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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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I made the first vote of the poll and Phillip Hinchcliffe has 100% of the votes. This is accurate and this percentage should not change. 
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Feb 19, 2014 08:58
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:53 |
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Here are gifs from the last year/season of Matt Smith's run, including Day of the Doctor and Time of the Doctor. I have plenty of stuff from the previous seasons as well that I'll get around to creating an album at a later date.jng2058 posted:And if we were only discussing the quality of stories, you'd have a point. But showrunner includes a lot of poo poo that never makes it to the screen and for that you've got to respect Verity for getting the whole thing rolling and RTD for bringing it back from the dead. If I was voting purely on quality of stories I'd give the nod to Moffat. Hinchcliffe ran the show during a period where everybody was bringing their A game, the show was running as smooth as could be, riding a massive wave of popularity and spreading out into demographics that had ignored or been uninterested in the show before. As far as I'm concerned the Hinchcliffe/Holmes/Baker era has never been topped in terms of creativity, success and a relatively smooth production running in the background (Tom was still creatively happy and not being such a menace on set).
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Feb 19, 2014 10:36
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CobiWann posted:
A magnificent story. The plot is a little over-complicated, the supporting characters (including Romana, sadly) are uneven with subplots that don't particularly go anywhere or have endings that don't feel quite earned, and the nods to continuity just muddy the waters a bit too much. But all that said, it doesn't matter, because the performance of Paul McGann utterly elevates this story to the top, and the emotional side of things more than makes up for the the rather clunky technical aspects of the story. I can't praise McGann enough in this story. Whether he's cheerfully mocking the Time Lords or the Never People or desperately trying to hide Charley away in her "birthday gift", or the utterly brilliant section where he refuses to do something another character insists is utterly essential, he absolutely owns the role. The latter bit in particular is the best, because it links in so beautifully with the man we saw in The Night of the Doctor, the guy who was willing to stand on the other side of a door and die in a crash when he could have easily escaped in his TARDIS. Why? Because this is the guy who refuses to give up, who refuses to accept that death is the only option. This is the guy who couldn't have used The Moment to kill the Time Lords and the Daleks and regenerated so a "different" Doctor could make the decisions that he absolutely refused to. This is "the man who never would", and that character trait has never been clearer to me than in this story, at that moment when he is given an easy out that would solve all the problems and refuses to take it because it is not right. I understand that Big Finish, despite not being allowed to mention/do stories about The Time War, took it upon themselves to begin setting things up so that McGann's Doctor could conceivably have been in a position to be the one that did it. In light of how excellent this story was, and what we now know about the 8th Doctor's ultimate fate, I hope that they will veer away from making the 8th Doctor "darker". Allow him dismay at the horrors he sees for certain, but don't let him lose that desperate hope we saw in Night of the Doctor or indeed in the end of this story - the idea that somehow there is always another way, and that while he might gladly sacrifice himself for the greater good (as he does in Night) he would never sacrifice anybody else, not if he can help it. Charley has some good, strong moments in the story but sadly spends a great deal of it just sitting around complaining but unable to do anything else. While this is a little unfair since India Fisher has a dual-role and ends up with probably more airtime than even McGann, it does add to the sense that the story bit off a little more than it could chew in the provided format. The story is in two long parts rather than four standard ones and I don't think it really works all that well, it would have been better to keep the standard format so that the lengthy periods where a particular character doesn't show up don't appear to be as long. Breaking things up/resetting with the opening and closing themes goes a long way towards helping that, even if you are listening to everything all at once rather than an episode at a time. Charley gets to show how much her travels with the Doctor have helped her to grow as a person, and her selfless offer of sacrifice mirrors the Doctor's own all too well. It is important to note that the Time Lords were all too willing to sacrifice her to "fix" things and that she fought that every step of the way, but was more than happy to make that choice for herself when she felt it was necessary. Functionally the two sides are identical, but there is no doubt (for me anyway) that the Time Lords are morally wrong and Charley is morally right - it is the difference between Oates saying he is going outside and may be some time, and Scott bashing his head in with a frozen huskie. Unfortunately I was less impressed with Fisher's performance as Sentris, which was a character with a lot of potential. I don't know if it is because they post-processed it so much or because she delibertately chose (or was told) to make Sentris' speech patterns slow and measured, but it felt like she was phoning in the performance most of the time. Her delivery and tone didn't match what she was saying at all, often I got the feeling she was supposed to sound bemused or angry or offended but she just gave the same sonorous, stable delivery. I know she can deliver a better performance than that and even her default delivery is pretty great (I could listen to her describe food on MasterChef all day :allears) so this was disappointing. However, I do love the resolution of Charley's "wrongful" existence, I thought it was a fantastic way of showing the web of time incorporating the paradox into the thread - she died but she lived which gave anti-time access to the universe and threatened to destroy time, but because of that the problem (she inadvertantly caused!) was able to be fixed, and therefore it was a necessary and established part of the flow of events - history now records that Charley died and lived simultaneously without any sense of,"Wait, that makes no sense!". The supporting characters, sadly, feel underwritten. Romana's story goes nowhere, she gets where she is going, we learn that she can't do anything, and then she just kinda hangs out there till she is informed what happened and given a choice to leave or stay. It is a shame because Romana is a fascinating character and Lalla Ward is a good actress, and I was looking forward to hearing her again. I haven't listened to The Apocalypse Element so I don't know if they got it all out of the way then or not, but the lack of warmth between her and the Doctor was noticeable - I felt like she was being treated as another one-off part who had returned for an audio, as opposed to a long-standing companion of the Doctor's during a particularly popular and well-regarded run on the show who had been written out as becoming very "Doctor-ish" in her own right. She makes a few exasperated comments in regards to the Doctor but they're the kind of lines that could have been made by anyone... in fact Vansell - an entirely new character! - gets written as if he and the Doctor have a longer and more storied history than the Doctor and Romana! Vansell himself could have been a pretty interesting character, slimy and entirely too convinced of the necessity of his actions. Unfortunately they kind of rob his actions of any agency with the throwaway line that Romana thinks he may have been entirely influenced to do everything he did, as opposed to the Never People using his pre-existing motivations and drawing him further down the path he was already committed to[spoiler]. I think that also wrecks any redemption in his final actions, because it's just somebody doing what they would have always done without external influence, as opposed to somebody realizing the error of their ways and trying to make amends. There is a lot of missed/robbed potential in this story like that, I would have loved a further exploration of the impact and psychological damage caused by using The Oubliette of Eternity. But not only do they fail to really examine it further, apart from a brief few lines by the Doctor they also ignore the fact of Sentris' hypocritical motivations - [spoiler]Sentris committed self-dissipation using the Oubliette out of guilt over all the times they discovered they had already used it, and then seeks to wipe out the rest of the universe in a similar fashion in "revenge" for the process that created the Never People. The Doctor uses it as an example of why Charley is a better person than Sentris, but they could have really delved into this facet of the character, as opposed to spending their time on Sentris dragging on in a modulated voice about the end of the Time Lords. Rassilon features heavily in the story as a figure of legend and worship, and is one of the major reasons for the expedition into Anti-Time. The search for his body makes zero sense since we already know WHERE his body is from The Five Doctors, and yet even though the Doctor actually brings this up it then gets tucked under the bed and everybody apparently forgets about it until the SHOCKING reveal that that's not Rassilon's body inside the casket after all!  . I found that aspect of things really confusing, and while the acceptance of conflicting information might make sense for those supposedly infected by Anti-Time, the fact that Romana and the Doctor accept it as well (after the Doctor's initial slight objection) just makes the whole thing weird. Of course, Rassilon in this story is established as a hero, a wise and just ruler who was farsighted and fair. In The Five Doctors the 2nd Doctor notes that this public image of Rassilon MIGHT have hid a darker secret of a man obsessed with immortality and callous about using and abusing others for his own amusement. Given what happens in The End of Time that appears to have been the way Rassilon was, and it conflicts with the image in this story. That said, I think both interpretations can and do fit - I can see Rassilon as a benevolent figure who rose the Time Lords to the height of power in the universe who then became corrupted by his own power. I can see his mind continuing to work even in his "sleep", and removed from power and temptation becoming the wise and benevolent figure once more. And I can see him resurrected by the Time Lords in their desperation during the Time War, and in the face of that madness becoming utterly corrupted again and obsessed with keeping the Time Lords at the top of the universe.You could argue the ending is a bit of a Deus Ex Machina, as the Doctor does something very clever and EXTREMELY dangerous in an act of sacrifice requiring split-second timing only for Rassilon to step in and fix everything in order to show his favor for the Doctor's selfless actions. I love the cliffhanger that results though, I can't believe so many stories sat between that cliffhanger and the resolution, and I can't wait to listen to Zagreus and hear how it all works out. Neverland is a fantastic resolution to the arc of Charley's impossible existence, overpowering its overly-optimistic complicated storyline/themes with a powerful emotional performance by Paul McGann and strong work from India Fisher. Not the strongest overall Big Finish story I've listened to, it is a very satisfying climax to everything that has gone before, though I would not recommend it at all as a standalone story - you need to have heard at least some of the stories before it to get the most from it. Also, I quite honestly (and shamefacedly) have to admit that I had no idea the R101 airship and its crash was an actual historical event, and had assumed all along that it was going to be written out of time in some way. Once that remained unresolved I actually went and looked it up and discovered it actually happened, and I don't understand why I've never heard of it before. I guess the Hindenburg gets all the attention because there is video and audio footage of its crash, so at least Doctor Who has achieved one part of its original educational intentions!
