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Doctor Spaceman posted:"Is the Doctor a superhero" is always a fun thing to consider. To be perfectly honest, I've never even considered him any other way. He hits a lot of the same beats for me, right down to the supervillains melodramatically threatening to blow up cities. You could easily make an argument that Hartnell wasn't playing a superhero, but after that...
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Jul 9, 2017 01:42
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cargohills posted:I feel like an attempt at a British superhero could have been quite funny.  ?Captain Britain, however, actually rules a lot.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:46
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idonotlikepeas posted:Superman is, fundamentally, an actual god that would prefer to be a human being, and that ties himself to human values because he believes humanity is important. Batman (my personal favorite, superherowise) is the opposite; a human that, by dint of talent, money, and considerable effort, has made himself into something more than human because he believes that sacrificing his humanity is the best way to serve others. Superman is actually Clark Kent wearing an disguise, even though it should be the other way around, and similarly, Bruce Wayne is just Batman wearing a disguise, even though it should be the other way around there, too. This drove me absolutely nuts in Kill Bill Volume 2 when Bill describes Clark Kent as the made up personality.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:27
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I'll say this about this thread, getting some amazing comic recommendations. Definitely checking out that FF Hickman run.
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Jul 9, 2017 02:37
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Yeah, Superman isn't a hero because of his powers, he's a hero because of his upbringing. Part of the reason I dislike the Snyder Superman so much is that Ma and Pa Kent don't instill the values in Clark that lead to Superman commonly being called an overgrown boy scout in the comics - they actively encourage him to hide away, to fear exposure or to just not help people "if he doesn't feel like it".Doctor Spaceman posted:"Is the Doctor a superhero" is always a fun thing to consider. One of my favorite jokes is in Last Christmas when the Doctor mistakes a description of himself as a description of Santa Claus 
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Jul 9, 2017 02:39
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AndwhatIseeisme posted:This drove me absolutely nuts in Kill Bill Volume 2 when Bill describes Clark Kent as the made up personality. It's odd with Superman since he actually has two secret identities (I'm purely going by the Donner version, I don't know if the comics are different): Superman, and bumbling, glasses wearing reporter Clark. So in this sense Bill's right. Clark Kent, the 'real' person, is only really able to be himself when he's back in Kansas with his parents, who taught him to be selfless and humble and instilled the values he tries to live by. He spends the rest of the time switching between two false personas: Superman, who is trying to live up to his own ideal of humanity, and Clark Kent, who is trying to not get noticed, whilst still trying to incorporate those values into them. Throw in Kal-El, Son of Krypton in there as well, and I'm surprised he doesn't periodically have a full on mental breakdown from his identity issues. Thinking about it, it's a good extreme example of who we are compared to how we present ourselves, which is a very universal conflict that pretty much everyone goes through. CityMidnightJunky fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jul 9, 2017 |
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Jul 9, 2017 02:51
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The other dumb thing about Bill's speech is that it's hardly unique to Superman.
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Jul 9, 2017 03:03
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Seriously, watch the below scene and compare it to the Grant/Lucy scene where he's torn between revealing his secret identity or not - it's wonderful they wanted to pay homage to the original film but they did such a poor job of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIaF0QKtY0c
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Jul 9, 2017 03:13
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Wolfechu posted:I'll say this about this thread, getting some amazing comic recommendations. Definitely checking out that FF Hickman run. You need a reading list, let me find the post I made about it. It is my bar none favorite run of comics ever, and should be all up on MU. It is also almost entirely self-contained, so all you need to know is at least the loose events of Civil War, the Skrull Invasion, and how that leads into Dark Reign. Burger McAngus posted:For my birthday a buddy of mine gifted me Hickman's run on Fantastic 4 and a year sub to Marvel Unlimited. I liked what I read so I was wondering if, as someone who's only marvel reading was that run, I could jump into Hickman's Avengers/Infinity/Secret Wars stuff or if I'd need a whole bunch of other things to know what's going on. Toxxupation posted:Okay, gently caress. I think I got the loving list down. Toxxupation posted:
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Jul 9, 2017 03:30
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I ended up downloading a copy of Hickman's FF run after I bought because the reading order is so loving annoying. At least his Avengers run can generally be read a trade at a time.
