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@vickymallard Thanks, obviously I stole my user name from Doug Adams. I was looking for something vaguely Who-related but not an actual Who character, so Doug Adams (who was a script editor in oldWho days) seemed to fit the bill.
I take it you’ve seen DT in Neil Gaiman’s ‘Good Omens’ – I thought the first series (which was close to the book) was very good, I haven’t seen the second series yet.
I haven’t seen any of David Tennant as 14 yet, I must check the availability of DVD’s.

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@nerys Everyone says Jodie Whittaker is a fine actor. I’ve only ever seen her as the Doctor so I find that hard to credit. Intellectually, I recognise ‘everyone’ is probably right, just that I haven’t seen it myself. Part of that is the scripts, I don’t think Matt Smith or Capaldi could have done much with them either. And part of it is Whittaker’s interpretation of the character, which is just so ‘off.’ She’s just so ‘Yorkshire lass’, it’s off-putting. And that has to be down to the direction / showrunner. For some reason this didn’t happen with Ecclestone’s Lancashire (‘Lots of planets have a north!’) or Capaldi’s Scottishness – I’m not sure why, I think just because they were better written *as the slightly alien Doctor* so their nationality came second. Same with Missy’s Scottish accent – I could totally have accepted her as a Doctor.

While each new Doctor brings their own flavour to it, they have to be recognisable as the same ongoing character underneath, and Whittaker just wasn’t. Telling her (reputedly) not to bother watching previous episodes, and using directors who had never directed a previous episode of Who, virtually guaranteed that. Plus changing all the companions and remodelling the Tardis and even the sonic screwdriver made the discontinuity complete.

I thoroughly agree about Eve of the Daleks, if I had to choose one of Whittaker’s episodes, that would be far and away the best. Perhaps not coincidentally, it had a relatively limited focus and not some galaxy-spanning mind-numbing catastrophe.

As an aside on a completely different topic, I just re-watched ‘Layer Cake’ (I often do that with a ‘new’ movie or episode after a couple of weeks) and I liked it better, I could follow the slightly complex plot and distinguish the characters much more easily this time round. (I think it was you I was discussing Layer Cake with? – apologies if I got that mixed up).

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@ps1l0v3y0u I’d completely overlooked Flatline! How could I overlook Flatline? It was a brilliant episode. And the train-related aspects of it were – adequately done. At least there was nothing there that made me squirm.

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@ps1l0v3y0u I think blue suits a GW engine better than red does. They tried it on some Southern Bulleid Pacifics too, I believe, and I think it suited them too. Not sure why they rejected blue in favour of dark BR green.

To bring this back to some semblance of Dr Who, has Who ever used a British train? There was the interior of a railway carriage (probably a DMU) in The Woman Who Fell to Earth. There was the Orient Express in space but that was French. And there was a train in the scrambled timeline of The Wedding of River Song but the locomotive on that was definitely French for some reason.

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@ps1l0v3y0u [geek mode ON] The Midland did actually run into Kings Cross (via Bedford and Hitchin) until St Pancras was completed c. 1868. However, in those days MR engines were green. Midland Red wasn’t used until 1884. So, I doubt whether any red engines were ever seen at Kings Cross. I’m not sure any Halls were ever seen at Kings Cross either, would they be ‘out of gauge’? (I don’t know this, I do know GWR engines tended to be the widest of the companies).

I haven’t seen the movie, but I doubt rebuilt Scots – fine-looking engines btw – had copper-capped chimneys and domeless boilers with brass safety valve covers 🙂

I don’t know the story but there is a photo of the West Country 34027 Taw Valley in LMS red with Hogwarts Express nameplates. As a Southern fan I feel obliged to protest (even if a sneaky part of me thinks it looks freakin’ magnificent, though not, of course, nearly as good as it does in green). I seem to recall reading that Warner’s thought it looked ‘too modern’ so they went for something a bit more old-fashioned, but that could be a sneaky story invented by a Southern partisan. I think the red Hall just looks bizarre.

As for Awdry’s engine ‘James’, here you are – scroll down to ‘technical details’
https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/James_(RWS)
In short, a L&YR Class 28 with a front pony truck added.
(You can find anything on the internet) (even, so help me, Rule 34)

[/geek mode]

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Well I just watched Funeral in Berlin (1966) with Michael Caine. Produced by Harry Saltzmann of James Bond fame, incidentally. I found it more watchable than Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. A fairly complicated plot which, however, I managed to follow for once. With a neat twist (or a double-cross) which was, in hindsight, entirely predictable. Actually there were a number of double-crosses, but one stood out. It seems odd to realise that this movie was almost contemporaneous with early Doctor Who.

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@<span class=”useratname”>ps1l0v3y0u</span>     I do try to copy-and-paste your handle, sometimes it works, sometimes the editor chokes on it, and I can’t tell till after I hit ‘Submit’.

I was never very much into Le Carre, I found him (and Graham Greene) a bit depressing tbh.   (I’ll probably get shot for lumping them together, for reasons I won’t comprehend  🙂     I preferred Ian Fleming, I can understand why James Bond took off.   Yes I know I was just rabbiting on about ‘reality’ and James Bond bends that quite a lot, more so in the movies.   The fact that they did most of their crazy stunts ‘for real’ probably helps to give them a facade of realism.

Oh, and Victor Canning, I always liked his (widely varied) novels.

I’m trying to analyse my preference for some writers and I think it’s basically down to whether they look at an event as ‘this is exciting/adventurous’ vs ‘this is banal/depressing’.   Banal I can do myself every day, I don’t need to read about it.   This is also why I detest TV soaps like Coro and Neighbours, I think.

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@janetteb    Hi, I was wondering where you’d got to.   Merry (late) Christmas!

I have thousands of things to do, with the result that I never do any because there are too many other things and besides, this site and Youtube are too much of a distraction.   This is not good.

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@p<span class=”useratname”>s1l0v3y0u</span> (why is your username like one of those impossible passwords the security mafia keep nagging us to use?)

