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 Read the spoiler policy before posting! You've been warned.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPxtqx55PA0 We're getting more than seven weeks of new Doctor Who in a row for the first time in five Goddamn years! Oh my! Ncuti Gatwa returns as the Fifteenth Doctor, and joining him in the TARDIS is Varada Sethu playing new character Belinda Chandra (NOT Mundy Flynn, soldier from the future). In addition, later this year a UNIT-based spin-off will air with a really long name that I'm not going to bother typing out, as that's tomorrow's thread's problem. Happy revival day! The forty-first (  ) season of Doctor Who runs for eight weeks, beginning 12 April and ending 31 May:1) The Robot Revolution 2) Lux 3) The Well 4) Lucky Day 5) The Story & the Engine 6) The Interstellar Song Contest 7) Wish World 8) The Reality War The previous thread can be found here Now, the formalities. PLEASE READ ---> NO SPOILERS <---PLEASE READ We have a designated spoiler thread that is thankfully relevant once again. Now, follow me on this next part. New episodes of Doctor Who will go online at 8AM Greenwich Daylight Time several hours before it formally airs on BBC One. You must use spoiler tags while discussing episodes that are on iPlayer and Disney+ but not yet aired on BBC One. This may be hard for some of you to understand, but not all of us go  in the middle of the night. While I cannot enforce this rule, I will write a strongly worded PM to a mod should you break it. Please, I beg of you, keep in mind the poor Brit browsing Something Awful with a 56k modem.WHERE DO I START? The Church on Ruby Road is the easiest place to start, given that it features a new Doctor and new companion giving first impressions. This is not to discount the first 14-ish Doctors, but this show's been on a long-rear end time. If you want to watch the original series, there are plenty of places to start. You COULD start with An Unearthly Child and watch everything in chronological order. You could also watch individual serials of all the Doctors and determine which you like the best. Keep in mind, don't shotgun a whole Hartnell or Troughton in one go, or else you'll get complacent. Those 60's episodes are meant to be seen one at a time, and if you only just rented the DVD, wait a few hours between episodes. The most popular serials for the original series you can jump into are: First Doctor: An Unearthly Child, The Aztecs Second Doctor: The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Enemy of the World Third Doctor: Spearhead from Space, Carnival of Monsters Fourth Doctor: Pyramids of Mars, The Robots of Death Fifth Doctor: Kinda, Frontios Sixth Doctor: Vengeance on Varos, Revelation of the Daleks Seventh Doctor: Dragonfire, Remembrance of the Daleks For Doctor Who since 2005, it's easiest to just watch a Doctor's first episode and go from there - you'll get a feel pretty quickly on the vibe of the era. HOW DO I WATCH DOCTOR WHO? If you're in the UK, it's easy - turn on BBC One to watch new episodes, or fire up your iPlayer and watch almost every episode of Doctor Who in existence! For everyone else, it's complicated. 1963-1989: BritBox 2005-2022: Max in the United States, Prime Video in Canada, and Stan in Australia (if you live somewhere else, I'm sorry, but I can't put every nation here) 2023-20??: Disney+ And no, it's not getting any simpler. Also, don't ask about how to stream the TV movie, because I don't know how. SHOULD I BUY THE DVDs AND BLU-RAYs? Just for the bonus features alone. They can't take those away from you! THE ALL-NEW GUIDE TO BIG FINISH There are literally THOUSANDS of Doctor Who and Doctor Who-related audio dramas released by Big Finish Productions. In previous threads, I would pour over all the individual lines and describe them. With the great restructure of Big Finish lines, though, I have to adapt. So, here are some bullet points: -Doctors 1-13 have their own individual lines now, although obviously the first three Doctors are not played by Hartnell, Troughton, and Pertwee. Here's a handy guide: if it's current series Doctor Who, "Adventures" means it's the actual actors, while "Chronicles" means it's not. -The Companion Chronicles & the Early Adventures generally do not feature the Doctor, and some of them are essentially audiobooks with sound effects. Check the cast list if you want to know which is which. -If you have ever asked "what about <random character x>?", boy are you in luck! There are so many spin-offs featuring characters both familiar and unfamiliar that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a series that makes you say "THEY got a series?" Some are good, some are bad, most are unremarkable. -Everyone has a taste, so don't rely on other people's opinions. For example, I don't care for or about Charlotte Pollard and her spin-off, but some people do! Some crazy people enjoy the story Nekromanteia - you do you! THE DISCORD Here it is. The future is now! FINALLY, let's take a look back....all the way to ten years ago! And me being wrong! a fool posted:There is zero point zero chance that Eccleston is doing Big Finish, but if we get a Companion Chronicle with Billie Piper, I'd still be stoked. Not only has Christopher Eccleston reprised his performance as the Ninth Doctor for Big Finish, but he's also going to be doing a set with Billie Piper (if it hasn't been recorded already). Hooray! Edward Mass fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Apr 3, 2025 |
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Mar 26, 2025 02:34
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entirely!
