From Twitter 12-26-2010

[scarfman]

• 00:23:32: #AKOTAS updated: Christmas filler. http://tinyurl.com/akotas/2411.htm #webcomics #kingarthur
  
• 04:30:19: Jiminy crickets, two 12 oz Cokes at 20:00 and I'm awake till 03:30.
  
• 10:55:04: Say, I never heard anyone say, "God bless us every one," this month.
  
• 11:10:30: Is the title of the Christmas episode of Leverage "The Snow Job"?
  
• 11:52:12: Haven't seen Matt Smith on #GrahamNorton yet. #doctorwho (Norton would read this twit and say, "I'm waiting for that too!")
  
• 17:26:53: People keep blogging about the #Sherlock moment in #DoctorWho A Christmas Carol, when The Big Bang did it first.
  
• 18:18:21: Oh, come on. There were no Reapers this time because this time the Doctor did it on purpose and took the necessary precautions. #doctorwho
  
• 21:17:11: #AKOTAS updated: a standalone gag. It feels good. http://tinyurl.com/akotas/2412.htm #webcomics #kingarthur
  
• 22:43:03: Apparently Moffat remembers the same Robert Holmes discussion of isomorphism that I do #doctorwho
  
• 22:51:40: @allygibson When I imagine the Doctor in Middle Earth, I imagine him in place of Gandalf. And different incarnations either side of Moria.
  
• 22:53:31: @allyngibson The Doctor's proper place is as the expositor, not the protagonist. Only Russell Davies seems not to know this.
  
• 23:27:14: Hero of Three Faces sketch update: characteristic crouch. http://tinyurl.com/3f4c3s/aauw.htm #3faces #doctorwho
  
• 23:27:39: Hero of Three Faces sketch update: basilisk from #Sanctuary. http://tinyurl.com/3f4c3s/aaux.htm #3faces #me
  

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Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

The Doctor's proper place is as the expositor, not the protagonist.

Ooh, excellent thesis. I can think of several other characters who follow that rule, and who occasionally get saddled with writers who don't get it. The Phantom Stranger tops the list, there; his best stories were about Other People Who Interacted With Him, but a few writers tried to turn him into DC's Doctor Strange.

(Come to think of it, in those first couple of Ditko stories, Strange was more expositor than protagonist.)

I think the central characters of many police procedurals qualify, as well. Dragnet wasn't about Friday and Gannon; it was about the cases they solved. Same with the various CSI franchises, with the exception of Miami.

I'm also going to express the heretical opinion that the X-Files worked better when Scully and Mulder were expositors than when they were protagonists.

Only Russell Davies seems not to know this.

I think that even he got it in the first couple of seasons. The thing that initially gave New-Who such a different feel was not that he turned the Doctor into the Protagonist, but that he did so with the companion. (Remember how so many people grumped about it being The Rose Tyler Show?)

I think Doctor-As-Protagonist may owe nearly as much to Tennant as Davies.