On the Sofa 11

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

This is a place to congregate, somewhere to “hang out”. It’s a topic for general chat about anything you want, and a place for new members to pop in and say “hello” without worrying about making any real contribution (we know that your first post can sometimes feel daunting). We’d love to hear from you all. We’re very friendly.

Conversations on the previous ‘sofa’ can be found here.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

As I’ve not been a regular for a while I thought it best to bring a gift. A brand new Sofa! This snazzy little number is from IKEAs kerplunk range. Enjoy! Oh, and…

HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY DOCTOR WHO FORUM!

Yes – it was 31st December 2012 when @craig very kindly set up this place to kill time and celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who. We’d just watched a Christmas Special and were complaining that we only had eight episodes before the anniversary special in November. Frankly, didn’t know when we were well off!

Anyway – as you see in 2023 raise a glass to old, new and absent friends, but above all a thank you to @craig. Cheers!

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

Thank you @phaseshift and  our lord and “master” emperor  @craig without which this space would not exist. Btw given all news lately about the 60th anniversary, and though I have been a lifelong fan of TV Who  for some reason Beep the Meep seemed to have passed me by possibly because I never got the DW weekly magazine my local suppliers of comics at the time being rather snobbish about what kids magazines the held in stock ie if it wasn’t DC or Marvel they didn’t stock them. I have been looking online to see if any of the comic book adventures of Beep  have been digitally reproduced but other than a plethora of TV magazine articles I can’t seem find much other than the odd single frame images.

[winston @winston]

@phaseshift   Wow!  Happy 10th anniversary to our forum. Thanks to everyone here for making it such a great place to visit and chat. Thank you also to @craig    for setting up the site 10 years ago and picking a day that is easy to remember. So happy 10th and a Happy Who Year to all you Whovians out there, where ever you happen to be. Next year looks like its going to be a good one for Who fans. Bring it on RTD!

Stay hopeful

[JimTheFish @jimthefish Time Lord]

@phaseshift

Thanks for the new sofa and jolly spiffy it is too. With regards, to the conversation on the previous sofa, yes, I must admit to a moment of squee when I saw Meep and the Wrath Warriors — a really interesting one to bring to the screen, I think as they strike me as some of the most comic book-ey characters you could name but it looks to me that they’ve done a really good job with them. But which I guess is really quite canny of RTD because there’s a nostalgia factor there but it’s not too overt or overly familiar. And it does make me hopeful that RTD hasn’t lost his touch with Who with him hitting the anticipation buttons right out of the gate.

And interesting point you make about the show now having access to the Marvel back catalogue with the move to Disney. And as RTD has expressed an interest in a DW continuity universe, who know what else we might see. (I’d like to put in a pre-emptive bid for Kroton.)

And, good heavens, is it really 10 years? That’s a scary statistic in and of itself.

[Tawnyowl38 @tawnyowl38]

Hello everyone I’m tawnyowl38 or just tawny I’m new to doctor who since I’m up to episode 6 of season 1 so I’m sorry if I dont get alot of the reference from the latter seasons! The music I like is: gorillaz, breakcore, speedcore, emo music, lapfox trax, drum and bass, dubstep, blink182, fall out boy, my chemical romance, sleeping with sirens, black veil brides, nirvana, carrington, mindless self indulgence, pet shop boys, old music (in general), fleetwood mac, nickelback, dj shadow, dot dot curve, green day, eminem, dire straits and 2000s music (in general). The movies I like are: trainspotting, a clockwork orange, the nightmare before christmas and lock stock and two smoking barrels. The tv shows I like are: kino’s journey, watamote, the owl house, ren and stimpy, south park and the promised neverland, hazbin hotel, helluva boss, rick and morty, death note and daria. The books I like are: manga, graphic novels, moomin series and jthm series and the games I like are: littlebigplanet, journey, skullgirls, undertale, moshi monsters and club penguin!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Hi Tawny @tawnyowl38
Season 1 – that’d be S1 of New Who I take it? (Also known as ‘After Gap’ or ‘AG’ Who, as opposed to ‘Before Gap’). The Season with Rose Tyler and Chris Eccleston as the Doctor?
You’ve got a good long way to go, I almost envy you.
You may need to beware of ‘spoilers’, we’re supposed not to post them without warning but of course we sometimes lapse.
I think you’re quite young compared with (most of us) oldies, I recognise Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits. Your taste in movies is fairly ‘dark’, Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels is a good black comedy.
Anyway, welcome to the forum.

