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Year of Specials was a thing because Tennant had to act in some plays and wouldn't be able to film a full season. There you go.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:44
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Oxxidation posted:Rose I utterly detest that final scene with Rose on the beach, and also feel she is almost completely extraneous as a character throughout not just this episode but the season as a whole. I don't see what she brought to the table as a character that wasn't covered in a superior fashion by other characters who were also present. I honestly can only think that, since she was RTD's first companion from the revival., he felt he "owed" her a "happy" ending in some way. Thus this contrived, nonsensical and offensive little coda to what I felt was actually an excellent and compelling 2-season exploration of the pitfalls of being the Doctor's companion, something the revival got to explore in a way that the classic series never did. It felt like shameless pandering to that portion of the audience that just took the idea of Doctor/Rose "twu love" at face value and wouldn't accept the idea of Rose NOT getting her man even if that was a wildly inappropriate and frankly creepy thing to happen. Oxxidation posted:What follows is the "Year of Specials," a weird scheduling quirk that gave Who fans five hour-long episodes (one being another two-parter) in lieu of a regular season. Not entirely sure why this happened, the thread can feel free to fill in. Tennant was working on some other stuff, RTD was burned out and had decided it was time to move on but wasn't quite done with the stories he wanted to tell, so they put together a far lighter schedule for a final year. I believe that the BBC was also strongly considering going out on a "high" note and just ending the show when RTD left, so he had to go to bat to convince them that Moffat (who had a history as a showrunner) would be more than capable of taking over.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:45
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Burkion posted:Year of Specials was a thing because Tennant had to act in some plays and wouldn't be able to film a full season. and by "act in some plays", Burkion means "Be Hamlet opposite Patrick Stewart".
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Nov 13, 2014 02:46
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Huh, how you feel about this episode really does depend on how much you despise Rose, even if that line of thinking doesn't really work that well for Occ.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:46
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Oxxidation posted:There is something rudely, shockingly, revoltingly, astoundingly spiteful about these two scenes placed side by side, Davies giving his pet a great big present while, once again, tossing his second-stringer characters into whatever hackneyed and cruel situations his brain cooked up. The events themselves are even worse, owing, again, to Tate's performance - her meltdown as the metacrisis starts burning up her mind is heartbreaking, and the actual memory-erasure feels uncomfortably rapey, Donna screaming tearful denials and cringing away from the Doctor's touch. That single scene reverberated throughout the entirety of Davies' tenure for me, making everything he put his hand to that little bit worse, and dropped "Journey's End" down a pit so deep and dark that my second-least favorite episode wouldn't even be able to hear the echo when it hit the ground. I really wish I could remember how I reacted to the Donna memory wipe scene the first time I watched it. I must have been weirded out by it at the least, but on my rewatch years later I was trying to remember the whole time exactly what became of Donna, since I knew she couldn't be sticking around too much longer. It felt like a punch to the gut to see her get such an awful fate and realize I'd managed to forget about it entirely.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:47
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DoctorWhat posted:and by "act in some plays", Burkion means "Be Hamlet opposite Patrick Stewart". Yeah seriously I'm almost tempted to beg Occ to check out Tennant's Hamlet as a bonus.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:49
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DoctorWhat posted:and by "act in some plays", Burkion means "Be Hamlet opposite Patrick Stewart". I kept it simple, stupid.  Also Homestuck is An Experience. Neither Bad Nor Good, often both, never only one. Much like Doctor Who can be.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:49
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Burkion posted:Also Homestuck is An Experience. Neither Bad Nor Good, often both, never only one. Love it or hate it, it has some cool music associated to it.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:50
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I basically agree with the functional parts of Oxx's review, except that I don't hate Rose enough for her triumph to derail everything for me to such a degree. What happened with Donna, well...idonotlikepeas posted:the tragedy here is a personal one: seeing Donna without the strength to stand up to her mother or affect her reality or to save anyone, forced to be an observer of events and having no power of her own. If Donna in this state doesn't break your heart, after what she's been throughout the rest of the season, I don't know what your heart is made out of. Rose never made the impact on me, good or bad, that she seemed to for a lot of Who fans. My reaction to her leaving for her own universe, aside from being a bit weirded out by the clone thing, was to feel bad for the Real Doctor who was clearly still hung up on her for some reason. So I go back and forth on this episode. It ties up a lot of loose ends well enough, I guess. But Catherine Tate really needed to have another couple of seasons as Donna; there was juice in that character left unsqueezed, so I'll always hate it a little for preventing that. idonotlikepeas fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 03:04
