Danny Stewart - Latest Comments

Re: Doctor Who: Old vs. New – Danny Stewart

Darth Egregious — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:20:09 -0000

You know, everyone comes into Who differently, and has a slightly different perspective on it. That's part of what makes it so great. Your own experience of Doctor Who is very unique to you, because of your age and how you were introduced to it. It's the same for everyone, by which I mean, different for everyone. There is an old saying, "You know you are among Who fans if everybody loves it but nobody can agree why." You might want to take that to heart and be a little less judgmental of people who like different aspects of it than you do.

So maybe for YOU Doctor Who hasn't had a mode since 1989, and if you don't care about the books and audios, fair enough. But LOTS of people (especially those who, like me, were actually watching Doctor Who IN 1989) really love them, and it's both arrogant and absurd to dismiss them out of hand, to try to pretend that the 15 "wilderness years" and its vast output of very popular stories - many by people now writing the show - never happened, or shouldn't have influenced Doctor Who going forward. Just as it's absurd to expect any new version of Who to refer only to what happened in a show that went off the air nearly 25 years ago and not be influenced by anything that's happened in the culture at large since then. Just as it's absurd to say that you can't judge any new Who by absolute standards of what's good drama and good TV and only whether it fits some preconceived notion of what Doctor Who "is."

But, fine, you want to construct a new Who using only elements from the original 26 seasons? We'll use the most recent iteration as the jumping off point, and base it heavily on S25 & 26's symbolism-laden, comic-book inspired style, where care is taken to relate the sci-fi concepts to either social issues or character development, and featuring a darker, more dangerous Doctor who is burdened by his responsibility but grounded by his concern for the companion's emotional journey.

Then let's cross that with Derrick Sherwin & Barry Letts' format of budget-friendly Earth-based adventures, with some excursions into space, but always returning to a regular cast at home. To that we'll add S17 & S24's self-aware meta parody, and JNT's penchant for using guest stars and returning villains to whip up publicity. We'll make frequent use of Hinchcliffe's trick of mashing-up various other movies, books and shows into a sort of "instant plot, just add Doctor" recipe.

As in every era of Doctor Who, we will use the latest techniques for special effects. As in every era of Doctor Who, we'll pattern the look after what's currently cutting edge and stylish. As in every era of Doctor Who, we'll make regular use of the old monsters, revamping the look to suit current taste and techniques, with usually only a handwave at continuity to paper over the change. And most of the new species we create will save the budget by using nearly identical costumes and masks that can be reproduced cheaply with minimal animatronics in a manner that wouldn't have caused John Friedlander any sleepless nights.

And since even in 1985 the 4x25 format was seen as quaint, we'll use the S22 format of 45 minute episodes, but again. as with the Cartmel era, we'll split studio time and location time to get twice as many stories per production block, and find a composer like Keff McCulloch who'll use dance and pop music in the score.

So there you go, a broad spectrum of past styles of Doctor Who all mixed into one new one. Might not be the combination of elements I would choose if I had my druthers, but I'd watch it, and I bet a lot of other people would too. If only somebody would stake his professional reputation on reviving an old, dead bit of nostalgia television, and overcome tons of internal BBC resistance (including Michael Grade, who's still around) to make a show like that!

Of course, none of this addresses any deficiencies in the actual plots or what's going on in the overall arcs. But to talk about that would require talking about the show as a piece of TV drama which can be judged on its own merits, and not getting caught up in the meaningless technicalities of what is/isn't "legit" Doctor Who, or accepting that things can have high and low points, and please some people and not others, without invalidating their entire existence.

Re: How Doctor Who Betrayed Matt Smith – Danny Stewart

Dalekium — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 14:03:37 -0000

I nearly started crying at "plotty-wotty".