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Also Doctor Who owns now and forevermore and it will NEVER stop being on television (for good!) 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Mar 26, 2025 02:37
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Oh, you’ve redecorated, haven’t you? I don’t like it. 
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Mar 26, 2025 02:38
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The_Doctor posted:Oh, you’ve redecorated, haven’t you? I don’t like it. I love the round things (episodes)
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Mar 26, 2025 02:42
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First time I've gotten in on the first page. And I'm wearing sandshoes.
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Mar 26, 2025 02:44
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That’s the trouble with new series threads; you never know what you’re going to get
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Mar 26, 2025 03:09
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https://i.imgur.com/WZyKBkW.mp4 And still. No. Round. Things!
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Mar 26, 2025 03:10
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rose tyler is so hot
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Mar 26, 2025 03:16
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Placeholder for my own reviews. Possibly I’ll make an organized list post like Jerusalem eventually. For now, links to my posts in the previous threads (largely reviews): https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4064084&userid=185993#post542466173 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4077597&userid=185993 Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Mar 26, 2025 03:49
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Looked back through the previous thread to say goodbye and had a laugh at this that I posted several days before the Christmas special:2house2fly posted:Kind of funny and kind of annoying that in Ncuti's first episode he commented that it could use a chair, and he was right, and he never added one
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Mar 26, 2025 03:52
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Hmmm, still not ginger.
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Mar 26, 2025 04:04
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Hopefully this season does well enough for Disney... I can't do this hiatus poo poo again
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Mar 26, 2025 04:22
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I suppose before it's drowned out by the new series I should say I've listened to the first dozen or so stories of the Torchwood monthly range. They're... pretty good. It's been a long while since I listened to anything Big Finish, largely because I got really sick of them telling stories for the sake of stories. Most of the Torchwood stories are better than that. There's two things that the successful scripts have in common: a) bothering to flesh out the supporting actor who, given that it's Torchwood, is often killed off in gruesome fashion; and b) making sure every story is about something. This story is about a robot duplicate, but it's also about living vicariously. An undercurrent of betrayal. This is pretty standard genre storytelling, but a lot of BF stories turned me off by not managing this fairly simple step. Another thing that separates them from the Doctor Who range is that these stories usually have pretty tiny casts. It's not uncommon to have basically two-handers, with maybe a couple of other lines of dialogue from a third actor. I suspect this is a budgetary thing; like Indira Varma isn't exactly hard up for work. It's also much more common for these stories to feature a conceit to explain the sparseness: this story is two characters talking over a phone; this story is two characters driving in a car. The Captain Jack episodes often go for the half-drama, half-audiobook format, again I suspect because that means you can cram more stories into a single recording session (way to screw up an easy gig for life, Barrowman). Jack, incidentally, is all over these stories, but only rarely does Barrowman actually appear; he's on the other end of a phone call or he's frozen in time or he's body-swapped into an old man struggling to mimic Barrowman's idiosyncratic accent. The big bum note for this first few stories is the overarching plot, such as it is. The first episode introduces the Committee, a shadowy organization that's been interfering with Earth mainly by doing random poo poo. It feels like when Stan Lee invented the X-Men because he wanted to stop having to come up with reasons why characters have superpowers. They're mutants, that's why. Why does this guy have a robot replica of himself? The Committee built it. Why is this plane crashing? The Committee drugged the pilot. A fairly big stumbling block for me is that I just have zero interest in most of the characters. The TV show was pretty bad, and given that Torchwood is an organization I'd be perfectly fine with them dumping most of the cast and creating their own (and I believe this is what eventually happens in the continuing series, which I also want to get back to at some point). Nothing against any of the actors, they equate themselves pretty well. I'm going to keep listening to these, though I'm going to be a little more selective from now on probably.