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Feb 20, 2014 01:53
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Discovering cultural differences can be fun (the idea that so many Americans have no idea what paper crowns and crackers are is just bewildering to me) and also deeply depressing (the idea of universal healthcare being despised, discovering how many Americans don't get paid annual leave as a matter of course etc). It is always a good reminder that what we consider as "normal" is based entirely on our own upbringing, environment and culture.CobiWann posted:I do want to ask this, as you’ve gone through McGann’s audio line at a good clip. It seems like there’s a good mix of “OId Who” stories, such as Storm Warning or Invaders from Mars where the historical setting or event is one of the driving forces, and “New Who” stories like The Chimes of Midnight or even Minuet in Hell, where the focus is much more on the players and the plot and the setting is mostly window dressing. But then along comes something like Neverland, Zagreus and pretty much the entire upcoming Divergent Universe arc from Scherzo to The Next Life. Neverland and Zagreus both felt like…they weren’t “Who” stories in the traditional sense. Time travel and the destruction of the universe, sure, and they featured the Doctor as a main character, but I couldn’t fit either story into a “Old Who” or a “New Who” box. Am I making any sense? I understand what you mean, though I disagree. I think Neverland would fit right in with the revival style as a season ender wrapping up the little oddities and mysteries and odd happenstances occurring around Charley. That said, I haven't listened to Zagreus yet or any of the divergent arc so I don't know if I'm about to encounter something truly unique and weird that feels completely alien to either the classic or revival series. CobiWann posted:…hold on. Jerusalem, you don’t happen to be over 1200 years old, do you? Run around with attractive young women? Know Venusian Aikido or how to play the spoons? Well, I can confirm that I never had sex with Billie Piper!
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Feb 20, 2014 22:35
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Yeah I jumped onto that as soon as I could, it was such a joy to pick up a Pertwee story in HD but also a shame, since I knew that it isn't really possible to do this for any other classic era story.
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Feb 21, 2014 02:57
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egon_beeblebrox posted:Why is Sylvester McCoy in this? Sylvester McCoy likes it when people give him money.
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Feb 21, 2014 04:54
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School Reunion wasn't written by RTD, but this is HIS story nonetheless. From the very beginning RTD wanted Sarah Jane Smith to return to the show, to explore what happens to a companion after they stop traveling with the Doctor. I imagine there was a very real (and perhaps justified) fear at the BBC about the idea of embracing the old continuity of the show too closely, nobody wanted the revival to be too closely associated with the classic series, the colored unfortunately by the derided latter years of the show and the idea of low production values, "wobbly" sets and crap monsters. Even though it was never outright stated, there were many who felt like the revival was meant to be considered a reboot of the show as a whole, that it was a remake of the original Doctor Who and not a continuation of that show. With the revival a smashing success and RTD's big gamble of using his clout to return Doctor Who to the air having paid off, I like to think this episode gave him a chance to just say,"gently caress it, let's wallow in the Classic run and haul the new audience along for the ride!  "The Return of Sarah Jane is handled amazingly well. The Doctor doesn't run into her on the street or decide to stop by and pick her up or anything. She has agency, she is proactive, she is out there doing things. Notably, our first look at her comes before she meets the Doctor, so we don't get to share in the initial shock of his seeing her after so many centuries - instead she appears beforehand involved in her own investigation/adventure, and even when she meets the Doctor she doesn't know it is him at first. So she continues on, breaking into the school on her own without needing any prompting from anybody else, at which point her investigation/adventure merges in with the Doctor's - she isn't reacting or being brought along for the ride, she's instigating and is there as an equal partner. To be fair, it would be easy to lose the new viewers here as we don't learn how the Doctor and Sarah Jane knew each other before this story and aren't told until Rose - often the audience stand-in - asks and gets the explanation. But the writing and, most importantly the acting, gets across admirably well the sense that,"These two know each other, these two have a history." The Doctor's stunned, stupidly happy reaction to seeing her again and his later wander through the corridors in a happy daze is just perfect, matching exactly my own reaction as a classic viewer who knows only too well who Sarah Jane is. My earliest cogent memories of Doctor Who were watching the 3rd Doctor and Jo Grant having adventures with the Brigadier, but even though Jo was "first" for me Sarah Jane was always my favorite. The companion/actor with the longest consecutive time spent together with the Doctor, Sarah Jane for quite some time was THE Companion for the Doctor, the one I judged all others against, and her time with the Doctor mirrors Rose's so well - weird-goings on, suspicion about how the Doctor is involved, befriending him and seeing sights you never thought possible, seeing him regenerate, growing ever closer to him till suddenly one day the two are parted irrevocably and she is left to pick up the pieces by herself. But of course the question is whether or not an actress who was on the show 30 years earlier can really fit in with the modern environment. Elisabeth Sladen proves more than up to the task, in fact I'd rank the moment when she discovers the TARDIS as one of the greatest moments in the show's 50 year history. The disbelief bordering on horror, the way she backs off and then finds herself face to face with the man she assumes MUST be the Doctor, it all sells the massive influx of conflicting emotions that the character must have been feeling (and indeed, the actor as well, considering this is her return to the show that was such a large part of her life). Her conversation with the Doctor, the disbelief and incredulity followed by anger mixed with happiness and then joyful acceptance are wonderful, and it is fantastic to hear the return of little touches like her trademark little,"Hmmm" noise that she used to make. Liz Sladen originally didn't want to return just to reprise the role of "Sarah Jane Smith: Companion" but once she read the script and realized the strong focus not only on her character but also the exploration of what it meant for her character to be abandoned the way she was she happily agreed. Throughout the rest of the episode, whether it is bickering or bonding with Rose, or questioning the Doctor's actions or offering advice to Mickey or forcing the Doctor to just for once say goodbye (he wouldn't even say goodbye to his own granddaughter, telling her that he would come back, yes, he would come back), she is far more than just a cameo or a nice nod to the past. Her character actively engages and drives not just the story but the relationships of the other characters ahead. I like Katy Manning, I think Sophie Aldred is Ace, and it is always a blast to see Frazer Hines or Janet Felding again, but I don't think any other actor/character other than Liz Sladen/Sarah Jane would or could have had as much of an impact. Sarah Jane's return also serves as a great splash of cold water in Rose's face and even appears to puncture for a time her growing romantic fascination with her idealized concept of the Doctor. Suddenly she has to deal with the idea that not only is she not the first companion the Doctor has had, but that she won't be the last either. Sarah Jane is a vision of her own future, this is somebody who was as close to the Doctor as Rose is, and yet the Doctor left her behind and never mentioned her once to Rose. Is this to be her fate too? The Doctor assures her that it won't be but this time she isn't willing to just listen to nice platitudes - Sarah Jane probably felt the same way and look what happened to her. Here the Doctor delivers what I think is one of the more powerful lines of the revival, and one that has special relevance to Rose - "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you." Perhaps the comparisons between the Doctor/Companion dynamic and a romantic relationship is a little too on the nose for some, but whatever Rose's delusions may be I don't put any stock in the idea that this episode recasts the 3rd/4th Doctor relationship with Sarah Jane as one of unrequited love. No man ever quite measured up to the Doctor for Sarah Jane, but that doesn't mean she wanted the Doctor as a romantic partner any more than a girl who measures a boyfriend against her father wants to bang her dad. In any case, Rose's fantasy has been spoiled, and in probably one of the healthier moments for her character she actually gets a chance to revel in the utter absurdity of the Doctor after she and Sarah Jane bond over his particular quirks and idiosyncrasies. This realization of his flaws will continue in the next episode as well, but I think she takes a little too much to heart Sarah Jane's recommendation that she cling on to her life with the Doctor, as once she accepts his flaws it seems to make her even more stubbornly committed to her fantasy that they are star-crossed lovers meant to be. Still, it is fun as hell to watch her and Sarah Jane attempt to one-up each other in terms of the adventures they've had, which considering the companion's role as an audience stand-in, can also be seen as a competition between the revival and the classic series. It is therefore a bit of a fist-pump moment for me that the classic ends up winning out by playing the Loch Ness Monster trump card.  