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You're being dramatic, name one or two thousand things wrong with his run... oh right you can't, so maybe it's not so bad afterall!
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May 10, 2021 02:54
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...I still haven't watched Revolution of the Daleks yet, and it's just getting harder and harder to get motivated to watch it. E: I will say I really like 13's shirt, the one that looks like Atari 2600 Breakout. Looks awesome, and I may just watch it for that.
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May 10, 2021 05:45
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SecretOfSteel posted:...I still haven't watched Revolution of the Daleks yet, and it's just getting harder and harder to get motivated to watch it. It's... not good. Even divorced from being a follow-up to the previous season's cliffhanger (which it basically isn't) it's not very good. The only thing it really has going for it (apart from being more Who) is that it's kind of a (sorta) follow-up to Resolution, and outside of that it's pretty terrible. As a companion exit episode it's weirdly bland and emotionless as well. Jodie Whittaker deserves way better than this. I kinda feel like back when the Colin Baker/Sylvester McCoy years were running and you could see they were trying their absolute best with a really, really bad hand. McCoy's stuff at least ended on an upswing.
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May 10, 2021 09:21
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It just occurred to me that the season being filmed is Jodie‘s third one, and going by the three season rule, we’re probably headed for a regeneration at the end of it. It honesty feels like she’s still barely started.
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May 10, 2021 15:37
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The_Doctor posted:It just occurred to me that the season being filmed is Jodie‘s third one, and going by the three season rule, we’re probably headed for a regeneration at the end of it. Yeah, she's had shorter seasons, airing less often. And that's before you factor in the general level of excitement experienced by this thread. We spent more time talking about Big Finish than Chinball Who.
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May 10, 2021 15:44
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It's particularly ironic as Chibnall clearly wants to leave his mark on televised DW with exciting ideas and innovations in the vast library of DW lore, but the problem is 1)he already did that by casting the first female Doctor, so everything thing else comes across as desperately trying to top that; and 2)even with all these big fancy ideas and startling revelations, all his stuff is so...bland. Even the stuff everyone was wincing over when it was announced like the Rosa Parks episode turned out to just be...there. His episodes aren't grand masterpieces, nor are they entertaining trainwrecks. They just exist, in a sort of ho-hum netherworld.
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May 10, 2021 16:47
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Chibnall’s just giving us his take on the Davison era, which means Whitaker’s last story will ironically be her best.
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May 10, 2021 16:51
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Chibnall’s just giving us his take on the Davison era, which means Whitaker’s last story will ironically be her best. So when she regenerates she'll be overshadowed by a handsome, buff, shirtless man?
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May 10, 2021 16:55
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Rhyno posted:So when she regenerates she'll be overshadowed by a handsome, buff, shirtless man? I’m down for that.  
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May 10, 2021 17:48
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Sydney Bottocks posted:It's particularly ironic as Chibnall clearly wants to leave his mark on televised DW with exciting ideas and innovations in the vast library of DW lore, but the problem is 1)he already did that by casting the first female Doctor, so everything thing else comes across as desperately trying to top that; and 2)even with all these big fancy ideas and startling revelations, all his stuff is so...bland. Even the stuff everyone was wincing over when it was announced like the Rosa Parks episode turned out to just be...there. His episodes aren't grand masterpieces, nor are they entertaining trainwrecks. They just exist, in a sort of ho-hum netherworld. I just started in on Jodie's run and this hits the nail on the head so far (maybe halfway through her first season). She's really good, and the companions are fine, but there's just nothing super exciting about any episode so far. The best was honestly the ending of the season opener. The villains of the week have been probably the most mediocre part of it, I think. So far of what I've watched, there's been a knock-off Predator (and not a very good one), animated bedsheets and Sniperbots (stupid loving name), a time traveling white supremacist, giant spiders (with not a hint of any alien interference) + a Trump knock-off, and a knock-off Gremlin/Ghoulie. Sure, they are threatening enough in the episode, but they have very simple motivations and have nothing really interesting going on. There's been no really cool monster or force or whatever that made previous New Who shine for me (like the Weeping Angels or the Silents, at least their initial appearances). Gully Foyle fucked around with this message at 19:02 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 18:59
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Been reading the novel of Day of the Doctor and it's such a fun experience with how each Doctor is described, both by themselves and other people around them, and the Moment is such a fun characterquote:‘Oh, I can do it,’ she said. ‘I’d love doing it, it’s the way I’m made. Slaughter is my favourite high, I’m a slave to my endorphins. That’s why I decided to grow a conscience—I was worried I’d started to binge kill and, if I didn’t watch out, I’d run out of lives to end. You need to keep something in the larder, don’t you? But, you see, a conscience is a bit tricky when you’re the hard-wired psychotic AI of the most powerful weapon of universal destruction in the history of space and time, both directions. I think you could say I had conflicts. I’m afraid I took to sulking in a basement.’