I’m fully capable of going all geeky on a film (you should hear me about ‘Hogwarts Express’ sometime, and I haven’t even watched the movie)  but I usually try not to go overboard quite to that extent.   Tinker Taylor may have been a fine film, I just couldn’t ‘get into’ it.   Maybe it was just my mood, I get like that sometimes.   Or maybe (heaven forbid) too much Youtube has reduced my attention span to 5 minutes.

I do think movie adaptations of books (and vice versa) are allowed to deviate a bit from the originals, after all they are quite different mediums and what works in one doesn’t work so well in the other.   The dramatic requirements can be very different.   So I don’t mind if they change things a bit so long as it’s not something that makes a nonsense of the plot.   Oh, and it should fit reality reasonably well, it shouldn’t be blatantly and gratuitously wrong.   If Sherlock Holmes is going to Dartmoor he’d better leave from either Waterloo or Paddington, not Euston or Victoria.   But I’m never going to go “There was no 8-35 from Paddington to Exeter in 1902” or something like that.

And similarly sci-fi should not break reality unnecessarily.   (Kill the Moon I’m looking at you…)

 

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@winston    ‘Rellies’ is a good old Aussie/kiwi slang term.   I hope ‘prezzies’ wasn’t too obscure?

I should clarify that, with Pacific island families, there are vast numbers of more-or-less distant relatives.   I usually assume that anyone from Mrs D’s island is probably some sort of in-law of mine, and this is rarely incorrect.    What is more disconcerting is, I can never remember their names but they all remember me by name.    Mrs D, now, has a memory for people like the Dalek databank.   In fact she will talk about old friends of mine that I’ve forgotten existed and she met just once, years ago.   However, when it comes to places, we’re the opposite, she gets lost while I can drive infallibly to places I’ve only visited once.   Combined, we should be formidable, like the Doctor and Clara, too dangerous to exist.   But in practice, we just argue.   🙂

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@winston   Your Christmas sounds quite satisfying, though I hope the illness that got Boxing Day cancelled wasn’t too serious.   Nice prezzies  by the way!   ‘Chaotic’ is one of those concepts that still sounds attractive but I’m too lazy for, most times.   I used to be  a party animal when I was younger, these days I tend to curl up in some corner of the hubbub with a book or even headphones and my MP3 player.  The rellies, all 500 of them though usually only about a couple of dozen tend to happen at any one time, are all used to that.

And yes, I got to the beach 11am yesterday and midday today.   Thanks!   The significance of those times is, high tide.   If I make the 50-minute trek to Piha on the west coast, that’s an ocean beach with hefty waves and cliffs and stuff, swimmable at any tide.

BUT if I just go to our nearest beach at Blockhouse Bay, 2 miles away, that’s on the Manukau Harbour which is a huge muddy harbour.   The ‘beach’ itself is a tiny crescent of sand that arrived on a  council truck, in an inlet nicely sheltered by a ridge of cliffs from the prevailing south-westerly breeze.   A ‘good’ high tide – that is 3.7 metres or better, there’s a foot of water over the mud at the base of the sand and it gets gradually deeper as you wade out.   Today was 4.0 metres and delightfully calm (and the water was warm) so I just waded out to about 5 feet depth and swam/walked on the bottom across the inlet to the next bay and back.   At anything but high tide though, as the waterline retreats, it’s just mud that gets progressively softer and oozier the further out you go.   So I have a copy of the tide tables on the fridge.   I’m looking forward to another 5 or 6 ‘good’ high tides before they get too late in the evening/decline to sub-3.7 mediocrity (it’s about a two-week tidal cycle).

Nardole was unexpectedly good, I’m pleased they brought him back in the next series.   In fact my next one to watch in sequence is the Frost Fair one so I’ve got Nardole and cameos by Missy to look forward to.

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@nerys   My email doesn’t do italics, I was just going to say how much I agreed with your first paragraph when I looked on this website and realised it was a quote from me.   🙂

The ending could have gone in several ways.   The DVD is still on my little stack beside the couch in the lounge and I’ll probably watch it again soon, I think it may be easier to follow now I have a rough idea of the plot.   I found that with its successor (by the same director?)  Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.   In fact, any episode with a complex plot, I’m usually better second time around.

I haven’t seen the new specials yet, and probably won’t for some time.   I’m not too worried about spoilers on this site, I think the way new episodes have their own dedicated threads helps that.   I also find that, unless I can put it in context, the occasional isolated factoid doesn’t really register with me.    So until I see it in the episode, it doesn’t mean much.

Besides, being in New Zealand, I’ve learned to live with everyone on the Internet having seen any TV episode before I do.   🙂

But other peoples’ brains may be more retentive than mine, so I can understand the desire to avoid spoilers as much as possible.

Speaking of crime movies, last week at the charity shop I picked up ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ with a cast of Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch…    should be a cracker, right?   But I stopped watching half way through.    It was just too understated, I just couldn’t get into it.   I can’t fault the acting, and I’m sure it was faithful to the book.   Maybe it was just me.   I’m certainly not into the explosion-a-minute Hollywood actionfests, but this was the opposite extreme.   I also picked up ‘Funeral in Berlin’, I’ll see if Len Deighton and Michael Caine can do for me what John le Carre can’t.

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@winston   We just had Christmas afternoon at Mrs D’s sister’s daughter’s house.  Half the clan there, let’s just say that it’s not my thing but I have learned patience over the years.   One of the kids did a piano recital – if he keeps practicing for a few years he might get good enough for the Portsmouth Sinfonia.   One of the others nervously sang a couple of Christmas carols.   To put it bluntly – they were terrible.   On the whole I would rather have watched The Tsuranga Conundrum.   But they were all well-meaning and Mrs D enjoys it so, you know, I just put my brain in neutral and later on snuck into a corner with a book – Simon Singh’s ‘Big Bang’ – to relax.   I hope your immediate rellies are more – inspiring   🙂

Anyway, it was mostly rainy, so my usual lemming-like urge to head to the beach which is triggered by sunshine was easily suppressed.  I’ll hit the beach tomorrow.

Our immediate family are down in Christchurch and this year – first time for several years – we’re not going down to visit them.   No particular reason, just a change.