Re: Doctor Who: Old vs. New – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 14:53:51 -0000

You always ask me just which era from the classic series I want the new series to emulate, but you never seem to realize that honestly I don't care. Pick any of them. S1, S5, S7, S13, S15, S17, S21, S23. You have 26 years of television to choose from. I would prefer ANY of it, ANY style, ANY era, with VERY few exceptions, to what we are getting now. When I say "the way they did it," I'm drawing from a very large pool. I would rather have ANY of "the way(s) they did it."

You also say that "character-based drama mixed with high concept sci-fi plotting has been Who's default mode since about 1988," but to me, all that means is that it's been Doctor Who's mode for 1-2 years out of 26. As far as I am concerned, Doctor Who hasn't had a mode since 1989. The New Adventures, the novels, the Big Finish audios, whatever you may want to consider, are a fun little distraction, but the only thing I have ever judged Doctor Who by is what has appeared on television as part of the series proper. Doctor Who has been on pause since 1989, and I factor none of the interwoven media into my judgments of what the series should be today.

Re: Doctor Who: Old vs. New – Danny Stewart

Darth Egregious — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 16:49:20 -0000

No, my argument is that character-based drama mixed with
high concept sci-fi plotting has been Who's default mode since about 1988.

I wish they'd focus less on meaningless arcs and bombastic "feels" but at the same time, any drama that's not about characters is not drama at all. So it's a matter of finding the balance between high-concept sci-fi plotting and characters with emotions & agendas which inform their actions within in the story...and that's just really, really hard. The new series often fails at this, I'm the first to admit, but more often that not it at least fails with ambition.

As for the preceding 25 seasons, you mean the way they did it in S1or S21? S7 or S17? S5 or S15? S13 or S23? I'm pretty sure in each case you'd say the former rather than the latter, but the point is, there's no one "way they did it" that stays true for more than a 3-season stretch, for the simple reason that they were always making it for a mass audience, according to the tastes of the time and in reaction to what had gone before. It's pointless to ask the show to act as if the last 25 years of its own developments in storytelling (with S26, the New Adventures, and Big Finish) hadn't happened - much less as if the last 25 years of TV drama and genre fiction hadn't happened.

In any era, the only thing to hope for is that it gets better as it goes along, that it keeps trying new things, and that any dips in quality are just that - dips.

Re: Doctor Who: Old vs. New – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:53:18 -0000

If "they did it in season 26" is your argument, then I would like a return to the way they did it for the preceding 25 years, please.

Re: Doctor Who: Old vs. New – Danny Stewart

Darth Egregious — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 14:46:10 -0000

The thing is, though, the shift to a more character-based dramatic format started with Ace and was codified with the New Adventures - character drama welded to adventure has been the default format for Who for the past 20 years. Indeed, "emotional bonds and epiphanies" pretty much describes Season 26 to a T. It's the WAY it's been done lately that's the real problem, as The Atlantic's article lays out better than I could.

For myself, I would like a bit more of the straight-up adventure to return, but I'm not sure what you mean by science, because classic Who had precious little to be honest, and more often than not relied on some kind of "reverse the polarity" cop out to save the day.

Re: Doctor Who: Old vs. New – Danny Stewart

Smoky Joe — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 20:11:11 -0000

Summed succinctly in a nutshell.

Re: Doctor Who: The Theme – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 17:28:20 -0000

Thank you so much. I'm immensely proud of the work we've done on it, and we will definitely be expanding it with time. We have plans to cover all the themes of the classic series, and will extend the same care and attention to all of them.

Re: Doctor Who: The Theme – Danny Stewart

Thomas David Dalladay — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 17:25:14 -0000

Congratulations to all three of you - it's an excellent site, beautifully designed and very thorough. I hope it will become the go-to resource for all aspiring musicians interested in this wonderful theme!

Re: Doctor Who: The Night of the Doctor – Danny Stewart

Darth Egregious — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 15:48:14 -0000

"Bring me knitting!"

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:19:19 -0000

Thanks. I didn't make that clear at all. Hopefully it makes more sense now.

