|
evenworse username posted:Thank you kindly. I'll go on record and say that Doctor Who and the Pirates is one of my favorite stories of all time, and not because of the...thingy. It takes a while to get going but the second half and the resolution are just all around amazing.
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2014 19:26
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 05:29 |
|
|
Astroman posted:Speaking of Doctors performing other roles, I just finished Afterlife with 7, Ace, and Hex and it was fantastic. 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.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2014 05:46
|
|
|
IceAgeComing posted:I'm just rewatching Remembrance of the Daleks (I found the special edition DVD somewhere for £3 while hunting for the last of my Christmas presents and I figured that the special features and all-round better quality of the episodes themselves was worth it) and I'd forgotten just how good it actually is. I've seen all of the post-Genesis Dalek stories bar Revelation of the Daleks and I think that this is the only one that manages to make the Daleks look good since it doesn't make Davros the focus of the story, just a key part of part 4. Also Ace is probably the best companion there's ever been... The part one cliffhanger was so good I'm sure they reused it in part of Parting of the Ways... I think the Remembrance cliffhanger does it much better honestly. It's confident enough in its own strength that it doesn't even have to call attention to the fact that the Dalek's going up stairs. Dalek, I think, spells it out too much. You can call it out, but I think having Rose actually taunt the Dalek goes a bit far.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2014 01:56
|
|
|
Cruel Rose posted:It's pretty decent. The premise is neat, and each episode manages to keep things fresh. Not one of my favourites but still, it's Six and Peri! Definitely worth a tenner. How heavy does it lean on the "cannot rewrite history, not one line" stuff? I'm honestly sick and tired of those types of stories, and between Doctor What's taking The Widow's Assassin to task, I've not gotten an audio in a while. Also, has anybody gotten The Rani Elite yet? I think I might just blind buy this one, since between the new Rani, the new Master, the other new Master, and the new Doctor, it's just canon now that all Time Lords are Scottish.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2014 23:02
|
|
|
Forktoss posted:If you haven't already, you should pick up the first episode they've put up for free if you'd like a taster. I haven't listened to the whole thing either, but I quite enjoyed the first part and it felt like it had potential. And, of course, in true Doctor Who fashion the cliffhanger to the first episode of an audio called "The Rani Elite" was that the one super-suspicious woman behind all those weird goings-on was actually - and you're not going to believe this - THE RANI. I love Big Finish, but sometimes I just want to say, "Really guys?" Cliffhangers are fine, I guess, but the name of the monster is in the story! It's not 1966 anymore! Just cut to the chase! And while you're at it, you don't need to make every single story four parts and 2-2.5 hours long. The Eighth and Fourth Doctor Adventures work just fine with an hour of time, with the occasional two-parter.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2014 01:10
|
|
|
egon_beeblebrox posted:Fifteen bucks for all that Doctor Who is a steal. Gonna listen to a lot of Colin Baker this month. Hopefully I'll like the Dalek Empire stories. It is indeed a great deal, but...that's a really odd selection if they're looking to reel in new customers, which you'd think the prestige of the Humble Bundle would be able to do. I think it would be a better idea to have a curated section of audios, mostly from the first fifty that are cheap anyway, as the pay anything, and then maybe some Dalek Empire stuff or Lost Stories or maybe newer stories from the main range as the more expensive stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2014 03:48
|
|
|
Pastamania posted:That was a ruddy great episode......if you don't think about it too hard. Which, since it's supposed to be watched post-Xmas dinner, when everyone is too fat and tired to move, is perfect. I thought it was said somewhere that Coleman originally wanted to leave after Season 8, but she changed her mind, so it might very well have been. Also, looking through the credits, the elf that wasn't Finn from Misfits was Dan Starkey, aka All the Sontarans.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2014 00:58
