emily k(nits, watches, and writes)

Oh yes, the shows go on.

Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock

Thoughts:
- They used five difference actors to play Spock.
- Scotty is pretty much my favorite ever.
- Well, Sulu too.
- Essentially everyone that Kirk loves ends up dead at some point. Rough life. How melodramatic.
- The adventure goes on …
- … OH! Some other actress playing Saavik? Weak, guys. Weak. Seriously all the things she did that probably kept Kirstie Alley from being in this movie were crap.

Tonight’s viewing is:

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

Who would have thought?

Notes:
- Totally forgot Kirstie Alley was in this movie. Hilarious.
- She’s a Vulcan? Or a Romulan? I didn’t think Romulan-Federation interaction had been solidified by that point, or if they ever were. Maybe I’m forgetting a later episode of Star Trek that dealt with that. Or supposedly she’s Vulcan-Romulan? Whatever.
- Watched “Space Seed” on cbs.com before watching this to make sure I remembered Khan’s origins correctly.
- As such (see last bullet point) I was really mad when Khan said he recognized Chekov. Damnit! Canon, people. CANON!

Today’s viewing is Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Comments about the film thus far:
- Kirk/Spock OTP
- Dr. McCoy looked like a total pimp when he first came aboard
- Spock is going through major acclimation issues. He’s been away from humanity for too long.
- Spock looked hilariously incredible with the long hair.
- I really hope that whatever our version of the Earth Federation is will end up being will be HQ’d in San Francisco.
- TNG stole the entire soundtrack of this film.

Here are the videos for my presentation titled “Representation of Genre in the Music of Doctor Who (1963).”

The Twilight Zone Intro (1959)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny7uGEPgoXk]

The Outer Limits Intro (1961)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtjhWhw2I8]

Doctor Who Full Opening Sequence from “An Unearthly Child”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLYSfWzKilI]

Doctor Who, Into the TARDIS
Our first look at the interior of the TARDIS
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRNUpeGu9a4]

And just for fun:
Futurama‘s spoof on The Twilight Zone/The Outer Limits
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma2Hqq0PVbU]

Abstract.

When the BBC premiered Doctor Who on November 23rd, 1963, they foresaw the program as a low-budget, teatime filler program on Saturday evenings. During the planning stages of this new show, the internal discussions surrounding Doctor Who’s development show that the BBC did not want a categorically science fiction (SF) show. As stated in documents from the BBC’s Script Department:

We are not writing science-fiction. We shall provide scientific explanations too, sometimes, but we will not bend over backwards to do so, if we decide to achieve credibility by other means. (BBC WAC T5/647/1)

The BBC believed that the British public was not ready for a mainstream SF show, nor that the SF writing community was prepared to produce stories that could reach to a wider, mainstream audience.

The highly eclectic, dissonant, and avant-garde sound design of Doctor Who tells a different story. Although the scriptwriters wanted to avoid making a SF show, the musique concrete and electronic techniques developed by Doctor Who’s freelance composers and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop utilized tropes and coded musical idioms associated with SF. This generic tension between the show’s dramatic intent and musical signifiers mirror the tensions found within literary SF, most notably the dialectic between estrangement and cognition. This article will examine the power of music in Doctor Who, and how the show’s sound design provided coherence of narrative and an aural link to established SF music conventions that helped define Doctor Who as SF.