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17 October 2022 at 07:45 #73533
@janetteb I think Georgia Tennant is too old now to play Jenny (unless of course Jenny has aged in the story). Which is a pity because, yes, Jenny had potential. What wedding speech was that – Tennants? Is it on Youtube?
Anyway, I really can’t bring to mind the person you’re referring to in your last sentence. Unless – let’s see – Time Lords – all dead. Cybermen – all dead. Daleks – all dead. Universe – mostly destroyed. But there is a new alien race, the Lupari – no, wait, they’re all dead too, except for one. Sontarans, all dead, except for 7 billion unconscious ones in Lupari ships (who I suspect will shortly be all dead too if the surviving Lupari has a big red button he can push).
17 October 2022 at 07:27 #73532@rewvian I got that same feeling watching the episode, that Astrid was shaping up to be a Companion. Particularly since Martha had just left him. Poor Doctor – lost Rose, Martha left him, lost Astrid – he had a worse success rate than me (though all of my ex-girlfriends or never-quite-made-it girlfriends were alive when we parted 🙂
I never listened to Kylie’s music much though (and likewise I never heard Billie Piper singing. I recall – unless I’m just imagining it – some scepticism whether a pop star could ever be any good as a Companion. I think Billie settled that one pretty well. And – based on her performance in Voyage – I think Kylie would have been good too.
17 October 2022 at 05:42 #73529@rewvian The Poison Sky – I had a problem with. Specifically, burning the gas out of the atmosphere. (This is where my technical scepticism kicks in). You need a certain percent of inflammable gases in air to actually burn, and for almost any gas you care to name, that concentration would be way higher than could be achieved by modified car exhausts. If the Sontaran gas was poisonous, all of humanity would be dead long before flammability concentration was reached. And when ignited – you’d have the biggest ever air-fuel explosion. Intense heat radiation, a massive pressure wave, and the casualty list would be like that of a nuclear war.
Yes I know it’s less impossible than time travel, but I can accept the Tardis as ‘alien tech’ whereas combustion in the atmosphere is very much terrestrial chemistry. The interaction of alien tech and Earth tech is often a sticking point for me. Like the Spitfires attacking the Dalek ship in Victory of the Daleks. I cringe at that. Spitfires in space – they need air to operate.
The Doctor’s Daughter – I liked. Jenny – Georgia Tennant, who really is a Doctor’s daughter, also a Doctor’s wife, also the daughter of a Hitchhiker companion (Trillian) – but anyway, she was a charming character. I was shocked when she got shot and delighted when she revived. I would have laid odds she’d be back in later episodes but for some reason that never happened.
The Unicorn and the Wasp – I thought was a middling-good episode. I’m surprised to hear it was ever rated one of the worst, I always found it was easy enough to watch.
17 October 2022 at 04:00 #73528@rewvian Smith was good. I didn’t like him at first (too young) but within a couple of episodes I’d accepted him. The flavour of the show did change with S5, of course the Moff took over as showrunner. Karen Gillan was excellent as Amy. In fact all the companions in the RTD and Moffat years were good; assertive young women who rarely took any nonsense from the Doctor. I’ve always considered the Companion as important as the Doctor. I liked them all (except Donna. Too shrill. First impressions can count for a lot and unfortunately the first impression we got of Donna was when the Doctor was grieving the shocking loss of Rose, and Donna burst in haranguing him for causing something he was completely innocent of. Donna wasn’t written as sympathetically as the other Companions).
16 October 2022 at 14:11 #73523‘With one bound, (s)he was free’ – but twice over? Yaz and the Doctor escaping in the first few seconds of the episode.
If the Lupari shield completely surrounds Earth, how is there daylight under it? And how did the Sontaran ships get to Peru? What are they doing inside the shield? Did I miss something?
(Urgh. The Doctor is being annoyingly chatty again. VERY annoyingly chatty. As Yaz says, normal service resumed. Regrettably).
Apparently the world is full of Sontarans. So what exactly was the Lupari shield doing? Oh, and Sontarans use psychics, and are total chocolate addicts – who knew? And how convenient. This is Chibbers rewriting canon again, isn’t it?
And Karvanista is an ex-companion of the Doctor’s, but he can’t talk about it or he will be instantly killed (as he explains at some length – do I see a contradiction here?)
And in the time it took for Karvanista’s ship to reach the Sontaran HQ in Peru, apparently the Sontarans have captured all seven billion Lupari ships and killed their crew, all without Karvanista getting word of it? Seriously? How?
Why do the Sontarans think that predicting the location of the final Flux event will give them any sort of win? And how would human psychics know the location anyway?
Two Doctors. Twice as annoying. You need Moff’s skill to exploit the humour in that (Day of the Doctor comes to mind) but sadly, Chibbers ain’t Moff.
Oh, the Sontarans plan to use the Daleks and Cybermen to soak up the anti-matter Flux. Who would have thought they were such master strategists. But though Karvanista didn’t know that all his fellow doggies were being killed on board their ships, he apparently still had remote control of all 7 billion ships…
And what happened to “We have to stop the Sontaran plan with the Grand Serpent.” How that was going to work, I don’t think we ever found out.w
So… have I got this right? – Chibbers has now destroyed all the Time Lords (except the Doctor and the Master); all the Lupari (except one, but we never saw any others anyway); the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Sontarans. And also most of the Universe.
Oh, except for the 7 billion or so Sontarans currently unconscious in the Lupari ships. That’s going to be awkward.This was just too much, too apocalyptic. Pretty much the opposite extreme from Blue Teeth Boy in Jodie episode one. But beyond a certain point, it ceases to have any emotional impact. It appears that the Doctor is indirectly responsible for all the destruction. And Division, because they couldn’t control the Doctor, threw all their toys out of the cot (or rather, blew them up). Isn’t that a bit of an over-reaction? I much preferred the Doctor as a normal being, just a ‘madman with a box’.
By far the best episode of the series was the most limited, Village of the Angels.
16 October 2022 at 09:58 #73522@rewvian @janetteb I seem to recall Voyage of the Damned was based on Poseidon Adventure (which I never watched, I wasn’t into blockbuster movies much). I wasn’t a fan of Kylie Minogue as a singer, but I thought she was very sweet and appealing as Astrid Peth and I almost shed a tear when she couldn’t be retrieved. The forkhoist scene was of course directly stolen from Ripley’s cargo handler battle with the Alien (and nothing wrong with that, I should add). And of course the angelic Hosts turning evil was a classic trope.
I gather it was not very highly regarded as an episode, but I quite like it. Not in my top ten list or even top twenty, but I always find it quite watchable.
cr
16 October 2022 at 09:46 #73521@rewvian OK, I’ve never been a customer of a streaming service. Partly because I’m always several years behind the current technology. For example all my laptops have been second-hand IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads, at least three years old, at maybe a fifth the price of a brand new one (Thinkpads are almost indestructible. They are eminently repairable and by the time they seriously break down they’re so old and obsolete as to be worth almost nothing and I’ve usually got two newer models anyway. But I digress). The other reason is, I think streaming is mostly via cable? We only got fibre broadband a couple of years ago, so I’m not sure if streaming was ever an option before that.
