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I still can't believe multiple Lego Doctor Who sets (official) don't already exist.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:39
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Organza Quiz posted:Are we really recommending "We" can't agree on anything! I personally still think The Eleventh Hour is a great introduction to the show, while Deep Breath definitely is not. The Eleventh Hour, by dint of being a brand new regeneration with a brand new showrunner with brand new companions in a brand new story is great because it doesn't require any excess baggage or explanations for the new viewer. Everybody gets exposed to this wonderful fairytale madman on the same level, and by the end the thumping music as the camera pans over to the wedding dress is such a great way of hooking the viewer into seeing what happens next. That's why I also still think Rose is a good intro, with the caveat that it had aged pretty horribly even 5 years ago, and only looks worse now. Deep Breath has a good second half but a pretty appalling first half, and it's dragging a lot of baggage with it in terms of continuity and character. It's a little like The Christmas Invasion in that so much of it is NOT about the Doctor (and then he completely dominates the ending), which is still an interesting perspective but leaves any new viewer basically in the dark as to whether they would like to regularly watch this guy as the lead actor in a regular series.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:49
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The_Doctor posted:Cobi, J-ru, didn't one of you review Engines of War, the War Doctor book? I've just finished it and wanted to see what others thought. Cobi did, yep - Here's the link
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Mar 26, 2015 10:05
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 Capaldi is so great 
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Mar 26, 2015 17:33
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Not to mention the Thals!
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Mar 27, 2015 22:56
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10 years ago, Doctor Who was revived into a monster hit of a show, becoming an international sensation and correcting the terrible yet inevitable mistake the BBC made in December of 1989 when they simply ceased producing any new episodes of the show. The classic series would have ended with a whimper if producer John Nathan-Turner hadn't figured out what was happening and gotten 7th Doctor Sylvester McCoy in for a hurried last-second voice-over that at least let the show "end" with some sense of dignity and hope for the future. But RTD's successful 2005-era revival was not the first attempt to get the show regularly back on television, nine years earlier than that saw the release of The Enemy Within, a television-movie that it was hoped would kick-start a new series of the show co-produced by the BBC, the Fox Network, 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios. At the time for Who fans (or at least myself) it was the first grasp of some potential good news (don't even talk about Dimensions in Time  ), the chance to see Doctor Who back on television again like a kind and loving God had always intended it to be. The TV movie failed in that regard though, and this was both a good and a bad thing. Bad because it meant no more new Who for 9 years, but also very good because a lot of what this new show intended to do would have been pretty loving terrible, at least in my opinion, giving the dreaded potential LOOMS storyline a run for its money. As it was, the one singular televised example we have of Philip Segal's vision gives a contradictory view of a show trying to both look to the future as well as embrace its past, a problem that RTD was able to more successfully navigate in 2005. Perhaps the most important thing to come out of the movie, though, was Paul McGann as the 8th Doctor, an inspired bit of casting that proved successful enough that despite the movie never going forward into a television series, and despite some of the awful ideas introduced (half-human being perhaps the worst) as new aspects of the Doctor's character, McGann himself was thoroughly embraced by fans of the show and continued to be considered THE current Doctor until 2005. This 8th Doctor appeared in any number of novels and comics, but McGann himself also continued to portray the part through Big Finish's audio line, a BBC licensed product that further lent him credibility and "official" status in fans' eyes.  The movie opens with narration from McGann, setting the scene and immediately tying itself to the original series, something nice for fans but perhaps another example of why it was difficult for new viewers to get into. His old foe and fellow Time Lord the Master has finally reached the end of his lives, exterminated by the (unseen) Daleks for some unspeakable crime - perhaps for NOT being a Dalek, the most unspeakable crime there is, or maybe they were pissed off he apparently pumped helium into their casings so they're so adorably squeaky as they declare,"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" and blast him into ash. For inexplicable reasons, the Daleks and the Time Lords have come to an agreement that the Doctor will be allowed to transport the Master's remains to Gallifrey, and this allows for a somewhat surprising and very welcome return for Sylvester McCoy as the 7th Doctor, who gets a good 15-20 minutes of screentime and a chance to say a proper goodbye for the character. For classic fans AND for McCoy himself, this is perhaps one of the great strengths of the TV Movie, a righting of a wrong from 1989 as the actor gets a chance to hand over the reigns to a new actor, a chance to say goodbye to the role. That isn't without it's own problems though, the actual main star of the show does not appear until well over 20 minutes into the running time, and though the 7th Doctor doesn't do much in the way of dialogue, he's still the guy who is introduced to the show as THE Doctor, leaving McGann having to work from behind to establish himself in the role. For new viewers curious about the show, it would have been slightly unsettling, though I imagine that based on the ratings for the show, most of the people who DID watch it were fans of the classic show anyway. As one of those, it was a pleasure for me to get to see McCoy back in the role, especially as he got to divorce himself from the stupid question marks on his costume and take on the look of a lovely, slightly doddery but otherwise dignified looking country aristocrat.  The 7th Doctor's death is often remembered as him stepping out into a hail of gunfire, with split opinions on whether that was an appropriate way for him to go or not. If that WAS the way he died, I'd say it was appropriate to see the grand chessmaster taken off the board by a random act of chaos... but that's NOT how he dies. The Doctor steps out of the TARDIS after it malfunctions and crash lands and is shot by a trio of Asian gangsters, but the bullets only wound him, it's the "treatment" he receives at the hospital later that does him in, and for me that is even more appropriate. Because the 7th Doctor - the guy who can talk anybody into anything, the guy who always proves the insufferably self-assured wrong - dies protesting ineffectually, ignored by so-called "experts" who dismiss his frantic warnings, holding him down and pumping him full of a gas toxic to him, essentially stabbing him through one of his hearts with what for them is the most advanced medical technology but for him is pathetically primitive. There is a strange kind of beauty to that, that in their well-meaning but ignorant attempts to help him, in their arrogant belief in their own superiority, they kill the Doctor, and for once all his words fail him. For a character like the 7th Doctor, sometimes considered arrogant himself, always so calculating and long-planning, to run into a chaotic situation like this seemed to me oddly appropriate. So Sylvester McCoy's time as the 7th Doctor finally ends, given an on-screen finality it had been lacking, giving him a chance to say goodbye to the fans, to the role, and to hand it over to an accomplished and well-regarded actor, to be there at the handover for the rebirth of a series that ended under his "watch". That the TV Movie did not succeed in reviving the show is irrelevant in that regard, because it afforded McCoy an opportunity he deserved, and his brief appearance was a welcome one.   