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DoctorWhat posted:Oh my god, just drop it. Don't post here at least until the next review-pair goes up, and it'll all blow over. It's not down, your URL was wrong. http://wifeinspace.com/
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Aug 12, 2014 15:09
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30.5 Days posted:It's not down, your URL was wrong. http://wifeinspace.com/ Well don't I look foolish. Edited.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:10
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DoctorWhat posted:It's a blog about a married couple, Neil and Sue Perryman, who decide to watch every single pre-2005 episode of Doctor Who, including the slide-show reconstructions of the lost episodes, as a kind of... experiment? Neil is the total Who nerd, but even he hasn't seen all of it, while Sue has only ever watched (but enjoyed) the New Series and has been almost completely insulated from in-fandom received wisdom and suchlike. Are you sure this isn't the plot for a hit new TV show premiering on Fox this Fall? Because it sounds like a setup for wacky hijinks.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:25
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Toxxupation posted:[*] At this point (and admittedly, I'm early, so I could easily be proven wrong) I'm convinced people who whine about Moffat being super sexist against women in his work on Doctor Who are just buying into a meme, since he's had the objectively best or second-best (considering how well you think Rose is characterized in "Father's Day") written Rose in any script thus far. Now, admittedly, that's a low loving bar to clear but complaining about Moffat being sexist against women seems to be a difference without a distinction at this point. Doctor Who just seems like a sexist show in general and demonizing him for being the worst when he's actually better at writing women then nearly anyone else we have seen thus far is pretty loving damning. I like Moffat's stuff far, far better than Davies, he's definitely a better writer in a technical sense, but by percentages the scripts in his seasons as showrunner have far fewer female characters and much more rarely pass the Bechdel test. This two-parter is an outlier in that respect, but people tend to dislike Moffat on the basis of sexism for stuff that comes much later in the show's run, including a lot of sexist comments he's made in press interviews. Here are a couple of choice quotes: Stephen Moffat posted:"There’s this issue you’re not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That’s the truth. We don’t, as little boys, play at being married - we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands." quote:"Well, the world is vastly counted in favour of men at every level - except if you live in a civilised country and you’re sort of educated and middle-class, because then you’re almost certainly junior in your relationship and in a state of permanent, crippled apology. Your preferences are routinely mocked. There’s a huge, unfortunate lack of respect for anything male." I wouldn't dispute that Doctor Who is a sexist show, though. One could wish otherwise given how moon-eyed it is about equality, but the treatment of women as characters was often very flawed in the Davies years too. The show is probably at its worst, in my opinion, when it lionises the Doctor and has his lady companions moon over him as if he were a cross between Lord Flashheart and the Messiah, which feeds into those sexist tropes quite a bit.
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Aug 12, 2014 22:21
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Moffats sexism has nothing to do with that lovely text. That's all I have to say.
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Aug 12, 2014 22:27
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Bown posted:Sorry but if you really feel the need to make those grand sweeping generalisations based on the 45 minutes of him you've seen so far you're being kind of a loving idiot and the multiple people who know better than you deserve a chance at a rebuttal. It's not super important to you shut down right this moment any musings about whether or not Steven Moffatt is or isn't sexist, because even within the part you quoted that opinion is qualified on "I have only watched this episode". Those future episodes DON'T MATTER right now. There is no need to disprove the opinion as it stands because if he is or isn't, the thread will get to those episodes eventually and you can discuss it then. This isn't about having different opinions or people taking issue with them, this is about you being a pissant. With respect to the age of the fandom, I am tempted to say that if anything part of why the first season of the new series is so odd is due to attempts to try and satisfy several audiences at once. You have to try and make the older fans happy (hence things like the Daleks retaining their old look, despite being absurdly nonthreatening), younger audiences (actual fart joke aliens), teenage boys (Rose "Bimbo Chav" Tyler). Rather than make good episodes that everyone can enjoy at once, it feels like check lists being run through to try and capture everyone.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:15
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The first series of the revival was, understandably, something of an experiment. Some things they got wrong, some things they got right. It's not even easy with hindsight to state what worked and what didn't, because it spawned a huge new fandom that isn't all attracted to the same things.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:24
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Coolwhoami posted:It's not super important to you shut down right this moment any musings about whether or not Steven Moffatt is or isn't sexist, because even within the part you quoted that opinion is qualified on "I have only watched this episode". Those future episodes DON'T MATTER right now. There is no need to disprove the opinion as it stands because if he is or isn't, the thread will get to those episodes eventually and you can discuss it then. This isn't about having different opinions or people taking issue with them, this is about you being a pissant.. This. The thread is interesting due to seeing the speculation and assumptions that Oxx makes based on not knowing what the future of the show holds. He's writing it without having seen the future episodes and arcs being referred to. If someone disagrees with his view of Moffat then just wait. When he finishes the run you'll ever be vindicated without having to spam up the thread, or will at least be able to debate the issue from a footing of equal knowledge.