[Tawnyowl38 @tawnyowl38]

Yea it was from the new version that was made in 2005 also I just finished all of s1 of it so I’m now on s2 also do u mean “I almost envy you” in a bad or good way?. I’ll try my best to get away from spoilers and oh really? Wow that’s cool also yea I like dark movies and tv shows especially British shows but thanks! 🙂

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@tawnyowl38 I don’t mean that in a bad way. You’ve got 12 or so seasons yet to view before you run out of new episodes, so that’s a good thing I guess. But for me to be in your position, I’d have to forget all the episodes I’ve seen, and I wouldn’t want to do that. So which of us is the more fortunate? (I don’t think there’s an answer to that).

[DoctorInes @doctorines]

Hi everyone !
My name is Inès and I appreciate Doctor Who a lot. Actually, I’m a french Student (therefore my bad grammar) and for my english class I have to do a presentation regarding The Tardis, I thought it would be a good topic but I didn’t found a lot of things to say about it… That’s why I wanted to know if you had any info that would make my presentation unique and interesting !

Thx for your Time <3

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Hi @doctorines Your English is a lot better than my French!

But there’s an awful lot to say about the Tardis…

The Tardis – there’s a Wikipedia page on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARDIS
that gives quite a lot of detail.
There’s also an excellent site at tardis.fandom.com that is full of information on every Doctor Who episode and character *except*, ironically, the Tardis. But probably far too much to easily digest.

Here’s a site that lists all the Tardis interiors: https://thedoctorwhosite.co.uk/tardis/interior/

(the exterior always looks pretty much the same, it takes a real expert to tell which vintage any given Tardis exterior is from)

To summarise – the Tardis is a time machine. The Time Lords of Gallifrey had a lot of Tardises but the one in the series is a Type 40 that the Doctor stole (or the Tardis ‘chose’ the Doctor and manipulated him into stealing it). It has some sort of psychic link with the Doctor, which is possibly why it often reconfigures its control room completely when the Doctor ‘regenerates’. It is conscious and intelligent.

Quite often, the Tardis’s time-navigation is a bit inaccurate, sometimes arriving days or years before or after the intended date. Some times deliberately – Doctor: You didn’t always take me where I wanted to go. Tardis: No, but I always took you where you needed to go. (‘The Doctor’s Wife’)
It is, famously, ‘bigger on the inside’. Nobody knows (because the show hasn’t said) just how big it is. And it looks like a 1960’s police telephone box because its ‘chameleon circuit’ is stuck.

The Tardis’s power source – well, I’m a bit unsure of that. It’s something like a contained supernova or some equally unimaginable power, if it got loose it could destroy the Universe. Or something.

The Tardis has a ‘translation circuit’ which seems to extend to anywhere its crew go, which translates everything into English. (This seems to be essential in Scifi series, for obvious reasons).

The Doctor can drive it, but he’s not a very good driver (the funny whoosh-whoosh noise in because he leaves the handbrake on). River Song can drive it much better, but then she was conceived in the Tardis and it taught her how to drive it. The Tardis is almost impossible to damage or break into from outside, however it can be ‘imprisoned’, teleported (I think), picked up by a helicopter, etc.

Other Tardises do exist in the series, for example in ‘Hell Bent’ the Doctor and Clara stole another Tardis from Gallifrey billions of years in the future, and it is now flying around disguised as an American Diner (or some other object, its chameleon circuit is probably still working) in the possession of Clara and Ashildr/Me.

Apologies if you already knew all that.

Plenty more where that came from, but I hope that gives you a few talking points?
Bonne chance!

[Doctor lou @thedoctor234]

Hi, I’m willing to Have A Doctor Who Roleplay Server, And is wanting to have anybody that can get Garrys Mod,

Its on steam, a gaming platform !