Once McGann comes into the show, it doesn't take him long to stamp his personality on the role, to give us our first look at the 8th Doctor - a hopeless romantic who desperately wanted to believe that things could be better, who saw the best in people and had a strong moral core... but was also easily distracted, almost childlike in some ways. Suffering from partial amnesia (the first of many, many times!) due to the anesthesia-delayed regeneration, he spots one of the Doctors (Grace) who "treated" him and for want of a better term kidnaps her, though in his head it's all very reasonable and sensible - he can't remember what is happening but she's involved somehow, and since she is a "Doctor" that means of course she'll help him, right? He approaches the world with all the wonder of a child, literally seeing it through new eyes - gone is the calculating and long-term planning of the 7th Doctor, replaced by the charming, well-intentioned and somewhat bumbling 8th Doctor. He simultaneously dazzles and infuriates Grace, he's a medical marvel to her but while at times he seems brilliant and enthralling, at other times he seems dangerously unbalanced and a potential threat. But for all his bumbling and silliness (his "these shoes fit perfectly!" moment is wonderful) the moments where he puts that all aside and demonstrates his calm authority truly stand out, such as when he steps through the window of Grace's home to demonstrate the breakdown of the molecular bonds of the earth. The casting of the "new" Doctor was a hugely important thing, the success of the story hinges entirely on it and though the TV movie didn't rate well enough to warrant being picked up, nearly everybody agreed that the fault wasn't in the casting, McGann IS the Doctor, with barely an hour of screen time he captured the essence of the character spectacularly well.  The trouble is that the story he, McCoy, and Ashbrook inhabit is not a particularly good one. Though the more controversial aspects of the planned storyline for any ongoing series are mostly contained or suppressed, enough creeps through to leave fans scratching their heads - the Doctor kisses his companion, the first romantic moment between the Doctor and a human companion seen in the show to that point. The Doctor is half-human, with a brief joke on his behalf suggesting that it was his mother who was the human (this would be confirmed if the show had gone ahead, along with a lot of nonsense about the Doctor and Master being half-brothers and their father being the enigmatic Time Lord Ulysses). The whole premise of the story relies on far too much pre-existing knowledge of the show and it's history, and the attempts to present it to a new audience are confusing: the Master has used up all his regenerations, he's decided to open the TARDIS' power source - the Eye of Harmony - in order to steal the Doctor's remaining lives, but leaving it open will cause the destruction of the earth, something he doesn't care about at all. In the Master's efforts, he possesses the body of a paramedic played by Eric Roberts, who was by all accounts not particularly enthusiastic about the role, and takes on a companion of his own, the young Chang Lee, who was saved by the 7th Doctor's unexpected arrival. The Master and Chang Lee hunt down the Doctor and Grace, who in turn are in search of a component to replace one burned out in his TARDIS, which just so happens to have just been invented and is set to be unveiled to mark in the new millennium. Once all four come together in the TARDIS, the Doctor and the Master compete for Chang's soul like the angel and demon on his shoulder, a bizarre section of the story that makes little sense since the Master shouldn't and wouldn't care one way or the other what Chang thought of him or his actions once he had the Doctor in his power - if Chang refused to open the Eye, it's not like the Master couldn't force him, as he happily does with Grace afterwards anyway. Grace's frantic rewiring of the TARDIS also makes little sense, as despite her clear intelligence (including some musing on the dimensionally transcendent nature of the TARDIS) there is no way she has any idea what the hell she is actually doing, though I suppose you could always try to handwave that as the TARDIS giving her psychic nudges in the right direction. More problematic than the rather confusing story though is the sense that this is a movie more interested in visual flourish than a tightly woven narrative. Events often happen with no clear cause and effect, characters disappear from the storyline, major events have no further bearing on the later story, camera transitions happen just because the director seemed to think they'd look cool (like the cut from the Time Vortex to the fish-eye with the camera shifting out the window and down to the street). Chang's backstory with the Asian gangsters goes completely unexplored, his murdered friends literally disappear from the story without a second thought in the next scene, with Chang accompanying the Doctor in the ambulance with no apparent police presence having occurred for the two dead bodies lying in the trash. When the Doctor regenerates and breaks out of the morgue, there is a rather clumsy parallel made with the awakening of Frankenstein's monster in the old classic film for no other apparent reason than that it seemed like a fun thing to do. The Doctor stomps out into a bizarre flooded corridor of the hotel, beds smashed on their sides, mirrors lines up on the walls madly, the shattered remnants of one artfully laid out on the floor so the Doctor can drop to his knees and bellow WHO AM I!?!?! to the thundering sky.... but why the hell is the corridor flooded? Who put those mirrors there? Why is there apparently an abandoned corridor with open and smashed windows letting in the elements? I put it to you that they're there because they looked cool, and that's basically the entire reasoning for why they're there. Later in the story, the Doctor sets off an alarm (mostly because it seems like the thing to do, he admits) and he and Grace clamber down the side of a building by a firehose. As they lower down, a cleaner is seen vacuuming the floor of the just now abandoned building.... why? It's New Year's Eve on the Millennium, the party was still going on seconds earlier and is only empty now because the building is being evacuated, so why is there suddenly a cleaner out there? Again, probably because it seemed like it would be funny to have something mundane happening in the foreground while action was taking place unknown behind them.  In the end, the TV Movie failed in its goal - it was meant to kick off a new series and though fans were disappointed it didn't happen at the time, in the end it was probably for the best. Giving Sylvester McCoy an appropriate and rather heartwarming chance to bring closure to his role on the show, and giving Paul McGann a chance to stamp his identity/personality onto the role were where it had its greatest success. Featuring an unenthusiastic Eric Roberts as the antagonist, and two very enthusiastic companion characters played by Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso, they're ill-served by the story they're given, which is a weird mixture of appeals to fans of the classic show and attempts to pave their own road and create their own mythology. More style than substance, this is mostly remembered in a positive light because of McGann, and in a negative light because of the half-human/companion kissing stuff. For me, the introduction of Paul McGann as the 8th Doctor was enough to make it a success, with McCoy's goodbye a welcome bonus.... I'm just glad that 9 years after it first aired, I can say now that it was a good thing that it failed to revive a show I'd been desperate to see return since 1989, because if it HAD succeeded, we'd never have gotten RTD's revival, we'd never have gotten Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi. And who wants to live in THAT world?  
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 05:30
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Oh yeah, the TARDIS interior redesign was incredible - I loved it right from the get-go, though the look of the console itself hasn't aged too well over the last twenty years, the large living space with the comfy chair, shelves of books and old gramophone etc just seemed perfect (could have done without the mantel full of clocks though) and I'm glad the revival appears to have taken some cues in that respect. And yes, the commentary is excellent, McCoy and McGann are lovely. I can't remember if my Special Edition DVD has it or not, but McCoy also filmed a really lovely video diary at the time of filming about saying goodbye to the role of CURRENT Doctor after all these years.