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Aug 13, 2014 00:48
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Quick rules clarification. Are we allowed to point out minor details in the watched episodes that Oxx/Occ/Toxx/Anus missed? What if said minor details relate to an upcoming plot point? Because I seem to remember that by this point in the original run people had noticed a recurring phrase and were already starting to speculate about it, but I'm not sure if it's possible for those of us who've seen the season to discuss it safely. Spoilered just to be safe, it's very vague and probably won't actually spoil anything for people who haven't seen the full season.
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Aug 13, 2014 07:56
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How about we don't, because this thread isn't about us and what we know, it's about seeing Occupation discover this stuff himself, and seeing if he'll be able to pick up on this stuff himself.
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Aug 13, 2014 09:41
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MrAristocrates posted:If you make it through Series 3 of Doctor Who I'll create a review thread for all three seasons of The Newsroom, Noted.  For like a year I was a New-Who fangirly nerd, and now I'm kind of meh about the show it but still watch. So I'm enjoying this thread. Don't poo poo it up. 
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Aug 13, 2014 15:11
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Congrats on the modstar, Annakie!
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Aug 13, 2014 15:13
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DoctorWhat posted:Congrats on the modstar, Annakie! Thanks! 
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Aug 13, 2014 15:15
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I've actually forgotten everything about series 1 & 2, aside from one especially stupid macguffin, so reading these reviews saves me the trouble of sitting through it all again. My fond memories are still crumbling, but not an hour episode at a time. God bless you two miserable bastards.
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Aug 13, 2014 15:23
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Annakie posted:For like a year I was a New-Who fangirly nerd Worst mod
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Aug 13, 2014 15:49
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Toxxupation posted:Worst mod She didn't call it NuWho, so best mod 
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Aug 13, 2014 16:21
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I was, let's say, inspired to revisit some old Series 1 new who because of this thread. Specifically, the Empty Child/Doctor Dances set, since I've never seen it all the way through and it's supposed to be pretty good, and Barrowman is pretty awesome. I just want to say... HOLY poo poo Rose is trashy as gently caress! I thought maybe people here were being unfair here straight-up calling her a chav but, no, totally warranted. Wow.
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Aug 14, 2014 02:43
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First Bass posted:She didn't call it NuWho, so best mod She didn't call herself a Whovian, best mod ever.
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Aug 14, 2014 02:45
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XboxPants posted:I just want to say... HOLY poo poo Rose is trashy as gently caress! I thought maybe people here were being unfair here straight-up calling her a chav but, no, totally warranted. Wow. The worst part is that making Rose a chav who makes goo goo eyes at the Doctor is a fine concept for a companion with loads of story potential.... but RTD made her into his little pet favorite so instead of actually going to interesting places he continually rewards her and frames her as this awesome creature when she so, so is not, speaking strictly as far as the thread is through the series up to this point. Even less than one series in she continually fucks up, but is never punished; every eligible suitor she meets treats her like a real prize catch; the Doctor not only entertains her flirtations but encourages them; and at every turn she is shown to be the ideal companion to the Doctor at this point in time instead of the urchin he picked up rolling through a back alley one night which she actually is. mind the walrus fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Aug 14, 2014 02:48