“The Christmas Carol” – was that the one with the shark in it?   As I recall, the villain wasn’t as evil as he appeared at first sight – just human.   That was an unexpectedly sweet episode.    I find “The Husbands of River Song” a bit sad, as it’s the next episode after we lose Clara, and it’s the last of River.   But Greg Davies was suitably obnoxious as the late King Hydroflax, and I found Hydroflax’s followers with the tear-open heads quite repulsive.   Were they the same people as cropped up in “Doctor Mysterio”?

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‘Half way out of the dark’ – is that from The Hogfather?   Of course where I am (in upside down land) it’s the opposite, for us these are the good months.    Long evenings and warm weather – lovely.   I’m making the most of them.   But if I do watch a Christmas episode it’ll probably be Last Christmas.   Sarcastic Santa, what’s not to like?

Can I join in thanking Craig for this site.   It’s great to  have somewhere relaxed and friendly to talk about one of my favourite TV shows.

And, Merry Christmas and best wishes to everybody.

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@vickymallard   Welcome to the forum.   Do I gather you are working your way through past seasons?   I did that a couple of years back – catching up on everybody from way behind.   I almost envy you because you’ve got several years worth of episodes still to work through.

I’ve got a standard suggestion I make to anyone catching up on episodes – you can find full transcripts of every episode on chakoteya.net, and a complete listing of all episodes on  tardis.fandom.com  under  TV > Doctor Who > Main Episode List, with links to every episode and plot synopses and cast lists.   Please excuse if you already know this.   I find the transcript very useful sometimes, when I miss a bit of dialogue.

Yes I had a high opinion of Martha.   Probably the smartest of any of the Doctor’s companions until, possibly, Clara.   And she was smart enough to realise that, though she had fallen for the Doctor, he didn’t feel the same way about her – understandably, because he’d just tragically lost Rose.  The only time he ‘fell’ for someone was in Human Nature / Family of Blood, when he’d  completely lost his memory, and then – as Martha sadly noted – “You had to go and fall in love with a human, and it wasn’t me.”    So yes, walking away was the best thing she could have done.

 

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<span class=”useratname”>@ps1l0v3y0u</span>    I have a significant quibble with ‘Tesla’.    For a start, the power generating station at Niagara Falls was built by George Westinghouse’s company for the Niagara Falls Construction Company with technical advice from Tesla.   To cut a long story very short, after Tesla split with Edison some years earlier for uncertain reasons (and the $50,000 dollar bonus offer recounted by ‘Edison’ was more likely an invention of Tesla’s), George Westinghouse’s company licensed, then later bought up, Tesla’s patents for AC motors.   The ‘battle of the currents’ (AC versus DC)  was essentially Westinghouse vs Edison, with Tesla very much on the sidelines, since he had gone off to try and develop radio and wireless power transmission (the Wardenclyffe project).   A ‘battle’ which was conclusively won by Westinghouse.   Yet the episode makes it sounds exclusively Tesla vs Edison, the name Westinghouse appears in the episode – zero times.     Yes I know it’s sci-fi, but it shouldn’t distort known history.       Okay, rant over.   🙂

I had noticed that ‘Demons’ was a repeat of Testimony.   “It isn’t an evil plan.   I don’t know what to do when it isn’t an evil plan.”  – Twelve.

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@robertcaligari Just reading your comment (which I agree with btw), I just have trouble visualising ‘Whittaker had the acting chops to go dark if the script called for it’. I believe you, most people seem to share that opinion, just that I’ve only ever seen her as the Doctor so I can’t imagine her as ‘dark’. Reportedly she was advised not to watch previous episodes, I think that was a huge mistake, if she’s as good an actor as people say she is, I think that would have added a lot of depth to her interpretation.

@ps1l0v3y0u (please edit box get it right this time. pretty please?) yes I noticed, watching the last few episodes of Seven, that his witty exterior could well hide a dark streak. How far would he risk Ace to attain his objective? – my impression is, far more than Nine or Ten would risk Rose, for example. I don’t think he ever did, at least in the episodes I’ve seen, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

One of the problems with the ‘fam’ was indeed too-many-cooks. An ensemble cast always diffuses the intensity of relationships and you end up with a Charlie’s Angels scenario (reputedly each of the Angels had a contract guaranteeing equal exposure so they ended up saying lines in turn). Good for comedy but not for drama. If Yaz had had more to do (as in a couple of later episodes, but way too late) it might have helped.

@winston If you’re going to do a completely fresh start (only the name is the same) then you need a strong performance to draw people in. NuWho has had three of those. Nine and Rose (mentioned already). Eleven and Amy – and I must admit I was a bit adrift at losing Rose and Ten, in fact I dropped off watching about three episodes into Season 5. Eleven just seemed too young. When I went back and picked it up later, though, the strength of Amy’s character (and I guess I just got used to Eleven’s youthfulness) drew me in again. And then there was Thirteen and the Fam, ah well, never mind.

Astrid was a great character, enthusiastic and vivacious, and delightfully acted by Kylie Minogue. She would have made a great Companion, and the Doctor was conveniently ‘single’ at the time. Possibly it was felt that another young blonde pop star might be a bit repetitive.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Um, half my previous comment was responding to you.   For some reason this comment box doesn’t seem to like your name.   See if it works this time.

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@gallifreyanking88     Ranking doesn’t ‘have’ to be  🙂   I usually avoid naming preferences (in case of arguments).   But I’d agree with most of that (even Donna, sorry, Tait fans)

*Except* for your ranking of Rose.   IMO the success of NuWho has got to be down to Rose and Nine/Ten.    Billie Piper had a sort of fresh impulsiveness about her that drew me in.    I wanted to see what happened next.

Martha tends to be overlooked, I liked Martha.   Intelligent enough to realise the Doctor was never going to notice her and walked away.   But – marrying Mickey?   The tin dog?   That was unnecessary.

And Graham did nothing for me.   I like Bradley but his character just didn’t ‘click’ with me.    I found Dan much more interesting, though he was only in it briefly.

