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Little_wh0re posted:I think that occ is going to like Fear Her more than this thread does I like Fear Her  Well, I think it's okay, and does some interesting stuff with Rose being proactive. Then the end happens  MrL_JaKiri posted:Requestion a Troughton, uh, request; got one from each of the other Doctors. The Krotons. I know it has a bad reputation but I thought it was okay and it has one of my favorite Doctor/Zoe interactions in it. If not that one, do The Seeds of Death.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:03
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Requestion a Troughton, uh, request; got one from each of the other Doctors. The Two Doctors 
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Sep 4, 2014 13:10
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Jerusalem posted:I like Fear Her Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooove
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Sep 4, 2014 13:38
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Requestion a Troughton, uh, request; got one from each of the other Doctors. The Enemy of The World Comedy option: The Dominators
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Sep 4, 2014 14:35
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Spatula City posted:This Dr Who Dynamic Rankings site is bullshit. Or the people that vote for it are. http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0436992 I agree that some of these are weird, I think the rating mostly correlates to how much action was in the episode.
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Sep 4, 2014 14:38
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http://www.dewhurstdesigns.co.uk/dynamic/ And I'll be doing The Krotons after I finish The Time Meddler
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Sep 4, 2014 14:59
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What are the four recommended 8th doctor audios to start again. Its storm warning, chimes of midnight and I can't remember what the other two are
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Sep 4, 2014 15:28
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Little_wh0re posted:What are the four recommended 8th doctor audios to start again. Its storm warning, chimes of midnight and I can't remember what the other two are Seasons of Fear and Invaders from Mars, usually, though I'm not super-keen on Mars.
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Sep 4, 2014 15:31
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Little_wh0re posted:What are the four recommended 8th doctor audios to start again. Its storm warning, chimes of midnight and I can't remember what the other two are Recommended Storm Warning, The Chimes of Midnight, Seasons of Fear, Neverland Enjoyable but flawed Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice, Invaders from Mars, Embrace the Darkness Blah The Time of the Daleks, Zagreus Minuet in Hell Minuet in Hell
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Sep 4, 2014 15:36
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I kinda loved Minuet in Hell, though that's probably because I looked at it as a comedy instead of it's intended horror stylings.
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Sep 4, 2014 15:38
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PurpleJesus posted:I kinda loved Minuet in Hell, though that's probably because I looked at it as a comedy instead of it's intended horror stylings. It's the Plan 9 From Outer Space of Big Finish. It's horrible, but it's got its charms and comes all the way back around again. I could give it a relisten and just enjoy it for a comedy. So, question. NATO is holding a summit in Cardiff this year. Isn't that how Day of the Daleks got started? Then again, who wouldn't love to see Jon Pertwee tell off David Cameron? (or for me, Colin Baker having a few choice words for President Obama)
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Sep 4, 2014 16:04
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I like Embrace the Darkness a lot more than most people seem to and I think Neverland is okay, but sort of just part one of the confusing clusterfuck that is Zagreus without the charm of having all the companions and Doctors come back to play different characters.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:07
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CobiWann posted:It's the Plan 9 From Outer Space of Big Finish. It's horrible, but it's got its charms and comes all the way back around again. I could give it a relisten and just enjoy it for a comedy. Exactly! It's by no means a good story, but I had a ton of fun listening to it.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:22
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I really enjoyed Invaders of Mars, but I started the Eighth with Nevermore and had a rare old time, with the superlative Dark Eyes coming nicely on the heels of the Dalek saga from before. I'm now going through the early Eighth stuff and Chimes of Midnight is turning out wonderfully. McGann is just so wonderfully listenable.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:30
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marktheando posted:Wow, that's uncalled for. Someone who hates Tom Baker, now I've seen everything. I don't hate Tom Baker, hes loving awesome, as is Boris Johnson, they are both eccentric as gently caress and mad as hatters.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:38
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I have a hard time with some of the accents in Invaders of Mars, but it's good campy fun. I'm up to Terror Firma with Eight and getting quite tired of C'Rizz, but it was a breath of fresh air to have him back. Scaredy Cat is next for me. I also started Cyberman, which had a fairly dull first part and feels as though it's emulating the Dalek Empire stories, which is a mistake for so many reasons. It's pretty great that there's always more Doctor Who.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:42
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:I don't hate Tom Baker, hes loving awesome, as is Boris Johnson He's really not