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Mar 26, 2025 08:04
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Edward Mass posted:The forty-first ( This is Lucie Miller erasure.
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Mar 26, 2025 08:35
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New Who is 20 years old today!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYIu7Qlqh4M
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Mar 26, 2025 09:41
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Crazy to think we've had 20 seasons of New Who since 2005!
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Mar 26, 2025 09:44
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I remember when I was 11 back in 2005 watching rose for the first time and my mind was blown.
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Mar 26, 2025 10:30
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Mar 26, 2025 13:39
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Random holy poo poo how did I not know this before... Mark shepherd, who plays Canton Delaware III, is actually the son of W Morgan Shepherd, who plays the older Canton Delaware III I knew who both of these actors were, but I never knew they were related until today. I just thought the casting was really good 😂 Between the two of them they've covered almost every major Sci-Fi series I can think of, drat Edit And of course I don't realize this is a new thread and I'm posting this on the first page, drat I don't know if it's worth that 😂 Rochallor posted:I suppose before it's drowned out by the new series I should say I've listened to the first dozen or so stories of the Torchwood monthly range. They're... pretty good. 100% focus on the Standalone stories, I find they're the best and get the most experimental, allowing authors the most freedom. Fun! Torchwood One is a blast, if you want to delve into the more gritty and Cutthroat Torchwood. Tommy pierce is my spirit animal. McGann fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Mar 26, 2025 13:52
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Rochallor posted:Torchwood Really cool you're giving these a go. They're really loving good. Rochallor posted:The Captain Jack episodes often go for the half-drama, half-audiobook format, again I suspect because that means you can cram more stories into a single recording session (way to screw up an easy gig for life, Barrowman). Jack, incidentally, is all over these stories, but only rarely does Barrowman actually appear; he's on the other end of a phone call or he's frozen in time or he's body-swapped into an old man struggling to mimic Barrowman's idiosyncratic accent. These are functions of the series just getting off its feet and experimenting with how it's going to tell its stories. I think the narration is pretty much dropped after the first two David Llewellyn stories, and from that point -- with one sneaky exception -- they either have Barrowman cameo as himself or the character just doesn't turn up. Rochallor posted:The big bum note for this first few stories is the overarching plot, such as it is. The first episode introduces the Committee, a shadowy organization that's been interfering with Earth mainly by doing random poo poo. It feels like when Stan Lee invented the X-Men because he wanted to stop having to come up with reasons why characters have superpowers. They're mutants, that's why. Why does this guy have a robot replica of himself? The Committee built it. Why is this plane crashing? The Committee drugged the pilot. This one is interesting. A lot of people talk about this run of stories being "the committee arc" and there are shared narrative elements across that constitute an arc, that's true. But I think the Committee functions more as a symbolic representation of a certain kind of modern evil, in that it stands in for the neoliberal hollowing of public institutions, conspiracies in the age of conspiratorial thinking, and the ability for large bureaucracies to shift responsibility away from any of the places it should actually be placed. You might as well call them "the society" or "the conspiracy", in that they sort of function as a shibboleth that locates the blame all in one place, only for that place to be everywhere and nowhere. They're a villain that's shaped like themselves. McGann posted:100% focus on the Standalone stories, I find they're the best and get the most experimental, allowing authors the most freedom. Fun! Agreed. The ongoing series has a lot of stand alone entries, though that's also because the arc material in the first season ended up in a fairly rough place due to actor unavailability. McGann posted:Torchwood One is a blast, if you want to delve into the more gritty and Cutthroat Torchwood. One's great. Soho's great. They're all great. Tommy loving rules too.
