Doctor Who, on the subject of V4...

[Ken Arromdee]

Does anyone else watch Doctor Who and think that some of the way it's been
written resembles V4 LSH, in that you have fans controlling the plots,
retconning things in, putting in fan theories and writing Mary Sues, etc.?

[Yeechang Lee]

Post by Ken Arromdee
Does anyone else watch Doctor Who and think that some of the way
it's been written resembles V4 LSH, in that you have fans
controlling the plots, retconning things in, putting in fan theories
and writing Mary Sues, etc.?

I don't watch Doctor Who. However, as evinced by recent posts, I've
been lately thinking about the larger idea you raise, of how different
writers approach the work and the stylistic tools they use.

Retcons are an obvious and quantifiable example. Levitz's two runs on
the Legion totaled, what, eight or nine years, or about double that of
TMK's. Other than the (supremely elegant) Validus origin and Supergirl
as Brainy's motivation for time travel, I can't offhand think of a
single retcon from the Levitz years. Period. I'm sure other will now
respond with a half-dozen instances I'm forgetting, but my point would
still stand: Levitz certainly did not regularly use them as plot
points, and--with one major, involuntary exception--never as major
ones). Look at the major story arcs of his second run:

* The Great Darkness Saga
* Yera/Vi
* Omen/Prophet
* Ontiir/Dark Circle
* The LSH/LSV war
* "Who is Sensor Girl?"
* The Universo Project
* Superboy/Pocket Universe
* Starfinger II
* The Conspiracy
* The Magic Wars

Superboy/Pocket Universe was obviously dictated by outside forces
beyond even Levitz's control. Yera/Vi set in motion by Levitz before
Darkseid. Other than that, not a single retcon[1]. Note that Validus
isn't on the list; his origin only served as part of a single issue
that was meant to serve as a coda for the Great Darkness Saga, and
even that's arguable because he'd never had an origin of any kind
before.

[1] Tying in Amethyst into the 30th century in v3 #63, the final issue
of Levitz's run and of the Magic Wars, is a small counterexample, but
perhaps a fitting one given that her first appearance was in a sampler
in v2 #298.

Now, look at TMK's run. My gosh, was there a single issue that didn't
have some kind of retcon, great (Proty II/Lightning Lad) or small
(Carggg), even after excluding Mon-El/Glorithverse in v4 #4-5?
Sometimes they used them well (Laurel Gand) and sometimes very, very
badly (Sean/Shvaughn), but there's no question TMK relied retcons as a
storytelling tool to a degree no other Legion creative team has done
before or since. As you say, classic fandom-theory Mary Sue-ish fan
writing writ incarnate.

Now, look at the list of Levitz-run storylines again. Were TMK to have
done them, it's a good bet that a majority of them would have involved
some Shocking Revelation:

* The Great Darkness Saga
* Yera/Vi (Vi's been an imposter for many years, not just more than a
year; this is why she fell out with Duplicate Boy during the
_Action_ years)
* Omen/Prophet
* Ontiir/Dark Circle
* The LSH/LSV war
* "Who is Sensor Girl?" (ripe with retcon potential from start to finish)
* The Universo Project
* Superboy/Pocket Universe (N/A)
* Starfinger II
* The Conspiracy (again chock-full of retcon-potential goodness)
* The Magic Wars

I invite others to come up with TMK-style retcon rewrites for the
others on the list.

[OM]

Post by Yeechang Lee
* Yera/Vi (Vi's been an imposter for many years, not just more than a
year; this is why she fell out with Duplicate Boy during the
_Action_ years)

...Now we know where Millar stole the idea for "Secret Invasion" :-P

OM

[YKW (ad hoc)]

Post by OM

Post by Yeechang Lee
* Yera/Vi (Vi's been an imposter for many years, not just more than a
year; this is why she fell out with Duplicate Boy during the
_Action_ years)

...Now we know where Millar stole the idea for "Secret Invasion" :-P
OM

Yeah. Tom DeFalco. :)
--
------------------- ------------------------------------------------
|| E-mail: ykw2006 ||"The mystery of government is not how Washington||
|| -at-gmail-dot-com ||works but how to make it stop." -- P.J. O'Rourke||
|| ----------- || ------------------------------------ ||
||Replace "-at-" with|| Keeping Usenet Trouble-Free ||
|| "@" to respond. || Since 1998 ||
------------------- ------------------------------------------------
"DC, currently, is run from the top down in a way that makes Jim
Shooter’s aegis at Marvel look like a hippie commune."
- Chuck Dixon, COMICS SHOULD BE GOOD, 14 June 2008.
<http://tinyurl.com/5rxsvp/#comment-665962>

[OM]

Post by YKW (ad hoc)

Post by OM
...Now we know where Millar stole the idea for "Secret Invasion" :-P

Yeah. Tom DeFalco. :)

...Which explains why Millar is nothing more than a hack.

