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@janetteb Aagh! I know the pain, rage and frustration of the website swallowing my post! What I usually do is type my comments into a text editor (NOT a word processor, I don’t want all sorts of formatting) then copy & paste into the website edit box. As I’m doing now.

We have propertional representation. I think you have STV? We have MMP. One vote for an electorate MP, one for a party. If a party gets less ‘electorate’ seats than the party vote, its numbers in Parliament are topped up from its published ‘party list’. With the proviso that it must either win one electorate seat or get 5% party votes. This was intended to ensure that crank parties didn’t get in, but it’s too high, it can be a nail-biter and decide the election on whether a minor party gets 4.9% or 5.1%, and it has been known for a major party (i.e. National) to soft-pedal on a safe right-wing seat so its little friend can get in with its 2% and bring in several seats from its list. But that’s a very minor defect compared with the problems of FPP. As a voter I love MMP, no longer am I faced with the worry of vote-splitting (i.e. if I vote green will I split the left vote and let the right-wing candidate in?). And no longer can a major party get elected (in a 2-party setup) with *less* votes than its opposition. Gerrymandering doesn’t work on proportional representation.

Back in FPP days, there were two parties, Labour and National, nobody else stood a chance. Now we currently have Labour, National, the Greens and ACT (‘Association of Consumers & Taxpayers), it splits up neatly into National-ACT and Labour-Greens, with sometimes a minor party with a couple of seats having the ‘casting vote’ on who forms the government. This is portrayed by opponents of MMP who claim to like ‘strong government’ as being a major defect, but the way I look at it is, ‘funny little party’ can only do that IF the two main blocs are split 50-50, it can’t subvert a massive popular majority like FPP could.

I fought for MMP 🙂 Back when it was being legislated there were street marches in support (and slanderous TV ads funded by big business against it). I was in a march in support (I very rarely march) and had my umbrella damaged in a scuffle 🙂

So currently on the left we have the Greens and Labour, on the right we have National and ACT (sorta). In the middle we have the Maori Party at the moment. I say ‘ACT (sorta)’ because they’re kinda odd, a bit libertarian, economically and societally well to the right of National, e.g. they think our gun control has gone too far, BUT their leader David Seymour put up the Choice in Dying bill (which passed – finally – about 50 years behind public opinion on voluntary euthanasia) so while he’s dead wrong on almost everything, I do have to thank him for that. And some decades ago I knocked on the door of a house for some reason, with an ACT campaign bus parked in the drive, and it was answered by a man in a dress with a long string of pearls. And this was in an era when trans-anything was considered extremely suspect. So they’re – a bit strange.

Re covid, after a year of successfully keeping Delta out, and with most people finally vaccinated, our Government finally called it quits on quarantine with Omicron. So we now have 1172 Covid deaths (total), at least 1100 of those being Omicron. This is obviously the reverse proportion to every other country, which just shows that numbers can be misleading without the background. Omicron is far less lethal than Delta. So we’re still having an epidemic, with mask wearing in schools and shops, they’ve given up ‘contact tracing’ (which worked quite well with Delta and lockdowns), our hospitals are heavily loaded but just coping. If a variant came along which was as deadly as Delta and as infectious as Omicron we would all be in deep doodoo. But vaccinations help enormously.

But anyway – omicron – you might very well be symptom-less, it’s possible. I had it for a week (probably, unless it was a cold) testing negative the whole time, finally tested positive when I’d recovered. It’s a really capricious and sneaky virus. I hope your experience is mild.

Cheers

cr

 

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Umm, so I just watched Orphan 55.   (For some reason I thought Orphan 55 was going to turn out to be the Timeless Child).    Bit of a drop from Spyfall.   It could have been a better episode with some good editing and an application of Occam’s Razor to the storyline, I think.

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Orphan 55 – first impressions

That building looks like Calatrava to me (similar to the complex in Valencia in ‘Smile’). (Googles: Yes, it was the Auditorio de Tenerife and yes it was by Calatrava. (Smug grin)).

