Been Thinking About Fantasy/scifi Rule Systems And Free Will

been thinking about fantasy/scifi rule systems and free will

David Tennant, Catherine Tate, and Josie Rourke for Throwback Thursday Promotional Shoot for Much Ado About Nothing

Excerpts from the Telegraph interview with David, Catherine, and Josie by Dominic Cavendish (published May 10th, 2011) [X]

Josie Rourke: I got a call saying, “Would you be interested in doing a production of Much Ado About Nothing with Catherine Tate and David Tennant?” And it’s a dream job, really. Their chemistry is very profound but it’s directed outwards: this has been one of the happiest acting companies I’ve worked with. It’s also very helpful when you’re conceiving a production knowing some of the casting. If it had been a different Beatrice and Benedick, it would have been a different production. Dominic Cavendish: The phrase “sex war” does cut to the chase of the play, doesn’t it? What makes Benedick so antagonistic, outwardly at least, to the opposite sex, do you think?   David Tennant: I sense that all that misogyny comes out of self-loathing. There’s fear of commitment, fear of emotional attachment and vulnerability. It’s very recognisable. It strikes me how this play is really the template for every romantic comedy – the couple who can’t live with each other, can’t live without each other.   Catherine Tate: We meet them at a time when you get the sense that they’ve been the coolest people in the room, and they’re getting to an age when they’re going to get left on the shelf and start looking sad. They both very quickly cave in when they think the other loves them.   David Tennant: They cave in with enthusiasm! 

from Michael Coveney’s article/interview with Josie Rourke in The Independant (May 27, 2011)

“I have never laughed so much in a  rehearsal room. My memory of this will be of wandering into a room and  finding one of them making the other laugh. "They are incredibly quick and intuitive in their response to each other, and that carries over directly into the play. They are such great company, and they set the tone for everyone else, charging us all up with the effervescent quality of their friendship.”

David Tennant Appreciation 2015:  Favorite Friendship

9/19

beware the IMPOSTOR

i know 42 isn't one of the most beloved doctor who episodes, but i personally loved it—mostly because i think it's incredibly important when it comes to the dynamic between the doctor and martha (along with the lazarus experiment, which i'll agree isn't a wonder of cinematography but it's the episode where—finally!—the doctor acknowledges how martha was never “just a passenger” to him).

and so, what's their dynamic, then? smith and jones, of course—the doctor and his doctor. not that it wasn't apparent already, from the very first moment martha is on screen she saves the doctor's life and plays a fundamental part in solving whatever situation they end up in, but in those episodes specifically—and more than ever in 42—the doctor relies on her and her alone, and he shows just how much he trusts her. because he does trust her, he does believe in her, he's seen such potential in her and i can see it, i see how he sees her and i wish the writing in season three wasn't so terribly inconsistent and that ten wasn't so terribly hot-and-cold, because when they're good they're really good.

i can't stop thinking about how scared the doctor was when he got infected with the virus, how vulnerable. the doctor is never vulnerable. scared yes, confused of course, sad for sure, even desperate, he often doesn't know what to do up until the very last second, but his job is to act as a crutch for others to lean on, to solve problems, to keep hope alive. all of this, during the second half of 42, was martha's job. because he was terrified. and this very primal sense of fear he was feeling came from the fact that the virus threatened to make him do the one thing he can't bear to do—killing without a reason to. he would've killed martha, he would've killed the rest of the crew, and everything would have been completely out of his control. so yes. he was terrified. so terrified, in fact, that at one point he had to physically reach out for her and call her name (“martha, where are you?”) when she let go of him for a few seconds because he couldn't open his eyes to look at her but he didn't feel her touch anymore and he didn't want to be alone—no, scratch that, he didn't want to be without her. for once, specifically, he didn't want to be without martha. and so she ran to him and she held him up and reassured him and he told her “i'm scared, i'm so scared” and tried to warn her about the regeneration process and all she asked of him was to believe in her. and it absolutely kills me how martha doesn't know the doctor has believed in her from the very first moment he's laid eyes on her. because he's being so stubborn, he's in his ‘can't-let-anyone-too-close’ era and he thinks that's what's best for everyone but he also can't stay away, can he? he can't let her go. and he ends up hurting her and himself a lot, but then some times he doesn't. some times he tears the walls down, some times he tells her about gallifrey, and he admits to her that he is scared, and tells her she was never just a passenger, and looks at her like he wishes the expression ‘right person wrong time’ wouldn't apply to a time lord.

and some times he trusts her completely, wholeheartedly, to save everyone for him. and of course she does, because she's his doctor, she's martha jones, she is ‘a star’. and he thanks her. sincerely. no humour, no banter, no nothing, he just thanks her—for saving them, for keeping herself safe while he couldn't, but also just because. just because she's there, and she was there when no one else was or could be, and she got him to share memories and sides of himself he'd previously never shared with anybody.

so yeah. to me, 42 will always be famous. just as martha jones will, and just as whatever the doctor and her shared will.

What do you think about Alec and Ellie dressing the same when they are in detective mode (grey button down, dark grey jacket)

Have I ranted about the costumes in Broadchurch yet? No? WELL THEN.

TV shows and films are all about characters. Ergo, the costumes should be all about the characters too. Good costuming will tell you everything you need to know about the character’s personality, and will change to suit their mood and the tone of the scene.

When it comes to Hardy and Miller, their costumes are fascinating to analyse. The signature “look” for both of them is Hardy in black and blue and Miller in orange.

