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Best Producer/Showrunner? This poll is closed. |
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| Verity Lambert |
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49 | 7.04% |
| John Wiles |
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1 | 0.14% |
| Innes Lloyd |
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1 | 0.14% |
| Peter Bryant |
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3 | 0.43% |
| Derrick Sherwin |
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3 | 0.43% |
| Barry Letts |
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12 | 1.72% |
| Phillip Hinchcliffe |
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62 | 8.91% |
| Graham Williams |
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3 | 0.43% |
| John Nathan-Turner |
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15 | 2.16% |
| Philip Segal |
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3 | 0.43% |
| Russel T Davies |
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106 | 15.23% |
| Steven Moffat |
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114 | 16.38% |
| Son Goku |
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324 | 46.55% |
| Total: | 696 votes | ||
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jng2058 posted:If it was just Vashtra and Jenny, that spin-off I could see. It's a Victorian adventuress and her servant/lover having steampunky or Holmesian adventures. And she happens to be a lizard with a sword. No problem, and when we first met them I actually hoped for that very thing. I feel that a Paternoster gang spin-off is about as close to Jago & Litefoot being on TV as we can possibly get, so I'm all for it. I love the "early science meets the unexplainable" schtick (J&L, some Sherlock Holmes bits, Scarifyers, Indiana Jones, etc). I just don't see there being enough of an audience for that sort of thing on TV right now.
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Jul 7, 2014 15:50
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Diabolik900 posted:FYI the scripts for the first five episodes of the new season have apparently leaked, so be careful online for the next seven weeks! As an important note, it's definitely been confirmed by the BBC that the first five scripts have been leaked, and there are actually people saying that the episodes themselves leaked as well. If there are any returning villains or heroes of import in the first five episodes, or relevant plot details as to the "season arc" (if there is one), you can bet that Daily Mail will splash it across a headline in the next couple of days, so don't put the words "Doctor Who" into Google until August if you want to go in fresh.
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Jul 7, 2014 15:58
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Bicyclops posted:As an important note, it's definitely been confirmed by the BBC that the first five scripts have been leaked, and there are actually people saying that the episodes themselves leaked as well. If there are any returning villains or heroes of import in the first five episodes, or relevant plot details as to the "season arc" (if there is one), you can bet that Daily Mail will splash it across a headline in the next couple of days, so don't put the words "Doctor Who" into Google until August if you want to go in fresh. You never had this problem when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor!
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Jul 7, 2014 16:06
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I've seen the leaked scripts and all I can say is the opening to Deep Breath is absolutely fantastic
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Jul 7, 2014 16:09
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CobiWann posted:You never had this problem when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor! Because Pertwee would've garotted anyone who tried?
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Jul 7, 2014 16:24
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CobiWann posted:You never had this problem when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor! Indeed the 1970s were a different time. ...Or was it the 1980s? 
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Jul 7, 2014 16:35
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CobiWann posted:You never had this problem when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor! Except he still is? 
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Jul 7, 2014 17:48
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bpc908 posted:I've seen the leaked scripts and all I can say is the opening to Deep Breath is absolutely fantastic I'll provide some balance and say that I read the opening and it was bad. It's very Moffatty so if you don't like his recent episodes you probably won't like this either.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:56
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Please stop posting about that. I don't want to know how "Moffaty" the opening is, I don't want to know anything! As an aside, I have now watched all of New Who.  And now I no longer have a new episode of Who waiting whenever I feel like it. Time to wait (and commence the Series 8 hype  )
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Jul 7, 2014 19:38
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Bicyclops posted:Indeed the 1970s were a different time. May you find yourself a tertiary character in the opening episode of a Phillip Hinchcliffe serial.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:47
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CobiWann posted:May you find yourself a tertiary character in the opening episode of a Phillip Hinchcliffe serial. It's................
