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Of Ships and Doctors
I've just read a wonderful post s3 character study of Ten, and I think I'm realizing that my ship is actually Doctor/TARDIS.
WAAHH!!
Which makes The Parting Of The Ways an actual on-screen Nine/Rose/TARDIS threesome, right? *boggles*
But I am still of the conviction that Doctor Who doesn't really need ships. Actually, I think with some shows, I'd miss out if I picked an OTP and ran with it.
A while ago, I read an article about someone ranting that shippers are stupid, because they shrink their perspective to a very narrow range through which they view the show.
I think that opinion is bullshit. Shippers who do that are not stupid. The only people who are stupid are those who are not aware that they are doing it.
Let's take House as an example. A die-hard House/Wilson shipper will probably not be able to appreciate the House/Cuddy moments the way they could be appreciated if they didn't care who House gets shipped with. That's pretty obvious. If you're a shipper with an OTP, you pick two characters to concentrate on and stop paying much attention to the others. If one of your characters starts extending their range of action to interaction with others than the other half of your OTP, there'll be disapproving jealousy on part of the shipper. And if one of the characters disappears from the show, the shipper will have lost their reason of interest.
That's a narrow perspective. No argument there. However, I think everybody in fandom has the right to decide for themselves how much they want to narrow their perspective respectively widen it. I guess everybody who has been in fandom for a while has seen it happening to themselves - you start out as a hardcore OTP shipper, and after a while, you either lose interest in the fandom because there's only so much you can get out of your ship, or you start exploring other ships. That second part, I think, very much depends on the fandom. If it's a brilliant fandom that you simply don't want to leave, you'll try to find ways to keep yourself interested. And looking at a show from an unbiased/differently biased viewpoint is almost like watching it anew.
It also depends on the show. If the show is brilliant, I think at least I personally would consider it too much of a loss to concentrate on one pairing and block out everything else. In House, I'm perfectly fine with concentrating on House/Wilson and ignoring the rest, because, let's be honest, the rest isn't really all that interesting. It's a medical show with crappy medicine. There are some interesting story arcs with Cuddy, but the three ducklings are - at least imo - three very boring characters. The least boring is Chase, but he's not thrilling enough for me to watch the whole show just from a Chase-fangirl-perspective.
Doctor Who, on the other hand, for me is a show that I would want to watch from a perspective as wide as possible. They're putting so much effort in the details - just as an example, the prosthetic masks. They use CGI very seldomly, and their aliens - like for example the cat-nuns in 2x01 - look all the more amazing because they seem so real. And their main character, the Doctor, has so many layers and variations that it'd take one hell of a long time to get bored with him alone. As as soon as you do get bored with him, you can have him interacting with one of the many, many side characters and experience his personality from a whole new perspective. Or you can have him regenerating.
So, I for myself have decided to keep away from ships in Doctor Who. Or, rather, enjoy them all equally. I guess I made that decision when I read a reaction to the Time Crash line 'all my love to long ago' that Ten says to Five. Some person was all like, OMG HE MEANT THE COMPANION HE HAD BACK THEN! and all I could think was, no, no, don't do that! You're missing out on the MOST BRILLIANT META MOMENT EVER!
Of course, as I said, that's her choice and her business. It simply was my first reaction to reading it. And so I decided to a) not pick one OTP in Doctor Who, because no matter who's with the Doctor, it's all good, and b) not settle on one Doctor as the perfect Doctor. Which is gonna be hard, because OMG TEN SO MUCH LOVE! But I'd miss out on so much if I refused to watch and enjoy Doctors 1-9 and the Doctors to come after 10. It'll still break my heart to see DT go, though. I hope he'll stick around for at least two more seasons! Or more. As many as I can get ;).
WAAHH!!
Which makes The Parting Of The Ways an actual on-screen Nine/Rose/TARDIS threesome, right? *boggles*
But I am still of the conviction that Doctor Who doesn't really need ships. Actually, I think with some shows, I'd miss out if I picked an OTP and ran with it.
A while ago, I read an article about someone ranting that shippers are stupid, because they shrink their perspective to a very narrow range through which they view the show.
I think that opinion is bullshit. Shippers who do that are not stupid. The only people who are stupid are those who are not aware that they are doing it.
Let's take House as an example. A die-hard House/Wilson shipper will probably not be able to appreciate the House/Cuddy moments the way they could be appreciated if they didn't care who House gets shipped with. That's pretty obvious. If you're a shipper with an OTP, you pick two characters to concentrate on and stop paying much attention to the others. If one of your characters starts extending their range of action to interaction with others than the other half of your OTP, there'll be disapproving jealousy on part of the shipper. And if one of the characters disappears from the show, the shipper will have lost their reason of interest.
That's a narrow perspective. No argument there. However, I think everybody in fandom has the right to decide for themselves how much they want to narrow their perspective respectively widen it. I guess everybody who has been in fandom for a while has seen it happening to themselves - you start out as a hardcore OTP shipper, and after a while, you either lose interest in the fandom because there's only so much you can get out of your ship, or you start exploring other ships. That second part, I think, very much depends on the fandom. If it's a brilliant fandom that you simply don't want to leave, you'll try to find ways to keep yourself interested. And looking at a show from an unbiased/differently biased viewpoint is almost like watching it anew.
It also depends on the show. If the show is brilliant, I think at least I personally would consider it too much of a loss to concentrate on one pairing and block out everything else. In House, I'm perfectly fine with concentrating on House/Wilson and ignoring the rest, because, let's be honest, the rest isn't really all that interesting. It's a medical show with crappy medicine. There are some interesting story arcs with Cuddy, but the three ducklings are - at least imo - three very boring characters. The least boring is Chase, but he's not thrilling enough for me to watch the whole show just from a Chase-fangirl-perspective.
Doctor Who, on the other hand, for me is a show that I would want to watch from a perspective as wide as possible. They're putting so much effort in the details - just as an example, the prosthetic masks. They use CGI very seldomly, and their aliens - like for example the cat-nuns in 2x01 - look all the more amazing because they seem so real. And their main character, the Doctor, has so many layers and variations that it'd take one hell of a long time to get bored with him alone. As as soon as you do get bored with him, you can have him interacting with one of the many, many side characters and experience his personality from a whole new perspective. Or you can have him regenerating.
So, I for myself have decided to keep away from ships in Doctor Who. Or, rather, enjoy them all equally. I guess I made that decision when I read a reaction to the Time Crash line 'all my love to long ago' that Ten says to Five. Some person was all like, OMG HE MEANT THE COMPANION HE HAD BACK THEN! and all I could think was, no, no, don't do that! You're missing out on the MOST BRILLIANT META MOMENT EVER!
Of course, as I said, that's her choice and her business. It simply was my first reaction to reading it. And so I decided to a) not pick one OTP in Doctor Who, because no matter who's with the Doctor, it's all good, and b) not settle on one Doctor as the perfect Doctor. Which is gonna be hard, because OMG TEN SO MUCH LOVE! But I'd miss out on so much if I refused to watch and enjoy Doctors 1-9 and the Doctors to come after 10. It'll still break my heart to see DT go, though. I hope he'll stick around for at least two more seasons! Or more. As many as I can get ;).