Back to DVD’s – yes I agree DVD sets are often horribly expensive. So again, I’m a cheapskate, I rarely buy the latest DVD’s, I either rent them (back in the day when video stores were a thing) or I wait a few months (or years) until they’re all over the second-hand market, or remaindered. If I really want a newish one I check Trademe (in New Zealand) or Ebay.com.au or even Ebay.co.uk for the best prices. That helps to keep my DVD habit reasonably affordable.
Matt Smith – yes, it took a while for him to grow on me, too. At first sight he seemed awfully weak and undecided, and also too young, for half an episode anyway. I liked Eleventh Hour much better on re-watching, knowing that his new-Doctor helplessness was going to wear off quite quickly.
15 October 2022 at 13:13 #73514Um. Interesting, sorta. Baffling, as in ‘where is this going?’ – frequently. (In some cases, nowhere, really).
So now Yaz and her companions are doing Indiana Jones stuff. It would seem the Angels have lost interest in them. Though somebody hasn’t, dynamite, mysterious assassins with suicide pills, is Yaz going to be the next James Bond? It would appear so, somehow the Doctor has delegated to Yaz the task of saving the Earth from alien incursions. Exactly how she is supposed to do that isn’t exactly clear. This is muddled writing. Why would date of the end of the world be on an old Mayan pot? And how would Yaz know where to find it?
And I’m afraid all this stuff about Division interfering behind the scenes (isn’t that pretty much what the Doctor does?) in multiple universes is losing me again. Too many story threads, too many complications. Umm, the next bit didn’t please me at all – the Doctor wouldn’t stop interfering in stuff so Division aka Tekteun decided to invent the Flux to destroy the Universe (and the Doctor with it). So it’s the Doctor’s fault. (I always knew she was too bossy 🙂 This is getting just too apocalyptic for me. Chibbers back to his old tricks, rewriting the canon.
And Tekteun had the Doctor brought to her ship (?) while she destroyed the Universe so the Doctor was no longer in the Universe to save it. So the Doctor will survive in Tekteun’s command ship – what could possibly go wrong?
And oh yes, we have UNIT, and also the Serpent guy from episode 1. Somehow, going from supreme dictator to an undercover bureaucrat seems a bit out of charcater. And also we have an occasional digression to Bel and Vinder’s search for each other, and the two blue-ish characters (Swarm and Azure?) who initially looked like the big bad but now appear to be just minor villains.
And meanwhile, Yaz and friends, via Nepal and the Great Wall of China, end up in Liverpool in Williamson’s tunnels. This is all very diverting but seems somehow off the point.
You know, with a bit of re-cutting to make each story thread continuous (instead of jumping from one fragment to another) you could have six fairly coherent, reasonably interesting episodes. Instead of the confusing collage that this series actually is.
So then the wicked emperor aka boss of UNIT is in collusion with the Sontarans, and the two blue villains (Swarm and Azure) have broken into Tekteun’s ship and zap her… So this all connects up somehow.
I’m ambivalent about this ep. The adventures of Yaz and co seem almost pointless (and we still don’t know who/why was trying to kill them). It does all connect up – well mostly – in the end. But the fragmented nature of the storyline makes it hard for me to care much about, say, Bel and Vinder’s quest to find each other. And it feels like the Doctor’s story has jumped not only the shark but Moby Dick and a kraken as well…
15 October 2022 at 10:35 #73513@rewvian I think the Angels were (and are) the best Who monster ever. And the Village of Angels episode was the best episode of Chibnall’s tenure. As I said somewhere, I was quite apprehensive what he might do to Moff’s creation, but I think he treated them well, at least up to the end of that episode. (I lied in my comment on ‘Utopia’, I’m not about to watch the final ep (6) of S13, but the penultimate one (5). I started watching 5 very late and dozy last night and decided to postpone watching it till tonight, to do it justice.)
You have quite a way to go to reach the Chibnall years, but at the rate you’re romping through episodes it may not take you so long, at that. I don’t know if you mentioned it, but how are you viewing them – online, or DVD sets? I use DVD sets myself, they often have interesting extras on them, specially in the Moffat era. Such as prequels and webisodes and the like. I even made myself a spreadsheet of what was on each DVD, just so I could watch them in the correct sequence with the episodes. (I found the list of episodes on Tardis.fandom.com, which gives the date of first screening, very useful in compiling my spreadsheet).
15 October 2022 at 10:16 #73512@rewvian I believe (mostly from hearsay) oldWho used quarries quite a lot, but I haven’t seen many of the episodes. I’ve seen B7 much more recently, in fact I was a B7 fan before nuWho turned me into a Who fan.
Since both series were made for the Beeb, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used some of the same locations, but I have no evidence for that. (I expect Googling might turn some up, but I’m too lazy, and about to watch the final ep of Series 13. That’s nuWho 13.)
14 October 2022 at 09:49 #73506@janetteb Our winter was the exact opposite of yours. The weather does seem to be getting more erratic. But anyway, I hope your weather improves for the spring.
14 October 2022 at 00:25 #73504@janetteb – oops, that first para was in response to your post #50 in this forum (last one on the first page). In case you were wondering where ‘Rose’ came from. This site has a peculiarity, that if I read the last comment, scroll up to log in to reply, it resets itself to Page 1. So I read your old comment, 1017 posts ago, about Rose and Mickey right before I posted.
Sorry about that 🙂
14 October 2022 at 00:19 #73503@janetteb I thought Rose was a bit harsh towards Mickey, too. But on the other hand, Rose was blonde, as photogenic as all get-out, had a bubbly personality, and Mickey was – a bit of a drip. I never found Rose irritating myself. But then, as I say, she was young and blonde 🙂
In other news – we usually get the weather after you guys have finished with it.
But we had the mildest winter ever, but then just a week ago, courtesy of El Nino or La Nina or summat, we got a blast of cold air direct from Antarctica, covered South Island and even Wellington in snow, coldest October day ever recorded. Lasted two days and by the following day I was back walking along the beach in beautiful calm warm weather again. Our weather is truly going bananas.Back to Who – I’m half way through the Flux episodes. Lots going on, almost too much. Every villain except maybe the Silents (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they appeared at some point). I have to say the Weeping Angels were very good, Chibbers’ best story yet (and I assume we have to credit his co-writer equally for that). I had dreaded what Chibbers might do to the Moff’s most iconic monster, but I’m quite pleased with the way it worked out. Claire having an angel ‘in her head’ is new. The stuff about the Doctor having worked for Division is typical Chibbers.
I’ve just finished the third season of ‘Sherlock’. Wow, the Moff in full steam. ‘His Last Vow’ – I had not expected Sherlock to shoot Mandelson or Murdoch (we wish!) or Milverton or whatever his name was, in cold blood, in front of police witnesses. That is something TV heroes just do not do. But Sherlock is borderline psychopathic. Memo to arch-villains – if you have blackmail dirt on everybody in power, and your safety depends on them all being intimidated by that fact, do not reveal to someone as coldly logical, loyal yet ruthless, as Sherlock, that the entire ‘filing system’ is in your head with no copies anywhere. Especially when you are hated by everybody of power and influence so that nobody is going to want to avenge your convenient death.