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Jul 9, 2017 03:32
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Lick! The! Whisk! posted:It's clear that Moffat modelled this episode, and Grant specifically, after Superman. But he completely misunderstands why Superman works. Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Grant is somehow both boring and kind of creepy. He has no reason to be a superhero, no inciting event that caused him to throw a costume on, so he feels completely out of place in "Mysterio", an hour in which he stars. Where Superman does what he does because he's genuinely nice, Grant, from "Mysterio"'s beginning to its end, feels like a Nice Guy. He engineers the entirety of his life to be around Lucy (Charity Wakefield), from being her live-in nanny to saving her constantly when he's in-costume, so the entirety of the episode comes across as watching some super-powered stalker try to trick a girl into a relationship with him. He's supposed to be a nebbish nerd, I...guess? But he just comes across as a complete and utter loser creepily pining after his employer. quote:DOCTOR: The Ghost. What have you got? Lick! The! Whisk! posted:It seems like the episode wants to put across that Grant is the real superhero, but if that's the case then why give him both such a traditionally feminine job and then make him so overdefensive about it? And why does "Mysterio" constantly use his job as a punchline? If the show wants us to root for him, why does everyone make fun of his job so frequently? Especially when you contrast that with how DW introduced and wrote Rory Williams (another character who worked in a female-dominated profession), it puts into sharper relief how nonsensical and at cross purposes such jokes are.  As for the "constant" and "frequent" instances of people making fun of Grant for being a nanny, I'm afraid you'd have to point them out to me. Jerusalem posted:There is actually a kind of vibe of Grant trying to take advantage of the situation to get into a relationship with her, when he escapes Brock's trap there was absolutely nothing stopping him taking out the thugs and Brock and saving Lucy.... except she had just told him how she liked Grant so he makes a point of escaping, changing back into Grant and then running up onto the roof so "Grant" can save the day this time.
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Jul 9, 2017 04:48
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2house2fly posted:This is an uncharitable reading of the scene, but to be honest I'm not sure what the charitable reading would be. Why didn't the Ghost casually fry the baddies with his heat vision and continue the date? Why did he fly away and then reappear as Grant? He tells them to point the gun at him rather than Lucy, clearly knowing that he's not at risk from a bullet, but why do that? If they shoot him then Lucy will know he's the Ghost, and if they don't then him being there is pointless. Maybe he was just stalling for time to try and find out what was going on (same reason I think the Doctor walked away from the guy being killed earlier; it would be nice to save him but then he'd risk the aliens concealing their plan or enacting it right away with no chance to stop it) but honestly I don't think even Moffat knew what Grant was thinking, and the whole point of changing them over was so that it would be Grant and not the Ghost who stopped the spaceship crashing. Probably the best way to have handled it would be for the Ghost to leave to change into Grant after learning that Lucy is impressed with him, Grant returns and THEN Harmony Shoal show up. That way Grant would be caught between wanting to save her and exposing his secret without the pretty hosed up step of abandoning her as the Ghost expressly to return as Grant to save the day. Then you could have him step up to the plate in the same way as before to stop the falling spaceship. I think that's all systematic of the bigger issue of the only new Who that year mostly sidelining the Doctor in favor of two completely new characters, who also had the misfortune of not being particularly engaging/interesting.
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Jul 9, 2017 05:33
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Superman - Secret Identity is one of my favourite takes on the character. It's about a guy called Clark Kent who becomes Superman in a world where Superman exists but only in comics. And it also feels like Moffat thinks superhero/comic fans are like Grant. At least this episode creates the opportunity to troll a particular brand of Whovian by asking whether Mr. Huffle counts as a Companion.
