Transmedia: Dr. Who

Here is a good story about Transmedia and Dr. Who. For those who are un-initiated, Dr. Who goes back to radio and the 1960s and in the best television tradition of the hero never dying: Dr. Who never dies, he is just reborn again and again, always as a different actor.

QUOTE: Of course, Doctor Who has dabbled in multiplatform before. Beginning with a tie-in annual in 1964, the story has spread to LPs, radio, film, comics, novels, games, merchandise, animation, metasites and other online exercises.

Wired's story on Dr. Who and Transmedia is part of a larger Transmedia issue: (What is Transmedia?) Well worth a read for those still trying to figure out the transmedia phenomenon.

A few thoughts on Transmedia and Tribalism

Our discussions in the last few weeks about tribalism and transmedia have me thinking about the forces we exert in our lives toward feeling secure. It seems to me that culture/society is all about the quest for light in the darkness. It all comes to feeling secure in the world we live in. Since the beginning of time, humans have worked toward understanding the big questions like where is the food coming from, how do we make it through the night alive and if its cold outside, how do we get warm. The basics of survival being air, water, food and shelter. It is this compulsion that sent us into tribes and built this multi-cultural world we live in. In the past, we lived inside a 20 or 30 mile radius of the place we were born. We lived with our families. To be outside the safety of the fire was to be ever in danger. We competed with our near neighbors for the food or banded with them into communities. Now, as we gradually spread out across the globe, able to travel anywhere, eat anything, know anybody, translate the babel, and contemplate the outer space, we return sometimes to the concept of tribe. It may seem we don't need the shelter of the common cave but we still need each other and the networks of money or power we inhabit. This long tail of applied interests we have been studying recently seems to me to be that reaching back into the small space of shared interests but with the twist that the internet can offer us neighbors from all corners of the global cave. We find we have shared interests with folks in other lands. We find that the threads which seem to divide us can also unite us but can also divide us yet again. The internet offers the same dangers but they seem more removed when they aren't right there knocking at the other side of the front door.

Transmedia storytelling takes the folk singer, the cave painter and the wandering minstrel and tosses in the Easter bunny, the corporate head cases, the librarian, the editor, the graffiti artist with his can poised on the edge of the brick wall and all these inordinate geeks and sets them loose together in a strange new tribe. One thing I note is that it takes a moderator, the uber-storyteller, to wind the threads together into something recognizable and remotely trackable. And even then perhaps the thing which attracts us most about the transmedia format is the stuff of fable, the idea that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if we could just find it. There could be an undiscovered country (clue) that not just anyone can find. We humans like stories that go on and on, serialized, remade, retold, reworked for every new generation. How else can you explain the remaking of classic films and books?

Expanded Version

Transmedia storytelling is extreme. It will be adopted more often and developed further in our cultural future because the creators enjoy doing it and fans can appreciate it to whatever level they want. Transmedia storytelling provides synergy across multiple channels, creating an incentive to interact and collaborate to know the big picture.

We definitely see more cross-media (extended products). It's easy to just add-on because it doesn't take the effort (but it also doesn't play the same role.) And right now, that's enough to satisfy a broad range of the audience.

Expanse amazes us and we like to be amazed.

It's fascinating, but it is a serious investment of time and resources for all parties involved. Wait, aren't our attention spans simultaneously dropping? How many passions can you maintain, how many stories can you follow, and how many alternate universes can you keep track of?

And at the end of it all, a story exists to make an impact and resonate with the world. How many ways can this change? Maybe the story changes with your level and kind (/degree) of involvement. This could be literal changes in the narrative with new information, or change in how it feels and what it means to you.

This relates to the overall progression of complexity of everything. We expect to be engaged at varying depths. Some more than others (divers and skimmers).

All the niches become normal. We are in the micro-culture era. Culture is becoming fragmented, but we're still connected by overlapping, interwoven threads of interests. The fundamentals of the human condition are still there, under the pile of culture we create.