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Jun. 14th, 2015 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newmoonstarBeen reading Emma by Jane Austen. It's the last Jane Austen novel I haven't read (or at least attempted to read- Mansfield Park has defeated me on no less than three occasions!) & I figured I'd give it a go at last when I heard a local theater troupe was planning a production. But now that's been cancelled I'm finding it hard to muster enthusiasm to continue reading it. The trouble with Jane Austen sometimes is that she's too good: her people are so much like real people that spending time with them can be draining- every annoying foible that real human beings have, every awkward social situation and uncomfortable family dynamic that we all know too well, is 100% there in all her characters in her books, and I have to say I would probably go crazy if I had to live in Highbury with these people for any length of time!
I liked Emma quite well as a short, breezy movie that only lasted an hour & a half, but when it was a mini-series of several hours length, less so, & by the third mini-series adaptation, I was pretty done with it! The book of course has the charm of the 19th century language & Austen's witty authorial voice, but I'm afraid I'm one of those people who she predicted not liking her heroine very much. Emma's such a clueless rich girl that you get frustrated thinking how much sooner everything would wrap up if she'd just stop sticking her nose into everything & get a life of her own. But of course women in those days couldn't go to college & have careers, so I guess she's kind of the poster-child for bored rich 19th century women having their time & intelligence wasted in having to be decorative objects in a man's world. If nothing else, Emma makes me very, very grateful we have feminism! And I will finish it, by golly, if it's the last thing I do. I'm already 300 pages in & determined not to quit when I've already gotten this far.
In my Classic Doctor Who Watch-athon, I've finished 'Delta & the Bannermen'. All I can say is that I now take back what I said about 'Paradise Towers' being weird- it was perfectly normal compared to 'Delta & the Bannermen'! Poor old Seven just gets the weirdest stories. (And that's really saying something, considering this is Doctor Who...) I doubt this serial could even be described in one sentence- it had everything in it but the kitchen sink. However, I will say that Seven & Mel are great, and I'm very sad that there weren't more TV stories with them. I think they make a great team, & I really do love Mel, and just wish she'd gotten a proper introduction episode, and more to do in this serial. She has some really good moments in it, but a lot of her usual companion duties get usurped here & given to the one-off character Ray. I'd heard some 'Ray should have been a companion' talk before I saw this, but while she's perfectly nice, I don't see anything particularly special about her, and would rather have had more screen time with Mel, especially considering the next story was her last.
And I'm heartily glad they didn't make Ray the new companion, because then we wouldn't have had Ace, and that would just be a tragedy! I've seen 'Dragonfire' already, & I absolutely adored it - yes, even with the Most Nonsensical Cliffhanger in the Universe! At least on the DVD extras they explained that it wasn't supposed to be like that, that productions are hectic & it just got away from them & there's no excuse & they're sorry- in which case, I'm perfectly able to wave it away & forgive. I have complete respect for people who admit that something didn't work, and have some humor & don't get all high & mighty about it. It's just a show, after all. (I find it ridiculous when people who write or produce Doctor Who are really whiny in interviews & insist that episodes or scenes that are famous for being bad were actually good, & the audience just didn't appreciate their brilliant vision. LOL- dude, chill! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't- but please don't make excuses & rag on your audience! We're not personally attacking you if we don't like something you wrote/directed/whatever, & I should hope to be extended the same courtesy, you know?)
But when it comes to Dragonfire, that's when I think we could have had more new companions- don't get me wrong, I love Seven & Ace, but I think it would have been even cooler if we'd have kept the team of Seven, Ace, Mel & Glitz for a while before going to just Seven & Ace. That would have been so interesting! I loved seeing Mel & Ace working together, & having a companion like Glitz- a somewhat reformed criminal- would have been really different. The four of them made a unique team, & I would have loved to explore that dynamic further. (Maybe there's fic- I should look- there's fic for everything in Doctor Who, sooner or later...)
And now I'm sad to have seen my last Seven & Mel story, but I know there's a ton of them on audio, & now I'm kind of afraid of how poor I'm going to be if I start listening to those! I already spent a ton of money on my last Big Finish buying spree, & haven't even got through them all yet, but I've already got a new list of more audio stories I 'need', lol. Theinsanity adventure continues... ;D
I liked Emma quite well as a short, breezy movie that only lasted an hour & a half, but when it was a mini-series of several hours length, less so, & by the third mini-series adaptation, I was pretty done with it! The book of course has the charm of the 19th century language & Austen's witty authorial voice, but I'm afraid I'm one of those people who she predicted not liking her heroine very much. Emma's such a clueless rich girl that you get frustrated thinking how much sooner everything would wrap up if she'd just stop sticking her nose into everything & get a life of her own. But of course women in those days couldn't go to college & have careers, so I guess she's kind of the poster-child for bored rich 19th century women having their time & intelligence wasted in having to be decorative objects in a man's world. If nothing else, Emma makes me very, very grateful we have feminism! And I will finish it, by golly, if it's the last thing I do. I'm already 300 pages in & determined not to quit when I've already gotten this far.
