|
I am in a room with Rob Shearman (as well as a man with the exact voice of Wallace Shawn) AT THIS VERY MOMENT
|
# ? Apr 28, 2015 23:44 |
|
|
# ? Jun 2, 2024 14:46 |
|
DoctorWhat posted:I am in a room with Rob Shearman (as well as a man with the exact voice of Wallace Shawn) AT THIS VERY MOMENT You should ask him why he hasn't written a Frobisher spin-off series for Big Finish yet.
|
# ? Apr 28, 2015 23:54 |
|
Also why isn't he writing for the TV show? Does he have Douglas Adams syndrome? Is he Douglas Adams? Ask him why he kidnapped Douglas Adams and why he won't let him go.
|
# ? Apr 29, 2015 02:46 |
|
He doesn't want to go back to (televised) Doctor Who and then screw it up. https://vine.co/v/eWlre0ZZTW3
|
# ? Apr 29, 2015 03:11 |
|
Bicyclops posted:Also why isn't he writing for the TV show? Does he have Douglas Adams syndrome? Is he Douglas Adams? Ask him why he kidnapped Douglas Adams and why he won't let him go. *sighs heavily* okay, bicyclops, you know when i said douglas adams left to live on your uncle's farm upstate? well
|
# ? Apr 29, 2015 03:36 |
|
Toxxupation posted:*sighs heavily* Yeah, I hate to tell you this, but your uncle decided he was too sad at the farm and would do better free in the local lake!
|
# ? Apr 29, 2015 04:32 |
|
Toxxupation posted:*sighs heavily* You mean Douglas isn't having tea with Mr. Rogers?
|
# ? Apr 29, 2015 13:39 |
The Girl who Waited and The God Complex Well, the girl who waited was a pretty popular guess choice, God complex getting a C... less so. Girl Who Waited A ThePlague-Demon BSam MrlJakiri Diabolik900 cargohills ewe2 Regy Rusty Attitude Indicator Xenoborg Gandalf21 John Charity Spring mycelia idonotlikepeas Random Stranger Organza Quiz Angela Christine And More adhuin jng2058 Lipset and Rock On Rochallor Bunnita AndwhatIseeisme Blasmeister Hannibal Smith WeirdSandwich Bown ??? cool kids inc. ThNextGreenLantern PurpleJesus BlueGhostie death .cab for qt MikeJF Kevin07 Dave Brookshaw Paul.Power Notatwat fatherboxx Pinwiz11 Bobulus Moatmonster Beefytaco 2house2fly Ohtsam Jsor NeuroticLich Big Mean Jerk howe_sam CardinalBiggles Proposition Joe ThePariah Jurgan thexerox123 legoman727 Grouchio Prison Warden B Colonel Cool Senario Well Manicured Man Lager Stobbit Roach Warehouse Mo0 egon_beeblebrox M_Gargantua DetoxP Capfalcon Kaza42 C Go RV! LabyMynora D Keisse J F Sighence God Complex A ThePlague-Demon BSam MrlJakiri cargohills Attitude Indicator Random Stranger Organza Quiz Angela Christine And More adhuin Well Manicured Man jng2058 Lipset and Rock On Rochallor AndwhatIseeisme Blasmeister WeirdSandwich ??? cool kids inc. Roach Warehouse PurpleJesus BlueGhostie death .cab for qt Dave Brookshaw Paul.Power Moatmonster Beefytaco Ohtsam Jsor Big Mean Jerk howe_sam CardinalBiggles Proposition Joe ThePariah Jurgan thexerox123 legoman727 ewe2 Prison Warden B Diabolik900 Xenoborg Gandalf21 Colonel Cool John Charity Spring mycelia idonotlikepeas Senario Bunnita Hannibal Smith Lager Stobbit ThNextGreenLantern egon_beeblebrox MikeJF Kevin07 Notatwat fatherboxx LabyMynora Pinwiz11 Bobulus DetoxP Kaza42 Go RV! C Regy Rusty Bown Keisse J Mo0 M_Gargantua Capfalcon Grouchio D 2house2fly NeuroticLich F Sighence Which gives us total scores of Notatwat 5 Senario 7 Hannibal Smith 7 egon_beeblebrox 7 Paul Power 7 Xenoborg 8 death .cab for qt 8 Dave Brookshaw 8 MrlJakiri 9 John Charity Spring 9 Random Stranger 9 Lipset and Rock On 9 cool kids inc. 9 BlueGhostie 9 MikeJF 9 2house2fly 9 ThePariah 9 BSam 10 cargohills 10 ewe2 10 idonotlikepeas 10 Organza Quiz 10 Angelia Christine 10 PurpleJesus 10 Kevin07 10 DetoxP 10 CardinalBiggles 10 Diabolik900 11 Attitude Indicator 11 Mo0 11 M_Gargantua 11 LabyMynora 11 Pinwiz11 11 Bobulus 11 Jsor 11 Capfalcon 11 Regy Rusty 12 Colonel Cool 12 Bunnita 12 Andwhatiseeisme 12 WeirdSandwich 12 Bown 12 Go RV! 12 Stobbit 12 Roach Warehouse 12 ThNextGreenLantern 12 Big Mean Jerk 12 Proposition Joe 12 thexerox123 12 legoman727 12 Blasmeister 13 Lager 13 Beefytaco 13 Ohtsam 13 Grouchio 13 Gandalf21 14 mycelia 14 adhuin 14 Well Manicured Man 14 howe_sam 14 ??? 15 PrisonWarden 15 ThePlague-Demon 15 And More 16 ??? 16 fatherbox 16 NeuroticLich 16 Kaza42 16 Jurgen 16 Moatmonster 17 Keisse J 19 jng2058 21 Sighence 35
|
|
# ? Apr 30, 2015 13:26 |
|