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Sep 4, 2014 16:59
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Jerusalem posted:I like Fear Her I just rewatched it to be sure. I'm not entirely clear where this reaction to the end comes from. It's mostly just absurdly silly. I guess when they sing to make drawing-dad disappear you could argue it's a really lovely resolution to a half-baked domestic abuse survivor plot, but it's not an offensive resolution, just a "makes it easy" button. The message seems to be that abuse survivors have to keep in solidarity with each other, which is a decent message, but was portrayed in a really dumb way. If everyone is referring to The Doctor carrying the Olympic Torch, that's just silly grandiose trademark Doctor Who nonsense. The rest of the episode is just totally mediocre, though it was nice to see Rose be the driving investigator for the entire episode.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:11
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I hope we get an episode soon where the 12th Doctor can slow down and be the 12th Doctor for a bit. These two eps have been really manic.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:12
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:I don't hate Tom Baker, hes loving awesome, as is Boris Johnson, they are both eccentric as gently caress and mad as hatters. I assume you don't really know much about British politics. Boris Johnson is more like an evil Tom Baker. He is a malicious McCoy hiding in Baker's body.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:14
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Jsor posted:If everyone is referring to The Doctor carrying the Olympic Torch, that's just silly grandiose trademark Doctor Who nonsense. Pretty sure that is what people refer to when the talk about the end of that episode. To me, it honestly never seemed any more grandiose than the way the Olympics are actually covered in real life.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:15
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Diabolik900 posted:Pretty sure that is what people refer to when the talk about the end of that episode. To me, it honestly never seemed any more grandiose than the way the Olympics are actually covered in real life. The problem arises from how the London Olympics actually turned out: A horrific corporo-fascist police state that bulldozed homes and displaced the impoverished in search of insane profit. It's the exact sort of jingoistic, anti-populace evil that Jubilee decried!
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Sep 4, 2014 17:19
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PoshAlligator posted:I assume you don't really know much about British politics. Boris Johnson is more like an evil Tom Baker. He is a malicious McCoy hiding in Baker's body. Oh no, I do believe Myrddin Emrys is British. Voted UKIP in the Euro elections, in fact. Yes.
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Sep 4, 2014 17:22
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Autonomous Monster posted:Oh no, I do believe Myrddin Emrys is British. Voted UKIP in the Euro elections, in fact. You sir are a winner!
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Sep 4, 2014 17:36
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:You sir are a winner! You're not
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Sep 4, 2014 17:41
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Hahaha. Yes the difference is that when people call Tom Baker a national treasure and a legend, they are entirely correct. When they say that about Boris Johnson, they are alarmingly wrong and make me want to vote yes even harder on the 18th.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:29
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Going back to the cancellation thing from a while back, I have to admit to being somewhat worried because the show's been back on the air for 9 years now. For a drama series in the current era, that's a long time. Soap operas and sitcoms can obviously run and run still, but that's a different set of circumstances; static sets, template characters that rookie writers can come in and write for, and so on. You can't compare it to the original run because for much of that there were only two or three channels, and you could put on an episode you'd made for five bob each week because people would watch it anyway. I don't think it's a coincidence that cancellation coincided with the exponential growth of channels and VHS releases. If you look at insanely popular shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Lost, they were all brought to an end when it was felt they'd reached a natural shelf life. Admittedly those are bad examples because Doctor Who has an open-ended narrative that none of them do. But I think if the BBC feels that it has lost creative impetus, they won't hesitate to say 'Hey, it had a great run', because it has. In this respect I feel like the biggest danger to the programme is Moffat either failing to step aside or dial down the number of scripts he writes in the near future; perceived staleness will be what kills the programme, not a loss of popularity. I'm not really clear on how BBC Worldwide's profits fund the Corporation generally, but I seem to remember that it's nowhere near as straightforward as a standard commercial network either. Besides which, Star Trek is surely as big as franchises come globally, and they didn't have any hesitation in canning Enterprise when it wasn't panning out. I guess what I'm saying is that we should all pray that Doctor Who remains good and we'll all be fine.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:31
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Yeah, the lack of an obvious successor like Moffat was in RTD's day could be a problem. If the BBC are wanting to get rid of Moffat, as they should (and they were supposedly very angry with him for loving everything up), they could just cancel the show. Though the BBC's other top international export, Top Gear, is still going after multiple incidents where all the presenters should have been fired, and is on like series 20 or something insane.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:37