|
|
|
Cerv posted:Doesn't matter. Nobody had a head wound when they "really" woke up. So it's all still another level of dreaming. If we're assuming Inception rules here, time passes exponentially more slowly the more layers of dreams there are. So that strategy could be a double-edged sword for the headcrabs: it's really hard to figure out you're in a dream when you're five levels down, but after the first couple times they're waking up left and right, so by the time they wake up for real (...OR DID THEY...?) they've only had the facehuggers on long enough for them to just start drilling.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2014 13:27
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:I actually thought Coleman's aging makeup was pretty good, as far as aging makeup goes. It actually took a few shots for me to click that it was actually her, and not just clever trickery with an all-new actor that happens to look a fair bit like her. Old person makeup most of the times seems pretty good, even on a low budget show like Doctor Who. I have a much bigger problem with the voices. Matt Smith did an...okay...job in TIme of the Doctor, but it was still falling through sometimes. Coleman's was pretty bad, too. I get that it's a difficult job to do, but, you know, they're actors. One of the only things I remember about Watchmen is that the actress playing the first Silk Spectre sounded exactly the same in the 1940s as she did in the 1980s.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2014 02:13
|
|
|
I can't be too hard on The Game. Russell does a great job whether you know it's him or not (I didn't), and the twist with his character is rather wonderfully bittersweet. It definitely loses its focus but I'd still say it's worth a listen. Some of the conceits to keep the game going (like the fact that teams sell each other's merchandise) were pretty clever. I'd tentatively recommend it.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2014 03:04
|
|
|
Davros1 posted:What's worse is I've been on forums with people who hated Colin's Doctor, and would refuse to listen to any of his Big Finish stories, but would finally relent for the Lost Stories. I never hear anything about it, but The Eternal Summer is one of my favorite audios. Fine, moving plot, but most importantly it's got great, well-rounded, memorable characters. Like, by far the best supporting cast in any story I've heard. It's also apparently the middle of a trilogy, but whatever, it stands fine on its own.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2015 21:06
|
|
|
I might like The Beast Below more than The Eleventh Hour, if just barely. But that is just an amazing one-two punch to start off Series 5. Shame about Mark Gatiss though. I think I gave Victory of the Daleks a C in the game, but after that drop in quality after the first two I fear it might be lower. Anyway, so now that there's another nine months or so until the next episode, is it time to talk about this non-lovely Doctor Who wiki? I'll be honest, I'm mostly interested in it so all y'all's reviews could be collected in a convenient place.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2015 18:05
|
|
|
I really don't think the technicolor is the problem with them, considering the same design basically looks great in the Dalek movies. I think it's mostly that they're too tall and too fat. Daleks were never eye-stalk level with the main cast before, and even if Matt Smith and Karen Gillian are kinda tall, it's fine if the Daleks stay the same height. The movie Daleks are probably tied for my favorite Dalek design with the original revivial Dalek design. The movie Daleks get a big pass from me because they're the first to have a light shining out of the Dalek eyestalk instead of a goofy eyeball decal.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2015 19:50
|
|
|
From Wikipedia, for what it's worth:quote:Gatiss wrote in the script for the Daleks' redesign to be "big buggers...bigger than we've seen them before". The eye stalk was designed to be level with Smith's eyeline. Moffat and Gatiss wanted the new Daleks to be very colourful, similar to the Daleks of films from the 60s.[7][14] Gatiss originally wanted there to be a green Dalek, but he decided that green "just doesn't seem to work somehow".[14] Nick Briggs, who voiced the Daleks, planned to counter their bright colours with a more vicious voice.[10]...
