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@ps1l0v3y0u Thanks. That’s a lot to digest.

The reason I mentioned ‘improv’ was sparked by ‘On the Turning Away’. That has four sung verses, followed by nine guitar solo ‘verses’ (not sure what to call them, I expect there’s a word for them). Except that sometimes there’s eleven in the solo, or even thirteen. (There are plenty of videos on Youtube to choose from). I haven’t listened attentively to see if the backing is doing more than just ‘keeping the beat’, but I suspect they are.

You’ve reminded me to go looking on Youtube for earlier Floyd works. (So much easier these days when one doesn’t have to physically visit a record store or tolerate the vagaries of radio DJ’s!)

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@winston Your experience with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was similar to mine with ‘Pulse’ (which just happened to incorporate the whole of DSOTM as the second half, although the musical arrangements were different in many places).

In fact I’ve noticed there are many different versions of tracks on the Net, some official, some bootleg from various concerts, but all of them different. This goes for Pink Floyd and also Dire Straits, the other band I’m most familiar with, but I assume it goes for other bands as well. So much so that if I want to nominate my favourite track I have to also include the time and place of the performance.

I suppose they must have ‘composed’ and rehearsed each different variation before each tour. Though how the performers manage to make the music sound fresh and vital on the fifteenth consecutive night is something I’m in awe of.

@ps1l0v3y0u My familiarity with Pink Floyd is mostly post-Wall, post-Dark Side i.e. the Gilmour era. Though I keep meaning to dip into earlier Floyd but never find the time. I have wondered how much of the many, many variations in tracks over the years were improvised ‘on the night’. Probably not a lot, considering the precisely choreographed lighting effects.

@thane16 Thanks for that. I have actually come to notice and appreciate a full harmonious backing to musical pieces more over the years. (I’m still struggling to find the correct words 🙂

As an aside, it baffles me how we can ever ‘hear’ music. That is, if I load an MP3, into a visual editor like Audacity, I can stretch it out to see the individual ‘sine’ waves. (Actually a Fourier series). What you are seeing is the totality of the sound that hits your ears. But how the brain can take that complicated mush and separate out and recognise individual tones, sometimes even to the extent of recognising a particular singer by their voice, I find quite incredible. The mental effect music can have is less difficult to follow, that’s just psychology, which everyone knows is deep juju.    🙂

Vision is much easier to understand (he says, with Dunning-Kruger in full force)

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Apparently Doug Adams was in that ‘scene’, he threw parties attended by many of the rock artists. And it reflects in his books, remember Disaster Area, the loudest rock band in the universe? And he mentioned Mark Knopfler specifically by name in So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish.

I was a bit of a classical snob when I was a teen. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Grieg – the ‘pop’ classics. Then I went to engineering school, boarding in a hostel, and the only thing to listen to in the long evenings was one ‘pirate’ channel – Radio Hauraki. First songs I noticed were ‘Different Drum’ (Linda Ronstadt) and ‘The Carnival is Over’ (Seekers – Judith Durham). Quite coincidentally, I still rate Linda Ronstadt’s voice as the best ever, and Judith Durham as #2. But now, Linda Ronstadt has lost her voice, and Judith Durham died a couple of months ago. I’m getting old. And R.I.P. Dolly Parton and Tim Curry (not that I’m suggesting he was much as a singer, but I found his slightly hammy over-the-top delivery as an actor, fascinating).
Pink Floyd passed me by for decades until one night, I was channel-hopping at midnight just about to go to bed and I caught by accident their ‘Pulse’ concert, couldn’t turn it off, the music and the light show blew me away. By next morning I was a Pink Floyd addict.
I think mature Pink Floyd – and much pop music in general – has much more in common with the sound of older European ‘classical’ music than modern ‘serious’ music does. That is, the same conventions of harmony and tempo are being followed. I think, but I’m NOT a musicologist and I’m not putting it very well, and I stand to be corrected.

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@thane16   Morricone’s ‘Jill’s Theme’ is haunting, I have it on my MP3 player (sung by Edda dell’Orso, as in the movie).    I also have a version with a theremin taking the ‘sung’ part, and in the mid-upper ranges it sounds eerily like a human voice.

As musical scores go, I thought Murray Gold’s score called ‘The Shepherd’s Boy’ was one of the best.  (That’s the one that played at the final scene in Day of the Doctor, and when the 12th Doctor was breaking through the diamond wall in Heaven Sent).   I also liked the plaintive Clara’s theme, as played memorably by the Doctor in the diner in Hell Bent.

Of course the original Doctor Who theme tune, all the way from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop days onwards, has been pretty addictive too.   As a totally irrelevant aside, if you listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Pulse’ album, from their ‘Division Bell’ tour, they dropped that musical phrase into the middle of ‘Another Brick in the Wall.’   Digressing yet further, Dave Gilmour invited Doug Adams to play guitar on a couple of tracks on the penultimate day of that tour.

 

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@thane16 @ps1l0v3y0u That beginning, with no music, just a creaky windpump, is very effective. And Morricone’s score, particularly Jill’s Theme which is a haunting piece of music.
I watched it recently and managed to follow all the plot threads (for the first time). Not that it’s complicated, just that Leone leaves the audience to join up the dots. For example, those guys who are trying to ambush Frank in the main street (and Harmonica saves him) – were did they come from? Well, several scenes before, Frank’s men were guarding Morton in his railroad car when he pulls out a sheaf of banknotes…
If there was a shortcoming, some of the Italian extras were a bit cheesy. But the main cast was excellent, notably Henry Fonda as the ruthless Frank, Jason Robards as the outlaw Cheyenne, and of course Charles Bronson as the taciturn Harmonica. Apparently that was written for Eastwood, and he would have been good, but he turned it down and Bronson absolutely aced it.
I didn’t even feel inclined to nitpick the steam engines, which were a couple of ancient Spanish broad gauge locos slightly dressed up – one of them even had outside Stephenson valve gear which is very rare indeed, but Leone framed all his shots so the difference wasn’t obvious.
Apparently it was trimmed by 20 minutes for the American distribution and was almost a flop, but in Europe it (I suppose you’d call it a ‘director’s cut’) became a cult classic.

@winston I’m not a great fan of westerns, spaghetti or otherwise, as such. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was quite good, most notably for the three-cornered gunfight** in the cemetery where he gave us (and presumably the characters) time to work out the intriguing logic – whoever drew first was, all things being equal, likely to kill one of the others and the third one would then kill him. I believe it’s known as a ‘Mexican standoff’. (**Oops, typo, I originally typed ‘bunfight’. Now that would have been something to see 🙂
I did like Doctor Who’s classic Western (‘A Town Called Mercy’). Written by Toby Whithouse. I did like his work on Being Human.
And (back to Westerns:) I also like The Prisoner’s ‘Living in Harmony’. I think any series that runs long enough ends up doing a Western sooner or later. Farscape did (Home on the Remains, though with rather cringey ‘western’ accents), Firefly did nothing else, Star Wars had strong Western elements (I think), so did Blakes 7.

