Sunday Memeage

[jjpor]

Oh, because I don't already spend enough time on lj talking about how clever I think I am:

Meme robbed from lindenharp:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My 'Spoon page:

www.whofic.com/viewuser.php

Comments

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

So, this was written, I think, around about the same time as that Duggan/Romana thing up above, after a particularly successful/drunken/squeeful/fannish (delete whichever ones seem most appropriate to you) watching of City of Death, and well, over on the DbyA boards, we just encourage each other in this sort of stuff. So, I wrote this on a wave of "Duggan IS awesome!"

Funnily enough, it started off as a semi-serious attempt to write Duggan sequel-fic, which I still haven't given up on, but somewhere in the space of the first sentence or two it turned into some sort of cracky spoof of 70s/80s cop shows, and I made Benton his partner, because, well, it's the kind of thing that happens when you're writing fic, isn't it?

So, Duggan and Benton have just burst out of their Ford Capri, on the trail of (as we find out later on) a rogue Ice Warrior who is hiding out in a block of flats. Serious, well-thought-out plotting, as you can see. ;D And a member of the public is trying to offer assistance, shortly before being KO'd. I suppose I'm sort of poking fun at Duggan's canonical habit of "thumping" things, but to be fair it's exactly the sort of thing they actually used to do in oldschool cop shows like The Sweeney and The Professionals. Well, maybe not quite like that, but they didn't stint on the thumping.

And that's sort of where I got the, frankly, appalling language going on in this, because it seems to me on my viewing of The Sweeney and its ilk, that the main cops, Jack Reagan (John "Inspector Morse" Thaw, incredibly), and George Carter (Dennis "Dennis Waterman" Waterman), call everyone they encounter a "slag", a "bastard", a "tart" or something similarly offensive (including things that it was okay to call people in 70s TVland (cf. Talons of Weng-Chiang), but which I wouldn't use in lighthearted fanfic).

And then we have Benton in his perm, sunglasses and zip-up cardigan, which (as did his inclusion as the partner here) came as a result of the world's greatest Doctor Who publicity photo, the link to which I unfortunately seem unable to find. But basically, it was shot during the filming of The Daemons, and shows Katy Manning standing next to John Levene, who is done up in his kewl "Benton undercover" 70s threads, while smoking and STRIKING THE MOST OUTRAGEOUSLY MACHO POSE EVER SEEN IN A PHOTOGRAPH, which involves showing off his shoulder-holster. It is, in a word, marvellous, and it is why Benton is in this story.

But yeah, with the "hot" car and the "hip" clothes, I think I was thinking about the Professionals, which if anyone's not familiar with UK TV of a certain vintage, was sort of the grittier, shootier Brit equivalent of Starsky and Hutch, but better. If you like adolescent macho stuff with shooters and motors and stuff. So, yeah, Bodie and Doyle, the guys in the Professionals were at the prettier, better-dressed end of the tough guy scale compared to Reagan and Carter, and this is what I'm trying to convey, while taking cheapshots at 30-year-old fashions as if it's clever.

Oh yes, and pulling out enormous, shiny guns and rolling unnecessarily across cars etc. is absolutely the right way to carry on if you ever find yourself in that sort of TV programme. And more unrequired thumping from Duggan too, to keep up the theme.

So yes, we get Benton sort of trying to be the voice of reason, in his slightly dim-witted way, because it seems like the kind of thing Benton might do, but he would of course be very bad at it.

Sir Keith is meant to be Sir Keith Gold out of Inferno, just because I wanted an actual Who character of a certain vintage to be their boss, and the Brig seemed too obvious somehow. If I ever wrote a sequel to this, I think I'd somehow work in a reference to his great-grandfather the famous Victorian music-hall impresario...

And Duggan's rather disrespectful assessment of his boss is again, absolutely the right way to talk about your superior if you live in a 70s-era cop show. As is the desire to "nick" people. "Nicking" objects means stealing them, of course, while "nicking" people means duffing them up, putting handcuffs on them and throwing them in the back of a Ford transit van...

And the language in this really is appalling, isn't it? ;D

[john_amend_all]

That's a very comprehensive commentary!

I don't think I've ever seen such cop shows directly, but I'm familiar with them through parodies, homages, Life on Mars and the like.

because, well, it's the kind of thing that happens when you're writing fic, isn't it?

As far as my fic's concerned, it's practically a law of nature.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I try to be comprehensive. Some people might say long-winded, but... ;D

As you point out, the idea of parodying 70s-early 80s cop shows isn't exactly ground-breaking, cutting edge comedy, but it amused me.