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Mar 29, 2015 22:09
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Cerv posted:am i the only person here who watched the TV Movie when it first aired and didn't give a poo poo about kissing? My memory at the time was just in general being confused by it, like it just didn't make any particular sense to me why it would be there at all. The half-human stuff was far more annoying to me.
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Mar 30, 2015 10:16
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Well that is pretty flawless logic, I guess.
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Mar 30, 2015 10:28
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Yeah, some people seemed confused as to why the Master was able to turn into a snake creature, but it wasn't like the classic series hadn't established time and again he'd been madly experimenting with bizarre ways to cheat death for a long, long time. Also, I just kinda figured the Master's eyes were still all weird and screwed up from his condition in Survival v vHaha, they put in actual Dalek voices instead of the squeak-jury the actual movie used. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 12:11
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She is an incredible actor and I am thrilled she is going to be on the show, that's awesome.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:48
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Those DC/CW shows are way more fun than they have any right to be, and Darvill is great, so this is good news, good for him.
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Mar 31, 2015 02:04
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CobiWann posted:Synopsis – An interesting experiment, LIVE 34 captures the mood and tone of a corrupt regime's news outlet reporting on the outcomes of Seventh Doctor's actions against the government, but fails to deliver by failing to cover the actions themselves. 3/5 I do appreciate that they committed so fully to the gimmick, even if it doesn't quite come off. I thought it was a particularly nice touch removing the opening and closing theme too, it's just important to remember that everything we see and hear in the episode is mediated even moreso than normal - there's never any real sense that we're getting the FULL story. I also still can't decide if the overall sense that the colony's population itself was "sick" and that the Doctor merely treated the symptoms was deliberate, or if the ending and the fate of the antagonist was rather unsettlingly intended to be considered a "good" thing, or somehow "fixing" all the problems clearly present in the foundation of the colony itself.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:43
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I just realized she's got prior experience hanging out with a man who knows more than he should and can change his face 
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Mar 31, 2015 22:08
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The_Doctor posted:Ironically, before the Time War, the Time Lords spent most of their time protecting Hitler from marauding time travellers causing chaos with history by trying to kill him. I love in The Kingmaker where Richard III glumly explains that he's been plagued with time travelers all his life showing up to study him in various different ways, to the point where it's become mindnumbingly boring to him.
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Mar 31, 2015 23:35
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The third episode cliffhanger is loving amazing
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Apr 1, 2015 20:53
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In 2013, about a week before the airing of the long-awaited 50th Anniversary Special, somebody posted words to the effect of,"Oh hey there's gonna be some kind of mini-episode made available online tonight." Since the start of the revival, there had been a long history of little special mini-episodes, some made for Children in Need charity specials, others done as Blu-Ray boxset extras filling in some of the gaps between episodes etc - it only made sense there would be a couple of teasers before Day of the Doctor aired to get people all ramped up with excitement. So the mini-episode was put up online, and we were treated to a scene of a crashing spaceship plummeting towards a planet while the sole remaining crewmember desperately tried to regain control, the unhelpful ship's computer mistaking her pleas for help with a request for medical aid. Complaining that she didn't need a doctor, the crewmember is surprised when a voice unexpectedly speaks up, in one of the great meta moments in the revival's history. "I'm a Doctor," says an all-too-familiar voice,"But probably not the one you were expecting."  For the first time in 17 years, Paul McGann appeared onscreen (and not in archive footage) as the 8th Doctor, in an episode aptly titled The Night of the Doctor. In a sub-10 minute running time, this mini-episode crams in more than anybody could have ever realistically hoped for, and though it is perhaps an overly-packed episode, bursting at the seams with content/character/emotion/continuity etc it carries itself easily on McGann's presence alone. There was no reason at all for Steven Moffat to make this episode, no reason to include McGann and give him the regeneration we never saw, no reason to explicitly address Big Finish continuity, no reason beyond the fact that Moffat WANTED to, and so he did, and we are all the richer for it. Ever since the revival started, we were told that there was a Time War, a great battle between the two most powerful and advanced species in the universe - the Time Lords and the Daleks - and that it ended when the Doctor made the choice to destroy both sides. The 9th Doctor suffered enormous guilt for that action, but "he" was not the one who performed the act, who made the horrible choice to go against everything he stood for as a person, to accept that there was no better way, that death and destruction were the only solutions. It was made clear if never explicit that the 9th Doctor was the immediate incarnation AFTER the Doctor who did that deed, which left only one possible conclusion - it was the 8th Doctor who ultimately "failed", who surrendered to fatalism and gave up on the idea that there could possibly be another solution. The romantic, slightly befuddled but forever hopeful 8th Doctor would be the one who chose to "touch the wires", who decided that he not only "had the right' but would do the deed, he would crush the vial holding the virus and he would wipe out not only the Daleks but his own people, to the point that even the actions that lead to that point would be sealed away in a Time Lock, separated forever from the rest of the universe, no future but also no past. The 8th Doctor would be the one to remove them all from the board, to reject the idea that there was hope for a better way, that out of great evil some good must come. The 8th Doctor would be the one who cracked. With the launch of the revival, Big Finish came to the same conclusion and reacted accordingly. Though they couldn't touch anything explicitly from the revival, the 8th Doctor had always allowed them a measure of freedom since he wasn't tied down to the classic continuity like the previous Doctors were. So seeing the writing on the wall, they began to adjust and adapt their stories to build the 8th Doctor towards a climax that they (at least for now) would never be able to produce: a darkening of the universe he lived in, the notion that things were getting more serious, the Daleks becoming threats to Gallifrey and the Time Lords, the Doctor himself growing a little more cynical, a little more weary of it all. It was a shame, but it seemed like they were tied down to the idea, after all, the 8th Doctor had to eventually be the one who broke down to set the scene for the 9th Doctor, even if it was a story that Big Finish would never be able to tell. But then something happened, something really rather magical, heartbreaking in an entirely different way and rather sadly inspiring - The Night of the Doctor happened. The 8th Doctor appears on the crashing spaceship, alerted by the crewmember's (Cass) distress call. Though McGann had spent years performing the role in audio, it is still remarkable how he instantly reinhabits the role on the screen, the only difference between him here and in the 96 TV movie being that he moves with more confidence and resolution. This is an 8th Doctor completely comfortable in his own skin, and he easily takes charge, assessing the situation, assessing Cass, and then coming to a quick decision on how to act. Cass remained behind on the crashing ship to operate the teleporter, getting the rest of the crew off at the cost of her own life. But she's not suicidal, she did this because it was her duty and now she is trying her best to save herself, and in this extremely quick introduction between the two, the Doctor immediately decides she is companion material, welcoming her "onboard" and leading her towards the back of the ship, cheerfully explaining they're going there because the front will crash first, telling her to try and keep up with the logic  This is where they crash directly into the revival era though, as he leads the confused Cass to the back of the ship, unlocking a door along the way with his Sonic Screwdriver, and beams with pride as he presents her with the battered TARDIS, promising her it's bigger on the inside. Cass was confused and agitated before, but here she becomes outright hostile, and it's a heartbreaking moment. She immediately understands she is looking at a TARDIS, and to her that is a word that means horror and death and destruction, everything that the Doctor and his TARDIS are meant to reject and stand against. She backs away from him in fear, asking if he is a Time Lord, and when he attempts to explain in that same hurried "do try and keep up" way that he isn't like the others, this time she is having none of it. The charm and appeal of the classic era Doctors runs full on into the bleakness of the revival's Time War, as Cass locks the door between them and deadlocks it, more terrified of the Doctor and his TARDIS than she is of death. It is a horrible moment, a rejection of the Doctor that pierces him right through the hearts, especially when he makes a forced attempt at a joke by saying at least he's not a Dalek and she angrily retorts that there is no difference between the two.  