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vegetables posted:There are more episodes of Doctor Who by Steven Moffat than there are by all women ever. Which is a loving tragedy, but that's also true for Robert Holmes, Terry Dicks, or RTD.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:13
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vegetables posted:There are more episodes of Doctor Who by Steven Moffat than there are by all women ever. But the overall quality still tips in favor of the women, so it's not too bad.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:16
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PriorMarcus posted:But the overall quality still tips in favor of the women, so it's not too bad. I like how this is so much more cutting when you know which episodes the ones written by women were. Well, except Survival, Survival's rad.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:32
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So that's Helen Raynor, Rona Munro, and Jane Baker. Anyone else? Well, I like Survival a lot. Let down by the cat puppets, and that's not the writer's fault.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:33
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Kate Orman, if you tilt your head slightly and squint one eye while looking at Human Nature...
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Oct 8, 2014 21:37
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Barbara Clegg wrote Enlightenment for Davison's era (which was also directed by a woman, incidentally). Lesley Scott also got a credit, but apparently didn't ACTUALLY contribute to the script she's credited on. Like I said, one hand.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:39
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I forgot Enlightenment! Enlightenment is also rad.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:42
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I knew Enlightenment was directed by a woman but I wasn't sure if it was written by a woman.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:42
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vegetables posted:I like how this is so much more cutting when you know which episodes the ones written by women were. Well, except Survival, Survival's rad. The goofy aspects of Survival are all on the production side, too. Munro had written it expecting that they would just do a little cheetah stuff around the eyes and mouth and let the actors carry their animal nature in the movement, but instead they dressed everyone in goofy fursuits. It's the strangest thing; a writer actually wrote a script that was fairly minimalist in terms of the costuming for a show that had no budget for it, and then the production team went completely overboard anyway.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:49
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Poor Lisa Bowerman.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:57
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Bicyclops posted:The goofy aspects of Survival are all on the production side, too. Munro had written it expecting that they would just do a little cheetah stuff around the eyes and mouth and let the actors carry their animal nature in the movement, but instead they dressed everyone in goofy fursuits. It's the strangest thing; a writer actually wrote a script that was fairly minimalist in terms of the costuming for a show that had no budget for it, and then the production team went completely overboard anyway. It also smothered most of the lesbian subtext between Aldred and Bowerman in the script/direction, apparently.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:58
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Republican Vampire posted:Sorry if this's been posted and I missed it, but Doctor Who footnote turned apparently decent podcast The Minister of Chance is seeking funding for a film on Kickstarter. Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann are involved, though of course they're not playing The Doctor. Clicked on this expecting to see a similar obvious scam or earnest but oblivious to reality pipedream like that previous Doctor Who themed kickstarter (the one "explaining" the extra faces seen in The Brain of Morbius) but this looks at least interesting and actually has planning and foresight involved as opposed to a couple of dudes in somebody's apartment doing bad Tennant impressions.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:29
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Have all the writers for TV Who been white? I have a sinking feeling the answer is "yes", but don't actually know for sure.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:45
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My coat and cravat are cleaned, pants pressed, waistcoat washed, shirt stripped of stains… NEW YORK COMIC CON, I AM READY FOR YOU!
