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4 February 2018 at 20:41 #63096
It seems the Testimony has some way of either releasing the Doctor’s blocked memory, or replacing the lost memories.
30 January 2018 at 11:35 #63089Yes, I’d agree with that. Looking at the scene, the TARDIS is definitely throwing the Doctor out – and the next thing we see of the TARDIS from the Doctor’s perspective is an apparent explosion and the control room full of flames.
So my guess would be that the TARDIS knew the Doctor wouldn’t survive the explosion that was about to happen, so did an emergency pilot ejection. 🙂
22 January 2018 at 19:51 #63027I remember Peter Wyngarde very fondly from Department S and Jason King, but I didn’t like Planet of Fire that much.
I did also think about Edge of Destruction, but it turns out that we already rewatched it, back in 2015.
However, we haven’t done the Dalek Invasion of Earth. 🙂
Looking at this in a more timetable type way – we probably have at least thirty weeks, given that the rumours are all for either late August (Bank Holiday) or early September.
Susan: 4 or 6 episodes
Rodan in Invasion of Time: 6 episodes
Romana I: 4-6 episodes, most stories are 4 episodes
Romana II: 4 episodes
Thalia in Arc of Infinity: 4 episodes
Flavia in The Five Doctors: 1 episode
The Rani in Time of the Rani: 4 episodes (we’ve already watched Mark of the Rani)
The Inquisitor: 2 -4 episodes
Jenny in The Doctor’s Daughter: 1 episode
The Woman/The Visionary/The Objector in End of Time: 2 episodes
Missy: The episodes which concentrate on her are usually 2 parters: 2 episodes
Hell Bent: (really only one scene, but notable as the first on-screen gender change in a regeneration) 1 episode.Total – 35 to 41 episodes. I’d say @janetteb‘s suggestion of an ‘Australian way’ watch has a lot to recommend it – if we do one or two of the longer stories daily instead of weekly, we could indeed get everyone in.
The two big contenders for ‘Australian way’ are Susan,Romana II and the Rani – on the grounds that we’ve already rewatched some of their stories.
22 January 2018 at 14:42 #63024Time to consider what we’re doing until the next episode, I think. We’ve certainly stopped talking about Twice Upon A Time.
Possible suggestion:A Female Time Lord retrospective.
We’ve watched rather a lot of Susan, but there is The Aztecs, BlenkinsoptheBrave’s favourite Hartnell. The next female Time Lord we see is Rodan (Invasion of Time), then we could pick episodes for Romana I (Mary Tamm), Romana II (Lalla Ward – and we’ve already watched City of Death), possibly Thalia and Flavia (Arc of Infinity and Five Doctors, respectively), the Rani (which has the dubious choice between Mark of the Rani and Time of the Rani).
Then there’s The Inquisitor (anything from Trial of a Time Lord) and Jenny (The Doctor’s Daughter).
End of Time includes some classic Time Ladies – The Woman (possibly the Doctor’s Mum), the batshit crazy The Visionary and The Poor Sod Who Argues With Rassilon.
Then, of course, there’s Missy. Personally, I think Dark Water/Death in Heaven.
We also have The General, in Hell Bent.
By the time we’ve got through this lot, we could be well past September, so it might be that we want to go for a selection, rather than every female Time Lady ever. Possibly ones who we hadn’t already reviewed (which would mean we omit Susan and Romana II).
12 January 2018 at 18:20 #63012A very brief excerpt from the DWM interview on the costume.
Sounds to me like they decided from a very early stage that off-the-peg wouldn’t work, tried a few bits and bobs that were off-the-peg, then said ‘no, really doesn’t work’.
I do get the ‘affordable cosplaying’ viewpoint, but personally, I’d reckon that when you have to dress an alien who is wearing a female body for the first time in several thousand years, the costume designer is entitled to go for something bespoke.
8 January 2018 at 17:43 #62993Not a fashionista myself, but I think you’re not comparing like with like. Men’s fashions tend to change rather more slowly than women’s fashions and women’s fashions are often seriously short-run.
If I grabbed a coat from a charity shop (or wherever the Whittaker Doctor steals her clothes from), I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to discover I’d lifted a short run piece of transient fashion.
Which may be the look that the design team is going for. 🙂
8 January 2018 at 13:18 #62991She wasn’t wearing earrings during the regeneration sequence, but it looked like they’d styled the hair to cover the ears (and the presumably already made piercings).
In a Whoniverse where nanowotsits can incorporate gas-masks into your face, I’m sure they have self-piercing earrings. 🙂
1 January 2018 at 20:31 #62933Looks like people have spotted the TARDIS crashing…
31 December 2017 at 16:17 #62916Okay, Northern accent theory:
In this episode, the Capaldi Doctor is frequently called the ‘Doctor of War’. This, of course, reminds him of the War Doctor.