Joint 9th, if you said at the start of the thread that this would happen with my guessing strategy you'd have looked a fool
|
# ? Apr 30, 2015 14:06 |
MrL_JaKiri posted:Joint 9th, if you said at the start of the thread that this would happen with my guessing strategy you'd have looked a fool If you'd said that MY new strategy was lunacy you'd have been 100% correct. Worst thing is that Sighence has the bottom spot so locked up that I can't even "aspire" to total failure.
|
|
# ? Apr 30, 2015 18:24 |
|
Hey I got God Complex right. I've felt really iffy about this season since I watched the LastAngryGeek's reviews on it.
|
# ? Apr 30, 2015 18:42 |
|
Doctor Who "Closing Time" Series 6, Episode 12 What's interesting about "Closing Time" is that it, much like "The God Complex", is perceived differently due to the episode preceding it; in contrast to that latter episode, however, "Closing Time" comes out looking distinctly more capable, focused, and executionally tight due to the myriad failures of "The God Complex". In most ways, "Closing Time" ends up being "The God Complex" done right, with just enough minor niggles and textural difficulties to dock it a grade. Overall, it's the platonic ideal of a B-grade episode, especially a Moffat-run B-grade episode, and is a pitch-perfect example of the sort of general, minimum quality benchmarks Doctor Who should always be able to hit. "Closing Time" works where "God Complex" didn't by centralizing its theme and narrative to be fundamentally about The Doctor struggling with his feeling of guilt and own encroaching mortality, as opposed to "God"'s mere implication of that narrative, shoved in awkwardly within the final ten minutes. From the first moment that The Doctor arrives within the now-married Craig's (James Corden) life, the overriding theme of "Closing Time" centers on The Doctor's reluctance to involve anyone else in his capers, seeing how poorly it ended with Amy and Rory. This sort of grin-and-bear-it cynicism, the fatalistic Doctor who is fairly certain he's about to die and doesn't much care- or worse, thinks that he deserves such a punishment -is the sort of Doctor we get from minute one and it's why this episode works at all, much less as well as it does. It may be an obvious move of "Closing", taking the subtext of The Doctor grappling with his own morality and turning it into text, complete with dialog that states and overstates the themes for the more oblivious listeners at home, "Just go. Stop noticing. Just go. Stop noticing. Just go. Stop noticing," The Doctor repeats to himself as he rushes from new father Craig's house. This is a Doctor so scared by the events that's he's observed, the events he's caused, that he resorts to explicit inaction when confronted with something he knows could be potentially dangerous. It's this scared, unwilling mentality The Doctor approaches the episode with- an unwillingness to act not from fear of who or what the antagonist could be, but by the danger he himself poses that gives the episode its texture, and makes it a more immediately interesting episode than "God Complex" ever was, despite treading similar ground. Doctor Who is many things but relies on its protagonist being an eager, thrill-seeking adventurer- it's the foundation of the show, the singular source of all of The Doctor's best and worst qualities. Seeing The Doctor lying desperately to himself, then outright ignoring the very obvious signs that something weird is afoot in Craig's hometown is so disconcerting because of how against character The Doctor is acting; it impresses how deep and disturbing the events of the past series of episodes have been for him. The Doctor's defining trait is, and has always been, curiosity so seeing him be so aggressively ignorant establishes to the audience how much flagellation The Doctor is inflicting on himself, how much penance he's paying. It helps humanize and make him more sympathetic when he needed to be so, since the actions he took in "The Girl Who Waited" were so monstrous and his apology in "The God Complex" so flaccid and, functionally speaking, so thematically discordant from the overall tone and aims of the episode at large. The idea that The Doctor has recognized and is trying to make right