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@nerys   As I’ve said, shouty Donna is her least attractive part, and that’s exactly what we got on her first appearance.   First impression and all that, it took me a while (about two seasons) to get over my Donnaphobia.   I thought the metacrisis ‘solution’ was clunky but by then I was sufficiently reconciled to  Donna that I let it go.

I find I’m much more tolerant to minor glitches if I like the character or the episode.   If I’m unhappy with the episode then every little slip gets noticed.   This isn’t entirely logical but I’m human.   Reputedly.

And yes, Chibs did tend to be a bit clumsy and heavy-handed with his messages.  As a young teen I used to thoroughly loathe the Lone Ranger because at the end of each episode he used to point out the moral of the story.   Even then I felt life was more complicated and often good and bad were ambiguous.   I also liked (some) British humour where the main character is a loser, over the American ones where the main character is the smartest one in the room.   (Did like ‘Married with Children’ though, which I suppose is consistent).

I still react badly to people preaching at me, even if I agree with the message.    Probably as a corollary, I used to be crap at explaining things at work (these days we’d say ‘giving presentations’) because whenever I stated a ‘fact’ the back of my mind would ask ‘are you sure?   Why would they believe that?’

Um, authors.   I like those who are reasonably concise and have a way with words.   My ideal paperback is 200-300 pages, these 500-page blockbusters put me off, as do banal stock phrases.

And I think Moff has the best ‘way with words’ of any Who writer.   Also his dictum that you have to give viewers something to keep them watching every five minutes.   Which he certainly did.

Oddly enough then, my favourite western is Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’.   The one where nothing happens for the first ten minutes.   Just Leone setting the scene and evoking the atmosphere.   It rewards a degree of unhurried attention, which movies could command back in the old days.   Wouldn’t work on TV, I think, not even ad-free TV.

That’s enough waffle from me.

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@winston   Our garden has osteospermums (Cape daisies) flowering, and also our rose bush has a few flowers on it.   In the middle of winter.  (Did I mention that before?)

But what I came to say was, that garden idea of yours is intriguing.  You becoming part of the garden.  A garden that captures people.   Has that ever been used in Doctor Who?    It sounds vaguely familiar.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I’d forgotten the exact dialogue.   That discussion of ‘variables not being equally weighted’ sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me, I’m pretty sure that with a multi-digit code like that, the ‘variables’ are exactly equally weighted, any number is exactly as probable as 9,999 others.   The Tardis (which is presumably also a supercomputer) could brute-force that in a couple of milliseconds – except that, wasn’t there a limit of three tries?   That kills any brute-force attack.  And also the causal nexus (whatever that is) ruled out the Tardis.

This was a variant of the three-in-a-cell scenario from Day of the Doctor where the Sonic Screwdriver had, effectively, decades to decode the cell door.   Except, there, the Screwdriver had a complete picture of the arrangement of all the atoms in the door, so it was just a computational problem of enormous numbers with just one solution.

@nerys   That paragraph you quoted in italics is basically what I concluded, except put more coherently and succinctly.

So the episode was indeed a bit loose, for Moff.

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@nerys   I didn’t put any effort into making my ‘theory’ of the briefcase code work, it’s just a conclusion I came to.   I can’t say I like it very much.   But, to mangle Sherlock Holmes, ‘when you have eliminated every other possibility, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’.

I don’t like it very much.   This is definitely not a hill I’m willing to die on.   🙂

I do agree, that briefcase code did seem almost – irrelevant.   Quite possibly Moff had a different solution in mind, or he wrote in the year in the hotel with the intention of making it fit somehow, then couldn’t.   But that doesn’t feel like Moff, when you consider the precise plotting of, say, Blink.

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@nerys   I guess Nova Scotia was a bit like New Zealand in respect of Covid, being relatively easy to isolate.    Omicron was, I think, way more infectious than previous variants, but probably less deadly.   Also, I think, by then people were starting to get a bit more blase about precautions.   Part of the rationale for the precautions was not to stop anybody ever getting it, but to stop them all getting it at the same time and swamping the hospitals – as happened in many places.

Re the briefcase, I didn’t say ‘he knew it because he knew it’ was particularly satisfying.   Would have been more satisfying if there was some other way the Doctor could have learned it – but for that to be necessary, the Doc who burst through the door would have to be the one who keyed it in.  Because, since the original Doc was told and knew it when he keyed it in, any other source of the information to him while he was staying with Anita would have been superfluous.

Timey-wimey or what?   As I said, bonkers.

It’ll be a couple or three months before any of our flowers start seriously blooming.   Just these few that are strange that way.

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@nerys I agree about Anita, I really liked her. I would have liked to see her as a Companion.   The Time Hotel is, of course, a species of time machine. I’m sure it generates all sorts of time paradoxes.

The just-married couple in Anita’s Sandringham Hotel honeymoon suite took the Doctor’s incursion remarkably calmly, I thought. Just a reminder that the Doctor has odd little gaps in his knowledge of humans, not faulting Gatwa but I think that would have been perfect for Capaldi.

Um, Covid. If I had to go into isolation I’d go quietly bonkers. My condolences for your father and mother.

I didn’t know anyone personally who died of Covid, but we were very lucky in New Zealand. Easy to close the borders, and our PM was popular, nobody in the Opposition thought there was any political capital in opposing quarantine or masking or vaccines. Also, by pure luck, we had a Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, who had no political associations and an excellent TV manner, you felt instinctively inclined to trust him, so PM Jacinda left the day-to-day announcements to him. Of course we had a few perverse anti-socials who refused to mask or quarantine or vaccinate because ‘their rights’, fortunately very few. I tend to be anti-authoritarian but I’m not stupid.

Enough of that.

I must admit, I was looking for the bit where the Doctor found the code for the briefcase, too.

I think the answer is absolutely simple. The Doctor who went on the year’s interlude with Anita knew it because the Doctor who burst in through the door had told him. (So even if Anita had told him, it would have been superfluous because he already knew it. And it’s not the sort of thing he would be likely to forget). So that’s how he knew it when he burst through the door, how could he not have known?  He knew it because he knew it.

Absolutely simple, absolutely logical, I defy anybody to tell me how that’s wrong. Oh, and completely, utterly bonkers.

I think the Doc explaining his deliberate cruelty to Joy was for the benefit of the viewers, in case they missed it.

Totally aside, we’re in the middle of winter here – just had two of the coldest weeks ever, though in Auckland it almost never freezes – but anyway, the osteospermums (african daisies) I planted in time for last summer (and they flowered then) have just come out in full flower again. And our rose bush has a few flowers on it. Auckland vegetation is weird.