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May 10, 2021 20:17
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It irks me that Community predicted this so accurately. Their inshow version of Who, Inspector Spacetime, had one female actor as the Inspector and she was generally regarded as the worst.
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May 10, 2021 20:39
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The fact that 13 is written as so passive and unassertive, even when Whittaker is clearly not playing the character that way, like, at all, is so annoying. It's like Chibnall forgot this is meant to be the same character who tricked Davros into blowing up Skaro, fought in the Time War and once accidentally-on-purpose pushed two guys into an acid bath. The Doctor is meant to be assertive and confident (some more so than others)! Yaz and Ryan were such bland and flat characters that gave the actors nothing to do (and were a massive set down from Bill), and Graham was basically just Bradley Walsh playing himself. One thing I will say about last season is at least they started to connect more to the franchise's continuity. Season 11 felt like it was keeping the lore at an arm's length for some reason, when the lore can be a lot of fun! Whittaker is clearly putting a lot in, but the writing is not backing her up, much like Colin Baker's era. At least she has a better outfit.
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May 10, 2021 22:02
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OldMemes posted:At least she has a better outfit. I don’t think it’s all that. The capris are a bad look.
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May 10, 2021 22:12
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The_Doctor posted:I don’t think it’s all that. The capris are a bad look. She honestly looked way better in 12's old outfit, during her debut episode. That look suited her way better than the current outfit does.
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May 10, 2021 22:39
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Oh yeah, 12's old outfit made her look way more assertive and confident, especially with the waistcoat.The_Doctor posted:I don’t think it’s all that. The capris are a bad look. As much as I like the Sixth Doctor, it was a really bad coat.
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May 10, 2021 22:57
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I've said this before, but when it comes down to it I'm happy if we get two good to great stories out of every season, and we've been getting that. The problem is the low overall output, and that the middle quartile episodes are so bland, so the journey between those good ones is worse. Like if there were a person whose only experience of this show was to watch only the best 2 episodes of every series as judged by the thread, they'd not notice that the show had slid.
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May 11, 2021 00:17
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It Takes You Away genuinely stands up against some of the best episodes the show has done. More weirdness like that would be great, but yeah there being so few episodes made in Whittaker's run so far makes the bland or bad episodes stand out all the more. Kind of like how Planet of the Dead is really bad, but absolutely loving awful when considered in the original context of being the first episode of the show in several months at the time it came out. Somebody mentioned 13 being too passive, and this really stands out in Revolution of the Daleks. The reveal that she'd spent years (decades?) in that prison and only broke out because Captain Jack came and got her was a terrible idea. If it had been revealed that it was her choice to stay there (working through some poo poo after the Master's most recent made-up lie for instance), and that she was also basically running the place/making life a misery for the guards etc (or hell, more in keeping with 13, she'd befriended them all and they've made the prison a nicer place with actual rehabilitation programs etc) that would be one thing. When Jack came and got her, if she'd gone,"Oh.... well I could have just left whenever but I feel bad now you've come all this way so okay let's go!" that would have been a neat moment. Instead, she's just... there. Serving her sentence, not really doing anything, then gets hauled along in Jack's wake. Edit: Look I'm not asking for much, just a 1:1 reenactment of this scene between the Doctor and a Weeping Angel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3GwwxFDPY&t=138s Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 03:38 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 03:34
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Jerusalem posted:It Takes You Away genuinely stands up against some of the best episodes the show has done. More weirdness like that would be great, but yeah there being so few episodes made in Whittaker's run so far makes the bland or bad episodes stand out all the more. Yeah, I thought 13 writing "the blind girl's parents are obviously dead but be kind" on the chalkboard was a kind of defining moment for her Doctor.
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May 11, 2021 05:16
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It's gonna be weird when in 30 years people are asking for 13's best stories, and getting replies like, "Well, It Takes You Away is pretty well-regarded, then the next-best story is probably Doctor Who and the Covid PSA, after that it's pretty slim pickings..."