his own failures, the failures that led directly to his killing of one of his closest friends and admirers, is one that demands greater focus than what "God Complex" gave. The audience, and The Doctor, finally experiences that delayed catharsis and satisfaction in "Closing Time" because it states its themes so early and examines them so thoroughly. This is an example of how being blunt can pay narrative dividends; beating around the bush wouldn't allow the audience to experience the same sort of struggling emotional arc The Doctor does within "Closing", wouldn't allow them to experience empathy and even sympathy for The Doctor's clear anguish and self-hatred for his past actions. Doctor Who has never been a subtle show, exactly, but in "Closing Time"'s case such a choice would've been disastrous; establishing early within the episode allows "Closing" to operate as a mental deconstruction of The Doctor and where his current headspace was at, and what his current headspace and mental approach going into the finale is. It also helps who the choice of guest star Companion is for this episode. I've always been a fan of Craig, both of the character and of the performance that his actor specifically applies to him, and in "Closing Time" it's no exception. Craig is an underrated, undervalued character within the Doctor Who universe, and "Closing" puts a fine point on how much value he adds when inserted into the show's universe. The Doctor has Companions, and people he can confide in, but he has almost no friends. Or, rather, he has almost nobody in his life who is just a friend, everyone that he considers "friend" is some sort of associate of his. Which is why Craig is so important to the general dynamic of Doctor Who- this is a guy who will never, ever, ever be a Companion of The Doctor's, and never has been a Companion of The Doctor's. This removes the subtext that applies to basically every other being The Doctor has ever associated with. To be more clear, the dynamic of The Doctor/Companion has always been tilted in favor of The Doctor, whether intentionally or not, and there's always been a layer of artifice to a Doctor/Companion interaction. The mere fact of the matter is that every Doctor/Companion relationship (and yes, this includes people like River as well) is predicated on The Companion working for The Doctor to achieve some overarching goal. This means that every interaction is colored, at the very least subconsciously, by the hanging fact that The Doctor is that Companion's "boss"- you can be friends with the people you work with and work for, and it's true that your work friends can even become your personal friends, but fundamentally speaking there's a divide that exists between every Doctor and Companion. That sort of nagging sense that either The Doctor or Companion or both might not be truly honest with the other because of the fact that they want to continue working with each other. With Eleven, especially, and his predilection for lying, obfuscation, and half-truths, combined with Amy's desperate need to be validated by The Doctor, this couldn't be more true- every interaction The Doctor and Amy has a refrain of the guilt and sense of failure that The Doctor feels about and protective for Amy and Amy's sense of inadequacy, her need to feel wanted and desired. It's most acutely obvious with Amy/Eleven but is just as true with every other Companion/Doctor pairing- the unspoken subtext of deference and hierarchical inferiority to The Doctor, especially since nearly all Companions end up "hired" by The Doctor after proven him- or most likely herself. The closest a Companion has come to breaking the mold was Donna, and that's mostly because of the way she was introduced into the narrative (forced onto the TARDIS without her consent or desire) and then integrated as a Companion (forcing Ten against his own will to bring her along out of sheer stubbornness). But even then once Donna was added as a full-time Companion the dynamics of her relationship with The Doctor changed; it just happened, because suddenly being The Doctor's friend was her job. Craig has the part "A" of Donna- being forced into The Doctor's narrative against his will -without ever having the part "B" of wanting to