They should do a series based on Abelard Snazz. Abelard Snazz is a character who emerged from Alan Moore’s early 2000AD Future Shocks…
In the story from which the above picture was taken he’s acting as a PR man for disinherited deities, gods who no one worships any more, helping them to reposition themselves in the marketplace, find a niche in modern society.
As you can see he has two sets of eyes. Here’s what Moore himself has to say about the character from the introduction to the second volume of his collected Future Shocks (the ones Titan published, not sure if the same intro is in the new Rebellion compilation, though if the obsessive completeness of their other books is anything to go by I wouldn’t be surprised.)
Unnerving and, after prolonged exposure, obscurely irritating. … The multiple eyes suggested multiple brains and consequent boundless intelligence, while the overall effect of the face was to produce light migraine symptoms in any who happened to view it. A genius who looks utterly bloody stupid and gets on everyone’s nerves. How could such a concept miss?
How indeed? And it is with that in mind that there really should be an afternoon TV show on BBC One based on the adventures of Abelard Snazz. It would be like the antidote to the supremely saccharine and safe Doctor Who, alien super genius flies around accidentally bringing about the downfall of civilizations. Yay!
while Snazz is undeniably misguided upon an often apocalyptic scale, he is nowhere near as irredeemably stupid as those who listen to him.
(One of the high points of the series is when Snazz, upon finding himself in a hippy utopian earth of the future with nothing to do, invents giant tennis playing robots, wimbledroids, which wreak havoc and cause the normally mellow populace to toss him into the cities giant jacuzzi)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah it would be great, much better than Doctor Who which I reckon has been more than a bit rubbish since Tennant took over Doctoring duties. Certainly better than Torchwood which is pretty much the worst Sci-Fi thing that’s ever been on tele, and that’s really saying something. So it certainly wouldn’t be written by Russel T Davis. They’d have to get Alan Moore to fully buy in and write some more scripts, if not you could recreate the 6 stories from the original strip and that’s a series.
The sound track would be proper radiophonic workshop style psychedelic synthy weirdness, maybe the Emperor Machine could be called in to do the business. No fake cinematic strings or anything like that. Re-watching some of the old episodes on Sky over xmas I was struck by just how out there the old Dr Who incidental music was, burbling analogue synths apparently situated in vast metal caverns, twisted shrieking noises looped over and over again. The new series just pulls out the ‘lush’ strings and pulsing electro-pop locking on to the familiar Hollywood emotional registers (the former = “generic emotional”, the latter = “action”), the audience is not often allowed to make up their own mind how to feel based on character actions and is never made to feel uncomfortable or like there’s anything really alien about the set up (Eccleston did manage to bring this to his portrayal of the Doctor). Not that a Snazz series should be all about weirdness and dislocation, it would primarily be about gleeful comic destruction, that and groan-worthy punning, all in the fine tradition of family television.
OK, I could complain about Dr Who all day but lets get back to the matter at hand before it’s to late, who would play Snazz?
Of course! Patrick Stewart is totally perfect. Did you see him in Extras? (youtube). The extra eyes would have to be done digitally, but I’m sure it’s well within the range of post production to duplicate a persons eyes convincingly. All of the aliens would be people wearing rubber suits though to underscore the comic tone.
In fact this whole post was inspired by seeing the above Patrick Stewart picture in this thread at freaking news and it’s only taken me this long to get to the point. I love the way the illusion so neatly and convincingly shows how hardwired our appreciation of the human face is, how its something that’s in the brains hardware rather than in societies software. (not that I think the distinction is that easy to make but I’ve already waffled on far too long and I need to go and cook dinner)
And then Dan said:
Ok, that picture of Patrick Stewart made me feel like I might fall off my chair. And I agree with you 100% about the music in Doctor Who. But I’m not convinced that Eccleston was particularly alien, just Northern (which was played upon quite a lot in a rather tiresome way). But still, there have been a smattering of actively good stories throughout the recent series. Disjointed comment ends.
And then KateG said:Blink was good. Properly scary, in the manner of the Gentlemen from Buffy. What about drafting in Josh Whedon? And how about Trevor from Eastenders as Dr Who?
Agree about the music too, though this is something I’ve been noticing a lot recently across the channels. Usually of the “BE AMAZED!” or “FEEL EMPATHY!” sort which makes me want to chew through my own wrists. Or maybe I’m turning 30 this year…
And then tom said:Rambling post leads to rambling comments I guess. Yeah maybe he wasn’t that alien but atleast he wasn’t as annoying as bloody David Tennant, and John Simm as the master is crap too, when I thought it was going to be David Jacobi … that would have been amazing.
I’m not sure Joss Whedon is the answer, I mean I’m clearly a big fan but dr who needs to be above all British and I don’t think Joss Wheddon really gets British (or any foreigns really) apart from in the ammusing caricature way cf. Giles and Wesley etc.
The series 8 comic which has quite a few british charcters is further evidence of this blind spot.
And then Dan said:I think the main problems with the current Dr Who are that (a) for some reason they got David Tennant to swap his normal Scottish accent for a “Get in! Oh, yeeees! Bring it on!” cheeky chappie accent, (b) they obviously made a decision very early on to continually return to present-day/slightly alternative almost-future Britain, which is quite clearly boring. It’s not like he’s stuck here, like Jon Pertwee. And while all of the Doctors have hung about Earth throughout the show’s history, they should definitely start setting things in a number of alien worlds, rather than Cardiff. And (c) making a story last one or two episodes rather than 7 or eight inevitably means that you lose all of the cliffhangeryness and slow build-up that actually made Dr Who really ace in the first place, thus leading to me getting really into it as a kid, thus allowing me to totally boost my coolness by ranting on and on about it here. Well, my work here is done.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Login [ « ] [ » ]