13 October 2022 at 23:39 #73502I thought that episode was okay. Felt sorry for Chan Tho the alien that Yana killed.
The scenes ‘outdoors’ with the degenerate wild men reminded me of a generic Blakes 7 episode. Same sort of ambiance and production values. (Maybe if I’d seen enough OldWho it would renind me of that too. Did oldWho and B7 used to share the same quarry?)
cr
13 October 2022 at 23:16 #73501@rewvian Blink is one of my favourite episodes (it also collected a raft of awards, quite rightly so). I had to go over it several times in my mind to figure out how it all fitted together.
It had the best and scariest ‘monsters’ in all of Who, I think. Just possibly the aliens in Alien were scarier, but in terms of bang-for-the-buck the Angels reign supreme. A monster that only moves when you can’t see it – Moff (like Ridley Scott) knows that the things you can’t see can be more scary than the things you can. And, it was a concept that ‘had legs’ as they say. Capable of development. The Daleks were always fighting the limitations of being a pepper-pot armed with kitchen utensils. Not so the Angels. I do agree that later Angels episodes weren’t quite as effective as Blink – which is to say, they were merely ‘good’ rather than ‘outstanding’. But I think that’s inevitable with any monster. I’ve just watched Season 13 ‘Village of the Angels’ and I have to say, it’s the best thing Chibnall has ever done. And part of that must be due to the story potential of the Angels themselves.
Blink also had a brilliant and sympathetic actress in Sally (Carey Mulligan), one immediately liked her, and old Billy was also charming. And so was Sally’s scruffy but engaging (maybe-)boyfriend Larry, and even young Billy.
The scene in hospital was moving, sad, but not depressing. “It was raining when we met” “It’s the same rain”. (And so it was, for Sally).
The ‘conversation’ in Wester Drumlins between Sally and the Doctor (on DVD) was sheer genius. How was it possible they were having a ‘conversation’? – because Larry was writing everything down, and the Doctor had a copy of it because Sally had later given it to him. And he had recorded his ‘speech’ and given it to Billy in the past to put on DVDs as an ‘easter egg’. I think that’s entirely original, I can’t think of anywhere in science fiction that’s been done before.
13 October 2022 at 15:46 #73498First impressions –
I know I’ve seen Claire Brown in something, and IIRC in that she managed to look innocent yet sinister at the same time. Can’t remember what it was, though. Tardis.fandom.com helps – Annabel Scholey, and she was in a list of things but significantly, Being Human. Summon up Wikipedia – oh yes, she was a vampire, Lauren. And obviously quite a wicked one, since she stuck in my mind.
Well now, ten minutes in, and so far things have been quite coherent. Could this be because the episode is co-written by someone who isn’t Chibbers, or am I letting my bias intrude? Claire has just acquired a pair of angel wings – that’s new.
And Dan and Yaz get hunted by an Angel in the fields – that’s quite genuinely scary. Note the fact the Angels never talk helps make them scarier, I think.
But then we’re back to the Chinese Irishwoman (or is it Irish Chinese – whatever) Bel. Somehow I can’t raise any enthusiasm for her ongoing story, broken up into little chunks like this.
But the Village of Angels sequences are very good and truly creepy. Burning Angel, that’s new too. I had expected (as a Moff fan) to be irate at Chib’s treatment of the Moff’s most iconic villain, but actually, so far, this is really good (and has a vintage Who feel to it).
So why are the rest of the Angels hunting Claire’s Angel? They’re an ‘extraction squad’ from Division – but what is Division? I have a feeling I missed something at some point. Okay, it appears to have been some shadowy organisation that had Claire’s Angel and the Doctor as operatives at some point. (Is Chibbers complicating things again?)
The sequence in the tunnel with Angels in the walls is truly scary and creepy. How will they get out of this?
Well, they don’t, or at least the Doctor doesn’t. “The only thing they want more than my Angel is you.” And the Doctor is transformed into an Angel.
Well, I never thought I’d say this of a Chibnall episode, but – bloody good ep! Certainly the best of Chibnall’s reign. I just hope the further plot developments can keep up the standard.
cr
13 October 2022 at 12:23 #73497Oh, and the general problem I feel with the Flux series (so far) is – just too much. Too many characters, too much devastation, Chibbers has everything turned up to 11, makes it hard to follow and hard to take any threat seriously. The Doctor seems much improved (though, to be uncharitable, maybe that’s just because she has fewer occasions to make rambling and/or preachy speeches).
13 October 2022 at 12:16 #73496I just took a look at the trailer (idle curiosity, I won’t get to view the episode for months) and it reminded me of Season 13 Flux, of which I’m part way through. That is, a host of ingredients, not sure how they all fit together. Though that could just be due to the nature of trailers. But one of those disintegrations in the trailer did look very Flux-like (or maybe it’s just that the CGI people have this great ‘disintegration’ algorithm and they’re itching to use it any chance they get).
11 October 2022 at 13:57 #73490My first imnpressions of this ep – well, confusion, mainly.
So now we have yet another character, an Asian-looking chick with an Irish accent; and Daleks, yet. This is starting to look like a Whovian Lord of the Rings. But the first scenes are quite promising.
And now I’m 15 minutes into the ep and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on. Has Chibbers decided to out-Moff the Moff? You have to be very careful and meticulous when splitting the storyline into multiple streams, to not lose the audience. Or as Mudlark put it succinctly, “He seems to be aiming for Moffat style levels of complexity without the particular skills to achieve it.”
So we got Cybermen with a walk-on part. And now I’m at the end, and we have a Weeping Angel. What next, Silurians?
What was all that? I’m still not sure what was going on, or who’s doing what to who. I have a general idea, I usually like to understand precisely what the storyline is, but in this case I can’t raise the mental energy to straighten it all out in my mind, and I’m not sure the result would be worth the effort. Which is a pity, there were quite a lot of quite good bits in there, I think. The sets, cinematography and the CGI were all notably good.
11 October 2022 at 12:03 #73489@rewvian I’m a bit wary of depictions of historical characters too. Not so much really famous ones like Shakespear or Julius Caesar or Cleopatra – they have been the subject of so much literary speculation over the centuries that I don’t think Who can affect their reputation, either positively or negatively. So Shakespear Code didn’t bother me on that account.
Less prominent people, or (particularly) technical people like engineers or scientists (cos I’m an engineer), I get distinctly uneasy and critical of distortions or misrepresentations. Such as Babbage and Ada Lovelace, or even worse Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse and Marconi. Westinghouse? – where was he in that episode? Well, he was the eventual winner of the ‘battle of the currents’, far more prominent than Tesla ever was, so his omission is kinda glaring.
Or Mary Seacole (I had to look her up). My first reaction was, here’s a classic bit of political correctness, they have to find some obscure character to further their diversity message (or whatever you call it). This was unfair – to Mary; Mary Seacole was not ‘obscure’ at the time, she seems to have been quite enterprising, adventurous and philanthropic. In fact her story would make a good historical drama. Which is why I’m distinctly unhappy about writing her into a fictitious story.
Martha – I thought it was well handled. It was evident Martha was falling for the Doctor (in the same way Rose had) and he was completely oblivious to it. As Martha put it, “You had to go and fall in love with a human, and it wasn’t me.” Which is why she very sensibly left him before she could get hurt.
