I am not much of a television watcher. We have the standard box, plus an obscenely huge big screen in husband's room with the aforementioned dead things on walls where I seldom go. I will do the occasional channel surfing, but I generally choose to read, write, or do other things on those rare occasions when I find myself with some discretionary time. I have no smug sense of pompous superiority about that (as I have sensed from some anti-TV folk). I merely have never developed much interest in TV.
The problem with satellite TV is that it just takes you twice as long to figure out that there's usually nothing but junk on. Also, I get very annoyed when even when I've chosen some reasonably tasteful programs to watch I get inundated with dreadful commercials like those of Smiling Bob promoting Enzyte for "Natural Male Enhancement" or "Girls Gone Wild" videos, interspersed with ads for shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" or "gay, straight or taken?" Thank you, NO.
Tonight, however, I spent a little time with the husband-person cuddling on the couch while he flicked channels. One of the choices that scrolled up was Dr. Who. I had remembered reading something about how Torchwolf was a major Dr. Who fan, so I thought I'd check it out.
OH MY WORD. What an interesting, quirky, bizarre show. The dialogue had me in stitches. I don't know enough of the background of the storyline to make heads or tails of it, and I'm totally unfamiliar with the characters. Still, it was a hoot.
I grew up watching hour upon hour of Star Trek and was a hard core Star Wars fan for years; I used to love watching DS9. I've been to a couple different Sci Fi conventions and have read dozens upon dozens of sci fi novels over the years. So shows with lots of strange aliens and space travel feel fun and familiar to me. But Dr. Who was different from the usual American space fare I've grown accustomed to. Maybe it's the British influence? Don't know. But the flavor is decidedly different, in a good way.
I still don't expect to spend much time in front of the boob tube, but this is a show I'd watch again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I haven't yet seen the newest version of Dr. Who, but I often enjoyed the older versions when I could see them -- my PBS station ran them years ago. Lots of fun stuff that relied on writing and acting, since the effects budget was such that George Lucas would expend it in about eight seconds of a Star Wars movie.
Gosh, I didn't know there WAS a new version of Dr. Who. Jaquandor is right - I used to watch Dr. Who in the 80s and even then they were reruns from much earlier. My local PBS station ran them late at night and they were very popular. Right up there with Are You Being Served? an brilliantly silly British sitcom about life in an old-fashioned family-owned department store. They ran that every night at 7:00 for years and years.
Post a Comment