And here, for me, is where the sadly inspirational bit comes into play. Because consider the situation the Doctor finds himself in - he's standing with his TARDIS directly behind him, he is free to leave at any time.... and he chooses not to go. As the ship plummets towards the planet below, he stands at the doorway facing Cass and begs her to reconsider, to open the door and come with him if only to survive THIS crash. She rejects him, she tells him she'd be happy for him to die with her, complains that the universe itself is barely hanging on as the Time Lords and Daleks tear it apart in their mindbending Time War... but still he doesn't go. The ship crashes and still the Doctor doesn't move, even though he was free to go at any time, and so the 8th Doctor dies the way he lived, never compromising his ideals, forever refusing to accept the inevitability of death and hatred and despair. He dies choosing to believe he can still get through to Cass, still hoping for something better, a solution that doesn't involve death. THIS is where the 8th Doctor dies, and he dies "whole", believing in something better even in the face of doom.  The planet, by something far more than coincidence, turns out to be Karn. A notorious magnet for crashing spaceships first seen in The Brain of Morbius, it is also home of the Sisterhood of Karn, a quasi-mystical order and "sister" race to the Time Lords, immortals who live in a self-imposed exile beyond even that of the old non-interfering Time Lords themselves. They have long been expecting the Doctor's return, and drag his corpse to a prepared room, where they use their "magic" to restore him to life, interrupting/delaying his own regeneration in order to game the outcome in their own favor. The 8th Doctor is startled awake and quickly discovers he has barely four minutes to live, reacting typically to this portent of doom with a complaint that he might get bored waiting that long. The Sisterhood have no time for his quips though, they have limited time to act and they are determined to force a choice on the 8th Doctor before "nature" takes its course and his regeneration occurs in its typically chaotic way. The Universe is being torn apart by the Time War, and Karn needs a champion of their own to save their own lives - immortality won't mean poo poo if there is no universe. There is obvious manipulation going on here, as they use Cass' corpse to hammer home the point to the Doctor that he has no choice if he wants to save innocent lives - watch the moment where they appeal to what Cass would have wanted and the Doctor tells them she would (and did) refuse any and all help from him. Head Sister Ohila's eyes narrow angrily, this is going off-script for what she wants, so she pushes past and puts words in Cass' mouth, appealing to what the Doctor would want to have heard from her, an exhortation for help, an acceptance of him as the person to provide that help. They offer the Doctor cups, each containing a formula that will control and direct his regeneration in a specific way, offering him a "choice" while doing everything in their power to make sure he makes the choice THEY want. And he does, the Doctor has already died being true to himself, only to be forced back into life briefly to have this "decision" pushed on him. So he accepts that there is no place for HIM anymore, he died clinging to the hope that defined his incarnation, and it is clear the universe doesn't want/need him around anymore. So he chooses the "Warrior" flask, as Ohila always wanted him to, and after banishing them says his goodbyes and drinks, regenerating into whom he now know as the War Doctor, who - as others have noted - immediately differentiates himself from his prior incarnation by picking up the gunbelt that Cass was wearing, in direct contrast to the 8th Doctor rejecting the (faux) gunbelt part of the costume he lifted from the hospital locker room back in the TV movie. The War Doctor - a younger looking John Hurt - declares,"Doctor no more," and moves on to the unseen adventures of the Time War, and his own eventual redemption.   So Moffat offers the viewers a chance to finally see the way the 8th Doctor died, but as he himself put it, Big Finish gives them a chance to see how he LIVED. While Big Finish has always been justifiably proud of the fact it was officially licensed to produce Doctor Who, and that therefore their stories should be considered in-continuity with the television show, there was always a sense that they were just some offshoot, a hold-out from the Wilderness Years, trundling along until the license that the BBC now cared far more about expired. But in this story, Moffat explicitly acknowledges the Big Finish universe as "canon", as the 8th Doctor in his final moments before drinking from the "poisoned" chalice bids a thankful farewell to the companions that have traveled with him through his unseen adventures. The Doctor posted:Charley, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, friends, companions I've known, I salute you. Not even 7 minutes long, Night of the Doctor crams in more than anybody could expect, and offers a heartbreaking but inspiring ending to a Doctor who never really got his time in the sun, at least not on television. McGann himself describes his Doctor as having a battered heart, but the point is that he DOES have a heart (two in fact!), and in the end he did not let go of his belief in a better universe, his rejection of death and decay and destruction as the inevitable. This mini episode was a pleasant surprise for viewers, a reaching out to acknowledge the classic series AND the Big Finish audios and the massive parts both had to play in getting Doctor Who to 50 years. It gives us a farewell to McGann, removes the shadow/questions that had been hanging over his character since the revival and the reveal of the Time War, embraces Big Finish, provides nods to the classic series, and let us know where the War Doctor came from/got his start. That this was all put together on a rushed schedule with what little budget was left over is a remarkable feat, and the strengths of the story more than make up for the slightly shoddy special effects or the rushing through scenes to fit into the runtime they had. What a wonderful surprise it was, a story that nobody expected to ever see that came out of nowhere at exactly the right time and place for maximum exposure and eager reception from an audience eager to see whatever Doctor Who they could in the build up to the 50th Anniversary special. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 23:48
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Bicyclops posted:It's also probably worth mentioning that the Eighth Doctor visits the Sisterhood of Karn in the EDAs, and that crack he makes about "four minutes, that's ages, what if I get bored?" is right on par with his typical interactions with them. I'm really glad he got 7 more minutes of screen-time. Maybe they'll do another anniversary special in a decade or so and he'll get another two minutes. Doctor: The Sisterhood of Karn, Keepers of the Flame of utter boredom Ohila: Eternal life  Doctor: That's the one Pinwiz11 posted:The only gripe I had about "Night" was no mention of Fitz or Anji as companions... yes, I know they're 8DA only but... You can always think of,"Friends, companions I've known" as a catch-all for any other companions too, and not just as a descriptor of the list he already gave
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Apr 2, 2015 00:30
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I don't think there is anything said one way or the other to support either argument, to be honest. I can't think of any reason why the Doctor WOULDN'T have regenerated, it was "only" a crash and severe physical trauma after all, I don't see why it would have cut off his ability to regenerate. But like I said, there's nothing one way or the other about it, and to me it makes more sense that the Sisterhood interfered in order to control what would have been a chaotic regeneration with a random outcome, forcing him temporarily back to life in his 8th incarnation so they could assure themselves of the outcome they wanted for the next.
