Doctor Who and the Attack of the Adjective Nouns

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There's one big problem with the "hints" that Russell T Davies keeps dropping about the Time War, and it's this: Too Many Nouns.

"I was on the front lines at the Fall of Arcadia." "I was there when the Dalek Emperor seized the Cruciform." "I saw your timeship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child at the Gates of Elysium."

Name-dropping all these nouns without any context makes us want to know what the bloody context is fer cryin out loud, and if it goes on for too long, we start to suspect that there isn't any. Once is backstory, twice is world-building, but thrice means it's time to deliver.

Now that Russell's no longer devoting all his energy to the TV series proper, let's see a book about the history of the Time War. We don't have to believe it necessarily; it doesn't have to be considered canon; I'm not even thinking of it as a novel, but as a kind of faux reference work. But it would be nice to know that there was a detailed backstory here, rather than just a game of Time War Mad Libs.

"I fought in the Battle of Place Name when Specific Dalek Type opened/stole/activated the Grecian Mythological Thingy. And you try to tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you."

1 Comment

OK, you try and write dialogue without nouns.

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This page contains a single entry by published on June 29, 2008 2:01 PM.

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