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May 11, 2021 08:51
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I haven't rewatched any of 13's run but Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away are the ones I remember being really solid. Other than those, I think I enjoyed at least The Witchfinders, Resolution, Fugitive of the Judoon, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati, but I can't vouch for how well they'd stand up on revisit. All in all the total number episodes I would rewatch/recommend isn't that much lower than it would be for the first two Capaldi seasons, for example (where I'd also pick maybe half a dozen episodes), but the highs definitely aren't as high and the overall baseline quality is much more dire than under Moffat/RTD. I definitely hope Whittaker isn't leaving after the next season though, it really does feel like she just started in the role.
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May 11, 2021 09:10
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Forktoss posted:I haven't rewatched any of 13's run but Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away are the ones I remember being really solid. Other than those, I think I enjoyed at least The Witchfinders, Resolution, Fugitive of the Judoon, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati, but I can't vouch for how well they'd stand up on revisit. All in all the total number episodes I would rewatch/recommend isn't that much lower than it would be for the first two Capaldi seasons, for example (where I'd also pick maybe half a dozen episodes), but the highs definitely aren't as high and the overall baseline quality is much more dire than under Moffat/RTD. I did forget Demons of the Punjab, that's a really good one. I know I'm a lot higher on Capaldi's first season (and in general) than most people, but those statistics are way different for me. Honestly if I was going to go back through Whitaker's run it's probably just Demons and It Takes You Away I'd bother to rewatch. Which is not to say that there's not some enjoyable moments in other episodes, it's just that they tend to go nowhere. 13's first episode isn't bad, but once you know that the character development in that episode is basically all that the characters are going to get, it feels so much like wasted potential. Likewise with Witchfinders, where the show demonstrates that it can pull the classic trick of putting two really good actors together and having them argue, it just chooses not to. The new series I'd skip the most of is probably Series 2, and I can still think of at least four episodes I'd definitely make sure to watch, and several more that are borderline.
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May 11, 2021 09:23
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Rochallor posted:It's gonna be weird when in 30 years people are asking for 13's best stories, and getting replies like, "Well, It Takes You Away is pretty well-regarded, then the next-best story is probably Doctor Who and the Covid PSA, after that it's pretty slim pickings..." No love for Demons of the Punjab? efb
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May 11, 2021 09:25
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Forktoss posted:I haven't rewatched any of 13's run but Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away are the ones I remember being really solid. Other than those, I think I enjoyed at least The Witchfinders, Resolution, Fugitive of the Judoon, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati, but I can't vouch for how well they'd stand up on revisit. All in all the total number episodes I would rewatch/recommend isn't that much lower than it would be for the first two Capaldi seasons, for example (where I'd also pick maybe half a dozen episodes), but the highs definitely aren't as high and the overall baseline quality is much more dire than under Moffat/RTD. The Haunting of Villa Diodati is one of those episodes that felt awesome when it aired but is retroactively worsened by the lame two parter it set up.
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May 11, 2021 09:28
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Fugitive of the Judoon has a great Doctor performance, unfortunately it’s not Jodie Whitaker. Once again, Chibnall writes her Doctor to be entirely passive and have the story happen at her, as happens in the finale, Timeless Child.
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May 11, 2021 11:15
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I forgot that The Witchfinders existed and when I did remember it I had to put in a lot of effort to stop picturing Robot of Sherwood Forest.
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May 11, 2021 13:15
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Spyfall was pretty good too. The reveal was spectacular. I'm generally positive about The Witchfinders, but I have a weak spot for that period, and Alan Cumming was so good in it. Likewise with the Tesla one. I think they'd be above-median episodes in any series. Reviewing the stories so far, there are so many where my reaction is "drat that one started strong but the ending was poo poo." E.g. I was super invested in Can You Hear Me? and then just shrugged at the conclusion. And let's not get going about Kerblam! again. Maybe Chibnal needs someone to rewrite third acts for him?
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May 11, 2021 13:20
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Witchfinders is great. Everyone talks about Cumming, but Finneran is so good as the other villain of the piece. It Takes You Away is obviously good. And the other historical stories are good value. Villa Diodati is the only one from the second season I remember or like. The Judson episode isn't a story, it's a teaser, and the others all basically suck. The evil plastic one is trying very hard though, it's just bad.
