Entry tags:
Dept. of Media Skiffy
Good, Challenging, and Confusing
It's about time, and inhuman personages of great but fluctuating powers, battling against incomprehensible dangers that are, again, largely time-connected, and about the results on humans caught in the wash of the battles, even when they are sometimes the cause of the battles.
Nope. Not Doctor Who.
It's "Sapphire and Steel." Which is why I titled this post as I did. Because that's what I think anyone could reasonably call "Sapphire and Steel", the British ITV show from the 1970s to which the redoubtable![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit introduced me a couple of years ago.
It's mysterious, incomprehensible, funny, brilliant, ridiculous (a deadly pillow! An evil round patch of light!) and unexpectedly terrifying (you'll believe a pillow is deadly! And that a round patch of light is evil!) It's got Joanna Lumley and David McCallum and, from time to time (see whut I did thar), the wonderful David Collings. It's very slow, but it's slow for a reason. And so many of its shots are beautifully composed to take advantage of the slowness ....
... ahem. Yes. I rather like it.
And you should watch it. Or at least I think you should give it try.
And why do I bring this up? Because today, at the end of an afternoon spent attempting to introduce a fannish friend who is not into televised skiffy to some various aspects of same (it's a long-term project spearheaded by another friend, and entered into willingly but bemusedly by the first person), as we were clearing up, the spear-header and I were talking about favorite series, and I happened to mention S&S. Oh, the friend says, I have that collection. It turns out she was less impressed by it than I was, and she handed the entire collection to me.
*cue pictures ofkaffy_r dancing quietly in her head*
Having seen S&S only on YouTube, to be able to have my own actual collection? Well, the whole "dancing in her head bit" is quite true.
As for the rest of the afternoon, well it was good, challenging and confusing as well. The person to whom we were introducing skiffical television liked, as far as I could see, the first episode of the revived DW, "Rose" or at least was positively amused and curious about it. The person was, again as far as I could see, equally amused by "Once More With Feeling" from Buffy.
But, in what came as a surprise to me, the person seemed to be almost insulted by the first episode of Firefly, for reasons that I truly, deeply disagree with, and which appear to point to a them having a sincerely different way of viewing skiffy, SF/fantasy, or indeed the world, than I have. I shall have to think on that deeply, because I'd personally predicted that the person would like Firefly and be completely contemptuous of DW. And thus do humans continue to confound, confuse and challenge me.
Still, the person did not immediately declare that the crash course in introduction to TV skiffy was over and done with. More afternoons are therefore possible in future. I look forward to it.
(Still. Rearing back because Firefly has wooden kitchen tables on space ships, or because shipping containers in the far future look like ... shipping containers ... well, as I said, I must think on that deeply.) And you know I still love you, right?)
It's about time, and inhuman personages of great but fluctuating powers, battling against incomprehensible dangers that are, again, largely time-connected, and about the results on humans caught in the wash of the battles, even when they are sometimes the cause of the battles.
Nope. Not Doctor Who.
It's "Sapphire and Steel." Which is why I titled this post as I did. Because that's what I think anyone could reasonably call "Sapphire and Steel", the British ITV show from the 1970s to which the redoubtable
thisbluespirit introduced me a couple of years ago. It's mysterious, incomprehensible, funny, brilliant, ridiculous (a deadly pillow! An evil round patch of light!) and unexpectedly terrifying (you'll believe a pillow is deadly! And that a round patch of light is evil!) It's got Joanna Lumley and David McCallum and, from time to time (see whut I did thar), the wonderful David Collings. It's very slow, but it's slow for a reason. And so many of its shots are beautifully composed to take advantage of the slowness ....
... ahem. Yes. I rather like it.
And you should watch it. Or at least I think you should give it try.
And why do I bring this up? Because today, at the end of an afternoon spent attempting to introduce a fannish friend who is not into televised skiffy to some various aspects of same (it's a long-term project spearheaded by another friend, and entered into willingly but bemusedly by the first person), as we were clearing up, the spear-header and I were talking about favorite series, and I happened to mention S&S. Oh, the friend says, I have that collection. It turns out she was less impressed by it than I was, and she handed the entire collection to me.
*cue pictures of
kaffy_r dancing quietly in her head*Having seen S&S only on YouTube, to be able to have my own actual collection? Well, the whole "dancing in her head bit" is quite true.
As for the rest of the afternoon, well it was good, challenging and confusing as well. The person to whom we were introducing skiffical television liked, as far as I could see, the first episode of the revived DW, "Rose" or at least was positively amused and curious about it. The person was, again as far as I could see, equally amused by "Once More With Feeling" from Buffy.
But, in what came as a surprise to me, the person seemed to be almost insulted by the first episode of Firefly, for reasons that I truly, deeply disagree with, and which appear to point to a them having a sincerely different way of viewing skiffy, SF/fantasy, or indeed the world, than I have. I shall have to think on that deeply, because I'd personally predicted that the person would like Firefly and be completely contemptuous of DW. And thus do humans continue to confound, confuse and challenge me.
Still, the person did not immediately declare that the crash course in introduction to TV skiffy was over and done with. More afternoons are therefore possible in future. I look forward to it.
(Still. Rearing back because Firefly has wooden kitchen tables on space ships, or because shipping containers in the far future look like ... shipping containers ... well, as I said, I must think on that deeply.) And you know I still love you, right?)
no subject
Yes! Big Finish - whom you may be aware of as the creator of lots of Doctor Who audio plays - also did three seasons of Sapphire & Steel. They did not, alas, manage to get the original cast to do this, but... David Warner!
I mean, they liked "Rose", with living plastic and time travel, for heaven's sake, whilst railing against Firefly because it didn't make scientific sense.
Hmmm. Possibly this is an example of -- but I can never think of a consistent term for it, so today I'll be calling it the "charity level". This is where an episode starts off with a certain amount of "charity" in the mind of the viewer, and as the episode goes on, the charity level either increases (as the viewer enjoys themselves more) or decreases (as the viewer is not enjoying themselves). If the "charity level" is high enough, things that would normally irritate the viewer (such as scientific inaccuracy) are forgiven because the viewer is having so much fun. If the charity level drops, however, more and more irritants are not forgiven.
I find that this theory explains why the same person can rail against scientific inaccuracy for one program while happily overlooking it with another.
Mind you, I think this is the kind of situation where I would be inclined to interrogate that person in order to grasp what their understanding of the genre is, and quite possibly end up frustrated because that person has insufficient self-awareness to figure out why they're reacting that way.
no subject
Mind you, I think this is the kind of situation where I would be inclined to interrogate that person in order to grasp what their understanding of the genre is
This person is definitely a life long fan of literary SF, and a long time member of traditional SF fandom. I probably will chat with them about this, but I doubt I'll be able to bridge the gap. My friend and I are probably ultimately willing to live and let live with each other's genre idiosyncrasies.