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Rhyno posted:The Who expanded universe is often times even worse than the worst episode of the show. It's just like the show, but moreso: the quality varies very, very widely. The best episode of Big Finish is probably better written than the best episode of the show, and the worst episode of Big Finish is Nekromanteia.
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Mar 6, 2020 14:34
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I've listened to a lot but not all of the Big Finish stuff but I've never read any of the novels. I really should get round to reading some of them.
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Mar 6, 2020 18:50
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Rhyno posted:The Who expanded universe is often times even worse than the worst episode of the show. Novel after novel of dudes detailing their sexual fantasies about Ace. 
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Mar 6, 2020 19:00
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At least there isn't any rape in the expanded Who universe! *glowers at the 90s*
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Mar 6, 2020 19:06
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Some of the EDA range are legitimately good books. I can recommend: - Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles - Unnatural History by Kate Orman - Interference 1 & 2 by Lawrence Miles - The Burning by Justin Richards - The Turing Test by Paul Leonard - Father Time by Lance Parkin - The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman - The City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose[1] - The Adventuress of Henrietta Street by Lawrence Miles[2] - Anachrophobia by Jonathan Morris - Trading Futures by Lance Parkin - The Book of the Still by Paul Ebbs - History 101 by Mags L. Halliday - The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin Also, not explicitly an EDA, but featuring a never specificed incarnation of the Doctor (in theory made canon by The Timeless Children), The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin. [1] Probably one of my favourite books ever. Set in New Orleans, it really captures the feel of the city well. [2] written as a history text, the story is told through diary entries, letters, and personal accounts. Highly inventive.
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Mar 6, 2020 19:16
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One of the weirder plot things about the EDAs was when one of the companions (I won't spoil who, in case somone wants to reads these fever dreams) gets turned into a TARDIS. Like, "oops, time to get off this planet!" and the companion would just... open up somehow and everyone would get inside them. IIRC, this arc continued over a bunch of books, so it's not a one-time deal. I don't recall a single description of what this actually looked like, just that they "opened up", and it always bothered me. Still does, I guess.
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Mar 6, 2020 20:22
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JacquelineDempsey posted:One of the weirder plot things about the EDAs was when one of the companions (I won't spoil who, in case somone wants to reads these fever dreams) gets turned into a TARDIS. Like, "oops, time to get off this planet!" and the companion would just... open up somehow and everyone would get inside them. IIRC, this arc continued over a bunch of books, so it's not a one-time deal. Sounds like a very hollow existence. 
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Mar 6, 2020 20:29
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Big Mean Jerk posted:
Which, why?! That used to be the dream for young men! Find a gal who's into the same nerd poo poo as you!
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Mar 6, 2020 20:50
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WSAENOTSOCK posted:This is so disheartening because it's by design and working as intended. These dudes DO NOT want women in their treehouse. Most of those guys realized that they are so disgusting (physically or mentally) that no woman wants anything to do with them.
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Mar 6, 2020 20:51
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Sounds like a very hollow existence. Boo this man! (j/k, I gave it a sensible chuckle/groan) Speaking of EDAs, did anyone know about or read the extremely short-lived Faction Paradox comics? I remember being amazed that they actually tried this, given: 1. DW fans were few and far between in those days 2. you would have had to have read the EDAs to have understood wtf was going on 3. even if you had, they were still confusing The artwork was abysmal, and no one (except me) bought it. So unsurprisingly we got 2 issues, and despite the promise of "coming next month! #3!" it never happened.
