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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.