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Jul 7, 2014 19:52
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bobkatt013 posted:It's................ *Monty Python theme starts*
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Jul 7, 2014 22:11
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3IZ7xS2ps
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Jul 7, 2014 22:24
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What kind of monster would leak scripts/episodes early? To what possible purpose or benefit? It just boggles my mind.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:52
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Jerusalem posted:What kind of monster would leak scripts/episodes early? To what possible purpose or benefit? It just boggles my mind. Story is that a guy making subtitles in America accidentally uploaded them to a less than secure part of the work intranet, or something along those lines. vvv What I said didn't imply that it was made up
MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 22:54
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Story is that a guy making subtitles in America accidentally uploaded them to a less than secure part of the work intranet, or something along those lines. Not a story, it's what happened. The BBC sent out the scripts to be translated because they are simulcasting the first episode, so they needed translations early, and the guy put them up on the public server for the place he works.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:56
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Well that just proves the old adage "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
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Jul 7, 2014 23:15
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Jerusalem posted:Well that just proves the old adage "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Or...it's all part of someone's master plan. 
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Jul 7, 2014 23:41
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The Seventh Doctor actually wrote a bunch of fake scripts and sent them to Miami in 2014 for close captioning, so that nobody would find the real scripts before they aired. Truly the puppetmaster.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:47
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Bicyclops posted:The Seventh Doctor actually wrote a bunch of fake scripts and sent them to Miami in 2014 for close captioning, so that nobody would find the real scripts before they aired. Truly the puppetmaster. Having read the scripts we can only hope this is true.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:49
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So... am I the only one bothered by "Scripts sucked/Scripts are awesome" chat? Because if it's just me, I'll happily stop lurking in this thread until August... or I guess until after episode 5 airs. But if it's as annoying to other folks as it is to me, could the script-readers just... keep it in
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Jul 7, 2014 23:53
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Eiba posted:So... am I the only one bothered by "Scripts sucked/Scripts are awesome" chat? Because if it's just me, I'll happily stop lurking in this thread until August... or well after episode 5 airs, I guess. People having opinions isn't a spoiler, but sure, I'll jump back over there.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:54
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Eiba posted:So... am I the only one bothered by "Scripts sucked/Scripts are awesome" chat? Because if it's just me, I'll happily stop lurking in this thread until August... or I guess until after episode 5 airs. If it helps, the people who voluntarily read the serious spoilers are usually people who have sort of given up on the show and tend toward the negative, so their opinions probably aren't giving much of anything away. I haven't read the scripts myself and am just making terribly obvious Classic Who jokes. Anyway, I'm currently hearing the end of The Juggernauts, which is definitely not one of Big Finish's better stories. It's kind of a generic, classic Davros and Daleks story, with a fairly forgettable First Doctor creature thrown in for a bit of a surprise.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:04
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Bicyclops posted:If it helps, the people who voluntarily read the serious spoilers are usually people who have sort of given up on the show and tend toward the negative, so their opinions probably aren't giving much of anything away. I haven't read the scripts myself and am just making terribly obvious Classic Who jokes. Juggernauts was definitely an attempt at re-bottling the gorgeous lightning that was Davros. It is a blast, however hearing Terry Malloy playing someone different... the enigmatically named Dr. Vasso. He seems nice.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:21
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After The War posted:Juggernauts was definitely an attempt at re-bottling the gorgeous lightning that was Davros. It is a blast, however hearing Terry Malloy playing someone different... the enigmatically named Dr. Vasso. No. Dr. Vaso, One "s". Otherwise you can't have the anagram of Davros. Also, you can't understand a word the Mechanoids say.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:25
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Davros1 posted:No. Dr. Vaso, One "s". Otherwise you can't have the anagram of Davros. Also, you can't understand a word the Mechanoids say. Different on-line sources spell it differently. I guess Silas Davros is just clever like that!