When he regenerates away from the War Doctor into the Eccleston Doctor, he developed a Northern accent. So, when he regenerates away from the memory of being called ‘the Doctor of War’, she unconsciously connects ‘being Northern’ with ‘NOT being the War Doctor’.
Remember: every planet has a North. 😉
31 December 2017 at 01:17 #62907Yes, I have tried the Bay of Biscay. In fact, I lived there for a while, when I was a child. 😉
If we’re going for the Rough Seas Hall of Fame, the Irish Sea has a well deserved reputation for snap gales, high waves, and flying if at all possible…
30 December 2017 at 23:18 #62905Apologies if I’ve sounded too harsh, or too tetchy. Of course you can state your opinions, even if everyone else disagrees. Heck, I keep stating my opinion that the Moffat-Capaldi period was an experiment that failed, and people disagree with me all the time. 🙂
But I really do think that – while we have exactly two scenes and one line from Jodie Whittaker – any questions, comments or ‘frank and robust discussions’ about a woman playing the Doctor ought to be in The Maldovarium forum. And if you want to respond to new posters (and tell them that they’re not alone), you should direct them to The Maldovarium.
Currently, we can only have a general discussion about women playing male roles, or whether a woman playing this particular role is either a form of political correctness or a valid experiment. And the pub seems the best place for that sort of discussion.
Because we’ve seen very little of our female Doctor as yet – and most of the forums are about the programme as seen.
29 December 2017 at 20:26 #62865@karenmarie
It worked! It worked!
Welcome to the forum. 🙂
29 December 2017 at 14:26 #62854Agreed.
The place to discuss women priests, women soldiers or woman Doctors 😉 – or any aspect of women taking on previously male roles – is the Pub.
29 December 2017 at 13:21 #62851Ha!
That reminds me of getting on the Calmac ferry to Iona one time and discovering that every single one of the crew were wearing hard hats. 😉
Fortunately, it’s only a ten minute crossing, but it was certainly a bit … bouncy.
29 December 2017 at 13:10 #62849Within Moffat’s Whonivese, ‘soul’ appears to be separate from ‘recorded memories’ – the classic case being Auton Rory. Then there’s the Gangers, where the entire episode is about beings with duplicate memories and duplicate brains – and whether those duplicates are ‘us’.
Moffat’s answer comes from philosophy, not biology’s current reductionist phase. You can have a philosophical thought experiment (or a Doctor Who script) where memories, even physical brain structure are precisely duplicated. Teleports, anyone? The question is, is that duplicate ‘me’, or is there something else that makes ‘me’?
Moffat goes for ‘something else’, but then suggests the ‘something else’ can be transferred from the old body to the new. Auton Rory, despite the extra programming, IS Rory. Virtual River IS River. Gangers, however, are themselves, presumably because they duplicate a still-existing ‘me’.
So the Doctor’s doubt about Bill is within his previous experience – which tells him that a collection of recorded memories could be just a duplicate, manipulated by something with an ulterior motive. Or, like Auton Rory, she could be the real Bill, in a different form. But he doesn’t know, and he’s just seen her die. And he’s in a raw enough state to not believe in the miracle of her survival.
29 December 2017 at 01:05 #62831I was thinking that, because the Testimony have time travel, they might have a’spoiler’ cut-out available.
Bill didn’t remember what happened to Heather or why she wasn’t with her because that happened (from the Doctor’s point of view) after this meeting. She’s avoided any possible spoilers by not remembering the ‘future’.
28 December 2017 at 23:40 #62822You can see why none of the modern Doctors last more than three seasons-plus-specials when you compare them at the beginning and end of their run. I swear, they all of them look ten years older, not three or four.
Not to mention the back operations, knee operations…
28 December 2017 at 23:32 #62820The ring was still Peter Capaldi, so that would be Steven Moffat. Moffat gave Chris Chibnall the same handover that RTD gave him; Steven Moffat’s script (and era) ended with his Doctor’s regeneration.
Chris Chibnall’s era started with Jodie Whittaker’s scene – so he wrote his (female) Doctor starting her career with the TARDIS throwing her out. 🙂
27 December 2017 at 12:10 #62779Yes, the regeneration scene (and a couple of other brief scenes) survive. The regeneration scene survives because the children’s programme Blue Peter did a piece on Doctor Who – and included that clip from Tenth Planet. When it came to the Great BBC Wiping of Tapes, Blue Peter’s formidable editor, Biddy Baxter, was having none of it. Blue Peter was going to have a complete archive. Or else.
