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I know we've already done nurse as a companion, but I like it because it kind of always gives the companion something to do without the Doctor's help. Calling the Doctor out on his own poo poo is as old as Rose, but it almost feels necessary at this point.
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Apr 13, 2025 14:35
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Fil5000 posted:Older even. Tegan and Liz spring to mind in that regard. Yeah, true.
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Apr 13, 2025 14:49
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It's also just that all the major streamers are pulling back from being bullish on acquiring intellectual property, I think. Not even Sesame Street can find a home.
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Apr 13, 2025 18:08
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Big Mean Jerk posted:It’s just wild to me that not that long ago we were hearing about giant infusions of Disney money and half a dozen spinoffs being planned or actively in production and now we don’t even know if the next season will happen. The same thing happened with Sesame Street and Looney Tunes. I can see how most people without young kids wouldn't have to think about either, but HBO/MAX produced a whole slew of spin-offs for both before suddenly just deciding to quietly pull the plug. For awhile these projects are just going to go up and down each fiscal quarter, I guess.
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Apr 13, 2025 18:32
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Maxwell Lord posted:The major problem will be if they can keep Gatwa around for that kind of commitment, he's a guy who's getting offers. Not that he isn't really good and I hope they can at least get a third season out of him (preferably four now that we're down to like eight episodes), but at the very least, this is a problem they've been equipped to solve for a pretty long time. I don't know what other streamer invests in Doctor Who right now, though, if Disney doesn't renew. Hopefully somebody.
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Apr 13, 2025 20:07
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The_Doctor posted:Aww, Jean Marsh has passed away. She was 1st Doctor companion Sara Kingdom and 7th Doctor villain Morgaine, bookending the entire classic era, and brilliant in whatever she showed up in. RIP Queen Bavmorda. I had no idea she was married to Jon Pertwee for awhile.
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Apr 13, 2025 22:13
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I think that may be an overestimation about how much RTD plans, to be honest. A solid percentage of his stories are outlandish, bombastic winking-at-the-camera stuff that lean into tropes, he's writing a significant part of the new Disney seasons, and even though last season was sometimes a commentary on his early writing, I think he's too into Doctor Who to make it that much about him.
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Apr 14, 2025 17:12
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Like... it doesn't feel as much that it's "intentionally fictive" as it is "Davies doing what he pretty much usually does" lol
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Apr 14, 2025 17:14
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Like I guess a very large portion of Doctor Who is sort of "intentionally fictive" in that it takes historical situations and "science" fiction and uses it to celebrate or deconstruct genre tropes, and Davies is the sort of writer who would do "the Doctor meets Ncuti Gatwa and Russell Davies," but I don't think they're signaling that in this season and it ignores what the point of Mrs. Flood is.
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Apr 14, 2025 17:22
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egon_beeblebrox posted:I can hear it in Eccleston's voice very easily, myself. Sounds like something he'd get into a righteous fire about. I'd love to watch any Doctor, in their prime, just be inserted into the episode for another Doctor. Patrick Troughton doing Matt Smith episodes. Peter Capaldi doing Peter Davison episodes. Ncuti Gatwa doing David Tennant's full run. Tom Baker just doing every single episode of Doctor Who. Obviously there's no way to do it without getting into Hotel Reverie territory, but it's fun to imagine.
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Apr 14, 2025 19:30
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I love this ridiculous TV show and I hope that it gets more seasons, less space between seasons, and, maybe most importantly, more episodes per season. (plus Christmas!) Still, I wouldn't wish on a monkey's paw for it. The biggest worry I have for Doctor Who is that somebody realizes it has an okay brand and it gets focus-grouped into not being weird. Whatever problems Davies has as a writer, he took a huge chunk of Disney money and used it to do a primal scream to advocate for LGBTQIA rights, and I'm sort of worried that the reason he has to go elsewhere is that Disney is changing its mind is that they don't care do that anymore. I will watch low-budget Doctor Who. I just hope there is such a thing.
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Apr 16, 2025 22:07
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It is really hard to do anything low budget anymore. MST3K's revival was loaded with difficulties.
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Apr 17, 2025 13:06
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Silver2195 posted:I didn’t see Rogue as trying to own the right-wingers. I’m not a fan of the Doctor having romantic relationships with humans either, although Fifteen/Rogue at least feels less skeevy than Ten/Rose (or Two/Jamie). It's definitely Davies writing some of his own fantasies IMO, lol. I just think doing a bombastic, slapdash, very gay show with Disney money is a bolder move than people are making it out to be, clumsy and tropey though the writing often is.
