- It was a bit like having an aircraft carrier land in the pond in your back garden when Star Wars [Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)] came out. I personally still think there's a place for story-driven drama.
- I was and remain "Old Labour" and an unrepentant supporter of unions in principle and in practice. On the day when no worker needs the help and protection of other workers against unconcerned and/or rapacious employers I will cheer myself hoarse. Since I don't believe in an afterlife however I can say with absolute certainty I shall never see that particular dawn.
- I was a choirboy; I was confirmed; I was wracked with non-specific guilt (still am, come to think). I prayed a lot for forgiveness (at least I've shaken that habit). If you think about it, the convert to a faith is usually more fervent than someone born into it, so I suppose it's logical that the convert from a faith should be more fervent than someone born into rationality. Any and all religions irritate the hell out of me now. I'm not really a zealot, though, unless faced with zealotry. People are perfectly entitled to be as benightedly stupid as they wish. Who am I to judge? What they are not entitled to do, however, is to insist that everyone be as barking as they are themselves. And what they are definitely not entitled to do is to introduce their mental health problems into education and government. Mind you, I get the feeling you never really shake it off, and, if ever the lights go out, I'll be howling at the moon and sacrificing small animals to big rocks with the best of them.
- If you try to tie up everything neatly at the end, it feels as though you tried to tie up everything neatly at the end. Because life isn't like that, I don't think stories should be either.
- Class systems exist in every society, and they always will in some form. They have a lot in common with religions, and, like religions, you can really only ignore them and hope they won't get in your way too much. The trick is not to let class and religion matter to you. But that's a really neat trick if you can do it.
- Science is testable and, if it isn't testable, it isn't science, it's philosophy (in its loosest form) or superstition (or religion which is a lazy combination of those two).
- It has rather cruelly been suggested that I will cheerfully sacrifice plot and character in pursuit of a gag. It's a lie of course. I would only do that for a good gag. For what it's worth I think humour is absolutely essential in any thriller worth the name. You cannot maintain tension or even build it in the first place without relieving it from time to time. If you don't use wit and humour to do that all you're usually left with is rather leaden exposition and gratuitous padding and the sudden realisation that the characters are not the sort of people you want to waste your time with. Besides which what is the immediate reaction to fear? Instinctively it's aggression but if you can get past that you mostly laugh. I think real fear and thus real courage often express themselves in humour. When you're clinging to reason a joke can be the only thing between you and the darkness. As far as Doctor Who (1963) is concerned I think humour is important for those reasons: humour but not the sort of whimsy which eventually seemed to become the show's default approach. Whimsy has a tendency to be soft and a bit silly which is not to my taste and which did not play to the show's strengths in my view.
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