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vegetables posted:Making insanely complex plans to destroy a species that's about to be destroyed anyway is entirely in keeping with the Master's way of doing things. Wasn't that in 2016, whereas this plan is presumably taking place in 2014? Maybe the flare is why she's doing this now rather than later; maybe she only wanted to rule Cyberearth for two years; maybe she was going to replace all the trees with "cybertrees" and is now frustrated that she can't. There are lots of explanations for this that make as much sense as anything else in this show. Danny died in the last episode. Putting an episode where he is not dead two years after that one is unlikely.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:12
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DoctorWhat posted:Look, between The Power of Three and Day of the Doctor we've got a second UNIT Dating Controversy going on, so the "now" is kind of hard to pin down. The London Eye was clearly visible when the Doctor was flying over London at the beginning of The Eleventh Hour which means that the Ponds had to be companions in the mid-2020's! And since they were companions off and on for several years, they probably go into the 2030's, even! I demand long, complicated, unreadable books clarifying all of this because there's no possible way that this could be production errors or things that just don't matter. 
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Nov 6, 2014 21:08
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Namarrgon posted:I don't remember Missy being pissed that the Doctor didn't genocide the trees, just surprised. And she could simply have been surprised that the magic fairy trees exist at all. The Doctor certainly was. She expected the Doctor to pull a rabbit out of a hat to save earth, and instead there are these crazy trees that put out fire with oxygen or something, idk. In that moment she was the audience stand-in for people who don't like problems being solved by anyone but the Doctor.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:59
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Random Stranger posted:The London Eye was clearly visible when the Doctor was flying over London at the beginning of The Eleventh Hour which means that the Ponds had to be companions in the mid-2020's! And since they were companions off and on for several years, they probably go into the 2030's, even! Amy lived twenty minutes from Gloucester in a village with one post office (and it's shut!) and a pond with no ducks. Perhaps the TARDIS just travelled back in time once the Doctor got back in?
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Nov 6, 2014 22:07
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Angela Christine posted:And she could simply have been surprised that the magic fairy trees exist at all. The Doctor certainly was. Why was that? The Doctor mentioned trees taking to each other and sees the souls of trees looking rather like fairies floating around in The Doctor, The Widow, and The Wardrobe.
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Nov 7, 2014 02:50
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vegetables posted:Making insanely complex plans to destroy a species that's about to be destroyed anyway is entirely in keeping with the Master's way of doing things. Wasn't that in 2016, whereas this plan is presumably taking place in 2014? Maybe the flare is why she's doing this now rather than later; maybe she only wanted to rule Cyberearth for two years; maybe she was going to replace all the trees with "cybertrees" and is now frustrated that she can't. There are lots of explanations for this that make as much sense as anything else in this show. Haha, you think the Master wants to actually follow through with any of her plans with the Cybermen now! How precious. Her only real plan was to get the Doctor in front of her to gloat. She'll drop them like an old shoe.
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Nov 7, 2014 03:31
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Astroman posted:Haha, you think the Master wants to actually follow through with any of her plans with the Cybermen now! How precious. Hell, most of The Master's plans are just to drop the big reveal. He's never wanted to really take over the universe or destroy the world, he just lives for that brief moment of abject horror on the Doctor's face as he realizes who's behind it all. Anything else that goes right is just a bonus.
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Nov 7, 2014 03:35
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There, finally caught up with the drat thread! The_Doctor, I'd love to do Secret Santa again - finding crazy poo poo to give was always a blast. Cobi-Wann, yes, listen to Gallifrey. Jerusalem, Unregenerate! was fantastic, and there are so many "Doctor has lost his memory and is in an asylum" stories, there's no reason we have to compare it to... that one, especially when the two have nothing else in common. Was that it? I think that was it. Oh, right - my theory is that Missy is going to turn out to be the Brigadier in drag trying to get his mustache back from the Rani, who is collecting all of history's great mustaches to create the Stachesphere, which.... Oh, she really was the Master and it wasn't some kind of double blind? Ah well, great casting anyway.