10 October 2022 at 07:13 #73485@rewvian I liked Martha. A very cool, collected character, very quick on the uptake but very different from Rose (who I loved). The Doctor took her on because he needed a companion to fill the gap, and of course Martha fell for the Doctor (just as Rose had), but he was too preoccupied with, I guess, the memory of Rose to see it. So Martha did the logical thing and left him, on good terms.
I’m not that fond of historical episodes, but Shakespear Code was actually quite fun. I did love the bits where the Doctor quoted famous lines of Shakespear (from plays he hadn’t written yet) and Shakespear promptly pinched them. Which raises the question, where did the line actually come from? (Which reminds me of the famous incident when James McNeill Whistler made a witty remark in the company of Oscar Wilde – Wilde: “I wish I’d said that” Whistler: “You will, Oscar, you will.”)
6 October 2022 at 13:37 #73471@rewvian This is about Girl in the Fireplace
A beautifully written episode, I think. The moment when the Doctor went to read Reinette’s mind, and found her reading his, was magic, and it emphasised what a strong-willed person Reinette was. And the device of time moving at different speeds was used by the Moff on several occasions (of course, it was established by RTD at the start of nuWho, if not by other writers earlier, that the Tardis could be a bit inaccurate with its timing). The Moff used it, notably in The Eleventh Hour, and even more poignantly in The Girl Who Waited. In Girl in the Fireplace, he used it, gently but effectively, in the sad ending.As to why the maintenance droids were so determined to collect Reinette’s head, this was a mystery right through the episode. We know they had been cannibalising the crew and/or passengers for spare parts, but why Reinette’s head specifically? This was only – brilliantly – explained in the very last shot. The ingenious but mentally limited droids thought the only spare part that would work to repair the SS Madame de Pompadour’s main computer was the brain of the real Madame de Pompadour.
cr
6 October 2022 at 13:17 #73470Well now, random impressions on first watching the ep –
‘The Doctor – former President of Gallifrey.’ That’s new isn’t it? Chibs messing with the timeline again?
Why would Mary Seacole (who I wasn’t aware of before but she was a historical figure) agree to spend a day away from her ‘hotel’ where I imagine she was vitally necessary, to monitor the Sontaran camp? Surely a suicidally dangerous and fairly pointless operation? Was this just Chibs wanting to find something for her to do? And incidentally, I don’t like writing real minor historical figures into fiction in arbitrary roles, I suspect it does them an injustice.
Sontarans, Crimean War, Liverpool docks, the Temple of Atropos, the Flux, Tardis locking the Doctor out – there’s just too much stuff going on for me to get interested following it. It’s like those damn soaps that have half a dozen plot threads going at once. There’s enough stuff here for six good episodes if they they were untangled and dealt with at one theme per episode.
Why does the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver need to make such an appalling noise just to signal ‘parley’? And isn’t it touching how the Sontaran general tells the Doctor everything she wants to know?
Um, and if the Lupari are sworn to protect one Earthling each, howcome they aren’t doing anything about the Sontarans? And if the Earth is now encased inside the Lupari shield, where’s the daylight coming from?
And of course the British commander has to be a pompous oaf who gets all his men killed pointlessly because that’s how the Empire was built, wasn’t it? (sarcasm).
I must admit, when Dan was about to get shot, I’d completely forgotten about his guardian Wookie. Which still raises the question, where were all the other humans’ individual Lupari guardians when they were getting executed?
And now pompous oaf general has to beg strategic advice from the Doctor, who is now being even more obnoxious and patronising than usual? What a surprise.
And the Sontarans all go dormant simultaneously at precise intervals? Haven’t the Sontarans (who are, allegedly, skilled and deadly warriors) ever realised this makes them uniquely vulnerable to a sneak attack and posted a few sentries on a different time schedule?
And then the Doctor gets even more hypocritical and snotty with the general for blowing up the Sontaran ships as they were retreating. The Sontarans would understand, it’s what they’d do. And they’d thank the General for giving them an honourable death. (How did he get the gunpowder in place in time? How fast does a gunpowder trail burn? This is nonsense).
I notice the Doctor doesn’t even bother with a lecture to the Wookie who dematerialises *all* the Sontarans and their ships in one go. Maybe she used up all her righteous indignation on the General.
Really, this episode is a mess. Full of ideas, but only half-developed. Half as much stuff going on, but a bit more carefully edited for credibility, only half of which I’ve found space to query, would have been an improvement.
On the plus side, Swarm, Azure (and Passenger) were much better drawn (and more subtle) than the usual scenery-chewing villains. And the production values and CGI were excellent.
6 October 2022 at 12:51 #73469@rewvian Well, the show has never been more action and gadget oriented than it is right now (I just watched Ep 2 of Srs 13 Flux). Non-stop action, explosions everywhere, and the Sonic Screwdriver Roolz! I think we’re about back to Star Wars level (and I don’t mean that as a compliment). There’s even a Wookie. The CGI’s good though.
4 October 2022 at 05:03 #73461@rewvian I was really impressed when Jackie turned up with that tow truck. It wasn’t the sort of tow truck you call when your Mini breaks down, IIRC it was the sort of heavy duty truck you call when your HGV breaks down. It made me like Jackie a lot more, because I’m sure she would be happier with Rose stuck on Earth, but she decided to help Rose anyway in very practical terms. Also, I was impressed that she could persuade her friend to lend her this huge and expensive track – and that she could drive it! (Probably not legally, but I guess trivial things like licences never bothered Jackie).
4 October 2022 at 03:21 #73460Further reflection on the episode – there was a whole lotta stuff going on. Chibbers had everything cranked up to 10. Presumably it will make sense later.
The Lupari (Lupus = wolf? Any relation to Bad Wolf?) are dedicated to saving one specific human each – that’s novel. How come they never appeared on previous occasions when the human race was in danger?
But anyway, seven billion Lupari ships forming a protective sphere around earth – is that feasible? I’ll try a back-of-the-envelope calculation: Surface area of a sphere = 4*Pi*R^2 IIRC.
Earth radius = 4000 miles = 6400 km. Suppose the sphere is 60 miles up, then R = 6500 km (or, 6.5 x 10^3). So R^2 =(approx) 40 x 10^6 km^2. 4*Pi =(approx) 12.4, so 4*Pi*R^2 = 496 x 10^6 km^2.
Divide that by 7 billion ( 7000 * 10^6 ) to get (496 / 7000) sq km per ship, i.e. 71/1000 sq km, or 71,000 sq m per ship.
Take the square root of that and you get a ship approximately 270 metres or 900 feet across.
So, that’s kinda big for just one Lupari and his human, but I suppose not absurd. (If my mental arithmetic hasn’t slipped a cog).I must admit I’m somewhat surprised by that result, it’s less absurd than I had expected.
Of course, we (on earth) would suddenly find it going dark, but I guess we have artificial light.
4 October 2022 at 02:17 #73459@blenkinsopthebrave That was pleasantly serendipitous. Re the Whomobile, I thought that was a reference to Bessie, his old vintage car, but obviously not. (And howcome I instantly remembered Bessie’s name when I haven’t seen any Three episodes for 40+ years? Was there ever a more useless factoid than that? My brain’s memory banks must be like an old rubbish tip, and about as much use for practical purposes. Sherlock famously thought he could control his, I certainly can’t control mine).