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Apr 2, 2015 02:56
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Dabir posted:The idea's been knocking around for a long time that if he dies too quickly the regeneration won't have time to kick in, which might have been why Ten permanently died in Turn Left. With a crashing spaceship he goes from zero to dead in no time at all. I always figured in Turn Left he just drowned over and over and over again until he ran out of lives, which is pretty loving grim. There's also the idea that he simply chose not to regenerate because he didn't WANT to live anymore, which is perhaps even grimmer  thrawn527 posted:So the absolute least you can say about this video is that it added one fan. Good on it. That's pretty great, McGann is a proven draw!
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Apr 2, 2015 03:15
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McGann is clearly only "wig over"
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Apr 2, 2015 03:49
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The_Doctor posted:Wasn't that a line in Kill the Moon? That they could keep shooting, but he'd still be standing. He says that he doesn't know if he has a regeneration limit anymore, so they're likely to run out of bullets before he runs out of lives. Of course it was more about pointing out the lunacy and stupidity of the threat in the first place, telling her to go ahead and shoot a child, a lady and an old man instead of just asking them what was going on. As always with Doctor Who, the way it works is whatever suits the story at the time - sometimes regeneration can be blocked, sometimes it can be overwhelmed, sometimes you can be dead for a couple of hours in a hospital morgue and then boot your way out, and sometimes you trip up and hit your head on the edge of the TARDIS console while wearing a wig and your predecessor's costume.
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Apr 2, 2015 11:44
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Yeah, I've always figured that it must be a matter of time moves at the same pace/direction for all Time Lords regardless of where they are (a day for the Doctor is a day for all Time Lords, no matter where he is in time and space, etc). But that can be gotten around, though it is frowned upon/outright forbidden - basically Time Travel isn't supposed to be happen to Time Lord society itself.
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Apr 2, 2015 22:31
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In all honesty, despite listening to it, considering what I'd heard, and doing a write-up for it.... I still had to stop and think for a bit before I could remember what happens in Scaredy-Cat. It really is a wholly unremarkable and uninspiring story. I really, really can't wait to get to the end of the 8th Doctor's monthly range stories, the Doctor and Charley are fine but despite my best efforts to keep an open mind, C'Rizz really is a pretty awful character.
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Apr 3, 2015 09:21
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If only Singularity had settled on a single main antagonist, I think it could have been absolutely top-notch. As it is, it's a solid story with a really strong epilogue that you can read in a couple of different ways, and it asks some very interesting questions about whether Turlough AND the Doctor are actually "good" people or not.
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Apr 3, 2015 22:54
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 Year of the Pig is a phenomenally good story from Big Finish, an absolute delight from start to finish. Everything about it strikes the right chord with me, the absurdity, the humor, the tragedy, the action, and even the deliberately blurry resolution to the underlying "mystery" of Toby's existence. It makes perfect use of Colin Baker's rather bombastic, slightly ludicrous character of the Sixth Doctor, and the setting is absolutely perfect - early 20th Century European seaside holidays for the well-to-do in society - not nobility but gentry or other members of the "respectable" class like police detectives, retired widows, old actors, writers, doctors and the like. The story slowly unfolds a mystery that builds in action to eventually reveal a tragedy that ends on a touching and heartwarming note. It's like an old Poirot or Sherlock Holmes story, though here the actual details of the mystery are far less important than the characters and how they deal with their own personal issues and troubling history. The Doctor brings Peri to Ostend for a reading holiday, he's gotten it into his head to finally settle in and actually read Proust, which gives Peri the upper hand for a change as she HAS actually read the entire thing, though she was less than impressed. She complains that Proust needed an editor, while the Doctor is more concerned by the fact that most of the volumes he has brought with him haven't actually been written yet, so he needs to be careful not to let anybody else see them. This causes a brief bit of humor, as he is being watched from the hotel via telescope (nothing sinister, the inhabitant just enjoys taking in the sights) and the brown paper he wraps up the future volumes in causes her to ponder whether he's brought some dirty books down to the beach. When they spot a man apparently drowning, the Doctor dives in to save him, apparently having such a rough go of it that the victim ends up doing most of the work getting them back to shore. This is the Doctor's first meeting with Inspector Chardalot, a ridiculously loud and self-satisfied man who EVERYBODY immediately sees through - he is hiding something or trying to pull off some kind of scam, and despite the utter transparency of his actions, he seems harmless enough that everybody kind of just goes along with it while waiting for the other shoe to drop. That Chardalot ends up being far more sinister is quite a nice surprise, because while his buffoonish attempts to ingratiate himself are transparent, the full extent of his duplicity doesn't really come out till towards the end - it's a pretty neat double-bluff, even if it wasn't entirely intentional on the part of the character. The Doctor and Peri find themselves rather forced against their will into taking dinner with both Chardalot as well as a rather nosy old woman named Miss Bultitude (voiced by Maureen O'Brien, who played Vicky during the Hartnell era). Bultitude is also not what she seems, a common theme of the entire story - everybody is hiding something or being economical with the truth in some way. Warning Peri with the identity of the young woman's "secret" admirer, she pretends to be more dithery than she is in order to orchestrate infiltration deeper into the hotel, helped somewhat by the Doctor being so mortified after getting tipsy and giving Proust (who it turns out is holidaying in Ostend as well) a piece of his mind. She has been "hunting" the hotel's most peculiar guest, who occupies an unused section of the hotel, never leaving his room, simply calling up seemingly endless meals to gorge himself on, accompanied only by his nurse, Albertine. Known only by his first name of Toby, he is convinced that "the Doctor" is coming to kill him and thus end the human race, because according to Toby he is the last human being alive on earth. Given his access to advanced technology and seeming knowledge of the Doctor, I assumed at