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One thing that ensures that shows have to cancel around the 7-10 season mark often is that the continuing main cast usually gets higher salaries as it runs, which isn't really the case with Doctor Who.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:51
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If I were worried about the show coming to an end, what I'd be fearing is 1989-itis all over again. As I understand it, the fundamental issue in 1989 was that Peter Cregeen (head of series and serials) and Jonathan Powell (controller of BBC One) both had a long-running slightly creaking programme that nobody wanted to work on. The whole point of JN-T agreeing to do Powell's dirty work and sack Colin Baker in 1987 was that he would be allowed to leave the show and do something else; he then returned from holiday to find that if he didn't do another year, Who was going to be shitcanned. He tried to resign again at the end of S24 and S25, but both times was told there was nobody else to do the job, and if he went so did the show. Finally he said "enough", left, and that was it. The ratings and the scheduling opposite Coronation Street are a complete red herring; if there'd been someone willing to stick his hand up and say "right, I want to be the producer of Doctor Who and here's exactly how I'm going to revitalise it and breathe new life into it", they'd have got the job and who knows what happens next. (Peter Cregeen says something to this effect on the Survival DVD extras.) (This "nobody wants to work on Doctor Who" thing is how Andrew Cartmel somehow ended up becoming script editor in 1987 despite at the time working as a CAD software developer; the sum total of his writing experience was two unproduced scripts and attending a few BBC workshops. He's a pretty good writer and there's a reason his unproduced scripts got him an agent, but it's not unlike appointing a Football Manager grognard to be the next England manager because nobody else wants to do it.) So this is my slight worry; GMS decides it's time to move on, nobody sticks their hand up and goes "Me! Pick me!", and the show dies for lack of enthusiasm. Mind you, if I were a betting man and there were no obvious writerly candidate, I'd put my money on Phil Collinson talking his way into the job; the guy's far too much of a fanboy not to at least try.
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Sep 4, 2014 19:49
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J-Ru for showrunner.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:03
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Trin Tragula posted:... A depressing history of the cancellation of Classic Who ... If this is the case, what's to stop just any old fan from "sticking their hand up"? I assume there's some controller somewhere who vets applicants, but what are the base qualifications that(/those) person(s) are looking for? Is it just star-power/industry cred? And if it is, what's to stop someone like Gaiman from gritting his teeth and going, "Yeah, OK, give it to me. I'm only gonna do one series, though." [Edit] Britified the Gaiman quote. Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 20:21
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Blasphemeral posted:If this is the case, what's to stop just any old fan from "sticking their hand up"? I assume there's some controller somewhere who vets applicants, but what are the base qualifications that(/those) person(s) are looking for? Is it just star-power/industry cred? And if it is, what's to stop someone like Gaiman from gritting his teeth and going, "Yeah, OK, give it to me. I'm only gonna do one season, though." I'm pretty sure that Mark Gatiss would do the same.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:23
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I wouldn't want Gatiss to take the job anymore. The last Sherlock series was awful.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:26
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Trin Tragula posted:(This "nobody wants to work on Doctor Who" thing is how Andrew Cartmel somehow ended up becoming script editor in 1987 despite at the time working as a CAD software developer; the sum total of his writing experience was two unproduced scripts and attending a few BBC workshops. He's a pretty good writer and there's a reason his unproduced scripts got him an agent, but it's not unlike appointing a Football Manager grognard to be the next England manager because nobody else wants to do it.) He got the job just by asking, I believe.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:29
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I wouldn't want Gatiss to take the job anymore. The last Sherlock series was awful. Wasn't it, though? But I'm pretty sure that was Moffat's fault, as the main issue was Last Vow being utterly terrible.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:31
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Just let Peter Capaldi write, produce, direct and star in it. Let's see how long he could pull that off before losing his mind.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:35
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egon_beeblebrox posted:... before losing his mind. ... at which point, the show would get even better.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:43
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Bicyclops posted:I have a hard time with some of the accents in Invaders of Mars, but it's good campy fun. I'm up to Terror Firma with Eight and getting quite tired of C'Rizz, but it was a breath of fresh air to have him back. Scaredy Cat is next for me. I also started Cyberman, which had a fairly dull first part and feels as though it's emulating the Dalek Empire stories, which is a mistake for so many reasons. I kind of liked Terror Firma but general consensus is that it's no good, and Scaredy Cat is mostly rubbish. But soldier through, because Other Lives and Time Works are fantastic.