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Nov 7, 2014 04:09
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I'm halfway through Red and while it's just a bit too The Island (with sprinkles of other dystopia) for me, the filter they put on the actor for White Noise makes me just want to listen to him forever, which, given his role, is actually pretty amazing.
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Nov 7, 2014 04:23
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So, um, they released a new Sixth Doctor audio last week. Post-Trial Six-and-Peri by Nev Fountain! It's called The Widow's Assassin. ... I didn't like it. Like, I super-duper hoped that it’d be totally amazing, a Piscon Paradox-level teardown of the Six-and-Peri dynamic that only Nev Fountain could deliver. A story where the Doctor would have to confront the consequences not only of the Trial and his subsequent abandonment of Peri, but ALSO of his actions in and following The Twin Dilemma. And… that’s not what it was. Only the briefest allusions are made to That’s all before getting into how distressingly the plot undermines what SHOULD have been Peri’s righteous anger at the Doctor over her treatment in favor of saying that a ~mind parasite~ made her be dismissive and critical, or how the story implicitly condones the Doctor’s subsequent stalkerish behavior. Actually, I think I hated it. Yeah, I hate it. Because being a socially-conscious person who also owns a rainbow coat has its obligations. Chief among those obligations is that I cannot in good conscience engage in, or give my support to, defensive “readings” of or apologia for The Strangling, nor otherwise understate how horrendous it was. I obviously don’t hold the position that Phil Sandifer does (that Dilemma renders Six (close to) irredeemable), but it’s a cross the character has to bear. That’s not to say that Assassin is without its good bits. Colin and Nicola turn in magnificent performances, especially following a body-swap near the end that’s positively uncanny. Six’s actual dialogue and bits of rapport are, as always, spectacular. There are even some good, Shearman-esque worldbuilding jokes amidst the dull and distracting political stuff. And Flip not getting Fridged was a tremendous relief. But I don’t think I can call Assassin a good story, because it’s frankly irresponsible. Perhaps Masters of Earth or The Rani Elite will do what I wanted this story to do, and redeem Assassin retroactively. But if they don’t (and, sadly, my hopes are not high), then I’ll have to… idunno, write in and complain, or something. Because the Six-and-Peri relationship needs to be ruthlessly interrogated. I want a whole main-range story that channels the beautiful, awful fury of the last ten minutes of Piscon Paradox and beams it straight into the minds of every single Whovian on the planet. I want justice for the Sixth Doctor, and until The Twin Dilemma has been tried and found guilty, that justice is incomplete.
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Nov 7, 2014 04:50
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I'd go so far as to say that the strangling does render Six close to irredeemable and that you essentially have to pretend it didn't happen to like him. You basically just have to block it from your mind entirely.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:00
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DoctorWhat posted:So, um, they released a new Sixth Doctor audio last week. Post-Trial Six-and-Peri by Nev Fountain! Wait.... post Trial of the Time Lord?