Somehow, Chibbers’ attempts at humour (the hopper virus that infects Ryan) just seem silly. Not my thing, anyway.

Bella looks really cute (or would without that ghastly nose ring) and refreshingly sarcastic – “Does this usually work? Pretending to be stupid so girls have to answer your questions?” The Doctor, meanwhile, is still suffering from the babblegush virus.

Why does Hyph3n look like a pantomime cross between a clown and a cat? Impossible to take seriously.

Why do they set out on the rescue mission with a truckload of assorted liabilities? Why not just a few of the more competent guests? I’m getting echoes of the drop ship in Aliens crossed with the Keystone Cops.

More babblegush from the Doctor. “Apex predators and we are driving straight into their territory”. Yeah, precisely what you just shamed Kane into doing, so whose fault is that?

How can Benni be doing 37kph when the Dregs have no wheeled transport? And they certainly can’t run that fast or the humans would be dead before they could blink.

Service tunnel? This is starting to feel more like ‘Aliens’ all the time. How do we know it isn’t full of Dregs?

But Kane strikes me as the only competent and determined character in the episode. And yes, killing Benni ‘had to be done’ but none of the others would have had the nerve.

So then Bella and Kane have an idiotic personal meltdown when they should be running for their lives – that sort of stupidity gets people killed, frequently other people. I will give Chibbers this, he has managed to engage my interest. And Bella is a raving psychopathic idiot, Ryan should clock her one round the back of the head (but we know he won’t) before she kills everybody.

I will give props for the ‘Novosibirsk’ sign on the tunnel wall, in my (limited) observation, signs in Russia are indeed often in both Cyrillic and Latin letters. (Minor quibble – if Novosibirsk has a Metro – which it may well have, now or at some future time – it’s highly unlikely it would have a station called just ‘Novosibirsk’ any more than the London Underground has one called ‘London’. Google: Yes it does and no it doesn’t.) But – standing around discussing the future of Earth while the Dregs are closing in on them – this gormless lot almost deserve to get themselves killed.

Since when did a virus look like an insect? Bella is completely insane. Wanting to blow the whole place up (and kill everybody) because Momma didn’t give her enough attention – what an entitled dick.

Yaz seems to have caught the babblegush virus – babbling questions while they’re trying to sneak past sleeping Dregs. Seriously, Chibbers, sometimes less is more – learn to let your characters STFU.

So then Kane commits suicide-by-Dreg for no apparent reason.

Um, if the Dregs breathe CO2 and exhale oxygen, howcome they can function inside Tranquillity? Oh, I see the Doctor finally worked that out too. But wasn’t it convenient that syrillium 3 fuel mutates into syrillium 4 when attacked by the hopper virus? Too much quasi-technical gobbledegook! (And also, it makes no scientific sense whatsoever).

I have a dreadful feeling the Doctor is going to talk the Dregs into submission.

And – saved by the child genius Sylas who just knows how to convert the syrillium. Wouldn’t you know it?

By the way Doctor, if you’re going to deprive the chief Dreg of carbon dioxide – stop talking! But oh my god, she *is* talking the Dreg into submission. I hate you Chibbers!

Howcome the teleport still works even when the hotel is blown up? Oh, and wouldn’t you just know it, the teleport doesn’t have capacity for everybody so Bella goes off to commit suicide-by-Dreg, what a surprise. Except Kane suddenly appears (did I miss something?) so they can both face the Dregs and die together, how sweet. BUT howcome the teleport knew its capacity was going to be exceeded when they sent off Nevi and Sylas separately *then* the Tardis Four? Makes no sense.

So then we get the inevitable environmental message from the Doctor, with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. Spare us, Chibbers. (And I say that as a confirmed tree-hugging greenie).

This episode was half-good, I felt. It also felt like v1.0 of the script. So many improbabilities and inconsistencies, it could have benefited from a bit of script editing.