first that he was a time traveler, perhaps even the last human being alive, who retreated into the past to live out his life in relative comfort in the presence of others like him, even if they are all technically eons-dead in his mind. The truth, of course, is something else entirely. The answer doesn't come till late in the story, following a couple of false leads, but it doesn't give anything away (it's right there on the cover) that Toby is a pig. Whether he's a pig with a human mind inside, or from an alternate reality where pigs were the dominant species, or an experiment, or an alien doesn't matter, the fact is he is a pig. He walks, he talks, he eats (boy does he eat) and he happily regales everybody with wistful tales of his days treading the boards, back when he was an "actor" working at what was essentially a freak show. His peers were giants, dwarves, women with lobster claws for hands etc, but he never had any sense of being exploited, and considers himself a true thespian.... more than that, he insists to anybody who will listen that the world has somehow gone wrong, that in fact everybody SHOULD be a pig and in fact WERE not so long ago, but something happened (during the Boer War he vaguely seems to insinuate) and humans somehow got it into their heads that they were and always had been the dominant species on the planet. The Doctor he fears is coming to get him seems to be involved in some way, and after satisfying himself that THE Doctor is not this mysterious person, he plans to move on from Ostend to another in an endless series of hotels willing to accommodate his odd habits, funded by his not inconsiderable fortune from his time in the Freak Show. The acting is excellent in this story, but it is - excuse the pun - extremely hammy. This is entirely deliberate, fitting in wonderfully with the setting the story is set in. Toby in particular is marvelous, voiced by Paul Brooke (the Rancor Keeper from Return of the Jedi!), he smoothly regales everybody with stories of his youth, and his joyful pleasure as he describes his food is infectious, he makes everything sound utterly delicious. Toby would be an easy character to make utterly insufferable - he's a rich, self-obsessed drama queen who never stops stuffing his gob, but there was no point during the story where I didn't find him anything other than a delight to listen to. That he is such a ludicrous creation makes the reveal of his origin all the more poignant, as Toby finds his childhood home and with somewhat bewildered nostalgia goes over the various objects present, trying to reconcile what he discovers with what he has always told himself he remembers. All the supporting characters get their chance to shine - Nurse Albertine has a great moment where she bitterly recounts the life/prestige she gave up by choosing to be Toby's traveling companion, and that serves to lance the boil somewhat as we (and she) realize the full depth of her attachment to her patient. It's also a good way to showcase she isn't just a creation written with 21st century ideals present, she is very much a product of her time, her enlightenment/intelligence is laudable but while bitterly recounting the honors given to her mentor that could also have one day been hers, she notes rather nastily,"And she a colored woman, too!" Meanwhile, Miss Bultitude moves from interfering busybody to partner-in-crime with the Doctor/Peri to starstruck fan of Toby to researching journalist to wannabe-companion/nurse, proving herself every bit as able (and sometimes moreso) as the Doctor or Peri in dealing with the various mad episodes they encounter. Peri, meanwhile, spends some time working with Inspector Chardalot despite her misgivings about his obvious scheming, at times being in peril, at other times taking the driver's seat to get things done - she is perhaps the "weakest" of the characters in that so much of her story is spent reacting to/accompanying others who are actually doing things, but she does serve an integral part in keeping various parties separate from each other at important times, a reliable character to fall back on as a secondary protagonist to lend a feeling of importance to the supporting characters. There are a few time travel elements thrown in (including a wonderful gag with some cows) and there is very definitely a sci-fi bent to the entire story, but at it's heart this is a story about lost souls trying to find their way in a strange world, feeling that time has passed them by and reacting in very different ways - one tries to hold desperately on to what remains of their idea of "civilization" while the other tries desperately to transition to the "new" world and become an accepted part of it. One seeks isolation, the other seeks inclusion, and in the end both come to a better understanding of each other and their place in the world. The historical setting is important for this, it's pre-WWI but the industrial age has kicked in, technology is advancing and the world shrinking as a result, a transitional period in history between the old and the new, a time when it was easy to feel lost or untethered, and listening to Toby the Sapient Pig find his place in that world was a real pleasure. Year of the Pig is just a drat good story. I really can't think of anything I disliked about it, from start to finish I was entranced, and it is a story I would highly recommend to anybody looking for a fun story with an ending that will leave you with a smile on your face and a warm heart. It's a story that fits Colin Baker perfectly, and when the Doctor inevitably DOES leave behind those unwritten volumes of Proust, what happens to them is just a perfect capstone to such a quality story. Oh, and just as a final note - there actually WAS a "sapient" pig named Toby, though it existed a good century before this story was set. I can only guess it was the inspiration for this story, the Doctor does mention upon first meeting Toby that there were plenty of "learned pigs" about in the past, which is why even he is surprised to see the genuine deal hanging out in a hotel room in Ostend stuffing his face with chocolates. I love that we live in a world where I could write that last sentence. 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 10:50
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Dabir posted:Fixed that for you. That was a pun worthy of Inspector Chardalot
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Apr 5, 2015 22:47
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Yeah, Robots might actually be a little unsettling, while City has a very whimsical feel to it. It's possible she may be scared by the first appearance of Scaroth, I remember the first time I saw it it gave me a hell of a jump, but I first saw it in the 80s and she's probably seen far worse, and it may even look comical to her now.
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Apr 5, 2015 23:28
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Bicyclops posted:The second half is good. I agree, but boy howdy is the first half pretty awful.
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Apr 7, 2015 02:56
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egon_beeblebrox posted:"Into the Dalek" is okay. Predictable, but fun. Seems like a sequel to "Dalek" from season one. It very definitely has a similar "Dalek" vibe to it, they really push the theme of the Doctor (and others, including Clara) questioning his own sense of morality and whether he's a "good" person or not.