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Sep 4, 2014 20:48
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So, The Time Meddler What's this one then? There's another Time Lord and he's attempting to change history! Of course the term "Time Lord" wasn't around at the time but he's got a TARDIS and the Doctor identifies him as one of his people. Last of the second series, last serial with Verity Lambert in charge. The editor credited Donald Tosh, fresh on board and replacing Dennis Skinner in the role despite Skinner staying on for another few months working out his contract. Skinner himself wrote the story and it was directed by Douglas Camfield. (While researching this I discovered that Verity Lambert founded a production company called Cinema Verity which of course I find hilarious.) This serial is pretty groundbreaking. The headline event is, of course, the Time Meddler himself but perhaps more important to the subsequent history of the programme is that this is the first example of a kind of story that would later be called pseudohistoricals - stories set in Earth's past but featuring science fiction elements beyond those brought by the Doctor and his companions. It is also the first one that features "TARDIS" standing for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space - in An Unearthly Child it stood for Time and Relative Dimension (singular) in Space. The "incorrect" version is now ubiquitous and also parses better from a scientific point of view (such as that matters, which is to say not very much). The story is set on the Northumbrian coast in the north of England. An abandoned monastery has suddenly gained a new order of monks, although only one has ever been seen... Vikings are sighted off the coast and the new King Harold Godwinson is gathering his forces further south. It's the run up to the Viking and Norman invasions of England in 1066 and the Monk plans to meddle with time itself! (Roll credits) Meanwhile the TARDIS crew is down to just Vicki and the Doctor - and Steven, who stowed away at the end of the previous story. A lot of the early running time with the crew is in dealing with the change from the previous serial, with Ian and Barbara leaving, and with Steven's disbelief that the TARDIS actually is a time machine. They wander around and meet some of the local peasants - a fairly believable group, although extremely light on individual characterisation. One of the things that's nice in the story is that everyone (except, perhaps, the Monk whose motivation is kind of shaky) acts fairly believably. The locals are nice to the Doctor, Vicki and Steven until the Vikings show up and suspicion falls upon them. Then when it's demonstrated that they're not working with the Vikings suspicion is immediately removed. It makes them seem much more like real people rather than just a tool of the plot. The Monk himself is actually quite individually pleasant as long as you don't get in the way of his plans. He spends some time making breakfast for the captured Doctor and treats the wounds of one of the wounded villagers, complaining all the while about the lack of modern medicine making it more difficult to care for him. It's actually quite shocking how much more adult the programme is than the modern show in a lot of ways. When the Viking scouting party roll through raping and pillaging it is implied that they actually do rape and pillage. Similarly the violence between the local villagers and the Vikings is something that would be fairly nasty if done with modern production values and in colour, and the serious wounds suffered by one of the villagers are not brushed off lightly even with the Monk's higher science. Unfortunately that's the only time anything has consequence - Edith's implied rape is forgotten by the next scene. The original screening was actually more violent than the surviving version; a twelve second sequence of the Vikings being stabbed to death has been lost, although the sound survives. It's on the DVD if you really want to hear it. Production This is the end of an era. After this serial William Hartnell will be the only member of cast and crew from An Unearthly Child that is still working on the programme - Lambert leaving after this story, William Russell (Ian) and Jacqueline Hill (Barbara) leaving after the previous story The Chase. Lambert and Russell leaving was known fairly well in advance but it wasn't until a month or so before the story being filmed that the futures of Hill (leaving) or Maureen O'Brien (Vicky, staying) had been decided. To make matters worse no regular writer was available to supply a script so Lambert had to write to Donald Wilson, Head of Serials at the BBC, in order to request that Dennis Spooner be allowed to write the story. Despite story editors being very much discouraged from writing stories Wilson allowed it, luckily for Lambert. Spooner decided he wanted to shift Doctor Who away from the dichotomy of either it being a "science fiction" or a "historical" story and decide to mix the two. Despite this he still went to some length to try and be period accurate - the character names were either directly lifted from King Harold close relatives (Edith, sister and Ulf, uncle) or borrowed