River Runs Through It

Toward the end of the 1980s I found myself working for Richard Williams on his long-cherished feature, The Thief and the Cobbler. I was probably there for only six or seven months, and it was tight schedules we were working to, but I knew pretty much all the staff from working at Disney and it was a really fun time.

The animation, including work by Ken Harris and Art Babbitt, set against Errol Le Cain’s astonishingly luxuriant backgrounds, was just astonishing. There were times when we’d sit back and watch the scenes that had been painstakingly put together over twenty-odd years.

There was one scene inside the palace when The Thief comes down a flight of stairs, takes the corner wide as he makes a turn, his shoes slapping on the marble as he gains enough traction to carry on down. It’s a gag Harpo Marx performs in Duck Soup, which I mentioned as the scene unfolded, naturally assuming it was an homage to the original.

I remember Dick saying that you should never copy something unless you can make it better in the process. Watching the animation, The Thief still retained a centre of gravity, but brought to life with a pencil meant the character could, for just a few extra frames of elasticity, thumb its nose at the laws of physics without it going over the top.

His comment has always stayed in the back of my mind. It’s what rises to the fore and drives the incandescent rage brought on by half-arsed, lazily written dramas that steal ideas and imagery from other, more celebrated sources and then does pretty much fuck all with them because the writers simply don’t know what to do with them.

It also reminds me of the line in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm says: “You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could...” Lazy motherfuckers! Hopefully there’s a special place in hell waiting for every one of them.

The inherent problem with science fiction is that the existing conventions have already been lazily recycled over and again, down through the decades across the media. I wasn’t impressed with Moffat’s first Doctor Who story, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter, because the concept of aliens trying to heal an injured human and not getting it quite right was already a tired idea during the era of the pulps.

Counting off the days in the wake of Silence in the Library, the main concern was that the second half wouldn’t live up to expectations. There’s always a danger anyway with two-part dramas that so much effort is put into setting up the story that it then simply dribbles away to a less than satisfactory resolution.

Thankfully, Forest of the Dead did absolutely nothing of the sort. Instead, Moffat refused to fall back on so many of the existing conventions of science fiction. Given that the Vashta Nerada had been established as unstoppable and something to simply run away from, cut from the chase and wisely spent the time concentrating on the mystery of CAL and solving the conundrum: 4022 saved. No survivors.

When it came to the revelation that Donna had been saved into the virtual world, the initial fear was, please don’t let this get within sniffing distance of a riff on something like The Matrix. Oddly enough, there was a brief glimpse of the interior of The Hub in this week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica that looked like the real-world power plant from the Wachowski’s film.

Instead we got something very different. Giant super computers always tend to be vengeful, like Skynet, or Colossus, or even AM that preceded either of them. Instead with CAL we got a computer traumatised from doing toe right thing. Even then it was still just part of a very clever, very human story.

The backbone of which continued to be River Song and the gentle teasing out of her future relationship with The Doctor. In fact, River’s description of her Doctor could be interpreted as Moffat slyly stating his intentions of where the character will go once he takes the reins for the 2010 season.

Throughout the episode the narrative constantly threw idea after idea at the screen rather than snapping up just one of them and running with that. Taking that approach it created one of the best pieces of adult dramas on television this week. I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole lot of the little kiddies that had been given the willies the week before sat on the sofa scratching their head as the story unfolded.

Having just blathered on about films that should have ended sooner, friend of the blog Jaded and Cynical mentioned on the previous post that he felt that Forest of the Dead could have done without the extended coda. A grumpy bastard myself, I like to see characters die, especially when they really deserve it. But this time I think Moffat got it right.

I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I’m going soft in my advanced years – for the last time I must have had grit in my eye!! – but those final fifteen minutes of the episode were as necessary as the previous half hour. After all, how could such a vital character as River Song be introduced and then callously snuffed out?

The bittersweet resolution even meant that CAL was no longer alone either. It showed marvellous ingenuity and compassion, and at no point did it feel forced or fake. It even reined in Catherine Tate, giving her a chance to act rather than simply be shouty-shouty. Which means that four days later I’m still trying to fathom it.