More observations into the vortex
The new series is most well encapsulated in the opening and the ending of The End of the World — all of the melancholy wonder there, that the series always seemed like it was trying to get across yet which had never before been so concentrated. About how fleeting life is, and how important it is to understand and appreciate what you, while you, can.
It really is the overarching message of the series — the new one, in particular. It’s kind of the message the Ninth Doctor gives us. Everything has its time and everything dies. He especially is doomed, by his own head and hand. And yet when Rose’s father figures the reason he’s never done anything important is that he was meant to die, he’s told that “it doesn’t work that way”.
The new series is doing a really good job of commenting on the nature of life by crossing it with the nature of time. Being and Time; Heidegger argues they’re the same thing. It’s not a bad argument, from a subjective standpoint. From a human one. From the only perspective we can know.
Which is, incidentally, the new perspective of the series — now that it’s focused on the companions again rather than the Doctor as-such.
Some people have expressed dismay at how they no longer can appreciate the original series as they used to, much to the derision of the hardcore. I think the problem is now there’s a frame of reference for the old stories. Before, they were all that existed — so it was easy to take them for what they were. Now you get to compare with the current production. You can’t help it, really — even if it’s not really a fair comparison. Since there is a “New Who”, the old who by nature becomes “Old Who” — with all the baggage that entails. One of those unavoidable details.
The question then becomes, how do we reconcile the distinction? It’s something each of us has to answer on his own, in his own way.
You know what’s the least dated? The black-and-white stories.
Really. It’s obvious they’re from another era. They’re old. They’re crackly. There’s a completely different headspace to black-and-white film, compared to color.
Check out Tomb of the Cybermen, for instance. It holds up nearly as well as, say, Lang’s Metropolis. There’s enough distance that you have no real inclination to compare it to the new material. It simply is what it is.
Once you introduce color, though, you run into a whole host of psychological problems.