Why Orpheus

Credit is owed to the Greeks for our Western secular culture in philosophy, mathematics, politics and drama, and we acknowledge the Greeks as our ancestral storytellers. For whatever reason we have as to why we write, they have given us the beginnings of what we write.

I'm interested in framing the New Adventures and the new series in this mythology. I am also interested in unfolding Barry Kosky's production of The Lost Echo. This was Kosky and Tom Wright's exploration of Ovid's Metamorphosis. In this the themes of change and story resonate as the lost echo.

Physicality

Another issue I have yet to resolve is with the equality of movement. This is the physical act that is present in both stories of Orpheus and Lot and I find the movement striking. It has a resonance with me and its a movement that even recently I experienced when watching 300 as Dilios (David Whenham) leaves for Sparta to become the narrator for the 300.

What I think it is I feel is a mimetic resonance. I can feel the physical sensation of twisting my torso, the muscles in my back tighten, I strain my neck to look over my shoulder, wondering how much more I have to twist to accommodate my vision. It is an effort but it also makes me vulnerable. I could fall, I could run into something or someone. The act runs opposite to all the different ways the body operates.

My Orpheus laundry

I have some Orpheus issues, I've not finished wrestling with this myth.

From what I've read (scanned), most academic interpretation of Orpheus looking back, is understood as Orpheus' humanity as a noble act. This I find a difficult position to agree with, from the few primary sources I've looked in to.

Ovid describes this as an act performed out of anxiety, but that doesn't read to me as a noble human. Virgil, in The Georgics, does not give a word to describe Orpheus's action. These are our two leading Roman writers, but where are the Greeks?

Ainslie tells me that it is in The Odyssey, referred to; I have yet to locate it.

In the operas (such as in Monteverdi L'Orfeo- Ainslie) depicts the scene as Eurydice calling after Orpheus. Eurydice asks why does he not look back, and therefore why does he not love her. After her continuous calling, Orpheus looks back out of love. That works - but where are the Greek writers?

Or is it that I'm to praise Orpheus as the noble human in his failing? Then why is Ildith's act, in the Lot story, not interpreted as the noble human; surely temptation is a human act?

Ainslie challenges - Ildith and Lot is an obedience story - a morality tale. the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is not. Context is the thing. I think my comparison is a fair one, the exercise brings out the meaning out of the two stories. Where I have perhaps gone wrong is that I failed to recognise that one is to be read as a story of events that took place and that the other is a myth, that is a difference to be respected.

mothers and fathers

list of stuff, can be safely ignored

Rose and Pete
Rose and Jackie
Nancy and James

Ace and her mum
Benny and her dad

Paternalism:
Rose and the Doctor (sometimes)
Ace and the Doctor (sometimes - but a different kind of "sometimes" to that of Rose and the Doctor)
Benny and the Doctor (sometimes)

Orpheus, Lot and Faith

Could the Orpheus myth be a distillation of the story of Lot?

In chronological terms, this could be true. The story of Lot as featured in Genesis would have been part of the oral tradition, before any establishment of the greek tradition. There are certainley similarities with the general plot of both stories: the leaving of a place; of God's/the Gods' instruction not to look back; and the fateful action of looking back. However the differences are far more pronouced and a lot more siginificant in both action and meaning.

Lot is fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah at the command of God, where as in the greek myth Orpheus leading Eurydice out, follows from the choice Orpheus had made when he had entered the Underworld.

It is Lot's wife (Edith/Ildith (ref: wikipedia)) who looks back, whereas it is Orpheus, not Eurydice who looks back in the greek story. Though whilst one might find an equality of physical action it doesn't follow there is an equality of meaning. The common moral extracted from Lot's story is that of the temptation and failure of man. This is definitely not the meaning behind Orpheus' action - the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is not a morality tale.

The tension established in the Orpheus and Eurydice is one between the Gods and Man. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, the Gods are often shown to be deceitful and cruel, where the human heroes of greek and roman myth are celebrated for their humanity.

Orpheus and Eurydice is a story is about a man's humanity. Orpheus uses his humanity to travel to the Underword. through his art he expresses his humanity to win Eurydice from death. In this story it is the Gods who behave poorly, it is their trivility in placing the condition on Orpheus. In the face of this banality, in his humanity, Orpheus looks back with love for Eurydice.

The story also demonstrates man with choice, it is Orpheus' choice to enter the Underworld, and only because Orpheus was certain that he would succeed. Michael Cadnum, in his novel Nightsong interprets from the myth that Orpheus has complete faith in his skill and art with song and lyre that he knows that he can not fail to express his love of Eurydice before Hades and Persephone.

In Lot, man is his faith in his god, In Orpheus man is his faith in his humanity and his art.

Orpheus

It is a story of change and loss.

But it is also a story of choice (Ainslie)

I've got no job, no A-levels, No Future

In my mapping of the New Adventures, I've started with No Future (1994? Paul Cornell). I was asked why I decided to reread this NA first.

The starting point of the Broadsword tenth anniversary issue was with the question - did the New Adventure have any influence on the new series. As I was a passionate believer in the New Adventures I wondered whether that belief, ten years later amounted to anything? Had I wasted my time? Did the New Adventures have a future? So yes I chose No Future primarily as a pun.

I had imagined ('cause I can not recall), that this theme would have to have been addressed in this novel and that I have to ask even now whether the new series has a future - how long in current entertainment climate can this series last? Does the new series have a future?

A second focus for the tenth anniversary issue of Broadsword is a "where are they now?" let me answer that with a list of names - Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss, Paul Cornell, Matt Jones, Gareth Roberts. There is no question that Paul Cornell was central defining figure in the NAs and for that I chose a Paul Cornell novel.

But then rewatching the new series episode Rose, Rose says at the the defining point of the new series - where she makes a stand - "I've got no job, no A-levels, no future" and I just can't let that one go.

Orpheus

In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus was told not to look back. What is the meaning of this instruction/action?

Everything has a time and everything has an end

Working my way through the first season of the new series and one of the emerging themes is loss. That's a key theme in anything to do with change. There are obvious examples such as the Doctor's challenge to Cassandra, however what for me was so startling and powerful to watch is to see the loss both Rose and Jackie experience.

There is no future in England's Dreaming

I have given myself the challenge to map two transitional eras of Doctor Who and ask whether the first, Virgin Publishing's New Adventures, has had an influence on the second, the new series of Doctor Who?

I think that a substantial aspect of the nature of both these eras of Doctor Who is that they are both posses qualities of transition, that there is behind both series a force of modernity.

There are many examples of both series that I can sight to suggest this, in an attempt to summarise these are -
+ reflection on the series' past and to make a change from that past;
+ both have attempted and succeeded to set up a new language;
+ engagement with its medium as a means to attempt something different;
+ meditation on the contemporary political and social eras in United Kingdom - though their subjects are very different, the NAs refelcted on a post Thatcher/Major past (and even further) and the RTD era is concerned about the future UK is creating.

The coming age and passing of the old

I consider myself a big fan of Modernism. I was really taken by Barrie Kosky's The Lost Echo Act III , of Euripedes The Bacchae. I love the interpretation of The Tempest as Shakespeare's contemplation of the end of the Elizabethan Era. These are ideas aware of a coming age and the passing of the old order.

I am a big fan of civilisation. I love the idea of this machine of human creation creating secular society, science and psycology of the world. This is evolution due to the human hand.