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purplecat42 isn't that bad actually. It's existing purely on adrenaline and not much else, but once you accept that then it trundles along nicely at its breath-taking speed.
It must be said my attention wasn't entirely on the story since NLSS Child excitedly proclaimed that she'd seen William Ash who played Riley as Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream (which seems plausible going by his IMDB entry) and then by her attempts to draw some kind of parallel between the two parts.
I've seen only one episode of 24 and, really, the most interesting thing about 42 is that it is trying to replicate the format by telling its story in some approximate to real time. The one episode of 24 that I saw annoyed me because I felt it didn't adhere rigidly enough to its conceit. Boring things like moving around buildings and driving to places seemed to happen rather faster than they would in reality. I felt 42 had the same problem. I wasn't at all convinced that the writer or production crew knew how big their spacecraft was, nor how long it would take to move around it. I'm absolutely sure, given the time it took them to open the 3 doors we saw, that they were not going to get 28 doors open in 42 minutes. What I can't really decide is whether that is a problem or not. In the mind of the writer, clearly, the conceit about 42 minutes was just an excuse to up the tension and motivate a lot of running. Getting the timings actually realistic would have been hard work, time consuming (and so expensive) and would probably have only served to completely destroy the sense of pace they were trying to evoke. It would have been more like an experiment in theatre than a TV show. I'd have liked to see it done, but I'm not sure it would have gone over well with the anticipated audience.
It's mostly a good episode for Martha but, once again, does Francine Jones no favours.
Beyond the central conceit 42 isn't trying to do anything particularly different. It has, essentially, a mind control monster, a base under siege, and a lot of running down corridors. The advantage of that is that it is, basically, inoffensive as Doctor Who stories go. I'd have liked them to work harder at making the real time, actually, real time, but suspect that would never have worked for modern mainstream action telly.
It must be said my attention wasn't entirely on the story since NLSS Child excitedly proclaimed that she'd seen William Ash who played Riley as Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream (which seems plausible going by his IMDB entry) and then by her attempts to draw some kind of parallel between the two parts.
I've seen only one episode of 24 and, really, the most interesting thing about 42 is that it is trying to replicate the format by telling its story in some approximate to real time. The one episode of 24 that I saw annoyed me because I felt it didn't adhere rigidly enough to its conceit. Boring things like moving around buildings and driving to places seemed to happen rather faster than they would in reality. I felt 42 had the same problem. I wasn't at all convinced that the writer or production crew knew how big their spacecraft was, nor how long it would take to move around it. I'm absolutely sure, given the time it took them to open the 3 doors we saw, that they were not going to get 28 doors open in 42 minutes. What I can't really decide is whether that is a problem or not. In the mind of the writer, clearly, the conceit about 42 minutes was just an excuse to up the tension and motivate a lot of running. Getting the timings actually realistic would have been hard work, time consuming (and so expensive) and would probably have only served to completely destroy the sense of pace they were trying to evoke. It would have been more like an experiment in theatre than a TV show. I'd have liked to see it done, but I'm not sure it would have gone over well with the anticipated audience.
It's mostly a good episode for Martha but, once again, does Francine Jones no favours.
Beyond the central conceit 42 isn't trying to do anything particularly different. It has, essentially, a mind control monster, a base under siege, and a lot of running down corridors. The advantage of that is that it is, basically, inoffensive as Doctor Who stories go. I'd have liked them to work harder at making the real time, actually, real time, but suspect that would never have worked for modern mainstream action telly.
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Date: 2015-02-01 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-02 06:59 am (UTC)I rather like "42" for the same reason.
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Date: 2015-02-02 10:51 am (UTC)NLSS Child didn't even notice it was supposed to be real time and I didn't point it out so I think it is probably definitely one of those ideas that doesn't really translate well to the screen without surrounding hype explaining it.
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Date: 2015-02-02 08:59 am (UTC)I remember JMS talking about the possibility of doing a show which happened in real time. He said it would be very hard to pull off convincingly and that he would only do it on B5 if there was a story that really should be told in that format - he wouldn't do it just to do a tricky piece of auteurism. He never did it, so I figure he never found a story that needed it.
(*) When iTunes starting including TV shows I heard the episodes decribed as "one hour shows cut down to 42 minutes by removing the ads" - am I the only one who finds this backwards - US shows are 42 minutes with 18 minutes of adverts inserted.
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Date: 2015-02-02 01:20 pm (UTC)