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Hey man, just a suggestion: if you ever need to get the sour taste of the show out of your mouth, try watching one the old serials from the Colin Baker years with the most acclaim: The Twin Dilemma. I gather that you're something of a feminist, so you'll particularly like the way that the Doctor interacts with his young woman companion in the first episode.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:08
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E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:Doctor who fans describe their relationship with doctor who the same way battered housewives describe their relationship with their abusive husbands It's been running for 50 years, ain't nobody that can like all of it. Some of it is apologetically cheesy in a James Bond way (the Pertwee era) and the Tom Baker years have a lot of interesting tributes on the horror genre, as well as some tongue-in-cheek stuff written by Douglas Adams. The RTD years are a lot friendlier to women and the LBGT community, but Moffat is sometimes a better storyteller and at least in his first season he tends to avoid stuff like burping dustbins, but he is an unapologetic misogynist. Like all genre fiction, it varies greatly in the ways in which it deals with its tropes (and in Who's case, its own long history) with anything from dread seriousness to full-on parody. There are years where it cares too much about its own continuity and years where it winks a little too much at its own audience and gets masturbatory. You kind of have to judge each episode on its own merits. I started with Rose and didn't care for it much, but there are some very good episodes in the first season, in my opinion. I also have to give Russell T. Davies credit for successfully reviving a show that had been off the air for decades, making it an international phenomenon and also spawning three spin-off programs, two of which were fairly big successes on their own for years. Clearly he latched onto something that was in the public consciousness at the time. Your OP seems to indicate that you don't like genre fiction in general, which means, to be honest, that you will never like Doctor Who, because it is very, very much a genre story.
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Jul 30, 2014 16:14
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Tiggum posted:
The Time Lord stories in old Who are actually mostly pretty bad and involve people in silly hats so getting rid of them was actually a great idea.
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Jul 31, 2014 14:33
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Tiggum posted:Oh, I don't actually want stories about the Time Lords in the show, I agree that the stories set on Gallifrey are generally bad. But I still think having them be dead is a bad idea. With them around, the Doctor is an exile, sort of by his own choice, but also because he can't accept the the conditions that would be imposed on him if he were to go back, which is much more interesting than simply having them be dead. If he's an exile, he's a more interesting character because of the internal conflict of having chosen this life, but still kind of wishing he didn't have to. If they're dead, he's just an orphan. There's no conflict, he's just sad. He's Batman. I disagree. He's still an voluntary exile, just emotionally and from his adopted home. Part of why Eccleston is angrier than a lot of versions is that he doesn't really enjoy traveling as much anymore, and if the first season has an arc, it's kind of him learning to be his old self again. He's never really interesting as an "exile" rather than as a traveler/tourist except during the Hartnell years when he claims to be trying to get home; everything else involving his home world is bad House of Lords commentary with the Doctor as trickster god. And we don't need individual Time Lords to show up. None of them, besides the Master, have ever been particularly interesting. RTD makes some very bad decisions, but the Time War was actually one of the best ones.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:24
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E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:Lol quit spergin bout doctor who My friend, you have just posted over 4,500 words about Doctor Who in which you discuss characterization, genre fiction as a whole, episode themes, contextual knowledge, and narrative weightiness using bullet points, scoring, and references to the Hardy Boys. Your reason for doing this, about a "lovely, lovely" show you "loving hate" was "my e-buddies dared me to." I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the person making "longass tryhard careposts" is you. Jeru, who reviews every episode, actually put less effort into watching and discussing Doctor Who than you have this week. The guy who spent hundreds of dollars on a rainbow Doctor Who coat spent less effort posting about Doctor Who than you have this week. Look into the mirror and offer your best Lovecraftian scream, for you have become the Doctor Who careposter.
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Jul 31, 2014 17:25
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DoctorWhat posted:if you follow me on Tumblr, you'd find that this is debatable The fact that an off-site blog can even contain the word "debateable" when compared pretty well illustrates my point, honestly.
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Jul 31, 2014 17:41
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 "The Unquiet Dead" gets a B? An he liked the goofy "What the Shakepeare?" joke? He's going to be posting in the Doctor Who thread and buying bowties before the end of the month.