travel with The Doctor. Hell, in Craig's specific case he, obliviously, actually held all the power in their interactions- part of the cleverness and genius of "The Lodger" was in inverting the traditional Doctor/Companion introductory episode so for once The Doctor needed to prove himself to Craig, or risk getting kicked out of the apartment and be thus unable to save Amy. And as I noted in "The Lodger" writeup, the story of "The Lodger" is essentially this awkward little romance that's interrupted and almost ruined by The Doctor. The refrain of Craig's life is that he's a stable, well-adjusted guy who proceeds in a normal little happy life, perfectly content with where he is and what he's doing- which makes him the exact opposite of the personality of any sort of Companion. He'll never board the TARDIS because he'll never have a reason to board the TARDIS- unlike Donna who saw the wonders of the universe and couldn't adjust to everyday life, Craig witnessed the top floor of his apartment turn into a loving spaceship and then went off to marry the girl of his dreams and have a kid. Craig is perhaps the most honestly real friend The Doctor has ever or will ever have, because there's no motive behind his interactions with The Doctor beyond "enjoys his company". And what that means for the narrative is that when Craig validates The Doctor he's being 100% sincere, and there's no subtext to what he's saying. When Craig tells The Doctor in the middle of the episode to "stop beating himself up", that if it weren't for The Doctor "this whole planet would be an absolute ruin," well for once we know that it's a character saying exactly what he or she thinks without trying to manipulate The Doctor in some way. He's not a Companion, he's an honest-to-God friend of The Doctor and just that- which means that every single interaction he and The Doctor has is both characters at their most truthful. The Doctor visited Craig at the beginning of "Closing Time" because it was, well, closing time, the end of the road for the Eleventh Doctor, and he went to the one person in the universe who could give him 100% unadulterated advice. Viewed from that angle the episode as a whole is really fascinating- it's essentially one long therapy session for The Doctor to overcome his own personal demons and get ready to face the finale with a clear mind. From that perspective the faults make more sense, or become easily backgrounded- the fact that it's a Cybermen episode is fine because the episode treats the Cybermen as exactly as the comic relief inept buffoons they are -the true antagonists of this episode are the thoughts inside of The Doctor's head, which Craig helps him slay. There's other examples, too, of direct analogies to the guilt that The Doctor is feeling- Alfie becomes a stand-in for the loss of Melody, and the shot of Craig at peace and happily married comes across as a direct symbolic echo of the life between Amy and especially Rory that The Doctor inadvertently ruined. The early elimination from the narrative of Sophie is, whether intentionally or not, representative of the fact that The Doctor and Amy achieved clear closure in "God Complex", with Rory and The Doctor not being able to pass that specific threshold -I'm fairly sure I'm overanalyzing this and it's just a coincidence but Craig comes across as someone who in temperment and interaction with The Doctor is very close in character to Rory, and this episode allows The Doctor to move past his specific guilty feelings with how he's treated him. It's not a perfect episode- the climax was overwrought and even I think the whole "Craig gets un-Cyberman'd via his feelings for Alfie" thing was hokey as poo poo -but it was singularly focused on addressing the crimes The Doctor's committed and building sympathy for his character while still respecting his character arc for the season as a whole, and simultaneously putting The Doctor in a specific position so he was ready for the finale, and it was a fun, funny, fairly well-written episode of Who. There's really no more I can ask from an average, table-setting and/or procedural episode of the show. Grade: B Random Thoughts:
|
# ? May 2, 2015 04:54 |
|
quote:The Doctor: "Oh you've redecorated! I don't like it."