<span class=”useratname”>@ps1l0v3y0u  I don’t know much about oldWho companions, except that Seven and Ace certainly seemed to have a degree of ‘chemistry’.   Sophie and McCoy evidently got on well together from the few videos I’ve seen of them at cons.
</span>

I wasn’t aware that Ace was around for Six, was that a misprint or my ignorance?

Amy was a strong character.   Summed up in her comment to Madame Kovarian – ‘River didn’t get it all from you, sweetie.’

I think 13 plus Yaz – only – might have worked better.   But 13 was atrociously written and Whittaker’s acting choices were equally terrible (do we blame her or Chibnall for that?).   She came across as a hearty Yorkshire-lass Girl Guide leader, the sort of person I instinctively avoid.   ‘Fam’ – ugh!   And ‘I’m the Doctor.   Sorting out fair play throughout the Universe.’    Simultaneously bombastic and bathetic.   The sort of line I might write if I were lampooning Who.   The sort of clumsy line a script editor should have cut immediately.   And she delivered it without a hint of irony.   I’m afraid she never did quite climb her way out of the mental pigeonhole that dropped her into.

 

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Well while everyone else is getting (justifiably) excited over new episodes, here am I drifting along oblivious in my own little Who world.   Which is to say I just re-watched ‘Smile’.   I stuck some random thoughts in the forum for that episode.   (My hard drive says I wrote some comments before but if so I don’t know where I put them).

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I just re-watched Smile, herewith some impressions –

Calatrava’s architecture is truly fantastic. It’s in Valencia. Yeah that’s not a set or CGI, it’s real. The cornfields are CGI but the buildings are real. Though I think with some CGI additions, but surprisingly little. I can’t think of any equivalent real-but-fantastic location since Portmeirion in The Prisoner.

Somehow, a world where you have to be happy or die is far more horrific than one where everybody is miserable.

Ooh, the writer likes tantalising us. Only on repeat viewing (ike this) does the Doctor’s words in the plant nursery set off alarm bells – “A skeleton crew.” Literally.

I keep being amazed at the extent of the ‘location’. Incidentally, I had to adjust my monitor dimmer so the backgrounds in the city weren’t faded out, then in the spaceship everything faded into gloom and I had to adjust it right up again.

The ship has a ‘Fleischman cold fusion engine’. That rings a bell – in (Googles – 1988) Pons and Fleischmann of the University of Utah claimed to have achieved Cold Fusion. It caused quite a kerfuffle, exacerbated by the University’s PR department who claimed, shall we say, rather more than was merited, and the whole thing was eventually found to be a chimera.

I did love the way Bill, who was guiding the Doctor by reading a wall map, suddenly realised – “Hang on, I’m being thick. I can come with you.” Doc: “Took that long to think of photographing it?” “You’d already memorised it, hadn’t you?” “Yep.” “Stop trying to keep me out of trouble.” I love the perceptiveness of both characters in that exchange.

And I couldn’t help a reflexive giggle that the first human they encountered, a young teenage boy, asked – “Are we there yet?” The universal question.

The dead old lady lying in state with a animated remembrance book of her life at her feet was nicely conceived. And I loved the concept that her (natural) death started a wave of grief as the Vardies, who were programmed to ensure everyone stayed happy, eliminated anyone who wasn’t happy happy happy. Beware how you program a robot, the results may not be what you expected.

Unfortunately the colonists are stupid enough to think they can shoot all the millions of microbots.

I’m not sure how anything survived the nuclear explosion caused by the Doctor unless that was a metaphorical one, or maybe a possible immediate future that the Doctor averted by resetting the Vardies.

First time through, I was upset that the murderous Vardies got let off so lightly. But of course they weren’t in any way evil, just genuinely misguided.

I thought the episode was great, and the architecture of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències was an outstanding location.

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Bloody hell.   (Am I allowed to say that?   Well I just did   🙂

Who has gone full Henson with this one!    Reminds me of Labyrinth, though this goblin king is a lot less good-looking than David Bowie.   An upbeat, cheerful, catchy song about – eating babies.   Ironically I guess, it’s pretty much in the Christmas tradition – most fairy tales were quite remarkably gruesome, after all.

It’s certainly – different.

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@translatorcircuit   Your last sentence rings a bell.   I should perhaps say that I’m absolutely not a gun lover, nor do I wish to raise the issue here,  but in past decades when American sitcoms (which Mrs D had a regrettable tendency to watch) were replete with cute smartass kids delivering ‘clever’ one-liners to a laugh track, the only way I could stay in the room was to fantasise walking onto set holding a Thompson gun and emptying an entire 100-round drum magazine into the assembled cast.    It made me feel so much better.   🙂

These days sitcoms seem to have been replaced by ‘reality’ shows as the nadir of television dreadfulness.

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@oochillyo   I’ve got that movie.   It’s insane, but entertaining.   Luc Besson on LSD   🙂    The ‘Pearls’ remind me strongly of the aliens in Avatar.   Rihanna’s character ‘Bubble’ is entertaining (and sexy 🙂   Visually, it’s spectacular.  Fun to watch.

Though, I think, it suffers compared with Besson’s earlier ‘Fifth Element’ (get that if you can, if you liked Valerian you’d love it).   Sort of demonstrates that ‘more of everything’ is not always better.   In fact I got Valerian because I’d watched and loved Fifth Element.   It (5th El) has Bruce Willis who was excellent, Milla Jovovich absolutely fantastic as Leeloo Multipass, and Gary Oldman as the ultimate buttoned-down Bond villain Zorg.   And all the myriad little details are nicely thought out.   I liked the wannabe robber who has a picture of scenery on his hat to fool those little front-door peepholes.

It feels a little more coherent than Valerian but is just as much fun to watch.   Probably my favourite sci-fi movie.   ‘Alien’ impresses me because it’s so well-made and atmospheric (and scary as hell);  Fifth Element I love because it’s so much fun.

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@craig   Thanks for your efforts on this site  (I bunged a small donation towards the kitchen as a token appreciation)

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<span class=”useratname”>@ps1l0v3y0u</span>    Oh, and I forgot to mention Paul McGann.   Excellent in The Night of the Doctor short.   I’ve seen the movie and it didn’t feel like Doctor Who, it was an American cop show disguised as Who.   He would have made a great Doctor, in proper episodes.

