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Dabir posted:She filled the base with cement. Admittedly, it's been a while since I re-experienced 9's season. And cemented-over plot-storage certainly beats a privatized Torchwood.
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 10:16 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 10:31 |
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Cleretic posted:I had an idea like this ages ago, of a villain who was just a normal modern-age guy but made himself a strong and credible Doctor-level threat by just salvaging enough Dalek/Cybermen/Sontaran/whatever tech and using it himself. He'd disappear somehow at the end of the episode, only to come back in an entirely different place and time, because he knows exactly what the best piece of alien tech that ever hit Earth was, and stows away on it until they take him somewhere good. This guy you mean? http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sebastian_Grayle
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 10:40 |
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Jerusalem posted:Haha, River Song is actually what came immediately to mind for me Yeah, it'd basically be an undercover River-level talent. Oh Doctor, please save me! ~Pockets crazy Dalek tech~. Roach Warehouse posted:The details are wildly different, but to my mind that hits most of the same story beats as the Professor Yana reveal and subsequent TARDIS theft/rigging. Ah, yeah I knew there'd been something similar but couldn't put my finger on it. I mean with hundreds of episodes of course they've done "someone dupes the Doctor and steals the Tardis" before, so they might be better off with "Doctor's in chains, bad guy is causing havoc with his non-Tardis time machine." What appeals to me is doing it with a new character who isn't a Time Lord, just a once in a generation genius. The Master even did the whole "Imprison the Doctor for years" thing, although that ended up being undone. The more I think of it the more I love the idea of setting up a secretly-evil companion, and the longer it lasts the better. It'd be pretty amazing to see the Doctor react to being completely deceived and owned (well, temporarily owned) by a human as well. I'm sure they could do little clues along the way that most people only catch after the big reveal too. I rather miss them setting up big plot threads that pay off at the end of each season/series, like they did with 11, and after all kinds of crazy high stakes, world (or universe) threatening finales, a smaller-stake one where the Doctor has to deal with a very intimate betrayal by a member of his favorite race appeals to me. Imagine the reaction if this companion betrayal results in a regeneration as well, and what kind of crazy Doctor we'd get out of that . Or if the betrayal happened in the last few minutes of a season, and we cliffhanged on a regeneration and the reveal that the lady we've all liked (and the typical audience surrogate) just broke everyone's heart. Bonus points if the companion doesn't know that the Doctor can regenerate, that'd be a bit hard to keep under wraps but it'd make for a great OH poo poo moment for the bad guy. I guess overall there's just a lot of interesting paths you could go down, and a dark companion is one of VERY few ideas they haven't explored. I doubt we're going to get the Valeyard anytime soon, this is kind of the next best thing.
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 11:13 |
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I guess some people just need their Adrics and Turloughs. [pictures of Turlough in his tiny bathing suit and Adric eating snacks]
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 12:02 |
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ThaGhettoJew posted:I guess some people just need their Adrics and Turloughs. [pictures of Turlough in his tiny bathing suit and Adric eating snacks] The links in your post are broken.
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 12:54 |
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SS Stuff will go out later today, I'm just waiting on someone to reply to an email to clear something up.
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 13:05 |
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ThaGhettoJew posted:Sooooo, the billionaire/collector/jerk Henry van Statten from "Dalek" but also he survives? They never really did wrap up with whatever his secretary does with all that alien tech after she wipes van Statten's mind and takes over. Once Eccles and Rose leave with Adam-The-Two-Ep-Companion it's not really an overly important issue for Earth's development I guess. I was picturing something like Statten in stature, but Grayle in personal strengths. In my mind this theoretical character's a lot smarter and a lot more willing to use their tools than Statten; I'm picturing them in Cyberman-based armor with Dalek weaponry, maybe wired up to some greater system they took from a spaceship. The idea itself came from trying to think of the few times when the antagonist of a story was straight-up just a non-puppeted, in-control human, so I'd see them as being on top of the tech. No accidentally triggering dangerous subsystems, getting consumed by the tech or losing control of some part of things, this one's a threat entirely by their own intentions. Perhaps not a match for the Doctor in intellect, but they know what they're doing, what they shouldn't, and what they want. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Nov 17, 2015 |
# ? Nov 17, 2015 13:51 |
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Cleretic posted:I was picturing something like Statten in stature, but Grayle in personal strengths. In my mind this theoretical character's a lot smarter and a lot more willing to use their tools than Statten; I'm picturing them in Cyberman-based armor with Dalek weaponry, maybe wired up to some greater system they took from a spaceship. The idea itself came from trying to think of the few times when the antagonist of a story was straight-up just a non-puppeted, in-control human, so I'd see them as being on top of the tech. No accidentally triggering dangerous subsystems, getting consumed by the tech or losing control of some part of things, this one's a threat entirely by their own intentions. Perhaps not a match for the Doctor in intellect, but they know what they're doing, what they shouldn't, and what they want. Lex Luthor without the monologuing. Got it. Actually, that's kind of what I wish from a hypothetical TV return for the Rani, humanity notwithstanding. She was evil, but pretty much focused on her monstrous science crap and moderate planetary domination and not so much self-destructively obsessed with messing with the Doctor's head and constantly threatening to destroy the universe like the Master. She just wanted to kill a bunch of people because that's just how you Science. Not that I'd want to take any attention away from Michelle Gomez; there might not be enough room left in the universe for another evil time lady with a semi-grudge against the Doctor. I don't know if the Big Finish Rani is any good, but I should look into it.
