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.

[purplecat]

Hmm, I'm not sure they're that mannered or even that socially awkward. They're not glamourous and self-assured (which arguably people on TV tend to default towards) but they seem a lot less caricatured than, say, what I've seen of the characters in The Big Bang Theory (which admittedly I'm not remotely familiar with).

Fandom is naturally touchy about how it is portrayed, for obvious and entirely justified reasons. However I felt this was mostly pretty fair up until the appearance of Victor Kennedy who is obviously signified as over-the-top and hyper-real. I think fandom (segments of) over-reacted here, basically.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with you on The Big Bang Theory, which I've found difficult to watch when I've attempted it.

I think segments of fandom saw different things in it based on their own experiences - which even if they disliked it, could indicate that the episode succeeded.