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Rochallor posted:How continuity-heavy is Afterlife? I've been holding off on getting it because I didn't really care for the big Big Finish meta-plot Forge stuff in Gods and Monsters. It only follows up on the end of the Hex stuff in the trilogy G&M was part of, as far as I recall.
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Dec 14, 2014 05:49
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Rochallor posted:How continuity-heavy is Afterlife? I've been holding off on getting it because I didn't really care for the big Big Finish meta-plot Forge stuff in Gods and Monsters. Yeah, what Doctor What said. It kinda reboots things, and while elder gods and the Forge characters are referenced (well one shows up too) it's a pretty fresh start clearly designed to begin a new arc.
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Dec 14, 2014 07:28
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Astroman posted:Speaking of Doctors performing other roles, I just finished Afterlife with 7, Ace, and Hex and it was fantastic. That speech the 7th Doctor gave the baddie at the end sent chills down my spine and I really, really would love to hear David Tennant perform it at a convention: That was a great moment, and Sly sells the hell out of it, but I really couldn't see any other Doctor pull it off. None of them are just flat out stone cold enough.
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Dec 14, 2014 16:44
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Barry Foster posted:That was a great moment, and Sly sells the hell out of it, but I really couldn't see any other Doctor pull it off. None of them are just flat out stone cold enough. That's why I said Tennant, I think he could.
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Dec 14, 2014 18:07
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DoctorWhat! The package of Target novelisations I sent out in September finally turned up at my home in London! I had totally given them up for lost forever.
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Dec 14, 2014 18:16
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The_Doctor posted:DoctorWhat! The package of Target novelisations I sent out in September finally turned up at my home in London! I had totally given them up for lost forever. Oh my god, thank goodness! Thank USPIS!
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Dec 14, 2014 18:25
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DoctorWhat posted:Oh my god, thank goodness! Thank USPIS! Well NOW I want to see the doctor team up with Jack Danger.
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Dec 14, 2014 18:50
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Fil5000 posted:Well NOW I want to see the doctor team up with Jack Danger. They could bond over their shared attraction to municipal street utilities1
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Dec 14, 2014 18:56
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DoctorWhat posted:Oh my god, thank goodness! Thank USPIS! I'll put it back in the post in the next couple of days, along with my Santee's gift!
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Dec 14, 2014 21:58
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The_Doctor posted:I'll put it back in the post in the next couple of days, along with my Santee's gift! Oh wow, thanks so much! I think you have my real name now via the Secret Santa system and/or our email correspondence, so HOPEFULLY my building won't turn it away this time.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:08
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The Doctor, I found what to give my Santee but I need his number for Amazon purposes. Please respond.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:17
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Solaris Knight posted:The Doctor, I found what to give my Santee but I need his number for Amazon purposes. Please respond. Yep, they've just replied and I passed it onto you.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:26
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The_Doctor posted:Yep, they've just replied and I passed it onto you. Perfect, thanks.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:36
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Can I just leave this pic right here? Apparently they crossed paths after doing some voice work and got excited at meeting the other...
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Dec 15, 2014 00:13
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CobiWann posted:Can I just leave this pic right here? Apparently they crossed paths after doing some voice work and got excited at meeting the other... I see Karen Gillan uses the CORRECT pallet swap for Ness in Smash Bros. 
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Dec 15, 2014 00:16
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CobiWann posted:Can I just leave this pic right here? Apparently they crossed paths after doing some voice work and got excited at meeting the other... Revival-era Big Finish productions 100% confirmed by CobiWann.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:31
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Jerusalem posted:Revival-era Big Finish productions 100% confirmed by CobiWann. You might very well think so, but of course I couldn’t possibly comment.
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Dec 15, 2014 13:39
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To my santee, your gift arrival should be imminent, and I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. No, I'm not.