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Apr 7, 2015 04:26
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 Circular Time is a weird audio, telling stories that I'm not entirely sure actually happened. Split into four episodes, each episode covers one particular season of the year, but all cover a similar theme - legacy. A self-exiled Time Lord wants to shape a society and "civilize" them with himself as their spiritual/judicial/philisophical leader; a troubled genius fears for his own personal legacy as well as that of the Empire he loves; a rough round the edges sportsman desperately hopes for personal glory to justify a life's dedication, while Nyssa attempts to put onto words some lasting record of her own people/life story; and finally the Doctor himself is faced with a choice on the kind of life he wants to lead, and how he will meet his own doom. The 4-season/episode format may be exploring a similar theme throughout the entire audio, but by its very nature it makes it feel fractured, with stories mostly getting no time to breathe or properly develop. This is somewhat appropriate in that the notion of circular vs linear time comes up frequently, and this is a story that is not linear, each "season" taking place at a different point in the Doctor's life, though the first three appear to be set firmly in the period between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity when the Doctor and Nyssa were traveling alone together. I say appear, because given the nature of the 4th "season", I'm not entirely certain the first three seasons actually took place at all, it's possible they were products of the Doctor's mind, a way of dealing with his own fears about his legacy, his future (and his past) and the conflicting desires inside him between a continued life of travel or finally getting to settle down. If that is the case, I'd call Circular Time a rather interesting if not entirely successful rumination on the Davison era, if not then it's a makeshift feeling audio throwing four small scripts into the pot in order to pad out running time. In "Spring", the Doctor takes Nyssa to a planet occupied by an Avian race, on a mission for the Time Lords to speak with a self-exiled Time Lord who they fear intends to openly interfere with the development of that race. They walk right into an example of the rough justice meted out by the Avians - punishment is handing out not to the guilty but to their loved ones, since this is considered a more effective deterrent to crime. This is hardly without its problems though, particularly for more grievous crimes like murder, where the punishment is the execution of the closest relative to the guilty party. The Doctor of course is not entirely happy about this, but he tries to keep his mouth shut about it while Nyssa goes nuts about it, considering it barbaric (the Doctor reminds her that Traken wasn't without its own cruel punishments despite being "paradise"), and she's far from the only one. The Time Lord they've come seeking is Cardinal Zero, who has supposedly embraced the lifestyle of the Avians and "gone native", though the Doctor quickly sees through that pretense, figuring out that Zero did not scuttle his TARDIS at all but merely disguised it as the nearby lake (the ENTIRE lake). He faked it so the Avians would accept him, and with his superior knowledge he quickly became considered the spiritual leader of the people, though he remains subject to all their laws and traditions - that he has done so willingly has brought him great esteem, while they look on the Doctor with suspicion. Zero's intent is entirely self-serving, though he pitches it as altruistic and well-meaning, he intends to elevate the Avians into a starfaring society, to give them back the "flight" they so desire... and to fundamentally change their society to fit in with HIS concept of how they shall be. Paying lipservice to respect for their traditions, he organizes a painfully simple ruse to frame the Doctor for his murder, regenerating into an Avian form of him own and running the Doctor and Nyssa off by using the law against them - he accepts the blame for his murder and admits it was a "suicide", and since the Doctor is the closest thing he has to a relative, the Doctor is the one who must be punished. The Doctor, making an odd comment about having anticipated all this and gone along somewhat willingly, escapes with Nyssa, and since it is not impossible to punish the crime under the law of the Avians, Zero declares there must be a rewriting of the law so that from now on the guilty are punished and not their relatives, making a point of smugly declaring an amnesty for himself. This is a story where the bad guy "wins", everything goes his way, and as the set-up for the next three episodes exploring how he changes Avian society and how eventually he faces his comeuppance, it was good set-up.... but the story never continues, it simply ends. More troubling is the Doctor's implication that he was a willing (if uninformed) party to the whole thing, guessing Zero's plans and going along with it. While there is no doubt that the Avian's system of justice seemed barbaric (one of the victims of the system begs the Doctor to do something to end it), the smug and self-serving way Zero accomplishes his task feels very wrong, and I am disappointed the story wasn't continued (unless it was, and it crops up in another Big Finish down the road). In "Summer", the Doctor and Nyssa get thrown into jail when the Doctor's absentmindedness causes them to be accused of forgery by Sir Isaac Newton himself. Newton is voiced by David Warner, so that's pretty much all the recommendation most people need to justify a purchase, and he certainly steals the show, the saving grace of this particular episode which doesn't have much else going for it. The coins that the Doctor gave Nyssa were a handful of currencies from different eras in Earth history (and at least one alien one I think) and they immediately grab Newton's attention because many of the details in them suggest some kind of subtle political plot on the Doctor's behalf. Once he gets a closer look at them he notices the workmanship that is beyond anything "his" Royal Mint is capable of, and from there he furthers ends up deducing any manner of things, not least of which being that the Doctor is a time traveler. The Doctor and Nyssa mostly stand around as he rants and raves and then goes into near-catatonic states as he works through the details of the coins and the ramifications they have on the future of the Empire, as well as his own personal legacy. A genius who "discovered" gravity (there is a quick reference to an old 4th Doctor joke thrown in), completely overhauled the Royal Mint, and developed (concurrently with another mathematician) Calculus, Newton was also obsessed with alchemy to the point of distraction, seeking to create the holy grail of alchemy - the Philosopher's Stone, the key to immortality. Though he quickly discards the idea that the Doctor is a fellow alchemist (for the more fantastical idea that he is a time traveler) it is clear that his mortality is much on his mind - when by deduction he mostly correctly guesses the future course of human events from the coins he took from the Doctor and Nyssa, he is alarmed to realize that the British Empire will not last, and that his own name is likely to be forgotten in the aftermath of an alien invasion in the 22nd Century (The Dalek Invasion of Earth). The Doctor can't offer any assurances in that regard, only commiseration that this is "all" he gets - the Doctor is very much a fan of Newton's, to a fault perhaps as he skims over some of the man's darker tendencies. Upon being given their freedom, they leave Newton behind with his obsessions and his fear of mortality, a theme that runs through the entire audio - but as a standalone episode, it feels oddly detached from everything else. This is more a delivery mechanism for a wonderful performance by David Warner.... not that there's anything wrong with that. In "Autumn", the Doctor travels to a little town called Stockbridge in Hampshire, where he has a tradition of showing up to join the local cricket team for the tail end of their season. It is his holiday, a chance to revel in "linear time" in a way usually foreign to him. While he plays cricket, Nyssa attempts to write a novel, to put down in words her memory of Traken, which exists now only in her memory. Unfortunately for the Doctor, linear time means things have a habit of changing, and he discovers that the local cricket team isn't full of "worthy" gentlemen anymore, but louts and hard drinkers lead by Don, a ex-professional whose obsession with his own legacy means he is determined to keep the team from being relegated down a division in their local competition. While the Doctor puts up with their casual racism, heavy drinking, and insults towards his mild manners, Nyssa is increasingly distracted and agitated by the attentions of a local waiter/university student named Andrew. At first he seems quite rude, questioning the point of writing a novel without an antagonist, but as the days pass it becomes clearer to her that his interest in her is genuine. He takes her to see "Traken", believing it to be her home village, and pushes for a romantic relationship while Nyssa resists, having everything about her life planned out and struggling to deal with Andrew's insistence that she just go with the flow and see what happens. Everything culminates on the day of the final game, as Don (with the Doctor's aid) pushes