Trust me, when Biddy Baxter said ‘or else’, everyone at the BBC would say ‘Complete archives? Yes, of course. We can definitely see the need for a complete record of a children’s magazine programme.’ 😉
Pity that she wasn’t producing Doctor Who, really, but at least she saved all the clips that were shown on Blue Peter – especially the Hartnell/Troughton Regeneration.
@countscarlioni
There’s an interview with the vision mixer for the regeneration on the Tenth Planet DVD. One of the things she found, when they were experimenting with the mix from one face to wipe out to new face for the regeneration effect, was that Bill Hartnell and Pat Troughton’s cheekbones had the same size and shape. So she focused on those to try and give the impression that, despite the change, this was still the same man underneath.27 December 2017 at 01:00 #62763I don’t think the ring was ever specifically defined as the Doctor’s wedding ring. It was designed to hide Peter Capaldi’s wedding ring, because he didn’t really want to be constantly taking it off.
I took it as a moment like Matt Smith removing the bow tie. The ring was the only part of the Capaldi Doctor’s costume that stayed throughout. It’s a symbol that this Doctor’s time had finished – the one thing he has constantly worn – no longer fits.
Yes, the TARDIS very definitely positioned herself to chuck the new Doctor out. She was also ringing the Cloister Bell from the moment of regeneration.
So either she knows this one is going to be ‘unlucky Thirteen’ (even though Jodie Whittaker is really Fourteen) or the Capaldi Doctor held back his regeneration for too long, and she had to eject the Doctor before the interior exploded.
If the latter, I expect a mid air rescue by an exploding TARDIS in the first few moments of the new series. Either that, or the next thing to be thrown out is equivalent of a parachute.
26 December 2017 at 23:25 #62754I should have put ‘villain’ in inverted commas. I meant Inverted commas. Blasted Internet… 🙂
Jodie Whittaker’s natural accent is from Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire, which is a fairly strong accent even by Yorkshire standards. Most people in the UK ‘hear’ a Yorkshire accent as friendly, honest and somewhat bloody-minded. Think Sean Bean.
It may be that she thought the new Doctor’s accent needed to be obvious from the start, so didn’t tone it down to accommodate the ears of those poor unfortunates who were not privileged to be born in God’s Own County. 😀
26 December 2017 at 02:57 #62739Why the but?
Because Doctor Who is usually more plot-orientated, but this Christmas morning it got out of bed as a character piece.
Also, because ‘and’ sounded crap.
Merry Boxing Day. Nice to see you back. 🙂
26 December 2017 at 01:16 #62735Okay. I liked it, on the whole, but it was what you’d call a character piece. The only real villain was the Doctor(s) himself, preferring to die rather than change. The TARDIS delivers him to his earlier self, and the resulting paradox diverts The Captain’s return to his own time zone. The Testimony are simply trying to put things right while doing a bit of historical research.
I’ve been thinking for a couple of months now that Capaldi’s era would have fitted in far better if Chris Eccleston had agreed to do the Fiftieth and Capaldi had been the ‘final’ Doctor. The Moffat-Smith era felt like a golden age; the Moffat-Capaldi era never quite worked for me. The darkness of his era would have been much more suited to a Doctor coming to the end of his life. As it was, the darkness felt – not fake, but like Moffat had got an idea that he didn’t want to give up, and couldn’t acknowledge that it was now in the wrong place. It’s like those scenes that writers love, and which should be cut because they now don’t fit into the final draft – only applied to an entire era.
The Moffat-Capaldi era felt like Moffat had decided that he’d ‘done’ comedy, and was now going to have a go at tragedy – only tragedies are ultimately about endings. But having to plonk the wonderful John Hurt into the list of regenerations meant that the post-Smith era was now in the position of a story about beginning again; a new regeneration cycle. It was no longer an ending. It was no longer a tragedy.
Having placed the Doctor in a new regeneration cycle – which implies more comedy – Moffat gave us a story about self-doubt, death and endings instead. Essentially, a story about a bloke who is handed eternal life, and who decides he’d rather commit suicide. 😉 And in order to persuade him that his new lives aren’t worth living, the poor sod has to undergo every torture the fertile mind of Steven Moffat could devise.
Anyway, we will see. It may be that the Moffat-Capaldi era is one that improves with time; one of those stories that you only really like on the second reading. Or it may be a marmite era. We’ll see.
I don’t like marmite, either. 😀
25 December 2017 at 23:48 #62734Yes, the TARDIS was ringing the Cloister Bell during the Regeneration, and then seemed to not only open the doors, but turn herself so that the Doctor had no choice but to fall out.