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May 11, 2021 14:06
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I'm starting to wonder whether there aren't deep differences between classic and new Who that render new Who inherently problematic. At the risk of boring everyone, let me see if I can articulate this fully, because new Who clearly has better production values, has some really good writing, and has fantastic performances, but I'd still rather rewatch Horns of Nimon over about 80%+ of new Who. 1. Story length. 90+ minute stories do lead to plenty of padding in classic Who, but they also mean stories are substantial enough that you can forget lots of details and be surprised upon rewatch. Even a well-watched story like Robots of Death offers a few scenes that you may have forgotten but which are delightful. New Who's shorter stories don't entirely preclude that phenomenon, but while there's less corridor-running, it feels like they're either ruthlessly plot-driven, meaning that if you recall the plot, you have no surprises ahead, or they still feel padded. I feel like Jodie's run as Thirteen has especially suffered from stories that are either drifting aimlessly or so ruthlessly plot-driven there's no room to breathe, and that's despite the fact that there's plenty of "Doctor talks with a companion" character-driven scenes. Perhaps it's because they so clearly exist to do that, instead of being embedded into the action like, say, the Doctor/Romana scenes in The Ribos Operation? 2. Production design, direction, and overall visual look. Of course classic Who is often closer to a filmed stage show, while new Who is visually more active and interesting. But conversely, a lot of classic Who has a radically different look from story to story, while new Who can be surprisingly samey. You can certainly tell the difference between new Who's original cheesy CGI and later series, but a greater uniformity in how the show appears on-screen might hurt rewatchability because it makes the episodes feel more interchangeable. For example, if you took a 3-minute scene from Pyramids of Mars and Talons of Weng-Chiang, I suspect most Who fans could tell the difference without even watching the whole clip. The visual setting, the places the stories happen, even the shot composition are so distinct between the two that you'd differentiate each without much bother. Some average-to-bad episodes could be hard to differentiate, but even the jungle scenes in Planet of Evil and Face of Evil can be differentiated pretty rapidly (despite both having invisible monsters!). Maybe I'm just not visually savvy enough, but I'd find it a lot harder to differentiate in the new series. The greater uniformity, the shift away from "this episode was kitbashed and assembled from spare parts" may have come at the cost of distinctiveness. 3. Series arcs and character development (or "development"). Davies started this, of course, though Moffat certainly doubled-down on it. But in terms of intelligibility (or maybe I mean legibility), classic Who is a thing of parts: you might group by producer, or by Doctor/companion, but while there may be major stylistic differences between, say, the Philip Hinchcliffe era and the Graham Williams era, conceptually you can detach individual stories and take them on their own without it being too jarring. Even the Key to Time series is really only disconcerting in its final episode or two of The Armageddon Factor, and aside from the first and last stories you could scramble the order without any real damage to any of them. In the new series, because of the shorter stories and because the whole thing was built around the expectation of rewatching, the serial design is significantly greater, and I'd argue that both Moffat and Chibnall design series arcs first and stories second, at a cost. Because there's plenty of other serialized TV right now, much of it more complex and interwoven than Doctor Who: you can dispense with a lot of the "arc" stories in new Who and follow the series arc, while trying that with a show like The Good Place or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be trickier. Perhaps what's bothering me here in new Who is that it feels like the individual stories, as secondary to the series arc, feel like afterthoughts, but that the series arcs rely upon being unknown and unexpected to drive interest and, once completed, don't seem especially interesting or compelling. I'd say the single best arc was Eleven's first series, and even that amounts to a statement about stories that feels profound on first watching but is really rather cliche in retrospect. If I want me some Three and Liz Shaw, I can watch Spearhead from Space and Inferno and be quite happy; if I want new series five, I'm probably skipping half the episodes because I find Amy's Choice kinda problematic, don't have the energy for the Silurian two-parter right now, and am in a very different place with regard to both Gareth Roberts and James Corden, thanks. But does that bust up the arc too much? I wanted to see what Chibnall was going to do with the Timeless Child thing, but now that I know, why in the world would I want to rewatch a series built around telling that story? (And I liked it more than most people here did!) And the character development also hurts rewatchability, in my experience. Sure, Twelve undergoes a development arc. But it isn't handled consistently: after his first series where he figures out he is a good man, he still needs Clara as his emotional support companion in the following series, to "care" for him? That honestly feels like a total misunderstanding of the character who actually develops from Capaldi's performance, whose problem is that he cares too much and too unreservedly: the idea that he doesn't understand emotion or other people's emotional reactions and needs a young woman to be "nice" for him is cringeworthy in multiple ways, but the biggest is that despite the series being built with greater care to feel like it's of-a-piece and with Twelve developing, the development is so erratic from episode to episode that it might as well not be there at all. I can believe that the Heaven Sent Twelve and the The Doctor Falls Twelve are the same person, but who the hell was that in The Return of Doctor Mysterio, or The Lie of the Land? The new series' insistence on having development merely allows it to get things all mixed up in a way that doesn't happen with the classic series; Four's final series is tonally different because of the new costume/producer/script editor plus Tom's health, and the tone is pretty consistent despite having stories as radically different as State of Decay and Warrior's Gate. As a result, I'd rather invest my rewatch time in a 90-minute classic story and get a complete experience, over watching new series piecemeal. What bothers me is the extent to which this is just me, moderately depressed after a year-plus of COVID, and the extent to which it's the show. Because I'm starting to reach the point where I'm unsure how much I care about the next series beyond finding out what happens: after decades of recording and collecting and purchasing Doctor Who episodes for rewatch, I'm wondering whether I should even bother anymore because of intrinsic problems with how the new series is handled.