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Dec 15, 2014 14:35
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So, I started listening to Circular Time and was quite pleased to immediately recognize Hugh Fraser, of Hercule Poirot fame, and then when the second "season" started, I was even more pleased to realize that David Warner was doing one of the voices! I had to get to Wikipedia pretty quickly to confirm that I wasn't hearing things! The stories themselves are fun, although they go by a bit quickly for my tastes. Still, better than any of them droning on forever.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:39
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Bicyclops posted:So, I started listening to Circular Time and was quite pleased to immediately recognize Hugh Fraser, of Hercule Poirot fame, and then when the second "season" started, I was even more pleased to realize that David Warner was doing one of the voices! I had to get to Wikipedia pretty quickly to confirm that I wasn't hearing things! The stories themselves are fun, although they go by a bit quickly for my tastes. Still, better than any of them droning on forever. "Circular Time" may be my favorite Fifth Doctor story (stories) for a lot of reasons, and the voice actors they chose are only a small part. egon_beeblebrox fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 15:45
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CobiWann posted:You might very well think so, but of course I couldn’t possibly comment. I can. It's a photo from 2010 when Karen was coming out of the studio after recording VO for a Who video game, and Sophie was going in to read several stories for BF's "Short Trips" range. Apparently Karen was ecstatic to learn that the woman coming in was Ace, and demanded that photo be taken. Sophie felt horrible because she had come straight from working out (and looked a mess) Karen autographed the shirt Sophie's wearing, by the way.
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Dec 15, 2014 23:20
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Davros1 posted:I can. It's a photo from 2010 when Karen was coming out of the studio after recording VO for a Who video game, and Sophie was going in to read several stories for BF's "Short Trips" range. Apparently Karen was ecstatic to learn that the woman coming in was Ace, and demanded that photo be taken. Sophie felt horrible because she had come straight from working out (and looked a mess) It reminds me of the time when Sophie bumped into a post-DW Eccleston once, and at first he was polite but reserved, thinking she was just another fan of the show. When he found out she'd actually played Ace back in the 1980s, she said his manner changed completely and he was super thrilled to meet her (though he did decline her offer to come along to some DW conventions/cruises). 
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Dec 16, 2014 01:10
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Sophie? Look a mess? Never! So just started showing the kiddo Warriors of the Deep, which is apparently considered a crime against humanity in some spots of the world. She thought it was kitschy, thought the Sea Devils look like Eagles, and her reaction when she saw the Myrka was "what the heck?!?" Two episodes in. Man, this story is so Cold War it hurts. And the costumes, Jesus Christmas.
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Dec 16, 2014 01:11
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CobiWann posted:Can I just leave this pic right here? Apparently they crossed paths after doing some voice work and got excited at meeting the other... Look out! You're being attacked by a giant Scottish bee! 
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Dec 16, 2014 01:30
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 Night Thoughts is a dark and not particularly pleasant story, but that doesn't make it a bad story. It succeeds in exactly what it sets out to do, which is create an atmospheric and isolated location for some thoroughly unpleasant people to have thoroughly unpleasant things happen to them. While Ace and Hex have to navigate pitfalls and traps both figurative and literal, the 7th Doctor comes across initially as just as dark and unpleasant as the other characters until the end of the story where we are thankfully reminded that he's a much better person than the people he stands in judgement over. The story reminded me in a lot of ways of Ghostlight or The Curse of Fenric, so I wasn't entirely surprised to discover a version of it was initially planned for McCoy's run on the show before the show.... simply stopped being made (it was never canceled, because the BBC is weird). The TARDIS arrives on a dark night on a small island that was used during World War II to test a deadly nerve gas, and has been abandoned ever since apart from a single building that houses several academics who undertake research between university semesters. When Ace nearly drowns after thinking she saw a ghostly woman in the water, the Doctor peculiarly pushes them to go to the house instead of straight back to the TARDIS. Once inside, it becomes immediately obvious how weird everything is as there is clearly a lot of tension between the academics who seem to be doing their best to keep something covered up. The Doctor quite obviously knows more than he is letting on, especially when Hex reveals a seemingly prophetic dream to him and the Doctor is curious but apparently unsurprised, and almost seems to take a savage pleasure in goading the academics with stories about researchers who tortured a bear. That's basically the atmosphere that permeates the entire story - a savage unpleasantness as people cruelly mistreat or abuse others. It's rather unrelentingly depressing, and when people start to die none of the characters seem particularly surprised - in fact the discovery of the first body takes place entirely "off-screen", everybody just kind of treats it like an established thing - "oh there's a body in the basement now? How unsettling, what's for breakfast?" Ace and Hex should really serve as the audience stand-ins here since they're the most "normal" people involved, but they do mostly seem to take everything at face value without questioning how odd the entire place is. Hex is the most pro-active and gets the most time, there's even a scene where he tries to convince Ace to go exploring with him and she rather uncharacteristically decides to just stay in her room and get some sleep. That's not to say Ace is passive, she gets up to plenty, including a rather gleeful scuffle with the (unseen) murderer as she reminds whoever they are that she's not an old academic and is more than willing to throw down - when she gets hit with a sedative halfway through the fight, there is this wonderful sense of,"Well that's just cheating!  " to her demeanor.Mostly it's about Hex though, who interacts with everybody and at least tries to figure out what the hell is going on with everybody. Very little is made of the fact that he basically had a vision of the people they were going to meet before they met them, the Doctor comments on it with little apparent surprise and Hex himself just seems to shrug and move on after his own initial shock at seeing the people from his dream in the flesh. I don't know exactly what it is about Hex that makes him such an appealing character, but basically from his first story I was onboard with him as a character in a way that, for example, C'Rizz utterly failed to achieve. His interactions with the other characters are well handled, especially his unease around Sue that he doesn't allow get in the way of TRYING to be nice to her and get her to open up. His utter distaste for the Major is well realized, especially when he calls him out on the lunacy of his plans, something the Major isn't at all used to having happen to him. But things kind of fall apart towards the end of the story, as he runs back and forth on the island not really achieving anything until the Doctor shows up, explains everything and then they all leave without really further exploring the repercussions of what has happened, or Hex's visions especially (hopefully that comes up in a future story). That's one of the issues with his audio - for about 90% of the story it all builds up very well to the resolution, and then the resolution.... just kind of happens. The stuff with Sue is especially bad and utterly contrived, even if its heart is in the right place. Perhaps the best part of it is the reveal of the end result of one of the academic's work. It's an extremely comedic moment (essentially her enormously complicated work ends up being used for amusing party tricks) that doesn't initially seem to quite sit right amidst the darker tone of the overall story, until you take into account that the Doctor is using this knowledge to belittle and puncture the ego of the Major. The contrivances are pretty extreme - not just Sue's fate, but things like the Taxidermist just happened to have designed a completely unknown method of perfectly preserving EVERY part of the body, which turns out to create the perfect conditions for something the Doctor didn't expect to happen. There's a kind of quasi-Monkey's paw finish to the story where everything is "ended" before it can come into view of the terrified characters, but the way the other characters leave the island with events quite clearly unfinished feels so weird. Having the Doctor and everybody else leave while the Major is just casually left locked upstairs makes no sense at all other than being a contrived way of creating an ironic "justice" for that character. It would have been better if everybody assumed that character had done something like fall into a "bottomless" pit and be presumed dead, only to live long enough for the same fate to happen. Basically, Night Thoughts is a rather gruesome, dark tale that is well constructed until the end when it all falls apart. The unpleasant atmosphere and characters are well realized but can make for a rather unrelentingly depressing feeling, so it is a relief when the Doctor reveals at last after an entire story of playing the callous puppetmaster that he simply couldn't bring himself to make the "right" decision and do something that would have basically made him no better than the academics with their own callous research. You can see how this story would have fit in as a televised story, it absolutely captures that spirit of the last season of McCoy's run on the show - the first story I can recall since The Fearmonger that has so clearly matched up with the feel of that era of the show, though The Fearmonger was more in line with the likes of The Happiness Patrol and Paradise Towers, while this is very much in the vein of Ghostlight or The Curse of Fenric. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Dec 16, 2014 |
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Dec 16, 2014 03:18
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I've just remembered that I listened to Night Thoughts forever ago, but reading that has made me realise how little of it stuck with me. I honestly couldn't tell you much of it beyond "some academics in a lonely house because Reasons". I even forgot Hex was in it. Maybe I should revisit. Or just listen to Chimes again soon because Christmas is coming up very soon and it wouldn't be Christmas without it.
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Dec 16, 2014 03:38
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Night Thoughts was "adapted" from a script concept for the unproduced Season 27, as I recall.
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Dec 16, 2014 03:40
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DoctorWhat posted:Night Thoughts was "adapted" from a script concept for the unproduced Season 27, as I recall. Well I did mention that, yeah 
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Dec 16, 2014 03:55
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Jerusalem posted:Well I did mention that, yeah Sorry, I must have missed it. I'm coming down from an adrenaline rush following a very exciting Smashing of Bros.