And of course the War Doctor,  John Hurt.   He too would have made a perfect Doctor – of course.

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@ps1l0v3y0u      I think you’ve summed up the Doctors pretty well.    My favourite of NuWho would be Capaldi.   But the others were good – Tennant maybe a bit too emotional.    Smith started out too young but he aged into it (a bit like Roger Moore as James Bond).

Old Who, I only ever saw glimpses of Hartnell, Patrick Troughton who I liked very much, and Jon Pertwee who had style.    I’ve recently gone back to Sylvester McCoy’s last few stories and I like him, and he had a definite chemistry with Ace.   If only oldWho had had special effects even up to the level of Series 1 of NuWho…   (and that goes for Blakes 7 too, though they didn’t have quite so many painfully naff aliens as Who)

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@devilishrobby     I just Googled and ‘steelbook’ is what it sounds like – simply a steel DVD case.   Personally I’m perfectly happy with the usual polythene DVD cases, less likely to get scuffed (because their labels are slip-fitted paper under a clear plastic cover).     Steelbook issues apparently typically have more ‘extras’.   But I’d be a tad unhappy if the standard version was deliberately skimped on extras in order to big up the Steelbook.    Actually, the idea of a steel DVD case sounds curiously old-fashioned and steampunk, to me   🙂

 

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@winston   Yes, I found the bit where they all turned against the Doctor hard to watch.   The stewardess – who was initially suspicious of the Doctor – redeemed herself at the cost of her own life and – icing on the cake – nobody even knew her name.   And, IIRC, most of the passengers didn’t seem to have learned anything from the experience.

The fact that we never find what ‘it’ was doesn’t bother me.  I’m intrigued but the information isn’t essential to the plot.

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@devilishrobby   Often ‘bottle shows’ are among the best, if the writer and cast are good.  I guess Moffat’s equivalent would be ‘Listen’, though it used several locations (so maybe it wasn’t quite a ‘bottle’ show) but the cast was only four people.   Again, it had two truly hair-raising scenes, one with the silent bedspread monster and the other with the noises in the empty base at the end of time – and again, we never saw the monster.

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@thereet    Much as I’d love it to be, it doesn’t seem to be.    I see  @<span class=”useratname”>ps1l0v3y0u   has already answered.</span>

If you’re searching for similar information in future, I can recommend tardis.fandom.com  which has a full synopsis and cast list for every episode.   And chakoteya.net   has a full episode transcript (which helps a lot in identifying characters’ names).

(I have no connection with those sites other than using them all the time)

But people here will be happy to talk about episodes.    Your random choice was fortunate,   Midnight was (IMO)  Russell T Davies best episode.

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@craig    Yes, one suggestion.   Is it possible to make the list of ‘Recent Forum Posts’ on the homepage longer than 5, or maybe set it so it lists the 5 different forums most recently used?    Currently, with a little bit of chitchat between two people on, say, On the Sofa, they all point to the same forum and a post someone made yesterday somewhere else gets swiftly buried.

Having fiddled with a bit of coding in the past, I’m aware ‘simple’ suggestions often aren’t simple at all, so please don’t bother if it gets complicated.

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@janetteb   I know just what you mean about your ‘handbag book’.   I was using Moving Pictures in similar fashion, which is why it took me so long to get through it.    In fact I’ve learned from experience that if I chauffeur Mrs D anywhere, especially if her very large family is involved, I make sure I’ve got a book handy in case of emergency.   That way I can settle down in a spare corner while they talk family things at length.

I wish you success with your family watch-through.   And I do hope RTD’s new episode is a success.    I probably won’t get to see it for some time, until it comes out on DVD.   But I can wait.   🙂

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@janetteb    I’ve just started (re-) reading Reaper Man  (he says, blithely ignoring the excitement going on nearby over New Episodes!)    I guessed you’ve finished it by now.    I think it’s one of Pratchett’s most entertaining books (and of course it features a favourite character, Death).   The Auditors of Reality remind me of management consultants.   The sort that ‘advise’ making half the workforce redundant.   I expect they invented kpi’s.    In the Who universe they would be Daleks, I think.

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@nerys    Well, ‘Layer Cake’ finally arrived in the mail.   I just watched it.   Yes, I did have some trouble following the complicated plot, though that did help with giving the impression that things were spinning out of control of XXXX (Daniel Craig’s character).   Interesting how they managed to never mention his name without that ever being obvious until the end.   (I found Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels similarly confusing on a first watching, it got easier second time round when I could identify the cast a bit easier).    Layer  Cake – I didn’t really like it, didn’t dislike it, but I couldn’t stop watching – just had to see how it all worked out.    And I have to say I was expecting a bad ending, but then there were several reversals in the last few minutes and I thought XXXX was going to get away with it and the final shock came from a totally unexpected (but in hindsight quite justified and predictable) quarter.

But I think my favourite film in the British crime genre is still Trance, with its ongoing puzzle of who’s controlling who.

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@ps1l0v3y0u I must admit that my memory of the episodes from Chibnall’s reign are a little hazy, having only watched them once so far. I think Spyfall struck me at the time as an improvement on previous eps, but I wouldn’t want to put it stronger than that without rewatching. I can understand your reservations about Noor Inayat Khan (or any other recent-historical figure). ‘Churchill’ always bothers me, though I suppose (like Hitler) he’s been so often portrayed in fiction that varying interpretations have lost some of their annoyance.

Asylum of the Daleks I absolutely loved. “You had a daughter.” “I know, I’ve read my file.” Ouch! The Daleks chanting ‘Doctor, save us!’ And of course Oswin, who was dazzling. I love it when Moffatt fools me, as he did with Oswin the Dalek. He put up clues all over the place – Oswin keeping out the Daleks with a plank and some nails, ‘where does she get the milk?’, a tiny part of my mind knew what was coming but I subconsciously didn’t want to believe it just because Oswin was such a vivacious character. And I say that as someone who frequently has problems with logistics, physical realism, call it what you will.  I will say not many writers or actresses could have pulled that off.