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@thane16    The Moment was a weapon so powerful it had achieved intelligence.   And maybe even a conscience.   (Current AI has quite a long way to go).    And Billie Piper was one of those people the camera loves.  Even leaning against the wall of the cell in the Tower of London behind three Doctors, she was stealing the scene without moving a muscle.

Excellent choice for the reboot of the series.   I tend to find the Companion at least as interesting as the Doctor of the day, sometimes more so.   Donna, I agree – too shouty.   Her first appearance when she harangued a grieving Doctor who had just lost Rose, prejudiced me for a long time against her.   First impressions and all that.  It took me several series before I mellowed, by Wild Blue Yonder I was okay with her, which is just as well because it would have spoiled an excellent episode for me otherwise.

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@thane16    Wild Blue Yonder was great, and a perfect example of how to properly use CGI.   And having just two cast intensifies the drama.   The alien ship looked truly beautiful.   Probably my favourite RTD(2) episode.    And, the reintroduction of Donna was successful.

School Reunion was good because it introduced the Old Companion well, it gave her proper attention and interaction with the current cast.   Always intriguing when a bit of competition is introduced between the current Companion and predecessors.

Another way to do it is to have a new character that just ‘looks like’ an old Companion – like Day of the Doctor, the Interface (Rose) was excellent and with a good rationale – The Moment had picked her out of the Doctor’s future memory (future – past – all the same to The Moment) and made all the more piquant because Rose’s Doctor, Ten, couldn’t see her.   And since it was just her appearance that was used it quite avoids the need for a rationale of how the old Companion get there.

And it always adds an extra level of interest when you have one character observing but invisible to the others, so long as the writer can handle it properly, and Moff was expert at that sort of thing.

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Gosh, look away for a couple of days and the comments fill up.
@thane16 Syzygy (I thought I posted this) That lecture was in Bill Potts first episode, The Pilot. Transcript at chakoteya.net.
I thought the idea that Rose(2) could solve the metacrisis by being non-binary – it didn’t really make sense to me, and it felt distinctly forced – RTD pushing an agenda. I share your feelings about it.
I liked Rose(2) and was disappointed that, after (I believe) a certain amount of publicity surrounding her casting, she actually appeared very little.

@ps1l0v3y0u I liked Martha, and I applauded her decision to gracefully dump the Doctor. Best thing she could have done in the circumstances. I thought lumping her with Mickey (Rose’s cast-off) was poor – not well thought-out. It just felt like RTD was trying to tie up a loose end. (As syzygy said).
Nor was I happy with her recruitment as a UNIT operative (but that applies to most ex-Companions who get recruited by UNIT. I think it goes something like this: We’d like to use this ex-companion somehow. But how? – we don’t have time to construct a complete storyline for her. Oh, I’ve got it – we’ll put her in UNIT. Problem solved!

As you pointed out, Moff had far less of a political/social message, or maybe it was just more subtly conveyed, so we didn’t feel like we were being preached to. (I’m generally sympathetic to most ‘woke’ ideas, but any hint of ‘preaching’ turns me off *even if I agree with the message*.)

 

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@syzygy  @thane16   Oh yes those ‘cue cards’.   “Sorry for the loss of your friend/relative/pet.”   How Capaldi delivered those lines without cracking up I don’t know.  (Reminds me of those ‘personalised’ offers we used to get a few decades ago from Readers Digest and the like –  “Dear [Dentarthurdent], we are certain that you and your family at [Post Box 2573] will be the envy of all your neighbors in [West Auckland Mail Centre]…”)

Mavity was a definite clue to an alternate reality.   That device can be extremely effective.   But it’s very tricky to do consistently for very long without getting tedious or too obvious.    The cups falling through the table in the penultimate episode were good, the bone monsters were taking it a step too far I think.   But I guess that was the reveal.

The other thing to beware of, the Reset Button tends to render all previous developments in the arc meaningless.   Runs the risk of frustrating, annoying or even angering the audience, who have invested emotional capital in those episodes.   The longer the arc, the higher the stakes.   And there’s the risk of it being seen, rightly or wrongly, as writer’s laziness.

‘Woke’ annoys me.   I dislike it as a word (does violence to English, like ‘gay’ which used to mean ‘cheerful, colourful and happy’ with no implications for sexual orientation and now I can’t use it without that implication). I also hate that it’s become so convenient to use it   🙂

It is also used as a derogatory term by those of a right-leaning persuasion.   I’m generally left-leaning, so most of my positions could be termed ‘woke’.   But I tend to apply ‘woke’ only to those excesses of behaviour or language carried to extreme.  Replacing ‘chairman’ with ‘chairperson’ is about my limit  (Chair makes no sense, they’re a piece of furniture, what’s wrong with ‘chairwoman’?).    I absolutely favour no gender/colour discrimination in pay, jobs etc where it isn’t a relevant factor (i.e. most of them).   Trying to pretend there is no physical difference between men and women, or claiming ‘his’/’her’ is sexist language, is going way too far for me.

Still, I’d rather be called ‘woke’ than a ‘patriot’   🙂

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@ps1l0v3y0u    I agree that Disney, with their tendency to milk old classics for all they’re worth, and cartoonise everything, was not a good fit.   And since their name was on it, I assume they vetoed anything too adult.   Their only plus is, they tend to be woke, and much as I deride that term and tendency, I guess it’s better than being bigoted.    (I would not normally rate ‘woke’ as a plus, but I guess recent real-world events have shown us what the opposite can be).

And I’m no too happy with the modern UNIT.   In old Who, it was basically the United Nations peacekeepers, which a lefty-liberal like me could get behind.   Now, it’s become a military organisation in its own right, and a very well-funded powerful one if that tower is anything to go by.   And a bit too weapon-gadget-techspeak for my liking  (“Clear the neutron blasters for firing.   Calibrate the Infinity Device.   Prime the disruptor cannons.   Engage the Displacement Field”)   (At least some of that I made up.)      And most of those were never explained.    If I can contrast with Moff, when he introduced a weapon or a gadget, even if it was a pun  (hand mines), it actually did something of consequence to the story.   Thinking of Boom  (Smartmines and ambulances).

RTD could certainly think of original concepts that worked  (Dot and Bubble, and the Slugs, and Wild Blue Yonder).   I think maybe he got overworked / out of time, and UNIT was a convenient fall-back – invoke UNIT, write a bit of action (shooting is easy and dramatic), problem solved.

So what you are proposing is a Big Red Reset Button?   (aka, it-was-all-a-dream).   Actually, that’s about the only thing that could logically work.   One of the problems with stories set here and now is, that you’re stuck with the consequences in later episodes (or you have to explain why nobody noticed them).   A great advantage of other planets or the distant future is, you never have that problem, as long as you keep your scope planetary.    I think episodes of limited regional scope work better anyway.   Once you start messing with Universe-threatening events or the Doctor’s past history, you’ve thrown away that advantage.