That was an entertaining clip from Pertwee, though I don’t recall ever seeing the Whomobile. It looks quite floppy and unstable as a vehicle, though it’s so low to the ground I think it would skid rather than fall over.
In other news, I just finally watched the first episode of Series 13 Flux (and posted my impressions in that forum). Well, there was a lot of stuff to digest, not all connected though presumably that will happen later. Chibbers had everything cranked up to 10.
4 October 2022 at 01:56 #73458Well now, Season 13. The series trailer (a DVD extra) looks interesting, anyway, hopefully Chibbers has improved his game.
First impressions –
Well that first action sequence was certainly eventful. I’m sure Chibbers said to himself “How many different ways can we endanger the Doctor”. I’m not sure how I feel about it, whether it was dramatic or parody.
Um. Next scene, a tunnel in Liverpool 1820. Ten years before the world’s first main-line railway, the Liverpool & Manchester, opened – and that included a mile-long tunnel down to the docks. Is Chibbers going to do anything with that?
The dangerous Karvanista – hey it’s a wookie! It just looks too campy to be intimidating. Maybe that’s intentional. But howcome Karvanista has a Scouse accent?
The Doctor + Yaz already appear to be more effective, dramatically speaking, than the Doctor + Fam (ugh!). Simpler is better.
The blue villain looks much more impressive than Blue Tooth Boy did back in Jodie episode one. But how many viallains do we need?
But this story is getting really complicated. New characters – Dan, Jon & Anna. Seven billion (isn’t that a bit excessive?) Lupari ships about to invade. The Tardis leaking black tar. Dan’s house imploding. Presumably all this will make sense (can Chibbers handle complications as well as the Moff?) And another new character, Claire. Curiouser and curiouser, to quote Alice. (No we haven’t seen an Alice yet, she was one of Lewis Carroll’s characters, but the way this thing’s going I wouldn’t be surprised if they all fall down a rabbit hole). An then Claire gets zapped by a Weeping Angel. Real cast-of-thousands this is.
Outpost Rose – any significance in the name?
AND it turns out that Karvanista and the other seven billion Lupari have come to save each of the seven billion humans from cosmic disintegration. I didn’t see THAT coming! Man’s best friend indeed.
And then we have Sontarans. Where do they fit in?
And the Flux, having disintegrated the Earth, is now chasing the Tardis and the Doctor has to ask Karvanista for help – that’s a turn-up for the books. And Karvaista’s 7 billion ships form a protective wall round the Earth – but I thought we just saw Earth destroyed. What’s going on? And does the blue villain control the Flux? Or is it Sontarans?
So – plenty of action, some of it confusing, and some of it (Earth destroyed, then protected by the Lupari) logically impossible.
3 October 2022 at 12:20 #73453So I just re-watched Scandal in Belgravia and I’m even more impressed. Even on a re-watch, it was never slow, even for a moment – it was full of things happening and blink-and-you-missed-it details. Beautifully written, beautifully acted, and there was a real electric feeling between Holmes and Irene Adler. This had a real feature film feeling to it, just so much more than a TV series episode.
3 October 2022 at 12:04 #73452@rewvian This was a pretty good finale double-episode for the first (new) series. It started off as a satire on humans’ deplorable taste in TV shows and soon morphed into something much darker. I particularly liked Jackie turning up in a honking great industrial tow truck. Her relaxed attitude to morality obviously has its fringe benefits. And there is one really striking image that sticks in my mind – Rose, having absorbed the time vortex, glowing with god-like powers, dividing the Daleks.
P.S. You really are chewing through them at a great rate, aren’t you 🙂
2 October 2022 at 10:16 #73445@rewvian That was quite a review. ‘Rose’ was the episode that got me hooked on Who. I’d seen some of Who when it was new – mostly Doctors 2 and 3, that’s how ancient I am – but then I lost touch. Easy to do in the days before video recorders and DVD sets, it was catch it when it screened or never. So I was a non-fan for about 40(?) years until Rose came along.
And it was Billie Piper just as much as Eccleston that deserves the credit for catching my attention, plus of course RTD’s writing. For me, the companions are always as important as the Doctor in keeping my interest. Just as well, therefore, that all of them have been strong characters. (While I have to say, the companion’s boyfriends have tended to be a bit wet – Mickey, Danny, even Rory, though he grew into an adequate character).
cr
2 October 2022 at 09:49 #73444@winston I’ve just realised I’m almost half way through all the episodes I’ve got of Sherlock (being Season 1-3). Messrs Moffat, Gatiss and Vertue obviously decided to go for quality rather than quantity. But they did pack a lot into each episode. I’ll have to take my time watching them.
1 October 2022 at 09:13 #73431@nerys I haven’t seen Eve of the Daleks – I’m just about to start watching season 13, Flux.
I do agree (based on seasons 11 and 12) that Chibnall doesn’t have the right touch for the Doctor. She talks too much and it makes her look dithery, superficial and annoying – she just doesn’t have any weight (emotional heft I think you called it?). But nor does she (as written by Chibnall) have the flashes of sardonic humour that previous Doctors had.
As for episodes that are ‘too clever’, I love an episode that is well constructed, maybe with several layers of meaning, and with entertaining and preferably original dialogue. I invariably watch a Moffat episode twice, firstly because it’s usually so enjoyable, and secondly to catch any bits I missed first time and also, often, words or events acquire additional significance with hindsight.
(Apropos of that, I just watched Sherlock season 2 ep 1, Scandal in Bohemia, but I’ll stick further comment in the TV Shows thread).1 October 2022 at 09:11 #73430I just watched Sherlock s2 ep 1, Scandal in Belgravia, and what an absolute cracker of an episode! It was full of flashbacks – but so well put together that they didn’t cause any confusion in following the complex plot – and original visual tricks like having Irene Adler and the sofa she was sitting on transported to the field of the crime scene. And speaking of Irene Adler, her first entrance was spectacular, since she was wearing nothing – she certainly got Holmes’ attention, and Watson didn’t know where to look. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen nudity handled so skilfully – it wasn’t gratuitous (Irene did it deliberately to confront Holmes and it demonstrated her supreme self-confidence). The ep also showed Holmes’ ruthless side – even if you’re a CIA operative, you do not abuse Mrs Hudson, lest you ‘fall out of the window’ as many times as is necessary.
This calls for a re-watch.
28 September 2022 at 07:33 #73422Well, it wasn’t really a ‘review’ so much as impressions. I only mentioned about half of the events, but looking at it, the other half were sufficiently similar I think you will have got the general idea of the episode from my comments.
I’m always a little alarmed when someone decides what to watch (or not) based on my recommendation – not so much lack of confidence in my opinions, as knowing how much peoples’ tastes differ, and sometimes in unexpected ways. But that’s more likely to manifest itself with an unusual or controversial episode, which Revolution of the Daleks wasn’t. That’s probably why this forum page is so short.
Graeme – yes, I think the writers weren’t always sure what to do with him. Too many Companions. As you say, parking him back on Earth (like Wilf) might have worked better.
And Ryan with the token disability (I say ‘token’ because it mattered when the writers happened to think of it, and not otherwise), which is partly why his character was so inconsistent.
