And thank you so much for writing it! I spent such a long time thinking about this, writing and rewriting and changing my mind again and again, that I wasn't sure at all any longer if I hadn't got wrapped up in my own head and my own thoughts so much that it might still make sense to me, but maybe not to anyone else, and when I finally posted it, I was very unsure about it all. So to hear that it does, and that I actually managed to get across what I meant, really means a lot to me.
The (to me) fascinating thing was that I started out with only the vaguest idea to look at the deaths in both shows, but after a while, when I decided on the chronological sequence and started to look at them as one story, or two sides of the same story, things suddenly came together, and it became obvious how ideas developed across both shows.
You also put a finger on what bothered me so much about the ending of "Forest of the Dead." I thought it went completely against the ethos of the show.
The Ending of Forest of the Dead always bothered me for exactly the same reasons you mention. I decided early on to keep the question of the author out of it, since with a canon like this it's impossibly to determine who wrote what, how exactly ideas were developed and shared (are these issues talked about? osmosis? hive-mind? RTD's red pen?), or what is intentional and what isn't, but I think in this case the differences between SM and RTD's way of writing and wordlview are really obvious. It's the only story in four seasons (+ specials) of DW and all of TW where not accepting death doesn't come with catastrophic and irreversible consequences—the people in the library are all saved, and apparently what happens to River and the other members of her team is also meant to be seen as a happy ending, even if it was always problematic for me, and from what I've read for quite a few people.
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Re: (2/2) Yes, my response is so long it needs two comments.
Date: 2010-09-03 06:10 am (UTC)The (to me) fascinating thing was that I started out with only the vaguest idea to look at the deaths in both shows, but after a while, when I decided on the chronological sequence and started to look at them as one story, or two sides of the same story, things suddenly came together, and it became obvious how ideas developed across both shows.
You also put a finger on what bothered me so much about the ending of "Forest of the Dead." I thought it went completely against the ethos of the show.
The Ending of Forest of the Dead always bothered me for exactly the same reasons you mention. I decided early on to keep the question of the author out of it, since with a canon like this it's impossibly to determine who wrote what, how exactly ideas were developed and shared (are these issues talked about? osmosis? hive-mind? RTD's red pen?), or what is intentional and what isn't, but I think in this case the differences between SM and RTD's way of writing and wordlview are really obvious. It's the only story in four seasons (+ specials) of DW and all of TW where not accepting death doesn't come with catastrophic and irreversible consequences—the people in the library are all saved, and apparently what happens to River and the other members of her team is also meant to be seen as a happy ending, even if it was always problematic for me, and from what I've read for quite a few people.