Moff, with his War Doctor, was careful to make him fit in.   Chibz came along and couldn’t be bothered with rubbish like continuity.   So the only real fix is the nuclear option aka the Big Red Reset Button.   Virtual Reality (or dreams) dissolves the continuity problem, since dreams can do anything (and usually do).

So maybe your expectation would have worked, better than plastering over the cracks in reality that Chib caused, anyway.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Hmmm, so you think RTD was making himself essential?   Possibly so.   Obviously Mrs Flood / The Rani was an extremely long-distance arc.

But suppose RTD and the Beeb had parted ways halfway through, I guess someone else could have found a continuation of the Mrs Flood storyline.   But as for all the other storylines – first it would be necessary to identify them.  Just imagining some writer was sat down with a stack of DVDs and scripts and transcripts and told, ‘sort this lot out’.   I’m not sure it would even be humanly possible.

There are complete transcripts of every episode on Chakoteya.net, and a detailed plot description of every episode on Tardis.fandom.com  (marvellous resources).   I must admit, though, that when I try to follow the plot description, the complexities of it often confuse me.    And that’s not even mentioning the Flux episodes…

Legend?  Legend of the Sea Devils?

Empire?   Oh, you mean  Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death!   I’d forgotten what they were called, even though they were the example that first sprung to my mind (but not their names!).  I do agree, not among RTD’s better efforts.   (That was British understatement for ‘sort of rubbish’  🙂

ps1l0v3y0u, sometimes your references can be a bit – cryptic.   We’re not all as with-it as you   🙂

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@ps1l0v3y0u

Well, I just watched the final double episode, and the Doctor seemed a lot more human and like his normal self in that one.

How ‘monster’ could an arc be?   Mrs Flood has been lurking for – how many seasons?

The ‘science’ in that was so – metaphysical – I don’t think I can nitpick anything.   I’m not sure how the Bone Creatures who apparently existed on a slightly different plane of existence could attack UNIT HQ, but never mind.   I’ve stuck my impressions of those eps in their right slots.

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Random thoughts on The Reality War.

… and the Doctor got rescued by Anita from the Time Hotel. That came out of left field. But it worked, and nice to see her again.

So it’s Big Reset Button time again?

The Time Hotel seems to have expanded its capabilities to have become a sort of ersatz Tardis, flown by Anita.

Nice to see Rose(2) again too.

Okay, so back to the UNIT cast of thousands scenario, whereby all the interesting characters like Rose(2) and Ruby and others are brought on as animated set dressing. (OK, maybe that was a bit harsh, how about ‘extras’?) RTD keeps doing that.

“Open the parallax cannons. Fire!” This a getting all Star Wars (or should that be Star Trek). Not my favourite genre, either way.

That null-space thing looks remarkably reminiscent of the Pandorica.

It was actually quite sweet, the scene between Ruby and Conrad. Conrad turned out to be not quite so detestable after all. Don’t know how Ruby and the baby ended up in the Tardis though. I take back what I said earlier, Ruby at least had a substantial part.

And at 40 minutes in, it looks like a fairly happy ending. The baby settled with Ruby’s mum, Poppy saved. But – 26 minutes still to go.

Um, Poppy disappears and only Ruby remembers her.

The music is really rather obtrusive. And busy. 13 doesn’t like the new Tardis. We’ve seen your taste in Tardises, girl, and I don’t think you have any grounds to criticise anyone else’s. Magic grotto, bah.

Howcome the Tardis blew up and then reconstituted itself in Belinda’s garden? Using up the rest of the FX budget?

Well the last 20 minutes, not very much happened, but it was pleasant enough. And gave a plausible excuse for regeneration.

And we got Billie Piper. I’d *love* to see her as the new Doctor. Some day…

Okay, this double episode was better than I remembered. I think I could follow it better, I often can, second time around. I thought I couldn’t remember anything of this one, or who was in it, but I think my subconscious must have retained something.

On the whole, not a bad episode (and I thought an improvement on the previous season-ender). Worth the re-watch.

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Random thoughts on re-watch.

Somehow, the Rani, though a bit obnoxious, doesn’t have quite the threat level conveyed by other Who villains.

Oooh, the Doctor in bed with a Companion. That’s a first. I mean, we’ve known that previous Companions were in love with their Doctors, but I think this is the nearest we’ve seen to them actally doing Luurve things.

Umm, then their child walks in and Conrad appears on the TV – something about this says ‘Alternate Reality.’ So thn Ruby turns up on their doorstep and the Doctor doesn’t recognise her, but Belinda makes a phone call – starts to have overtones of The Truman Show. (An excellent movie, by the way).
What’s with all the yellow coffee mugs? And giant walking dinosaur skeletons – this is getting weird.

It seems that Conrad is now world dictator. Shades of the Master in Last of the Time Lords. Or Big Brother.

Um. Bone Headquarters is – really weird. I can’t make out what’s going on, except Conrad seems to be running it under the orders of Mrs Flood and the Rani.

And what is Dr Who’s ‘vindicator’ direction finder doing on the clock?

RTD going on a bit about social evils (male dominance, the neglect of the disabled) is starting to get a bit on my nerves. Maybe not as bad as Chibz, but it’s kind of – obvious.

Belinda now phones ?Control? to report the Doctor for having doubts. This is more Truman Show than ever.

And in the Bone Palace, that flashback to (I presume) the original Rani – she must have regenerated since. The original had blue eyes and I think looked much more interesting and sinister.

Well, all this is very – surreal. I don’t really understand what is going on. Never mind, on with Part 2.

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@janetteb   Not saying the guy didn’t deserve it, but it was un-Doctor-like.   Also, the Doctor appeared to be partly motivated by revenge for himself being frozen, which was also quite out of character.   The guy had plenty of reason to hate the Corporation, but taking it out on the rest of the Universe was unacceptable.   If he had just set out to assassinate the entire management of Poppy Honey I would have sympathised with him.

Buried somewhere in all that was a message about exploitation and revenge, but I think it got swamped.

I’ve forgotten the song already, probably because I’ve been updating the playlist on my mp3 player, so it got sort of buried.

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@whohar    I’d agree wholeheartedly with all that.

Also, I’d add, the writing lacked a certain polish or sparkle that Moff used to inject into it.   And, I think, a certain sense of humour.   I’m thinking of, say, the interaction between Clara and the Doctor in Flatline, or the Doctors in Day of the Doctor.   Can anyone point to a Chibz episode that managed that light touch?

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Well, I just watched it again.   Wrote several paragraphs, most of which I’ve deleted because they were just repeating what I posted a year ago.    A couple of points survive –

Blowing the roof off – that’s certainly drastic. Minor quibble – I’m not sure the Doctor and the Tardis would get sucked into space – there must be artificial gravity still operating, and if they’re on the bottom of the space (like the rest of the audience in fact) they’d feel the drop in air pressure but there shouldn’t be enough wind to lift them into the air (just as only the couple of passengers nearest the opening get sucked out when an airliner door blows off or a fan blade shatters the window).
Another minor quibble – no way the Doctor could move through space by windmilling his arms, Newton says no. And, howcome the Doctor can aim that canister so accurately the reaction propels him through a small door? And howcome it opens for him? And howcome the couple of guys in the station can see him on a screen?