At one point during the story, the Doctor snaps and reveals the reason he always leaves companions behind - they decay, they die, they grow old while he just regenerates and moves on. That's the curse of a long life, which plays into the (frankly undramatic) concept that maybe he may have been tempted by Mr Finch. Finch is played by Anthony Head, probably best known as Giles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (RTD took a great deal of inspiration for the revival's format from Joss Whedon) and he is great as an unapologetically unsubtle villain. His moves about like he has a stick up his rear end, his body locked in a straight line, his head twisting about on his neck like he is a vulture. Eugene Washington as Mr Wagner is what I guess you would call his henchman/second though he gets few lines, but his appearance alone makes him utterly chilling, he somehow looks like the (sadly poorly done in CGI) Krillitane. The story that takes place around the real meat of the episode - Sarah Jane's return and the impact that has - is pretty silly really, more the stuff of an outright children's show than Doctor Who (which I always stress is a family show) - aliens disguised as schoolteachers are trying to unlock the secrets of the universe using the imagination of children pumped up on chips (fries for Americans). The little subplot of the fat kid who gains acceptance when he takes credit for blowing up the school is particularly silly, especially considering that throughout the episode he appears to be an accepted and liked fellow student of all the other kids and only disliked by the aliens since he isn't allowed to eat their specially prepared meals. Written by Toby Whithouse, he nails the emotional aspects and the important main character interactions but everything else feels like it is trying too hard to stand on its own. The Krillitane aren't particularly impressive as CGI creatures, which in fact has the unintended effect of making all the jokes made at K9's expense seem particularly silly. The Doctor insists that K9 is cutting edge while Mickey and Rose laugh about how retro and disco it looks, and yet thanks to being a practical effect, K9 stands up far, far better than the plastic looking Krillitane swooping about while Anthony Head does his best impersonation of a cat yawning. Head comes across better in the quiet moments, particularly his poolside meeting with the Doctor, but if the idea was to have him as a devil-figure tempting the Doctor it really doesn't work. Even with the character having been on his moral high horse already in the series, I doubt anybody for even a second buys that the Doctor was in danger of being tempted to side with the Krillitane. Of course since he is supposedly snapped out of it by Sarah Jane, then it is a nice example yet again of a human companion grounding the Doctor. It also goes towards showing how Rose isn't providing quite the same grounding influence, it is the old companion who gets through to the Doctor the idea of things having to move on and being content to live with the regret of what couldn't be. Sarah Jane posted:The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship, everything has its time. And everything ends. That's a lesson that Rose doesn't learn, one forced on her at the end of this season which is where the story SHOULD have ended, but I'll piss and moan about that at a later date. Of course, what has gone unmentioned to this point is Mickey. He's the one who calls them back to earth, and though he puts on a brave face and cracks jokes, the fact is that he is lost. Unable to move on past Rose, too scared to take chances, he simply sits and reacts to events, never being proactive. The character who started as an idiot only good for being laughed at or made to look foolish managed to regain at least some dignity through season 1. Now after a brief period of gleefully mocking Rose when she discovers that the Doctor is just like "any other bloke" he ends up chatting with Rose where he comes to the horrified realization that he is "the tin dog". Like K9 he provides mostly comic relief and then pops up when needed to help them get some information or push a button, and that realization is what finally goads him to be proactive. Having already turned down the Doctor's offer to travel with them (which Rose doesn't know about) and then Rose's own offer for him to come along, he finally screws up the courage to join them on their adventures. He doesn't necessarily know if what the Doctor has to offer is for him, but he knows he isn't achieving or doing anything as things currently are, and he has to at least try. Consider Rose's reaction here and remember that she once offered to have him along, and that she still enjoys teasing him about his feelings for her - now that he is actually willing and ready to try new things like she has been so happily telling him about, she is upset. Why? Because it is a further intrusion on her continuing obsession and fantasy of what could be with the Doctor. Jack was different, he was from the future and played into the sense of fun and adventure and "newness", but Mickey is a reminder of where and when she came from, of who she was, and more importantly suggests that she is just like him - just another human to travel with the Doctor, so does that mean this is all she is too? That no matter how much he cares about her, he might care about Mickey as much, and they're not fated to be together, that the universe doesn't just exist to provide amusement for their travels amongst the stars? The episode ends with Sarah Jane turning down that same chance to travel with them. The Doctor says goodbye at last, even though he tries to avoid it she forces it from him, but he isn't angry at her for it. "My Sarah Jane!" he declares with a huge smile and hugs her, and Sarah Jane finally has some closure on that part of her life. But after he goes (she does a great job of selling how much it hurts hearing the TARDIS dematerialize) she realizes that the Doctor just HAD to leave things open. He has rebuilt K9 and allowed her to hold on to that remnant of the past. With a parting joke about how the Doctor likes to replace things with a brand new model (Rose) the two of them head off happily together. The episode feels to me like a promise that while the revival is what Doctor Who is now, the classic series lives on. It isn't just a beloved (and sometimes embarrassing) memory, but as vital and integral to what makes the show work as any of the new writers, actors, production values or support of the BBC. Plus, you have to love the easily reinterpreted line: Sarah Jane posted:I preferred it as it was, but er, yeah. It'll do. School Reunion is the merging of the two versions of the show, a story that cements at last that yes this IS the same show, that returns a beloved former companion and shows their relevance to what is going on in the modern take. It is an episode that assuages the fears of old viewers and gives new ones an idea of the rich history to be found in the show. Quite frankly, in spite of the rather unremarkable "actual" story of the episode, it is just a wonderful, wonderful episode of Doctor Who and one of my personal favorites. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Feb 21, 2014 |
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Feb 21, 2014 10:03
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Good points, I guess I just found the school story distracting because it was "getting in the way" of the Sarah Jane's interactions with everybody, which was far more interesting and compelling to me. While the setting works for all the reasons mentioned (initial plans were to set it on an army base, which would have fit Sarah Jane's history fine but left Mickey and Rose kind of out to sea) I do think the peril the kids are in (and creating) is largely a misfire, as their portrayal is quite uneven. On the one hand they have the kid who is smarter than he should be, but he drops out of the story entirely after his first appearance (they dropped a scene where the Doctor's earlier questioning basically causes him to burn out by stressing his new intelligence beyond its limits) and then they can't seem to decide if the other kids are super-genius weirdos ("yay playtime ended earlier so we can go back to class!") or regular kids (giggling over the super-smart kid, indifferent to answering questions in class, celebrating the school blowing up) or victims in a trance. The pudgy kid with glasses is seemingly meant to be an outcast so his acceptance at the end is a cathartic moment, except he seems to fit right in and have plenty of friends throughout the whole episode. Plus the Krillitane work better in concept than execution, and the CGI for them has dated so badly that it makes it hard to take them seriously. I think even the Reapers in Father's Day stand up better than the Krillitane do, and I'm glad that all CGI monsters appear to have gone somewhat by the wayside in favor of practical effects.