Akhaten for example, I kept having problems – for example the space speeder – in a vacuum? And the planets all looked far too close to each other. Or were they all just little planetoids drifting in an asteroid field in an oxygen-rich atmosphere? I just couldn’t rationalise the environment.

Journey to the Centre of the Tardis was okay for me. Nightmare in Silver, so-so.

I thought Jenna Coleman fitted Clara perfectly, so we differ there. Pearl Mackie was good, though I preferred Clara. But the only nuWho companion (excluding Chibnall years) that I didn’t like was Donna. Too shouty and aggressive, and her first appearance was unfortunate – the Doctor had just lost Rose and Donna bursts in destroying the mood.

Apparently Bill is quite intelligent and observant, for example noticing the rug under the Tardis. Though she did take quite a long time to fully grasp the idea of the Tardis – I don’t blame her for that, anybody would have trouble, and it was an amusing sequence. The pictures of Susan and River were I suppose just a symptom of the Doctor feeling a little lonely. I was wondering why there wasn’t one of Jenny too, but then I guess he only met her for a few minutes.

I did like the way the end of the episode ‘set it up’ for the final moments of The Doctor Falls – again, that took me completely by surprise at that time, but of course Heather would do that, wouldn’t she.

 

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Just re-watched The Pilot. I do like this episode, and better this time round. The first time, I was slightly (and unconsciously) biassed against Bill. Nothing personal, just that Clara was a hard act to follow and I was missing her.

Bill is quite a plain-looking girl, but her mother (in the photographs) is beautiful.   That was a lovely Christmas present from the Doctor.

I rather like idea of The Doctor, man of mystery (even though we know the answer). And this is one of the better Tardis reveals (and of course Twelve’s Tardis is far and away the most glorious and impressive one of the entire batch).

Nardole is excellent comic relief. “Human. Human alert. Do you want me to repel her?”

I think Moffatt could rival Oscar Wilde for epigrams. “Hardly anything is evil, but most things are hungry. Hunger looks very like evil from the wrong end of the cutlery.”

It’s rather nice that the liquid menace pursuing them across time and space is so simply resolved. It just wanted to be friends.

A thoroughly enjoyable episode, and we still don’t know what is in the vault.

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@ps1l0v3y0u    Well I’m a Southern Railway fan primarily (I grew up in LSWR territory) but I think Gresley certainly had the best-looking of all modern locomotives. (It’s great to see that a P2 is being built btw). I acknowledge Churchard’s lead in e.g long-travel valves but (IMO) Churchward having made great advances, his successors were reluctant to change anything and were overtaken by other lines of development. But yes, as so often happens, Gresley’s was the name that stuck and others were eclipsed. This always happens, in the public imagination there’s only room for one name. Going further back Brunel gets all the publicity as a Victorian engineer and other engineers just as capable, like Robert Stephenson and Joseph Locke, get eclipsed.

By the way, when I said I know ‘quite a lot’ about early railways I wasn’t claiming to be any sort of expert, I was comparing myself to the average extent of knowledge. I certainly wouldn’t claim that my hobby could match a professional interest, a bit disconcerting to find that you had one. 🙂 Just that it gives me sufficient background to see how much gets left out of popular accounts.

Looking at Chibnall’s pre-Chibnall episodes (as it were) – 42, Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, Dinosaurs, Power of 3 – yes Power of 3 was undoubtedly the best, for sufficiently small values of ‘best’ 🙂   Stephen Berkoff was okay as the villain except that the ending was rather rushed. We didn’t get to see much of him. Reminded me of Solomon, a bit.

There were a couple of Chibnall-written episodes from Chibnall’s reign that are possibly equal/better than Power of 3 (at least in my recollection and I’ve only viewed most of them once) – Resolution, Spyfall, Fugitive of the Judoon (co-written), Eve of the Daleks (which I think is the best thing Chibnall has written).

As an aside, and just to prove you can’t believe everything you see on the Internet, I was googling ‘Chibnall Dr Who episodes’ to remind myself and this page https://guide.doctorwhonews.net/person.php?name=chrischibnall listed among Chibnall’s writing credits – wait for it – Asylum of the Daleks(!) Nooooooo! I had to go to Tardis.fandom.com to reassure myself that I wasn’t going bonkers, I *know* it was written by the Moff, it has the Moff’s fingerprints all over it, unmistakeably, it introduced Clara and I recall seeing Moff being interviewed about it. And it’s one of my favourite episodes.

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@ps1l0v3y0u I deduce that you’re some sort of historian or history fan. 🙂 I’m not really, except in a few specific areas.

Take any subject, like, say, sailing ships, or the English Civil War, and what the average member of the public (including me) ‘knows’ probably amounts to about half a paragraph. Usually it boils down to just a few anecdotes. That’s inevitable. I mentioned the early history of railways because I do know quite a lot about that, and therefore it’s obvious to me just how much popular accounts are leaving out (which is most of the story). I don’t mind that so long as the result isn’t actively misleading, and really, from a general social history point of view, I guess it doesn’t matter much who made which improvements so long as somebody did. Doubtless most popular accounts of the Civil War are leaving out just as much but I wouldn’t know. I just have to hope the writers aren’t misrepresenting anything, because that is not acceptable.

I would apologise for introducing Arthur, except that in the context of ‘mythical British historical figures’, omitting Arthur is a bit like talking about ‘Scottish legendary monsters’ and forgetting Nessie. 🙂

I didn’t care for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship much either, I’d forgotten Chibnall wrote it, what a surprise. I should probably have thought of a better example of not clashing with history. The only character I really liked was Nefertiti. Riddell was obnoxious, which is why the last scene where Neffy had apparently volunteered to be Great White Hunter’s servant girl really peeved me.

Um, better example – The Unicorn and The Wasp. Apparently Agatha Christie really did disappear for a while with no explanation.

The Power of Three, since you mention it, was really good until the last few minutes. Loved the idea of the enigmatic cubes, studying us. (Echoes of the mice in the Hitchhiker series – projections in our dimension of pan-dimensional beings, and all the time that scientists were studying lab mice, the ‘mice’ were studying them. There’s nothing new in sci-fi. 🙂 BUT if the cubes were studying us for a year for some subtle reason, why the crudeness of just killing a third of the population? Why did it need a year of study to do that? Am I missing something?