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 14:49 |
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Wow, that last episode lost me incredibly completely as soon as they started talking about the monsters coming from sleep dust. I'm usually pretty tolerant of wacky improbably premises (I didn't even bat an eye at Kill the Moon) so I dunno what it was with this but I was immediately crying aloud to myself something like "This makes no sense, what is this even?" which I can't really remember doing much before on any Who episode. In fact many times throughout the episode I thought that this is so obviously so nonsense that the twist has to be that it's a dream. I'm glad the Doctor agrees with me on the nonsense part though. The episode lost me so hard that I'm still not quite sure what happened. Was it just a constructed narrative and none of it actually happened, which is why none of it made sense? Was it all a dream? Or was it in fact real and these boogeymen do form themselves out of your bodily waste and then record everything on their boogey-hard drives? What actually was the villain's plan? Did I just pay really low amounts of attention and all of this was explained?
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 16:18 |
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They don't actually technobabble it out. I think you can get the important stuff though - some kind of signal in the Morpheus machine puts dust in people's eyes that lets Rasmussen see/record through them, and a stronger version of that signal (which was shown repeatedly in the episode itself) allows that dust to hijack your whole body. I think the idea is less that not sleeping makes you a monster and more that the guy who wanted to eliminate sleep wanted to modify humans in other perverse ways.
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 18:22 |
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Cleretic posted:The idea itself came from trying to think of the few times when the antagonist of a story was straight-up just a non-puppeted, in-control human Miss GIllyflower again! The intention at first is to make you think she's been controlled by the parasite, but it turns out that is just some freaky primitive bug thing she carries around with her, and Gillyflower herself is the power, the brains and the will behind everything. I really dig Miss Gillyflower
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# ? Nov 17, 2015 22:46 |
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Cleretic posted:The idea itself came from trying to think of the few times when the antagonist of a story was straight-up just a non-puppeted, in-control human That's happened loads of times overall, not so much in the revival because of the There Must Be A Monster concept and the shorter run time (multiple episodes means more chance for something like The Ambassadors of Death to develop)
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:03 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:There Must Be A Monster This hits exactly the problem of at least 2 episodes this season for me - the idea that there has to be a gribbly thing. Sleep No More would have worked MUCH better as a psychological horror - the Morpheus Machines aren't causing monsters to appear, they're causing hallucinations, affecting people, changing how they think and feel and behave. But then you couldn't easily have done the found footage bit and it wouldn't have had dudes in (CGI?) rubber suits. The Woman Who Lived would have been SO much better without the loving fire-breathing lion-man. Even the Fisher King which was a pretty badass design worked a lot better as an offscreen voice and a scary shadow before it came onscreen and became real. The monsters have felt really forced in a lot of recent episodes. It feels sometimes like they have an SFX budget and they will drat WELL USE IT TYVM.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:11 |
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The Fisher King worked best in silhouette. This is to say nothing about the costume - which was excellent: - but shots like this: gave it a mythic feel which really really helped that scene. Given the way the episode panned out, I think having that more, uh, "abstract" tone may have helped it. As it was, the Fisher King waddling off because he thought the Doctor had changed poo poo lost a lot of the gravitas.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:28 |
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Part of that is down to suit acting not really being a thing anymore. At least not as much as it used to be. Suit acting is a fantastic wonderful thing that gives a lot of weight and emotional depth to characters that are just big rubber suits. If you don't film around the suit properly and you don't work the suit properly, it's going to just be embarrassing and awful. RoboCop in the first movie has FANTASTIC suit acting, to the point where you don't even need to see Robo's mouth, nor can you, for most of it. Peter Weller sold a lot of pathos and humanity and put a lot of time and effort into making it work, and the thing had to be edited around to make it sing as well. RoboCop from Prime Directives was played by an actor illsuited for the suit, who did not take the time and effort to learn how to work the suit, and was shot as quickly and cheaply as possible meaning there's a lot of meandering shots of RoboCop waddling around like a loving drunk penguin. There's an art to suit acting is what I'm trying to say. If everyone isn't onboard, it's going to be silly.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:37 |
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Jerusalem posted:Miss GIllyflower again! The intention at first is to make you think she's been controlled by the parasite, but it turns out that is just some freaky primitive bug thing she carries around with her, and Gillyflower herself is the power, the brains and the will behind everything. Diana Rigg owns.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:39 |
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I really do think the monsters are there sometimes to satisfy the "kids like monsters!" checkbox. Doctor Who is watched by a wide range of audiences, and I can get the reasoning that monsters are an easy way to represent a problem. The BBC might be weary of certain portions of the audience not understanding or enjoying purely psychological horror or think pieces. But that's probably just the marketing manager in me coming out.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:39 |