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Jul 8, 2014 00:30
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42, like the preceding season 3 episode, is a mostly forgettable but non-offensive standard episode of Doctor Who. The one place it stands out is in its use of (roughly) real-time - the 42 minutes that the Doctor has to save the crashing ship roughly equates to 42 minutes within the show itself. The episode doesn't really do anything bad, but nor does it really accomplish anything special either - outside of one brilliant moment - and I feel this is down to the writer. Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who career has involved his producing episodes that at best are standard and at worse are blatant knock-offs of the style of either RTD or Moffat, and this is no different (in his defense, the moment he got to produce something all his own he made the superb Broadchurch, which I highly recommend everybody watch at least once). Long-serving Who director Graeme Harper directs the episode solidly enough but it is for the most part an entirely unremarkable job.... apart from that one utterly superb moment mentioned earlier. The Doctor and Martha answer a distress call and arrive on a space-ship whose engines have been sabotaged, causing them to begin to fall out of control towards a star. With the TARDIS in a room too hot for them to enter and the security doors locked down, it's up to the Doctor to repair the engines while Martha and another crew member work to get the security doors open and access the bridge controls. Complicating things are the saboteur, who is possessed by a vengeful alien creature, and a Captain who is deliberately trying to hide her own complicity in events and refuses to believe the saboteur (her husband) is responsible. This set-up seemingly gives Martha something to do, and to be fair she does get a lot more to do this episode... but again she seems to serve mostly as a catalyst for the development of OTHER storylines/characters. Making use of the "universal roaming" the Doctor has given her phone, she calls her mother for help with a "quiz night" that is actually her attempt to open one of the security doors. She'll call her mother several times during the episode, during which time we learn she is working with members of Harold Saxon's staff, who are apparently doing their best to track Martha's calls to discover the location of the Doctor. For me this creates more of the same problem that was present in the previous episode - Martha's mother has reacted far too strongly to the Doctor to make any sense, especially when considered from her point of view/the passage of time. She complains bitterly about how strangely Martha has been acting ever since she met the Doctor, but keep in mind that it has basically been roughly a week since the hospital incident and Francine has only seen the Doctor and Martha together ONCE, at Lazarus' demonstration. The show seems to have forgotten that from a relative point of view it has been a couple of (admittedly highly eventful) days since the start of season 3, whereas for Martha there have been a few weeks of insane adventures. Francine reacts like she is privy to the same events as the viewers, like she has seen Martha many times and noticed a disturbing change in her daughter's behavior that she can link to the Doctor. But she met him once, at a party, where some stranger said,"Hey that Doctor guy is bad news" while a giant scorpion monster was running around sucking the fluids out of people's bodies. Some of this might be explained by Saxon's background machinations, of course. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is the first instance where we see the Archangel logo on Martha's mobile phone. At the end of the season we'll learn that Saxon's Archangel Mobile Phone Network created a psychic field that basically allowed him to pull off a trick of mass hypnosis, making people trust him... and distrust who he told them to distrust. But while Martha is mostly acting as a catalyst, there is one moment where this episode shines. Confronted by another possessed crewmember, Martha and Riley hide in an escape pod. Unluckily for them, the possessed crewmember (Ashton) seems to still be able to operate software (raising horrifying thoughts about the depth of the possession) and they scramble to prevent it from launching the pod. The Doctor arrives to confront Ashton but he is too late, and in the best shot and most powerful moment in the entire episode, he and Martha stare in horror across the gulf of space as her pod falls towards the sun. They scream and shout to each other but we get silence, which makes the moment all the more powerful. It's at this moment that Martha feels the full weight of her decision to travel with the Doctor come crashing down, as she realizes that she is going to die and her family will never know what happened to her. At Riley's insistence she calls her mother and tearfully tries to make peace with her while struggling not to blurt out what is happening. A similar thing happened with Rose and Jackie in season 1 but in that case it was Rose's realization while in the future that Jackie was long dead and then getting to return to the present and see her alive that caused the breakdown. Here, Martha differentiates herself most strongly from Rose as a character beyond simply saying,"I'm not Rose!". Rose never quite grasped or accepted the idea that she could die, she was (to put it in unfair terms) a self-centered person. Martha, however, is somebody who puts the thoughts and feelings of others ahead of herself, often to a fault. Rather than thinking,"Everybody that matters to ME is dead and that makes ME sad" she thinks,"I'll die and THEY will never know and THEY will always wonder what happened and THEY will be sad." Of course the Doctor saves her, but in the process he leaves himself open to possession as well. It is always refreshing when the Doctor is left vulnerable like this. It's always tempting to think of him as not having the same vulnerability/weakness of a human being, but things would get boring pretty quickly if he was never at risk. While he fights it longer than a human would be able to, in the end he succumbs to the possession, and the only thing that keeps his mind from being burned out (or his body's defense mechanism kicking in and regenerating him) is the lucky timing of the crew dumping