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Mar 6, 2020 20:57
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Boo this man! (j/k, I gave it a sensible chuckle/groan) I also vaguely remember these, and IIRC, they weren't an approved DW spinoff (as Lawrence Miles had quit the 8DA range in a fit of pique not long after they were taken over by BBC Books) and as such couldn't use any DW characters or make any DW references or anything. So it was a thing that was explicitly set up for and tied to DW. The main thing I remember about FP was a novel that had some FP agent kill off the Third Doctor, during his travels with Jo, because they were trying to create time paradoxes the Time Lords couldn't ignore, or some such thing. It didn't make a heck of a lot of sense even at the time, and the best explanation I can give is that Lawrence Miles basically hated the direction the 8DA range was going in, didn't get along with most of the other writers, and absolutely loathed the PDA (past Doctor adventures) range because he felt that the range was taking away from the 8DA (which he already had issues with). It was Miles sort of approaching these things the way Garth Ennis approaches superheroes (or for the wrestling fans in this subforum, he was slowly turning into Jim Cornette. Only without all the racism). So (and I might be misremembering or forgetting some things here), it was a series created by an embittered former DW 8DA writer, based explicitly on taking a sledgehammer to existing DW canon and throwing shade at his peers, that couldn't even use DW stuff. It's no wonder they didn't make much of a splash. E: and to be absolutely fair to Miles, he did have some legit criticisms about the range, as far as the 8DA went. I remember reading something where he said the brief the writers received for a new companion was that they should think of her being like a character off of the show "This Life", which Miles objected to because he thought the characters on that show were a bunch of shallow self-obsessed late-1990s yuppies. And he was right. There were also a fair amount of edgelords writing for the series that used characters from the show (mainly the aforementioned Ace) to write their slavering sexual fanfics about, or putting in "mature" poo poo like the Doctor casually talking about drinking a whole pot of tea with 'shrooms in it. And there was the one author who gleefully confessed to writing scenes of Turlough being tortured because he used to have BDSM fantasies about him in his younger days. Stuff like that. A lot of it was just pure wank that confused "being adult" with "lots of scenes of sex, drugs, and gory violence". Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 21:16
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Sydney Bottocks posted:
That was in an actual BBC 8DA book, Interference. I think. It's been a while but I read them at the time. edit: I just read the plot summary here https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Interference_(novel) and I still don't know wtf happened Unkempt fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 21:30
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The_Doctor posted:Some of the EDA range are legitimately good books. I can recommend: This is a good list and I endorse it. Read the "sensible" good stuff before you branch out into the "clearly on drugs" stuff. The Shadows Of Avalon being my favorite on drugs Doctor Who novel. It has faeries, cannibalism and one of the Doctor's companions turns out to be a secret humanoid TARDIS. Plus the Brigadier. DancingShade fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Mar 6, 2020 |
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Mar 6, 2020 21:36
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Ugh. Agree with all the sentiment that the Master committing genocide off-screen and the ridiculous fan wankery in the finale really dragged it down. What really drives me mad (and this is true for Star Wars too) that they don't try anything new. Instead of being the Doctor or the Master the Timeless Child could be a new antagonist, with infinite lives, a legitimate grudge against the Time Lords and the ability to make more Time Lords! They could act as a malevolent force in the background sending Time Lords to cause trouble or a more direct antagonist like the Master, but more cold and calculating versus the Master being bonkers. Plus if the character is popular, congratulations Chibnall you've had an impact on the canon without loving with everything!
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Mar 6, 2020 22:31
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MysticalMachineGun posted:Ugh. Agree with all the sentiment that the Master committing genocide off-screen and the ridiculous fan wankery in the finale really dragged it down. A lot of modern fandom does tend to boil down to "I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!  "
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Mar 6, 2020 22:34
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The Book of the War by Mad Larry is interesting, just a reference of snippets of happenings due to/related to Faction Paradox. Except for parts referring to a faction of The Faction that operated in Hollywood - I would avoid all those parts due to the stupidity of the idea and if I even read through them once I've wiped them from my memory. But the book has info on The Faction, Grandfather Paradox, the City of the Saved, I think it was called (basically afterlife at the end of the universe), something else I can't remember the name of where people are cloned over and over and eventually turned into agents of FP, I think... been a long time since I've thumbed through it but it has lots of backstory for the crazy years of the 8DA line, though all unofficial.
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Mar 6, 2020 22:39
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Jeffe posted:But the book has info on The Faction, Grandfather Paradox, the City of the Saved, I think it was called (basically afterlife at the end of the universe), something else I can't remember the name of where people are cloned over and over and eventually turned into agents of FP, I think... been a long time since I've thumbed through it but it has lots of backstory for the crazy years of the 8DA line, though all unofficial. They were the Remote. If one of them died, the other members of the Remote would ‘remember’ them back in a clone tank (which was usually as successful as it sounds), thus we got Kode, who used to be Fitz several deaths ago, and 4 iterations of Laura Tobin, eventually named Compassion. The Book of the War was also written by several people, not just Loz.
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Mar 6, 2020 23:29
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Stuff like that. A lot of it was just pure wank that confused "being adult" with "lots of scenes of sex, drugs, and gory violence". Oh I didn't realize DC published the comics.