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Feb 21, 2014 11:48
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Some sort of Brittas Empire if you will Helen Brittas and Lucy Saxon have a lot in common!
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Feb 21, 2014 23:26
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Gaz-L posted:HOT SCOOPZ: CHRIS BARRIE TO PLAY DR WHOS MASTER??? "I'm going to whip you to within an inch of your life, Doctor..... and then I'm going to have you."
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Feb 22, 2014 00:02
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Sekkira posted:Watching the Sea of Death serial and so far it's fantastic. From the whole cliffhanger of "This is Barbra's... it's got blood on it!" and then solving it next episode with "Oh, I just got scared and scratched myself trying to tear it off! The Keys of Marinus is a story that should NOT work. It's a handful of standalone stories hurriedly written to fill in for another proposed serial and it stretches the already screaming budget beyond the breaking point (though the amazing super-lab scene is loving amazing) and yet somehow it works. For me anyway, I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.
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Feb 23, 2014 21:44
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" to the realisation that the collecting of keys and travelling to different locations is a great D&D/video game style plot. The Doctor's just gone ahead to solo quest while the party goes to the screaming jungle.
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Ehhh what tended to happen was that the Doctor would just waltz into a place and act like he was in charge. The psychic paper solved a problem that didn't really exist, and also takes away the possibility of fantastic sequences like the one from the Curse of Fenric, where the Doctor goes into a top secret military base, demands some official stationary, writes his own letter of reference, forges Churchill's signature and gives it to the base commander with the ink still wet when he bursts in the door moments later. If I remember right, he even does it in front of other characters, who just seem so pleased by the audacity of what he just did that they won't make a stink.
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Feb 23, 2014 23:42
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The Doctor forgetting he didn't have it and flashing his (William Hartnell's) library card at the fishlady not-vampires was pretty hilarious too.
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Feb 24, 2014 05:20
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It's just a cute nod, and I think it's great that for all his adventures in time and space, the Doctor starts his new cycle of regenerations as an older man traveling with a couple of school teachers from Coal Hill. 
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Feb 24, 2014 21:53
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thexerox123 posted:I'll believe that it's just going to remain a cute nod when I see it. I'll believe that it's the center of some big decade-spanning metaplot retroactively applied to Hartnell's run when I see it. Actually let me elaborate because that came of as really dickish of me, so sorry! The revival has been very restrained in terms of playing about heavily in its own continuity, and avoided trying to rewrite the history of the classic series. The only real exception to this was last year which is completely forgivable as it was the 50th year of the show and the entire thing was a nostalgia driven wallowing in the show's history (The Day of the Doctor could only really work in light of it being the 50th year of the show). Clara becoming a school teacher was a playful nod to the origins of the show, but the show goes on and Clara is still in it so she is still a school teacher at Coal Hill, and given that the Doctor has taken to dropping his companions off between adventures now it makes sense that the school would still continue to feature in the show in some way. Given that the new character is called a recurring character as opposed to a companion, it makes a lot of sense that they'd chose another school teacher as it would provide somebody to react to Clara's odd behavior and frequent absences. If he becomes a companion (temporary, recurring OR permanent) then it's a neat little nod to the idea of the Doctor traveling with two companions who are Coal Hill Schoolteachers, especially if one of them is onboard because he was investigating a strange "girl" (Clara) at the school. Based on how the revival has handled things so far (with the exception of the unique 50th year of the show), I find it far more likely that it is just a "cute nod" and not a "megaplot". After all, the Doctor returned to Coal Hill once before during the show's run, and that was due to it being the 25th year of the show, and what was a cute nod then is just as likely to be a cute nod now. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 00:11
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Box of Bunnies posted:The Foot of the Other Clara: Who was "The Other", Doctor? Doctor: A notoriously fertile sex-haver, Clara, he often said how proud he was to have personally and intimately fathered so many children. In fact, 95% of all Time Lords trace their genetics back to his constant sexual antics..... not me though, me and my family are one of the few with absolutely zero connection to him in any genetic, psychic or even geographical sense. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go and buy some more clothes for the wardrobe, as Time Lords have no ability to produce clothes themselves, having never developed looms.
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Feb 25, 2014 02:22
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CobiWann posted:Clara - "But what about the garish colored coat that your Sixth incarnation hard? The Daleks considered its existence a war crime!" All joking aside, I kinda wish that whenever that coat might be brought up by anybody that the Doctor - in whatever incarnation - gets all huffy and defensive and insists that it was awesome.
