a recent fan, so I didn't see it when it first came out. I remember thinking the episode was brilliant until the Abzorbaloff appeared. The monster was rubbish, and what it was there for and its story was rubbish. A rubbish monster can really throw the entire episode for me (which is why I feel that "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone" and "The Angels Take Manhattan" are terrible episodes, because the Angels are rubbish).

However, what really ruined the episode for me is the ending. It's not the comment about Elton and Ursula's sex life. It's that the Doctor locked her in the slab at all. The Doctor knows the difference between "living" and "existing", and should never have even considered doing it - it amazes me that both RTD and Tennant allowed that to happen.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

I've just skipped this (and Fear Her) in our rewatch. I fully subscribe to the "unreliable narrator" concept, that this is Elton telling the story from his incredibly unreliable viewpoint. From that view the bits I found very cringeworthy (the "playing together in a band" bit in the montage) for exxample, fit very well with his wish-fulfilment. Still, the monster is crap in a way even most classic Who didn't plumb (IMHO) and I think Blink got the idea of a Doctor and companion-less episode much better.

[john_amend_all]

Love & Monsters is, I think, the only episode where halfway through I said "I don't care what happens to these people" and fast-forwarded until the monster showed up. I presume, then, that puts me in camp 1.

Regarding some of the other criticisms you cite:

• I don't think the monster's flaws arise from it being designed by a child; the child's drawing is far more menacing than what we actually got. That suggests the problems are in the realisation of it.
• What bugged me about the paving slab was that one line says Ursula is supposed to be immortal. That means she'll outlive Elton and everybody else she ever comes to love, and sooner or later will surely fall into the power of someone or some organisation who won't treat her kindly at all. There's a reason that in The Five Doctors, the punishment Rassilon doled out was immortality as a face on a slab.