Watching an old -
very old (1970) - episode of
Dr Who just now, I found myself pondering some of the questions about realism that were covered in Thursday afternoon's lecture for MSFX and Digital Animation students. The Silurians (who, more
realistically, should be called 'eocines') were first known to me as characters in the Target novelisation of the TV serial,
Dr Who and the Silurians, then as photographs in issues of
Dr Who Weekly in the 1980s. When the creatures returned to the series in the early 1980s, facing Peter Davison's (brilliant, much underrated) Doctor, they impressed me a lot (how!?), whereas their cousins, the Sea-Devils, who feature
terrifyingly in my earliest memories of the show, were disappointing in their droopy-headed, mock samurai sluggishness. What had scared the living whatsit out of me in 1973 let me down in 1984... Ah well. Expectations change. Notions of realism change. We grow older. So when the redesigned Silurians appeared in the first series of Matt Smith's doctorhood - well, they are obviously so much more convincing, subtle and sophisticated as a race of intelligent prehistoric humanoid reptilians, the materials for facial augmentation are obviously so much more supple, flexible,
skin-like. Even so, against all the evidence of my own eyes and ears, there's a part me which continues to prefer the Silurians of 1970 and 1984. This part of me is willful... And it suspends disbelief... And it is also, oh yes, just a bit nostalgic...
Realism, I suspect, isn't an absolute value. It's extremely subjective. Even a silly old emotion like nostalgia can kink its criteria. And that's rather wonderful, I think. So bring on the Sea Devils of the 21st century - I'm looking forward to meeting them, with their flash-lamp death-rays and their big string vests...