Given the shot of an interior which is seen, as the Doctor is falling, in a mass of flames – it may be that the TARDIS has ejected the Doctor for her own safety.
I think the Chibnall part of the regeneration scene is a very deliberate shout-out to Moffat’s part of the Tennant/Smith regeneration. New show-runner, new Doctor, new TARDIS interior, new companions – just as with Moffat, this is a completely new era.
24 December 2017 at 22:26 #62720To everyone: I’m dashing between services (that’s what comes of having Christmas Eve on a Sunday), but just to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a happy Who-watching session – whenever it may be. 🙂
19 December 2017 at 11:21 #62641Yes, I’ve seen it on Twitter. I don’t think it’s on the official UK BBC site, but it may have been the US publicity people who released it, as a teaser.
It could be just a nice bit of Photoshop, of course. There’d be that shot of Peter Capaldi on the TARDIS floor from The Doctor Falls, then you could meld his face with Jodie Whittaker’s.
17 December 2017 at 22:19 #62634I’m curious as to what the audience knew of what would happen before this episode aired – did anyone in the general audience know that this was the last time they’d see Hartnell as the Doctor? Was it a ‘big deal’ as an episode? Was Troughton known as joining the cast?
Judging by the archive copy of Radio Times, the audience could easily have missed hearing about the transfer between Hartnell and Troughton. The front cover is all about the return of the Daleks.
16 December 2017 at 23:57 #62629The DVD has the animated version as standard, and the stills reconstruction as an extra. Right decision, I think. Having watched both, I found that the animation was a much better continuation of the story, while the stills/ video reconstruction was of mainly historical interest. It is, as @craig says, fascinating to see the remains of Hartnell’s last regular Doctor Who performance. Though I’m going to be nerdy here, and point out that his actual last performance (and my only childhood memory of Hartnell’s Doctor) was in The Three Doctors.
But fascinating as it was, I found it easier to follow the animation than the stills. The animation clearly builds on the stills and the remaining video, and the animators seem to have tried to catch some of the actors’ mannerisms. They’ve made decisions that I disagree with – the Cybermen, for example, with black holes for eyes – but the sixties style works well, as does keeping it in black and white.
On to the story: Ben succeeded in sabotaging the rocket! Yay! Gen. Cutler, however, has taken the opportunity for some serious scenery chewing before he gets shot by the Cybermen. We also see an early example of ‘The Doctor Offer’, where the villains are given an opportunity to live peacefully.
Everyday Sixties sexism. Ben gets to work on radioactive Z bombs, Polly gets to be a hostage. And scream a lot. Was it beyond the wit of the (male) scriptwriters and producer to at least have her try to escape/sabotage the Cybership/provide the Doctor with important information? As @janetteb says, it’s particularly annoying when we’ve just been watching Barbara.
Mondas Cybermen are more vulnerable to radiation. That seemed to be a trope of the fifties and sixties – I remember Asimov’s robots having the same problem.
How do you get rid of an entire invasion force of Cybermen when they need a nice new planet? Make them dependent on energy from Mondas, so they all collapse and the story can finish in time for the problem to switch to the Doctor’s mysterious weakness. And the TARDIS is doing Weird Stuff as well, but the Doctor manages to let Ben and Polly in before… What? Because back when this episode first broadcast, nobody had a clue what had just happened.
A lot of people, including some of the actors in this story, rate the final moments of The Tenth Planet as the moment Doctor Who became a never ending story. 🙂
15 December 2017 at 18:36 #62617The audio commentary for Episode 3 is actually the audio commentary for Episodes 3 and 4, since the BBC decided not to do a commentary for the animated episode. Chris Dunham joins the commentary (Radio Technician, Eps 3 &4). I will confine myself to the Ep. 3 comments.
Cybermen: there was some discussion of using the actors’ own voices, but it was decided that the helmets would make it too difficult to get a clear recording. No ADR, of course; even Roy Skelton had to be on-set, just off camera, recording the dialogue as-live.
Doctor Who in this ep. was played by Gordon Craig. Chris Dunham notes how impressed he was by the way the Doctor’s part was redistributed and the actors took up the baton.
Apparently this is a historic episode for Doctor Who. This is where the series gives birth to its very first ventilation shaft – and what a bouncing, healthy, large ventilation shaft it is. 😉 While Who was low budget, the designer notes that it didn’t feel it, because at that point practically everything else was low budget too. TV was very new, the designers had come in from art school, theatre, shop window design, anywhere. It was all very experimental and exciting, but there wasn’t a lot of money floating around.