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Doctor Who "The Doctor Dances" Series 1, Episode 10 There's a scene about three quarters of the way through "The Doctor Dances" where The Doctor confronts Nancy, as The Child walks over to them, crying for his "Mummy". "He's gonna keep asking, Nancy," he urges. "He's never going to stop." And it's at that moment that the Doctor Who audience realizes that the entire 75 minutes of groundwork and buildup that Moffat had laid was to build to that singular line of dialog. And it's incredible. Genuinely a wondrous accomplishment for Doctor Who and, heck, even television as a whole. For the first half of the episode, I was convinced that after the tonal, genuinely unnerving piece of television that was "The Empty Child", "Doctor Dances" was one gigantic disappointment. Moffat abandoned the quiet, understated, tense mood of the previous episode for, essentially, a low-rent action film. Jack, The Doctor, and Rose get chased from room to room by the Empty People, tossing one-liners and shooting pistols as the overbearingly loud score blares on. I mean, it's not bad, but it's not what I wanted or even expected. To me, it felt like the jump that Aliens made from Alien- trading in its atmosphere and storytelling hooks for big, loud, action setpieces. Worse, still, it felt like Moffat was at his weakest when writing these scenes- the dialog was still crisp and the jokes flew fast, with most landing, but there was still a false, half-assed air about them, as if Moffat only included these scenes because he felt like he had to (or was pressured to) and it filtered onto the screen. It, to me, was all the more a disappointment because I felt like Moffat had so nailed the sense of atmosphere in the first episode. Everything about "The Empty Child", from the setting he gave to the time period to the mysterious story he was weaving worked together as a cohesive whole, and in the follow-up he spends so much of his time in the first half of the episode trading in stuff that, as read on the screen, he didn't really believe in. It got so bad that after a certain point in the episode I felt like Moffat was truly a one-trick pony, able to build a world and that's about it. Although he continued his uncommonly skilled ability at fleshing out Rose- throughout the first half of the episode she's seen being logical and pragmatic, and in fact in one memorable sequence she, not Jack or even The Doctor, is the one who saves everyone's bacon, able to figure out that shooting down is their only way out -there's a sequence soon after involving Rose flirting with The Doctor that made me roll my eyes, since it seemed only included to continue forcing an at this point extremely tired storyline. Truly, it felt like Moffat had completely lost the thread on his own two-parter, since it had devolved to, yet again, more will-they-won't-they. At the same time, Nancy is involved in her own B-story. Without the Doctor directly on her tail, the time spent on Nancy doesn't really make much sense, at first: She's a solid, well-defined character, but she's not a main cast member, and indeed all of the main cast is currently grouped with their own pressing issues. So it's all the weirder that we get scenes like Nancy blackmailing the man whose house she's nicked food from or her agonizing over what will happen to the orphans she is looking after after she's gone. It all seems like long-winded stalling for whenever she will inevitably meet back up with the main group, and one massive waste of time that throws even more shade on the already-flawed action sequences. But none of that matters, absolutely none of it, because the entire episode builds to The Doctor, Rose, Jack, and Nancy gathered around the false-flag alien ship that Jack shot into London 1941, as our heroes await death at the hands of the Empty victims. It is there where we finally get plot payoff for who and what The Empty Child is; it turns out the "ship" was in fact an ambulance, staffed with nanogenes, helpful nanobots that automatically fix whatever is flawed in a species. Unfortunately, none of them had ever encountered a human before, so the first human they found- a dead child, wearing a gas mask- they assumed all humans operated the same way, so "revived" him and quickly spread about "fixing" the rest of humanity- stopping their hearts, creating a gas mask as a face, and most importantly had them singularly obsessed with "Mummy". It's a powerful, elegant reveal, and if the episode ended right there I would've given "Doctor Dances" a B and been done with it. Writing a plot twist is a supremely difficult thing to pull off, and Moffat did so with aplomb, laying out all the pieces in the previous episode for anyone to pick up- the nanogenes were introduced and defined, the Child's victims all had the same symptoms, and Jack even stresses himself that all he shot into the crater was "an ambulance". Really, just extremely neat storytelling all around. But it's the second and third twists that elevate this episode to pantheon status. As I mentioned at the very beginning of this review, as The Child walks over to the foursome, crying plaintively for his Mummy, Nancy breaks down sobbing, crying about how this entire mess was her fault. And it's that confession that The Doctor puts together the pieces, for the first time: the Child isn't Nancy's brother, but her son. She gave birth to him as a young teenager, then lied to everyone including him about his parentage, to protect herself. And that's when The Doctor utters the two lines of dialog that encapsulate the whole episode, as he's urging Nancy to confess to her son her dark secret. "He's gonna keep asking, Nancy," he states. "He's never going to stop." I thought that Moffat was great at setting a scene, created a world, and that's it. I could respect the hell out of him as a writer, I reasoned, but I wouldn't be in love with his work, because I go for the big, bold character moments, the heartstrings-pulling drama. And, to me, Moffat just didn't have the juice to work in that arena. Nancy in "The Empty Child" was, to me, all of