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Apr 17, 2025 14:59
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Open Source Idiom posted:This conversation is making the thread very unchill. I don't think anyone is yelling at anyone or being mad or anything, it's okay to disagree. I do think that the Doctor being a thousand year old space wizard means that none of the romances really work, but since the can of worms was already open, it's probably best that there are some same-sex versions of "The Girl in the Fireplace." I don't think Rogue was particularly more clumsy than the Rose romance or whatever they were trying to do with Yaz in that last episode. The Yaz thing in particular fell flat for me because the whole Sarah Jane "You'll get old and die eventually and I don't want to be there for it" is among the worst ways to address it. The character hasn't grown enough that they can spend 60-ish years with someone because the companion is not going to be able to run down corridors forever? They're really incapable of dealing with grief at this point? "There's no point in being grown up if you can't act a little childish sometimes," sure, but even the non-romantic friendship between Twelve and Clara should have taught the Doctor that it's okay to commit to spending time with someone even if the way you spend time with them is going to change and may involve him having to take care of them a little. I dunno.
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Apr 17, 2025 20:55
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Slyphic posted:I just want more companions that aren't 1) young 2) contemporary 3) British 4) women - doesn't have to be a full sweep, just please let's stop hitting all four points. I had such expectations for 'the fam'... Like can we get 15 and Percule Hoirot or something (he's still not Public Domain in the UK, ugh, rare point for America here) Yeah, it'd be cool. Leela, Jamie and K-9 were all really fun and even the sort of throwaway ones like Nardole add something to the dynamic.
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Apr 17, 2025 21:16
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Thranguy posted:Flag on the play, trying to start a Unit timing derail right after the last derail. lol. Re: Paul McGann, yeah, he has a great voice for the Doctor, and the tragedy of Doctor Who not becoming a powerhouse franchise is that we'll never get the Eighth Doctor Adventures spin-off. Hell, they could just do televised versions of half of his Big Finish adventures. I think he'd sign on.
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Apr 18, 2025 19:23
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The thing about watching a show that's 61 years old and covers material like time travel and alternate universes is that things like "What would a whole season of Paul McGann look like?' or "What would Gene Wilder be as the Doctor?" or "What would Eccleston have done with season 2?" are just floating out there. We can almost be grateful that most of us do not want to see the Fox/BBC idea of what a Doctor Who revival would look like, lol.
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Apr 18, 2025 19:40
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Let's not throw Joseph Campbell under the bus for the failures of that season, it was just a bunch of very green American writers who had seen Doctor Who on PBS and thought that they could do better.
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Apr 18, 2025 20:06
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Edward Mass posted:As a reminder, please spoiler tag discussion of Lux until 8PM GDT tomorrow (3PM eastern). Thank you for saving those of us on the US east cost who read from looking at World Time Buddy.
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Apr 18, 2025 20:11
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This kind of episode is the kind of thing they couldn't do without the Disney money, the cartoon was really well implemented. I think the episode goes a little too meta for me once the Doctor Who fandom people come in and Davies has already had a bite at that apple, but it still felt fun to watch.
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Apr 22, 2025 17:45
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Jerusalem posted:I absolutely loving love the Doctor showing up out of nowhere to save the day and act as Ian's lawyer, only to admit that he has no experience as a lawyer, no knowledge of Marinus' legal system, and no idea about ANY of the facts of the case beyond Ian got accused of killing somebody lt's up there with Four defending himself from the all-powerful, sentient balls of light that have put him on trial in terms of "completely winging it and just getting by on sheer confidence and a general competency in how this sort of thing tends to work" moments.
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Apr 25, 2025 01:02
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I think this episode's biggest mistake was linking itself to Midnight, because it immediately invites you to compare it to a better episode and the connection also feels extremely tenuous and sort of diminishes the mystery of the Thing in the Bus. I like the "it's always behind you" thing, though, and the sign language issues were cool. They created conflict without feeling like they were exploiting deafness, and the episode was always on her side, making you feel her frustration that she was being intentionally left out of the discussions of some paramilitary force that had control of her entire life. I think the ending was a cheap horror  , and the crack shot who can make you temporarily dead only to bring you back felt stupid - if this thing is so all-powerful that's always behind her, it can probably stick around through legally dead, and if it's just playing games and following its own rules, it feels like there are cleverer ways around it.It was still a good episode, I just think it loses a lot of steam once the solution for getting it out of Belinda is presented. After that, it sort of just starts introducing new rules rapidly in a way that makes you question the premise.