These are the clothes they typically choose to wear of their own accord. Now, this look renders them as opposites - eye burningly-bright v. dark and dull, informal v. formal, etc. Hardy’s tendency to wear a suit at all times, even in informal settings, plus a black coat indicates how self-protective he is. His clothing is his armour and he uses it to protect himself from the rest of the world. He hides his feelings behind a business suit. He feels at home in a suit and doesn’t consider it posh. He wears it in S02E04 when he shares a bed with Ellie because he’s so nervous and awkward that he needs those layers of clothing to protect himself. Around other people, it’s always a semi-formal suit. This is the default look for him.

Ellie’s default look is trainers, comfy trousers and her orange jacket. This establishes her as a practical woman, a mum who doesn’t care about appearances. The orange jacket is particularly comforting for her, and she withdraws into it - zips it up and tucks her hands into her sleeves - when she’s feeling sad or scared. She also carries a practical, ugly bag on a strap that she often clutches to herself like it’s a safety blanket.

Their signature look, therefore, presents them to us as opposites. But the way Chibnall has constructed them is as people who are superficially opposites, but the same underneath. They are cast to look the same, and are the same age, with the same brown hair and eyes. They seem like opposites, and they are in many ways, but under it all they exactly the same, with the same values and principles and desires. They are really two halves of a whole.

It’s my opinion that Chibnall is basing Hardy and Miller off the couple Jude and Sue from Jude the Obscure - a book which is, not coincidentally, I’m sure, the only Thomas Hardy book explicitly referred to by name in the show. Jude and Sue are both traumatised by disastrous first marriages, but eventually form an extremely intimate and loving relationship with each other. Sue is incredibly intelligent and a real rebel in many ways; Jude is a rather melancholy man hung up on old dreams and desires with recurring health issues.

Here are some of the ways Thomas Hardy talks about them:

That complete mutual understanding, in which every glanceand movement was as effectual as speech for conveying intelligence betweenthem, made them almost the two parts of a single whole.

“I have been struck with these two facts; the extraordinarysympathy, or similarity, between the pair… They seem to be one person split in two!”

There is even a scene where Sue wears Jude’s clothes. “Sitting in his [Jude’s] only arm-chair he saw a slim and fragile being masquerading as himself.” Later, Jude thinks, “what a comrade she would make; fortheir difference of opinion on conjectural subjects only drew them closer together on matters of daily humanexperience. She was nearer to him than any other woman he had ever met, and he could scarcely believe that time, creed,or absence, would ever divide him from her.”

Jude and Sue are two halves of a whole who look alike and dress alike, but are superficially different. Jude says “you are just like me at heart” and Sue replies, “But not at head.” Same heart, different minds.

It is Claire who brings up this idea of two halves. “You go about your life thinking you’re complete and then youmeet someone and you realise you’re only really half of something… when you meet that person… you’re only really whole when you’re with each other. Neverends well, does it?… Howeverit happens, one half always loses the other.”

Now, I’ve already established in another post how the cinematography establishes them as two halves of a whole, but let’s look at how the costumes do the same.

When it’s all business and they’re working together, they tend to wear the same grey, black or blue suit and blue or white shirt

Here they are absolute mirror images of each other, she almost a “double for himself.”

It should hardly be surprising that they’re wearing suits, since they’re in a professional setting, but the fact that almost constantly mirror each other, with Ellie wearing a feminine version of whatever Hardy wears, is absolutely deliberate. It really gets across the sameness between them, the absolute equality of their relationship, and the fact that they share the same goals and principles when investigating these cases.

Ellie also has a black coat that matches Hardy’s, again just a tailored, feminine version of his outfit.

It goes the other way, too. Plenty of people have noticed that Hardy wears a blue sweater in S02E06 and S02E07 that matches Ellie’s blue sweater from S02E01.

Ellie’s is bigger and baggier than Hardy’s, and it has horizontal pattern stitching while Hardy’s is vertical. Hardy even wears it with a blue collar underneath, just as Ellie did.

It’s interesting that Hardy says, “I’m reborn” and that the first outfit he wears after his operation is something that reminds him of Ellie. Technically that sweater was not a good choice for a man who’d just had pacemaker surgery since you can’t really lift your left arm (watch how DT favours his right arm when he puts it on); button-up shirts would have been a better choice, but no, Hardy wanted something warm and cuddly that reminded him of Ellie. He’s like a babby duckling imprinting on the first person he sees when he wakes up.

I like that Ellie tends to match him when it comes to formal wear, but Hardy matches Ellie in informal wear because it echoes the way Hardy teaches Miller to be a better detective, and Miller teaches Hardy to be a better person.

When Hardy’s alone or in bed, he sometimes wears a grey t-shirt, which is about as exposed as he gets.

As S2 rolls on and he literally and figuratively starts to expose himself more to Miller, and she to him. In S02E05, once Ellie has forced her way into his home and made herself a permanent fixture, he relaxes around her.

Here, she is all business. The suit is on, the hair is up and she’s working a case, but Hardy’s jacket and tie is off and his sleeves are rolled up.

By S02E07 it’s different. Hardy is revitalised by surgery and is now all business as they work together, while Ellie has relaxed into informal attire and works with her hair down and slightly messy, wearing a casual, comfy blue top with the sleeves and collar open.

For them to relax like this in each other’s company indicates a deep trust and intimacy.

There’s a hundred other details I could talk about, but even so, out of all the little quirks and subtleties in the costuming choices it is their default look that I adore the most because honestly

It tells you everything you need to know about these characters and their relationship.

And that is some amazing costuming right there.