Moffat's strength and weaknesses writ large: He's able to craft an interesting character with decent dialog in a fantastic, well-defined world, but he's just not good at having me care about them on any emotional level. Nancy in "The Empty Child" is cold and removed from others, completely humorless. She's an interesting character because she knows more than she lets on, but that's it, I wasn't particularly invested in her story. Which makes her reveal as the guilt-ridden mother of The Child all the more emotionally affecting. It wasn't a failure of Moffat in crafting Nancy as unrelatable, it was a choice. It retroactively completely and utterly changes every single scene that Nancy has both in this episode and the previous. She stays away from others because she's still suffering the loss of Jamie, her son, and chooses to block herself off, to prevent herself from becoming emotionally vulnerable again. She's noncommital and vague because of her associated guilt with The Child due to the deception she has told. She steals food from other houses during air raids for two reasons: one, to redeem herself for abandoning and denying the existence of her own son, and out of a deep-seated desire for death as punishment for her sins. Every single Nancy scene within this episode, especially between her and the orphans, was not stalling for tim, but rather textural, character-defining work as Nancy worries that she will ruin these children's lives the same way she ruined her own. The two-parter wasn't an atmospheric one at all- it was an emotive one. Even the setting, of London 1941, was chosen so as to justify narratively why Nancy would keep her pregnancy and subsequent birth a secret in the first place. The previous 75 minutes of Doctor Who built to this singular scene, as Nancy finally decides to confess that she is, in fact, The Child's mother. This moment, this confession only lands if we, the audience, are emotionally invested in Nancy as a character, and speaking for myself boy was I. I choked up as Nancy plainly tells her son, "I am your Mummy," finally paying off the memetic line of the two-parter in resounding fashion. An absolutely incredible scene. The third reveal- as the nanogenes realign with the new information, recognizing Nancy as Jamie's parent and finally realizing that they had it wrong all along, and go about fixing their blunder with the other infected -lands particularly well as The Doctor, for once, is joyously excited about being able to save everyone, urging the nanogenes with: "Come on. Give me a day like this. Give me this one." He's so used to "acceptable losses" as a guiding principle of the work he does, and Eccleston completely sells the pure joy of, for once, everything working out perfectly for everyone involved. Without this scene, the fact that the nanogenes reversed all the damage they caused would seem really pat and forced, but with it the scene itself is elevated, emotionally- a rare moment of a show being able to have its cake, and eating it too. But really, the Doctor in triumph is secondary. The climax of this episode is the Nancy reveal and confession, because it reveals that at its heart, the entire two-parter was about the power of the love between a mother and her son: Powerful enough to revive the dead, powerful enough to kill, but also powerful enough to cure. Powerful enough to bring hope and joy to a cynical, bitter nine-hundred-year old man, if only for one day. Powerful enough for everything to turn out okay. And Moffat sold it. By loving god he loving sold it. loving incredible. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Aug 15, 2014 03:42
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Only 29 episodes until the next good one.
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Aug 15, 2014 03:51
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I'm glad to see the recognition of how powerful that moment where Nancy acknowledges her motherhood is. It often gets overshadowed by the (excellent) following scene with the Doctor joyously declaring that just for once everybody lives, but it really is what the entire two parter had been building to.
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Aug 15, 2014 03:51
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Man I wish Eccleston had stayed on the show longer. Just think what he could've done if he'd had the opportunity to work with more genuinely great material like this episode instead of what most of the season provides. Everybody lives. 
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Aug 15, 2014 03:55
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Toxxupation posted:Powerful enough to bring hope and joy to a cynical, bitter nine-hundred-year old man, if only for one day. Are we sure we're talking about The Doctor, here?  Don't get me wrong, I realize a very large amount of Dr Who is pretty garbage and don't expect you to ever be dissuaded of that fact - why should you be? I often question why I'm still watching the show, myself. But, I think what all of this has made me realize is that, maybe, my very favorite shows are the ones that are completely, totally unreliably unpredictable. There's something magical about a show that can go from an F one week to an A the next, and I'd certainly rather watch that show than one that maintains a consistent C+.