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May 11, 2021 16:47
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The long classic serials may have a lot of padding, but there's also a lot of downtime interactions between otherwise minor/background characters you'd never get in a 45-minute single episode of NuWho
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May 11, 2021 18:18
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Binro has no room to exist anymore.
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May 11, 2021 18:42
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https://twitter.com/bigfinish/status/1392041791814180865?s=20
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May 11, 2021 22:44
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Open Source Idiom posted:The Judson episode isn't a story, it's a teaser, and the others all basically suck. Fenric sequel when
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May 11, 2021 23:09
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Forget tantalizing glimpses of possible retrieved missing episodes from the Hartnell/Troughton run, now there's a tantalizing glimpse of a possible lost Capaldi story! quote:Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi looked bewildered as he accidentally joined a Zoom meeting held by a climate change group. 
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May 12, 2021 08:24
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The TV Movie (Grace:1999) was broadcast for the first time 25 years ago today!  Canada weirdly got to show it first on May 12th, the US on May 14th on Fox, and the poor BBC not until the May bank holiday on the 27th. I went to the midnight release of the VHS tape at HMV Piccadilly Circus in London on the 12th/13th. I was a tiny barely teen spod, and thus was second in line. Geoffrey Sax, the director, was there for signing, although it was rumoured Paul McGann was going to be there as well, and I remember being terribly disappointed. I still haven’t met McGann, but there’s a space for him in The French Revolution. US promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyam_n9XyjQ BBC promo with the wonderful HE’S BACK AND ITS ABOUT TIME! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-RmLRSdC8M
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May 12, 2021 09:05
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Apparently it didn't air here in Australia til July which, actually, was pretty quick turnaround for those days I suppose The ABC ad for the movie used Doctorin' the Tardis lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoepKvhUAg4
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May 12, 2021 09:25
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Homora Gaykemi posted:Apparently it didn't air here in Australia til July which, actually, was pretty quick turnaround for those days I suppose  E: only thing I really remember as a teenager watching this was jumping up and down when they called it the cloaking device thus earning my nerd stripes. SecretOfSteel fucked around with this message at 10:27 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 10:24
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The_Doctor posted:The TV Movie (Grace:1999) was broadcast for the first time 25 years ago today! The BBC version was also cut down, which I never knew until I got the Movie on DVD years later and being shocked that my Taped version was somehow different. It's just a few bits that comes to around a minute of various "violent" scenes, but it really threw me.
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May 12, 2021 11:46
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BooDooBoo posted:The BBC version was also cut down, which I never knew until I got the Movie on DVD years later and being shocked that my Taped version was somehow different. When the Beeb did a Doctor Who night in 1999 (where those Pitch of Fear, Web of Caves, etc sketches come from), they rounded out the night by showing the TV Movie. However, they didn’t announce in any way that it was going to be the uncut version, so that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMI8SxMv2y8
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May 12, 2021 12:07
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Aaand Barrowman's been axed from Doctor Who: Time Fracture over the exposure allegationsquote:‘Immersive Everywhere has taken the decision to remove [John Barrowman’s] pre-record from Doctor Who: Time Fracture,’ it read. ‘We will continue to include content that pays tribute to this brilliant show that is Torchwood so as not to disappoint its fans, and are working on an exciting storyline to be announced soon.’
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May 12, 2021 17:58
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