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Oct 9, 2014 02:55
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 The Game is a story with an engaging concept that is abandoned at the 2/3rds mark, much to the detriment of a story that was - while not groundbreaking - at least serving to thrust the Doctor into a horrible moral quandary regarding the value of life, coupled with a lesson about the difference between reputation and reality. But all of that gets abandoned in the last third of the story, introducing an entirely new character and entirely new threat which bears little relation to what has gone before. As a result, the story feels fractured and often incoherent, you could almost be forgiven for thinking you'd accidentally downloaded the wrong final episode to an entirely different story. The Fifth Doctor enthusiastically brings Nyssa to the planet Cray so he can enjoy being a fanboy for a change - he wants his picture taken with Lord Darzil Carlisle, one of the greatest individual forces for peace in the known universe. The Doctor has followed his career and been very impressed by what he has read, and since history says that Cray is where Carlisle has his final success before retiring for good, this is his last chance (kinda, he is a time traveler after all!) to meet the man. Nyssa quite correctly reads between the lines here, does this mean the Doctor is cheerfully taking them to visit a WAR? The Doctor sheepishly admits that yes he is, and it's a bit of characterization I love - any Doctor would probably let themselves get carried away, but the 5th Doctor especially is adept at confidently striding into a situation and finding himself in over his head. Darzil Carlisle himself is played by William Russell, one of the original Doctor Who companions: Ian Chesterton. It's very sweet to have him in this story playing a decidedly un-Ian character, and one whose reputation is highly inaccurate to the man himself. Carlisle is brusque, uninterested in details, seemingly indifferent to the horrors of war or the importance of his own mission. He just wants to kick back and relax, enjoy good food and accommodation and a massage from his robotic assistant. He's joined by Ambassador Faye, who finds herself doing the bulk of the preparations while struggling to get her legendary superior to get involved. When Carlisle learns from Nyssa that the Doctor is present on Cray but that he has NEVER met Carlisle before, he goes into a bit of a panic and eventually reveals the horrible truth. Carlisle is a fraud and always has been, for some reason when he was very young he met a man called the Doctor who took it upon himself to work out a peace deal between two warring factions and then give all the credit to Carlisle. Again and again throughout the years, this Doctor has done all the work for the growing reputation of Carlisle and refused to take any credit, and eventually Carlisle learned to just enjoy it and the many benefits his enhanced reputation brought him. But if THIS Doctor doesn't know him, then does that mean that Carlisle himself is going to have to bring peace to Cray? And how? He doesn't have the first clue where to start. Russell plays Carlisle very well, and despite the un-Ian nature of the character, there's still something wonderful about hearing him tell the Doctor that he is his best friend, and that he's sad he never got a chance to say a proper goodbye to him. His eventual retirement is a sad moment that also sets up the Doctor's need to recreate the conditions that will eventually lead to it. It's nothing new to Big Finish or the New Adventures novels, though most modern fans of Who would probably think of this as a quasi-River Song style relationship. The nature of the war on Cray isn't quite what you'd expect. In basically a reversal of how things worked on earth, war has been turned into team sports, though retained the lethality. Rather than fighting over territory with bombs, guns, swords and artillery etc, the battles are restricted to specific arenas and teams with a set time-limit to each "match". The "Game" is called Naxy, and two teams fight it out using what are basically hockey stick/blade hybrids. Civilians watch from the seats and millions more watch on television and enthusiastically support their team. The game has been "balanced" so that any one side gaining momentum affects them negatively from a financial standpoint, as the opposing team has the right to license products based on the opposing team and their stars. It's an interesting take on sports teams rivalries, and despite the hockey sticks the game is pretty clearly meant to bring to mind football, and particularly the various "armies" of hooligans who get together to put a beating on opposing supporters. Here the two are combined, with the hooligans put onto the field and cheered on as they beat and kill each other. Unfortunately, Naxy makes even less sense than the Doctor and Nyssa's angry condemnations of it from a moral standpoint. Cray is a planet of a single city (a common issue with sci-fi planets, not just Doctor Who) and the numbers read out by Faye suggest either there is an ENORMOUS population in that single city and a prodigious amount of reproduction going on.... or that the whole problem of war is going to be resolved soon enough because there simply won't be enough new "players" to replace the many, many, many dead ones. Basically, Naxy makes no sense at all from a logistical standpoint. Forget the moral arguments, the war would never have continued because there were too few people to engage in it. All of the little balancing rules included in the story to try and address these issues fall apart because of that one basic problem - too many people are being killed too quickly in too small a space that the population base simply wouldn't be able to sustain it for any length of time, let alone multiple generations. The Fifth Doctor gets in over his head of course, when he takes Nyssa to a sports pub and accidentally gets himself invited to take part in the game before discovering how lethal it is. All his attempts to halt the game or get his team out of the arena backfire horribly, as his team uses the distraction he causes to work a pincer movement on the opposing team and gain a rare victory after the momentum has recently been