But I’ll tolerate all that for the sake of the story, this ep hasn’t offended me like Kill The Moon did, probably because that was supposedly based on Earth in current times, whereas this ep is in the science-fictiony future. So reality can be – relaxed.

I guess I would have liked to see the Corporation suffer for their crimes. Buying invading and looting countries for their natural resources seems to be more topical right now than when it was made.

Soooo, how was the episode? Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. It had some good bits in it.

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@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’ was more noticeable because it was more clumsily done.

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@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 woman good. (And this from a guy who wanted to see Kamala Harris win). Demons of the Punjab – it was hard to pick sides, except to say killing people is bad. It was maybe a bit of a change to find that the Demons were benign, though it did look suspiciously like the idea was stolen from Testimony.
Tesla was, historically, rubbish, Edison’s adversary in the ‘battle of the currents’ was George Westinghouse, who didn’t get a mention. Villa Deodati felt quite good, or would have been if it hadn’t been derailed by the Cyberman thing, I think a better play could have been written without the Doctor in it at all. But then it wouldn’t have been in Doctor Who.
The Crimean War thing was absurd, it was just so predictable that the officers would be complete idiots. No explanation for how history does not record that the enemy was short aliens. I get acutely uneasy when actual historical figures (like Mary Seacole) get re-imagined i.e. misrepresented. And they blew up the formidable Sontaran ships with – gunpowder, was it? I just tried reading a synopsis on Tardis.fandom.com but I gave up, cast of thousands and I couldn’t follow the plot.
Witchfinder was full of it. Gave the impression that witch trials were commonplace in England and always fatal (about 500 people were executed for witchraft in 150 years, from 2000 trials, because judges and juries tended to be sceptical), that James 1 was entirely responsible (more executions took place in Elizabeth 1’s last decade than in James’s 22 years); oh, and witches weren’t burned, they were hanged. A fifth of those were down to the thoroughly evil ‘Witchfinder General’ Mathew Hopkins, by the way. So I would guess that most people then thought, as I do, that they were a disgusting and horrible travesty of justice.

I’m a leftie environmentalist but Praxeus thoroughly put me off by the clumsiness of its message. And there’s the thing about Chibz – even things I would normally agree with, I instinctively disagree when Chibz says them because they’re so clumsy and obviously agenda-driven. Arachnids – I found the ugly American just too over the top to be credible (though in light of the last year or two I suppose I might have to reassess that). Orphan 55, again, wielded the environmental message like a sledge hammer.

Can’t help wondering whether Chibz was pandering to his perceived audience. Wasn’t he the guy who previously gave us Dinosaurs on a Spaceship with Queen Nefertiti (would have liked to see her as a Companion, by the way) meekly going off with obnoxiously super-macho Great White Hunter? (Because why? Presumably she Needed a Man? /s )

Finding any -isms in Moffs episodes is much more of a stretch. The scary old people in Amy’s Choice were inhabited by aliens. Nixon was fairly neutral I thought i.e. neither a villain nor a hero (in the episode). Thin Ice took a swipe at the bigoted aristocrat but other than him, nobody took much notice of Bill’s colour. Extremis used the Catholic Church as a background but neither particularly promoted nor attacked it, so far as I could see. Somehow I found Oxygen, savage as its anti-predatory-capitalism message was, was far less blatant than Kerblam! (And the way the owners of Kerblam had an epiphany and turned into humanitarian benefactors in the last couple of minutes was just – so simplistic as to be ridiculous).

Oh yeah, Spyfall. Started off really well, ended up doing violence to history and to real historic people (Noor Inayat Khan). Notice that in Let’s Kill Hitler Moff covered his tracks – he didn’t actually kill Hitler and one can reasonably assume that Adolf wouldn’t be too keen to publicise that somebody had punched him and shut him in a cupboard. That’s how it’s done.

Okay, I think that’s enough of me.

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@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 ?imaginary? monster in Listen was probably the scariest of the lot. Made my hair stand on end. How do you fight something that may not exist? (As an aside, I used to work on sewage pumping stations, big empty underground rooms with pumps humming away, and walking down the steps into one of those always made me nervous for no valid reason whatsoever. I think it’s a natural reaction. Of course I could never admit it.)
Followed by the Weeping Angels and the Silents. In the case of the Angels, it was precisely because they only move when you’re not looking. What you can’t see…
The Silents with their memory wipe were an ingenious variation on that, almost the inverse in fact. You could see them but instantly forgot as soon as you looked away. As a concept for generating interesting situations I think it was the best of any monster. And, as you noted, quite economical on the FX budget.

Love interests – I can take it or leave it. (I seem to recall an outcry from Old Whovians when Rose was first attracted to the Doctor). So long as it arises naturally and isn’t ‘tacked on’, I’m okay with it. It would be quite unusual if anyone had a whole string of female companions without mutual interest with any of them. I do recall Moff having a bit of fun with this on a couple of occasions when Companions asked the Tardis to show them a list of previous Companions. And of course there was a slight age difference – I seem to recall the Doctor was a few million years old after Heaven Sent – or I guess maybe not, if the clone machinery generated an exact replica each time of the Doctor who first entered, I guess he only aged a few hours in that episode?

@ps1l0v3y0u The Companions of nuWho – they all survived after a fashion. Rose is in the alternative reality with Doctor clone. Martha left the Doctor (and then, as you noted, ended up with Rose’s cast-off Mickey. Why? It made no sense at all. I have no idea why RTD did it, other than some impulse to ‘tie up loose ends’. She also ended up in UNIT. Both things made me unhappy). Donna survived, sorta, and even got her memory back. Lady Christina de Souza flew off to her own adventures (I wish she’d become a Companion, woulda been brilliant. Maybe a Clara before Clara arrived).
Amy (and Rory) ended up alive but back in time. Clara ended up roaming the universe with Ashildr in a stolen Tardis. And Bill ended up doing the same with her pet puddle Heather.
I don’t count any Companions post-Moff. 🙂
Like you, I can’t be bothered to devote the mental energy to reviewing Chibz’ episodes.
Incidentally, woud a female Doctor have worked for Moffat? I’m pretty sure it would. Moff (in my view) was good at constructing good female characters – Amy, Clara, Bill, Missy, Irene Adler (to stray into a different genre). He would have made it work.