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Aug 2, 2014 18:20
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E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:Oh let me guess: it's an episode of doctor who The Big Bad Wolf is made real due to a TARDIS malfunction and he beats up Charles Dickens for making that "What the Shakespeare!" joke. Guest starring Tim Allen as the wolf, who for some reason spouts random phrases related to gender essentialism as the Doctor pats him on the back and shares a beer. Sorry, oxxidation, I had to spoil it.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:33
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Bown posted:Bad Wolf might be the weakest link of the whole season. Hm. Subtle. 
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Aug 5, 2014 21:37
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mind the walrus posted:Really can we just get a highlight list of episodes for him? I want to see him take on "Fear Her" too. And lord knows I want to hear his thoughts on a Series 4 companion. No, we have to wait until he slowly loses his mind and starts foaming at the mouth with rage or slowly becoming Doctor Who's number one fan. He already gave a fairly mediocre episode a B and devoted more word-rage to the farting aliens than they're worth. By the time he gets to the end of the Tennant years, he'll either have a bomb planted in the BBC offices or he'll be wearing a Tom Baker scarf and calling his padded cell his TARDIS.
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Aug 6, 2014 14:32
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He's barely into season 1 and has already given two episodes a B and is beginning to understand why people enjoy the program. He should be ready for cyber-conversion in two weeks.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:09
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Shearman's definitely a great writer and some of his Big Finish stuff is arguably better than most of what's on television for Doctor Who, but I really don't think a guy whose premise for a Doctor Who thread is "I hate Doctor Who" and has expressed a dislike for genre fiction is going to be into dystopian science fiction radio dramas, to be honest.
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Aug 8, 2014 15:05
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MrL_JaKiri posted:
It's totally shocking, really. It was successful enough that Disney was buying the rights to K-9, the 70s robot dog, for a weird Australian spin-off. That's to say nothing of the two fairly successful spin-off series Doctor Who spawned, one of which got partial funding from Starz for another season. There are all kinds of factors we could theorize probably contributed to the revival's success but one thing that is inarguable is that the RTD years were, in terms of making the show culturally relevant again, an enormous success. But yeah, Lost was not a niche American program by American standards. It was ABC's main vehicle for six years for a reason and it has influenced the way storytelling works in American television in a lot of ways, whatever people think of it now.
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Aug 18, 2014 17:13
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It'll be interesting to see what he thinks of the Christmas specials. It reminds me of something someone wrote about Dickens (I think it might have been John Irving, actually) in which people are entirely forgiving of the schmaltz and cliches in A Christmas Carol but for some reason seem to condemn him for it in his other work. Doctor Who is the reverse: all of the flaws that make the show charming for its normal audience seem somehow infuriating when they're wrapped in a Christmas ribbon. Both of this thread's reviewers are going to hate David Tennant's portrayal the most of the revival Doctors; this is virtually a guarantee.
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Aug 18, 2014 17:24
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Toxxupation posted:In case people who were fans of my LMS thread-all like, two of you- were wondering, yeah I do plan on doing season in review write-ups, just I dunno when, it might be whenever oxx and I take an extended break ( if we keep on pace it'll be probably whenever we finish season 4, which seems like both a natural break point and timed to be roughly around the holidays, which I'll be very busy with my LMS thread and the TVIV yearly poll) Might as well do the specials after season 4 before you break. If you're doing this through Netflix, for some reason they're classified as their own individual units instead of being part of the main run, but after those is when the showrunner and Doctor both change, so it's a good stopping point.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:06
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Oh, sorry, my bad. Glad they fixed it.
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Aug 18, 2014 19:00
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Eccleston has said publicly he was not a fan of some of the production stuff from season 1, although he has never elaborated or gotten more specific than that. He doesn't hate Doctor Who, but he doesn't seem to like discussing it much anymore. I'm sure they would have kept him on, because the prospect of casting a new person to play the lead is difficult enough when you aren't in the midst of reviving a long-dead program. And yeah, Tennant was a huge fan who basically got into acting because of Doctor Who, had been working on the radio dramas as a few characters for awhile, and had worked with RTD before. He got to live out his childhood dream and play the Doctor (and, hilariously, married the daughter of the person who played the Fifth Doctor, thus both becoming his hero and getting his father in law as his hero at once). I'm pretty sure Captain Jack was brought back to life purely because he was so popular, they wanted to be able to bring him back if they wanted, but who knows?