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HD DAD posted:I really do think the monsters are there sometimes to satisfy the "kids like monsters!" checkbox. Doctor Who is watched by a wide range of audiences, and I can get the reasoning that monsters are an easy way to represent a problem. The BBC might be weary of certain portions of the audience not understanding or enjoying purely psychological horror or think pieces. Kids also love dinosaurs so clearly the solution is to remake The Invasion of the Dinosaurs over and over
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:43 |
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Jerusalem posted:Miss GIllyflower again! The intention at first is to make you think she's been controlled by the parasite, but it turns out that is just some freaky primitive bug thing she carries around with her, and Gillyflower herself is the power, the brains and the will behind everything. I had this idea before Miss Gillyflower, actually! I think it came up during either Donna's season or Amy's run. But yeah, she was a really good take on that sort of idea. MrL_JaKiri posted:That's happened loads of times overall, not so much in the revival because of the There Must Be A Monster concept and the shorter run time (multiple episodes means more chance for something like The Ambassadors of Death to develop) While I don't remember his examples, I do remember that I talked to a friend about this, and by his recollection the human villains dropped off considerably, maybe completely, after Pertwee left.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 00:47 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:- but shots like this: Yeah, this particular shot is somewhere in tone between Keith Thompson and Zdzislaw Beksinski and I really dig it
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 01:39 |
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Speaking of Sandmen! Short Synopsis: The Doctor's a bad guy; space-racism; and a conclusion that's for the birds. Long Synopsis: A massive clustered space-faring fleet lives in fear of the mysterious "Sandman", a monster from their past who chased them from their homeworld and now preys on the weak and vulnerable, skinning them alive. The Sixth Doctor arrives not to fight The Sandman, but to reveal to Evelyn that he IS the Sandman, and he has come to lord it up over the terrified Galyari. Space Gypsies try to take advantage of the confusion for profit, and a hero from the Galyari's past returns to do battle with the monstrous Doctor once more. What's Good:
What's Not:
Final Thoughts: The Sandman isn't a particularly good story, it has an interesting gimmick that is ill-executed and hamstrung by an unnerving air of bigotry running through most of the story. Writer Simon Forward obviously enjoys the setting and characters though as he has reused the Galyari and Mordecan in other stories he wrote for Big Finish. Unfortunately for me nothing about any of them made me particularly enamored with the race or the character respectively, and like the air of bigotry in this story, there is also rather inappropriate cultural appropriation in Dreamtime - the writer seems to have his heart in the right place but not quite able to pull off the exploration of foreign cultures they want to. Evelyn is badly served by this story, mostly reduced to a background character and feeling if anything like an extra. The Doctor's actions are confusing and never really given the proper context to warrant his actions or attitude, which make his (very well read) lines towards the end of the story themselves feel out of place even though they're far more in keeping with the character and actions we'd usually expect. It's said that Colin Baker elevates even the most humdrum material, but sadly there wasn't much he could do with this. It's not a BAD story, but it's not very good either, and certainly not good enough to make up for the bad elements.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 05:27 |
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Cleretic posted:While I don't remember his examples, I do remember that I talked to a friend about this, and by his recollection the human villains dropped off considerably, maybe completely, after Pertwee left. Sort of. The largest concentration of human villains was, fairly obviously, in the era where every other story or so was a pure historical. Pertwee, surprisingly, has very few "humans are the true monsters" stories. Four, off the top of my head (The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno, The Green Death and The Invasion of the Dinosaurs), and there's years that go by without a story without an alien as the villain due to the presence of the Master. That the stories are Earth based tends to increase the number of human secondary antagonists, mind. It also depends how you classify stories. What about something like Vengeance on Varos, where the fact that Sil is an alien antagonist is completely incidental to the plot and the story would work just the same as if he were a human (cf Mindwarp, where it matters that they're aliens)? What about Creature from the Pit, where the antagonists look human, act human, but aren't human? What about stories where the Master doesn't need to be a timelord (which is basically all of his Pertwee ones except The Claws of Axos*)? What about stories like The Talons of Weng Chiang, where the villain is human but doesn't act like it? This partially goes back to what I was saying about the daleks at the start of this series, that it's a pity that we've lost the idea that alien races can be heterogeneous as it can add a lot of depth to a story. That's part of the reason why I look much more favourably on The Hungry Earth than most people in the thread - badly written though it is (hurray for the vivisectionist!) it still presents the Silurians as having internal differences and is almost unique in the revival for having that aspect. *I initially put Frontier in Space here, but then I remembered Mavic Chen - definitely human - fulfils basically the same role in The Daleks Master Plan. MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Nov 18, 2015 |