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Feb 25, 2014 03:05
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The Girl in the Fireplace is Steven Moffat's second story for the Doctor Who revival, and considered by many to be the best episode of the second season. Watching it now with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see many of the common recurring elements of Moffat stories. Whether you think that is a problem or not is up to you, but for me this story still holds up well - those same recurring themes (a character falling in love with the Doctor, repeated phrases, childhood fears being "real", "Doctor who?"/The Name of the Doctor, the Doctor jumping through different points of a person's life etc) are handled with somewhat more subtlety than could be said of future stories. Considering Moffat's own embracing of the RTD format of a bigger over-arching storyline for a season, it is also rather remarkable that this story actually stands alone from season 2's character and storyarcs. Torchwood is nowhere to be seen, Rose's growing obsession with the Doctor is almost entirely absent outside of some smug needling by Mickey, and in the latter case there is also a complete lack of the quiet animosity Rose showed towards the idea of Mickey traveling with them at the end of School Reunion. There are reasons for this, of course, most notably that this story was originally intended to air earlier in the season, and that RTD had enough confidence in Moffat (and enough on his own plate!) to leave him to produce the story in his own little vacuum. RTD gave him no season arc instructions or suggestions, didn't edit in any after he got the script, seemingly believing the story was strong enough to stand on its own merits and didn't require anything extra added in. As a result, this story stands apart, a little island poking out of the ocean that is the rest of the season. Which isn't to say that this story is all Moffat/no RTD, because it isn't. RTD wanted a story with Madame de Pompadour, he wanted it to be a love story (that wasn't Moffat's invention, but all at RTD's directive), and even the wonderfully creepy Clockwork Men exist as a concept because RTD was inspired by The Turk, which would also serve as an inspiration in Neil Gaiman's Nightmare in Silver during Moffat's run. Moffat often got a lot of (quite justified!) credit for the quality of the stories he produced during the RTD era, but it pays to remember that RTD was the driving force behind the revival, and that the writers producing quality stories during that period were working off of his ideas and instructions. So I think both RTD and Moffat deserve the credit for how good this story is, and should share the blame for any problems that it may have or parts that people didn't like. Take out the kissing and what you have here is a story that feels almost like a throwback to some of the gloriously weird stuff of the early classic years. The Doctor and companions arrive on an abandoned spaceship and discover windows to other times and a very specific place - a ship in the 51st century leading to 18th Century France. There is a strong sense of the surreal, parts of the ship have been repaired with the organic components of the crew, eyes in security cameras and hearts working as fuel-pumps. A horse clomps about the empty corridors in the 51st Century, while Clockwork men dressed in period costume wearing creepy masks stalk a woman through the years of her life. At its heart though the surreal elements are window-dressing for the real story, which is the near immediate bond that forms between the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour. Meeting her initially as a child where he is the brave and heroic figure who saves her from the very real monsters that live under the bed, the next time they meet she is an adult who responds with astonishing speed to the bizarreness of their situation. By all accounts Jeanne Poisson WAS a very remarkable woman, but it still feels like it is straining credulity in the way she so quickly adapts to the madness of what is happening. Even so, it does lead to some great scenes, such as when Rose is trying to figure out how to explain an utterly alien and impossible concept that she (a time-traveler!) is having trouble understanding, only for Madame de Pompadour to easily (almost dismissively) grasp and explain the concept to her. Throughout the story, she carries herself with poise and dignity, befitting somebody who was raised from a child to be the second most powerful woman in France. Even so, there is a sense (for me at least) of Moffat being a little too in love with the character, as she takes everything in her stride, figures out how to read the Doctor's mind based on some pretty flimsy story-logic, and especially in how she talks about always dreaming of seeing the stars close-up. There is a lot more that could be said about a character like Madame de Pompadour, the surface is barely scratched in this story (which to be fair is not a biopic), and it bugs me a bit that they try to reduce her interest with the Doctor as almost purely a romantic one. Given that her longstanding close relationship with the King was non-sexual for most of their association in spite of the fact she was his Mistress, I disliked the idea of her falling in love like a giddy schoolgirl with the Doctor as opposed to falling in love with the notion of exploring a larger world than she ever conceived of existing till she met him. It goes unspoken, but there is a quiet desperation in her final written words to the Doctor - she appears to have accepted her coming death with that same poise and dignity shown throughout the episode, but also seems to still believe that her imaginary friend/hero/love will show up to save the day one last time. Of course he doesn't, and we see again that the Doctor does not deal well with goodbyes. It is only brief, but there is an echo of the morality issues from The Unquiet Dead and The Doctor Dances in season one. Madame de Pompadour was the King's Mistress, but while Rose and Mickey laugh and make jokes about "Camilla", the Doctor explains casually that there was nothing salacious or scandalous about it at the time. She was raised to be his Mistress, she was friends with the Queen, her role was official and she had a firm and accepted involvement in politics and the arts. The Doctor jokes about "the French", but he is giving the supposedly enlightened 21st Century Mickey and Rose (an interracial couple, remember) a lesson in the fact that their morality is not necessarily the only one. Just because they're from the "future" doesn't mean they are automatically more tolerant and accepting, or that their idea of what sexual norms are will be more liberal than those of the past. I don't recall there being any complaints about the fact that this family show threw in the notion of accepted extra-marital affairs as not just existing, but the "hero" being absolutely fine with it, but I imagine Mary Whitehouse might be rolling in her grave. I mentioned earlier that the story doesn't really fit into the season arc involving Rose, but that isn't entirely accurate. There are definite parallels between Rose and Madame de Pompadour even if they weren't deliberate, or if later strongly similar situations are merely coincidence. The Doctor, (despite a joke about snogging her) is clearly uncomfortable with her romantic interest and unsure exactly how to deal with it. He attempts to distance himself from her when he can (sending Rose to see her instead), makes no suggestion of being with her when he believes he is stuck in the 18th Century, and quickly leaps at the idea of turning her into a Companion as that is, to him, a "safe" way of engaging in a relationship with a human female. That is what he understands and what he is comfortable with, and his offer to Madame de Pompadour to join them in their travels is also his way of negating the "threat" of her romantic interest. Later in the season he will find himself in a similar situation with Rose when they believe they are "trapped" in roughly the 40th Century, but he will be completely oblivious to her suggestions of "shacking up", worrying about money and a job and a house just like he worries about money in this story. In hindsight, he (and we) can look back on this episode as a warning of the dangers and eventual fate coming for Rose - she fell in love with the Doctor and the impossible dream he made into a tangible reality, but she couldn't spend her life waiting for the Doctor to show back up and take her away from the mundanity of real life. Rose got off easy compared to Madame de Pompadour, and it is unfortunate that season 4 took away from the lesson she was forced to learn. Instead of standing on her own two feet and living her own life she threw herself back into the Doctor's wake and gave up any possible chance to be her own person to once again exist as a prop to humanize and "fix" the Doctor, even if it wasn't THE Doctor. This is the only standalone story to feature Mickey as a regular companion. After this comes a two-parter that mostly keeps him apart from the Doctor/Rose combo and then sees him leave. It was a shame that we didn't get to see an exploration of that bad attitude Rose had towards him in School Reunion, in fact much of the episode's interactions between the two sees them enjoying each other's company and having a good time. Mickey eagerly joins in with Rose's decision to ignore the Doctor's admonishment to stay put, and though he goads her a little about the Madame de Pompadour there is no sense of conflict between them at all, in fact you'd almost think they were still together as a couple (shades of Amy/Rory-to-be perhaps?). The three-person TARDIS dynamic never really gets a chance in the revival until Moffat's run, even the much lauded 9th Doctor/Rose/Jack team was very short-lived and didn't involve all of them on-screen together for very long (in fact, Mickey was there for a large part of it!). Quite wonderfully, the story ends with the Doctor none the wiser for WHY all this happened. Sure, he knows that the Clockwork Men were "stupid" and got it into their heads that Madame de Pompadour's brain could restore their ship to proper functioning order, but he doesn't know why they fixated on her. In the end he chalks it up to the incomprehensible and unshakeable conclusion their machine-minds came to while trying to complete their programming after being damaged by the ion storm - fix the ship, the ship must be fixed, the ship is broken, fix the ship, the ship needs parts, there are no parts, find parts, fix the ship, the crew have parts, take their parts, fix the ship etc, etc until somehow they reached the point of find Madame de Pompadour, take her brain, the ship will be fixed. I think it is great that the story ends with us being shown the reason why - the ship is named after Madame de Pompadour, the Clockwork Men determined that the broken "brain" of the 37-year-old ship could be fixed by replacing it with the brain of the 37-year-old Jeanne Poisson. The Clockwork Men are a fantastic "monster", they look spooky as hell in their masks and wigs and even creepier when the elegant clockwork interiors are revealed. Why were robots designed like that? How advanced were they? We'll never know, but for all we know the SS Madame de Pompadour was a museum ship or a research vessel or even a high-end designer 51st Century fashion label, with the ship's systems fully automated and all the grunt work done by robots ala Robots of Death. In any event, how great is it that in their super-advanced but "stupid" non-sentient state they were able to build windows in space/time but didn't take that extra step of just transporting back to the shipyards in the present instead of 18th Century France? They're brilliant idiots, operating without malice or emotion and without consciousness. They're one of the neatest villains of the revival era, and it is nice that Moffat has (so far at least) resisted his tendency to revisit the creatures/monsters that make an impact on the viewers. The Girl in the Fireplace is well-deserving of its high regard. In parts a clever time-travel story, in others a look at the fascinating life of a fascinating woman, in still others a strange form of "love" story between the Doctor and a human woman. It has its problems but stands out strongly as a mostly standalone story in a season more focused on exploring the relationship between the Doctor and Rose. More of a Doctor story, the companions suffer somewhat as a result, but the guest star (Sophia Myles) more than holds her own and earns the focus she is given.