the fuel that caused all this trouble in the first place. The supporting actors are mostly disposable with a couple of exceptions. The Captain - McDonnell - could be argued as the actual monster of the story, and perhaps I should give Chibnall more credit in writing her as sympathetic and even heroic and self-sacrificing in parts while also making it clear she is completely to blame for the predicament they are in, and continually lies about her complicity in these events. Riley feels like his part was edited, there seems to be a short-circuited development of a relationship (or perhaps just recognition of kindred spirits) between he and Martha, but even with the enormous stress of the escape pod event the closeness they exhibit at the end and bittersweet parting seems to come out of nowhere. The other supporting characters are.... nothing. They're disposable non-entities, there simply to be up the "poo poo's getting real!" factor by having them killed or possessed by the creature. RTD would do much better than Chibnall in a similar situation with Waters of Mars, where the characters would at least have the semblance of a personality/history before being "taken" by The Flood. The creature is kind of confusing, I can never tell if the possession is physical or psychic or a combination of the two. When the stolen fuel (actually a part of the living sun) is returned the ship automatically starts up again (the surviving crew had reached the controls but couldn't get them to react), suggesting that the sun was preventing it from escaping all along... but then why possess one of the humans and smash up the engine parts? If psychic then how do the humans generate the heat to "BURN WITH ME"? If physical then how do the possessed beings retain the ability to speak English and remember how to operate software? Are they separate creatures or a single entity that can possess more than one body? If so why not just possess every member of the crew instead of burning them, then crash the ship into the sun and thus regain the stolen part of itself AND kill the jerks who took it? Thought didn't seem to go much further than the visual of the possessed crewmember wearing a creepy mask and saying creepy things. Like The Lazarus Experiment, this episode doesn't really stand out. It isn't bad, it actually does more with Martha than usual, it furthers the Saxon subplot, puts the Doctor into a vulnerable spot, and experiments with the real-time format.... but none of this feels particularly special or noteworthy. The episode is perfectly functional, it is easy to watch and I never regret watching it... but I promptly forget it once I have, and generally have to be reminded it even exists when thinking back over older episodes. They can't all be amazing episodes that stand out in your mind for years or decades to come, but at least even terrible episodes tend to be memorable. 42's biggest problem is that it is nothing more or less than an episode of Doctor Who, it disappears into the pack and never stands out in its own right.
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Jul 8, 2014 01:48
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Yeah, poo poo...I'm out (of the spoiler thread). I usually hang around in there and speculate on rumors about poo poo until a few days before the finale when the deep synopsis comes out. I probably post more in the spoiler thread then this one, sometimes. But the first 5 full scripts? That's a bridge too far. Also I don't know what it is, but after the mechanizations of the past couple years, with the big notes to hit of Anniversary, Regeneration, etc am I spoilered out? Like for some reason with this new Doctor I just want to go in fresh. I totally trust Capaldi to play him awesome and there's no burning need I feel to know some of the big upcoming things like I normally do.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:12
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Eiba posted:So... am I the only one bothered by "Scripts sucked/Scripts are awesome" chat? Because if it's just me, I'll happily stop lurking in this thread until August... or I guess until after episode 5 airs.  But honestly, I've read scripts for a lot of things that sounded terrible in my head, but I was picturing something entirely different than what I got. So the naysayers aren't bugging me much. I can just assume that they're lacking in imagination.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:45
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LividLiquid posted:No. They're actively talking about episodes that haven't aired yet. It's spoilers, through and through, and I don't dig on those, especially when the events are time-locked. I also find that some of the chief complaints many have about the show aren't necessarily the ones that I share. I don't like Moffat's writing on women and I think the characterization of his companions suffer for it, and I think his season arcs are frequently a bit infuriating and nonsensical. He has some pacing issues. Some of his stuff I can get past it, some of it I can't. But if he injects any kind of whimsy or fun into anything, there are a group of people who complain that they're tired of young, twee, cutesy Doctors or "catchphrases." I think people expecting Capaldi to play Malcolm Tucker are going to be disappointed. There's no way he isn't going to be silly and childish sometimes, and I don't personally want that to change.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:31
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Just having the scripts probably wouldn't work for the core of the whole thing in this case, anyway. I could see being satisfied with them if you got the scripts for Season 6, or the middle of an ongoing season, or something; the important bits then are all known quantities, so you can probably get reasonably close by just imagining what you're gonna see. I don't think I could be happy with just reading the scripts here, because there's a lot of big things that I just don't know. Capaldi's the most important part, of course, and a script's not going to give me much idea of how he's going to play the Doctor, but the same is true from a lot of the things I've seen from the teasers that the Doctor Who Tumblr puts out (which I wouldn't suggest lookig for; there's a couple things I'd definitely class as spoilery, and the rest isn't even that helpful).
