A look at Doctor Who and Mythology – DW series 1 and 5

Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dee...

In a previous entry I mentioned that the British scifi series Doctor Who could very well be considered a modern myth. Since then I have watched the entirety of the ninth (Christopher Eccleston) and eleventh (Matt Smith) Doctors’ runs on the show. This is two full series – 26 episodes. Based on this sample alone, which is a drastically small microcosm of the television show, I cannot liken Doctor Who to mythology. It certainly has some mythic elements, but I refuse to let that be an indicator of anything based solely on the fact that writers far and wide decided to consciously include mythical elements into their works after the publication of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

“Let me put down my frappuccino and talk about genre”

Let Me In director reveals what he kept and what he cut from the vampire classic.

The above link is to an io9 interview with the director of Let Me In, the American remake of Let the Right One In. The article is fine and makes me look even more forward to the film. I enjoyed the original, and there was little chance I would not see it. It is a vampire romance with kids in a depressing setting. What can go wrong?

SyFy is the future

A couple of blogs to which I subscribe broke the news that The Sci-Fi Channel, who have been working ever so hard on changing their image and broadening their scope, will be undergoing a name change in the near future.  NBC Universal have deemed this necessary because they have been looking for a name they could trademark.  They have decided that misspelling the name to SyFy and including the slogan “Imagine Greater” are the best courses of action.

Part of me really thinks that this is just a way to get nerds’ superhero panties in a twist, which is a fun thing to do.  A few years ago NBC put WWE’s ECW program on Tuesday nights, and Sci-Fi viewers had a hategasm.  Now misspell the word that binds the nerds together and see how much they whine and whine.

For the record, I think the idea contains an unflappable amount of stupidity.  SyFy is not only a stupid workaround in order to own a name, but it also looks stupid.  And the ultimate goal is to get more people watching the channel?  Rather than working on image, maybe they should be working on content.  Honestly, other than Battlestar Galactica, I don’t even go as far as flipping through the channel.  Really, who does?