|
# ? May 2, 2015 05:16 |
|
It is kind of a shame that the Cybermen come across so badly in this story, because even though I agree that their presence is secondary to the major theme of the story and the true "villain" is the Doctor's self-doubt and fear.... I really just want to see a GOOD Cybermen story in the revival I do feel this story suffers from trying to recreate/revisit the unexpected magic of The Lodger, and while the chemistry between the two actors is still there, I think it's too self-aware of how well the previous story was received and tries a little too hard to do that again, when it felt more natural (or at least unexpected) the first time around.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 05:45 |
|
In which https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_of_River_Song
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:00 |
|
Oh God I've been waiting so long to post this: So, so awful Also I loving love that 95% of this episode is down to River and Amy's attempts to "help" the Doctor causing this nightmare time-crushed/compressed universe, and if they'd just stayed out of the way and done nothing the Doctor would have easily solved the problem, and the episode would have been like 10 minutes long. It's kinda great to go back to the very first episode of the season where the Doctor warns them not to ever think they're cleverer than him, then look at this episode where they try to be clever and just gently caress it all up till the Doctor sighs and "marries" River just so he can get a chance to get close enough to essentially tell her,"Jesus River, I've got this, okay?"
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:08 |
|
Craig's kind of like the Doctor's very own Hob Gadling, isn't he?
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:09 |
|
yo people in the contest does the contest run up to or including the christmas special it's numbered as 614 on netflix so i wanted to be sure it counted
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:14 |
|
I ended my guesses at Wedding, so
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:22 |
|
Toxxupation posted:In which If this doesn't get an F, I give up.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:24 |
|
Senor Tron posted:With witty lines like that you should be writing this show. oh
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:26 |
|
Republican Vampire posted:Craig's kind of like the Doctor's very own Hob Gadling, isn't he? The Brigadier might be closer, since they met more often and over a much longer period of time. For the revival, maybe Wilf?
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:36 |
|
I voted up to the end of the Eleventh's tenure. Hopefully I'm rather accurate as I put down that vote 5 months ago.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 06:43 |
|
ThaGhettoJew posted:The Brigadier might be closer, since they met more often and over a much longer period of time. For the revival, maybe Wilf? See, I dunno. I can dig the Brig, but Craig has this quality where it's about being friends, not about any of the monsters, which is what makes Morpheus and Hob's friendship interesting.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 07:11 |
|
I also ended my guesses at "Wedding", and I'd say, unlike the previous year's episode, the upcoming christmas special is much more the start of Season 7 than it is an ending to Season 6.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 07:41 |
|
I find this review fell flat because it depended very much on the audience sharing the writer's point of view about the previous episode despite it being well-known that that was a minority point of view. But guys the god complex sucked guys.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 07:45 |
|
I'm still not sure what to make of this finale even years later but there are a few things about it I really love: Gantok getting... eaten(???) by skulls Dorium is pretty great Amy: "she's all grown up now and she's fine, but I'll never see my baby again." Plus Amy killing Kovarian is a mirror of River killing the Dalek last series, which is to say it's extremely cool and bad rear end I feel like more could have been made of it than a line or two of dialogue, but after all the "Doctor's enemies come out of the woodwork" moments the reveal that there's an equal amount of people willing to try to save him out of gratitude was quite sweet. Of course he had it all under control the whole time, but it's the thought that counts Solving the whole thing with just a few words: "actually, thinking about it..." I jumped up and clapped when I watched it live Amy being the Doctor's mother in law is the perfect ending
|
# ? May 2, 2015 07:45 |
|
Remind me, how many people in the thread called the eventual end to the Doctor dying thing as soon as they saw the guy-suit with mini-people in Let's Kill Hitler? I also did up to Wedding. Escobarbarian fucked around with this message at 09:58 on May 2, 2015 |
# ? May 2, 2015 09:46 |
Toxxupation posted:yo people in the contest does the contest run up to or including the christmas special I did up to wedding of river song as s6.