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Mar 7, 2020 00:33
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Were we not talking about Torchwood?
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Mar 7, 2020 00:42
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The_Doctor posted:They were the Remote. If one of them died, the other members of the Remote would ‘remember’ them back in a clone tank (which was usually as successful as it sounds), thus we got Kode, who used to be Fitz several deaths ago, and 4 iterations of Laura Tobin, eventually named Compassion. I really hope you've read all this stuff in the past year or three, otherwise your memory is terrifying!
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Mar 7, 2020 02:08
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MysticalMachineGun posted:What really drives me mad after further thought and reflection, what drives me mad is they brought Jack back for a cameo and then didn't even have him appear in the finale like, what the gently caress
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Mar 7, 2020 02:36
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Isn't he incredibly busy right now and they had to work really hard just to find a gap in their respective schedules to film just that one scene?
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Mar 7, 2020 02:39
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Novel after novel of dudes detailing their sexual fantasies about Ace. That's literally not true and a poor description of the New Adventures. I was rereading them a few years ago and reviewing them here and got through several before life got in the way. There are some really dire ones, but really well written ones too. They would really try anything so tonally some were very off. Some were way too violent and dark, but others captured the spirit of the old show or presaged the new one. They went in some weird directions with backstory and canon but you can't say they didn't try to do something in an era where the show was cancelled and for all intents and purposes a dead fandom relic.
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Mar 7, 2020 02:55
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Astroman posted:That's literally not true and a poor description of the New Adventures. Counterpoint:   Seriously, though: the NDA/PDA ranges featured a fair bit of writing about Ace being all sexed up, having sex, losing her virginity to Glitz, etc. Perhaps some authors were truly genuine in trying to take DW back into a more "adult/mature" direction and away from being considered a children's show, and with Ace being the most recent companion, they decided to portray her in a more realistic light with sexual desires being a part of that. If so, while I don't necessarily think it's a good idea, if it's genuine then it's at least a logical step. On that note, however, I remember reading one PDA with 7 and Ace where one of the villains was leering over Ace so hard you could practically see the beads of sweat forming on the writer's forehead. I don't recall Peri or Tegan or Leela or any other female companions getting similar treatment in the PDA novels (Turlough, on the other hand...). Which is especially ironic in that the female companions in the past were often cast for their sex appeal, while Ace was meant to be a more progressive companion that wasn't just "for the dads"...and yet, even the guys who wrote for her on the show couldn't help but comment on how attractive they thought she was, so it was pretty much inevitable that given a novel format with looser restrictions, that some of the guys who wrote for her were going to go full-bore on just how sexy they thought she was. quote:They went in some weird directions with backstory and canon but you can't say they didn't try to do something in an era where the show was cancelled and for all intents and purposes a dead fandom relic. This reminds me of another thing about Lawrence Miles, too: he absolutely detested the notion that Big Finish basically came in and "replaced" the novels in most people's minds as being "real" DW. He felt the novels had been the one thing pushing the series forward after it went on hiatus and after the TV Movie came and went. When BF started doing stuff with 5, 6, and 7, I don't think he cared much, but when they started doing audio adventures with 8, I remember reading about how it really started to gnaw at him, mainly because (for licensing reasons at the time, I'm sure) they didn't acknowledge or use any elements or companions from the 8DA novels, so to him that was basically saying the novels were just glorified fanfic and the audios were the "true" DW wilderness years stories. Of course, he'd already pretty much quit the range at this time, so a lot of it just came across as sour grapes. And I seem to recall that BF did some Faction Paradox audios? So maybe he eventually got over any resentments he might have had.
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Mar 7, 2020 03:21
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Jerusalem posted:Isn't he incredibly busy right now and they had to work really hard just to find a gap in their respective schedules to film just that one scene? He is recovering from a significant injury.
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Mar 7, 2020 05:14
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I still haven't watched the finale because I got spoiled and it sounds really bad. I liked most of the rest of the season, I don't want to go out on a sour note and have to wait forever for more Doctor Who. I already went through that with Twice Upon a Time.
