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gogmagogOh dear, arguments over whether Who is sci-fi or fantasy (spoilers for the most recent special), because clearly it can only be one or the other and since it has no swords or elves, it must be hard sci-fi, and when it handwaves scientific impossibility with technobabble it must be DOIN IT WRONG.
I really think the ghettoization of fantasy/sf, even within the collective genre of "speculative fiction" or whatevs, does harm because it leads a lot of people into making hard-and-fast dichotomies like this. Really Who is science-fantasy - sure, it has spaceships and aliens, but the TARDIS is a lot closer to the wardrobe from Narnia than any kind of space vessel from Star Trek.
But I think what amuses me most is the idea that somehow this last special was kind of the last straw for Who as a sci-fi show, or that Rusty's somehow doing so much worse than his predecessors at the sciencey bits due to his unwillingness to research. I mean, I rolled my eyes at the "alien stingrays flying around and around the world so fast they create a hole in space-time" - someone's watched Superman one too many times, methinks - but it's hardly out of Doctor Who tradition.
I mean, this is the show that, in one of the mythically great burninated serials (Evil of the Daleks), featured two Victorian men creating a time machine out of mirrors and static electricity.
Let me repeat that:
IT FEATURED TWO VICTORIAN MEN CREATING A TIME MACHINE OUT OF MIRRORS AND STATIC ELECTRICITY.
So no, I don't think scientific accuracy of any kind, at least on any meaningful level, has been a part of Who's mandate for a very long time. Maybe in its first few seasons, when we had Ian to teach us about the condensation of water in temperature changes, but not for a very very long time (and even then, when they WERE trying to teach science, half the plot revolved around complete scientific impossibilities).
So tl;dr, Who has always been much more skiffy than sci-fi, and it's about as close to hard sci-fi as Star Wars is (actually they're I think at a similar level of "science fantasy," though I'd say SW is a LEETUL closer to the hard sci-fi side, which as horrifying as that is to say tells you something about Who I think).
Edit: Oh never mind, now it's coming off a little more as something against the episode in particular or against RTD personally; since this person is totally okay with Moffat's "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey" explanation and Pertwee's "reversing the polarity of the neutron flow," I honestly can't see why "swarms of alien creatures creating wormholes through going really really fast" is somehow beyond the pale. Not that Rusty can't occasionally get a little bad with his "random technobabble saves the day," but even that's not the first time that's happened in Who (it happened in the aforementioned Pertwee's era not infrequently too).
And hey it's a little better with the science than Heroes, which at times seems at least to be TRYING to be hard sci-fi and which has made![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jokersama's head explode with its treatment of medicine.
I really think the ghettoization of fantasy/sf, even within the collective genre of "speculative fiction" or whatevs, does harm because it leads a lot of people into making hard-and-fast dichotomies like this. Really Who is science-fantasy - sure, it has spaceships and aliens, but the TARDIS is a lot closer to the wardrobe from Narnia than any kind of space vessel from Star Trek.
But I think what amuses me most is the idea that somehow this last special was kind of the last straw for Who as a sci-fi show, or that Rusty's somehow doing so much worse than his predecessors at the sciencey bits due to his unwillingness to research. I mean, I rolled my eyes at the "alien stingrays flying around and around the world so fast they create a hole in space-time" - someone's watched Superman one too many times, methinks - but it's hardly out of Doctor Who tradition.
I mean, this is the show that, in one of the mythically great burninated serials (Evil of the Daleks), featured two Victorian men creating a time machine out of mirrors and static electricity.
Let me repeat that:
IT FEATURED TWO VICTORIAN MEN CREATING A TIME MACHINE OUT OF MIRRORS AND STATIC ELECTRICITY.
So no, I don't think scientific accuracy of any kind, at least on any meaningful level, has been a part of Who's mandate for a very long time. Maybe in its first few seasons, when we had Ian to teach us about the condensation of water in temperature changes, but not for a very very long time (and even then, when they WERE trying to teach science, half the plot revolved around complete scientific impossibilities).
So tl;dr, Who has always been much more skiffy than sci-fi, and it's about as close to hard sci-fi as Star Wars is (actually they're I think at a similar level of "science fantasy," though I'd say SW is a LEETUL closer to the hard sci-fi side, which as horrifying as that is to say tells you something about Who I think).
Edit: Oh never mind, now it's coming off a little more as something against the episode in particular or against RTD personally; since this person is totally okay with Moffat's "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey" explanation and Pertwee's "reversing the polarity of the neutron flow," I honestly can't see why "swarms of alien creatures creating wormholes through going really really fast" is somehow beyond the pale. Not that Rusty can't occasionally get a little bad with his "random technobabble saves the day," but even that's not the first time that's happened in Who (it happened in the aforementioned Pertwee's era not infrequently too).
And hey it's a little better with the science than Heroes, which at times seems at least to be TRYING to be hard sci-fi and which has made
jokersama's head explode with its treatment of medicine.
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Er. What.
Date: 2009-04-13 03:31 pm (UTC)I don't really have have anything to say, I guess. ITAw/u, dawg.
Oh, I have no problem believing a time and space traveling alien who has a starship shaped like a 60's police box. But I can't wrap my head around why the Doctor would say that flying fast and in groups makes wormholes.
Do you understand the difference?
There isn't one, crazy person.
Re: Er. What.
Date: 2009-04-13 06:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 08:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 09:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 10:56 pm (UTC)but the TARDIS is a lot closer to the wardrobe from Narnia than any kind of space vessel from Star Trek.
ASLAN IS A TIMELORD. I CAN'T UNSEE IT.
And it would explain so much about the stories.That said, unless you're an extremely hard-science nitpick, then even the most stickler writers are going to have to throw in guessworky mumbojumbo at some point in any SciFi story. If they didn't, then they'd only really be able to write about technology we have in the present day doing only what we know it can do now, and somehow I really don't think you could consider that as much scifi as even Who is, because the "fi" is for fiction, and that alone both gives you (the writer) a great deal of wiggle room on what to define as science, as well a great deal of wiggle room on just what kind of fiction you want it to be.
Maybe I'm just too loose when it comes to my translation of scifi, though. If it's got aliens, spaceships, or a plot revolving around whatever kind of iffy science, then it's SciFi to me. Doesn't mean it's good scifi, and often times I've found that the best scifi stories I've ever read, watched or heard are absolutely terrible or minimal in the actual science part, but they're still scifi. (However, I do appreciate it when an author at least gives SOME thought to their technobable, because I totally get this WTF look at Bad Technobable like that wormhole theory).
Erm. Anyways. *pops off*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 11:17 pm (UTC)YOU CAN'T SPELL "RASSILON" WITHOUT "ASLAN" (well if you take out one of the A's)
But yeah, there's totally a spectrum of SF, from the hardest of the hard to the softest of the soft, and sometimes some of the best things are on the softer end (if only because I've found that hard sci-fi's biggest weakness, on those occasions when it is bad, tends to be privileging the idea and the science far over the characters, which is the surest way to make me lose interest; crappy soft sci-fi, even when it has a crappy plot and characters, at least HAS plot and character). I also think you make a good point that just the fact of the genre of science fiction ultimately leads to things that are impossible or improbable (at least as things sit now), and so while you can argue about different degrees of improbability, it's all theoretical and fantastic anyway.
And yeah, I get that look at bad technobabble too; like I said, I thought the Superman Stingrays were pretty eyeroll-worthy, but not more so than some of the boneheaded technobabble used even by Who greats such as Robert Holmes (the misuse of radio waves in Pyramids of Mars - which doesn't make that serial any less awesome, for the record - being the one that immediately springs to mind).