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2015 20:05
|
|
|
Forktoss posted:I really like the very first eyestalk design in The Daleks, with the contracting and expanding camera shutter thing on the eyeball. It's such a great effect, especially for 1963, and I don't think they ever bring it back - from The Dalek Invasion of Earth on Dalek eyeballs are just blank, static and obviously wooden things and they stay like that until the revival. Huh, I don't remember that at all! That looks a whole lot better than the ones in the rest of the classic series, maybe even the original new series design. This silly eyeball was the one I was talking about, I definitely remember it in Day of the Daleks and Remembrance, so I'd assume it's in the ones in between, too. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2015 00:53
|
|
|
Bicyclops posted:The Kingmaker is a lot of fun. I love that they got John Culshaw to do his Tom Baker impression for the Doctor's recorded notes. I was kind of disappointed when I found that out, because I thought Tom Baker had just done some voiceover for a documentary on Richard III or the War of the Roses or whatever, and Big Finish cleverly appropriated it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2015 03:46
|
|
|
I think the story missed an obvious (and to my mind, necessary for making the story work) twist where all the people are getting jumpy about the idea of there being clones of them running around, and then the Doctor says, "No John, you are the monsters." And then they run into their real human selves. It's obvious that the message of the show is supposed to be that the clones are exactly the same as real people, but they do spend quite a bit of time plotting and planning and doing evil monster-y things. It's kind of clumsily written and somewhat too long, but then that's the case with pretty much every single two-parter. You can see why this was the one that finally broke the camel's back.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2015 00:30
|
|
|
PriorMarcus posted:The basis of the one we were creating was to keep each continuity separate and have an in-depth production history/review/behind the scenes side to the Wiki, while having strict control over articles to keep its a family friendly site befitting the show. When a TV show itself can't manage to keep its continuity straight for more than a couple years at a time is there really a benefit to having separate continuities for everything? Plus, even with all the ancillary material the separate continuities form an oddly coherent sequence anyways. For the most part its original series - books - Big Finish - new series, with some comics sprinkled in occasionally. I'd say just throw everything in together, and refrain from pointing out contradictions unless they're particularly interesting or amusing.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2015 03:38
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:"From today until Monday morning (UK time) we're putting 50 of our main range Doctor Who stories at a special offer price, both on CD and Download." Just looking through the titles on sale, it's not...a particularly strong set, I have to say. It's been too long since I've listened to the Eighth Doctor audios, but Scherzo, The Natural History of Fear, and The Last all stand out for me. CobiWann has also done reviews of most of them recently. From the other Doctors, Arrangements for War, The Harvest, The Kingmaker, and Circular Time are essential. It's too long, but I quite enjoyed Year of the Pig, mostly because of how ridiculous it becomes. The Wishing Beast & The Vanity Box isn't great, but it's a nice Six/Mel story and you could probably get away with just listening to The Vanity Box by itself. And of course, 100 is great fun except for the Joseph Lidster story. Speaking of Lidster, avoid The Reaping and The Gathering at all costs. And Terror Firma, for the same reason, unless you want to know what the best Lidster script is (it's still pretty bad). Also, Medicinal Purposes, unless you want to hear the Doctor be a Burke and Hare apologist.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2015 21:18
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:I actually don't mind his logic.The dynamic that New Who goes for is 'troubled (male) Doctor, grounding-force (female) companion', and it's a dynamic that works very well. If you reverse the genders, then without a major change in the way the Doctor is written, it's just going to come off weird and sexist. I think the only New Who season that might have, if it had a female Doctor, managed to avoid that is maybe season five, and even that would still have some weird subtext regarding certain Doctor/Amy elements. That's not necessarily a dynamic that has to continue, however. And it's pretty general as far as things go. I mean, it generally describes both Series 1 and 8, but the nature of those relationships is totally different. And what's wrong with Moffat writing a female Doctor? The reaction to Missy and Clara this season (in this thread, anyway) has been pretty great.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2015 04:45
|
|
|
Bicyclops posted:It would be easier to get on board with Charlie's anger at the end of Absolution if everyone didn't agree with the Doctor's shrug-like reaction to its ending, I think. All I remember about that story is yeah, being on board with the Doctor going, "Oh well, happens from time to time, next adventure?" and this amazing line when Eight is asking somebody where Charley is: "I'm looking for a girl." "Eyes, hair?" "Yes, she's got those." I think the problem was that they wanted to go into the EDA because they thought the stories would be more appealing to fans of the new series, so they kind of rushed Eight out of the main line and the assorted continuity and into his own series. I guess the quickest way they thought to do that would be to have the Doctor act like a complete asshat to Charley? It kind of sucks how that relationship is brought to an end. Did anybody end up listening to the Charlotte Pollard series? I kind of forgot that existed.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2015 18:59