[Doctor lou @thedoctor234]

Would anybody Love to Roleplay in a doctor who Rolepaying server, I’ll give instructions !

[syzygy @thane16]

@tawnyowl38

welcome to the forum. I’m in my early 20s & recognise Blink182 & Lock Stock etc. Like @dentarthurdent I also know Fleetwood Mac & Dire Straits though I’m pretty sure most of my friends wouldn’t have a clue. I don’t know what lapfox trax, breakcore or speedcore is! I think emo was connected to the scene kids of the ‘10s which I basically kept away from.

😆😆That makes me feel really old: I should recognise those bands or shows.

Mum finally convinced me to watch I Claudius, & in addition to reading Virgil & Homer plus some War and Peace (!) I’ll be doing that pretty much all year.

I recently read a small book about mapping and clocks called Longitude (a seminal work, I’m told, in its description of how the first seafarers went about examining how time works- very Doctor Who) as well as John Ralston Saul’s Globalism as an introduction to how people view economics.

@doctorines welcome to this forum too. I’m at uni but as my semester doesn’t start yet & my part time job chopped back my hours I have time on my hands so caught up on recent Doctor Who & other things (cleaning my room was one of them- not exactly inspiring).

cheers to you all. Hopefully more members will join & post to keep this forum rocking.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Hi syzygy @thane16 I read ‘Longitude’ a while ago, it was largely about a clockmaker (Harrison – I just had to google that). As I dimly recall, though, it didn’t go into a lot of detail about how he managed to achieve super-accurate timekeeping (I could be wrong about that though).

I’ve just paused my intermittent re-watch at the end of Season 6 to view some movies. I was prompted (by a Youtube video) to re-watch Once Upon a Time in The West, Sergio Leone’s ultimate spaghetti western, and still my favourite. Surprisingly, because it’s very leisurely and requires a relaxed approach and I wasn’t feeling particularly relaxed – surprisingly, as soon as the ten-minute nothing-happening title sequence started, it just ‘clicked’ with me and I enjoyed the whole movie better (including Ennio Morricone’s haunting score) than ever before. I’ve found my enjoyment of movies or episodes very often depends on the mood I’m in, but I can never predict it.

Now I’m going to try Lord of the Rings (the original movie), I couldn’t see anything in it first time around, I’ll see if it’s improved with age or a 55″ TV screen…

[syzygy @thane16]

@dentarthurdent you are probably right about Longitude. I needed a dictionary and encyclopaedia (I actually have a large Collins encyclopaedia of History) to work out what the hell was happening.

I like Morricone too. And Lord of The Rings: but once was enough for me.
I’ve realised it’s not War and Peace but Crime and Punishment! I can’t even correctly remember the titles of the books I’m supposed to be reading. 🙄🙄 😆

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

I have to admit LOTR still does nothing for me. Just 5 minutes longer than Once Upon a Time in the West but it seemed much longer. I think there were too many characters and too much stuff going on, and hobbits are annoying. And somehow, the heroes seem so utterly outnumbered at every stage that it’s hard to credit them surviving, so that reduces credibility.

I’ve never read Tolstoy (or Dostoevksy either). I’m afraid I used to find the ‘classics’ assigned to us at school, rather hard going. Except for Shakespeare, Shakespeare understood Moffat’s dictum of ‘you need to have something happen every few minutes to keep the audience engaged’. (Except Hamlet, he was all talk and no action – ‘get on with it, kill somebody’. Bloodthirsty kid, I must have been).
I was a compulsive reader, would read anything, but I preferred (some) popular stuff like Arthur C Clark, John Wyndham, even Arthur Conan Doyle, and of course Doug Adams later on.

[syzygy @thane16]

@dentarthurdent

Hallooo! It’s the elder Syzygy reportin’ in. I’d thought I’d head to the new Sofa.

yes, it was certainly a freak storm: not surprising in Brisbane at this time of year but certainly the worst in this suburb we’ve seen for quite awhile with respect to the amount of rain,  hail & wind causing furniture & cars to be pushed about. Thane mentioned the weather warnings, which, again, were poor & far too late: not unusual in itself.