I agree Time of the Doctor was a bit incoherent, but mostly harmless. But I really can’t explain Kill The Moon other than to suppose Moff just didn’t have time to rescue anything from the wreckage of that disaster of an episode. Every single scene was an affront to physics, reality and common sense, and it was utterly out of character for the Doctor to leave the fate of the world to chance (unless he was lurking with a self-destruct-inhibit button on his screwdriver, but even that would be entirely out of character), the appalling Courtney was a walking liability with all the charisma and intelligence of a cowpat – I cannot believe that the person who crafted Blink with such logical coherency and appealing characters could have had anything to do with such a debacle. Um, if you want your science fiction to be coherent or credible, then one or two deviations from everyday reality are permissible (e.g. time travel, monsters), but not every single scene. It’s fine to get metaphysical in episodes like The Doctor’s Wife, but it’s a shocking clash in episodes that rely on such physically-real entities as the Space Shuttle and space suits. (I’m ranting again). Brilliant as he is, I think asking Moff to write half the episodes himself while also being responsible for all the others was just too much.

@thane16 Puro I know you asked ps1l0v3y0u but I hope you don’t mind me interjecting – things I didn’t like about Chibz’ seasons? First, it ‘felt’ wrong, the Doctor didn’t feel like the Doctor (in many ways other than just gender). Dropping occasional culty references into the dialogue didn’t mitigate that. Second, the ‘fam’ (ugh) were too – diffuse – to work as a companion. Third, the Crystal Cave Tardis. Fourth, I’m not a fan of Universe-destroying threats. Fifth, Chibz’ writing just felt clumsy.

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@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 worse than me, some days she gets up after midday).

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@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.

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@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’ onwards (and possibly from earlier than that) the Companion’s status de facto increased to rival the Doctor.   A trend I welcomed.

And I think the writing arose naturally from that.   It never felt forced to me.

That scene in Listen – was it this one:

(Clara leaves the restaurant, and Danny bangs his head on the table. The Doctor and Clara step out of the Tardis.)
CLARA: Is that what I look like from the back?
DOCTOR: It’s fine.
CLARA: I was thinking it was good.
DOCTOR: Really?
(Clara walks to the restaurant.)

Um, I can’t see anything particularly unusual about that.   I mean, guys certainly appreciate girls’ figures, but I imagine a girl, given the occasion, might be a teeny bit vain about their own appearance?   But I’m guessing there.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that sort of thing has happened, in New Earth, Cassandra the flat, in Rose’s body, admired her new-found curves

CASS-ROSE: Look at me. From class to brass. Although, oh, curves. Oh, baby, it’s like living inside a bouncy castle!

and of the Doctor (in Rose’s mind)   ‘nice rear bumper.’

@whohar    The Doctor and the Companion are, functionally, a couple, so far as the structure of the story works.   And by a ‘couple’ I mean anything from a pair of colleagues, to friends, to romantically involved.   Either way they care for each other (the story would fall apart if they didn’t).   They will certainly loom large in each other’s consciousness.   So the writing naturally reflects that.

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@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 that would be bloke-ish. 🙂

But I don’t see that in Moff’s companions.

I’m not sure whether one could write a specifically female character (or a male one) without being accused of perpetrating stereotypes. I think they are written more as *people*, which is fine with me. Though I will admit that a certain degree of femininity – which probably comes more from the fact they’re female actors than from the writing – adds a little interest to the characters.

Now they do exhibit unusual strength of character (because they have to, being fantasy hero(ine)s, natch), and that is often wrongly associated with male aggressiveness. Which I think is a wrong stereotype, and not a desirable one. I don’t want my heroes to be mindless killers, I want them to be thoughtful killers who agonise about it afterwards (as I think Doug Adams said somewhere).

And in any case, all hero(ine)s, regardless of sex, have to be a little bit braver and stronger than the average bloke or blokess in the street, otherwise their adventures wouldn’t be interesting. I can get quite enough boredom in my own life (which is comfortable, predictable and boring*) without wanting to watch more on screen.

* Boring to anyone watching me, that is. I like it that way, and find it interesting enough.

To cut it short, I can’t see anything wrong with Moff’s heroines, but then I’m not a woman, maybe I’m missing something.

About the mouse – after it bit me, I had the brilliant thought of using a plastic ice cream container – worked even better than I expected, the mouse immediately dived in and hid in it. So I just had to put the lid on. Could have saved myself a bite if I’d thought ahead. Cockroaches I give ’em a squirt of toxic chemicals then wait till they’re dead before I carry them out on a piece of paper. I don’t really like to touch them. Ditto flies, though I know all I have to do is wash my hands afterwards. Beetles I carefully pick up and toss outside, praying mantises I let them climb on my finger and relocate them onto a plant. I like mantises, savage killers that they are. Centipedes creep me out (in the book Doctor No, someone put a giant centipede in Bond’s bed, made my hair stand on end just reading it. In the movie they changed it into a tarantula – massive anticlimax I thought).

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@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-puddle-friends  🙂   Amy had Rory and Clara had Danny.   And guess who was the dominant character in those relationships.   I think the blokes were the adjuncts, not the other way round.

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@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 year who had a mouse in their washing machine and wanted me to get it out.   Bloody thing bit me.   True story).   Where was I – oh yes, strong female characters.   Ripley, Sarah Connor, Aeon Flux… (by the way, I think that movie was under-rated – probably because, so I hear, it diverged too much from the cartoon so the fans hated it.   I wasn’t a cartoon fan so I liked it.   Also had Liz 10 in it.)   And Amy, Clara and so on.

By the way, when considering female heroes, it sometimes crosses my mind that these are fantasy characters and real women wouldn’t be able to do that.   But then, it’s just occurred to me that not every guy is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Doctor or James Bond.   So my slight misgivings about female heroes just got neutralised.   Which is good.

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@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 Clara was (IMO) the main character). Very obviously ‘Heaven Sent’ would fail it. ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ would fail it. I think ‘The Pilot’ probably fails because Moira is a sentient puddle. ‘World Enough and Time’ – fail (even though it’s almost all about Bill).

(I’ve just found out that there was a second woman in Alien, the navigator. I’d forgotten that. They had a row about whether to let the crew back in. Who were male. So it still fails the test.)

[Snarky mode ON]: If I ever write a screenplay I’ll make sure it passes the ‘test’, I’ll just have two extras in some unrelated scene who just say “Hi Jane, nice day, isn’t it?” “Hi Sarah, yes it is” just before a Dalek shoots them. Test passed. [/snark] Okay, sarcasm aside, I think it’s a patently spurious ‘test’ based on spurious criteria and one which utterly fails to measure what it purports to measure. And, it makes no allowance for degrees of meaning. So it passes what it shouldn’t pass and fails what it shouldn’t fail.

Just to make my position clear, I detest ‘macho’, I like almost all women Companions as characters (irrespective of their gender) and often find them more interesting than the Doctor. I was – disappointed – to see many of them turned into UNIT operatives, as RTD had a habit of doing.

@syzygy I agree about the steadily increasing capability of the Doc’s Companions, at least under RTD (1) and Moff. On another tack, as it happens the Eurovision episode (I assume that’s Interstellar Song Contest) is next on my list, so I’ll see how it strikes me.