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Jul 9, 2017 06:01
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I also generally viewed the episode as being more about Grant leaving a state of arrested personal development with regards to his ability to relate, communicate, and understand other people. All the superhero stuff (the costume, the cocksure manner, the Christian Bale voice) is him trying to be a big manly superhero but not really getting any of the stuff about motivation that Toxx mentioned with regards to Superman & Spider-Man and overcompensating for it. He also does fancy Lucy really hard but would never consider making a move - he's not trying to 'trick' her into a relationship. It's the opposite. He's trying to avoid moving in either direction, either moving on with his life and from her or actually acknowledging and expressing his feelings thereby running the risk of rejection. He's a classic nervous teenage boy. He is a kind of Nice Guy and a general wet blanket but he's also too nice (or read enough Superman comics, on which his worldview seems to be based) to be tricking her. He's just become some kind of servant for Lucy. If, prior to the climax, Lucy said to him "I like you, let's try things and see what happens" then he would have just run away and not confronted it. The irony is that despite all his power, he has no agency in his own life. He's in a rut. His arc is that he just grows up a bit and gains the power to express his wants and needs more clearly. Maybe that theme would've worked better if the episode focused on Grant as a teen or a younger man. He and Lucy must be in their early to mid 30s or so when the story airs? He seems a bit old to only be learning that kind of life lesson then. Maybe the idea was that being The Ghost took up enough time that he never had a chance to develop himself but then was his life of actual superheroics that easy for him that he was never forced to grow up? Had nothing else happened in his life? Did he never just read a book or something? (At least, this is how I remembered it all - I've not rewatched this because it's not really worth it.)
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Jul 9, 2017 10:58
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Narsham posted:And it also feels like Moffat thinks superhero/comic fans are like Grant. I don't really think that's the case. He's a giant nerd himself, I'd imagine he understands that comics nerds aren't very different.
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Jul 9, 2017 12:39
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Escobarbarian posted:From a "criticising the review" standpoint I gotta say there's far too much discussion of Grant and superheroes in general and too little about the actual episode. Which I guess presents a point, while obviously the recaps are long gone, should the review still generally make sense to someone who hasn't seen the episode? I dunno what the answer is (obviously this thread is mainly for fans of the show, which is an argument against it) but I know as someone who hasn't seen the episode all this review tells me about it is "there's a guy called Grant who is a superhero and also parts of the episode revolve around the Doctor". Is there a villain? Were they good or bad? What was the Doctor doing in his half? Was it good or bad? Who is this guy Capaldi apparently leaves to die? etc You'll get used to the tangents. I forget the episode (latter-era Davies, I'm pretty sure), but I remember once he spent the first like 1,500 words of a 3,000-word review going on and on and on and on about the television writing and production process and how it works, explaining it to us like it was TV 101 ... except he was talking about a process that was literally not at all the way Doctor Who (or most other British TV) works.
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Jul 9, 2017 17:15
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Timby posted:You'll get used to the tangents. Just a little reminder that you're talking to Bown. Y'know, the guy who got "banned" from the initial thread. 
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Jul 9, 2017 18:08
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And More posted:Just a little reminder that you're talking to Bown. Y'know, the guy who got "banned" from the initial thread.    how did i not know about the nameswitch
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Jul 9, 2017 18:10
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I forgot to mention in the review, but My Hero Academia actually pulls off the "Superman who is also Spider-Man" thing really well. Basically, what I'm saying is watch My Hero Academia.
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Jul 9, 2017 19:54
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Timby posted:I remember once he spent the first like 1,500 words of a 3,000-word review going on and on and on and on about the television writing and production process and how it works, explaining it to us like it was TV 101 ... except he was talking about a process that was literally not at all the way Doctor Who (or most other British TV) works. hahah i remember this, the best
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Jul 9, 2017 20:02
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And More posted:Just a little reminder that you're talking to Bown. Y'know, the guy who got "banned" from the initial thread. He can be right too. If the tangent about SH-comics was bit shorter AND mixed more with stuff about the episode I would have been hooked. Currently reading the piece I constantly thinking: Yeah, but what about the Christmas Special?". I agree that it wasn't very good episode. I just didn't see it as aggressively bad, Just mediocre take on old-school superheroics. Issaries fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 10, 2017 08:47
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tbf I got pretty vindicated after Oxx called everyone horrible spergs and burned out
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Jul 10, 2017 11:53
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End this tangent now, please.
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Jul 10, 2017 17:13
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Why would you need to carry it on? Full story got told already.
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Jul 10, 2017 17:52
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So Occ, not to change the subject or anything, but I'm curious about something. You mentioned that you're aware that this season is Moffat and Capaldi's last. So, in light of that knowledge, before you go into the meat of this season, what is your opinion of this change? Excited for the change? Sorry to see them go? Completely indifferent about who's sailing this lovely ship? Let us know. I'm curious if your opinion will change or not after the season is over.
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Jul 10, 2017 21:34
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Also, and unrelated to the above: people who sent me just the first vote, remember to send me a second vote soon! We're expecting a review this Saturday, and it'll sneak up on you faster than you think. I'd advise getting it taken care of early in the week.
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Jul 11, 2017 00:24
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AndwhatIseeisme posted:So Occ, not to change the subject or anything, but I'm curious about something. You mentioned that you're aware that this season is Moffat and Capaldi's last. So, in light of that knowledge, before you go into the meat of this season, what is your opinion of this change? Excited for the change? Sorry to see them go? Completely indifferent about who's sailing this lovely ship? Let us know. I'm curious if your opinion will change or not after the season is over. Oh I forgot to respond to this. Well, firstly, having shotgunned the entirety of the RTD tenure before watching the Moffat stuff I have to say from an empirical standpoint there's very, very few times where Moffat's episodes sink to the depths that RTD regularly sank to. And from a "Genuinely offensive to the audience's intelligence" standpoint nothing is worse than "The Parting of the Ways", although "The Zygon Inversion" almost gets there by virtue of how just straight-up normally offensive it is. So I always found the Moffat hatred really overblown and frankly, really disingenuous - I saw the RTD stuff, it was regularly really loving bad. Moffat's stuff being sorta repetitive and having some vaguely sexist poo poo in it is not unique to him at all, and I found the bandwagon hatred of Moffat almost always argued in bad faith. The subsequent mean-spirited joy people had that he was leaving always came across as a really lovely thing to think and really ignored the positives Moffat brought to the series. Like, if you honestly argue that Series Five is anything but one of if not the best seasons of Doctor Who, ever, I would say you are either arguing in fundamentally bad faith or aren't actually a fan. Like I cannot envision hating Moffat so much you can't actually acknowledge that Series Five, "The Doctor's Wife", "Listen", "Heaven Sent", "Time of the Doctor"...I could go on, those were literally off the top of my head...aren't among the best stuff this show has produced. So yeah, I'm sad to see him go, but I can fully agree that it seems like it's Moffat's time to leave. Series Nine was mostly abysmal and 1000 was really really bad, so I can see the argument that Moffat's run out of ideas. Like hoo boy, was Series Nine a loving mess. I think I mentioned in the Series Eight finale review that change is fundamental to DW - that it's a fundamental part of what makes this show appealing, that it constantly surprises. I thought (and still think) that this is a mostly-bad (or, more accurately, mostly not good) show that has flashes of true greatness. The change is essential to keeping the show fresh, the uncertainty, so on some level I'm excited to see what the next showrunner brings to the table. And from a selfish perspective it's nice to get another showrunner so I can have reviews dealing with the new showrunner's style over having to bring up Moffat v. RTD a billion more times. That all being said. Chibnall is (mostly) a loving terrible writer on DW and a mostly terrible television writer in general. It's really, really hard - near-impossible, in fact - to be excited that Chibnall's taking the reins when he wrote that loving godawful Silurians two-parter and outside of Broadchurch season one, which itself fell into an awkward repetition within its first season of repeating themes and ideas over and over, everything he's written has been varying shades of bad. As a writer he's mostly bad, as a showrunner he had one good season of a show before the bottom completely fell out - I just don't know. I have zero confidence he can deliver.
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Jul 12, 2017 04:45
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I do NOT want to drag all this up fully but for me it's almost entirely a tonal thing. I'd rather watch a show that more resembled a sorta crappy British kids show but still fundamentally understood it's character than one that looks/feels more like modern sci-fi but has the Doctor getting turned on by his girlfriend murdering aliens. I could probably write a whole essay about that one line (it's in 602 if anyone can't remember) and how I consider it entirely representative of Moff and his flippant, sorta lovely attitude/willingness to ignore pretty much the central tenet of the Doctor's character (violence and murder are wrong) in order to (in this case) make a quip about how River makes him horny. But obviously I'm not gonna do that Anyway the point of this post is to say that calling Moff hate disingenuous isn't really fair because not everyone watches TV the same way as you or for the same reasons
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Jul 12, 2017 09:03
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My Moffat hatred stems more from his complete and utter failure as a showrunner. He's literally wasted years of the show because he can't budget properly and we're now on the second (!) actor to leave the title role because they don't want to commit any more of their time to a delayed production. Yeah, the Moffat years look professional and polished, but it's still a loving mess behind the scenes.
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Jul 12, 2017 10:20
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Don't forget the time he had a domestic at a party with Caroline Skinner and ended up shouting that she was "erased from Doctor Who"
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Jul 12, 2017 10:28
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Big Mean Jerk posted:we're now on the second (!) actor to leave the title role because they don't want to commit any more of their time to a delayed production. Capaldi was forced out by the BBC. Not sexy enough.
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Jul 12, 2017 10:59
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That rumour about Capaldi being forced out comes from a goon who works at another production near the Doctor Who studio and has accurately predicted some stuff about the current series finale, and that will clearly be in the upcoming Christmas episode, well in advance, so he's at least got some real second- or third-hand insider knowledge. Plus that guy absolutely hates Steven Moffat so if he says Capaldi leaving isn't Moffat's fault, he must really believe it. Anyway, as a producer Chibnall has delivered TV episodes consistently on schedule, as far as I can tell. And it's rumoured he'll be taking a US-style "writer's room" approach where the plots of episodes and seasons are hashed out collaboratively (or, if you're feeling unkind, by committee) and you barely ever see any episodes where the show runner has a writing credit, so his ineptitude as a writer may be a non-issue. In retrospect, Moffat clearly either intended to leave after series 9 or was expecting to. Bringing back Gallifrey and making the Doctor the villain is something you save for your big finale, and the ending was a perfect blank slate for a new writer. I like Moffat but he's had a good run on the show and I wouldn't have minded if he'd left, although I think I prefer a new show runner and new lead actor coming on together
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Jul 12, 2017 12:13
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I really don't get the hype around Series 5. Politically, The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks aren't really much better than Invasion/Inversion, and aside from that are both pretty unbearable to me anyway - and then there's two whole episodes dedicated to a story that was better when it was written by a communist and starred Jon Pertwee. There's a decent amount of average-to-good episodes, and some classics (Amy's Choice in particular is a standout) but not really any more than anything before.
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Jul 12, 2017 13:35
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Sorry, I'm on the Series 5 train, especially coming as it did after the noisy mess that was the last Tennant specials.
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Jul 12, 2017 13:59
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Series 5 has 6 high-end Moffat episodes, Amy's Choice and The Lodger, which is just about a higher bar than any other series. I'd actually probably be more likely to watch series 8 through again though, where Forest is the only one I really couldn't stand watching again
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Jul 12, 2017 14:39
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cargohills posted:Politically, The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks aren't really much better than Invasion/Inversion
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Jul 12, 2017 14:48
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I have seen people say they saw the moral of The Beast Below as "if you're nice to your slaves they'll be happy being slaves" which seems a bit of a stretch to me but it's out there. As for Victory of The Daleks, it features Winston Churchill ("I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia") as the Doctor's chubby chummy.
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Jul 12, 2017 14:58
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I can't remember Beast Below but Victory has the Doctor being best mates with Churchill the bloody British hero which is a trillion kinds of urghhhhhhhhhh e: ^^^ Don't forget calling Indians "a beastly people with a beastly religion"
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Jul 12, 2017 14:59
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Mark Gatiss said he didn't want to tackle the darker side of Churchill because he didn't feel it was appropriate for a kids TV show. and he's correct but really what they should have done in that case was to not have Churchill in it
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Jul 12, 2017 15:05
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AndwhatIseeisme posted:I would be legitimately fascinated to hear about this opinion. These pieces, by Jack Graham, pretty much explain why I find them both so awful: The Beast Below: http://shabogangraffiti.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/beasts-of-england.html?m=1 Victory of the Daleks: http://shabogangraffiti.blogspot.co.uk/p/churchill-bastard.html?m=1
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Jul 12, 2017 15:07
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