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Feb 25, 2014 11:37
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"The Lord of Time" line is one I really like and I should have mentioned, because again it kind of stands apart from the "I am the ultimate authority" thing the Doctor has going on in the rest of the season. I can totally see Tom Baker delivering a line like that, and it reminds me of the 11th Doctor's,"Fear me, I killed them all," response to House's threat in The Doctor's Wife - no surprise then that both lines were written by Moffat.AradoBalanga posted:I mean, if you were really evil, you'd put Tom's grinning visage in bleach pen on the wall. As drawn by Peter Capaldi!
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Feb 25, 2014 22:47
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I've been listening to Omega and towards the end of episode 3 I was rolling my eyes at how obvious the upcoming twist was. They kept stretching it out while I kept shaking my head and wishing they'd just get on with it and make the "shocking" reveal and play the theme. The story up to that point had been serviceable but nothing special, and I was eager to get through the story. The "twist" came, I shrugged with indifference.... and then the OTHER twist came and after a few moments I realized exactly how I'd had the wool pulled over my eyes for three episodes and I loving love it. I hope part 4 lives up to the expectations that this cliffhanger delivered, because goddamn that came out of nowhere (for me anyway!) but makes perfect sense in hindsight 
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Feb 26, 2014 07:09
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DoctorWhat posted:What did you think the twist was going to be? I thought the twist was that Omega had hidden himself away in the Doctor's subconscious and was taking control of his body at different points to do what he wanted. It wasn't until the Doctor shows up at the end of episode 3 that I realized there had never been a Doctor there at all, it was Omega walking around once again in the 5th Doctor's form, alternating between believing he was the Doctor and becoming Omega. Of course I haven't listened to part four yet, so maybe I've got it completely rear end-backwards, but that is what I presumed to be the case, and it was something I didn't see coming at all.
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Feb 26, 2014 10:25
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Sekkira posted:Clara just steered the Doctor on the right path so the original series actually happened, and then she was around to make sure the entire thing wasn't retconned. She just solidified that all of those episodes actually happened. The best explanation I remember hearing that lined up with my own interpretation was that the GI infested the Doctor's timestream like a virus and Clara was the antidote. She didn't jump in and have multiple copies of herself square off with the Great Intelligence and foil its plans thousands of times as it shook its fist at her and she told the Brigadier,"Things are certainly going to be more interesting with the GI around!". Rather, she was just a (mostly unnoticed) benign presence in place of where a previously hostile and damaging one had been. So instead of the classic series as we knew it being derailed and the Doctor killed thousands of times going backwards in his own timeline, the classic series just happened as it always had. The GI burned out in its attempt to kill the Doctor, and Clara would have burned out too if the Doctor hadn't decided to jump into his own time stream and give her a point to focus on so she could pull her consciousness back together and they could escape.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:13
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CobiWann posted:Sorry. Glitch in the Matrix. I actually thought you were making a joke about the eventual replacement being such an unclear thing at the moment that only a combination of Mark Gatiss and Paul Cornell could possibly be considered the leading contender. That said, I'm pretty sure that Mark Gatiss is the guy being groomed for the role.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:59
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CobiWann posted:...can current medical technology allow such a thing? Yes, but it requires a few stiff drinks first.
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Feb 28, 2014 02:21
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CobiWann posted:
I tried to enjoy this, and it's not a bad story, but in the end I just couldn't help but feel the whole thing was.... irrelevant? Perhaps that is the wrong word, but basically I never felt any sense of the stakes of the various plots - by the end we're supposed to be looking at a minor invasion of France and it has all the impact and sense of import of some rival gangs putting aside their differences to square off and scare away those rear end in a top hat kids from the other summer camp across the lake. There is an abiding sense of immaturity to the whole thing, in some senses intended but in others I'm quite sure not. By making everybody a self-centered rear end in a top hat (which is probably pretty historically accurate) it makes it difficult to care about any of them. As a result, the Duke of Buckingham is made near cartoonishly evil, presumably because otherwise the listener would react with a,"So?" to the idea of the King and the Queen and the Cardinal and the Musketeers being slaughtered. I audibly groaned when they pulled out the old,"The companion looks just like this integral character!" chestnut. I consoled myself that it couldn't possibly just be a coincidence and several remarks by the Doctor made me think that there was going to end up being more to it. In the end there wasn't though, and I think that sums up the story pretty well - you expect more and then you don't get it. I have no problem with the idea of pure historicals, but only if they're also good stories. In this one, so many seemingly cryptic references between the Cardinal and the King had me expecting a last minute twist of alien invaders or something, but nope it was just the King and the Cardinal being self-involved jerks and then an even bigger jerk showed up and got stopped and then the story was over. Criticisms aside, I did mention that it isn't a bad story. There is good stuff in there, almost entirely involving either the Doctor or Peri or Erimem. Nicola Bryant getting to perform dual roles was nice, and Erimem stepped up as a valuable part of the team, especially in how easily she ingratiated them into the King's court. Best of all for me were the early parts of episode one, where the Doctor feels like a put upon dad or older brother having to escort two giggling younger girls through Paris. Peri and Erimem getting on together so well is nice, and they seem to have a real chemistry together, so it is a pity (though an understandable one) that they spend so much of the story separated. The Doctor shines in the fourth episode when he just decides,"gently caress it" and dives headfirst into being a swashbuckler and takes on the Duke of Buckingham, it's just a shame that this conflicts with his resigned, slightly peeved attitude throughout the rest of the story. He also takes a rather indifferent attitude to a lot of what is going on, he's concerned with Peri's wellbeing but then allows himself to be waylaid and bothered by the ludicrous musketeers, and when he's being tortured he alternates between pain and a kind of tired,"Is this still going on?" attitude. I kept waiting for The Church and the Crown to redeem itself or get better, and it just kept on being happily mediocre instead. The coming together of "The Church" and "The Crown" feels like it should be a triumphant moment but it just kind of happens, and nobody really seems to learn any lessons or gain any perspective whatsoever. Even the brief subplot of the Doctor assuring Peri that history is supposed to unfold in a particular way and that their actions to stop Buckingham aren't changing things from how they SHOULD have been just kinda feels tacked on. The whole story is just an exercise in mediocrity with a couple of bright spots of amusement to help it along. As a story I wouldn't recommend it but I also wouldn't warn people away from it. It's just a mostly forgettable story that I don't think you'd be particularly worse off for having never heard.
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Feb 28, 2014 03:14
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I have to admit being pleased with the Cardinal's portrayal, both because he isn't the megalomaniac that we immediately think of nowadays when his name comes up, and also because he isn't some moral paragon of virtue either. Just because he was apparently so much better than his popular portrayal doesn't mean he wasn't flawed or a product of his time/environment. He's still an arrogant douchebag, but the decisions he makes are for the most part coming from a genuine sense of being the right thing to do. He puts his faith in the power of his Church to such an extent that he openly admits the runaround he is trying to pull on the King to his face, but he's also suggested to be a bit of a lech and a hypocrite when it comes to the whole vow of chastity bit. I'm disparaging of the story, but I want to stress again I don't think it's bad, just that taken in its entirety it's (to me, anyway) just all around mediocre. It doesn't hit any highs or lows, but it also kind of fails to make an effort at reaching for anything more than just a standard story. That's not necessarily bad, but the best and worst stories are usually ones that try for something more than standard and either succeed/get close (The Chimes of Midnight) or fail spectacularly (Apparently Minuet in Hell? I haven't actually listened to that one).