Generally, Christmas/New Year specials have fallen outside the main stream of the story, with occasional exceptions to farewell an old Doctor or introduce a new one. This episode was pretty mainstream. I agree, I don’t think Chibnall has the touch for a Christmas episode.
@winston Thanks for the compliment, but as I said to Janette, it was just scattered impressions.
Game of Thrones, now, is a series I have never watched an episode of. Not because of any aversion to it, just that it’s never happened to come up on the TV. Maybe I should do the DVD boxset thing, though eight seasons is a bit formidable. (Okay, I just ordered a used copy of Season 1 on Trademe (our local Ebay), I’ll see if it grabs me).
Anyway, now I’ve watched Revolution of the Daleks, I can now progress to Season 13 Flux (which has been sitting on the shelf for a month, waiting). But I think, right now, Episode 3 of Sherlock (so many DVD’s, so little time…)
27 September 2022 at 11:57 #73419Revolution of the Daleks – first impressions
So, back to the big bad Trump impersonator – not a good start, I have to say. Flashback to Arachnids. Though – looking at the security droid – hasn’t Earth been invaded by Daleks before? Don’t thousands of people know what they look like?
Doctor in space jail actually looked more promising than I would have expected, though her stroll past other prisoners including the P’ting just reminded me how naff some of those episodes were.
Um, that Tardis disguised as a house from Timeless Children – I can see a practical problem there. People might accept a phone box suddenly appearing, but a house? – what’s it’s street number? Wouldn’t the neighbours sort of notice if a house just appears with no building work?
I have to say, full credit to the repulsive Robertson for his anger at his assistant for reviving the Dalek. Showing very considerable common sense for once. Maybe he isn’t quite as one-sidedly evil as on first appearance.
Um, why does the Tardis take time to fly to Osaka? It’s a tardis, ffs! And, Ryan and the Doctor talking in flight doesn’t do anything for me – just feels like filler. Other than the Doctor revealing that she is not who she thought she was (it feels to me like she should be having this conversation with Yaz rather than Ryan).
Yaz and Jack Harkness in Osaka – it’s face-hugger time!
Isn’t it nice how the villain explains all his methods and all his plans in detail to the enemy? James Bond villains used to get laughed at for doing that, this Dalek is going way over the top.
Okay, it’s quite ingenious to set the Dalek SS on the (presumably tainted) Dalek clones.
But then Robertson goes full evil on us. What a surprise. For a few minutes there I thought Chibbers was getting more subtle, but no.
Why would anyone think Ryan and Graham tagging along with Jack Harkness is going to help? I’m always surprised that blowing up the Dalek ship (with a few tiny firecracker-sized bombs) is going to kill all Daleks on board.
The decoy Tardis, on the other hand, was a really good idea.
Um, Ryan is going to leave the group because his mates need him (what mates?). And, the planet. For a guy with doubts about his self-worth he’s suddenly had a rush of self-confience, hasn’t he? Maybe some of Robertson’s ego rubbed off on him.
So anyway, two-thirds of the ‘fam’ (ugh!) just left – that could be a good thing, get rid of some of the baggage. Be interesting to see if the next series is the better for it.
This did not feel like a Christmas/New Year special at all, more like just another episode. Could have been cut to regular episode length without losing much, at that. It wasn’t terrible, just didn’t inspire me. (And where was the titular ‘revolution’?)
26 September 2022 at 13:06 #73418@winston I just watched Sherlock episode 2, I can see why you’re a fan of it! Well-written and suspenseful. And you have to watch every minute or you might miss something (though watching on DVD is good, I often find myself freeze-framing to catch something).
23 September 2022 at 14:39 #73415… and for once this is exactly the right forum (not that that ever stopped anyone) – by total coincidence I’ve just this minute finished watching the first episode of Sherlock, written/produced by, of course, Steven Moffat, Sue Vertue and Mark Gatiss. I have to say it’s pretty good. I’ve had the box set sitting on the shelf for a year and for some curious reason never got around to watching them. The Guardian interview with the Moff yesterday brought it to mind.
I have to say the dialogue doesn’t sparkle quite the way Capaldi’s Doctor Who did, but maybe that’s because Sherlock is actually a more grounded series, or maybe because it has two male leads (Holmes and Watson) rather than having a male and female (as in Doctor and companion). I have this feeling that having a male-female pairing lightens the tone, or maybe I’m quite wrong and talking nonsense, I dunno. Cumberbatch and Freeman are very good in it, though.
But anyway, back to that trailer for The Devil’s Hour, it reminds me again what a marvellous actor Capaldi is. Just his voice makes me want to hear more. Some actors are lucky that way.
21 September 2022 at 11:31 #73411@mudlark It’s a little bit reassuring (to me) to see that female persons agree with me on Moffat’s characters and I’m not somehow blinkered by my male point of view. (Actually I just realised I’ve stereotyped myself horribly there – I’m not really sure what a ‘male point of view’ is, forget I said that 🙂
Whittaker was either mis-cast or mis-written (or both), I find it hard to see an ancient Doctor there. I’d say she’s too young, but Matt Smith was too and he managed to overcome that. I think he had more help from the script, though. WhitDoc’s habit of constantly talking to herself is annoying, comes across as dithering, and detracts from any weight her character has, IMO.
@blenkinsopthebrave I can absolutely sympathise with Moff’s irritation when, after crafting a nicely constructed story, and freshened it up with interesting and witty dialogue, some critic dismisses it as ‘too clever’. I’d be tempted to label such critics as too thick to appreciate it, but that’s probably not the case, I think it’s more a reflection of the current fashion of anti-intellectualism. In Moff’s place I’d feel like asking (sarcastically) whether he should put in a fart joke and a laugh track.
I think there’s definitely a place for stories that take a little attention to follow the plot. I know Moff has said there needs to be a little high point every five minutes to keep people watching, and that’s quite true. I think Moff was pretty good at doing both – exercising the minds of the aficionados while still keeping the attention of the casual viewer.
I’m also a sucker for interesting language (that’s NOT a euphemism for swearing!) whether dialogue or written narrative in a book. Nothing bores me quicker than reading a story where every character says the same banal predictable thing as a thousand characters before them. How to make dialogue fresh and interesting is a gift some writers have (I don’t!). And an ability to convey a lot of meaning in a few words. Terry Pratchett had that – I remember for example the tiny chuckle of delighted recognition I got when I read, of the missing Angua the werewolf, ‘her basket hadn’t been slept in’ – of course, where else would a werewolf sleep? Or, of the cruel aesthete Lord Hong’s luckless subordinates, ‘most of whom couldn’t compose poetry to save their lives, and some of them hadn’t’. Ouch! An entire horror scenario conjured up in one phrase, that’s impressive. It also tells you all you need to know about Lord Hong.
On the other hand, I once tried reading an Arthur Hailey blockbuster (Wheels, IIRC) and got about five pages in and said ‘this thing reads like a screenplay’ and gave up. It was just a straight report of how the guy got in his car and drove to work, there was no magic in the words. Or maybe I was in a dyspeptic mood and doing Hailey an injustice.
@janetteb Your point about ‘hug’ quality is very true (‘hug’ isn’t quite the word I’d use but I can’t think of a better off the top of my head). Series and episodes we keep going back to because they’re good and enjoyable to watch. And I’m afraid you’re right, none of Chibbers’ eps (so far, you never know, I haven’t seen the Flux series yet) are ones that I’d choose as one-offs. Maybe Fugitive of the Judoon with the alternative Doctor Ruth might come closest.