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@janetteb   I do hope your new government survives long enough to make some real changes.   At least your ‘right-wing’ politicians mostly want to appear to be in the right, and to want to appear credible.    They give lip service to fairness and equality and even the environment and so can sometimes be shamed into doing the right thing.    The disturbing thing about Trump and his cronies (if I may be political for a moment) was that he just didn’t care what he said, he didn’t care if it was obviously and blatantly a lie – in that respect he was a true psychopath.   You cannot shame people like that into doing the right thing because they truly have no comprehension of right or wrong.

Sorry to hear you’ve got the covid.    We had it (probably omicron) a couple of months ago.   Oddly enough, I had ‘the flu’, Mrs D returned a positive RAT test, so we both had to isolate for seven days, during which I kept returning clearly negative RAT tests.   The day her covid isolation expired, I returned a positive – so I had to isolate for another seven days while she (having just had the covid and completed her isolation) didn’t have to.   There is no justice!   Not sure what that proved, other than the symptoms of covid are highly erratic.

As you say, it’s a good time to snuggle up and watch Doctor Who.    With luck (which obviously I wish you) and vaccination (which I assume you have) the symptoms should be no worse than a moderate dose of the flu.   Best of luck!

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Congratulations @janetteb    Hopefully you will see some real change.

And my commiserations to @winston.   Stick it out, change will come eventually  (as I used to tell myself when ‘Teflon John’ Key used to keep getting elected…)

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P.S.  (Separate comment ‘cos the website seems to swallow any message if I try to edit it) –  when I said ‘lesser-known’ in respect of Ada Lovelace, Beethoven, George Stephenson and Marie Curie – *of course* everybody knows their names!   But, how much does the ‘average person’ know about them?   Usually just one notable fact, maybe two.   That’s how I mean ‘lesser-known’.

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@janetteb Thank you for reading my comments of Part 2, though I think ‘review’ is dignifying my collection of random impressions a little more than it deserves 🙂

I agree with all your comments. As regards Gallifrey, Me sitting in the ruins at the end of the universe is, I think, entirely compatible with Gallifrey being destroyed at some point (or even abandoned and crumbling with time – that would have been an option which Chibnall just pre-empted. Though of course it couldalways have been rebuilt).

It is a little disconcerting to have Gallifrey destroyed ‘now’, though given the nature of the Doctor – a time traveller – ‘now’ is sometimes hard to pin down. And also, given that it’s in a different galaxy, and considering special relativity, it is technically impossible for Gallifrey time to be fixed precisely in regard to our local time. (I don’t know how far away Kasterborous is, probably only a small time difference compared with the age of the universe. So this point is probably irrelevant).

I do agree, having more established planets to choose from would be a good resource for writers. All the many, many other planets visited have tended to be one-offs, for the benefit of the current story (except, as you say, Gallifrey and Skaro). Re Earth resources, UNIT of course, can always be re-established (and Chibbers left that option open). Torchwood was pretty well destroyed in its last series, I think. Oh, I’ve just read that that was written by – guess who. Do I see a pattern emerging here? 🙂

Not just Ada, Babbage and Noor Khan, I’m always a little bit uneasy about involving real historic characters in fiction. The more recent they are, the uneasier I get. It seems disrespectful to change anything about their character (and virtually any fictitous events can’t help but throw a fictitious light on their character). I guess really pre-eminent figures like Churchill, Kennedy, Hitler, Stalin, Victoria et al are sufficiently well known and documented to be immune to that effect. (Understand, in no way am I comparing those people in any respect except their public prominence). Also, I don’t care if anyone slanders Hitler. And I think Julius Caesar and Cleopatra and probably even Boadicea are beyond help by now 🙂 But lesser-known figures like Ada Lovelace, Beethoven, George Stephenson, Marie Curie (to take the first four names that come into my head) – I would not want their enduring ‘public image’ to be determined by the topical requirements of a science-fiction story plot. Maybe that’s just me.

(Right, off to see a T Rex at Auckland Museum.   I wonder if it’s full of artron energy?)