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Jul 8, 2014 04:35
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To be fair, even after reading the scripts, I would rather watch the episode. Something about reading doesn't really get a grasp on how the actor will portray the character
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Jul 8, 2014 05:00
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bpc908 posted:Something about reading doesn't really get a grasp on how the actor will portray the character Absolutely. A script could be written one way and then performed entirely differently by the actor depending on their mood, interpretation and whatever else is going on at the set that day and how they're reacting to other actors. Then an editor comes along and chops and changes things to fit the narrative they're trying to create and suddenly you've got something that might have only the barest passing similarity to what was on the page. And of course back in the 70s and 80s you mad ol' Tom Baker lurching about either having a great time or sulking and pouting like a pissed off teenager. 
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Jul 8, 2014 05:10
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Jerusalem posted:And of course back in the 70s or 80s you mad ol' Tom Baker lurching about either having a great time or sulking and pouting like a pissed off teenager. You need to check the dating protocol  .
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Jul 8, 2014 05:17
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Neddy Seagoon posted:You need to check the dating protocol Why? According to Doctor Who I don't need to date, just meet and fall in love with a complete stranger after less than a day and decide to stay with them at roughly the same time my contract with the BBC runs out and I want more money!
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Jul 8, 2014 05:20
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Jerusalem posted:Why? According to Doctor Who I don't need to date, just meet and fall in love with a complete stranger after less than a day and decide to stay with them at roughly the same time my contract with the BBC runs out and I want more money! Oh come on, that only happened to Susan. And Vicki. And Jo. Plus Leela, Peri, Mel... It only happened to all of them!
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Jul 8, 2014 05:44
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Still, anything is better than what happened to Dodo. "Where's Dodo?" "Who gives a poo poo?" "Fair enough."
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Jul 8, 2014 05:50
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Jerusalem posted:Still, anything is better than what happened to Dodo. "She left without even saying goodbye! Right in the middle of one of my adventures. Now I shall be alone!" (Polly and Ben wander in.) "Well, that was a freebie." (The Doctor yanks on the dematerialization controls.)
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Jul 8, 2014 05:54
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Bicyclops posted:(Polly and Ben wander in.) Ben & Polly: So what happens now? Doctor: Now I die and turn into a completely different person and ditch you for a Scotsman! 
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Jul 8, 2014 05:56
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Yeah, a script is just a template, acting, shooting, editing and direction all have their own equal importance in determining how good the final product is. I haven't read the scripts, but consider how many different adaptations of Titus Andronicus or Romeo and Juliet there have been and how many of them are better or worse than others despite the same characters featuring and lines being read. Writing is important too of course but it's not really possible to judge the finished quality of the episodes based on just scripts! I haven't read the scripts or even looked for them, for what that's worth, so I'm not doing a "well, they're pretty bad, but they could turn out good!" thing here. I'm just saying the script is only a part of the story. Android Blues fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 06:15
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