Thursday, November 17, 2011

Of Iron Ladies, Time-Travellers and ...


A brief post after reading that the film industry of Hollywood intends to write produce, direct and publish movies on two subjects dear to my heart. Margaret Thatcher (now Baroness Thatcher) and Dr Who. Both are subjects that many people either love or hate.

The American movie cultus has a strong tradition of re-writing history for popularist reasons. Telling lies, in other words, to project onto screens in order to sell productions to an unworldly, and generally uneducated, mass market. The twisting of the events of the Second World War, and the blatant untruths created about Allied intelligence communities (the classic example being the story of the Enigma machine) might now be projected onto the depiction of 1980s Britain under (then) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Much as I applaud the talents of Meryl Streep, I fear the worst when it comes to this film.

I think the same, yet differently about Dr Who. In the BBC cult science fiction series that began in November 1963, the anti-hero is an enigmatic, clumsy and awkward time-traveling character who nevertheless always manages to save a planet, a species or the very universe. How will Hollywood portray him and the half-century of television that nurtured generations? I truly dread to think. Only one word comes to mind.

(From behind the sofa, of course!)

Exterminate!

2 comments:

susan s. said...

I think it all depends on who plays him.

Rev. Richard Thornburgh said...

The actor is a main consideration of course, but the script will either be true to the cultus or be completely reworked. The former we can live with if the latter is in keeping, but no actor can save a dire script, and there are plenty of examples of movies that have had top line performers but which have "bombed" at the Box Office.