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Mar 26, 2025 14:20
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Open Source Idiom posted:Really cool you're giving these a go. They're really loving good. Oh, hell yes, I forgot about Soho. Those have been immediately listens for me, thothe last set was a bit underwhelming. Though admittedly at the time I may not have been giving it full attention. Will have to relisten to Ascension at some point, James Goss usually doesn't bounce off me Norton fullgate is one of my favorite creations from Big finish, that would admittedly the character is suffering from overexposure and works better as a secondary.
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Mar 26, 2025 17:44
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Jerusalem posted:Crazy to think we've had 20 seasons of New Who since 2005! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
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Mar 27, 2025 19:49
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Mooseontheloose posted:I love the round things (episodes) What are the round things? (episodes)
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Mar 27, 2025 21:38
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The Round Things™ are filled with alcohol
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Mar 27, 2025 22:01
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Confusedslight posted:I remember when I was 11 back in 2005 watching rose for the first time and my mind was blown. My wife couldn't stand the classic series, but she got as far as the "that's who I am" before she was hooked
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Mar 27, 2025 22:13
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Vinylshadow posted:The Round Things™ are filled with alcohol 12: I may have snuck a glass at some point in the last 1500 years. 
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Mar 27, 2025 22:26
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The Tsuranga Conundrum: While there’s no particular scene here that’s egregiously awful, this episode is quite dull to watch. It’s not even about people running through corridors so much as people standing in corridors; scenes of people standing in corridors while spouting technobabble alternate with scenes of people standing in corridors while talking about family drama. And it’s set on a hospital spaceship, so the corridors in question are monotonously white. Yes, the Ark in Space had a somewhat similar setting, but there the white corridors felt ominous. There are a couple of apparent Signals from Fred. “Why am I even talking about this?” asks Ryan at one point. “I get it,” Yaz snaps after some particularly longwinded exposition about particle accelerators from the Doctor. (Yaz also looks disgusted by the sonic screwdriver’s “self-rebooting”, reinforcing my perception from It Takes You Away that she hates plot developments that aren’t properly foreshadowed.) The episode improves somewhat towards the end; it even develops an actual sense of tension. Is that enough to make it a 2 out of 5? I don’t think it’s as good as any of my 2s so far. Rating: 1/5. Next: A story from 1987 and a story set in 1987. Both involve dragons.
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Mar 28, 2025 01:29
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I recall my takeaway from The Tsuranga Conundrum being pleasant surprise that it was a recogniseable episode of Doctor Who, structurally. There's like a sci-fi mystery, the heroes find out about the monster using some kind of clever plan, they defeat it with another plan, side characters have arcs, nobody that I remember espouses an inhumanly insane ideology. It had all the ingredients. Faint praise, admittedly
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Mar 28, 2025 02:57
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2house2fly posted:I recall my takeaway from The Tsuranga Conundrum being pleasant surprise that it was a recogniseable episode of Doctor Who, structurally. There's like a sci-fi mystery, the heroes find out about the monster using some kind of clever plan, they defeat it with another plan, side characters have arcs, nobody that I remember espouses an inhumanly insane ideology. It had all the ingredients. Faint praise, admittedly I guess I can see the argument for it being better than Arachnids in the UK (which I gave a 2), but Arachnids at least looks prettier, and feels like things are actually happening in it. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Mar 28, 2025 |
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Mar 28, 2025 03:23
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I remember really liking the Doctor’s reaction when the sonic screwdriver was eaten. Whitaker does good facial reactions.
