Time After Time (...before time, then at the same time... or something)

I'm over a week late with this. I blame time streams.

So it's half time in the latest Doctor Who series. Thanks America. Season splits are an awesome idea(!) But anyway...

I love Doctor Who. The concept is brilliant. The character is just my favourite shade of nutty. The presumably accidental idea of regeneration is such an amazing addition to character development and I imagine offers so much room to play. It must be a dream to write for.

I'd hate writing for it.

There's been something amiss with this series. Possibly, there is a part of this that stems from the fact it is a new episode of Doctor Who, rather than a new episode of Mr Moffat's other project, Sherlock; a series so good it makes Lucy Liu an unattractive concept (see thoughts on Elementary, i.e.: why bother, there's already Sherlock. Lucy Liu isn't going to make that go away). But it is more than this. There is room in my life for two awesome series, I can't see why I would exclusively want only one.

And before anyone suggests the problem may be very Matt-Smithish in appearance, don't bother. As far as I'm concerned Mr Smith, along with Miss Gillen and Mr Darvill comprise the best line up of Team TARDIS since the reboot. I can conceive of the notion that Matt's portrayal of our favourite (and only) Gallifreyan is precisely why I still watch.

And I don't think it's the writing. Moffat et al have fairly routinely produced thundering rollercoasters of enjoyment for every episode. He's definitely stretched the suspension of disbelief at times but it has tended to work out fine by the end.

This series, though. I don't know. Something is getting me rankled about the story so far. I couldn't work it out until this sub-finale that... oh. Spoilers are probably going to crop up from here on in. Fair warning.

As we said our goodbyes to the Ponds, whisked off into the past to a Manhattan made inaccessible by a highly unstable time stream, there was just one thought which totally killed the ending for me, and suddenly made all my problems clear as crystal.

Time travel is a really idiotic plot device.

As I sat there, watching Matt Smith shine in his moment of utter despair, telling us exactly what the Doctor would have felt as if it had really happened, all I could think was, 'Why did they not just arrange to be picked up outside of New York a year later?' I didn't see anything to block doing this, other than nobody thinking logically. The Doctor and River could have just got into the TARDIS, set a course for Boston, a year after the issue with the Angels and picked up Rory and Amy who would have had a lovely, year long adventure in America. At no point did it come across that this would be impossible.

And I think that this issue stems straight from how ridiculously complex time travel ends up being. It's easy to think about it, easy to picture obvious physical laws that would theoretically exist in travelling through time. But try sticking it to a narrative and, unless you are rigid, you get problems. It feels like the Doctor's writing team were working on mixed messages, or maybe were simply using differing and contradicting possibilities as it suited the story. Which is fine. An artist has got to have license and audiences will be willing to accept things like this if it makes the story compelling. But I am absolutely the most pedantic person in the world, and I will sit there and gripe when you suddenly close a door you had been prancing through, back and forth, for 5 series previously. And time travel has lots of doors. Loopholes, even. And I know that this is why I get a bit uncomfortable around time travel. It is the ultimate Deus Ex Machina (there's an ultimate problem, but who cares? We'll just go back in time and make it so it didn't happen), but you can't have it solve every problem, or there would be no tension. Thus, inconsistency is inevitable.

Yet, I have so much experience in watching and enjoying time travel stories. Aside from the good Doctor there is a plethora of stories I have experienced that have used time travel as a key feature. In fact, it happens so often I can't think of any specific examples other than Back to the Future. Oh, and Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. Well done me. They do, however, somewhat conveniently, offer me contrasting approaches to time travel. Everyone knows Back to the Future. Kid unwittingly ends up in the past and screws everything up so has to unscrew everything or he ends up having never existed. A classic grandfather paradox. He then finds out that the minor screw up that remains has altered his time and made his father a major success, before two more films happen. The point being that the story adheres to the idea that you can change the past and alter your present, retaining your old knowledge at the same time. And I hate this. The completely nonsensical detritus that remains when these stories have bulldozed through a time stream.

The other example, Night Watch, does things a bit differently. I'll try to sum it up without spoilers. And remember what happens. Let me just read the Wiki entry...

...