turned against them. To his disgust, the Doctor becomes a Naxy Celebrity, with shoe endorsements and other licensing arrangements taking place whether he wants them to or not. At the same time, Nyssa is learning more about Carlisle's secret and uncovering elements of strange goings on both on Cray and with the so-called peace mission. Frustratingly, most of the moments where she is in a position to inform the Doctor of these go nowhere, as he shushes her when she tries to tell him or she bizarrely decides to keep things to herself. As a result, the Doctor is never in full possession of the facts, while Nyssa isn't in any position to do anything with the information she does have. This does put the Doctor into a vexing moral quandary, as he is thrust into a one-on-one battle where victory can only come with the death of one of the participants. If he refuses to take part, a score of other players will have to do battle instead and he'll be indirectly responsible for their death or the death of their opponents. The interest here in is how the Doctor could possibly get out of this situation, because we all know he WON'T kill somebody just because those are the rules of the "game". Earlier in the story, the Doctor found himself unwillingly responsible for the death of over a hundred men, even though it wasn't at all his intent. Now it seems he must be responsible for the death of another or die himself, unless he can do what he always does and figure a way out. He gets this when the other player refuses to take the killing blow... but why? It's good Doctor Who to have the Doctor's actions provide a moral compass that allows a character to see the error of their ways or look to a "better" way of doing things. But it's bad Doctor Who when that moment of realization isn't earned. The Doctor's opponent is Hollis, and nothing at any point in the story building up to this moment indicates he has in any way questioned the validity of Naxy as a way of life, or that he sees death as anything more than a necessary part of it. His interactions with the Doctor himself have been minimal, and those with Nyssa haven't given any indication that her words have reached him. He doesn't even seem to particularly agree with his Coach's desire for peace... so why when he is at a moment of triumph does he decide to throw it all way? I'd argue it's because the script says now is the time for this to happen and no other reason - it feels unearned both as character development for Hollis and as an endorsement of the strength of the Doctor's calls for peace. This is where the story basically falls apart, sadly. While attempts were made to breadcrumb what follows next, it feels like a different story suddenly being crushes into The Game. An entirely new character arrives on the scene who immediately dominates the scene and reveals that he has orchestrated events specifically to get the Doctor to Cray in order to gain access to his TARDIS. Faye's characterization is thrown out the window, the other players in the story become wrapped up in the events now going on, and the new character dominates the entire story. It feels very much like an attempt to create a new nemesis character for the 5th Doctor's audios, in much the same way that Project: Twilight did with Nimrod. Like with Nimrod, I didn't find Morian compelling at all, and every moment that screams,"Aren't I a threatening and compelling villain, Doctor? We shall have such sexy and exciting future adventures together!" leaves me cold. Particularly since everything seems to be set up at the end of the story for Morian to be killed by Faye, as everything has been leading to her realizing she has been brainwashed but instead... nothing happens. He goes, the Doctor says he'll be ready for him "next time" (  ) and he and Nyssa prepare to leave, peace restored on Cray because both sides temporarily had a mutual foe who has left the planet less than a day after making himself known.It's a bad resolution to the conflict set up in the first 2/3rds of the story. I can't help but think it would have been better if Morian's origin had been as the surviving member of one of the obsolete "teams" that had been supposedly wiped out generations earlier. How that would have played into the eventual peace settlement I don't know, but I have to think it would have been better than bringing in an entirely exterior character with mostly unrelated motivations and making his attempts to force the Doctor to do his bidding the central plot. It doesn't help that he's accompanied by voiceless beastly henchmen whose rough breathing sounds nothing more than loud snoring - it does make for a rather amusing if unintentional metanarrative where the bad guy is loudly declaring how great and clever and badass he is accompanied by the sound of sonorous snoring in the background. The Game ends on a rather downbeat note. Peace has been achieved at a great cost, Carlisle is gone, Faye is still in the grips of the bad guy and the Doctor has had his illusion of a great man punctured. He faces the future (Carlisle's past) resolutely but agrees with Nyssa that he'll put off doing what he has already done until after she is gone, which further serves to emphasize Nyssa's own mortality against his long life, even if they are unaware of how soon their permanent separation is coming. Overall, the story lacks the gravity to earn such a downbeat but resolute finale - too much is played for comedy (the sportcaster giving play by play on his own death, for example), the logistics of the war aren't plausible, characters change without development or a background to support their change of heart etc. It's wonderful to hear William Russell, of course, and Nyssa's attempts to be proactive are welcome from a character who is so often a passive one, stories like these must be part of the reason Sarah Sutton came back, it's a chance to develop her paper-thin character from the television show. Davison is wonderful as the Doctor who gets in over his head and has to work streneously to extricate himself from the situation. But The Game lacks structure and the plot veers off madly towards the end, with an unsatisfying departure of the main villain and a downbeat ending that needed a better story leading up to it. Worth a listen, but not anything you should go out of your way for.