(If I had to choose just one, of all eps, it would likely be Day of the Doctor. Or maybe Hell Bent.)
It would be great if the Moff could be lured back to write an episode or three, wouldn’t it?
(Totally off the point, today Auckland turned on one of those lovely sunny days which it occasionally manages even in winter. My old BMW registered 22 degrees (72 F) air temperature in the supermarket car park, there was almost no wind, so I went for a walk along the deserted beach below the cliffs and took a very brief impromptu dip – the water was almost warm enough (by a couple of degrees) and what-the-hell accounted for the rest. Never, in previous years, have I ever swum before the end of November, and usually not until Christmas. Global warming?)
… and we’re way off topic in this thread by now 🙂
20 September 2022 at 14:22 #73407@mudlark That was an excellent interview with the Moff. Two things the critics reportedly alleged, which I absolutely disagree with – one was (alleged) misogyny. Maybe my perspective is different from this side of the gender gap, but would a misogynist ever have created such strong and appealing female characters as Sally Sparrow, River Song, Amy, Missy, Clara, Osgood, the Interface (Rose), or Bill?
And the other was ‘clever’ ‘puzzle-box’ plots. Maybe that’s more a matter of taste, but I absolutely love a multi-layered plot where words and actions take on a different significance with hindsight and where a second watching is rewarded by new insights. The obvious example being Hell Bent where we don’t know (first time through) which one is fishing for information and which one knows exactly what is going on. That adds more depth to the episode, helped of course by good acting and characterisation (always need that). Or Last Christmas, another classic. And, it’s always fun to watch. I sometimes think the critics are so cynical they can’t stand watching something that’s just plain well-made, polished and enjoyable.
[/rant]
17 September 2022 at 09:39 #73405@janetteb Maybe the finale will be, as you say, better. (That’s called ‘damning with faint praise I think 😉 I’m still waiting for my Resolution of the Daleks DVD to arrive so then I can watch Series 13 (which I already have but waiting to watch in sequence) so then after that there’s a couple of specials before ‘The Power of the Doctor’. Whittaker series 2 was better than Whittaker series 1 anyway, hopefully the progression continues.
Oh, *Revolution* of the Daleks, it seems, we had Resolution (of one Dalek IIRC) before. Revolution, Revelation, Retribution, Restitution, Evolution, Dissolution, Termination, Extermination (of course), Elevation, I can think of an almost infinite number of potential ‘… of the Daleks’ titles. My mind is rambing out of control, I think a lack of new Doctor Who episodes to digest… 🙂
@winston Well, I hope the confluence of ‘all the major baddies’ works. Sometimes, more is not better. For example, Journey’s End where they had a chorus line of companions working the Tardis – it all felt kind of phony and artificial, as if they had to find something for everybody to do and give everyone equal billing. In dramatic terms, it doesn’t work unless there’s some specific reason for each person to be there. I think in Pandorica Opens/Big Bang it worked because having all the Doctor’s enemies combining was kind of the point (and nor did they try to give each one an equal share of screen time). But what do I know, I won’t see it anyway for six months until the DVD comes out…
8 September 2022 at 09:44 #73397@nerys @winston @blenkinsopthebrave Midnight was one of RTD’s best-written episodes, I think. It was actually a bottle episode (I checked to see I’d got the terminology right and, surprise, Wikipedia lists it as an example of that 🙂 but all the more intense for that. Scared people turning on each other is always frightening. The stewardess, who initially was a hostile figure, saved the day in the end. And, nobody even knew her name. Very effective.
And the monster was all the scarier for being unseen. A bit like the noises in the base at the end of the universe in ‘Listen’. RTD and Moff both know that the unseen is very hard to beat for scariness.
Back to Midnight – I tend to pair it mentally with Blink – both were self-contained, standalone episodes that didn’t interact with the main narrative of the series, both were among their writers’ best stories.
2 September 2022 at 09:50 #73391@winston Well, Rose is one of the better first episodes, I think – it did signal the return of Doctor Who after a long gap, it rekindled my interest after a much longer gap, Eccleston and Billie Piper were great in their roles. (And I give Billie equal credit with Chris and RTD for the revival being a success, I think the Companion has almost always been as important as the Doctor). The Parting of the Ways came as a surprise for me too, it wasn’t till some years later I started following Who on the Internet. I actually find it fairly easy to not be spoiled, even if I know a broad outline or an isolated ‘fact’ of a coming episode, it’s rarely exactly what I expect and capable of being interpreted in so many ways, so I can mentally ignore it till I see it. Like, I knew about the Master and the ruins of Gallifrey in the Timeless Child episode but I didn’t have any idea how it would play out. And I’ve got quite good at squashing my natural inquisitiveness and not-reading episode synopses and the like.
As an aside – when ‘Xena’ was being made here – the main studios were about 5 miles away from me – I was ‘on’ the Internet and episodes here were way behind overseas. Then there was a 2-year gap (here in NZ) between the end of Season 3 and the start of S4 – an English fan took pity on me and started sending me VHS tapes so I was only a few weeks adrift. But still, I managed to stay mostly ‘unspoiled’. There was massive speculation coming up to the finale about whether Xena would die or not, I managed to avoid it all until I was spoiled by a New Zealand Herald billboard of all things – the things newsagents stand on the footpath in front of their shops – that said ‘Xena loses her head’. (Only time I’ve ever seen a TV series make the headlines, but then Xena and its companion productions were virtually the whole NZ TV production industry for several years). Even so, that’s slightly ambiguous, capable of several metaphorical interpretations, so it didn’t spoil the impact of the final. Take that, NZ Herald, you spoiler you.
Coming back to real life, it was a nice day today so I went down to the bay for a walk, it was near high tide, but very calm and the water in the corner by the beach was unexpectedly warm so I went in for a paddle and a very brief dip – brief because it was about 2 degrees too cool to tempt me to stay in, but not agonising – and I’m a complete wimp about cold water. Saw a 4″ jellyfish. But this is extraordinary, generally I don’t swim before Christmas, last year I was surprised at being able to swim at the start of December, so today is 3 or 4 months early! This is the first time I have ever swum (in this hemisphere) between May and November. Global warming is a thing.
1 September 2022 at 09:19 #73389@winston Generally the first episodes of Doctors tend to be reasonably good ones, as if the writers make an extra effort (I’m sure they do). So you’ve got ‘Rose’, ‘Christmas Invasion’, ‘Eleventh Hour’, ‘Deep Breath’ and ‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’ (well personally I have reservations about that last one). You could also if you liked include Companions’ first episodes, like Runaway Bride, Smith and Jones, Asylum of the Daleks (or should that be The Bells of St John?) and The Pilot.
Personally, I think most of the ‘endings’ were among the best episodes of Who, (and I’m sure the writers/directors i.e. RTD and Moff intended it that way) – Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords, Journey’s End, The End of Time, Angels Take Manhattan, The Time of the Doctor, Hell Bent, World Enough & Time/The Doctor Falls (yes I know that should be technically Twice Upon a Time but we know that was an afterthought 🙂 Most of them carry a big emotional impact and are very sad but not depressing – the Moff in particular knows how to avoid tearful farewells – emotion on screen doesn’t always translate to emotion in the viewer, in fact it often has an inverse relationship. One of the saddest moments was the death of old Billy in ‘Blink’ – and we’d only known him for a few minutes. Or Riggsy painting the abandoned Tardis in Face the Raven.