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@ps1l0v3y0u Well the classic mythical figure has to be King Arthur, I guess. Based on (presumably) some ancient chieftain. But the most mythologised-about has to be Cleopatra whose existence is very throughly documented. It’s fun to play with historical figures, but ideally it should dovetail in to known history and not do violence to it. So for example I was okay with Queen Nefertiti being on a spaceship and deciding not to return to Egypt (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) since apparently she disappeared from contemporary history quite unexpectedly (I read that somewhere, sorry if I got that wrong). I doubt that Who episode is ever going to confuse history. (What I wasn’t happy about was her going off with that misogynistic Great White Hunter ass Riddell, but that’s another issue).

You said “a historian also needs to think very carefully before they make something plausible or entertaining from whatever facts THEY have to hand.” Ditto for fiction writers!

History is, unavoidably, just a collection of ‘stories’ about historical figures and events. Most things in the real world are complicated, and telling a coherent narrative demands massive simplification. For just one example, I’ve read extensively about the early history of railways and the steam locomotive, and the popular historical account which tries to compress it into five minutes and five people has to leave out a vast host of details. This is inevitable if it’s going to be fitted into a general history course. You could say the same of any topic. So as soon as you start to make a story out of it, the question of what to leave out skews the story – even if the teller is unbiassed (and of course history is, notoriously, written by the victors).

But then modern stories, even totally fictional ones, can overlay and obscure the historical record. For example there is a persistent attack by American commentators on the character of George III (‘mad King George’). Reading his detailed Wikipedia page I get the impression that he was an enlightened King for his day and his relatively short periods of mental illness late in his long reign do not define him. And how many Netflix watchers now think Cleopatra VII Philopator was black? (I hope that idea doesn’t stick. Really, anyone deliberately putting counterfactual information in a self-styled ‘documentary’ should never be allowed to make anything for television ever again).

 

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<span class=”useratname”>@ps1l0v3y0u</span>   Hi,  I can’t really comment on most of that since I’m essentially a nuWho fan.   I have watched the last few of Seven and Ace’s episodes on DVD, and I know all the old Doctors, but that’s about it.

I’m okay with such concepts as travelling to ‘the end of Time’, but I just find that – dramatically – threats of universal destruction are overwhelming and tend to overshadow the stories of the characters.

Robin Hood’s authenticity never worried me at all, I just accept him as a mythical figure.   Like King Arthur.  (I had to Google ‘Robert Hode’, it seems there are varying candidates for the original of Robin Hood).   So that aspect of Robot of Sherwood caused me no qualms at all.   I was mainly concerned with the impossible ballistics of shooting the spaceship with a golden arrow, and how could an arrow stuck in the hull be processed quickly enough to boost the engines?   Never mind that gold is a remarkably unreactive metal so unlikely to be a usable power source.

I do agree that – *if* the conflicting dates of ‘Robin’s origin were common knowledge – then the Tardis would be an excellent solution.   The only drawback (from my point of view) is that almost nobody in the audience is aware of the anomaly, so it would be a solution to an unknown problem.

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@janetteb   It’s probably a symptom of my disinterest that I can hardly remember what the overall plot of the Flux series was.   Or maybe it was just quite obscure at the time.   The Flux eating the universe actually reminded me of episodes in that weird series Lexx where robotic heads were eating everything and changing it into more robotic heads, sort of like cybermen on steroids.

I dimly remember Kate, I seem to recall she was quite a good character.   (Resorts to tardis.fandom.com where would we be without it?)   Oh, you were talking about ‘The Power of the Doctor.’    Kate Stewart.   I was thinking of someone else, I thought you were talking about The Flux.

Um, as I recall, I found The Power of the Doctor ‘not too bad’ though that’s more a reflection on what came before (viz. the Flux series).    Just browsing tardis.fandom.com to try and figure which later companion I’m thinking of.   Nope, can’t do it.   I’m going to have to re-watch the series at some point, I guess, I seem to recall some incidental characters who deserved better treatment.   But it’s hard to write a coherent series when the apocalypse meter is off the dial all the time.    Sometimes, the most effective episodes are the ‘small’ ones where the peril is finite and only a few people are at risk.   I’m thinking of ones like The Girl Who Waited or The Doctor’s Wife or World Enough and Time or Face the Raven, for example.   Or even Eve of the Daleks, the best episode of Chibnall’s tenure IMO.

Well, on to the first of Bill Potts’s episodes, The Pilot.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I agree with most of what you say. And specifically re Kill the Moon/Forest of the Night. Robot of Sherwood had big problems with the golden arrow (as far as I’m concerned) but it was light-hearted enough I could overlook that.

However I think any show has to be internally self-consistent, and that has to come from the showrunner and writers. Directors and actors can detract from that, or possibly even improve it though I don’t know if that has ever happened. (I’d love to know if a regular character has ever said ‘No I wouldn’t do that, three episodes ago I did the exact opposite’ and had their point taken up.)

Sci fi of the Doctor Who flavour has to be about characters, since ‘ideas’ are hard to show on screen, usually boring, and if of galactic-sized phenomena (e.g. Independence Day) they require hugely expensive special effects for which no Who before the 2020’s had the budget, so either looked impossibly lame or just couldn’t be done. And as Independence Day and Chibnall’s Flux series demonstrated, FX are no substitute for a good strong coherent plot. So Who had to be very much character-driven.

And I also agree that, with Companions, more is less. Take for example Journey’s End, where the Doctor and half-a-dozen favourite Companions were playing at flying the Tardis towing the Earth back into place – that was so contrived and every-companion-gets-a-line it makes me cringe. The Tardis can be flown solo ffs, why did it need a committee? Amy and Rory were just manageable (with Rory taking a definitely secondary role), Chibnall’s menage was just too many and I agree it would have been much better with just Yaz (and I wouldn’t care if every lesbian refugee from Xena and Gabrielle had jumped on the fanfic wagon 🙂 Oh, and ‘Fam’? Please. Moffat wrote the Doctor as a humanoid alien with slightly odd quirks and a lack of comprehension of accepted human behaviour, Chibnall’s Doctor was more like a hearty and unbearable Girl Guide leader.