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Oct 9, 2014 04:24
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DoctorWhat posted:My coat and cravat are cleaned, pants pressed, waistcoat washed, shirt stripped of stains… If a girl dressed as Midna randomly says hi, that's my girlfriend. I told her to keep an eye out for The Coat.
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Oct 9, 2014 06:18
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DoctorWhat posted:My coat and cravat are cleaned, pants pressed, waistcoat washed, shirt stripped of stains…
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Oct 9, 2014 07:27
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Speaking of Survival, a couple of lines about Ace's under age drinking were cut by the powers that be for being unsuitable for a kids show*, but Kill The Moon did include a similar reference to Courtney. That's progress for you. *it is; get over it. You don't need to justify yourself for watching it.
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Oct 9, 2014 08:16
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DoctorWhat posted:My coat and cravat are cleaned, pants pressed, waistcoat washed, shirt stripped of stains… And the one year I can't go due to having six classes in my roster  . Next year or the year after, I'm cosplaying as Daggeron and we're going out for drinks/hang out in general.
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Oct 9, 2014 14:50
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Solaris Knight posted:And the one year I can't go due to having six classes in my roster Depending on whether they host the con a few days earlier next year or not, Doctor What will still actually be too young to drink next year. The guy was like 11 years old when the revival started.
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Oct 9, 2014 15:09
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Bicyclops posted:Depending on whether they host the con a few days earlier next year or not, Doctor What will still actually be too young to drink next year. The guy was like 11 years old when the revival started. This is weird and scary on at least three levels. That a ~20 year old can't drink legally, that Doctor What is so young, and that the revival has been going for so long.
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Oct 9, 2014 16:36
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marktheando posted:This is weird and scary on at least three levels. That a ~20 year old can't drink legally, that Doctor What is so young, and that the revival has been going for so long. Next year is its tenth anniversary, in fact, which is absolutely mind-boggling, especially because all the weird delays will make the actual date of the tenth year anniversary sometime in between seasons 8 and 9.
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Oct 9, 2014 16:39
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I got into the revival with Tennant but didn't start actively watching until Series 3, so yeah I feel super old.
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Oct 9, 2014 16:44
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I rented (!) series 1 from Netflix, and made it over to London just after the series 2 dvds came out. Bought them all and watched them on the flight. By the time I landed, I had already fostered a deep hatred for Tennant. 
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Oct 9, 2014 17:09
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When the revival started, I was still reeling from the cancellation of Enterprise and yelling at people online about what was in The Hatch. High school me was somehow even more sad than I am now.
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Oct 9, 2014 17:09
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Bicyclops posted:Depending on whether they host the con a few days earlier next year or not, Doctor What will still actually be too young to drink next year. The guy was like 11 years old when the revival started. Doctor What is so young that when they cast Matt Smith in the role he said,"Who's the old guy?"
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Oct 9, 2014 21:36
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When the revival started, I had given up on being a fan two years earlier because UK Gold weren't showing repeats any more, I couldn't afford to buy DVDs and it was obviously never coming back.
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Oct 9, 2014 21:56
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Jerusalem posted:Doctor What is so young that when they cast Matt Smith in the role he said,"Who's the old guy?" i turned 20 today, it was very satisfying. also OH GOD MY FEET, I NEED GEL PADS FOR THE NEXT 3 DAYS AND POSSIBLY FOREVER also 
DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 00:55
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DoctorWhat posted:i turned 20 today, it was very satisfying. Try having flat feet, kiddo!  Cons are torture but man oh man are they fun. Happy birthday too, I guess.
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Oct 10, 2014 01:08
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I spent about £50 and loads of time putting together a half decent 11th Doctor for a Hallowe'en night out that never happened in 2012, I'm still biding my time. I already owned a Stetson so I can throw that in as a tribute to a specific scene/set of publicity stills.
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Oct 10, 2014 01:48
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DoctorWhat posted:i turned 20 today, it was very satisfying. Happy emerging fully formed from the Looms as a reincarnation of a mythical figure and founding father of your hyper-advanced society because a writer missed the entire point of what makes the Doctor the Doctor Day!