(Biggest fault of Farscape was its characters’ death scenes, I’d be like ‘get on with it’ while feeling a bit guilty about that).
30 August 2022 at 09:55 #73387@janetteb Thanks for the Happy Birthday. I also got one from my dentist (or I guess his computer system, which knows altogether too much about me 🙂 But anyway, yes, occasionally an old colleague from work dies. I was in a loose grouping at work, all of whom started more or less together (give or take a few years) four decades ago, and all of whom retired at more or less the same time. I retired 7 years ago, if I went back into ‘the office’ now I probably wouldn’t recognise anybody – oddly, I have dreams of still being at work and being afraid of retiring because what would I do with my time? But in practice, there was never a problem (except in my dream) because stuff just expanded to fill the time available.
When I’ve watched Series 13 of Who, and finished all of New Tricks, I might go back and start Red Dwarf from episode 1. Or even Battlestar Galactica. So many DVD sets, so little time…
Oh yes, another sign of (my) age – Serena Williams is playing in her last tennis tournament. It seems like only yesterday that Venus and Serena were the latest new arrivals.
29 August 2022 at 12:03 #73385@winston Thank you! Actually, I spent the day at home with Mrs D, and it was really quite pleasant. I know her niece was plotting to take us out to dinner, but Mrs D had the flu last week and I managed to catch it, sorta – a very mild infection since we’ve had out flu shots. Oh, and I am now 0.75 centuries old.
But what really makes me feel old is people my age dying on me 🙂 I had a friend who was precisely the same age as me – she died young, of cancer, about 15 years ago. That was very sad and quite unsettling.
Oh, and my adopted-step-grand-daughter who used to be so cute crawling around our lounge as a baby is now 15 or something… they grow up so fast.
28 August 2022 at 10:38 #73382Yes, I love that (non-) episode. Features a cast of everybody, some of whom I recognise, and has a friendly jab at each ones’ little quirks. And it was the first time I’d seen Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy – I’d always skipped the later years of old Who, not least because McCoy looked so silly – the Five(ish) Doctors convinced me that he had a character, led to me watching a number of the last Seven episodes where I noticed the chemistry between him and Ace, and a number of cons on Youtube that confirmed he has a quick and wicked wit.
I was sure it was a DVD extra somewhere but apparently it was only on some special DVD edition. I’ve seen it, must’ve found it online somewhere, and I’ve just managed to download a copy. I wasn’t sure if I’d got the whole thing, it’s just 30 minutes long, is that right? Anyway, I’ll watch it again tonight, suitable viewing for my birthday 🙂
Okay, just watched it. They got walk-on parts from Peter Jackson and Ian McKellen – that’s quite impressive 🙂 And I got a good laugh out of it, again.
cr
25 August 2022 at 13:55 #73380@winston Well, the episode was quite good, or about 3/4 of it was. If they’d left the Timeless Child and the CyberTimelords out of it, there would still have been plenty of content and it might have been a bit more coherent. There was just too much stuff. Even though it was a double episode, the events at the end seemed to be a bit compressed – cut short. As if there was five or ten minutes of footage on the cutting room floor.
And they never said how the Master destroyed Gallifrey (when the Daleks had failed to). Oh, and where had the other humans who went through the portal, ended up? Presumably not Gallifrey. Though I seem to recall it was stated that the destination was random, so that’s not a plot inconsistency. Though, the Master knew the Doctor and friends were coming – how did he do that? And considering he knew so much, howcome he or his cyberguards didn’t spot the companions planting bombs all over the ship?
So it didn’t cause me the extreme anguish that Kill the Moon did, I think my reaction overall is pretty much like yours.
Cheers
cr
23 August 2022 at 10:26 #73377@janetteb Well, the upheavals in the finale were worrisome, though maybe didn’t affect me quite as badly as you. Maybe that was because I’m less serious about ‘canon’ – though I’d still rather it wasn’t broken gratuitously. Or maybe it was because I was aware of the controversy it had caused so I was pre-warned. Or maybe it was just because I had lower expectations. If The Woman Who Fell to Earth and blue teeth man couldn’t put me off, this one didn’t (even if the lone cyberman reminded me of him).
Things that do cause me problems are physical or logical impossibilities (and no I don’t mean time travel or teleports, this is science fiction after all), but little things like, how did three humans defeat scores of Cybermen in direct battle? (And if four of those were humans in disguise, how did they avoid getting shot/blown up by mistake?). How did the humans manage to plant bombs all over the cybership (without being caught) and then escape from it at a moments’ notice? And, the efficacy of weapons seemed to vary according to the dictates of the plot.
Ignoring the canon issue, this series was much better (or less cringingly awful) than the previous series, so – out of curiosity as much as anything – I’ve ordered the S13 DVD’s. I’ll report back 🙂
It will be interesting to see what RTD makes of the series, if I last that long (I’m pretty ancient and people my age keep dying on me, which is disconcerting). Judith Durham just died. She was the first singer I was ever a fan of, and IMO she had one of the two most beautiful voices in all of music (the other was Linda Ronstadt). One thing that makes me very pleased to be living right now is the Internet and digital electronics, which makes it practical and easy to listen to music that suits my tastes whenever I want, even walking – something impossible when I was young. And in centuries past, a voice like Judith Durham’s would never have been heard by more than a few hundred fortunate people.
cr
23 August 2022 at 04:57 #73375@devilishrobby No, Timeless Children is the last one I’ve seen. I haven’t seen the Flux series but it’s in the mail to me. Haven’t seen Revolution of the Daleks either (Revolution? Evolution? Revelation? Restoration? Resolution? Retribution? whatever…) I’m kinda hoping it will be included in the Flux DVD’s but it might not be. Doctor Who is very inconsistent about this, and it’s annoying – having to buy the Christmas special separately. Even more annoying, is buying it then finding it included free in the next series – done that too!
I did wonder if the Division was a teaser for future developments, which may allay my criticism.
In some ways the Cyber two-parter reminded me of a fruit cake – all the ingredients were there – maybe too many ingredients! – but someone forgot to add the yeast or baking powder or whatever cooks use and it just didn’t rise. There were a lot of lines that could have lightened it but just didn’t have the right touch (or maybe just weren’t written by Moff – I will admit to a personal bias there, but if course, looking out from the inside of my brain, I can’t tell if it’s a real effect or just me). That said, it was an okay episode.
Moff certainly changed or invented a lot of things, but (again IMO) he was careful not to uproot too much canon all at once – which is what Chibbers just did. And Chibbers’ Doctor was too talkative to the point of being annoying, so I never warmed to Jodie. Of course it all got mixed up with the ‘never a female Doctor’ camp which didn’t help, I was neutral on the topic, was quite intrigued to see a female Doctor but I was severely disappointed with this one. Ruth, now, I much preferred. And then there was the Tardis’ interior decor, and too many companions none of whom got a chance to really shine. As you say, a perfect storm.
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