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@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 really liked Rose(2) and we only really ever saw her in one episode. As for the other old Companions who came back, I had the distinct feeling they were just there as ‘fan service’ and their roles had just been tacked on to the story.

I also agree about FX. It can be great, used properly in the right context (the beautiful alien ship in Wild Blue Yonder) but it can be a distraction and is no substitute for good writing and acting. (Wild Blue Yonder only had two actors and four characters in it, which really helped to focus the narrative and tension, so the FX only helped, not distracted). But I’ve rabbited on about this enough before. 🙂

As a complete aside, Spain just won the World Cup! I was really hoping they would. (Nothing to do with any British-Argy feud, everything to do with the fact that the World Cup boss’s boss, that well-known football expert and FIFA Peace Prize winner President Donald J Trump, will have absolutely hated having to present the trophy to those ‘hopeless bad people’. Sometimes karma gets it right 🙂

 

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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 interesting questions.

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@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).

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@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 characters are continued in each successive book, each book is essentially a self-contained episode, and it loses very little in the absence of ‘back-knowledge’.   The same way, for example, you could watch ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ without ever having seen the Doctor or a Dalek before, and still be entertained by it.   So you only need to ‘commit’ to one book, though there is always the risk of becoming addicted.

My choice (from many) would be ‘Hogfather’ which in fact was the first of the ‘Death’ series I read, and it didn’t suffer from not being the first.   In fact I later read the earlier ones as ‘back-story’ and it worked that way too.

But there are many others.   All of them feature Pratchett’s wry humour, original turn of phrase, and his entertaining allegory with the human world.

Actually Colour of Magic was the first of all, and I think he got steadily better over the next dozen books.   Small Gods I liked the least, because I found the character of Vorbis frightened me in his rigid and righteous and tyrannical intolerance.

So if you found those worthwhile, I think you’d like most of his others.

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• This reply was modified 2 months ago by  Dentarthurdent. Reason: posted it twice

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@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 mythical creatures (not to mention the Librarian) it would have been difficult or costly to make 20 years ago; these days AI-guided CGI could I think do it quite effectively, *if* properly written and edited by an intelligent human. And using AI for the graphics only, *not* for the dialogue.

Frequently difficulties (as with the Clara-light episodes) can result in excellent episodes. Blink being the most celebrated one, Heaven Sent of course, and I think Listen was another. When you’re trying to economise on time, cast numbers, or sets, the writers just have to be inventive and try harder.
That approach is also infinitely better than some serials (mostly sitcoms) used to resort to, which was to have the cast sitting around a table saying ‘do you remember when?’ and recycling indigestible chunks of old episodes. That just looked lazy cheap and boring, and I’d refuse to watch. I don’t think Doctor Who ever sunk that low.

In the realm of inventiveness, I’m thinking of the original Alien movie, where the crashed alien ship was just painfully obviously fake (according to Ridley Scott), so they just showed it through the crew’s ‘suit cameras’ played back through an old TV with a lot of ‘interference.’ It worked. So did the fact that the ‘alien’ was only seen in its entirety for a few seconds at the end, must have saved a lot of cost, and the fear of the unseen is almost always greater than the seen. (ref ‘Listen’. Also Eaters of Light, where I found the monster anticlimactic when we finally saw it).

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@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 system translates any word it doesn’t understand as ‘Exterminate’  🙂

Reminds me of a censor program they installed at work when we were first (reluctantly) allowed to use the Internet – for work purposes only.   It would spit out messages like:  “Your attempt to access to http://www.recycledconcrete.com.nz  has been blocked.   Reason:  Pornography.   Your attempt to access this site has been recorded.”    All very 1984.   I eventually figured out that anything not on its ‘whitelist’ was ‘pornography.’   I used to screenshot these threats and print them out, I acquired a stack an inch thick.  For self-defence, in case some troll in IT looked at the records and said “Dentarthurdent has been looking for pornsites on his work computer.”   If that program was made physical, it would have been a Dalek.

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@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 Rice Burroughs’ ‘Princess of Mars’ and similar titles. ‘World Enough and Time’ is from a poem by Andrew Marvell (quite hard to find the reference as Google is swamped by links to the Who episode). Robot of Sherwoood, Mummy on the Orient Express, Journey to the Centre of the Tardis, A Christmas Carol was a straight ‘steal’, there are many more. It’s an amusing pastime to go looking for them.

But then Terry Pratchett’s books are chock-full of literary references to innumerable fantasy and legendary themes. Far too many to even list. They add a little spice to the narrative. Same goes for Doug Adams’ Hithchiker quintet. In fact I’ve just realised why the two series seem so similar in tone to me, they’re both parodies or allegories of aspects of human society.

That ‘Discworld reading order’ you linked looks quite valid to me, when I started I found a similar list. ‘Jingo’ leads me to think you’re following the ‘Watch’ list. Good choice. Lord Vetinari, by the way, is one of my favourite characters. The list I would personally choose as a ‘do not miss’ would be the Death series (though he crops up in cameos in most of the books).

I think I’ve got all the Discworld books in paperback, picked up from time to time as used copies became available reasonably cheaply. As always, I was a late arrival to the genre, so I had a lot of ‘back catalogue’ to work my way through. I’m re-reading them in order of publication. This is very easy to keep track of since all the books have all their predecessors listed on the flyleaf in exact order of publication (something many series fail at).

@ps1l0v3y0u I always thought Doug Adams’ particular talent was the ‘man from Mars’ approach – looking at human habits as an alien might. For example (paraphrasing), ‘much of humanity’s problems revolved around the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.’ Or Ford Prefect, who chose his name in order to be inconspicuous. Adams had a talent for the absurd.

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@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’ remarkably similar, to me at least.
And of course Doug Adams wrote for Doctor Who, so I suppose it’s not surprising that Moffat shows a similarity to Pratchett.
If you’re up to Jingo, I assume you just read Hogfather, which I reckon one of his best. And of course it’s got Death in it, which is always a bonus. I think that middle period was Pratchett at his best (not that he was ever anything less than good). Did you ever see the movie of Hogfather? Certainly worth a watch.

Talking of Moffat, I’ve just watched the full interview with Moffat, it’s on a podcast called Half the Picture. About half of it relates to Doctor Who. One intriguing snippet is that Blink happened almost by accident, he was (according to Moff) down to write a Dalek two-parter but he realised he didn’t have the time. So, as compensation to Russell for ‘jerking him around’, he offered to do the Doctor-lite, the episode nobody likes. ‘Russell has rarely responded to an email so quickly.’
And Heaven Sent arose because Jenna Coleman could only do 9 episodes, which they allowed for by completely leaving her out of The Woman Who Lived, putting her inside a Dalek for most of The Witch’s Familiar, and Moff wrote a solo for the Doctor so nobody would notice Clara’s absence.   Which, he said, mostly worked.
And I can’t help mentioning that Moff’s estimation of Rose is the same as mine – re Empty Child, ‘He’s great, she’s great too and my God you can’t stop looking at her’. There are some people the camera loves, and Rose is one of them.

