Comments on: We need a new Terry Nation http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/sf-and-gaming/sf/we-need-a-new-terry-nation/ The blogs of Tim Hall Fri, 14 Apr 2017 23:35:42 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.41 By: Tim Hall http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/sf-and-gaming/sf/we-need-a-new-terry-nation/comment-page-1/#comment-30543 Fri, 02 Aug 2013 18:01:38 +0000 http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/?p=8225#comment-30543 Indeed. Old Who went downhill towards the end where they took out the darker stuff that owed a lot to Hammer Studios and Lovecraft, and replaced it with too much camp humour.. Nu-Who had it’s moments, but again it suffered from too much camp humour and “knowing” in-jokes, and what appears to be contempt for the very concept of internal consistency. Probably reached it’s nadir with the excrable “Love and Monsters”.

Torchwood had potential, especally when it went darker and Lovecraftian, but again suffered from bad plotting that forgot the way cause-and-effect is central to good SF.

Also been pointed out that Star Cops was the work of Chris Boucher, not Terry Nation.

]]> By: Serdar http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/sf-and-gaming/sf/we-need-a-new-terry-nation/comment-page-1/#comment-30541 Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:29:13 +0000 http://www.kalyr.co.uk/weblog/?p=8225#comment-30541 What I liked about Terry Nation’s approach is that you could tell he took the underlying conceits seriously, *and* he was taking in a range of influences which aren’t as familiar to audiences today — e.g., the Hammer Studios horror productions, which I love. A lot of that seems to have been traded up in favor of a kind of high-end camp.

I saw “Spearhead from Space” again recently, and again what struck me most about it was how under it all you could tell the people in charge took the whole thing pretty seriously. They weren’t being sly. That sort of attitude is hard to cultivate today.

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