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Apr 29, 2025 23:29
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Like, how is she sure that jumping down the well is going to keep it there? How do we know the range on what this thing has? The Doctor just stands around the well being sad for awhile, which feels like a bad idea, even if he's mourning, etc. I think once the stakes are high as they can go (it's on the Doctor's companion!), they should have found a neat solution that wasn't "the local nobly sacrifices herself for our heroes, but surprise! It's still here!" I think I also wanted a little more resolution for the sole survivor - she was probably the one who needed the swelling music while the Doctor cried the enormous silent tears as she went back to her son instead of the crack-shot suicide squad. Minor complaints, though.
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Apr 29, 2025 23:35
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I groaned when I saw Pete McTighe's name, but this one was actually pretty good. It's a much better "What happens to the people in the Doctor's orbit when he's not around?" episode than Love and Monsters, and the romantic montage being something that the sociopath villain engineered is the most brutal part of the episode. The Doctor's monologue was definitely preachy, but come on, it's Doctor Who and sticking it to disinformation grifters just feels good right now, especially as delivered by Ncuti Gatwa. He has almost no time in the episode and still absolute nails "a very old and extremely well-traveled and vaguely terrifying person in a fun, smiling young person's body." It helps that Millie Gibson is a good actor herself; you could really feel her devastation. I think something that has helped the UNIT stuff, which can get tedious fast, is focusing on Kate as a character and letting the human side of it work, even if it does often feel like a very long, backdoor pilot to the spin-off (which I guess McTighe is also writing). PriorMarcus posted:Which was a good scene, but now we know that Conrad probably wasn't imagining that at all, so it was just a directors flourish rather than anything which informed the character. I'm not sure that's actually true. It's always hard to tell when it's a grift and when these people are true believers, but Conrad goes right back to "nice special effects!" as soon as he's not in danger anymore, so we can't really trust anything he says. He obviously doesn't actually take the antidote (and he could have even if he'd said he didn't), so I guess part of him believes his own lies, but he could still get swept away by Ruby's story, at minimum.
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May 5, 2025 16:02
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Xelkelvos posted:It feels redundant with Kate having her own response, and sticking it to fictional information grifters is more mastrubatory wish casting than anything imo. It's one step removed from literally speaking into the camera but without the fortitude to say it under one's own name. It's a genre fiction show about a space wizard, though, the whole concept is utterly hamfisted fantasy casting, lol. Even classic Who is preachy and didactic. I think it might just be that the production value increases create a tonal dissonance that didn't exist with the rubber masks filmed in a quarry or even the early revival era with the camera that seemed like it was smeared with Vaseline and the 90s video game looking Slitheen. I think it's kind of charming, but I get why people would think that it's cringe. I just think the difference between which episodes of Doctor Who are cringe and which are enjoyable is a pretty thin line, often, given the overall approach to the whole thing.
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May 7, 2025 23:56
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I really liked this one, but I do agree with PriorMarcus that Belynda's stuff didn't really go anywhere. Why have her get stopped by the police at all if they were just going to cut away from it? I can't tell if it was some weird comic relief that fell flat or just something they sort of half-dropped. The villain's plan also sort of felt half-baked, and this idea that he could kill all the gods, but that this would also kill stories and therefore people felt a little too Sandman for Doctor Who, especially with just that as the whole explanation. Still the horror-fantasy concept of a barber shop where people have to keep telling stories has a lot going for it, cool Jo Martin cameo, great cast overall.
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May 11, 2025 23:01
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lmao that the Eurovision episode of Doctor Who is the one where they brought back both Carole Ann Ford and the Rani. I'm really glad they brought Susan back, Ford has been saying she'd love to do the show and do something besides just scream for years. I'm sure they filmed more with her, looking forward to it. Also now we can relive all the great Rani serials like uh.... er... Look, everyone, the Rani is back!.
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May 18, 2025 19:16
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No Dignity posted:Mrs Flood is having the time of her life being her own goon and I'm not sure else you could want or need from that intro imo Yeah, that was fun. They're giving two people a chance to chew the scenery. Should make for some good, cackling monologues later
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May 18, 2025 22:43
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