 

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@janetteb There’s no particular reason why you might amend your view of the Hogfather TV adaptation when you read the book, first acquaintance is a powerful influence. 🙂 Hogfather is one of his best books, by the way.

I’m up to ‘Moving Pictures’, one behind you with Reaper Man. Reaper Man is a good one, IIRC. Are you reading them in any particular order? I have all his books in order in my bookshelf and tend to read them in order of publication, though it’s really not necessary. As far as I can tell, all his books are in chronological order, he never (?) went backward in time, though he did jump from one place and set of characters to another, and some characters overlapped into different threads. Of course various fans have published ‘reading order’ guides, I found a useful one for information (even though I don’t follow it) was Kryzsztof Kietzman’s (see if this link works) https://d4804za1f1gw.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/07/24165448/Discworld-Reading-Order.jpg

I liked Doug Adams’ ruler of the universe, too. And he was fond of cats, which is a plus for me. One of the strands of Doug Adams humour was looking at things from a skewed point of view, such as ‘Much of the unhappiness in the universe was concerned with 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.” (I’ve misquoted him, I’m sure). While Terry Pratchett takes common human tropes and deftly adjusts them to suit the quirks of his characters, such as when Angua the werewolf had gone missing, “Her bed hadn’t been slept in. Neither had her basket.” That is the only time he mentions her basket, but *of course* a werewolf would need one from time to time. And Death of course is a fertile source of those little quirks.

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@nerys     I would say (from memory) that the TV series quite closely followed the book.   As I would expect, since Neil Gaiman was apparently closely involved in the TV production.   (I think in general it does make a difference to ones viewpoint which version one saw first, since the first-seen tends to establish itself in ones brain as the yardstick by which other versions are judged.   I couldn’t avoid that, for instance, when reading the Moff’s novelisation of The Day of the Doctor, the TV version kept interrupting.   I must read it again).     That said, I think I can recommend the TV version of Neverwhere if you get the chance.

@oochillyo   @janetteb   I definitely think that stories have to follow their own internal logic.   And that credibility depends partly on our own background and viewpoint – I’m an engineer for example.    I (too often) quote Kill the Moon as an example – I have no problem at all with the Tardis (which violates every law of physics) materialising inside the hold of the Space Shuttle – *but* the Space Shuttle (which is a glider) gliding to a landing on the airless Moon makes me snort with disgust, in reality it would just make a new crater.    The Tardis and the sonic screwdriver I accept because they’re Time Lord technology (hence equivalent to ‘magic’), and thus fully explained within the internal logic of the show.   The Space Shuttle – isn’t.

Messing with history also meets with a mixed reaction from me, I get annoyed that Tesla gets credited with the development of AC electricity supply when the major credit should go to George Westinghouse.   Non-engineers would probably be baffled by that.   🙂    But Martha prompting Shakespear with some of his best lines – I love that.

Other people have their own boundaries of what they’ll accept, and those boundaries are often irregular or even fractal.

janetteb, I trust you’re enjoying Sir Pterry, I have all of his books and I’m slowly re-reading my way through them.   They are explicitly magical, the Discworld exists in a strong magical field and (so far as I can tell) the laws of Discworld ‘physics’ are quite consistent.   It’s notable that Sir Pterry incorporates every spook and monster ever invented by man in his books sooner or later.   And under the guise of magic and fantasy, he manages to impart a strong humanist (is that  the right word?) feeling, without ever sounding preachy.   And his characters are masterfully defined.   (My favourite characters – Vetinari, Angua the werewolf, the Librarian, and of course Death).

Incidentally, going back to the book vs film question, I don’t think Terry Pratchett’s work translates quite so well to film.   Even though I do like the TV movie of Hogfather.   Partly because his writing style is just so good, so amusing, so wryly funny, and much of that cannot be translated to a visual medium.   And of course portraying orang utans or talking dogs or Death (an anthropomorphic personification) on screen is always going to be difficult.

I find that Sir Pterry’s books often remind me of Doug Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’ series.    Just something about the fantastic flavour of both.   It’s interesting because I would unhestitatingly class Hitchhiker as ‘sci-fi’ and Discworld as ‘fantasy’ but they are remarkably close in tone, or at least they seem so to me.   I used to think there was a sharp line there but I no longer do.

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@nerys    In related news, I’ve almost finished reading Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’  (having watched the DVD series with Capaldi as the Angel Islington a short while back).    I find Gaiman’s writing style rather plain, which is interesting as his scenarios are truly fantastic (they are fantasy after all).   But quite absorbing.    If he wasn’t so busy with other projects, I think he would have made an excellent showrunner for Dr Who.

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@nerys     The DVD of Layer Cake hasn’t arrived in the mail yet.    Um, it certainly should have done, thanks for the reminder, I must chase it up.    I’ll probably comment on it when it finally arrives (whenever that is).

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@devilishrobby  Oh yes, the ‘Recent forum posts’ are all this bloody Finnegan pest.   @craig, I think your attention is required, if you would be so kind?   Along with banning this ‘Monica Williams’

If it helps I’ll volunteer to look at every forum on this site and list all those polluted by this ‘Finnegan’ for your convenience, let me know.   He seems to be spamming links to online stores for football jerseys.   If only I was a hacker I’d bring their sites down.

 

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I got eight messages from Monica Williams.   Eight!

Did you get a message from her too?

I’m devastated, I thought it must be my magnetic personality.  (sob)

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@janetteb   And oh yes, the minor characters are all well written.   There could almost be a spinoff, there.   The dramas of an alien ‘refugee’ society in modern London.   (I had a sudden flashback to Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’).    Not sure quite how well I’d like it though.  I tend to prefer series that have just a couple of main characters, ensemble casts tend to dilute the drama for me.

Me has become quite ruthless by now.   I would have expected to see more lines on her face, but presumably the Mire medicine kit also functions as an anti-ageing treatment.

 

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