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Aug 15, 2014 04:01
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XboxPants posted:But, I think what all of this has made me realize is that, maybe, my very favorite shows are the ones that are completely, totally unreliably unpredictable. There's something magical about a show that can go from an F one week to an A the next, and I'd certainly rather watch that show than one that maintains a consistent C+. I mentioned before; I think that's the real magic behind Doctor Who and the better Star Treks; they take risks, they build scripts around ludicrous concepts, they go all over the place and happily fail half the time just because some of the rest of the time, they'll knock it out of the park.
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Aug 15, 2014 04:05
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Regy Rusty posted:Man I wish Eccleston had stayed on the show longer. Just think what he could've done if he'd had the opportunity to work with more genuinely great material like this episode instead of what most of the season provides. I liked Christopher Eccleston so much as the Doctor. It really sucks how it ended. Especially if you watch those early episodes of Doctor Who Confidential, and you hear him talk with such enthusiasm about the role, and then it just died off and he left. He is currently on a pretty bad HBO show "The Leftovers". His "solo episode" (Episode 3, where it was an hour of just him and his story) had a moment where that big stupid grin pops up(just like when he says "Everybody Lives!") that made me unnecessarily sad that he left the show after one season. I really, really hope he comes back and does some Big Finish audios. That would be amazing.
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Aug 15, 2014 04:09
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Toxxupation posted:Random Thoughts: Just in case you forgot.
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Aug 15, 2014 04:11
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Doctor Who "The Doctor Dances" Series 1, Episode 10 Optimism. How I loathe it. Occupation's tastes and my own diverge often, and often in opposite directions. I like stoic, bleak stories, and he likes emotive ones with a happy ending. I like melancholy folk or guitar-rock, he likes peppy electronica and dubstep. I like Homestuck, and he also likes Homestuck (but won't admit it). My brain locks down like a bank vault whenever it gets a whiff of emotional manipulation, and by that token, the end of "The Doctor Dances" - regarded as one of the iconic moments of the series, with the Doctor's triumphant shout of "EVERYBODY LIVES!" - should have landed with all the aplomb of a clown from a tenth-story window against the cold granite of my heart. But I liked it anyway. Why is this? Join me, horrible friends, on a journey of discovery. Without getting into too much detail, Moffat has always struck me as a very "clockwork" type of writer - he's obsessed with making every element of his plots come together somehow by the end, no matter how much he needs to torture his scenarios to make that moment of convergence occur. Luckily, this two-parter meshes with very little trouble. But before we get to that, let's glance over the structure of this episode in general. As with "Aliens of London" and "World War Three," each episode serves a different purpose - "The Empty Child" is mostly setup (though here the setup is atmospheric and tense rather than soul-deadeningly stupid), and "The Doctor Dances" is mostly action, which for Doctor Who means a lot of running and shouting. As Occupation noted, this kind of takes a big ol' dump on the feeling of dread engendered by "The Empty Child," though it still gets a few nice "boo!" moments, as the Child is now at "home" and much livelier as a result ("You mean the Child can phone us?" Rose asks. "And I can heeear yooou. Coming to fiiind yooouuu," the Child cuts in, with all the joy of a dead rat). Still, the Doctor and Rose spend a good amount of time running from gas-mask men and then twiddling their thumbs in a supply closet, which leads to a lot of witty banter - serviceable witty banter, certainly there's worse kinds of witty banter, but it does let the air out of the balloon a bit. Personally I liked the interaction between the Doctor and Rose in that closet, since they've got absolutely nothing else to do but sit around and wait for either rescue or doom; Rose has apparently already burnt out her fear of death, so this would be a fine time to goof around in a wheelchair and give the Doctor lessons in how to do a decent two-step. The first half of the episode still feels like filler; the Doctor has all the information he needs within the first ten minutes, but we've still got to fill another twenty before the conclusion, so let's have a bit of a run-around and make fun of the screwdriver. Of course, then we have the final act, which Occupation has gushed about so much. It's cloying. It's stupid. It's literally saving the day with