|
|
# ? May 2, 2015 09:57 |
|
jng2058 posted:If you'd said that MY new strategy was lunacy you'd have been 100% correct. Worst thing is that Sighence has the bottom spot so locked up that I can't even "aspire" to total failure. We made the mistake of not voting the opposite of whichever extreme we chose. That'd basically be Sighence's strategy. I checked, and assuming I did the math right, I'd have 33 points. As it is, I'm beating both of you and losing to everyone else.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 10:43 |
|
Bown posted:Remind me, how many people in the thread called the eventual end to the Doctor dying thing as soon as they saw the guy-suit with mini-people in Let's Kill Hitler? I remember that and the Flesh-Doctor returning to die being the top picks for how the Doctor got out of it, I don't think a single person on the planet actually thought the Doctor actually really died - at best some may have thought that he actually died but his past self was going to change the future/his past. It did put a slight damper on the storyline running through the season, nobody bought that the Doctor was actually going to his death, though of course it was only really important that the characters themselves think that he would, not the viewers. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 12:04 on May 2, 2015 |
# ? May 2, 2015 12:01 |
EDIT - I just realised which thread this is in, my apologies. VVVVVV Might be worth editing out. It's not a big thing, but still Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 15:28 on May 2, 2015 |
|
# ? May 2, 2015 12:53 |
|
edit: I don't think this is spoilery, but just in case...
Bobulus fucked around with this message at 15:36 on May 2, 2015 |
# ? May 2, 2015 14:44 |
|
Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! In this episode, THE DOCTOR DIES!
|
# ? May 2, 2015 14:57 |
|
DOCTOR WHOOOOOO?!?! Question for other thread people (no spoilers in question, but spoilered since I don't want to give anything away by the question inferring anything) Without saying when he/she/they arrive, does anyone else feel like it would be better if Toxx knew the identity of the new companion? After all it wasn't long after this when we knew, and it made the companions first appearance a lot more surprising
|
# ? May 2, 2015 15:14 |
|
Senor Tron posted:DOCTOR WHOOOOOO?!?! It might be a better idea to just discuss this in the normal thread rather than having a big, annoying, redacted conversation here.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 15:27 |
|
Bobulus posted:Well, it isn't a thing that is brought up a lot in the revival, but classic Who was pretty firm on the Doctor having a set number of regenerations. It really wasn't. It was a bit of continuity that Bob Holmes created and then resolved (in the Brain of Morbius, largely by Robert Holmes, we see the Doctor's 4 TV incarnations as well as another 8 more. In The Deadly Assassin, by Robert Holmes, he created the regeneration limit to explain why The Master was a heap of rotting flesh. In The Caves of Androzani, by Robert Holmes, the 5th TV (and so 13th) Doctor is poisoned and announces things like "Is this death?" and "I might regenerate, I don't know. It's different this time." before regenerating, past the limit). Doctor Who has no real story continuity beyond what the authors felt like was a good idea at the time.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 15:36 |
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:It really wasn't. It was a bit of continuity that Bob Holmes created and then resolved (in the Brain of Morbius, largely by Robert Holmes, we see the Doctor's 4 TV incarnations as well as another 8 more. In The Deadly Assassin, by Robert Holmes, he created the regeneration limit to explain why The Master was a heap of rotting flesh. In The Caves of Androzani, by Robert Holmes, the 5th TV (and so 13th) Doctor is poisoned and announces things like "Is this death?" and "I might regenerate, I don't know. It's different this time." before regenerating, past the limit).
|
# ? May 2, 2015 17:27 |
|
Senor Tron posted:would be better if Toxx knew... I'm pretty sure he does. He caught some of the Christmas special a few months ago (when the last episode he had watched was The End of Time) and was a little startled at how the show had evolved.
|
# ? May 2, 2015 18:54 |
|
|
# ? Jun 2, 2024 14:46 |
|
I'm aware that clara exists and what she looks like because it's physically impossible to follow television news without seeing a picture of a tiny, almost elf-like brunette next to peter capaldi also I'm aware she shows up sometime halfway through series 7 because oxx straight up told me also yeah i saw a shot of her when i was at my parents house when she was acting with capaldi and some...fancy looking lady? that's literally all i know i think it can be safely assumed that i'm Aware of what current Doctors and Companions look like because well, doctor who coverage is loving everywhere
|
# ? May 2, 2015 21:39 |