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sobriqueDear Russell T. Davies,
Please, ensure you somehow exploderize the Doctor's Sonic screwdriver in one of your special episodes.
A Sonic screwdriver is a marvelous plot device, for circumventing a trivial challenge - that of the locked door. A locked door is annoyingly difficult to 'bypass' - that is, after all, kinda the point of them. However they're also not very interesting challenges, in general.
And thus giving the Doctor a 'magic lockpick' is actually quite an elegant way of merging the two problems - people lock doors in secret military compounds, and locked doors are boring.
However, you should be aware that that carries with it a risk - making your 'magic lockpick' a 'magic do everything device'. You see, you're the story writer, you can quite literally make anything happen to the people involved. What's important in the storytelling is therefore not what happens - which can be anything you feel like - but how the characters react to it, to each other, and how they deal with a the problems.
Dramatic tension is often increased by having a problem and some danger.
However, this dramatic tension is completely pissed away if you have a 'wave wand, fix plot' type plot device - like the Sonic screwdriver, as you've been using it in Dr. Who. Deus Ex Machina plot resolutions, you see, highlight the intrinsic powerlessness of the character involved. That really does fall down badly when it comes to portraying the Doctor. Kinda the point of the Doctor is that he's really old, wise, a bit mystical, and happens to have some rather handy tech around that lets him get to the places he needs to be to apply his awesome. The Tardis is a really great example of this - it serves as a vehicle that shortcuts the boring 'Doctor gets to where the interesting is happening' part of the story, and also quite nicely explains why he didn't get stopped by any of the security in somewhere high tech (or for that matter, low tech and paranoid). It's therefore entirely OK for it to be awesomely powerful, and yet a bit cranky, because it serves the needs of the storytelling, without it actually needing to take a metaphorical dump over whatever plot is happening - the combined 'don't meddle with timelines, because bad stuff happens' and 'TARDIS tends to go astray at times for unknown reasons' serves very well to get the Doctor into play, and leave him there until the story is done.
Assistants also serve a valuable role in the story telling, as they 'fill in' for the audience to ask questions and get told about what's going on, and quite why there is peril this time. Or to be a target of 'dramatic tension' themselves, because the Doctor is awesome, clever and wise, but assistants don't have to be. So the can let themselves get captured, caught out, push the button that they shouldn't, or otherwise be... the human element of the team.
Oh, and whilst we're at it - dramatic tension doesn't get more because the numbers involved are bigger. Stalin said it quite well - "Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic.". You don't need to make your plot EVEN MORE EPIC THAN EVER BEFORE - the impending destruction of planet earth is like a giant game of chicken, and something you can't _actually_ do in your plot line, and have it meaningful. However taking this character that you've introducted everyone to, got a bit of empathy going, and then put in peril of some kind actually works much better - because they're insignificant enough that you _can_ just kill them as a story writer, but we care about them enough that we'll be rooting for the Doctor to save them none the less. That's got way more dramatic tension than declaring the power level to be over 9000!
But yeah, just blow up that sodding screwdriver already - it's making you lazy with your plot resolutions.
Please, ensure you somehow exploderize the Doctor's Sonic screwdriver in one of your special episodes.
A Sonic screwdriver is a marvelous plot device, for circumventing a trivial challenge - that of the locked door. A locked door is annoyingly difficult to 'bypass' - that is, after all, kinda the point of them. However they're also not very interesting challenges, in general.
And thus giving the Doctor a 'magic lockpick' is actually quite an elegant way of merging the two problems - people lock doors in secret military compounds, and locked doors are boring.
However, you should be aware that that carries with it a risk - making your 'magic lockpick' a 'magic do everything device'. You see, you're the story writer, you can quite literally make anything happen to the people involved. What's important in the storytelling is therefore not what happens - which can be anything you feel like - but how the characters react to it, to each other, and how they deal with a the problems.
Dramatic tension is often increased by having a problem and some danger.
However, this dramatic tension is completely pissed away if you have a 'wave wand, fix plot' type plot device - like the Sonic screwdriver, as you've been using it in Dr. Who. Deus Ex Machina plot resolutions, you see, highlight the intrinsic powerlessness of the character involved. That really does fall down badly when it comes to portraying the Doctor. Kinda the point of the Doctor is that he's really old, wise, a bit mystical, and happens to have some rather handy tech around that lets him get to the places he needs to be to apply his awesome. The Tardis is a really great example of this - it serves as a vehicle that shortcuts the boring 'Doctor gets to where the interesting is happening' part of the story, and also quite nicely explains why he didn't get stopped by any of the security in somewhere high tech (or for that matter, low tech and paranoid). It's therefore entirely OK for it to be awesomely powerful, and yet a bit cranky, because it serves the needs of the storytelling, without it actually needing to take a metaphorical dump over whatever plot is happening - the combined 'don't meddle with timelines, because bad stuff happens' and 'TARDIS tends to go astray at times for unknown reasons' serves very well to get the Doctor into play, and leave him there until the story is done.
Assistants also serve a valuable role in the story telling, as they 'fill in' for the audience to ask questions and get told about what's going on, and quite why there is peril this time. Or to be a target of 'dramatic tension' themselves, because the Doctor is awesome, clever and wise, but assistants don't have to be. So the can let themselves get captured, caught out, push the button that they shouldn't, or otherwise be... the human element of the team.
Oh, and whilst we're at it - dramatic tension doesn't get more because the numbers involved are bigger. Stalin said it quite well - "Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic.". You don't need to make your plot EVEN MORE EPIC THAN EVER BEFORE - the impending destruction of planet earth is like a giant game of chicken, and something you can't _actually_ do in your plot line, and have it meaningful. However taking this character that you've introducted everyone to, got a bit of empathy going, and then put in peril of some kind actually works much better - because they're insignificant enough that you _can_ just kill them as a story writer, but we care about them enough that we'll be rooting for the Doctor to save them none the less. That's got way more dramatic tension than declaring the power level to be over 9000!
But yeah, just blow up that sodding screwdriver already - it's making you lazy with your plot resolutions.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 06:51 pm (UTC)