the power of love. The score is overblown and the fairy-light effects of the nanogenes are cheesy and cheap. Why am I smiling. Is this sickness. Will I die soon. It occurred to me that, much like one of the few other decent episodes in this series, "The Unquiet Dead," the story of this two-parter could have functioned perfectly well divorced from all the science-fiction jiggery-pokery (which would also have the happy result of chopping out Rose's plotline). Cut away the nanogenes and the spaceships and the sonic, and what you have left is a straightforward ghost story. The Child is a revenant, a walking curse out for some inscrutable desire, and he curses everyone who comes near him with his need. It's only when that need is identified, and provided, that the malicious force possessing the Child is pacified and disperses. The Doctor's desperate optimism and drive to solve the mystery, contrasting with Nancy's despair in the seemingly unstoppable forward march of the Blitz, is what forms the real emotional core of this episode, not a hug and a bunch of shiny lights. Nancy sincerely (and understandably) believes the world is at an end, just like she's lost faith in herself as a person; the Doctor knows otherwise, and his indomitable will to better things - sometimes in spite of himself - is what finally triumphs over the Child's sickness, just like Britain will eventually overcome the Blitz. The end is never the end (is never the end is never the end). Of course, without the sci-fi aspects of the plot we wouldn't have Rose pep-talking Nancy, or Jack's charming little scene in the face of his impending explosion, or that slow pan of the Tardis inside Jack's ship with Rose and the Doctor still clumsily dancing away, or that hobbling old woman whose leg was restored by the now-properly functional nanogenes (a charming little aside that just ratcheted up the feel-good factor of the ending one more notch). The happy ending of "The Doctor Dances" works because it takes all of the creeping dread and wrongness of the previous 90 minutes, confronts it directly, and then banishes it - that tingly feeling in my chest, therefore, is intellectual satisfaction at a well-resolved plot, with no troublesome emotions involved. Well done, me. Well done, everyone. And well done, Moffat, of course. Regardless of how people feel about him now, there aren't many who knock this two-parter, and especially not its ending. Maybe it's because a little basic metaphor and competent plotting is post-doctorate stuff compared to most of Who (and especially compared to Davies' fever-dream kitchen-sink approach to scriptwriting), but I've seen this ending over and over by now and it still makes me feel stuff, despite my cultured brain yammering that it's all in terrible taste. Optimism's for chumps, but everybody lived. So let's dance. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 04:16
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Really great two-parter. It gives you dread along with optimism, a very human/emotive story supported by science fiction, and the story itself uses its historic background well without overshadowing the story or making the episode seem dated. And you learn a lot about the Doctor in these episodes, by both what he says and does. It does have some cringe-worthy dialogue, but these are the first two episodes I'd show to someone who wants to get into Doctor Who. Especially since cringe-worthy dialogue is a hallmark of this series!
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Aug 15, 2014 05:44
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JUST THIS ONCE, EVERYBODY LIKES IT!
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Aug 15, 2014 05:47
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E: Actually, you know what? I'm 99% sure that this post won't contribute meaningfully to anything. Sorry.
Republican Vampire fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 05:57
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Toxxupation posted:The climax of this episode is the Nancy reveal and confession, because it reveals that at its heart, the entire two-parter was about the power of the love between a mother and her son: Powerful enough to revive the dead, powerful enough to kill, but also powerful enough to cure. Powerful enough to bring hope and joy to a cynical, bitter nine-hundred-year old man, if only for one day. Powerful enough for everything to turn out okay.
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Aug 15, 2014 06:10
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This story, along with 'Dalek', is really why Eccleston's season is still my favourite. His character - the broken, damaged war veteran putting on a brave face and being silly to mask truly deep pain - is so much more well-established than anything that comes afterwards. The sheer glee that after everything he's been through he finally gets to have just one big straight-up win, with no collateral damage or anything, is incredibly powerful, and Eccleston sells the gently caress out of it.
