* First off,
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no_true_pair is now open for sign-ups! \0/ (I'm still trying to decide who to put on my lists. Only 4 characters in a set!! *runs around in circles*)
* Secondly, Marie-Clare has just started watching
sapphire and Steel over on her YouTube channel ("Is this going to be scary?" she asked about halfway through. XD) Anyway, if anyone else would like to see her reaction, there it is!
And now for a meme! I picked this up via
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lirazel -
List 8 television shows that you would show someone to get to know you.
Which sounded like fun, although with the necessary caveat that I don't think anybody who isn't me should watch ALL of these, which probably tells you all you really need to know about me anyway. This list is 100% true and I would rec all of the things on it to at least somebody round here, but I don't think it'd make the best watchlist! XD
1.
Doctor Who - tl;dr - just watch DW. Bits from all of it. Whatever you like. DW has been just about every kind of show in turn. It's been my first and foremost and sometimes only fannish love since I was 11 and I watched the last ten minutes of
The Happiness Patrol and found out that sometimes one show can embrace at the same moment killing Bertie Bassett and reflecting that happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin. (You can't have true happiness without sadness, because you can have neither without love.) And that blue is a great colour.
I learned that the most extraordinary things begin in the most mundane places, that we're all bigger on the inside really. It's about true friendship (found in unlikely people) across space and time, about imagination and stories - all kinds - and facing your fears and the monsters they shape themselves into; the importance of free will (it's not an illusion after all, do i have the right?), that evil must and can be fought; that change is hard but everything must evolve in the end. There's always good in it, too (even if nobody likes it when you redecorate). No matter how serious you are about what you do, you don't necessarily have to be serious about how you do it. There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. It's better to travel hopefully than arrive. Take the long way round. All of time and space, where do you want to start?
And there's at least one episode or serial or audio or comic or book or Doctor or era to please everyone; and nobody is pleased by all of it.
My most formative bits are probably (inevitably) Seven & Ace, and the first season in 1963, and Robots of Death and Vengeance on Varos and the Fifth Doctor's era, but then there's season 7 (old who), and episodes like Hide and Listen and The Day of the Doctor, and The War Games (which I watched rented out from Aberystwyth Library - 3 day loan - in installments in two days, gripped), and honestly, the point is, you should watch whatever till you find your bits, because randomness and choice and freewill and sometimes being quite silly is the order of the day.
2.
Enemy at the Door - it represents history like I studied it, it is TV that is shaped around characters, and it shows you what a librarian actually does, when Miss Brown risks her life for a professional code of conduct that I shared, too, and it was a series that gets how it feels to be trapped through circumstances outside your control. I felt like someone had made this specially for me, weirdly, given that I didn't even want to watch it because I didn't think it'd be my thing.
3.
Spooks - my first grown up fannish love, with snarky pretty tragic spies and also RUTH EVERSHED. If you're going to understand me, you need to watch Ruth. Also I love tragedy and characters dying when I'm in the right mood. It helps if it's snarky and ironic tragedy because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Plus, it's important to know how to kill people with forks and disarm a bomb in your microwave, and the key is in the things that are never said.
4.
Shadow of the Tower - because wordy, theatrical historical old time drama that wants to be shakespeare is my thing. also it is the only way anyone can understand my James Maxwell thing. Not that you necessarily will. But SotT does at least make it more explicable than anything else if you can sit through it. Which, tbf, you might not be able to, but. I have. At least ten whole times and probably more. It's awesome really. ;-p
5.
Sapphire and Steel. I'm weird, how weird am I? Also you will need to meet Silver and that I think the most perfect relationship is between three mysterious non-human beings who pretty certainly will be doing something that isn't sex when they're together, whatever it might be. I think that's wonderful.
6.
Once Upon a Time - for fantasy, my absolute love of fandom crossovers - this whole show is a giant crossover - my ridiculous sense of humour (this show frequently shares it), for a female-led show that also has sword-fighting and dragons and pirates and curses and magic, and for Regina (covering my love of evil ladies who know how to dress + my evident love of grudgingly reformed evil ladies) and also, from s7, Alice, whose story I think resonates with quite a few people, but she's another rare character who genuinely knows what it is to be isolated and trapped.
7.
Hinterland (
Y Gwyll, but since I watched
Hinterland, it has to be that version). Because of Aber. To understand me, Aberystwyth, where I went to uni is important. Hinterland does not necessarily reflect Aber properly because it never goes up Penglais Hill, but it does show a lot of the reasons why I'll always love it. Plus, Wales and Welsh and Mared, and I should have at least one detective show to be representative. (Even if my general taste is more Golden Age/Cosy than this.)
8.
Dracula (1968). I couldn't decide at this point, so I went for this because it was the shortest of those vying for the last spot! This has a lot of my favourite old telly people in at once, it is very iddy for me and it taught me where the line lies between the creepy things I do like (often very much) and most horror (which I don't), which is basically that I like a bit of old fashioned (usually historically set) Gothic horror, and Dracula-esque vampires, too. Plus, fainting men, always a plus. You can also experience my sadness at tragic fake hair, which clearly is important.
It is very weird to me that I didn't include B7 and
Press Gang in particular, but DW + Spooks = B7 (as I was told when someone who also liked both of those recced it to me) and DW also has Steven Moffat. Even if probably not quite as good as in PG and a list without Lynda Day is probably not quite right.) I did very nearly go for
Survivors in the last spot, because even if it also made me wild at times, it was great, and I really really appreciate that it went full steam on asking all the hard questions. EatD doubled for Public Eye and Mr Palfrey. But mainly DW has everything, really. Nothing more is truly needed in this context.