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Aug 19, 2014 00:31
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Toxxupation posted:I NEED TO STRESS THE FACT THAT THE loving DOCTOR SWORDFIGHTS ON TOP OF AN ALIEN SPACESHIP THE SIZE OF LONDON Someone is really going to love the later part of the Moffat years.
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Aug 19, 2014 04:28
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I don't agree with you all the time, Oxx, but you actually have the right heart when it comes to enjoying Doctor Who. When it tries to be dark, horrifying, or morally ambiguous, it frequently misses the mark, but when it's all bombast and tongue-in-cheek, it's really endearing. The "let's poor all the medicines together!" stuff wouldn't have been nearly as annoying if they didn't want us to take it so seriously. I think they pull the Rose-Cassandra-Doctor switcheroo purely because Billie Piper was bored of playing Rose and wanted something else to do, and knowing RTD, the choice to splash Rose's cleavage around was more well-intentioned than under a different producer, but yes, it's a bad decision. I remember liking the Doctor's obsession with shops and Tennant's choice to immediately latch on to the whimsy part of the role, but his shouty indignant parts feel like he's mad at the script more than anything else, and we can't help but to join him. e: Also, the Face of Boe is cool.
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Aug 21, 2014 04:10
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Oxxidation posted:I, too, do not know what brazzers is. What is brazzers. Here, this link should be helpful: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sex edit: wait, there might be actual spoilers, I don't know, I didn't really read it.
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Aug 22, 2014 17:52
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Jsor posted:Yes, there are spoilers. It's not as good as the Star Trek wiki's entry on beards, but it's a close second.
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Aug 22, 2014 17:58
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DoctorWhat posted:The TARDIS Wikia is so profoundly misimplemented and lovely it boggles the mind. The kicker is that anything you'd actually want to use it for, it doesn't even have. Once or twice I was confused about the end of an audio story and figured that would be the place to check, but all the Big Finish stuff is a basic summary with "This article is a stub." An in depth article on sex including bits from the weird Zygon porn, though, that's there!
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Aug 23, 2014 00:55
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Offsite wikis are always the most hilarious part of any fandom and the greatest thing is that inevitably, the editors get into some kind of tiff about something so inconsequential, nobody but they understand it, and suddenly there are two offsite wikis.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:46
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Obviously I really like watching and listening to Doctor Who, but I feel like if I ever felt inclined to update a wiki about Time Lord sex habits, I would suddenly realize that I was writing about something called a Time Lord, which sounds like a made up insult, like "Way to make us fifteen minutes late again, time lord!", and instead of updating said wiki, I would pour a Tom Baker sized scotch and do literally anything else than think about Time Lord sex.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:55
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gently caress, not only have we missed the previews, but we're like fifteen minutes into the movie and the only seats are in the front where we'll have to crane our necks. Thanks a lot, Time Lord!
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Aug 23, 2014 01:59
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Has anyone linked the Children in Need special yet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IylzJNaW5k There are no spoilers in this; it aired between Eccleston's last scene and the first Christmas special.
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Aug 23, 2014 04:53
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Toxxupation posted:I reviewed it chump! CHUMP Whoops, sorry, I skipped a bunch in between Bad Wolf and the Christmas special.
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Aug 23, 2014 04:59
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Sarah Jane is only sort of the longest running companion; Jaime was in more episodes and Tegan, I think, just slightly beats her. Still, she was definitely one of the longer running ones, and her goodbye was sort of bittersweet. They were going to kill her off but had problems doing it in the script, and purportedly Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen made up their own goodbye. I like School Reunion better than you did, but mostly because K-9 is hilarious and I always enjoy it when they hand Anthony Stuart Head a good piece of scenery to chew on. I do wonder how much they were already planning Elisabeth Sladen's spin-off already sometimes. It's definitely a fanservice episode, though. It's a letter to all those people who wondered why the hell the Doctor never went back for Sarah after their emotional parting. Poor Mickey, though. The companion who was written purely to put jealousy in the show for some reason. Like the jealous Nice Guy non-boyfriend wasn't enough of a thing in sitcoms, now he has to be in every fantasy/sci fi series. Thanks a lot, Xander from Buffy.