|
|
|
After The War posted:Good God, The Wishing Beast is awful, even for a Paul Magrs story. Isn't it a crime in the UK to waste Jean Marsh? And if not, why not? I accidentally listened to The Vanity Box first and thought, oh, this is a nice little story. Moves along at a fast pace and has some humor. Then I listened to The Wishing Beast which is the same story but three times as long. It still wasn't bad, but there's not enough going on in it to justify its length.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2015 15:37
|
|
|
The Angels Take Manhattan feels like, to me, the only script Moffat had to write as opposed to wanted to write. It feels very much like he started with the idea that he had to write out Amy and Rory and worked backwards from there. It's a shame the split season stuff screwed around with everything so much.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2015 05:50
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:Yeah, I've seen people in this thread talk about it highly. I wish I saw the episode they watched. I really liked Akhaten. It was structured a little weirdly, but it had a good Smith speech, Clara's first great character moment, some sort of nice music, and a great cantina-style assortment of characters. I don't really see what its detractors dislike about it; it's probably one of my favorites from S7.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2015 01:27
|
|
|
Davros1 posted:Well, then, did you report this: Is this a specific instance of Robin Hood they're doing? Because there's no way Robin Hood isn't public domain, is there? I don't listen to any of BF's other stuff, nor am I really familiar with the other properties, but surely the Stargate or Highlander people can't have such big plans coming up that they won't lease the rights to BF for a while. Is there anything going on in that front that's not direct-to-video?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2015 02:44
|
|
|
I hope that if they're doing this, they're willing to rewrite a little bit of the TV show so it still doesn't just end with Six conked out on the floor of the TARDIS. But honestly, I'd rather have a new first story for Six than a new last story. Time and the Rani is just bad, whereas The Twin Dilemma is morally indefensible. Big Finish have got Davison, Bryant, and Baker; just write a new story that starts from the end of Caves. Would anybody really care if we all pretended that Twin Dilemma didn't happen?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2015 15:29
|
|
|
Angela Christine posted:Eh, it might not. I thought the perception that it was a commentary on mental illness was overblown. It is a bad episode, but not because the Doctor says, As one of the few people who liked Forest (I thought it was the worst of the season but drat was this a good season), I still think they fumbled the ball on the medication issue. It would only have taken a couple of extra lines to make it more clear that the girl didn't need medication, and that the Doctor was specifically talking about overmedication, to make the point land. But they left it a little too open to interpretation. In a way it's the opposite of Kill the Moon, where they realized that there could be an anti-abortion message in it and totally rewrote the scene to make it so that it was three women talking amongst themselves choosing an option. It's quite possibly the most pro-choice message ever, considering pro-choice doesn't equal pro-abortion. And Kill the Moon and Forest are linked in a lot of ways, so it makes there difference stand out more clearly.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2015 18:25
|
|
|
It's the only Six episode to be universally considered good, I would think.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2015 22:53
|
|
|
I like all of those as well, and I'll throw Mysterious Planet in there, too. But you could probably get away with just watching Varos and moving onto the audios. The rest of the stories we've listed come with big fat asterisks, IMO.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2015 00:26
|
|
|
Burkion posted:And of course it's about the Doctor bonin'. RTD and Moffat arguing about the Doctor having sex in magazines, Bush and Clinton running for President, it's 1992 all over again.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2015 03:23
|
|
|
I would be cautiously okay with RTD writing a script under Moffat. More of his scripts are good than aren't, on the whole, and he's written some incredible ones (Gridlock, Turn Left, Midnight). If Moffat were willing to tinker with it a little and it wasn't an event episode, just a regular run-of-the-mill one I bet he'd do a great job, especially since it's been so long since he did anything Who-related. Torchwood Season 4 was what, 2011?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2015 04:47
|
|
|
Yeah, Tennant was a big enough fan to do BF BEFORE he was the Doctor, I imagine Smith is now a big enough fan to try it one day, but I get the feeling that Eccleston is done. It's a shame, but I guess it does leave Nine with something of a mystique about him. Just the 13 episodes and out. Whether or not Smith does it probably depends on where his career goes, which is pretty hard to say at this point. Tennant seems like he's staying in the theater scene, which means it wouldn't be a stretch for him to pop over to the studios once in a while, but Smith wants to try and make it in Hollywood, so who knows.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2015 00:42
|
|
|
Forktoss posted:Big Finish had Nick Briggs first, so really it's New Who who've been using BF Daleks. Whenever the Daleks appear on a BF cover they're clearly the old series ones, too. Nick Briggs was just the go-to guy for Dalek voices when the revival started. I'm really interested if any of the Doctors will appear in the Kate Stewart audio, because that would really be interesting, having old series characters directly interacting with new ones.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2015 14:59