himself past his limits to win the game and secure the team's place in the division, while Nyssa uses Andrew as inspiration to finish her book and excise some of her own demons by getting out the sheer horror and grief and frustration of seeing her home planet destroyed AND the knowledge that the man who killed her father is gleefully running around inside of his body somewhere out there in the universe. It's a bittersweet ending in keeping with the season, the Doctor and Nyssa have put off change as long as they can, and though both achieve their goals and secure their legacy, both also know that nothing will be the same, and that there is something hollow in the accomplishment. "Autumn" feels like an intermission, the quiet before the storm, nothing really happens in it, which is kind of the point - the Doctor plays cricket, Nyssa writes and develops her relationship with Andrew, and then when they both get what they think they wanted, they move on from this brief interlude in their lives and leave behind the quiet existence of linear time. In "Winter", everything is a massive change, and the events of this story are what make me question whether the previous three actually happened at all or were all an illusion/inside the mind of the Doctor. The first sees him go up against Cardinal Zero, a warped reflection of himself - the interfering Time Lord who ends tyranny and injustice. The second sees him meet a great hero of his and get a chance to speak with him and reveal something of his legacy to him. The third shows him that the peaceful existence he would like to enjoy is superficial and soon to fade, like the leaves on the trees. In the fourth story, we find the Fifth Doctor an old man living with his loving wife in a small farm in the middle of a blizzard, worried about the noise in the barn where he keeps his coffin, and more worried still about his sleeping children Adric and Tegan upstairs. Nyssa is older too, but not as old as the Doctor, living with her husband having eventually cured the sick at Terminus and being able at last to move on with her life and find the stability she has been seeking. But Nyssa has been having bad dreams, and when she uses her husband's invention to explore that dream, she discovers the Doctor who insists to her that HE is the one dreaming, and that she is a figment of his subconscious and nothing more. There is something surreal about the place, which is only suitable for a "dream", and when Nyssa's husband joins her in the dream they discover that none of them can get out of it. This causes the Doctor to face up to reality, and after a short but vehement protest that this is all he has ever wanted.... he almost immediately shrugs it off, acknowledges that they're clearly in some kind of illusion, and expresses surprise that he fell for it for even the briefest of seconds. The Doctor rejects an existence in linear time, and from the moment he does, he knows everything that is happening, the memories flooding back to him. Without giving too much away, it's a story that ties into issues from the Pertwee and Tom Baker eras as well as his own - the Doctor realizes where he is, what is happening, what the "thing" in the barn is, and who put them all in here in the first place. Saying a final fond farewell to Nyssa, who was the first face his face ever saw, he accepts his fate and walks gladly into it. I said at the beginning of this write-up that this was an audio about legacy, but I think after writing all this I got that wrong. This is really a story about change, about the fear of it, the need for it, the unfairness of it all AND the inevitability of it. The Avian society could never advance itself under the brutal surrogate system of justice it used, and so Zero changed it by changing himself. Sir Isaac Newton wanted not only to be remembered forever but to LIVE forever, and he thought the British Empire would do so as well - instead he learns that change is coming, that he will die, that the Empire will break-up and breakdown, and that within a few centuries the Earth itself will be conquered by an alien race. The Doctor finds the comfortable pair of socks that was his local cricket team has changed, that time has moved on without him and even the timeless game of cricket has changed. Nyssa works through the impact that the forced change in her life has had on her, and through her relationship with Andrew she changes further, a change that helps her to make the decision to eventually remain on Terminus, which is turn leads to the happy life she is living at the time of "Winter". And finally in that story, the Doctor is offered a false stasis, an unchanging reality he can hide in, a way to be truly happy and content and settle down, to have a family again for the first time in centuries... all he has to do is give up, to submit and accept it. Instead, the Doctor chooses change, and it comes not a moment too soon. Circular Time was written by Paul Cornell and Mike Maddox. I'm not familiar with the latter, but the former is generally pretty drat good, and the story the two tell here is laudable if only for trying something pretty drat different from the norm. I don't know if the story was always intended to be this way or if Big Finish just threw a handful of small scripts together and asked one or both writers to tie them together somehow, but I like to believe it was the former. In that regard, this story takes an interesting look back at the 5th Doctor's time, and ties it in nicely with themes that were first introduced during Jon Pertwee's time, and were closely associated with the end of Tom Baker's era and the beginning of Davison's own. It does get a little continuity-heavy towards the end, but I imagine there are very few people listening to Big Finish Doctor Who audios who aren't intimately familiar with the continuity references anyway. This story is certainly worth a listen, even if it isn't entirely successful at doing what it seems to be trying to do, you have to applaud the effort.
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Apr 8, 2015 05:06
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Wheat Loaf posted:No joke; I was listening to the radio in the run-up to the 50th anniversary and everyone on whatever show it was (something on Radio 2, I think) seemed to think Russell T Davies was still the head writer. Well to be fair, RTD casts a long shadow, what with literally being a giant and all.
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Apr 8, 2015 10:26
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computer parts posted:What are some good Seven audios other than Colditz? I want to explore him more, he's a devilish manipulator. It's a very early Big Finish story, but The Fearmonger is excellent, it feels like it comes straight out of McCoy's last season. Capaldi  
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Apr 8, 2015 23:08
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It's such a weird story, it's so light-hearted and the contrivances of the plot are so ridiculous that in the end I (and the characters!) seemingly decided "gently caress it" and just rolled with everything coming their way, but then there's these really dark moments sprinkled throughout that either get played for laughs or are just straight up cruel/unsettling that mesh really poorly with the rest of the story. And those names  - I thought Fazackerly was bad, but then along came Dimplesqueeze. These are names that belong in a far more openly comedic farce than this story provides.
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Apr 9, 2015 01:48
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egon_beeblebrox posted:Continuing with series eight, and I have to ask: How did they manage to clone Anthony Ainley for "Robots of Sherwood?" I still can't believe that was Ben Miller, I didn't recognize him at all... perhaps because he was, as you correctly noted, actually Anthony Ainley.
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Apr 9, 2015 02:57
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On the other hand, I love the UNIT "family" feel that develops with the Doctor being stuck in one time/place for any length of time, and it allows for some neat stuff with the Doctor grumpily experimenting on the console trying to work around the gaps in his memory the Time Lords shoved into place. It also makes for a pretty neat longer term (though probably unintentional) thing where the Doctor spends every moment he's "stuck" on Earth trying to escape, and the very second he's able to once again travel in time and space and go anywhere/anywhen in the universe, he CHOOSES to return to that time/place to hang out some more with his UNIT buddies 
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Apr 9, 2015 09:27
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Tom Baker is a national treasure. Of every nation. And I'm not just talking about Earth.
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Apr 9, 2015 22:37
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Bicyclops posted:I decided on The Sea Devils. Terrible to hear that your run of bad luck continues At least it has the fencing scene!
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Apr 10, 2015 04:43
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I remember he also played the spirit guide in the Reeves & Mortimer revamp of Randall & Hopkirk: Deceased which was a lot of fun.
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Apr 10, 2015 09:30
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