Also not a surprise that people were dashing past on the nearby streets, failing to pull over so there were the typical accidents as well as those who believe “I can take this storm! My car will handle it easily…”  🙄

also, yes, the storms in NZ were all over the news in separate countries. Glad you were OK.
I recognise Thane mentioned @winston & possibly @blenkinsopthebrave regarding any previous storms and winter rain in Canada but that was on the Spoiler thread. Hoping you’re alright & doing well.

Kindest, Puro the Old.

[syzygy @thane16]

@dentarthurdent

I think you should give Tolstoy a whirl. Not a bad story teller…. 😀

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Hullo Puro. I must admit I’m a little confused, you and young syzygy both use the same name and log in as @thane16?
I’m pleased you and young syzygy came through the storm unscathed.

Are these storms getting more frequent? We’ve had two major events in two weeks here. But it seems to me the few regulars on these pages have been experiencing wild weather a lot more recently (or is it just my memory of older events fading).
Today was fine so I went for a drive to the beach (via two diversions around closed roads) but the Piha Road was closed anyway. So I drove down to Titirangi Beach, low tide, there was a car sitting at the base of the cliffs. I don’t think it drove there or floated there, I think it came 50 feet down the cliff with a slip.

I just watched A Town Called Mercy to cheer me up. Marvellous episode.

[syzygy @thane16]

@dentarthurdent

indeed we do. Mother and son. There are times when he types and I think, other times when I don’t have a clue he’s on and other times when for 3 years he’s not on Forum at all.
but he’s still in the house -I smell his socks when I pass his room.

I believe he vacuumed it yesterday, though.

you’re right about the hellish weather. It’s worse everywhere & it’s climate change.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

I came across this interesting insight into the early days of the show. Thought I would share.

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/the-1963-doctor-who-diaries-of-waris-hussein-part-one/

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Is ‘On The Sofa’ back?   I thought it had sunk without trace.

Anyway, @blenkinsopthebrave, I took a look at Waris’s diary and now I’m hooked, down the rabbit hole we go again…

Thanks for the link!

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

In light of various goings on in London, I thought I would share this

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Sophie Okonedo rocks!

(Why couldn’t she have been the first female Doctor?    If Capaldi could do it why not Sophie?   Maybe because Liz10 was far more memorable than some snotty Pompeiian aristocrat.)

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent  @blenkinsopthebrave    Liz 10 was a very cool character and I would love to see her back on Who. She would make a great Doctor.

I am planning on watching the “Are you my Mummy?” episodes tonight. It has some scares and some laughs and Captain Jack! These episodes have some great banter if you like that kind of thing and I do. There is a happy ending and the Doctor dances, what more can you ask for. I love Eccleston’s cheeky grin as he realizes that he can dance.

stay safe

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

A couple of nights ago, Mrs Blenkinsop and I thought it would be fun to watch an old Peter Davison story from the 1980s. We chose “Warriors of the Deep” featuring the Silurians, in 4 episodes. Oh dear, it was feeble!

Two companions–Tegan, who who spent the entire four episodes being slightly whiny, and Thurlow, who was unconvincingly angry with everyone. And poor Peter Davison lacked any real sense of authority as the Doctor. I had seen a lot of Who back in those years, but remember abandoning it during the Peter Davison years. This story reminded me why. But it wasn’t Peter Davison who was at fault. It was the vision that the showrunner had for Who. And that person was, of course, John Nathan Turner. This story exemplified that. It was done like…a Roger Moore James Bond movie, but without the budget.

Who knows, I may dip into some other 1980s Who to see if I am being too harsh. Or maybe not.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@blenkinsopthebrave    I have to admit, I find many older TV episodes somewhat lacking in conviction.   I think it’s partly due to better production values these days.   I emphatically don’t think heaps of over-the-top whizz-bang is a substitute for a good story and acting, but I have to admit that insufficient or inadequate props (like some of the old Who monsters) were sufficiently rudimentary to involuntarily engage my sense of the absurd and drop me out of the story.  Daleks, though, are fairly immune to this effect.