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It should also be mentioned that one of the reasons the ending really sucks is because Doctor Who has a penchant for bringing characters back for nostalgia's sake as they did with Sarah Jane and about half the villains. What the ending means is that Rose and Martha can come back in the future on a whim and a paycheck. Donna however is so hosed that it would take some serious bullshit to bring her back at all (which is not say that they wouldn't because it is Doctor Who). So not only is she gone she is probably never even going to be in something that has to do with the show ever again and that's terrible.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:41
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One thing you can always count on in Doctor Who is that there can always be more bullshit. It's the same reason the Daleks got brought back a few times already even though they were super-all-dead-we-swear multiple times. There is an unlimited supply of bullshit to justify whatever the current writing team wants to happen and no matter how ridiculous it is, something equally ridiculous has already been done in the history of the show, probably more than once.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:49
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Yeah it reminds me of how some goons in another thread just yesterday were talking about the Regeneration Limit and I'm like "Why do you dumbfucks care you know the whole Regeneration Limit thing is going to be circumvented and the how almost certainly doesn't matter. Doctor Who/The Daleks/whatever are too popular to let go based on the canon so the show will come up with some sort of bullshit to get it all to keep moving forward-- that's how they came up with the concept of Regeneration in the first place when Hartnell started dying.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:59
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Oxxidation posted:All of this is to say that, on one hand, I can respect Russell T. Davies' decision to see off the characters of Donna Noble and Rose Tyler in the way he did - his characters, his script, his work, his choice. But my other hand...well, let's say that if this analogy were more literal, my fingerprints would be on file and I'd be posting this from inside a Welsh jail. I've heard they're actually quite nice, but they serve too much soup. This review is poetry. I want to frame it and put it on my mantle. 
Overmayor fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 04:11
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GOD DAMMIT I just had to hedge my bets. I knew in my heart that these episodes would be all kinds of Occ's poo poo, but I doubted myself and put B for these. I COULD HAVE HAD IT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLL
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Nov 13, 2014 04:39
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Oxxidation posted:But then something else happened. You know what happened. It's what always happens. She's what always happens. Rose Tyler happened. quote:What follows is the "Year of Specials," a weird scheduling quirk that gave Who fans five hour-long episodes ... For political reasons (as in, why is all the BBC money being spent in London), the BBC opened a major production center in Cardiff, Wales, where "Doctor Who", "Sarah Jane Adventures", and "Torchwood" (among others) were shot. Cardiff is 3-4 hours by road or train from London, so the cast and crew don't see much of their families, friends, and job opportunities while the show is in production. "Doctor Who" shoots more episodes a year than many BBC shows, which often have limited runs as short as 3 (Sherlock) or 6 (The Hour, The Thick of It) episodes. "Doctor Who" shoots are grueling. Not only are there effects that have to be set up, then repeated until they go right, but single episodes often need to be shot both by natural daylight and natural (ish) night. The entire cast and crew keeps weird hours and is exhausted all the time. Which brings us to 2008-9. Russell T. Davies had said repeatedly that he wanted to do 4 seasons of Doctor Who, then leave. David Tennant had gone back and forth. He was and is a stone-cold Who fanboy, but he was well aware of the dangers of getting typecast. Tennant was already a rising actor before Who. He'd had well-reviewed leads at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and had starred in the TV miniseries "Casanova" for RTD. After Who had finished shooting but before it finished airing, the RSC invited Tennant to play Hamlet. The writing was on the wall. "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" aired in June/July 2008; shooting on Series 4, plus the 2008 Christmas Special, had finished in May. The first official BBC story was that 2009 would be a light-Who year (four specials + Christmas*) because Tennant needed time to do Hamlet; they left it up in the air whether he was returning or not. RTD had already decided to leave the show, taking his core team with him; he wanted to give the new staff some shakedown time before the old staff moved on. Furthermore, the show had switched to filming in HD, which meant that the sets had to be rebuilt or redressed. All of these reasons meant that another full-series shoot would be a bad idea in 2009. RTD announced his upcoming departure in May 2008. In October 2008, before that year's Christmas special aired, Tennant announced that the specials would be his last episodes. With each special we were wondering "Is this the time he regenerates?" "Is this guest star actually permanent?" We put each episode under an electron microscope, searching for the molecules that spelled out THEY'RE LEAVING RIGHT NOW. Which is the frame of mind you should strive to emulate, for the true Who experience. tl;dr Everybody on the show was worn the gently caress out and needed to move on. http://www.team-tennant.com/interview/id4.html : 2009 Tennant/Davies interview, right before Easter special aired http://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/1rspaj/why_did_doctor_who_do_the_year_of_specials_ending/ Note: I did my best to base all of this on references, rather than on my faulty memory. I apologize in advance for the bits I got wrong. * Yes, it's slightly more complicated than this. Shut up, she explained. edit: f,b. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 04:44
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Arsenic Lupin posted:tl;dr Everybody on the show was worn the gently caress out and needed to move on. Is there anything in The Ballad of Russell and Julie that references the Year of Specials or are we free to link that now?
