(no subject)

[fajrdrako]

maaseru sent me a link to this interesting article about David Tennant in Hamlet. I liked the opening line with its link between this and "The Shakespeare Code": "For the second time in his career, David Tennant is finding himself saving Shakespeare." But even better, a connection I'd never thought of:

Tennant ... has no difficulty in making the transition from the BBC's Time Lord to a man who could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself a king of infinite space.

I'd never thought of the Doctor in the TARDIS as "a king of infinite space", but now I think of it, I can't imagine a better description of him.

Ever since Tennant became the Tenth Doctor, I've thought he had a good dollop of Hamlet in him: clever, mercurial, eloquent, suicidal. I wonder how the Doctor got along with his mother, and whether he had an uncle. Or a stepfather.

I'm tired of the condescension shown to SF in these articles, though, as if Tennant and Stewart have never done Shakespeare before, or as if Star Trek and Doctor Who fans are too déclassé for such highfalutin Tudor drama - as if they don't really want the riffraff wandering about the premises.

It's all storytelling, and one of the great virtues of Shakespeare is that he was never a snob. So why do the people producing his plays become so patronizing?

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

However excessive a fan may become, I've yet to see anyone attend a Shakespeare play dressed as a Klingon

I think they were afraid some of Patrick Stewart's fans might just do that…! (I'm not sure what it is about certain science fiction fandoms, but some do seem to me to attract a lot of 'trainspotter' obsessive types whom I'd probably place on the mild end of the Asperger's spectrum.)

Galaxy Quest is great fun! Some Trekkie friends of mine squirmed in painful but amused recognition.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Galaxy Quest managed to have just the right tone - funny but not over the top or insulting. And Alan Rickman, too.