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Nov 7, 2014 05:03
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Jerusalem posted:Wait.... post Trial of the Time Lord? Yup. Bicyclops posted:I'd go so far as to say that the strangling does render Six close to irredeemable and that you essentially have to pretend it didn't happen to like him. You basically just have to block it from your mind entirely. Well, if one is so inclined they can use the post-regenerative trauma excuse. What Six can UNAMBIGUOUSLY be blamed for is his behavior immediately AFTER The Strangling.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:08
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DoctorWhat posted:
Well, sure, but using in-universe excuses for behavior people can recognize in the world they live in gets really awkward. It's why people find mind control plots so infuriating and why everyone kind of squirms uncomfortably in their chair when they watch that Star Trek episode where half of them get physically de-aged. The magic is there to make us ask questions about ourselves, and I don't want to ask questions that involve me attempting to make excuses for The Twin Dilemma.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:24
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Bicyclops posted:Well, sure, but using in-universe excuses for behavior people can recognize in the world they live in gets really awkward. It's why people find mind control plots so infuriating and why everyone kind of squirms uncomfortably in their chair when they watch that Star Trek episode where half of them get physically de-aged. The magic is there to make us ask questions about ourselves, and I don't want to ask questions that involve me attempting to make excuses for The Twin Dilemma. Well yeah obviously. I don't engage in apologia, as I've said. I prefer to think that Six's story starts with The Mysterious Planet at the earliest. But Dilemma DID happen and it was horrible and it counts in a way most other terrible stories don't because it was Six's introduction. Arguably, what Ten did to Donna was of similar awfulness, but Ten didn't START his tenure by violating a woman's body and mental autonomy.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:30
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Hell, most of The Master's plans are just to drop the big reveal. He's never wanted to really take over the universe or destroy the world, he just lives for that brief moment of abject horror on the Doctor's face as he realizes who's behind it all. Anything else that goes right is just a bonus. The only time he ever really seemed to stay on task was when he became the PM and took over Earth and seemed to have a semi-serious plan to invade the Greater Universe after jumpstarting Earth's technology. But even then it was all done to get a rise out of his pet Doctor. DoctorWhat posted:So, um, they released a new Sixth Doctor audio last week. Post-Trial Six-and-Peri by Nev Fountain! I'm almost to the end of the last episode and yeah, it's no Peri and the Piscon Paradox. Maybe hearing the end will make me like it a bit more but so far it's falling very flat. And I do not understand for the life of me why they couldn't get Brian Blessed. I'm really surprised he's never done BF TBH. Man seems to be made for doing audio work. Some of the comedy bits are OK, but it lacks the gravitas of Piscon. I couldn't buy for a minute that Queen Peri was Lord Kiv, since you'd figure the first thing she'd do after killing Yrcarnos would be to phone up the Sil and let the Mentors take over all business on Krontep. Then when they pull out the fake mind parasite I'm all  . I also have a feeling I know where the ending is going Peri will come back, get with the obsessive nerd, and be Queen happily ever after.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:36
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Must be really awkward to have to remember which companion to visit when they are all alive at the same time.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:36
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Wait when did Ten strangle Donna?
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Nov 7, 2014 05:51
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Wait when did Ten strangle Donna? He didn't. I think Doctor What is referring to is the memory erasure, although I don't really put that in the same category.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:53
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I not as hung up on The Strangling and the feminist narrative of Six as some of ya'll. To me the biggest Peri unresolved issue is the Doctor's abandoning her. Which we all know IRL was because for whatever reason (her choosing, JNT's) Nicola was leaving and Bonnie was coming in and they had to write her out. "Peri leaves the Doctor to get married" was a tried and true Companion Exit right back to the first (Susan); making us think she'd died at first was what they probably thought was a clever twist. In universe it is problematic because the Doctor will often move heaven and earth to save a companion in so many episodes, but in this one he didn't. The Time Lords just said "hey, she's ok" and then he pops off with Mel happy as can be. At least hearing her marriage to Yrcarnos was a fixed point or something and the Doctor tried to go back but kept landing elsewhere or forced away for some other reasons til he gave up would have been something. We got none of that and it always rankled me. Nev's theory of the Split Peris was an interesting way to look at it. But instead of trying to tie them all together into some sort of cohesive ending to make up for The Abandoning and put it to rest, I think instead it's just going to be a series of Peri "What If" stories. Again, I'm saying this as I still have like 10 minutes left to listen to, and will do so tomorrow on the way home from work, so I could be way off base.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:56
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I don't know that the phrase "feminist narrative" is even the first I would reach for in describing my feelings about how a person should not strangle their young pupil in a fit of rage and I am honestly a bit unsure of what you mean.