OBSwampThing: Millar was also the hack who ruined "Swamp Thing" and
basically destroyed Vertigo's flagship book. Go figure.

OM

[OM]

Post by Yeechang Lee
* Omen/Prophet

...This was probably the one real complete miss of the classic
Levitz/Giffen run. Most of this was due to Giffen changing his style
from his cleaner GDS-run style - what several critics called his
"Kirby swipe" style - to his Munoz knockoffs that were perceived by
many to be nothing more than a waste of Marks-A-Lot. But Levitz story
just didn't click for a lot of people, and quite a few critics were
wondering why a story that bad wasn't resolved by having Matter-Eater
Lad consume another Miracle Machine. At least then the ending would
have made sense.

OM

[Yeechang Lee]

[Omen] was probably the one real complete miss of the classic
Levitz/Giffen run. Most of this was due to Giffen changing his style
from his cleaner GDS-run style . . . But Levitz story just didn't
click for a lot of people

Oh, there's no question that most people view Omen/Prophet as just
plain awful. I too dislike Giffen's art (even pre-Munoz) but, as you
say, Levitz's story is at fault. I've speculated that it was Levitz's
attempt to top Darkseid with another seemingly cosmic threat.

Now that I think about it, the Great Darkness Saga is the only one of
Levitz's three "cosmic threat" storylines that is well-regarded. The
Magic Wars is better than Omen/Prophet but still mediocre at
best. Other than the Great Darkness Saga, Levitz specialized in--and
did much better work with--smaller-scale villains or fights. I
certainly wouldn't put the LSV or Starfinger II on the same level as
Darkseid, and Conspiracy of course only involved four Legionaires
versus the Time Trapper. Universo was not (yet) a cosmic threat, and
"Who is Sensor Girl?" and Yera/Vi are character studies.

[Yeechang Lee]

Universo was not (yet) a cosmic threat, and "Who is Sensor Girl?"
and Yera/Vi are character studies.

Neglected to say that the Universo Project is also a character
study. While Conspiracy does offer some interesting insights into the
four (five post-v4 #4) Legionnaire' single-minded obsession, I
personally rate the Universo Project as the best Levitz Legion
storyline because of the wonderful characterization its four
protagonists receive. Note that Saturn Girl and Brainiac 5 are at the
heart of both storylines, too.

Conspiracy is more interesting for how hearkens back to the earliest
days of the Legion. It is, in fact, the ultimate Silver Age Legion
story.[1] Saturn Girl in _Adventure_ #304 was merely the first in a
long and honored tradition of one Legionnaire, or a few, pretended to
megalomania or villainy in order to face an enemy without endangering
his friends. It is fitting that the four Legionnaires of the
Conspiracy do so in order to take on the Time Trapper, who proved to
be the greatest Legion villain of them all.

[1] Down to the white dwarf star Mon-El brought to Legion
headquarters. I know Levitz apologized in the letter column for the
bad science, but note that Superboy once brought a piece of a star to
Earth during the _Adventure_ days, too.

[Nick Eden]

Post by Yeechang Lee

[Omen] was probably the one real complete miss of the classic
Levitz/Giffen run. Most of this was due to Giffen changing his style
from his cleaner GDS-run style . . . But Levitz story just didn't
click for a lot of people

Oh, there's no question that most people view Omen/Prophet as just
plain awful. I too dislike Giffen's art (even pre-Munoz) but, as you
say, Levitz's story is at fault. I've speculated that it was Levitz's
attempt to top Darkseid with another seemingly cosmic threat.
Now that I think about it, the Great Darkness Saga is the only one of
Levitz's three "cosmic threat" storylines that is well-regarded. The
Magic Wars is better than Omen/Prophet but still mediocre at
best. Other than the Great Darkness Saga, Levitz specialized in--and
did much better work with--smaller-scale villains or fights. I
certainly wouldn't put the LSV or Starfinger II on the same level as
Darkseid, and Conspiracy of course only involved four Legionaires
versus the Time Trapper. Universo was not (yet) a cosmic threat, and
"Who is Sensor Girl?" and Yera/Vi are character studies.