In my Classic Doctor Who Watch-athon, I've finished 'Delta & the Bannermen'. All I can say is that I now take back what I said about 'Paradise Towers' being weird- it was perfectly normal compared to 'Delta & the Bannermen'! Poor old Seven just gets the weirdest stories. (And that's really saying something, considering this is Doctor Who...) I doubt this serial could even be described in one sentence- it had everything in it but the kitchen sink. However, I will say that Seven & Mel are great, and I'm very sad that there weren't more TV stories with them. I think they make a great team, & I really do love Mel, and just wish she'd gotten a proper introduction episode, and more to do in this serial. She has some really good moments in it, but a lot of her usual companion duties get usurped here & given to the one-off character Ray. I'd heard some 'Ray should have been a companion' talk before I saw this, but while she's perfectly nice, I don't see anything particularly special about her, and would rather have had more screen time with Mel, especially considering the next story was her last.
And I'm heartily glad they didn't make Ray the new companion, because then we wouldn't have had Ace, and that would just be a tragedy! I've seen 'Dragonfire' already, & I absolutely adored it - yes, even with the Most Nonsensical Cliffhanger in the Universe! At least on the DVD extras they explained that it wasn't supposed to be like that, that productions are hectic & it just got away from them & there's no excuse & they're sorry- in which case, I'm perfectly able to wave it away & forgive. I have complete respect for people who admit that something didn't work, and have some humor & don't get all high & mighty about it. It's just a show, after all. (I find it ridiculous when people who write or produce Doctor Who are really whiny in interviews & insist that episodes or scenes that are famous for being bad were actually good, & the audience just didn't appreciate their brilliant vision. LOL- dude, chill! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't- but please don't make excuses & rag on your audience! We're not personally attacking you if we don't like something you wrote/directed/whatever, & I should hope to be extended the same courtesy, you know?)
But when it comes to Dragonfire, that's when I think we could have had more new companions- don't get me wrong, I love Seven & Ace, but I think it would have been even cooler if we'd have kept the team of Seven, Ace, Mel & Glitz for a while before going to just Seven & Ace. That would have been so interesting! I loved seeing Mel & Ace working together, & having a companion like Glitz- a somewhat reformed criminal- would have been really different. The four of them made a unique team, & I would have loved to explore that dynamic further. (Maybe there's fic- I should look- there's fic for everything in Doctor Who, sooner or later...)
And now I'm sad to have seen my last Seven & Mel story, but I know there's a ton of them on audio, & now I'm kind of afraid of how poor I'm going to be if I start listening to those! I already spent a ton of money on my last Big Finish buying spree, & haven't even got through them all yet, but I've already got a new list of more audio stories I 'need', lol. The
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Date: 2015-06-14 02:32 pm (UTC)Hah, too true. I haven't started Emma yet -- I'm saving it to take on a trip in about a week -- but I'm looking forward to having my patience tested. <3 I really enjoy how good Austen is at sympathetic flawed characters, so I predict liking Emma -- though you never know.
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Date: 2015-06-14 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-19 10:23 am (UTC)Yep, that's exactly it!
And aw, I love Persuasion too, it's one of my all-time favorite novels. :)
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Date: 2015-06-19 04:11 pm (UTC)For me too! It's such an elegant book, but still so heart-warming (and occasionly heart-breaking). And her satire is spot on!
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Date: 2015-06-16 03:34 am (UTC)I love this assessment! That is so true. :)
I love her hypochondriacal characters...
I think that the reason that I love Clueless so much is that it unabashedly makes her a clueless, rich girl.XD
Keep reading though! It is worth it to see how it wraps up. ;D I am using far too many emoticons here.
Mansfield Park is rather huge and can be a bit frustrating. I did not mind Fanny. But my mother could not stand her feeling that she was far too quiet/passive. I really appreciated her later on and I loved her brother! Their relationship was touching.
I admit I am quite terrified to watch 'Delta & The Bannermen'. I love Seven though I have to agree, it being the 80s aside, what the heck were they thinking??
I still have not listened to some BF audio purchases and I want more...
I keep thinking that it isn't all that bad because they are relatively inexpensive but of course it seriously adds up. >.>....
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Date: 2015-06-19 10:11 am (UTC)Mansfield Park & Emma are both rather long, & think that might be part of what's getting in my way. I gobbled up all of Austen's other books very quickly, but they're shorter, so they didn't have quite the same repetitive feel the longer ones have, particularly as Emma is only set in one place with the same characters, whereas all the other novels have a change of setting at some point which helps enliven things. But I'm determined to finish them both eventually!
'Delta & the Bannermen' isn't terrifying at all, don't worry- I wouldn't even call it bad, it's just very strangely cobbled together out of a lot of different elements so that it kind of defies a concise description. But if you can get past the strangeness of intergalactic wars & alien princesses with green babies dropped into the middle of 1950s cutesy nostalgia, Seven & Mel are great. They're a really underrated team. <3