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Dec 16, 2014 03:57
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The_Doctor posted:I've just remembered that I listened to Night Thoughts forever ago, but reading that has made me realise how little of it stuck with me. I honestly couldn't tell you much of it beyond "some academics in a lonely house because Reasons". I even forgot Hex was in it. Maybe I should revisit. I think what will stick with me isn't so much the little details or even the characters, but the atmosphere of the piece. It really stood out to me in terms of just how dark the whole thing was - I keep using the term unpleasant but I don't mean that as necessarily a bad thing, it's what they were going for and it comes across very well.
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Dec 16, 2014 04:05
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Something uncomfortable, but not in a bad way? Man, I can't wait to get to this story. I love the creepier side of Doctor Who, especially those from Seven!
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Dec 16, 2014 04:47
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This could be anybody's house at any time, and I love that.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:12
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I'm still not telling you where Gallifrey is!
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Dec 16, 2014 05:17
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Since the season is over, how's that not terrible Doctor Who wiki coming, guys?
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Dec 16, 2014 06:24
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If anyone is organizing a new wiki thing, I'd be up to help. I certainly have some time for the next few weeks, anyway. I've been rewatching season four lately for the first time in years, prompted by finally reading The Writer's Tale, which was much more interesting than I was expecting. Season four is....really good. I mean, bits of it are totally absurd, but (mostly) in the best RTD ways. Even Voyage of the Damned, which I've never really understood the vitriol for. I always remembered it as being a fun romp - nothing great or outstanding, but certainly not bad. Even on rewatch, I still mostly enjoy the first, oh, 50-60 minutes. Once The Doctor gets taken to meet MAX Capricorn it all starts to go a bit downhill, and Astrid's 'ending' of...having her particles dispersed or whatever is not nearly as moving or affecting as it thinks it is. But other than, still enjoyable. And the season proper, pretty drat solid most of the way through. Midnight was still as good as I remembered, and I enjoyed Turn Left more this time than I did on the first watch. It is really rather bleak, and that kept me from enjoying it much the first time around, or wanting to rewatch it since then. About to go into the finale. Oddly enough, the first full episode of Doctor Who I ever sat down and watched was Journey's End when I caught it randomly on SciFi. It was very confusing, and it was even more confusing when I started Rose and The Doctor was a different person. So we'll see if that holds on up on rewatch, then.
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Dec 16, 2014 08:50
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Thanks to my Secret Santa for the dvd you sent me. The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I think I saw it on tv ten years ago when the (Australian) ABC screened all available episodes for the 40th anniversary. Just got home from work today and put it on.
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Dec 16, 2014 10:03
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No problems man. Hartnell is my fave doc so you'd better enjoy it. There is a bit more to arrive but I think they shipped seperately
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Dec 16, 2014 10:17
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Little_wh0re posted:No problems man. Hartnell is my fave doc so you'd better enjoy it. Ahh you're the best! Apologies to the poor person who got me, I haven't had a shipping email yet so if there's nothing by the end of the week I'll be emailing someone sternly.
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Dec 16, 2014 10:26
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BSam posted:I think I saw it on tv ten years ago when the (Australian) ABC screened all available episodes for the 40th anniversary. I don't think they played Dalek serials in that run because they didn't want to go through the extra hoops of dealing with the Nation estate. I remember that being the case because stumbling upon that marathon early in Colin's run was my introduction to the series and I didn't see Revelation of the Daleks until I got it on DVD for Christmas that year since it wasn't played on telly. It's a wonder I stuck around when the first thing I ever saw of the show was the back end of Attack of the Cybermen.
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Dec 16, 2014 10:58
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Box of Bunnies posted:I don't think they played Dalek serials in that run because they didn't want to go through the extra hoops of dealing with the Nation estate. I remember that being the case because stumbling upon that marathon early in Colin's run was my introduction to the series and I didn't see Revelation of the Daleks until I got it on DVD for Christmas that year since it wasn't played on telly. I've said it before, but it bears saying again - my first Who memory is of Terror of the Vervoids. It's a wonder ANYONE that got into Who in the mid 80s hung around.
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Dec 16, 2014 11:41
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