OK, so, essentially, the time travellers take up roles within the original passing of time, the protagonist filling the role of mentor to his younger self, ensuring that things go as recognised in history. I think things do sort of change, but it's insinuated that it all leads to the same result, anyway. It follows the logic that, if you go back in time you cannot change anything because you would already done those things in your time line for you to be where you started. If that makes sense. Its a much more solid time stream without paradoxes littering the story. Much tidier, much more comfortable to live with.

But that's probably the only tidy way of doing time travel: whereby, you aren't changing anything. The problem you get then is 'Why bother time travelling at all?' This is why I don't want to do time travel. It rarely adds to a story's cohesion, and that clearly matters to me far too much. I'm very willing to see people try but I think I know too much about time travel now to be as able to disconnect myself from what I see as glaring paradoxes.

Obviously, hating the concept of time travel and loving time travel stories is a bit weird. But at least it's not a paradox. I can take comfort in that, at least.

Sycophancy

It's not often I post blogs. Even less do I blog about "what I'm feeling." Certainly not since escaping the teen years.

But no thing can maintain itself forever. Which is a shame.

My recent absence I will shamefully put down to my concentrating on 'proper writing,' which is a ridiculous excuse, I know, but such is my mind that it can, as yet, only focus on one of a type of thing at a time.

Something that has inadvertantly come about from a new found determination to finally get some shit done has been an almost sub-conscious thought experiment, an ethereal by-product that grows with every word I add in futility to what ever page I am unblanking. This is the worry of what to do with the results.

But I know the answer. Or, at least, I know of an ideal solution.

I may have mentioned this before but I habour an ever-expanding and unfathomable admiration for Penny Arcade and the empire that now hosts it. I imagine, to normal people, these efforts may not be all that extraordinary but I find myself struck down in awe by their progression from fledgling, Internet-based comic strip to a now fully fledged Goliath of Humour that is still based, primarily, on the Internet. This is something worthy of emulation.

But, a business is worth nothing if the "product" is worthless. Conveniently, this is not the case with the Penny Arcade strip. Now, while I appreciate the quality of artist Mike Krahulik's work in the strip, especially recently, I can't draw. I have no knowledge of drawing or the skills that go with it. I could as much tell you how Krahulik stacks up against other artists as I could rate a partiular ninja against other ninja. I confide myself in just acknowledging the ninjaship. He ninjas well. I think the analogy is beginning to fall apart.

(This is where the feeling-y bit starts. Brace yourselves.)

Being a writer, however (not the most prolific one, I grant you), I can comment fairly coherently on the wordsmith of the comic, Jerry Holkins. And I will. I will do so with much enthusiasm.

I love the man's writing. His abilities in pacing and structure can be masked by the very jokes they work to construct or the visual comedy from the art but, having spent as much time staring at his web page and gorging on the literary feasts in the news posts that accompany the strips, I could quite happily wax lyrical about the almost melodic quality in his sentence structure, the extensive and often gorgeous vocabulary like the ornamentals of one of Bach's fugues. And he does this talking about video games.

I don't really talk about inspirations. I think maybe my instinct is to be intimidated instead of inspired. That was certainly true with music. The bands I respected most scared me off as I believed I could never amount to that.

With writing, I don't seem to get that. Words are a much more intuitive concept for me. I can see almost straight away how the combination of letters and commas arranged in front of my works. There's a degree of intimidation but I can see the path up the mountain. Jerry's writing: his words, his measure, the images and insights he conjures; It's like Everest. But his writing is so well crafted, so graceful. It's hard to feel anything but inspired, to aim for that peak. Jerry hypnotises like a piper, leading the way up the mountain path.

I try to temper my enthusiasm as much as I can when it comes to literary idols of mine. I worry that I might end up simply mimicking their style rather than infusing it into my personal style. I always look over my writing and worry that it may as well be Terry Pratchett fan-fiction. I once considered writing a series of blogs regarding my thoughts on modern attempts at hedonistic living but discarded these as they looked like a sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But the lust for language and description that Holkins exhudes in his writing is a state I am quite willing to live in solidly, at least for a little while. A shift in focus from the long arc of the story to the sensual immersion in the shorter moment might just be what I need to produce an improvement in how I write.

This relies, of course, on an improvement in frequency. I should probably work on that too.