Doctor Who Club of Australia

[Theta Sigma]

Sorry Panecea I did say the following before:

[Panecea]

I figured you may have and last night I left out Camille. Only my opening line was meant to add to this thread, the rest was a reference.

Secondly, when ave you ever known books to be translated exactly into film. I believe it was the author of the Constant Gardener who felt that when books are made into films the filmakers should not attempt to copy the contents of the novel, rather they should take the core of the story a build a coherent retelling around that.

[Theta Sigma]

I was not trying to say that an adaptation should be exact from its original source material.

I was saying that Miss Marple being a well known Agatha Christie character should not be incorporated in a story she was not originally in.

Agatha Christie is well known for Miss Marple and Poirot but she has written stories that did not feature either of them and today's audiences should get to know these stories without the need to have either Marple or Poirot in it. For instance I have seen some years ago the 1958 film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, a non-Marple and non-Poirot story. The story worked well without either of those two detectives in it.

The point is there should not be a requirement to incorporate either Marple or Poirot in stories that they were not originally in on the basis that these two characters are well known to the audience.

I would think that anyone who is interested in the works of Agatha Christie, seeing her name is enough to attract people's attention regardless whether a story features Marple or Poirot or someone else.

[Panecea]

My statement was not meant to sound brash, so I apologise if it did. I was simply hypothesising as to the creative motive behind that decision.

Further examination of the issue would suggest that it is a matter of relavence that may lead to such a decision.

Think of it this way...

The overall goal of the show is to get the viewing public interested Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

Now the producers or creative consultants know that it is most likely that a significant propotion of viewing public have not read the works of Agatha Christie.

Futhermore, there is a limited budget to work with so the entire Miss Marple series can't be filmed at once. Selections for episodes would then be made with viewer in mind. (Note the more novels that are televised the less significance this point has)

Having taken into consideration the second point, the episode selections are probably reviewed. Now should the franchise become popular and they run out of novels to televise actually featuring Miss Marple or one of the initial selections doesn't involve the title character, the producers will probably take poetic license to make the story more relevant.

If this was not done the general viewer probably wouldn't see the point, it would seem irrelevant to them and the series.

Yes, it is literary blasphemy to commit such an act against a classic work but in order to introduce a seemingly extraneous set of texts to today's generation I believe the poetic license is warranted.

To be succinct, it comes down to viewer and their interest and hunger for the series. The process that guides these decisions is not based on a conservative model, it is capitalistic by nature and runs on whatever works.

[Theta Sigma]

OK, let's move on to At Bertram's Hotel: