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Maxwell Lord posted:Yeah, but that's... lore. Having the first woman Doctor is ambitious in the sense that it risks idiots getting mad, and changing the lore causes all sorts of fandom shouting in both directions, but there's not really much in the episodes themselves that feels like a shakeup. Gallifrey being gone again doesn't really change how the show goes forward (where the Time War did, simply in the process of clearing the boards and the Doctor being lonely and haunted by what he'd done and so on.) Jo Doctor is lore? You’re parsing Chibnall’s ambitions unfairly, I think. The last time Gallifrey was destroyed, the Time Lords were unavailable (except for the Doctor and the Master). In the last season, we saw a CIA agent (or whatever the organization will be called) in pursuit of Jo Doctor, subsequent to learning the Master wiped out Gallifrey. So whatever Chibnall has in mind, this secret Time Lord organization still exists despite what the Master did (and that’s assuming they didn’t help him do it). Was the fate of humanity in Utopia lore, when we saw humans on-screen? Why is massively changing established Who lore not ambitious? Moffat added another Doctor in between 8 and 9 when he was showrunner: isn’t that lore? Maxwell Lord posted:I don't even have that strong an opinion on the Timeless Child revelation. On the one side it does make the Doctor more "special" and that's kinda dumb, on the other it does bring up the possibility of "past" Doctors we've never met and actions the Doctor has taken that she doesn't even remember and there's some potential there. It's easily ignored most of the time. The main problem with Timeless Children is it's a badly structured story where the Doctor doesn't get to do much and the big dramatic sacrifice is by... some guy. This is where Chibnall's falling down. So we agree that Chibnall is bad at endings? I haven’t watched much of Broadchurch. I am wondering if Chibnall stuck the landing there, and if so, whether it had something to do with the innate structures of mystery stories?
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Jul 7, 2021 15:04
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Narsham posted:I haven’t watched much of Broadchurch. I am wondering if Chibnall stuck the landing there, and if so, whether it had something to do with the innate structures of mystery stories? Season 1 is fantastic, season 2.... is not. I never watched season 3 because 2 was so bad, but 1 was really good. I can only assume that he basically worked on and built up to that first season for YEARS before he finally got to make it, and then it was a big hit and ITV said,"Cool, make another season!" and he went,"Wait.... what?" Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jul 7, 2021 |
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Jul 7, 2021 15:17
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I'm not 100% sure the reveal of the killer in the first season of Broadchurch is completely fair, but the show stuck the emotional ending. Having the case fall apart right off the bat in season 2 was total bullshit though. The third season was mostly fine, but again, I'm not sure the reveal of the rapist's identity was something the audience could've sussed out from the clues provided.
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Jul 7, 2021 15:31
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https://twitter.com/bigfinish/status/1413422842717392897?s=20
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Jul 9, 2021 17:25
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I maintain that having the aristocracy steal their specialness from somebody else in a mind-boggling violation of their autonomy, then lying about it was fertile ground for both social commentary and storytelling, but the way he did it was just yeeeeeesh.
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Jul 11, 2021 02:49
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I saw Ghost Light again. It's good, though of course it's dense and confusing. I should watch the extended version (or reread the Target book). It's odd that Battlefield started as three episodes and got extended to four, even though Aaronovitch said it would've been better if it'd been shorter, but Ghost Light and Curse of Fenric both might've benefited from being longer. Like Aaronovitch, Marc Platt is a writer who I wish had had more of a chance on the original show, but I feel like their writing just wouldn't work on the current show, or that the way the show is now made would twist their writing out of recognition.
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Jul 11, 2021 17:21
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Peri and the Piscon Paradox is on discount this week, so I picked it up. Nicola Bryant is fantastic in this one - I've not listened to any of the Companion Chronicles before, so this was fairly different. Peri's Achilles heel as a character has always been the accent that the production bizarrely insisted Bryant use in the 80s, but its something she's been able to overcome and really build on the character. Bryant has a really good real voice! There's no reason Peri couldn't have been British! Colin Baker is hilarious in the Piscon Paradox too. But its also a deeply sad story. oh boy that ending As for retcons, I'm of the opinion that they should enhance, not undermine older stories. A good retcon is what Big Finish did the with Beevers Master. They couldn't get Anthony Ainley back for Dust Breeding, even though its set after Survival, so they got Geoffrey Beevers back to play the decayed Master, with a handwave saying to say 'oh the Tremas body rotted away'. This opened up a great new context for Master stories: the idea that the Deadly Assassin to pre-Dark Eyes Master are the same incarnation that keeps hopping bodies, only to have them burn up eventually and become useless really helps give the character a sense of desperation: that he needs a constant supply of bodies at any cost until he can get a Time Lord body. Plus it allows for new actors to possibly slot in, and helps keep the VNA semi-canon in order. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 12, 2021 22:29
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OldMemes posted:VNA semi-canon What is with this axe to grind?
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Jul 13, 2021 06:13
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Open Source Idiom posted:What is with this axe to grind? Big Finish takes elements and plot ideas from the VNA, but isn't fully beholden to them and uses them as needed, mainly because they've been out of print for decades and most people haven't read them, is what I mean. By retconning in the body rotting thing, they can use the Basil Rathbone version, and slot in extra bodies before the Eric Roberts version. Without Benny, there would be no Big Finish, after all.
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Jul 13, 2021 11:46
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I was more talking about the "semi-canon" stuff, which is kinda nonsense, sorry man. Doctor Who doesn't have a canon, and if it did, BF wouldn't really count -- both The Haunting of Villa Diodati and Revolution of the Daleks run roughshod over BF continuity without really giving a poo poo. And then you've got to somehow solve Paul McGann mourning a serial killer(!), a woman who hated him, and a person he doesn't know(!) in The Night of the Doctor, while also dismissing long term companions Helen and Liv. (Oh and that retcon you're talking about solves a couple of problems, but not the one you're thinking about.)
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Jul 13, 2021 12:34
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Open Source Idiom posted:I was more talking about the "semi-canon" stuff, which is kinda nonsense, sorry man. Doctor Who doesn't have a canon, and if it did, BF wouldn't really count -- both The Haunting of Villa Diodati and Revolution of the Daleks run roughshod over BF continuity without really giving a poo poo. And then you've got to somehow solve Paul McGann mourning a serial killer(!), a woman who hated him, and a person he doesn't know(!) in The Night of the Doctor, while also dismissing long term companions Helen and Liv. As nice as it was to see Charley and Lucie confirmed as TV canon, the problem with that bit of in Night of the Doctor is that it can't include companions created afterwards, and Liv and Helen only started appearing from 2014 onwards. Doctor Who does have a canon, just not a consistent canon: stories will contradict sometimes because they weren't written by the same people, but there's a broad stroke of stuff Doctor Who stories have to fit into. For example, there's an early Tenth Doctor comic that shows the Eighth Doctor ending the Time War: this can no longer be considered canon because it doesn't fit with later stories. Same reason the Shalka Doctor or the Cushing Doctor aren't canon. Or why the First Doctor Annual short stories from the early 60s don't fit. TV canon is the main one, but you still get things which are unclear (like the First Doctor having one heart) because it wasn't being written as an ongoing story, especially in the early years of the show. There's an attempt to make the setting feel more joined up from the 70s onwards, even if it is patchwork, but that's part of the fun of the franchise. There's some weird, weird stuff if you follow the iceberg down. I think it was Russell T. Davies who said that 'the Time War broke it' can be used to hand wave any minor continuity issues with stories that are considered canon.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:51
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To muddy the waters more:
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Jul 13, 2021 15:47
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Moffat is just trolling the fans with that one. Fitz was OK, he was certainly a better character than Sam. I say the TV version is the canon one, the novelization is a retelling, but that's just me.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:51
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Fitz owns.OldMemes posted:Moffat is just trolling the fans with that one. Fitz was OK, he was certainly a better character than Sam. I say the TV version is the canon one, the novelization is a retelling, but that's just me. I mean, that's kind of the point though isn't it? Canon is determined by a textual authority, which (with the greatest respect) when compared to RTD and Moffat you're not one. And if you're right, and Moffat is trolling, (and given that RTD doesn't consider canon to be a thing at all), then the point is moot.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:19
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It makes no sense to just mention Fitz without the other EDA companions, and its not in the TV version, so it seems Moffat is being a bit cheeky there. Then again, Sam Jones was an awful character, so into the non-canon zone with her. Anji was better.Open Source Idiom posted:Fitz owns. True, but there's some stuff which can't be canon, because it doesn't fit the narratives agreed on later by the TV show - for example, at one point it was considered de facto canon that the Eighth Doctor fought the entire Time War, but later stories established he didn't - that's what I mean by canon. Before Genesis of the Daleks, the comic strips established that the Daleks were created by some bloke called Yarvelling, but Davros being introduced on TV established that as no longer canon, for example. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 16:34
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Fitz appears in Big Finish, so he’s arguably more canon than the rest of the EDA companions. Anji does indeed own, though.
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Jul 13, 2021 16:40
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OldMemes posted:True, but there's some stuff which can't be canon, because it doesn't fit the narratives agreed on later by the TV show - for example, at one point it was considered de facto canon that the Eighth Doctor fought the entire Time War, but later stories established he didn't - that's what I mean by canon. Except, given that we're dealing with a setting where changes in history are a matter of course, so later stories contradicting earlier stories would be a logical expectation. I don't know if you're read Simon Guerrier's The Time Travelers (or Jim Mortimore's Campaign) but they take that premise and run with it quite considerably. Which is how we've ended up with a story where Ian and Susan fight a South African/Cyberman alliance for racial harmony. The_Doctor posted:Fitz appears in Big Finish, so he’s arguably more canon than the rest of the EDA companions. Anji does indeed own, though. The idea of something being "more canon" than something else, because of what spin off material it appeared in, doesn't really make sense to me (even beyond there being no singular conception of canon in the first place haha).
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Jul 13, 2021 16:58
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Davros had a sister called Yarvel. Their mother murdered her.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:07
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I should have put quotes around ‘more canon’ because I wasn’t being serious at all about what is/isn’t.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:31
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The only Doctor Who I've ever seen is from the 70s at 1:00am on PBS (and I love it and that's why I started following this thread) but I can already tell that it's not a show that takes its own continuity very seriously, or maybe it just can't afford to take its continuity very seriously. Last week there was a swimming pool in the tardis that was clearly a municipal swimming pool in whatever town is up the street from the quarry where they film all the alien planet scenes.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:54
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:The only Doctor Who I've ever seen is from the 70s at 1:00am on PBS (and I love it and that's why I started following this thread) but I can already tell that it's not a show that takes its own continuity very seriously, or maybe it just can't afford to take its continuity very seriously. Last week there was a swimming pool in the tardis that was clearly a municipal swimming pool in whatever town is up the street from the quarry where they film all the alien planet scenes. I didn't know any PBS stations still showed Doctor Who.
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Jul 13, 2021 19:05
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I don’t like to post exactly where I live, but I guess I just outed myself. I live in one of two cities in the US where they show old Doctor Who at 1:00am on Saturday. I had no idea it wasn’t being aired nationally. It started last summer with what I guess are the first Tom Baker episodes.
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Jul 13, 2021 19:19
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Continuity in classic Who is mainly just callbacks to earlier stories and namedrops, or references to concepts previously established. There aren't masses of stories which rely on the viewer having seen every story to understand what is going on. Actually, that's a similar approach that Big Finish and the New Series take, some story arcs aside. Continuity is best used in Who when it adds to character or story.
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Jul 13, 2021 20:02
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Everything is canon Contradictions arise because time travel nudges things out of place every once in a while because hahahahaha stable time travel mechanics hahahahahaha
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Jul 13, 2021 20:11
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:I don’t like to post exactly where I live, but I guess I just outed myself. I live in one of two cities in the US where they show old Doctor Who at 1:00am on Saturday. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to out you there; I was just surprised. But back in the glorious 1980s, every PBS station really did show Doctor Who, usually on Saturday afternoons or late at night. American fans got a new serial every week and were generally unaware that many of those stories hadn’t aired in Britain for years.
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Jul 13, 2021 20:19
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Action Jacktion posted:Sorry, I wasn’t trying to out you there; I was just surprised. But back in the glorious 1980s, every PBS station really did show Doctor Who, usually on Saturday afternoons or late at night. American fans got a new serial every week and were generally unaware that many of those stories hadn’t aired in Britain for years. I dunno what other cities or markets had, but during the 1980s on the Chicago area PBS station (WTTW), we got a virtual smorgasbord or British TV on Sunday nights. Usually early on Sunday evenings they'd show Fawlty Towers, then after a news program or something they'd show whatever British period piece drama on Masterpiece Theatre around 10 PM. Then the rest of the night went something like this: 11 PM - Monty Python's Flying Circus 11:30 - Dave Allen at Large Midnight - Doctor Who (shown in the 90-minute "omnibus" format) After DW - it depended on the length of the DW episode that night (many of the six-parters were split into two separate omnibus editions that aired over successive Sunday nights), but usually they'd show The Two Ronnies and then Image Union (which was the station's locally-produced program for short independent films and such; one memorable edition focused on some of the artists on Chicago's Wax Trax! label). If it was a shorter DW story like The Sontaran Experiment, they'd usually air another MPFC episode to fill in the gap. They originally just ran the Pertwee and T. Baker episodes, but sometime around 1984 or 1985 they got the rights not only to the Davison stuff but also the Hartnell and Troughton stories that were available, as well as the rights to C. Baker (and McCoy later on). I want to say they were generally a year or two behind original airdate on the newer stuff. When we got a VCR, I made sure my dad showed me how to set it up to record all those shows, too.  In the later part of the 1980s through 1990, they switched some of the programs out (Python was replaced with John Sessions-era Whose Line, Dave Allen with Blackadder 1 thru 3). They also got the rights to Blake's 7 sometime in the mid-late 1980s (though they aired that late at night on Monday thru Thursday, as I recall). But DW was still a big part of the programming block, at least until they eventually lost the rights and replaced it with The Prisoner (but I was in the USAF and over in England by then so I just heard about that). In short, drat if TV on Sunday nights wasn't something I looked forward to hugely as a kid during summer vacations. 
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Jul 13, 2021 22:57
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No Are You Being Served or Red Dwarf? That’s all I ever knew of British tv until college.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:04
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:No Are You Being Served or Red Dwarf? That’s all I ever knew of British tv until college. It has a giant fanbase here. I never saw any Doctor Who, though, so I'm not sure how much of it we had access to.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:10
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I don't remember if we got AYBS?, though to be fair I don't recall ever looking for it. The main other Britcoms I remember WTTW showing back in the day were Two's Company (the Elaine Stritch/Donald Sinden comedy about a rich Yank in London, and her snooty butler), Sorry! (a comedy starring Ronnie Corbett as a hapless loser living with his parents), and I think To the Manor Born (which I never actually watched until a few years ago). Pretty sure they didn't get Red Dwarf until after I'd already left for the UK (which is where I first saw an episode of RD). There were probably some others back in the day, but I honestly can't recall off the top of my head.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:50
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MPBN played all the old DW at one time or a other, and earlier on Saturday, so I could watch it after supper. They also played a lot of British comedy, include stuff like the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin and the Good Life.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:56
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I don't remember if we got AYBS?, though to be fair I don't recall ever looking for it. The main other Britcoms I remember WTTW showing back in the day were Two's Company (the Elaine Stritch/Donald Sinden comedy about a rich Yank in London, and her snooty butler), Sorry! (a comedy starring Ronnie Corbett as a hapless loser living with his parents), and I think To the Manor Born (which I never actually watched until a few years ago). Pretty sure they didn't get Red Dwarf until after I'd already left for the UK (which is where I first saw an episode of RD). There were probably some others back in the day, but I honestly can't recall off the top of my head. WTTW showed a poo poo-ton of Fawlty Towers, at least when I was a kid (born in '84).
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Jul 14, 2021 01:48
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I probably saw the whole of the original run of Red Dwarf in about a year thanks to KLRU playing back-to-back episodes every Saturday in 1998.
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Jul 14, 2021 01:52
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Timby posted:WTTW showed a poo poo-ton of Fawlty Towers, at least when I was a kid (born in '84). Yeah, IIRC they showed it early in the evening on both Saturdays and Sundays around like 6 or 7 PM EST.
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Jul 14, 2021 03:51
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SpannerX posted:They also played a lot of British comedy, include stuff like the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin I must have watched and rewatched the GROT episode of Reginald Perrin 100 times, the loving kids with the square hoops and the guy enthusiastically buying nettle wine for his in-laws 
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Jul 14, 2021 05:00
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I couldn't find any of their who stuff, but this was my pbs station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSI0HU6io7I They were all huge nerds and I miss staying up late for the weekly who-venture
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Jul 14, 2021 18:04
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YouTube's algorithm just served me this, and uh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygJTSnLQvP8 possibly a sequel to Rosie Ball?
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Jul 14, 2021 19:22
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Is that from the special program the BBC did when they first aired the 1996 movie? I vaguely remember that, it had Tom Baker presenting, sort of in character, sort of out, lots of archive clips and some bits about the science of the show. Although it must have been disappointing at the time, the pilot not catching on was probably for the best, since we got a much better revival without any of the bad ideas they had for the US revival series, and McGann is still knocking it out of the field as Eight on audio in a way he probably couldn't on TV. I'm actually finding myself enjoying the interviews on post 2010 Big Finish to be as entertaining as the plays themselves. It's really interesting to hear the actors explain how they're approaching these characters they know as well. Especially Colin Baker, because that dude really loves his character and his affection for the Sixth Doctor comes across as oddly infectious. He finally beat Michael Grade! I find it amusing how often the lunches served during recording are mentioned.
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Jul 14, 2021 23:55
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OldMemes posted:Is that from the special program the BBC did when they first aired the 1996 movie? I vaguely remember that, it had Tom Baker presenting, sort of in character, sort of out, lots of archive clips and some bits about the science of the show. Apparently it's policy to no longer talk about the lunches during the interviews, because people wouldn't shut the gently caress up about them, they were that good. The Torchwood interviews are, I'm gonna be honest, often really loving funny and fun. (And can be surprisingly candid and informal, like the "don't talk about the lunches policy" which slipped out during the most recent one.) Torchwood at BF is really, really good.
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Jul 14, 2021 23:59
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Wait, the actors have been officially asked not to talk about the lunches? That's amazing - I'm sure I've heard interviews with Briggs and McGann both waxing poetically about the lunches. Maybe that's what keeps the talent coming back - steady work and pay, the writing and chance to work with old friends again....and the lunches. Recording remotely must have been hard, not only because the cast have to soundproof themselves, and they don't have their co-stars in person to act against, but also no lunches. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 00:04
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OldMemes posted:Is that from the special program the BBC did when they first aired the 1996 movie? I vaguely remember that, it had Tom Baker presenting, sort of in character, sort of out, lots of archive clips and some bits about the science of the show. IIRC it’s from the 1999 Doctor Who night on the BBC, which featured a repeat of the 1996 movie, albeit uncut for the first time. It also featured the comedy skits which were released on the Beginning DVD set, including the infamous ‘any fucker with an Equity card’ line which pissed off Colin Baker. It launched a very short-lived repeat run, where they quickly realized the modern-day audience didn’t have the patience for 7 weeks of Doctor Who and the Silurians, jumped to the 76th repeat of Genesis of the Daleks and shelved the whole thing.
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Jul 15, 2021 00:26
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