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Aug 15, 2014 10:27
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The old serial format brought with it a lot of episode cliffhangers (duh), and as the rest of the serial style shows died away and we were left with just Doctor Who it became somewhat iconic of the series. By including the two parters in his run RTD was deliberately trying to harken back to that time, giving us (in his first series) three cliffhangers to work with of varying quality. The trouble is that it puts a lot more of a constraint on a two part programme than it does on a four, six, twelve part programme; you can't just keep ramping up the stakes in a story that's going to be on TV for over a month so the cliffhangers didn't necessarily imply an increase in tempo of the action. With a few hours to play with and an expectation of a slightly slower pace each episode can proceed along at its own pace - some fast, some slow, some horrifically meandering and time wasting. And because you had so many cliffhangers you could get away a bit more with a few slightly dodgy ones - Dragonfire, Warriors of the Deep, Time and the Rani - because the truly exceptional ones stuck in the memory so well. As an example: Back in the sixties each individual episode had a title, and there was no overall story name on the title card. The story that we now know as The Daleks had its first story called "The Dead Planet". (The Daleks was really the breakout hit that put Doctor Who on the map. People went nuts for them, so it was decided to bring them back - more on that in a bit). One of the most effective cliffhangers came at the end of a series 2 serial. The first episode was called World's End. The episode opens with a man tearing a metal object off his head then committing suicide in the Thames. TARDIS lands in what looks like modern day London - a first for the programme - and then follows a really bleak episode, where they wander around a ruined London which features stuff like signs instructing you not to dump corpses in the river. For what was still sort-of supposed to be an educational show for children this was pretty loving dark. The end of the episode sees Doctor and Ian (one of the 3 companions) cornered by the river by more of the men with the metal objects on their head, and they look around for some way to escape... Only to see a loving Dalek rising from the Thames!!!!!! That drove people wild. Pity the story is now called The Dalek Invasion of Earth so that you know they're going to appear going in, but c'est la vie. We're living in a world where the explosion of the Enterprise (final dramatic moment of Star Trek III) was put into the trailer. You can find the episode on Daily Motion. UNFORTUNATELY the new series doesn't have the luxury of time and loads of cliffhangers. There's only a handful per series and the two-parters tended to draw even more attention anyway due to their larger scope. In addition if you're writing a story and want to split it into two parts there's a tendency to put it at the end of the second act - you can't put it in the middle as you have another dramatic moment coming up soon probably anyway to steal thunder or have thunder stolen from it - so the first two thirds of world and character and plot building go into part I and all the resolution goes into part II, which isn't nearly enough for the running time. Hence you add in some literal running time. Most two parters follow a pattern of "build up" part I and "running around like a mad person" part II, and they really suffer from it.
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Aug 15, 2014 11:11
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The Dalek Invasion of Earth is also responsible for establishing most of the Dalek character. It makes Exterminate a catch-phrase, it nails down the Nazi parallels (one even talks about "the final solution", which for a programme transmitted less than 20 years after the end of the war was pretty on the nose) and makes them able to move on non-metallic surfaces, a trait that would have been pretty drat limiting for other stories.
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Aug 15, 2014 11:14
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MrL_JaKiri posted:One of the most effective cliffhangers came at the end of a series 2 serial. The first episode was called World's End. The episode opens with a man tearing a metal object off his head then committing suicide in the Thames. TARDIS lands in what looks like modern day London - a first for the programme - and then follows a really bleak episode, where they wander around a ruined London which features stuff like signs instructing you not to dump corpses in the river. For what was still sort-of supposed to be an educational show for children this was pretty loving dark. The end of the episode sees Doctor and Ian (one of the 3 companions) cornered by the river by more of the men with the metal objects on their head, and they look around for some way to escape...
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Aug 15, 2014 12:30
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Tiggum posted:This is one of the things that really annoys me about NuWho. Some of the episodes have some great shock reveals in them, but every loving time you'd know about it before you saw it because they'd showed it on the preview at the end of the previous episode and/or just gave it away in the title. Dalek is great example, because they clearly wanted the Dalek to be a surprise, but you knew it was coming because you watched the previous episode and read the title of this one. It's not like they'd be able to keep it that secret, since apparently BBC marketing and Radio Times has free will to spoil whatever the gently caress they want regardless of drama or what the showrunners want, going by the last few years.
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Aug 15, 2014 12:47
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I'm curious Oxx. Based on the last couple of episodes, would you keep watching the show right now if you had the choice to just stop?
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Aug 15, 2014 13:43
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Senor Tron posted:I'm curious Oxx. Based on the last couple of episodes, would you keep watching the show right now if you had the choice to just stop? I am Oxx. He is Occ, or Toxx. Many people have gotten the two of us confused. Those people are no longer here, or anywhere.
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Aug 15, 2014 14:03
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Oxxidation posted:I am Oxx. He is Occ, or Toxx. Many people have gotten the two of us confused. Those people are no longer here, or anywhere. All these name changes are making it very hard to keep track of things. Same question to Occ.
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Aug 15, 2014 14:45
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