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Nov 13, 2014 04:59
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howe_sam posted:Is there anything in The Ballad of Russell and Julie that references the Year of Specials or are we free to link that now? I'd wait until the RTD era is TRULY over.
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Nov 13, 2014 05:03
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Oxxidation posted:What kind of loving moral is that? "That doesn't matter." And that's when I start looking up the prices of cross-country plane tickets, and shovels, and lengths of strong, strong rope.
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Nov 13, 2014 05:04
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g0del posted:Make a kickstarter. I'd donate. can "buying Occ a Sixcoat" be a stretch goal?
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Nov 13, 2014 05:05
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DoctorWhat posted:I'd wait until the RTD era is TRULY over. Just watch, he'll come back from the alternate universe to haunt us.
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Nov 13, 2014 05:34
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Two reviews a week, so three weeks until we hit Matt Smith right?
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Nov 13, 2014 05:41
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The biggest badass of the two-parter was Wilf who loving nailed a Dalek with a paintball gun right in the goddamn eye but of course it didn't work because then how would Rose have saved them?
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Nov 13, 2014 05:44
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Senor Tron posted:Two reviews a week, so three weeks until we hit Matt Smith right? Thereabouts. Occ may try to accelerate the schedule but I'm dissuading him from it because these specials are big 'uns.
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Nov 13, 2014 05:46
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If nothing else, watching them all very close together will really wear you out on Davies, because that'll have been nine episodes in which he had a hefty share (if not all) of the writing, many of them longer than normal episodes. Much though I'm sure we all love the accelerated schedule, watching them and writing a long review for them in very short order would be one hell of a slog.
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Nov 13, 2014 05:50
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DoctorWhat posted:can "buying Occ a Sixcoat" be a stretch goal? That is not appropriate burial attire.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:13
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Toxxupation posted:i assume most people in here are big who fans and have seen the episodes in question, but do the summaries provide a use to you as a reader? have their been times you've had no idea what the episode i was reviewing was about, and did the summaries jog your memory? or did they come across as boring filler from a guy who really overwrites these reviews (because boy oh boy i am NOT concise) I binge watched this show 18 months ago and consequently forgot about a lot of things. Like, I remembered being a Martha fan for reasons I outlined during her season, but I totally forgot about Evil Martha in one episode this season. I for one appreciate the effort.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:21
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Oxxidation posted:Thereabouts. Occ may try to accelerate the schedule but I'm dissuading him from it because these specials are big 'uns. I agree with keeping them a little spread out, after all when they aired it was about 20 months from the end of series 4 to the final Tennant episode and they were treated more like events. I expect it would get tiring marathoning them.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:22
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30.5 Days posted:That is not appropriate burial attire. I dunno, it would certainly serve to encourage any urination the mourners felt like doing.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:22
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30.5 Days posted:That is not appropriate burial attire. Seems like an appropriate thing to bury to me, with or without a body in it.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:41
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Arsenic Lupin posted:In any case, the TARDIS is a living being (in some sense). Regy Rusty posted:But what I really find unforgivable is Donna's fate. I cannot believe that people can think it "feels right" to have Donna end up with all of her memories removed. Her life at home was depressing and miserable and now she's going right back to that, without even fond memories of the much more exciting things she got up to. Whatever happens to Rose and Martha, at least they'll always know what amazing things they'd done. And Donna gets none of that? It's so incredibly unfair and mean and it makes me almost angry at RTD for doing it. I don't even generally feel particularly strongly about this show, but this episode gets to me. Glenn_Beckett posted:Donna having literally every ounce of character development ripped out of her is a bad creative decision, objectively so. And that on top of the episode just being generally terrible. Daleks showed up way too often during the first few seasons and by this point just seeing them was enough to put me off. Rose Arsenic Lupin posted:Tennant was already a rising actor before Who. He'd starred in the TV miniseries "Casanova" for RTD.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:41