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Mar 28, 2025 05:28
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Vinylshadow posted:The Round Things™ are filled with alcohol Don't tell dad.
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Mar 28, 2025 08:46
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Thanks, Rusty!  https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHu_COcNB_n/
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Mar 28, 2025 11:08
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The_Doctor posted:Thanks, Rusty! This is gonna need a translation.
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Mar 28, 2025 11:27
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The_Doctor posted:Thanks, Rusty! Lol Rusty's gone mad with power 
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Mar 28, 2025 12:05
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Doctor Who reviews, dragons of 1987 edition Dragonfire: I think the Seventh Doctor era’s mix of 3-part and 4-part stories was a good idea; it keeps plots from dragging the way 6-parters sometimes do, but also gives settings and side characters room to breathe in a way the new series often fails to do. There’s some fun scenes here, from the Doctor distracting a guard with a philosophical discussion to the milkshake cantina. I have two issues with this story, though, both involving characterization. The Doctor and friends get along too well with Glitz considering he’s just sold a bunch of people into slavery. And Ace feels too cartoonish. Rating: 3/5. Father’s Day: This is a very effective tear-jerker. It helps that it has a sense of restraint. The standard criticism of the story is that the Reapers feel tacked-on. I don’t think the story would really work without them, though. You could substitute a more abstract time-paradox consequence, but I think that would weaken the story’s atmosphere; the intensity of the scenes in the church relies on them. I’d like to see them again, actually; because they’re a consequence of historical interference, rather than the cause of it, they could enable new types of historical stories. If I have any reservations about this story, I guess it’s that it moves Jackie back towards comedic-grotesque mode a little. But Father’s Day has some sense of restraint even in this regard; the flashback scenes, at least, take her seriously. Rating: 5/5.
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Mar 29, 2025 01:43
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Love Father's Day so much, the Doctor showing up alive at the end with no idea HOW he's alive but quite chuffed nonetheless is the best. Plus, of course, this:  The way the Doctor turns to other Rose for just a brief "what the gently caress did you have going to do?" moment before they disappear from existence is beautiful 
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Mar 29, 2025 01:48
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just listened to the Paradise of Death radio drama, and I really liked it. you can tell Jon Pertwee and Nicholas Courtney are old, but they give very worthy performances, especially Pertwee. the performances of the antagonists leave something to be desired, but the story is good enough for it to not matter much.
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Mar 31, 2025 00:51
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Jerusalem posted:Love Father's Day so much, the Doctor showing up alive at the end with no idea HOW he's alive but quite chuffed nonetheless is the best. I'm sad that they introduced lore related to the disappearance of time lords and the lack of regulation of time, and then dropped it I know that's what Who does, introduce lore and then wait 50 years to bring it back, but "These things eat paradoxes" is a really important concept for a time travel show.
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Mar 31, 2025 16:29
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Torchwood Rictus was good. The title gives it away, but it's a riff on Smile. The real appeal here is the characterisation of what I assume will be a new regular, Princess Beatrice, who comes across as a parody of early modern literature heroes by way of Wind In The Willows Toad of Toad Hall, complete with silly catchphrases and a love of high speed vehicles. The script undercuts this twice -- first, in exactly the way you'd expect, by emotionally grounding her and citing her antics as an overcorrective to her mother's helicopter codependency and our of fear at not resembling her mother. And then, secondly, by depicting her as a bone deep reactionary, q classiest snob with an interest in eugenics, and therefore far more like her mother than she believes herself to be. The Zygons are just sort of there, and could be air lifted out of the story fairly easily, except in so much as this is the only(?) story to pick up the gauntlet thrown by Moffat's various Zygon stories and their consideration of assimilationist politics. This is far more cynical than The Zygon Inversion (or perhaps just more clear headed about what that story was actually saying), and throws in a few interesting curve balls by considering the same scenario through the lens of pre-democratic political policy. Anyway, nice and gory, fun and thoughtful. Good stuff. Four half a babies out of five.
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Mar 31, 2025 16:42
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