# ? Nov 18, 2015 11:23 |
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I should do my own version of the Editorium but without being Phil Sandifer, which I hope everyone can agree is a massive natural advantage from the off
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 11:30 |
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My problem with this story was how safe the script played everything. We the listener know the Doctor isn’t evil…sometimes without mercy, sometimes a bit of a dick…so if you’re going to sell us on the concept of the Doctor as a true monster of legend, the script doesn’t back it up with anything more than Colin Baker yelling or the Galyari quaking at the mention of “The Sandman” of legend. The Galyari and the Clutch are neat concepts, though. I’d like to see them show up a little more in Big Finish, although the next time you hear them is in Dreamland. Edit - Just going to leave this right here... http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015...n-to-doctor-who CobiWann fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Nov 18, 2015 |
# ? Nov 18, 2015 12:47 |
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There's a clip up! Courtesy of the Radio Times
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 14:53 |
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The_Doctor posted:There's a clip up! (Of Tennant and Tate's Big Finish stuff, which two people seem to have decided not to mention )
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 14:55 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:This partially goes back to what I was saying about the daleks at the start of this series, that it's a pity that we've lost the idea that alien races can be heterogeneous as it can add a lot of depth to a story. That's part of the reason why I look much more favourably on The Hungry Earth than most people in the thread - badly written though it is (hurray for the vivisectionist!) it still presents the Silurians as having internal differences and is almost unique in the revival for having that aspect. Hmm, I thought the revival was pretty good about that actually. Just off the top of my head the fart monsters and the Zygons in this year's two parter were portrayed as having different factions.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 14:55 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:(Of Tennant and Tate's Big Finish stuff, which two people seem to have decided not to mention ) Sometimes you just push the red button without know what's going to happen!
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 15:33 |
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Of course I stop watching the show and end up missing out on SS.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 17:49 |
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The_Doctor posted:There's a clip up! is this representative of big finish quality?
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 18:15 |
Attitude Indicator posted:is this representative of big finish quality? Sounds a bit wonky to my BF-accustomed ears, to be honest.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 18:29 |
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Of course I stop watching the show and end up missing out on SS. Sign up! I haven't emailed out yet (doing that in a couple of hours) so I could still do another sift and fit you in!
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 18:41 |
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I just watched Sleep No More and wow, this season has really gone from bad to worse. I could just barely handle the idea of sonic sunglasses (and good on nerd girl in the Zygon(?) Inversion episode for giving him a read on that), a patently idiotic idea which should have been brought to a conclusion after a Viking snapped them in half. However, I think I'm going to draw the line at eye booger monsters, a concept so completely idiotic it even Steven King would have passed on it. It's sad because I like Capaldi's cheap magician/Dracula look and his delivery is usually pretty good (for a children's show) but this season has been really terrible so far and I don't know if I'm going to bother watching more of it.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 19:04 |
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The sonic sunglasses are completely fine.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 19:26 |
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The_Doctor posted:Sign up! I haven't emailed out yet (doing that in a couple of hours) so I could still do another sift and fit you in! Much obliged, just signed up.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 19:36 |
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I should do my own version of the Editorium but without being Phil Sandifer, which I hope everyone can agree is a massive natural advantage from the off
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 20:19 |
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Vlaada Chvatil posted:a concept so completely idiotic it even Steven King would have passed on it. you haven't read enough Stephen King
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 20:26 |
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Jerusalem posted:Miss GIllyflower again! The intention at first is to make you think she's been controlled by the parasite, but it turns out that is just some freaky primitive bug thing she carries around with her, and Gillyflower herself is the power, the brains and the will behind everything. Another example of a human antagonist who was just an evil, selfish twat is the wonderful Harrison Chase in Seeds of Doom. He is one of my favourite villains.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 20:41 |
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cargohills posted:The sonic sunglasses are completely fine. They're funny, and Capaldi looks cool in them. Attitude Indicator posted:you haven't read enough Stephen King Yeah, Stephen King is not beyond writing booger monsters. The guy will write anything. It's kind of admirable, in a way.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 20:43 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 10:31 |
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And More posted:They're funny, and Capaldi looks cool in them. No you are wrong.
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# ? Nov 18, 2015 20:45 |