Even  The Prisoner suffers slightly from that – not to the point of spoiling my interest, the effects still hold up just adequately, but the sense of spookiness and mystery that struck me when Six’s cottage door opened by itself or a statue turned round to scan him (and I can still remember that feeling even if I can’t re-experience it), has evaporated in these days when every shop has automatic doors and CCTV is everywhere.     Blakes Seven I have to regard with a very tolerant eye and try to immerse myself in the characters before it works for me.

As a total aside, I had a kidney stone ‘removed’ on Monday – what they do now is, they shatter it with a laser.   Just think of that – a laser powerful enough to blow apart a little soft rock that can fit way up ones insides – is that science fiction or what?    Into the Dalek stuff…

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@dentarthurdent I actually quite enjoyed the wobbly sets in old Who, and The Avengers with Diana Rigg and The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan, both when I watched them as a teenager and now. Why? Because the writing and the “vision” of them was miles ahead of American TV at the time. The problem with Who during the JNT years, was that the writing and vision informing the show had lost all that was special about early Who and The Avengers and The Prisoner. So when I criticized “Warriors of the Deep” it was not the budget per se, it was that they were not making “Doctor Who”, they were trying to emulate a Roger Moore James Bond movie. But fortunately, at least, without the double entendres.

Re: the kidney stone, I hope your recovery is speedy.

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

Well, McGoohan’s ‘Danger Man’ (Secret Agent in the US) was a spy series that occasionally featured technological gadgetry (this was just before the James Bond movies went all-out in that direction).   The other thing about DM was that, just sometimes, there would be a plot where the ‘villains’ weren’t really villains at all but innocent civilians – this was a disconcerting twist from our usual goodies-vs-baddies fare.   (And before ‘Callan’ and the like made subverting the Intelligence services fashionable).   But anyway, Danger Man was of course followed by The Prisoner which went full science fiction.   I think the idea of a sort of open prison where nobody was sure who was warders and who was prisoners, and where all the coercion was psychological, was maybe unique in TV at the time.   Very much character-driven with a strong lead actor (No 6) who could impart weight to anything he said.   And of course it benefited from the unique self-contained setting of Portmeirion with its quirky architecture.     And a degree of subtlety and moral ambiguity in that some individuals might be allies or enemies, not always sure which.   And in what other show could someone putting three lumps of sugar in their tea be an act of defiance?

Blakes 7 which came a decade later was in some ways similar – the lead actor (Avon) and the moral ambiguity in particular.   And it shared with Who the famous wobbly sets and the universal quarry landscape.

Avengers was much lighter in tone, closer to Man From Uncle or, in fact, Roger Moore James Bond, I felt.   But I did enjoy watching it.   Early Roger Moore 007’s got just too silly.   (I also watched Get Smart but – I hasten to add – only because of Agent 99 🙂

(Re the kidney stone, they left in place a stent which made things quite painful so I didn’t do much but mope for 3 days.   Took it out as instructed Thursday morning – instant relief!   Trotted happily off to watch Flatline.   99% recovered, thanks)

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

@dentarthurdent Ah, Danger Man, now that was a great show. I have all of it on dvd and we watch it regularly. Returning to the importance of show runners, it was devised and largely written by Ralph Smart, an Australian film maker, who was part of the intellectual and artistic emigration of Australians to Britain such as Clive James, Robert Hughes and others in the post-war years. Smart made a surprisingly nuanced movie about the dispossession of the Aborigines on the Australian frontier, with Chips Rafferty, called Bitter Springs. Danger Man was also surprisingly nuanced as you allude to.

All of which is a long comment to return to my belief that John Nathan Turner was a hopeless show runner who did his best to ruin Who.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@blenkinsopthebrave   I’m not very familiar with JNT.   I did just read about the Cartmel ‘Master Plan’ (on Tardis.fandom.com) which sounds as if it could have been very much more interesting.   Of course whether it would have worked that way in realisation is one of those things we’ll never know.

I agree about the importance of show runners in setting the direction and flavour of the show.   I’m hoping RTD revives the prestige or spirit (or whatever one calls it) of the show.

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