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Donna's fate might be one of those things that's harder to deal with as an American, where social welfare is frowned upon and even now we still have arguments over whether the threat of sickness and pain is a necessary part of a productive workforce. Donna does so much and goes right back to being told to bootstrap by her Mother who seems to be totally oblivious to anything that's happening. If it wasn't for old Uncle Wilf, it would seem like she has no connection to anyone. So yeah, watching Donna is like watching someone perform better than their peers, right in front of their peers, and then get a big fat zero from the man who literally controls the infinite probabilities of the universe. Even without Rose, it's still sad as hell. Fiction generally treats being mind-wiped or "living a false life" as some kind of negative, but they should have either written Donna a less miserable life, or made it clear she really enjoys that seemingly miserable life, or given her a new one and stored the old one in the Doctor's pocketwatch.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:52
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Oxx, that was the best review in this entire thread. If I had a medal handy, I'd pin it on you. ... why do we not have a : wilfsalute : smilie? Pwnstar posted:Well Jack has his own [TARDIS] piece and is growing his own so it wouldn't be fair for Rose not to also get one! I just looked this up and RTD says even though the scene is cut it is canon. All hail the Empress. Goddammit.
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Nov 13, 2014 06:54
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A lot of confusing posts itt from people who don't seem to think Donna's ending was intended to be sad.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:00
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2house2fly posted:A lot of confusing posts itt from people who don't seem to think Donna's ending was intended to be sad. Hell, there's even that often (justifiably) mocked shot of Tennant standing in the rain looking sad just to hammer it home even further.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:08
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Tiggum posted:I always felt like people saying this were making far too much of a throwaway line by Tom Baker. At least until NuWho made it literally true.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:10
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Jerusalem posted:Hell, there's even that often (justifiably) mocked shot of Tennant standing in the rain looking sad just to hammer it home even further. 
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Nov 13, 2014 07:11
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Oxxidation posted:Thereabouts. Occ may try to accelerate the schedule but I'm dissuading him from it because these specials are big 'uns. Are they though? They're like Christmas Specials (which one of them actually is!) in that they take a single idea and handle it in an over the top and goofy manner. Only one of them has any real meat to it beyond being a fun lark.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:14
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Nah, several previous Doctors have talked about the TARDIS being alive (stretching right back to Hartnell). It was never as explicit was it was in the revival but it was definitely more than just a throwaway line. Hell, in the very first scene featuring the TARDIS in the very first episode of the show way back in 1963, one of the Doctor's original companions touches it, jumps back in shock and outright says,"It's alive!"
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Nov 13, 2014 07:18
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Jerusalem posted:Hell, in the very first scene featuring the TARDIS in the very first episode of the show way back in 1963, one of the Doctor's original companions touches it, jumps back in shock and outright says,"It's alive!" And the third serial has the TARDIS telepathically trying to warn the crew that they're in danger but because it thinks in a totally different way to humans it can't communicate directly and just causes all sorts of weird events to happen they have to try to figure out. The TARDIS being a living, self-aware thing has been in there from the very start.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:30
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2house2fly posted:A lot of confusing posts itt from people who don't seem to think Donna's ending was intended to be sad. Jerusalem posted:Hell, in the very first scene featuring the TARDIS in the very first episode of the show way back in 1963, one of the Doctor's original companions touches it, jumps back in shock and outright says,"It's alive!"
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Nov 13, 2014 07:30
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