The Watchdog Barks
AS A PUBLISHER and editor, I’m disturbed to hear that major bookstore chains may be closing their doors, that privately owned book shops and news-
stands are on the brink of extinction—not only because it impacts my own business and ambi- tions, but because I fear that national illiteracy, brought about by decades of slashed education budgets and too much eye candy distraction, may have finally crossed a point of no return. As a critic, I find equally upsetting the recent reports of well- known newspaper critics, national and local, who are finding themselves suddenly unemployed. To lower operational costs and stay in business, newspapers have begun dismissing their house critics, replacing them with syndicated pods, evidently not realizing that what prompts reader loyalty is quality material that cannot be found elsewhere.
In a recent essay, blogger Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that he could foresee a time when film criticism will be a devotion rather than a job. If truth be told, the profession of film criticism has only ever existed for an elite few well-positioned people, and not necessarily those who are most adept at the task. It’s a rare serious critic who hasn’t had to supplement his devotion by teaching, copywriting or, imagine this, editing a magazine. While I regret hearing that NEWSWEEK’s David Ansen has been bought out and that Nathan Lee of THE VILLAGE VOICE has been let go, I have faith that their abilities will land them elsewhere. It’s the state of local and regional criticism and reviewing, in big and small newspapers across the country, that most concerns me. It’s tragic that any newspaper would consider its critical faculties dispensable. John Cheever once described the relationship between fiction and those who read it as being the highest and most exalted form of communication possible between human beings. He said this because literature makes use of highly crafted language and tells essential truths about life, inner as well as outward life, that aren’t available to us through conversation, at least not on the same level. As a novelist, I share that belief but, as a critic, I feel that criticism serves the same purpose. If I’m interested in anything—film,
literature, music, whatever—I’m likely to seek out the criticism pertaining to it, much as people interested in public or historic figures seek out biographies. It’s not enough for me to like or enjoy something; I want to understand it, to make better sense of my own response to it, to achieve a higher understanding of the work and myself. I want my gut reactions translated into sense, articulated for me in ways I might not discover independently; I also want to read valid responses I didn’t have, owing to my own biases and subjective experience. Chances are that, if you’re reading this magazine, you feel much the same way. This particular issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG came together as a rather fortuitous accident. Over the past several months, I had heard and read a good deal of favorable comment about a recent episode of the long-running BBC series DOCTOR WHO, called “Blink.” I took care not to read reviews of the episode too closely, so as not to spoil it when I got around to seeing it. Just before this issue began production, “Blink” ran here in the States on BBC America–and I was bowled over by it. It was the first proper episode of DOCTOR WHO I had ever seen, and it seemed the ideal point at which to climb aboard since enjoying it doesn’t require much knowledge of the show; indeed, I was able to enjoy it without realizing that the fellow speaking so urgently from the DVD Easter Eggs was in fact the Doctor! But after digesting “Blink,” I began to wonder how one might best proceed in an ongoing discovery of this much- beloved series… and, as I sat down to peruse the submissions which had accumulated for this issue, I found myself miraculously in possession of material answering exactly this question. What you are now holding in your hands, then,
is a DOCTOR WHO issue for readers who have yet to delve very deeply into the program… er, programme… but are curious enough to feel the temptation. Further supporting the prevalently British theme of this issue is Richard Gordon’s memoir (as told to Tom Weaver) of Protelco Films, the short-lived production company he co- founded in the Sixties with partner Gerald A. Fernback, which yielded at least one minor classic of British sf-horror: Terence Fisher’s ISLAND OF TERROR (1966).
Tim Lucas 3
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