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Mar 7, 2020 05:17
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Astroman posted:That's literally not true and a poor description of the New Adventures. Yeah there are a lot of bad and incorrect takes in this thread. For instance, Lawrence Miles was, for the longest time, the only reason the EDAs were any good. And so much of the modern show, under RTD and Moffat, draws from his work and ideas. You can draw a direct line between The Doctor's Wife and Compassion, for instance, or Moffat's Silence arc and Interference. There was a lot of dumb gross poo poo, but there was a lot of really cool and amazing stuff too. The books really tried to push the show forward in ways that didn't always work, but the intention were usually honest (and when they weren't, they were probably written by John Peel or Terrance Hicks or another legacy writer who just didn't give a gently caress). I'm sorry that scary melty Ace cover looks like bukkake, but you can hardly blame any of the writers for that, eh? Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Mar 7, 2020 |
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Mar 7, 2020 05:45
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My threshold for "this is acceptably good" for written prose is a lot higher than it is for television or films, for whatever reason. When the craftwork in a novel is shoddy, it just seems more obvious and takes me out of the story. I can 100 percent believe that the Doctor Who New Adventures novels have some compelling stories (when your setting is all of space and time, it opens some stuff up), but the fact that they are largely written by people who do teleplays makes me really, really doubt that the authors can make the right choices when it comes to stuff like narrative distance or dialog markers. I also don't think that Doctor Who lends itself particularly well to written prose unless you're doing a close third or first person from the companion's perspective, because actually getting into the Doctor's head sort of ruins a lot of the appeal of the character. Even focusing on the companion's perspective creates a dynamic that really only works in stuff like cozy detective novels or snappy genre fiction that relies mostly on dialog in a way that makes it feel almost like a play with colorful asides. Someone like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett probably could have written some good Doctor Who novels, I suppose. That kind of "I'm doing a stand-up routine over a stage comedy that will never be performed" way of writing is basically the only way I can think of that suits the material.
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Mar 7, 2020 06:08
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Open Source Idiom posted:For instance, Lawrence Miles was, for the longest time, the only reason the EDAs were any good. And so much of the modern show, under RTD and Moffat, draws from his work and ideas. You can draw a direct line between The Doctor's Wife and Compassion, for instance, or Moffat's Silence arc and Interference. Miles would be surprised to hear that, as he's gone on record (as recently as 2015 on his blog) as stating just how much he dislikes the revived series, reserving quite a bit of dislike for Moffat's era in particular. Miles has never been overly fond of Moffat and has never been shy about saying so, so if there are any parallels to be drawn between Miles' novels and Moffat's run, they're likely unconscious and unintentional (I won't say they were outright nicked, because I have no idea if Moffat ever read any of Miles' work). I admire Miles for trying to push the series forward via the novels, I just think he forgot that the writers did not in fact own the IP, and that he was never going to be fully able to do the things he wanted to with the characters and premise. And when he finally realized it, they'd pretty much moved on without him.
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Mar 7, 2020 06:34
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Sydney Bottocks posted:And I seem to recall that BF did some Faction Paradox audios? So maybe he eventually got over any resentments he might have had. It wasn't Big Finish, it was BBV, a similar company which somehow - because of the complex nature of who holds the rights to what in Doctor Who - did a bunch of Big Finish-like Faction Paradox stories, which could mention and include the Sontarans, but couldn't actually use concepts like the Time Lords or Gallifrey. Instead you got talk of the Homeworld and the Great Families, and their Timeships. Later on, the series continued, but for some reason jumped from BBV to Magic Bullet Productions, who also did a bunch of FP stories, this time with Sutekh and the Osirans featured. Not sure what happened to BBV, whether they lost the rights or merged or went bust or what. Both series, which are in the same continuity, are fairly good and well worth a listen. Among other things, Magic Bullet also do the Kaldor City stuff, heavily based on Chris Boucher's work on Robots of Death AND Blake's 7.
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Mar 7, 2020 07:18
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Wolfechu posted:Among other things, Magic Bullet also do the Kaldor City stuff, heavily based on Chris Boucher's work on Robots of Death AND Blake's 7. Hasn’t that been folded into BF of sorts? Like, Liv Chenka is from Kaldor City if memory serves?