Much praise for the late David Dodimead, who appears to have basically stepped up to play the ‘main hero’ for this episode.
Anneke Wills is firm in insisting that the coffee was merely a ploy for Polly. She was wheedling her way in to persuading Barclay to sabotage the Z-bomb. She repeats that she had no idea at the time that Bill Hartnell was so ill – no one mentioned it to the actors. Michael Craze bore the brunt, it seems, with Hartnell accusing him of forgetting lines (when it was Hartnell himself). Hartnell was always very ‘gentlemanly’ to her. However, while Michael may have had reasons to remember this story less than fondly – as well as suffering Bill Hartnell’s bad temper, the artificial snow got up his nose, got jammed and nearly killed him – he at least met his future wife. She was the floor manager. 🙂
12 December 2017 at 16:22 #62609Yeah, I felt the same way after watching Attack The Block. The scene where she had to sneak past the alien to get into the flat, especially. Same thing when a very young Matt Smith gave his ‘introducing’ interview.
In Matt’s case, there was a moment of mischief when I could see ‘the Doctor’ peep out of his eyes; in Jodie’s case there was a moment of grim determination – when I could see ‘the Doctor’ doing exactly this scene. 🙂
9 December 2017 at 19:20 #62606The special effect for the spaceship formation looks suspiciously like a black backcloth with holes cut in it, mounted on a circular frame so they can turn it round, then backlit.
William Hartnell isn’t in this episode at all; his stand-in is playing ‘collapsing Doctor’. That’s why we don’t see the face. It was Acute Bronchitis, it seems, and he must have been pretty ill – Anneke Wills remembered that he’d really wanted to give a good performance for his last story. While, as @craig says, there were plans in place for a possible collapse, it doesn’t seem to have been an entirely smooth process – more Gerry Davis and Derek Martinus holding things together by the skin of their teeth.
I do love the little bit with Robert Beatty, where he starts talking to Cutler Jr. as if he’s on the phone to him, then visibly remembers that he’s Gen. Cutler talking to Lt. Cutler. Even if he does continue to call him ‘Son’. I’m guessing that Cutler Jr. is only seen on monitor because they’re reusing the two astronaut set, and want to make Zeus Five look like a solo ship.
Geneva is also fun, with everyone rushing around trying not to look as if the budget can only stretch to one speaking part and one cough-and-a-spit.
William Hartnell’s lines were split between Ben (‘the Doctor said’) and Dr. Barclay.
Ah, Polly finally gets to do something. Make the coffee. 😉 In fairness, she does then make an excellent job of persuading Barclay to be sneaky in defying Gen. Cutler, as well as pointing out that it may possibly be Cutler Jr’s life against the lives of millions. Later she rises to the dizzy heights of hiding under a blanket, pretending to be Ben.
The ventilation shaft seems to be a failure of communication between designer and script- or possibly Barclay’s lines here were originally Hartnell’s, and the Doctor would’ve been too old to clamber through them. In which case it’s simply everyone making the best of a bad job, and hoping no one will notice that the shaft could’ve taken Barclay easily.
No wonder the Doctor will invent the Sonic Screwdriver a few stories later, the number of times people talk about screwdrivers in this story.
May I just say that the Cybership is a beautiful bit of model-work? Lovely design. So is the Z Bomb, with its retractable gantry. Also a very nice bit of stunt work in this episode, with Ben’s somersault over the railing.
As @wolfweed says, Derek Martinus manages to keep the tension going despite the minor handicap of losing his lead actor four days before filming. 😉 The final countdown is used to great effect, with the numbers flashing up onscreen as … the credits roll. Good cliffhanger.
9 December 2017 at 17:20 #62605Audio commentary time
The Cybermen are rated ‘terrifying’ by the actors. The costume was like a very tight tracksuit covered in plastic – very, very hot. There was some Cyber-fainting.
Anneke Wills notes that the crew were all dedicated to making Who work. The designer talks through the design process: read the script, discuss with director, produce drawings and models for the director. Once the look is finalised, produce plans and drawings for the people building the sets. They had three weeks for the design phase, and one day to build the set in the studio.
One aspect of the modern Cybermen that is preferred by Donald Van der Maaten (Cyberman) is the choreography – the metallic, robotic movement. These Cybermen have a very human movement – while it makes them spookier, the modern ones seem more dangerous to him.
Some discussion of the then current rehearsal period/one day recording versus modern on-set rehearse-record. The conclusion is that a rehearsal period is more fun for the actors, but doesn’t really impact on the performance seen by the audience. Simply a different method of working, made essential back in 1966 by the sheer expense of video tape and only being allowed a maximum of four filming stops. The actors had to be able to give an ‘as-live’ performance, which needs rehearsing as a whole.