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Feb 28, 2014 04:38
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CobiWann posted:I will buy you a copy of this just to hear your thoughts on it. Does Big Finish even have a gifting/buy on behalf of somebody else option? It would make life a hell of a lot easier but their website is a loving nightmare to navigate.
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Feb 28, 2014 09:12
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Chibnall knocked it out of the park on Broadchurch but I've not been overly impressed with other stuff he's done (particularly his Doctor Who episodes) so I'm wary about that. I supposed the proposed second season of Broadchurch will show if that was an aberration or not, because I didn't think that was a show that really needed a season 2 (or could have one, based on where characters in season one end up) and it will take a pretty good writer to make that work.
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Feb 28, 2014 11:02
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That's part of what I liked about Time of the Doctor, it reminded me of the way they first appeared in The War Games even if they don't appear in person, they basically change the rules of the game the moment they take an active part in affairs. The Doctor loves to break the rules, but the Time Lords SET the rules.
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Feb 28, 2014 13:54
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CobiWann posted:The Spectre Of Lanyon Moor.... Did people not like The Spectre of Lanyon Moor  ? The "monster" has a rubbish voice but otherwise it is a really enjoyable story with a great old-school feel, and the Brigadier is absolutely in top form.
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Feb 28, 2014 14:16
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Timby posted:It's not a reboot. The show simply picked up the story with a gap in-between, and that gap has been slowly filled in over the years. I can't listen to audios if I'm working, but they are a godsend for bike rides, walks, or going to the gym, which are three things I try to do as much as possible.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:39
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Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel is an interesting two parter, a mixing of the old and the new in more ways than one. They feature the return of the old Who villains The Cybermen, but these are a new version, a reboot as opposed to a revival. The return of Rose's father, a figure from her past but - like the Cybermen - not quite the same thing. They also feature the return of Graeme Harper, a director of the classic series who now takes the step into directing the revival of the show. It seems only fitting that an old director should return to direct an episode featuring an old villain, and Harper does a good, solid if unspectacular job. Unfortunately, this is a pretty good description of the episodes themselves, they don't really stand out in any way even though important (indeed pivotal) things happen in them. The establishment of parallel words, the return of Rose's father, Mickey's departure, the return of the Cybermen, even a meaningless at the time throwaway comment about "a crack in time" being the cause of their problems. All these things happen in this two parter, and yet the stories never manage to really rise above and become something more than the sum of their parts - they're not bad, but they're flawed, and a bit too much is going on for their own good - some tighter editing and trimming down could have given these episodes real focus and made them into modern classics. Instead they're, well, the kind of stories you end up mostly forgetting about, and when you do remember them it's usually,"Oh those were okay..." with a quickly added qualifier about how they screwed up one or more aspects of the stories. To be fair, the Cybermen have always had a history of unrealized potential. There are very few truly "classic" Cybermen stories, with Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion perhaps being their strongest outings (the latter probably more down to Vaughn and ....Packer  ), both of which were made in the 1960s. It was a good idea to try and drop all the baggage associated with some of the dreadful later stories that came along - unlike the Daleks, people tend to like the idea of the Cybermen as opposed to the actual execution. Using the excellent audio Spare Parts as inspiration, RTD told Tom MacRae (who would eventually write the superb The Girl Who Waited in season 6 of the revival) to retell the origin of the Cybermen but NOT to use the original Mondasians. That's just what he did, replacing Earth's sister-planet Mondas with a parallel reality earth, giving the show the freedom to do as much damage and devastation as possible without having to reset everything at the end. Unfortunately the new Cybermen origin draws far too heavily on Genesis of the Daleks, giving us the first of the second-rate Davros-esque villains of the revival series - John Lumic. Played by the late Roger Lloyd Pack - Trigger from Only Fools and Horses, Owen from The Vicar of Dibley - Lumic somehow manages to deliver an over the top performance even as he sits near motionless from his fixed position paralyzed in a wheelchair. It's something about the set of his face, the wide eyes and spark of madness. Obviously we're meant to see that Lumic is quite, quite insane, but RLP overplays it, unfortunately. I think it was a mistake to try and give a face to the origin of the Cybermen, it takes away from the complicity of the species as a whole in embracing survival at all costs. By making these new Cybermen victims of Lumic's plan as opposed to willing (if mostly ignorant) participants, I feel that they lose the distinctive horror element that has always been promised by the notion of the Cybermen, even if that has rarely been delivered in the show itself outside of The Tenth Planet. The overriding imperative of WE MUZZZT SURVIVE comes not from the redundant desires of the original Mondasians as a species to live forever, but from one man's arrogance. Lumic lacks the force of personality of the likes of Davros, and his eventual organic fate doesn't have anywhere near the impact of Davros being betrayed by his own creations. They also blow their chance to hammer home the emptiness of the Cybermen's "immortality" by having Lumic retain pretty much the same personality once he becomes the Cyber-Controller. His voice is still distinctively his own and he sounds just as emotional as he did before, when he should have been indistinguishable from the other Cybermen voice/personality wise. That would have sold the horror more, in my opinion, by removing the genius and creativity and spark of Lumic and replacing it with the generic body and voice of any other Cyberman, emptily declaring the imperative that drove its former life without understanding WHY it was so important that it MUZZT SURVIVE! What makes this missed opportunity the worse is that MacRae clearly understood this notion because he includes elements of it in other parts of the stories that absolutely resonate - the Cyberman whose emotions the Doctor unlocks and tells him she was about to get married, for example, or the Cyberman that stomps up to Pete and Rose and unemotionally declares that it used to be Jackie. Those moments are excellent, but they forgo that loss/burial of identity so the Doctor can make his big speech to Lumic, who might as well still be Roger Lloyd Pack sitting there in his wheelchair rather than the Cyber-Controller in its ridiculous looking cyber-chair (seeing that thing move is embarrassing).This story marks the departure of Mickey as a traveling companion, as well as finally firmly establishing himself as his own person and giving him purpose in life outside of being a prop or a reactionary figure to Rose and the Doctor. Mickey starts the episode in much the same way he started the series, as one-dimensional comic relief. He moves through the episode as he has moved through the series, as a reactionary, often horrified bystander drawn into the action. He ends the episode having saved the day and come into his own as a pro-active and motivated character with his own goals and direction in life distinct from the Doctor and Rose. We are finally given some back story on his past, and this time the Doctor is our audience stand-in, listening as Rose explains what Mickey has been through - abandoned by his mother and father, raised by his grandmother who died prematurely. The Doctor comments that he had no idea about what Mickey has been through, and Rose admits that they tend to take him for granted. Mickey visits his Gran in the parallel universe and discovers she is still alive, and reveals (to us) that her death came about because she tripped on a bit of stair carpeting that he'd told her to get repaired. When she comments that HE could repair it he immediately agrees, indicating though not outright stating that he has felt tremendous guilt over her death and in part blamed himself for it. Kidnapped and discovering his own parallel self (named Ricky, so the Doctor was kind of right all along!) is a hardnosed rebel leader, Mickey is left to consider once again his own shortcomings. Ricky is an interesting look at what Mickey could have been, though there are still those comedic elements present that show us he isn't too different from Mickey - his badass "most wanted" status is actually in regards to his parking tickets, and he rides around with his vigilante gang in a van straight out of Scooby-Doo. There's an odd little scene where Ricky is killed and Mickey rushes back to rejoin the others that I think is meant to leave us confused as to which one was actually killed, but it loses a lot of tension in that I doubt anybody for a moment thought that Mickey was the one to die. Mickey becomes integral to the end of the story, not only helping to save the day with his computer skills (ala World War 3) but also in how he inspires and encourages Jake to do the right thing and help save Rose and the Doctor. Consider in