Tip o' the keyboard to bink, who sent me these 21st century Doctor Who pics and pointed out the differences between them and the old Doctor Who and Star Trek.
The design signifiers are the opposite of the ones used in Kirk & Spock's Star Trek world--past and present.
(The later Star Trek series Deep Space 9 and ST: Enterprise vary this formula, but they are not Kirk's world.)
BELOW: The bad guys, the daleks, are the ones with the clean, mechanistic design.
BELOW: While the TARDIS, Dr Who's good-guy ship, is the cluttered, animalistic one. Rather steampunk, with its ornate Victorianish high-tech gadgetry.
The design signifiers are the opposite of the ones used in Kirk & Spock's Star Trek world--past and present.
(The later Star Trek series Deep Space 9 and ST: Enterprise vary this formula, but they are not Kirk's world.)
BELOW: The bad guys, the daleks, are the ones with the clean, mechanistic design.
BELOW: While the TARDIS, Dr Who's good-guy ship, is the cluttered, animalistic one. Rather steampunk, with its ornate Victorianish high-tech gadgetry.
It's the Steampunk thing.
ReplyDeleteYeah--steam daleks!
ReplyDeleteNice observation.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jeff--wish I could claim it, but it was bink's.
ReplyDeleteGood point! The "clean is bad" aesthetic is very much there in Star Wars as well, and to a lesser extent Blakes 7. I think most people intuitively see and understand that and automatically place them on different ends of a sort of aesthetic continuum (in my experience, it's usually assumed that one can be a Star Trek OR a Star Wars fan, but not both!)
ReplyDeleteJEN: Yes, it's funny how I can forgive Star Trek its flaws, and they are many;
ReplyDeletebut don't cut Star Wars the same slack;
even though in general am on the messy end of the aesthetic spectrum myself.
I think, as always, for me it is the emotive Captain Kirk that saves Star Trek's cleanliness from being sterile.