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Guest — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:16:51 -0000

Actually my solution works only if creating the symlink from dropbox pointing to ~/Library/Container/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Archive

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 12:20:59 -0000

Thanks Urbicande! I've added this information to the post above.

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

disqus_BXGxrFTOcV — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:52:22 -0000

I found a way to fix this issue. I followed the instructions here: https://discussions.apple.c...

Then I merged both my Archive folders (the local one and dropbox one), moved the merged folder to Dropbox and simlinked it to ~/Library/Container/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/ again

Re: Peter Capaldi: righting the course – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 17:23:02 -0000

We are absolutely on the same page there!

Re: The return – Danny Stewart

Greg Knight — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:13:46 -0000

Well said.

Re: The return – Danny Stewart

Andy Griffiths — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:17:27 -0000

Couldn't agree more sir. Much of what I've seen on the forums in the last few days (and before) has shown me that there's a lot of selfish, impatient idiots among our fellow Who devotees, sadly.

Re: Peter Capaldi: righting the course – Danny Stewart

Darth Egregious — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 09:39:57 -0000

Well, fair enough, and I'm sorry if I oversimplified your opinion. We are fully agreed that it shouldn't be shit, though we might have somewhat different ideas of what constitutes shit.

However, I do agree very much that the last couple of series have been quite disappointing, especially given the quality of Moffat's scripts for RTD. They've been ambitious, yes, full of great moments, sure, and starring Matt Smith, whom I feel is one of the very best Doctors, when he's allowed to be. I can point to episodes I quite like in the last 3 series, but overall they've been neither emotionally engaging, intellectually intriguing, nor dramatically satisfying. The re-watchability factor has dropped off the cliff for me.

I hope that having a bit of a hiatus and coming back with a an actor who knows good drama, knows good Who, and has the clout of being an established star and a writer/director in his own right, rather than someone who's new to the whole "leading man" business, will get Moffat back on track with the proper drama I know he's capable of (see Jekyll, The Empty Child, the better episodes of Sherlock, and a few others).

Re: Peter Capaldi: righting the course – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 16:45:09 -0000

I'm not saying the show ever was what it used to be; I'm simply saying that I liked or loved almost every form that it took from 1963-1989, and strongly dislike the direction they have taken it since 2005. You like to pigeonhole my argument into "the show's been changing since 1966, why shouldn't it change now?" I'm not saying it shouldn't change. I'm just saying it shouldn't be shit. :)

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Mathieu Chevrier — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 13:21:20 -0000

excellent! I'll give it a try. Glad I could help.

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 13:20:29 -0000

Wow, great find, Matt. I always forget that they're shoehorning stuff into sandboxed containers nowadays.

Theoretically, all you need to do is delete that Archive folder and change the command in my original post to this:

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Documents/iChats ~/Library/Container/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Archive

I'm doing some testing on this right now and I'll report back and try to update my original post with the results.

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Mathieu Chevrier — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 13:15:08 -0000

hey, it seems they are stored in Library/Container/Com.Apple.ichat/Data/Library/Messages/Archive

As I'm not a terminal user, would you know of a way to perform the same trick as before for a "dropbox" save?

Cheers!

matt

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Danny Stewart — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 13:03:25 -0000

Agreed; it's very unfortunate. I noticed that all my logs stopped on June 10, 2013—the day Mavericks DP1 was released. Thus ends six years of my meticulously kept chat logs. End of an era for me.

Re: Chat logging in Mountain Lion – Danny Stewart

Jason G — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 13:00:05 -0000

That's brutal for the Mavericks change. Hopefully we'll see a Chatology update that finds a way to search archived messages in 10.9.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google – Danny Stewart

Shadowbane2009 — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:51:13 -0000

I got nabbed by that too and it totally pissed me off...and their policies regarding NICKNAMES is pathetic...last I checked...NICKNAMES ARE just um NICKNAMES...nothing official GOOGLE!!!