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Nov 7, 2014 06:02
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Bicyclops posted:I don't know that the phrase "feminist narrative" is even the first I would reach for in describing my feelings about how a person should not strangle their young pupil in a fit of rage and I am honestly a bit unsure of what you mean. Because I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that the reason a lot of people ITT are so triggered by "The Strangling" is that it's violence against women and they are looking at the episode from a scholarly feminist perspective. In and of itself, it's a terrible act of violence against a woman, and if it happened in real life, such a person would be castigated and never forgiven, a la Ray Rice. From that point of view it would make the 6th Doctor's character irredeemable, no matter what else he did. I'm saying that the Doctor's post regeneration behavior wasn't as much of an issue for me as was what he did to Peri later by leaving her. I'm probably one of those people who "puts it out of my mind" in order to accept the character. I see the whole incident and the subsequent behavior in the first of his episodes as post regenerative bonkers/something to retcon out--as opposed to redeem. Might as well be "half human on my mother's side" or the Mobius regenerations. Of course, I say that as someone who only watched the Twin Dilemma a few years ago, after having seen all of his other episodes and having heard most of his audios. So for me, I'd literally seen all of CBake's other output and that's the aberration as opposed to someone who might have viewed the episodes in order and has that coloring all his subsequent appearances on video and audio.
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Nov 7, 2014 06:40
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Astroman posted:In and of itself, it's a terrible act of violence against a woman, and if it happened in real life, such a person would be castigated and never forgiven, a la Ray Rice. How much do you hear nowadays about Sean Penn breaking into Madonna's house, tying her to a chair and beating her?
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Nov 7, 2014 09:47
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Or Chris Browns career being ruined. Or Russell Crowe
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Nov 7, 2014 10:26
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Little_wh0re posted:Or Chris Browns career being ruined. Or Russell Crowe Or Roman Polanski.
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Nov 7, 2014 10:40
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Loving Terror of the Autons. It's incredibly 70s everywhere. The Master is fabulous. My only problem is with Jo Grant's characterisation and I can forgive that since this is literally over 40 years old. Lots of unintentionally funny things like "It looks like they're taking us to some kind of quarry!" Yes, of course it's a quarry.
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Nov 7, 2014 11:01
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Bicyclops posted:He didn't. I think Doctor What is referring to is the memory erasure, although I don't really put that in the same category. It's kind of like that awful Skins episode where Tony has to rape Effy before he can phone an ambulance. Man, Skins was kinda hosed up before it went into that lame Effy/Cook/Freddie love triangle bullshit.
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Nov 7, 2014 11:05
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I was just reading some interesting facts about the Krotons because that's the sort of thing you do with your free time when you're a Doctor Who person, and apparently the reason they speak in a mangled South African accent is because Roy Skelton intended it as a comment against apartheid. More politically conscious choices for alien robot accents in Doctor Who in the future please, perhaps Cybermen with North Korean accents
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Nov 7, 2014 11:07
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Forktoss posted:I was just reading some interesting facts about the Krotons because that's the sort of thing you do with your free time when you're a Doctor Who person, and apparently the reason they speak in a mangled South African accent is because Roy Skelton intended it as a comment against apartheid. More politically conscious choices for alien robot accents in Doctor Who in the future please, perhaps Cybermen with North Korean accents ISIS Sontarans? Maybe do that Australian episode that some members of our government really want to happen, and do one about the Dalek Department of Immigration.
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Nov 7, 2014 11:19
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Bicyclops posted:I'd go so far as to say that the strangling does render Six close to irredeemable and that you essentially have to pretend it didn't happen to like him. You basically just have to block it from your mind entirely. It's not just the Sixth Doctor, it's the Doctor full stop. Six is the Doctor, whether you like it or not; people aren't absolved of culpability for their pasts because they change, even if they atone for what they've done. Which the Doctor doesn't, ever. I think a "let's deal with the strangling" story is necessary from a character perspective because of this, even though it's something that would be very difficult to handle and I'd have no faith in almost anyone to successfully pull it off. Also, re 2016: oh! I am an idiot.