Donald van der Maaten has two claims to fame – being one of the very first Cybermen, and appearing in the final stories for both William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton.
Earl Cameron’s role as Zeus Four’s commander is noted. Star Trek, incidentally, was airing in the States but wouldn’t make it over the Pond for another three years – so Cameron’s black astronaut was very much a first for UK.
Some discussion of William Hartnell- this would be his last full episode. Again, I get that distinction between those who knew him before he was ill, and those who didn’t. Hartnell’s gift (according to Alan White) was looking like he wasn’t acting. Alan White, who’d worked with Hartnell before, is perfectly happy to say how good an actor he was, and sounds like he liked him. But talk to the two who were youngsters back then (Anneke and Chris), and they clearly found him nasty, terrifying and do not remember him fondly. There’s a very, very awkward pause when Chris Matthews is asked if Hartnell was a good actor – this story is, I think, the only time he worked with Hartnell.
4 December 2017 at 12:25 #62581Aaaand the ‘everyday Sixties sexism’ comment.
Good as the story itself is, it’s a very bad example of the way to tackle a ‘male-only, semi-military’ setting. While it’s perfectly reasonable to have a male only base in Antarctica in 1986 (a lot of countries still see it as a difficult environment for women, and even the mixed gender bases run about 3:1 male:female), there’s been no attempt made to rebalance the genders in the non-Antarctic roles. During Verity Lambert’s era, I’d lay odds the Director in Geneva would have been a woman and the minor role of the Technician male or female. Here, all the main roles go to male actors – except Polly, who’s built-in.
Even Polly’s role could be seen as the stereotyped ‘women’s role’. She pleads for the lives of the astronauts, showing the ‘caring’ side of human beings. In terms of action, she has had very little to do apart from hold William Hartnell’s hand. Furthermore, there are no girlfriends or wives mentioned. Apart from the pin-ups in episode 1, women are basically invisible. The astronauts appear to be bachelors, Cutler’s son doesn’t seem to have a mother. Invisible.
Compare this to the Verity Lambert era, and while the story is great, the roles for women are very circumscribed indeed. If you compare it with the more modern Cold War, which has a similar ‘male-only, military’ setting (and in fact only has one female part – Clara ), you can see the difference. Gattis didn’t have any other female actors, but he made sure that the sailors had wives and girlfriends, and one of the major off-screen presences is almost a mirror image of Gen Cutler/Cutler Jr. Except that Gen Skaldak and the presumably dead Skaldak Jr are father and daughter. Clara is also playing a much more active role, negotiating, making suggestions and reminding Skaldak very much of his ‘young officer’ daughter.
I wait to see if Polly gets to do anything exciting in the later two episodes.
3 December 2017 at 12:18 #62574Why does it have to be a female? No one has come up with an adequate answer
Yeah, they have. But it’s not adequate *to you*. No answer can be adequate *to you* because you don’t want a female Doctor.
Can you just accept that gender-switching the Master to Missy was a magnificent success? And that earlier, the Sarah Jane Adventures showed that tiny Whovians were perfectly happy to accept a female lead in a Whoniverse adventure? And that, given the above evidence that the Whoniverse doesn’t demand a man in charge, the new production team have decided that they’d like to start with an experiment?
The experiment being a female Doctor.
If we never experiment with a female Doctor, we’ll never know whether the Doctor *must* be male – or whether it’s simply that we were too scared to try anything other than a white, British, male.
2 December 2017 at 23:05 #62568The Mondasian Cybermen are seriously creepy; what with the human eyes peering out of the helmet, and the human hands that are impervious to frostbite, I don’t think the series hit this height of body horror until that Cyber-head ejected a decayed skull, in Pandorica Opens. I think I prefer the sing-song to the later, more robotic tones; though I can see why seventies producers preferred to avoid Zippy.
World Enough And Time doesn’t help, of course. Add in that they’re in constant pain. They just don’t care.
Interesting that Robert Beatty plays the different tone to his astronauts for all it’s worth. A man, possibly, completely focussed on getting his people back safely from their mission. The feelings of the people on the ground don’t matter; they’re not in danger. It makes him very slightly less of an idiot- though the fact that he spends most of the episode peacefully snoozing might also make him seem more intelligent. 😉
Cybermen do not see the difference between the people in danger that you can, potentially help and the people all over the world that you can’t. It’s kind of the ultimate in equality; an equality that does not care. And everyone is equal because they’ve been made equal, no race, cultural or even gender differences. In that light, it’s disturbing that they’re obviously trying NOT to kill the humans. For what purpose?