with some minor changes (Sweyn, Harold's brother, becomes Sven and Wulfnoth, his grandfather, becomes Wulnoth). The pseudohistorical setting brought quite a mixed reaction at the time. The first episode, and its new team, brought quite a lot of interest. People wondered about the coexistence of Vikings and wristwatches and many enjoyed the break from futuristic science fiction, but this interest very quickly faded away in episode two and the mystery of the Monk and the travails of the Vikings left many cold and longing for something more akin to The Chase. The Monk is played by Peter Butterfield, now more known for his work in the Carry On... series of films although he was yet to appear in them at the time. He plays the Monk well. He is good at the physical side of acting and has good rapport with Hartnell. His pride about his Type Four TARDIS is particularly well portrayed. Hartnell himself wasn't enjoying the changes going on behind the scenes and reacted especially badly to Lambert's successor John Wiles trailing the production, play-acting tantrums during rehearsals to attempt to intimidate the new men Wiles and Tosh. Camfield's direction is very good for the time, making good use of the moving camera and some excellent atmospheric lighting. No composer is listed for the serial as only stock music is used. Working title: The Monk What doesn't work so well? By the standards of later Doctor Who the Monk's plans seem very parochial. Stop Hardrada landing near York to let Harold Godwinson win the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and then spend a few hundred years dragging England forward in tech with the aim of "Shakespeare producing plays for the television". It's neither very evil or particularly destructive. One of his evil deeds was putting a tenner in a bank account and coming back 200 years later. Compare with Logopolis where the Master destroys a good portion of the universe. Then again he was going to attack the Viking fleet with nuclear weapons so maybe he just likes being disproportionate. The Monk (and the Doctor's) view of "modern" is also done with an unsurprisingly sixties bent, despite both the companions being from the far future - the TARDIS is a "modern" police box, the Monk wears a sixties wristwatch and plays his fake music through a gramophone. It's one of those things you just have to chalk up to "They had no idea it would be watched nearly 50 years later". Steven's character development - from not believing the TARDIS is a time machine to just being another companion who's used to all that stuff - happens pretty dramatically half way through the serial. It may have been nice to string it out a bit longer. As for the story in general nothing much actually happens. Vicki and Steven, despite being entertaining, spend the entire serial looking for the Doctor and only find him at the end. The Doctor spends most of his time captured, with him missing the whole of episode two after Hartnell's agent wrangled him another week off. Billy Fluffs I can't bring myself to put this under either "What doesn't work so well" or "Individual bits I like so it can have it's own section. There's one notable Billy Fluff in this story: "I'm not a mountain goat and I hate walking to any day. And I hate climbing." Individual bits I like Hartnell had a load of exceptional lines in this serial: "That is the dematerialisation control, and that over yonder is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy - now please stop bothering me!" [of a Viking helmet] "What do you call this then? A space helmet for a cow?" [After capturing the monk] "And remember: no more monkery!" In general the Doctor's general confusion over what the monk is saying and doing followed by him announcing he understood it all along is pretty entertaining. He also has a nice bit where he works out when he is based on context, and his realisation that he should go investigate the monastery due to a skip in the (pre-recorded) singing of the monks is a nice moment - but this being Doctor Who it's entirely possible that people just assumed it was a production error. The monk's big checklist on the wall is amusing. More villains should have that, makes it easier for us to keep up. I do like the fact that the Monk is foiled by the "stupid peasants" working out the basics of his plan and that he is captured by the Doctor through a stick held to his back as if it was a gun - obviously something that wouldn't work against the local folk! Final words History has been fairly kind to The Time Meddler. The increased presence of the Doctor's people has retrospectively made this serial more important, as it is the first time when another non-Susan Time Lord (and non-Doctor TARDIS) have appeared. The familiarity of the modern audience with a pseudohistorical helps as well. All in all it's an enjoyable serial with the performances of the cast overshadowing the lack of story momentum. The story is 113th in the Doctor Who dynamic rankings. I'm going to stop saying "I think that's a bit low" as there's so much shite in the top 100 it's going to happen for every serial except The Twin Dilemma.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:47
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