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Nov 7, 2014 11:26
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Well of course there's a fairly major personality change, arguably the Doctors are different people who happen to share some memories. Ten certainly saw it that way. For further discussion of this topic I recommend Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1 episode 8, "Dax". It's established that two hosts of the same symbiont are in fact two separate entities despite the symbiont carrying on the memories and some traits of its past hosts, but not whether the current host should be held responsible for the crimes of the symbiont's past lives and the whole thing is rendered moot at the end anyway
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Nov 7, 2014 11:41
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Random Stranger posted:The London Eye was clearly visible when the Doctor was flying over London at the beginning of The Eleventh Hour which means that the Ponds had to be companions in the mid-2020's! And since they were companions off and on for several years, they probably go into the 2030's, even! Stephen Moffat actually mentions this in the commentary for that episode. He then goes on to give a rudimentary, semi-canonical explanation, viz., it's a time machine.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:09
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TinTower posted:It's kind of like that awful Skins episode where Tony has to rape Effy before he can phone an ambulance. don't remember that. his sister? really?
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Nov 7, 2014 12:34
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vegetables posted:It's not just the Sixth Doctor, it's the Doctor full stop. Six is the Doctor, whether you like it or not; people aren't absolved of culpability for their pasts because they change, even if they atone for what they've done. Which the Doctor doesn't, ever. In regards to the strangling, it's obvious that the writer did not intend for the Doctor to become a beater or abuser of women, and you kind of have to take that path going forward or the whole character is just totally morally bankrupt from 1984 or whatever on. I really do think pretending it didn't happen is the best way to go about it. I don't think any bit of headcanon or actual canon can sufficiently explain it away. I mean, ignoring it is lovely, but not ignoring it just casts a shadow over the rest of the show.
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Nov 7, 2014 12:51
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Yeah I think it should probably be ignored. I'm not saying it's non-canon or anything, it's just that The Doctor is a character rather than a real person and it seems stupid to let one bad writer tar him forever.
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Nov 7, 2014 13:56
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Cerv posted:don't remember that. his sister? really? It was the finale of season 1 I think? Trapped at the party with the posh boys.
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Nov 7, 2014 14:03
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Everything is non-canon.
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Nov 7, 2014 14:04
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Yeah I think it should probably be ignored. I'm not saying it's non-canon or anything, it's just that The Doctor is a character rather than a real person and it seems stupid to let one bad writer tar him forever. Yeah, pretty much. This got me curious enough to look up the writer, who also worked on All Creatures Great and Small, which I haven't seen but do see mentioned a lot, as well as some 1960s adaptations of the D'Artagnan romances. He began his career writing for the tabloids. The Twin Dilemma is his only writing on Doctor Who.
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Nov 7, 2014 14:56
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He can also claim to have given the best/worst reason for being unable to complete his Who script: his typewriter exploded. E: More generally, though, it seems a bit unfair to definitively blame Anthony Steven for the strangling scene, as opening/closing TARDIS scenes (especially in terms of continuity for a new Doctor's first story) would typically be handled by the script editor rather than the scriptwriter. I don't know if this is specifically true for The Twin Dilemma, but given that Saward had to finish the scripts himself (and also rewrite a lot of it), it's possible it's actually another element of the creative bankruptcy the show found itself in around 1985, rather than simply due to a dodgy script from a one-time Who writer. pinacotheca fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Nov 7, 2014 |
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Nov 7, 2014 15:02
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Forktoss posted:I was just reading some interesting facts about the Krotons because that's the sort of thing you do with your free time when you're a Doctor Who person, and apparently the reason they speak in a mangled South African accent is because Roy Skelton intended it as a comment against apartheid. More politically conscious choices for alien robot accents in Doctor Who in the future please, perhaps Cybermen with North Korean accents Man everyone should know this already, or at least they would had I posted my review of the Krotons which I got bored of writing when it got past 3000 words
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Nov 7, 2014 15:27
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