The scientists, who aren’t soldiers, have no shame in playing for time. Still trying to save the astronauts- who keep trying to save themselves even as Zeus 4 disintegrated around them. A total contrast to the Cybermen, who are calmly using their deaths as a teaching moment.
In light of later Who history, Ben’s “imagine trying to tackle one of them geezers with a screwdriver” goes down as ‘most unintentionally ironic line ever‘. But his humanity is demonstrated when he is nauseous after killing the Cybermen. Ben is more human than General Cutler; who doesn’t care. Except about his astronauts, and about his son.
2 December 2017 at 15:05 #62560Yes, definitely a more big-screen ‘look’ for series 11.
1 December 2017 at 23:02 #62544The DVD has arrived. It’s rather spiffy; not only does it have both the animated AND the stills reconstruction of Episode 4, it has a ‘making of’ documentary, the immediately post Who Hartnell interview, plus interviews and discussion pieces with several Who companions.
And, of course, an audio commentary. They seem to have managed most of the surviving cast members; Anneke Wills, Earl Cameron and Alan White (the two astronauts), Donald van der Maaten (Cyberman) and Chris Matthews, who had his first TV role, Radar Technician. They also managed an interview with the designer, which is intercut with the commentary.
Generally the cast seemed to have really enjoyed this as ‘something different’, cutting edge. They were proud of it. Earl Cameron was very happy (if a bit surprised) to be asked to play an astronaut. Back in the 60’s, as I noted above, just the idea of a black astronaut was unusual.
A lot of the outside was filmed at Ealing – William Hartnell had a stand-in. One thing that’s very noticeable is that while the surviving original cast (William Russell, Carole Ann Ford) obviously recall Hartnell very fondly, by this time Hartnell seems to have been not just ‘irritable’ but frankly terrifying. Anneke remembers that she and Michael were very close partly because they needed to support each other when Hartnell ‘went off on one’. Alan White, who knew Hartnell from previous jobs, also remembers him fondly and talks about what a good actor he was. The impression I’m getting is of a contrast between people who only knew him in this later stage of Who, and those who knew him before he became ill.
The set had been partly ‘borrowed’ from Pinewood, where they were filming something futuristic.
Robert Beatty (General) was a big star at the time. He was also a mate of Hartnell, so some of the scenes were figured out between the two of them. Kit Pedler, the writer, was very hands-on and attended rehearsals to help out with the science.
Peter Kindred was the designer – pleased to be asked to do Who because it was his first ‘proper’ job after finishing his trainee designer stage. He was going for a realistic, rather than ‘SF’, look; Cape Canaverel style. He wanted a ‘lonely little base’ in the middle of nowhere – hence Ealing, which allowed space for wider shots.
Peter also remembered how difficult Hartnell was by then – he didn’t know at the time Hartnell was ill, but remembers him as very, very bad tempered. He had the distinct impression everyone was looking forward to Patrick Troughton coming in; he also thought the idea of regeneration was very clever, very original.
The organic hands of the Cybermen were a costume error – the costumer forgot the gloves. Then they decided it looked rather good, especially given that they were supposed to be in the Antarctic, so used make up instead.
29 November 2017 at 15:09 #62527I really enjoyed that clip. Gawd, yes, the JNT ‘disco Who’ theme. And that bloody wink, which I believe even McCoy himself disliked.
Hope life gets better for you.
29 November 2017 at 15:05 #62526One tiny piece of good news: I’m now a NaNoWriMo Winner. That is, I’ve managed to write 50,376 words during November. 😉
And I have reached ‘The End’ on my first draft. And it looks okay; needs a lot of work, obviously, especially since I seem to have outlined several scenes rather than writing them and other scenes are in entirely the wrong place…
… but there’s the bones of a novel there.
😀
29 November 2017 at 14:59 #62525Happy 16th Birthday, Thane!
29 November 2017 at 14:57 #62524Paisley is not exactly far from Glascow.
No, it isn’t. On the other hand, Chester and Flint are about as far apart, and they’re in different UK countries. 🙂
As you say, accents can change over very short distances in the UK. Rochdale is about as far away from Manchester as Paisley is from Glasgow, and the two accents are quite distinct. Generally, big cities like Glasgow or Liverpool or Manchester will have their own accent, and the surrounding areas will have theirs.
28 November 2017 at 09:55 #62513David Tennant was born in Bathgate, but brought up in Paisley. So his accent is West Scotland, but not Glasgow.