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Mar 7, 2020 08:07
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Wolfechu posted:It wasn't Big Finish, it was BBV, a similar company which somehow - because of the complex nature of who holds the rights to what in Doctor Who - did a bunch of Big Finish-like Faction Paradox stories, which could mention and include the Sontarans, but couldn't actually use concepts like the Time Lords or Gallifrey. Instead you got talk of the Homeworld and the Great Families, and their Timeships. That's right, I knew there were some FP audios, I just misremembered who published 'em. And I am also reminded that Boucher wrote a Fourth Doctor PDA (Corpse Marker, I believe) that was basically a sequel to Robots of Death, and that also technically established that the universe of RoD existed in the same universe as Blakes 7 (IIRC he used a minor character from a B7 episode, and established them as ending up on the homeworld of the Sandminer crew, on the run from the Federation).
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Mar 7, 2020 08:26
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The_Doctor posted:Hasn’t that been folded into BF of sorts? Like, Liv Chenka is from Kaldor City if memory serves? As far as I know, they're still around. They certainly have a website still, and they post fairly regularly on their blog and Facebook. I don't know if they've actually recorded anything new as of late, but they're certainly still selling their existing stuff. Sydney Bottocks posted:That's right, I knew there were some FP audios, I just misremembered who published 'em. And I am also reminded that Boucher wrote a Fourth Doctor PDA (Corpse Marker, I believe) that was basically a sequel to Robots of Death, and that also technically established that the universe of RoD existed in the same universe as Blakes 7 (IIRC he used a minor character from a B7 episode, and established them as ending up on the homeworld of the Sandminer crew, on the run from the Federation). If I remember rightly, Nation was wanting to have the Daleks as the aliens that were attacking the Federation at the start of Series 3 of Blake's 7, but the BBC balked at it for whatever reason.
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Mar 7, 2020 09:46
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Wolfechu posted:If I remember rightly, Nation was wanting to have the Daleks as the aliens that were attacking the Federation at the start of Series 3 of Blake's 7, but the BBC balked at it for whatever reason. Maybe it would have raised the budget by 15p for the season and the BBC flew into a rage at that kind of luxury expenditure?
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Mar 7, 2020 09:57
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I don't recall Peri or Tegan or Leela or any other female companions getting similar treatment in the PDA novels (Turlough, on the other hand...). You should look up what the books did to poor Dodo
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Mar 7, 2020 13:50
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Davros1 posted:You should look up what the books did to poor Dodo Man, I really liked Who Killed Kennedy til it got to the parts about Dodo.
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Mar 7, 2020 14:17
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Open Source Idiom posted:I'm sorry that scary melty Ace cover looks like bukkake, but you can hardly blame any of the writers for that, eh? Yeah from memory it's a pretty good book and nothing skeevy happens to Ace.
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Mar 7, 2020 14:21
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Miles would be surprised to hear that, as he's gone on record (as recently as 2015 on his blog) as stating just how much he dislikes the revived series, reserving quite a bit of dislike for Moffat's era in particular. Miles has never been overly fond of Moffat and has never been shy about saying so, so if there are any parallels to be drawn between Miles' novels and Moffat's run, they're likely unconscious and unintentional (I won't say they were outright nicked, because I have no idea if Moffat ever read any of Miles' work). They were both in the same friendship circles for a while, and Moffat is on record as having thought Alien Bodies is brilliant. And, for what it's worth, there's definite Alien Bodies energy throughout Name Of The Doctor. The_Doctor posted:Hasn’t that been folded into BF of sorts? Like, Liv Chenka is from Kaldor City if memory serves? The Magic Bullet plays (which are very very good) are kind of hard to reconcile with the Big Finish take on the universe. For one, the MB stories take place on a version of the planet where they don't have interstellar travel. That and there are plot reasons that are hard to reconcile between the two. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Mar 7, 2020 |
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Mar 7, 2020 14:45
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I feel like TV Who has missed a trick by not having at least an ersatz Faction Paradox. It’s a really great concept. Anyway, going by his last tweets, he’s not been having a good time of it lately. 
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Mar 7, 2020 15:52
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alrighty. What's bugging me more is the last few comments from why they are leaving from Bradley Walsh. Is there something inherently toxic about doing new Doctor Who? First Christopher Eccleston only did a season and ran away screaming. Then the head-shaving affair. Now Bradley Walsh saying very politely that the experience sucked. when you compare it to legends of tomorrow, it feels like, for all its faults, their biggest complaints is that they don't want to leave. We can't blame RTD, Moffat or Chipnel for this one because it seems pretty consistent. Is it the fans, or is the BBC still actively sabotaging it yet again?
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Mar 7, 2020 16:51
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