I rather enjoyed the Magic Wars at the time. It was a good "the team
pulls together and rediscovers it's sense of purpose" story. Had V4
built on it instead of pissing on it's corpse I think we would
remember it fondly.

[OM]

Post by Yeechang Lee
Now, look at TMK's run. My gosh, was there a single issue that didn't
have some kind of retcon, great (Proty II/Lightning Lad) or small
(Carggg), even after excluding Mon-El/Glorithverse in v4 #4-5?

...Actually, ISTR that the average was three retcons an issue during
the entire run. with the most being something like 31 of them.

OM

[OM]

Post by Ken Arromdee
Does anyone else watch Doctor Who and think that some of the way it's been
written resembles V4 LSH, in that you have fans controlling the plots,
retconning things in, putting in fan theories and writing Mary Sues, etc.?

...Yes and no. Davies was reportedly dead set on never bringing the
Daleks back - which is why he had them killed off in the "Time War"
*before* Eccleston first showed up, but had to cave into doing that
one episode featuring the relic Dalek because of fan pressure. He
obviously learned his lesson from that one, considering how his
four-season run ended :-P

...But other than that, what other fan-induced effects are you
claiming have happened? Donna's departure, perhaps, as well as
Martha's - hey, let's face it, Rose is a hard act to follow, and Sarah
Jane has her own series now! - but what else?

OM

[Ken Arromdee]

Post by OM
...But other than that, what other fan-induced effects are you
claiming have happened? Donna's departure, perhaps, as well as
Martha's - hey, let's face it, Rose is a hard act to follow, and Sarah
Jane has her own series now! - but what else?

Shipping the Doctor and companion.

Bringing back Sarah Jane *with a retcon for the shippers*; supposedly Sarah
was in love with the Doctor all along. Mercifully this wasn't mentioned in
the season finale.

Torchwood is pretty much fanfic, complete with the angsty bisexuals and
even a mpreg reference.

Jenny and especially River Song are textbook Mary Sues.

The general fan idea of bringing something back as the fan wants them rather
than as they were. The Cybermen are the worst case of this; RTD came up with
a completely new set of Cybermen with a completely new origin.

This is also true of destroying Gallifrey and starting the Time War. Though
mostly offscreen, it has some similarities with the V4 destroying of the
Earth, and it also frees RTD from having to deal with pesky plot elements
that he doesn't want to use.

The general idea of putting in things and then ignoring the impact they
would have episodes later is also very fannish, because when you write
fanfic, anything you write doesn't affect the continuity of the original
show. If you blow up the Earth or give a character a sex change, you
don't need to write stories that use that for the rest of eternity. Fans who
get on the real series and write it that way often miss this. Examples of
this on Doctor Who include making aliens blatantly public and then having
characters ignore this on flimsy or no excuses, and introducing the idea of
monsters eating the world when Rose tries to save her father and then not
using them whenever anyone else changes time.

And it also seems to me that Russ's tendency to write stories that constantly
affect the fate of the human race or the universe is a fannish thing to do.

[Nick Eden]

Post by OM

Post by Ken Arromdee
Does anyone else watch Doctor Who and think that some of the way it's been
written resembles V4 LSH, in that you have fans controlling the plots,
retconning things in, putting in fan theories and writing Mary Sues, etc.?

...Yes and no. Davies was reportedly dead set on never bringing the
Daleks back - which is why he had them killed off in the "Time War"
*before* Eccleston first showed up, but had to cave into doing that
one episode featuring the relic Dalek because of fan pressure. He
obviously learned his lesson from that one, considering how his
four-season run ended :-P

Well he said he was. Like he said Ecclestone was about for the long
haul. There's no way he could have gotten the script for Dalek in,
realised that it was quite good and only then started to write the
Season 1 two part ender.

One thing he's been consistent about in interviews is his dislike of
spoilers, hence sometimes seeming to fib about what's going to happen
to preserve the surprise.

Post by OM
...But other than that, what other fan-induced effects are you
claiming have happened? Donna's departure, perhaps, as well as
Martha's - hey, let's face it, Rose is a hard act to follow, and Sarah
Jane has her own series now! - but what else?
OM

[Duggy]

Post by Ken Arromdee
Does anyone else watch Doctor Who and think that some of the way it's been
written resembles V4 LSH, in that you have fans controlling the plots,
retconning things in, putting in fan theories and writing Mary Sues, etc.?

Can we have one ng without a Doctor Who discussion!??

===
= DUG.
===