|
|
|
Big Finish is hardly 90 percent of the thread. Even when there's nothing on TV it probably doesn't get beyond 30 percent or so.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2015 20:35
|
|
|
It's a bit ahead (read: not on sale) of all the ones you guys are talking about, but I listened to Heroes of Sontar the other day and it's the best story I've heard in quite some time. Easily the best Sontaran story, possibly the best Turlough story, and it handles the rest of the characters, including a squad of seven Sontarans, extremely well. It pulls the same trick as the new series in making the Sontarans comic relief, but it turns out there's a reason why these particular soldiers are so funny, and it uses this to dovetail into an emotionally strong finale. It's like just, really good, man.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2015 22:55
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:Toby Hadoke does a Big Finish podcast that might cover some of that perhaps, I've never actually listened to it myself. I instinctually skipped it when I found out that it carried over from the abysmal Medicinal Purposes. Good to know that was the right choice. There's a third story by the writer, Assassin in the Limelight, which is probably also poo poo. GonSmithe posted:If you find something let me know, because I've been wondering this for the 5 months it's been since I listened to it. I don't have a source for this, but I remember reading at some point that Big Finish wanted to wrap up the divergent universe arc much more quickly than they had originally planned, because they thought TARDIS-less adventures wouldn't appeal to fans of the new series. I'm speculating, but I'd bet they wanted to get the Eighth Doctor stories out of the main range and into the EDAs. I think it was said that the EDAs were specifically targeted at new series fans. So they slapped together a conclusion and had the Doctor act like a dickwad to make Charley want to leave. While we're randomly speculating, has Paul McGann just been really busy these past few years? It seems like Dark Eyes was a way to work around not having a lot of studio time with him, and then he wasn't even in Dark Eyes 3 all that much. There's not much on Wikipedia regarding TV or movies. Does he do a lot of theatre?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2015 03:58
|
|
|
MikeJF posted:Both! The Two Masters. We do have enough Masters now to do a multi-Master story! There's Jacobi, Simm, and now Gomez. But honestly, with how totally insane a one Master plan is, I don't know if anybody could write a non-lovely multi-Master episode.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2015 03:49
|
|
|
Pesky Splinter posted:Ooooh yeah! Ever since I learned what Macqueen looks like he's popping up in everything. Minor character in The Thick of It, half a dozen lines in Black Mirror...
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2015 16:58
|
|
|
Pesky Splinter posted:Being as vague as possible, Dark Eyes 4 is pretty good. First episode has barely any relevance to the rest of the story though. MacQueen is the real highlight. This is probably my favorite since the first Dark Eyes. 2 was okay but felt more just like four unrelated stories thrown together, and 3 was just all over the place. I quite liked 4 overall.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2015 21:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 05:29 |
|
|
Bicyclops posted:Carole Ann Ford's Hartnell impression sounds a bit more like Glinda the Good Witch than the First Doctor, but she puts such love and energy into it that you can still kind of picture what he would have sounded like saying the lines. I've only listened to one story where Nicola Bryant does it, but I honestly think that she plays a better Six than she does Peri. *** I missed novel chat, and I've read maybe five Doctor Who books in as many years, but from the ones I have read, they are honestly great. I'm sure there's a lot of crap out there but I've been sticking pretty much to only the highly-rated stuff and it's been steering me right. It honestly doesn't compare at all to the Star Wars EU (something which I used to be shamefully intimately familiar with). While there were a handful of good books in that bunch, there was nothing which screamed "this is Star Wars." The New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures have that in spades. I just finished reading Alien Bodies and it is basically the perfect way to do an "adult" Doctor Who book. No sex, so putting companions in weird rapey situations. What's adult about it are its concepts (and a small but incredibly effective dose of body horror, which is pretty much the only thing that couldn't be done on TV). There's a more advanced version of a TARDIS which is just a human form which people step inside. She gets exploded at some point and there's a lengthy bit about her physically putting her memories back together. There's an exploration of Kroton society. There's musing on small changes in history adding up to big ones. There's a dig at the Raston Warrior Robot. There's a great characterization for Eight that nobody else has really tried doing. It is just really, really good. I'm kind of flummoxed at how good it is. It's perhaps unsurprising given their audience, but one thing the books I've read do is dig pretty deep into continuity. There are references to probably a dozen different episodes in Alien Bodies alone, and I've not seen all the episodes. There's even a reference to the Metatraxi, who were supposed to appear in Season 27, but didn't actually turn up until Big Finish did their Season 27 stories, more than a decade after this book was published. In short, if you read one Doctor Who book, Alien Bodies . Or Timewyrm: Exodus, that's also great.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2015 02:31
|
|