What with all this kerfuffle about who ripped off what or was based on which previous film etc. I thought it might be useful to post a link to this, which fellow FMs may not have seen.

The Seven Basic Plots

When it all comes to it in the end, you are more likely to spot similarities between things than differences

Anyone fancy tying DW stories to one of the Seven?

All of them to the first one on the list?

Actually Webby, this thread could turn into an interesting philosophical discussion.

I think our need to see pattern in everything and to classify things is a evolutionary survival instinct. It's pretty important for us to classify newly encountered materials into predators, food etc. Detecting pattern helps us with this task.

Likewise, it's pretty important for a Doctor Who fan to classify the latest episode to......

....

George Lucas famously read (plundered, according to some) a book called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". It's a 1940's "academic" work that effectively says that all "hero stories" are the same throughout history and effectively draws lines between every hero - including religious figureheads - going back thousands of years.

Some critics suggested that Lucas basically treated that book as a magic formula and remade Star Wars - just changing the title to "Willow".

Most Doctor Who episodes if not all fit into the first and slightly less into the fourth.

His definition of Tragedy seems too narrow because it wouldn't include tragic romances like Romeo and Juliet.

He's not saying everything has a single plot, but that these are the seven which you can combine elements from.

It would - you just have to see the "war" between the families as being the real villain in the story. It's the same with "self-conflict" where the "villain" is a person's own ego or fear which they have to overcome. Both Romeo and Juliet manage to defeat the villain - by robbing it of he the chance to split them up (bear in mind that "the afterlife" was a "fact" when that was written so death was not "the end" for "the heroes")

Heavy.

But suicides were also considered damned, so eternity together in hell would have been at best a mixed victory.

More a mixed grill once the pitch forks and eternal flames had got to work.

edit: I'm not certain contemporary audiences were leaving the theatre smiling at the touching story of the couple who cleverly managed to co-exist happily ever after.

"Suicide" is "noble" when it is classed as "sacrifice" - throwing yourself in front of a bullet to save a child is "suicide" but it overcomes a "villain" - which renders it "good".

Heavy - kind of - but only in the same way as DW stories are that don't have some three-headed alien as an obvious bad-guy. Midnight is a good example because it has an unseen "enemy" but the real "villain" is human nature and the "hero" elements are spread across multiple characters each of whom also takes on some part of the role of villain.

It was IIRC the screenwriter of Casblanca who first said that there were only seven basic plots

How interesting. Cracking story he told himself. Has Doctor Who done Casablanca yet?

Apart from numerous starts of beautiful friendships?

edit: sorry - wrong thread for pastiche spotting. replies in Points of View thread please.

You're getting in that Dalek time machine with Chesterfield where you belong. Hmm? If that machine dematerialises and you're not in it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not toboggan, but soon and for the rest of your life. Barbara my dear, I'm no good at being noble but it doesn't take mud to see that the problems of four little people don't amount to a hill of beans flying around in Spain. Someday you'll understand that. Hmm? Silly old fusspot.

Genius post from the usual suspect.