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Aug 24, 2014 04:19
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Jsor posted:I still just want to see Anthony Stuart Head as the Doctor. I'm almost surprised it didn't happen. He did four audio stories with them, played some kind of gargoyle in the weird animated story they did with David Tennant, and he was in an actual episode. He's done almost as much Doctor Who as Eccleston.
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Aug 24, 2014 04:56
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Anthony Stuart Head as just about anything really.
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Aug 24, 2014 04:59
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Mo0 posted:I hadn't heard/read that before, are you able to point to where you saw that? I just found it on Wikipedia back when I was watching through classic Who. They cite the DVD commentary as the source, although they say that Baker and Sladen "wrote" the scene, and I could swear other sources (that I can't find now) say that they basically improvised it without rehearsing. The only reason I believe it is that her departure was an afternote to the serial and has nothing to do with the rest of the story. At the end, the Doctor just says that he has to go back to Gallifrey and that she can't come with him.
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Aug 24, 2014 06:43
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MikeJF posted:Torchwood was less 'adult' and more 'adolescent'. This is description of most geek media that attempts to be "dark," "more adult," and "not for kids anymore," really. Video games, comics, all of it. They're basically the "for kids!" version stripped of their whimsy and hope. It is a shame, there are lots of great stories that could be told to a more mature audience that grew up on the material, it just never happens.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:55
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Toxxupation posted:
Ah, those bygone days. Do yourself a favor and never read a word of any interview Moffat has given, particularly with regard to anything involving gender.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:33
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Oxxidation posted:Those interviews were already posted. No one cared, as is right and good. Personally, I think it makes it harder to deal with things that would otherwise be fairly normal microaggressions, but to each his own.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:37
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The Bechdel is not a foolproof test and given that Doctor Who is often about isolating people from having conversations with anyone besides the Doctor and/or his companions because they could only hire four extras for the quarry they were filming it, it's probably not the best show to apply it to. The little ways in which popular fiction diminishes women is definitely very present in the show, though, which is something worth paying attention to, no matter what HUMAN FISH happens to think.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:02
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Bown posted:A lot of you are getting pretty darn angry about a post that couldn't be more correct Like... we're in a thread where a self-described feminist is reviewing Doctor Who and discussing, in his reviews, whether or not Stephen Moffat is writing strong women characters, what the hell did they expect people to talk about 
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Aug 25, 2014 16:12
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thrawn527 posted:I think the point is that, no, Moffat's episodes don't pass the Bechdel test, but neither do Davies episodes. So what the hell is the point of pointing out that Moffat's episodes don't? Shouldn't it just be said that Doctor Who doesn't pass the Bechdel test? It's not like anyone brought it up in a Davies written episode, while it was equally true there. The Bechdel test is a red herring here, as far as I'm concerned. Moffat's later tendency to have women of a certain archetype as villains over and over and leer at them through the writing is a problem though, and something a bit absent from the RTD years. Moffat isn't Satan by any stretch of the imagination and he definitely writes some of the show's best episodes, both during his tenure as showrunner and before it, but he is not particularly good about writing women and he does seem to get worse as he goes on.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:32
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Like, the Bechdel test is illustrative, for example, for romantic comedies, which are ostensibly about and for women, but frequently fail the test spectacularly. I don't think it's particularly relevant for Doctor Who, though, and we're on a pretty big derail.
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Aug 25, 2014 16:54
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Don't both of them have an Estuary accent? I remember the "official" reason for Tennant talking the way he does was that Rose had influenced him for the regeneration. 
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Aug 25, 2014 19:55
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Grey Area posted:Yes, but most Americans are only aware of two English accents: RP and "cockney". I expect a lot of fans would say that Eccleston had a cockney accent. I guess it's sort of like how the only three locations in America for British TV are New York City, the White House and the Wild West and the only locations in the U.K. to Americans are Victorian London and the Cornish moors.
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Aug 25, 2014 20:22
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