Also on Half the Picture is a full interview with Peter Capaldi, which I will leave until tomorrow.

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@whohar
I’m reading through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, in order. This is a long-term project. I do love an author with a good turn of phrase, and Pratchett certainly has that. So does Steven Moffat (of which more in a moment).
In between that I’m reading [geek mode ON] Hamilton Ellis’s British Railway History, Part 1. Which is what it says. Hamilton Ellis is a good writer and the shenanigans and manouvrings, alliances and rivalries of British railway companies in the 19th Century is a bit like following the convoluted history of Dr Who. [/geek mode].

As for what I’m watching, far too much Youboob. I still have the last 3 eps ever of Dr Who to re-watch. And a mixed bag of movies.
I’d single out the last James Bond movie, No Time To Die, in which he does (spoilers) exactly that. I think it’s quite a good movie.
Incidentally, the producers had teased that 007 was now going to be a black woman. Which caused the predictable commotion. And she was, but – thankfully for continuity – the number 007 had been reassigned to a new 00 operator on Bond’s retirement, Bond was still Daniel Craig. I’m quite okay with that, it respects continuity.
This raises the point of continuity in a series. Doctor Who, almost fortuitously, and I think uniquely, found the answer to that with regeneration. The Bond series didn’t have that luxury, so I had contextual problems with each successive Bond, though I gradually got used to it. I still couldn’t have accepted Bond as a black woman though, that would have been much too incongruous. It’s an identity thing, not a colour/gender thing, for me. Again, Doctor Who could get away with that thanks to regeneration.

Just watched The Fifth Element, Luc Besson’s sci-fi fantasy from 1997, with Bruce Willis and Mila Jovovich. Mainly because it’s fun. And Gary Oldman was excellent as the villain Zorg – incredibly rich, with absolutely no conscience – that’s starting to sound depressingly familiar today. For anyone familiar with the movie, Ruby Rod was a shock at first appearance, extremely annoying, though he became slightly redeemed as the movie went on. These days, he’d be an ‘influencer’ and his outrageous in-your-face persona now feels more credible, unfortunately. And maybe the current insane state of the world has toned him down by comparison.
Also Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone’s ultimate spaghetti western, with Charles Bronson in what was obviously intended to be the Clint Eastwood role, he’s subtly different from what Eastwood would have brought to it but, in my view, actually even better. Leone certainly knows how to build up tension, it’s a movie that needs time to watch, it’s no use watching in a hurry. And this time through, I found I could follow the entire plot, there were events I couldn’t follow on previous viewings. I found the same effect with ‘Blink’ and ‘Joy to the World’ for example.

Talking of which, right at this moment I’m going to spend the next hour and a half watching Steven Moffat’s interview on Youtube    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-wYCvusZ4     Thanks @whohar drawing attention to it.

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@whohar   Thanks for that.   That article is actually excerpts from a video interview with Stephen Moffet, it very helpfully  gives a link to the interview, which is on Youtube here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-wYCvusZ4

I know what I’ll be watching for the next hour and a half.    Moffat is always interesting to listen to.

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@whohar   Care to give us a link to that interview?   Thanks.

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@translatorcircuit Unfortunately, what you think ‘should’ happen to the rights carries little weight with those who actually have custody of them. In particular, if the BBC were wound up, it would probably be the duty of the receivers (or whatever their title was) to maximise the financial return.

As for ‘The Time Machine’ somehow invalidating Doctor Who’s copyright, that’s not how copyright works. ‘Prior Art’ can invalidate a patent, but copyright is a little bit different. There is no copyright in ideas, only in the expression of those ideas. The idea of a time machine, even if it was original with Wells, is not copyrightable. The BBC, or you, or Disney, can make all the stories they like about time machines and not violate anything. It’s the expression of those ideas which is copyright. If Disney or you make your time machine look like a blue police box, that would almost certainly be a breach of copyright. Again, courts take into account how much of the original work was copied. There’s a doctrine known as ‘fair use.’ If your sci-fi included a line-up of model time machines, and one of them happened to be a blue police box, you’d probably be on safe ground, so long as the hero didn’t select it to do his adventuring in.
Also, of course, almost every idea in science fiction (or any other fiction) has been used countless times.
The authors of ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ famously sued Dan Brown for using their ideas in ‘The da Vinci Code’ and failed utterly. Firstly, their book claimed to be factual and historical, and there is no copyright in facts. (Kind of an own goal, that, if they’d released their book as fiction they might have stood a better chance). Second, they claimed da Vinci Code copied their ‘theme’, but couldn’t state which unique parts of their ‘theme’ had been copied, other than a few key points which were ‘factual’. There was no word-for-word wholesale copying. So they failed.
Similarly, Doctor Who copied a theme fron A Christmas Carol, but they were on safe ground. The Who story was sufficiently different from the original to be safe from copyright.

And even if the Beeb had been guilty of breach of copyright in elements of The Time Machine, that wouldn’t invalidate the original copyright or mean that anybody else could breach copyright independently. And, the Beeb would still have copyright over all elements of the story that weren’t copied from The Time Machine.

(Disclaimer:  I’m not an expert, if any of what I’ve said is wrong, please somebody weigh in.)

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@janetteb I agree with you about the budget and special effects. First of all, the FX should support the script, not replace or outweigh it. I think there’s a certain quality of FX to properly support the story. Less, and you get things like the embarrassing unconvincing ‘guns’ in Blakes 7, or the gods in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy looking like styrofoam statues firing ‘little points of light.’ Too much, and the plot gets overshadowed. The worst is when the producers think, “We’ve got the most awesome FX, just need a script to tie them together”. No, FX cannot substitute for a good script. Nor can a cast of thousands.
This is probably why the most intense episodes of Who were ones like Blink, Listen, Midnight and so on.
This is not to say that a good FX budget doesn’t help when the story needs it, for example I imagine the CGI budget for the beautiful alien ship in Wild Blue Yonder must have been – generous. But even so, it was subservient to the story, so it worked.
For another example, “Alien”, which was famously filmed on a relatively tight budget, was by far the most intense and suspenseful of its series.

And, I think a ‘feel for the show’ is a big asset, maybe even essential, for producers/writers/directors.

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@winston    Yes, we had noticed rather a lot going on.   The orange Feuhrer in Washington is a busy boy isn’t he?

1867 is quite recent.   Still beats Australia though.

I wish you happy birthday, good luck and elbows up!    🙂

 

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@translatorcircuit      And I had the impression that Doctor Who only existed because of the BBC.   Silly me.

If the Beeb was closed down the rights wouldn’t suddenly disappear.   They would probably be sold off to the highest bidder – who would probably be Disney or Netflix or one of those.   Doctor Who: Jedi Knight  meets Alien.   It would make a mint.

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