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Oct 10, 2014 02:03
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Jerusalem posted:Happy emerging fully formed from the Looms as a reincarnation of a mythical figure and founding father of your hyper-advanced society because a writer missed the entire point of what makes the Doctor the Doctor Day! I... kind of like the idea of the Other and while I understand why people dislike it, I'm a big fan of those kind of mythologies. 
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Oct 10, 2014 02:09
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Solaris Knight posted:I... kind of like the idea of the Other and while I understand why people dislike it, I'm a big fan of those kind of mythologies.   With ya, buddy.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:17
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Solaris Knight posted:I... kind of like the idea of the Other and while I understand why people dislike it, I'm a big fan of those kind of mythologies. Personally I think there are two ways to mishandle the idea of "let's make the Doctor more mysterious" and somehow in the 80s they managed to simultaneously do one and almost do the other. Writer: Let's make the Doctor more mysterious! JNT: Question marks all over his costume? Agreed! Writer: Let's make the Doctor more mysterious!" JNT: How? Writer: Let's decide he's special not because of his travels broadening his horizons and his exposure to humanity giving him a moral compass more recognizable and inspirational to them, but because he's the literal reincarnation of some near mythical being from the start of Time Lord history! I just think it's an elitist viewpoint (the Doctor is just inherently special and important and superior) that doesn't fit in well with the show's ethos. It fails to recognize that he's "not just any Time Lord" BECAUSE he stepped outside of that stagnant society and expanded his way of looking at the universe. Not because he's some ubermensch founding father, but because he was a midling at best Time Lord who refused to accept the way things were.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:18
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Of course he's not like any other Time Lord. He's an AWFUL Time Lord. Took multiple tries to pass tests! Is average at BEST at Time Lord Maths and Math! Couldn't even tell you the difference between the two! But that's OK because, if history has shown us anything, it's that Time Lords really suck.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:29
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Except he's basically a trickster archetype, which places into a god-like place in any mythology anyway AND there's no reason he can't be the one that stepped outside the elitist perspective to be the compassionate part of the trio. Then again, I find the 'barely passed his exams' thing just as tedious and annoying as many find the Other. (I can take or leave looms. Loom however, is an awesome video game.) It's patronising. He's special because he's a scrappy kid with street smarts, because of course no-one with BOOK smarts can be kind and benevolent. It's actually anti-intellectual in a way that feels very UN-Doctor Who.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:29
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Gaz-L posted:Except he's basically a trickster archetype, which places into a god-like place in any mythology anyway AND there's no reason he can't be the one that stepped outside the elitist perspective to be the compassionate part of the trio. Depends on the exams. It seems they're playing up the Time Lord Academy as a more military sort of institution which would fit in better.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:30
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Gaz-L posted:It's actually anti-intellectual in a way that feels very UN-Doctor Who. Personally I find little trouble in seeing the Doctor as the type of student who got bored in class or struggled to concentrate long enough to actually sit down and study when there were other more interesting things to focus on. Give him something that interests him and I bet he nerds out like nobody else and would spend hours working on it, but lay down a structured and rigid program of study and he starts fidgeting. It's not scrappy street-smarts so much as it is an intellect driven by curiosity and fascination - I like to think of the likes of Einstein, who hated school as a teenager because of the way they taught. quote:He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning. I can easily see the Academy being just such a place - students are given a very strict and rigid system and anybody who doesn't fall into place is failed out or forced to repeat themselves until they finally give the rote answers that are wanted. As a result you get a Time Lord society that doesn't change from the "perfect" status quo of their position at the top of the universal food chain.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:46
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I suppose my vision of Time Lord academia is more the epitome of learning for it's own sake. The kind of place any student would adore, but could easily become frustrating once one wanted to do anything with that learning because well... "what's it for?"... why to better one's mind and understanding of the universe, of course! I just cringe every time the failed exams thing comes up. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 02:56
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Gaz-L posted:I suppose my vision of Time Lord academia is more the epitome of learning for it's own sake. The kind of place any student would adore, but could easily become frustrating once one wanted to do anything with that learning because well... "what's it for?"... why to better one's mind and understanding of the universe, of course! there is a problem with that thinking though. EVERY instance we have ever seen the Time Lords as a society. They Time Lords abhor change, they detest involvement, and can't get enough of being stogey old bureaucrats who keep to the status quo no matter what. They do not experiment, they do not improve, they do not wander. They have no imagination and no soul.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:00
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