{"id":364,"date":"2009-06-16T10:58:13","date_gmt":"2009-06-16T14:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/?p=364"},"modified":"2023-08-21T09:58:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T13:58:13","slug":"who-watches-the-re-watchmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/2009\/06\/16\/who-watches-the-re-watchmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Watches the Re-Watchmen?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Early<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not enough for a science fiction fan to view a favorite movie or series, or read a favorite novel, once. The whole notion of fandom involves repeated and extended interaction with the object of our notional obsession. The repeated engagement with a work of science fiction, in any medium, is not unlike any form of literary or cultural study. We re-read, or re-watch, in order to better understand the object we are studying.<\/p>\n

Re-watching or re-reading is not simply summarizing; to re-watch is to examine a part with knowledge of the whole. Sometimes this task reveals continuity errors or plot holes; other times, re-watching reveals nuances planted early in a series that only bear fruit much later in the future.<\/p>\n

While the whole prospect of re-reading or re-watching science fiction is nothing new—the fanzine has been around about as long as the genre itself, and parodies of devoted re-watchers raising continuity questions feature prominently in any portrayal of science fiction fandom—of late, several science fiction re-watching efforts have been undertaken online.<\/p>\n

In addition to my own Doctor Who<\/em> Project<\/a>, two other groups are working their way through the numerous Doctors, including The Doctor Who<\/em> Mission<\/a>, a group project trying to tackle a story a week, and The TARDIS Project<\/a>, which is revisiting not just stories but individual episodes within each story.<\/p>\n

One of the problems with Doctor Who<\/em> re-watching in general is the difficulty in finding all of the stories. Besides the much-lamented loss of more-than-a-few episodes by the BBC<\/a>, the entire existing run of the series is not yet out on DVD<\/a>, leaving dedicated re-watchers who have no desire to acquire the missing stories via peer-to-peer solutions to scramble about at library sales and online auction sites to find VHS tapes to undertake the task before they stop making VHS players.<\/p>\n

The glee of finding some repeated trope or following the evolution of a phrase in a series is well worth the effort required to track down all of the damn things, though.<\/p>\n

(Image courtesy of gbaku<\/a> via a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not enough for a science fiction fan to view a favorite movie or series, or read a favorite novel, once. The whole notion of fandom involves repeated and extended interaction with the object of our notional obsession. The repeated engagement with a work of science fiction, in any medium, is not unlike any form … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[14,16],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","tag-doctor-who","tag-rewatching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pedXm-5S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6271,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/6271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisbaer.net\/mp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}