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

[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.

[purplecat]

I guess, as a classic Who fan, one has to be pretty tolerant of monsters that look a bit rubbish.

I've talked about Ursula's fate with pretty much all the commenters above. But I take issue with the idea that she is only "existing" and not "living" - there are many people with severe disabilities who would, I think, contest that they are still living even though they are limited in what they can do and experience and would certainly object to the suggestion that they would be better off dead. Ursula and Elton tell us they are happy and I'm quite prepared to accept that.

[shivver13.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't have a problem with its costuming/special effects. I'm a classic fan, too. I didn't like the mechanics of the monster, and the faces of its consumed victims appearing on its body, or the fact that they still had consciousness and could influence what it did.

I look at it very differently. To me Ursula's statement that she doesn't age implies also that she'll never die. She'll be locked in that stone slab after Elton has gone. In a way, it's similar to Borusa's fate, and certainly implied to not be a happy one. Part of that, of course, is because Borusa asked for immortality without knowing what he was really getting, but then the Doctors, given the same offer but knowing what it meant, unequivocally refused it.

Maybe it's a question of choice - the Doctor didn't give her a choice. Perhaps he did afterwards, telling her he could let her go or she could stay in that slab forever, and she chose to stay. But to me, it's a horrible fate, and it surprises me that the Doctor, who understands that fate all too well, would even offer it.

[purplecat]

It's possible that personal circumstances are making me more touchy here about the idea of what constitutes a "fate worse than death" and the parallel to people with disabilities may be in my head more than in the intent of the author.

I guess, as you point out, it would have been nice to have a lot more detail which the show for all sorts of reasons, including time and its nature as an action/adventure piece doesn't give us.