Rose that he wanted to run and abandon the Doctor to his fate, but here he pilots the zeppelin (with no knowledge!) back into place to rescue them even in the midst of an exploding factory. His decision at the end of the story to remain behind in the parallel world cements him as his own person - he's not planning on living another person's life (he says as much to Jake) but he has decided that there is a valid life out there for him separate from the Doctor and Rose. He's no longer trapped in his old life just waiting for a call from Rose, and he now has a purpose to follow. It's a good, strong exit for the character, though there is some conflict in that on the one hand he wants to look after his Gran and spend time with her and on the other he wants to take off to Paris with Jake to fight Cybermen. Rose in these episodes is drawn inexorably to see her father yet again, even though she is fully aware that he is NOT the same Pete who fathered her and whom she met in Father's Day. Though it goes unsaid, there is a vein of,"If I'd never been born my parents would be happy and rich (and alive!)" running through the first episode as she discovers Pete's success and then learns that she was never born in this world, and that the only "Rose Tyler" is a little Yorkshire Terrier. While Rose doesn't moon over the Doctor at all in these episodes, they do put her in a position where she finds herself losing every other man in her life. Mickey finally moves on with a life that doesn't involve her, and when she finally reveals her identity to Pete he reacts with horror and gets the hell out of dodge, and who can really blame him - imagine if your wife had just been killed horribly and then you found out this girl you just met is a parallel universe version of the daughter you never had? Having also lost her "mother", Rose returns to her own universe and rushes straight back to see the "real" Jackie. But while she still has her mother, the only man in her life is now the Doctor, and we're going to start seeing her growing infatuation become troubling. In the end, this 2-parter promises a lot and doesn't quite deliver, and what could have been a classic ends up merely pretty good. Too derivative of the Daleks' origin, the Cybermen for the most part fail to live up to the hype, much as they have for most of their run in the classic series as well. Lumic was a mistake and provides a "face" for the Cybermen origin that wasn't needed, and,"DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!" comes across as an obvious effort to recreate the magic of,"EXTERMINATE!" But there are brilliant moments of Body Horror, particularly when the Doctor and Mrs Moore talk to the paralyzed Cyberman in the cooling tunnel. The completion of Mickey's character development is a welcome touch, and a number of elements are put into place for the big upcoming season finale. Torchwood is mentioned at a couple of points in the story, they apparently exist in this parallel world as well even though the Doctor wasn't there to "inspire" their creation (I don't believe there are parallel world Doctors, I think Time Lords by default exist as unique entities) and that will be important for the finale. We haven't seen the end of Mickey either, though his major development as a character has ended. For now though, it's just the Doctor and Rose together again, pushing on to new adventures and getting entirely too wrapped up in each other.
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Mar 4, 2014 10:20
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CobiWann posted:So what was the POINT of the Cybus Cybermen, except to “update” them and make them “cool” again? I think there were a few things that went into the decision. They wanted to update the Cybermen design like they did so successfully for the Daleks, and I think for the most part they succeeded there since I quite liked the new design. RTD absolutely loved Spare Parts and wanted to do a similar origin story, but he didn't want to negate the audio, and since he needed a parallel earth story to set up for the finale, it all just kind of slotted together and made sense to combine the three. Rose does actually mention the Cyberman head they saw in Dalek too and the Doctor explains that there are Cybermen in their universe as well, so I don't think the original intention was to replace the Mondasians... except of course every time after season 2 that they showed up in the RTD era they were explicitly the Cybus versions even when you had to really stretch to explain how they got there. It wouldn't have even been a copyright thing, since they still had to acknowledge Kit Peddler and Gerry Davis, so I'm guessing it was down to not wanting to fiddle with the designs and remove the big Cybus logo they put front and center.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:08
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Detective No. 27 posted:Would Mondasian and Cybus Cybermen be hostile toward each other? I think the Mondasians would just see the logic in co-opting the Cybus versions into their "species", and the Cybus versions would have no problem with the concept of being "upgraded" to a technologically superior version of themselves. Whereas the Daleks are obsessed with racial (specie-al?) purity, the Cybermen have long since lost any sense of what their original selves were trying so hard to save - people were obsessed with living forever but gradually all that was left was the meaningless imperative to survive. To the Cybermen, the only thing that matters is that the Cybermen continue to exist, but they have absolutely no prejudice against any race providing the base materials for new Cybermen units, so long as they have the appropriate mental capacity. Contrast that with the Daleks, especially the ones in The Parting of the Ways who have been driven utterly insane(r) by the fact the genetic material they're made from is "wrong". The Cybermen would have no such problem.
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Mar 5, 2014 01:03
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computer parts posted:That is one of the funniest exchanges too since the Daleks just get pissed at the idea. I've always loved,"Outline resembles the INFERIOR species known as Cybermen." They're just so catty
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Mar 5, 2014 02:04
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I think that is utterly missing the point. It wasn't a bad thing that the Doctor chose to save Adelaide and the others, it was a bad thing that he decided he was in charge and that he defined the rules of the universe now, becoming everything he'd fought against (basically, a more benevolent version of the Master). It was a bad thing that he comments smugly that he has only saved "little people" before, rejecting the importance of everyone other than Adelaide, which goes against everything the Doctor stands for (everybody is important, everybody matters). Moffat having the Doctor "cheat" the Time War resolution isn't about the Doctor always being right and dictating his morality onto everybody else, it's about the Doctor choosing hope over necessity, over finding another way to save people's lives. He doesn't impose his will (hell, he even tells the General his plan ahead of time and waits for approval before actually doing it) and the crux of his moral conundrum is about saving the "little people" - he doesn't care about the big important figures like the Lord President or the High Council or the General, his concern (and his guilt) is over the children on the planet, the innocents who he murdered "for the greater good" in the past. The story doesn't end with the 11th Doctor "The Time Lord Victorious walking away unscathed", it's "The Doctor Victorious walking away finally healed", and I think that is a hugely important difference. It is an embracing of a vital aspect of the character - the Doctor as the person who saves people, who rejects violence and destruction and looks for ways to help people because it is the right thing to do, not because it is "his right". Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 5, 2014 13:57
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I also think it's silly to dismiss that Clara was the one who provided the Doctor with the inspiration to try harder, because it's been that way in the show since 1963 - humans make the Doctor a "better" person, without them he was just another arrogant, sneering Time Lord, albeit one who actually had an interest and curiosity in experiencing time and space first-hand as opposed to observing it with the dry detachment of a laboratory experiment. From the moment Ian Chesterton prevented him from killing a caveman with a rock, the Doctor has developed the very human sense of morality that makes him so compelling. Without a companion, he falls into very bad old habits. If people are going to claim that Clara inspiring the Doctor not to repeat his (perceived decision was Moffat trying to make HIS companion super-special and wonderful, then every other script editor and producer is guilty of the same since that is what every single human companion has been for the Doctor since day one.
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Mar 6, 2014 01:49
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Metal Loaf posted:Does anyone else like Davies's tenure and Moffat's equally or is it meant to be a strictly either/or thing? Plenty of people do.
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Mar 6, 2014 02:47
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Haven't you people learned yet not to engage in anything to do with Doctor Who on the internet outside of this thread 
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Mar 6, 2014 23:44
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DoctorWhat posted:Why should I ignore him? He's wrong. He goes against everything [read: Big Finish] I believe in. Couldn't you just be satisfied by building a time flow analogue out of available bits of cutlery, thus mildly disrupting his schemes?
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Mar 7, 2014 01:35
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