@thane16

in the social messaging of Chibbers I thought it was overtly political – except I understand that’s both essential (plays & stories were always this) & part of Who’s rich history but something about the execution of their messages was clunky or unsubtle….

Well, you said in three lines what I took a page to do.   The ‘social messaging…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Chibz’ ‘history’ eps made me cringe because of the inaccuracies in the ones I do know a little about, which leads me to doubt his accuracy on those I don’t know about. (I stole that from somebody). I have to admit I didn’t watch Rosa because I was sure it was going to be a depressingly simplistic stereotype of white men bad, black w…[Read more]

@thane16 Um yes, that Edit function does seem a bit – erratic. I try not to use it. If I have to, and I’m feeling cautious, I just copy the whole post into a text editor first, that way if something goes wrong I’ve got a copy on my system.
And long comments, I do use a text editor and just paste the whole thing into the edit box.
I think the…[Read more]

@thane16    I do hope you didn’t have to retype the entire post.   I should have offered to fish it out of my inbox and send it to you.   I just didn’t think of it.

I’ll comment on your points tomorrow.   It’s 3-34 a.m. and Mrs D reminded me it’s about bedtime.   (I’m retired so don’t have to worry about getting up in the morning.   Mrs D is…[Read more]

@thane16  syzygy    I see a long post from you in my mailbox (addressed to demtarthurdent) and I see your one-line correction just above my last comment, but i can’t see your long post in this forum.   Not sure what happened there.

@ps1l0v3y0u   I think what you call ‘bloke adjuncts’ is simply within the normal range of reactions of one human towards another human(oid).   The premise of the show is that the Doctor is the Main Character (and happened to be a bloke).   The Companion was, like all hero’s companions, a supporting character – except that, from ‘Rose’ onwar…[Read more]

@syzygy @thane16 Um.

I think @ps1l0v3y0u meant that women could sometimes be written as “another bloke” as opposed to a well thought out female character. If I’m wrong please chip in.

I’m not sure what that means. Well, if they got drunk with the other – girls, cracked juvenile bad-taste jokes, and went out on the pull on Saturday night, I guess t…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u

Some people were annoyed that Moff’s companions were obvious bloke adjuncts. They have a point. I’ sure Bill ‘molested by a puddle’ also had some people frothing. 

Not sure what ‘bloke adjuncts’ means.   They were normal heterosexual people (like, the 90%) who naturally had boyfriends (or, in the case of Bill, girl-puddl…[Read more]

@whohar   I was aware that in devoting a couple of column inches to the Bechtel test I was maybe giving it far more significance than it (IMO) merited.   But that’s one of those can’t-win things.

I do like strong female characters who don’t just stand on a chair and scream when they see a mouse.   (Though I did have a female acquaintance last…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u The Bechdel Test sounds like barely relevant hokum to me. ‘At least two named women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man’?

Well, ‘Alien’ would fail that and the hero was a woman, ffs! So would ‘Hell Bent’ (I don’t think Clara and Ashildr talked to each other about anything other than the Doctor, although…[Read more]

@syzygy I do agree about UNIT’s new mega-HQ. Makes MI6’s Ziggurat look like a garden shed. It also has (in my opinion) a really dominating and intimidating appearance, more like CyberHQ than UNIT.    (As an aside, do Cybermen drive Cybertrucks?)

And I, like you, was also disappointed in the companions, or rather the treatement of them. I re…[Read more]

Rather more interesting (because more exclusively Who-related) and briefer than that one I linked to before,  Youtube just served me up an episode of the Whoniverse show  (which seems to be a little bit less kitsch than the fan show they used to add in as extras on Moff-era DVDs).    But anyway, it is the Moff, answering some reasonably int…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I agree Small Gods was satire.   I usually like that.  I just found Vorbis too close to reality for comfort.

All the other books are satire too, of course.   And I’m certainly not saying Small Gods was bad, I’d sooner read it than, say, anything by a less talented writer  (which is most of them).

@ps1l0v3y0u

You don’t need patience, or any commitment, to read the Discworld books.   Any more than you need a commitment to watch an isolated episode of Doctor Who.   The ‘recommended reading lists’ give the impression, possibly inadvertently, that each ‘series’ is one continuing story.  This is just not the case.   Although many of the charac…[Read more]

@janetteb I’m currently reading Lords and Ladies, which is of course a ‘witches’ one. Though my preference is for Nanny Ogg, which probably says something about my moral character 🙂

I’ve got the Hogfather movie on DVD, on my ‘rewatch soon’ pile. I’m a little surprised a lot more Discworld movies weren’t made. I guess with the wide cast of…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   I guess Clara the Dalek only required Jenna’s presence when she was actually visible inside the Dalek.   The rest of the scene would have used a stand-in Dalek.   So with that, and one other Clara-lite episode which Moff mentioned but i don’t recall, I guess that amounted to one Clara episode saved.

And it appears the Dalek syste…[Read more]

@whohar

I think ‘Fifth Elephant’ may well have been derived from ‘5th Element’. It’s very common in literature and drama, I think it’s perfectly legitimate and a nice nod to the original work.
There are plenty of examples in Doctor Who. ‘Spyfall’ obviously comes from ‘Skyfall’ (James Bond). ‘Empress of Mars’ is very obviously a tribute to Edgar…[Read more]

@janetteb Pleased to see you’re a Pratchett fan too. For some reason, to me the other work that most resembled the Discworld is Doug Adams Hitch-hiker quintet. Notwithstanding that Discworld is explicitly fantasy and Hitchhiker is explicitly Science Fiction. But there’s just something about the situations and characters that make them ‘feel’…[Read more]