27 November 2017 at 20:35 #62507Okay. General Cutler is an idiot.
In fact, he’s such an idiot that the script has a line in it (possibly inserted by the script editor or producer) where one of the supporting characters mentions how unbearably awful the General is. The guy is an official idiot. His job in the script appears to be to rush around shouting at people instead of asking them sensible questions, refuse to let them explain what’s going on, then shout at them some more when they try and explain. I mean, seriously, three people turn up at an Antarctic base, and you don’t want to know little things like ‘how the heck did they get here without anyone noticing’? A mysterious extra planet turns up and you don’t wonder if your mysterious visitors have something to do with this?
Yup, Official Idiot.
Cheers for Earl Cameron, not only playing a black astronaut, but playing the Captain of Zeus Four. In 1966, one month after Star Trek had daringly posited a black communications officer who was never (in the original series) allowed to take the command chair. I mentioned Earl on the news thread; he attained the grand old age of 100 in August. He was one of the generation of black actors, mostly immigrants, who managed to break the colour bar on British TV, moving from specifically ‘black’ parts to roles that – like the part of Williams – were not racially based.
Considering how ill William Hartnell was, he does a very good job. I really enjoyed his performance; though I did note that he has relatively little to do. This is, it seems, because by this point they were trying to reduce his workload.
The snowscape of Antarctica is pretty good for the day, but I kept wincing at the seeming lack of knowledge of just how very, very cold it would have been. Polly’s very fashionable handwarmer must have had magic qualities (possibly TARDIS designed), because it keeps her hands unfrostbitten even when she takes them out – and the metal in her ring would’ve cold-welded to her hand if she’d really been waving it around in Antarctica. I was much more tolerant of the dodgy ‘space’ acting, because this was 1966 and human spaceflight was only about five and a half years old. No live TV broadcasts from space stations to base the movements on – the actors seemed to be trying to imitate ‘weightlessness’ and later managing a good guess at the effects of acceleration.
This first episode is interesting in that it seems to set up the ‘real’ villain as General Cutler. Yes, we get the invasion of the Mondasian Cybermen at the very end, but while ‘The Tenth Planet’ is the mystery, Cutler, throughout the episode, is the real antagonist.
And he’s an idiot. Did I mention that? 😉
26 November 2017 at 15:08 #62489I think Wolfweed took the words right out of my mouth.
Really sorry to hear that, and I hope the lawyers manage to get you a good settlement – and that you find something new and interesting very shortly. All the best.
25 November 2017 at 14:21 #62480@craig and @jimthefish
Also, I think Spoilers (3) has reached its limit.
25 November 2017 at 14:20 #62479Yes, someone tweeted that one of the crew members mentioned South Africa. At the time, I thought the crew member was taking the p*ss, but possibly Chibbers has done a ‘less episodes/same total budget’ deal, which would allow them to use South African locations.
25 November 2017 at 14:17 #62478@craig and @jimthefish
Hi, Craig. I realise that Doctor Who may be the last thing on your mind right now, but if we are to watch Tenth Planet before Twice Upon A Time, a forum needs to be created either this week or next week. There are now only five Saturdays before Christmas, including today.
Possibly Jim could create one?
Pip23 November 2017 at 11:30 #62463I note that Whittaker has the kind of body shape that can actually carry off the Capaldi costume, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Chibnall does the same thing Moffat did, and have the final costume reveal as a statement about the kind of Doctor she’s going to be. The Smith Doctor spent most of The Eleventh Hour in the Tennant Doctor’s costume.
Though now my mind is vaguely wondering whether, if so, Time Lord underwear is programmed to regenerate with the wearer (switching to more gender-appropriate undies), whether poor old Jodie Whittaker is going to spend most of the first episode bra-less, or whether there’s something about the Capaldi Doctor that we were never told… 😈
23 November 2017 at 11:24 #62462You registered just to say that? Gosh.
20 November 2017 at 22:19 #62447There’s a perfectly good argument that only TV is ‘canon’, but even TV has alternate explanations for the same events.
The Webisode ‘Night of the Doctor’ is canon, but references the Audio Companions for the McGann Doctor – so those Companions are also canon. You’ll have to figure out which of the McGann Doctor’s Audio Adventures happened in the same time line as Night of the Doctor, and which happened in alternate time lines, but the BBC has agreed that he definitely met those Companions.
Personally I long ago divided things into ‘events’ and ‘stories’. In the TV episodes we, the audience, see events in the Doctors’ lives. Time may have been rewritten since 🙂 but in the world of the Doctor, they happened. The Audios are also ‘events’, but some are events that happened in alternate time lines.
The novels and comics (and other ancillary media) are ‘stories’. They might be retellings of genuine events, or they might be stories about the Doctor. If they’re stories, they may have happened – but to a different Doctor, in a different way.
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