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Impressions watching Part 2 for the first time…

Perfectly true that airliners (particularly Airbus) are flown by computer, and that the computers are under the cockpit floor. (Bjorn Pilot did a video on Youtube showing the computer room on an A350. The A320 (which they are in) is smaller and not quite so computerised, but I’m sure the same applies. Also, the computers control, not just the engines, but equally important, the flight controls. I rather doubt they have convenient access doors in the cabin floor and USB cellphone interfaces but I’ll concede that one 🙂
Also, Airbus have demonstrated full auto flight – that is, takeoff, flying en route and autoland – without any pilot intervention (though there was a flight crew on board). Autoland is in fact routine now. And there is discussion of a Big Red Button which, when pressed, will cause the aircraft to automatically select the nearest suitable airport, broadcast the necessary emergency messages, and land itself. So the app on Ryan’s phone is technically possible right now.

The sequence in Ada’s mind (?) is nicely surreal. (Ada – any relation to Ada Lovelace?) (Well, apparently the Victorian gentleman who welcomed Ada back from her trance is named Babbage. I wasn’t aware that Charles Babbage had an interest in such matters, nor that Ada Byron, Countess Lovelace, did. Maybe I haven’t read enough into their background).

When will the Doctor learn not to baffle people with incomprehensible jargon? She’ll end up in a rubber room sooner or later. Rescued from 1835, ironically, by the Master – but ouch! – this Master has gone completely psychopathic.

… nor was it ever recorded that Ada Lovelace had an aptitude for Gatling guns or grenades. Maybe this is an alternate universe.

Ryan smashing his phone is annoyingly stupid, and smashing Yaz’s is – unacceptable. I’d slap the idiot silly for that. Stamping on it will make it unuseable – for the owner – but won’t necessarily stop it transmitting to the spooks. Just switch the darn thing off! Take the SIM card out. Take the battery out if you’re really paranoid. Then you’ve still got a working phone if you later need it. And don’t leave the wrecked phone lying there *with all your data in it* for the spooks to pick up (assuming they haven’t already downloaded it all…)

Not sure I’m happy with messing with the history of Babbage and Ada Lovelace. For some reason I’m more disconcerted by that, than messing with Shakespeare or Dickens, I don’t know why. And Noor Khan was also a real person. Wish Chibbers would stop this sort of thing, he’s messing with real peoples’ stories.

Laser shoes are a bit of a joke, aren’t they. Most likely thing is to shoot your own ankle off, next most likely is the people standing next to you.

Ryan is getting to be a serious liability, telling the spooks their plan. If I was Yaz I’d ditch him.

Telepathic communication between the Doctor and the Master – I think that’s new. And a bit inconsistent considering she never clicked to who “O” was.

Barton managed his great chunk of exposition in his speech pretty well, actually.

Hmm, I do quite like the idea of using all humans as DNA-encoded hard drives. Not sure what incredible quantities of data needs to be stored on them though. Or why the Kasaavin needed to spy on the human development of computing. Oh, and (without wishing to denigrate her) Ada Lovelace was not the sole start of computing – Babbage had something to do with it too.

Speaking of which, I noticed the Doctor quite resolutely mindwiped Ada and Noor Khan. I don’t see this as seriously inconsistent with Clara and Bill. Those two were companions who the Doctor had invited along, and felt responsible for, and Bill continued to be a companion, so the circumstances were different. Ada and Noor Khan were chance acquaintances, and furthermore Ada was an important historical figure who could have seriously derailed history. Noor Khan, sadly, less so.

The destruction of Gallifrey, and the Timeless Child thing, is new. I’m aware its – controversial. Not sure if it contradicts any previous canon, yet.

Overall, an okay episode, though I didn’t like it as much as Part 1.

I do like the way Yaz is developing, good that she’s finally been given a bit more to do. Though Ryan it seems is going the other way. The Doctor is improving a little, be better if she didn’t gab on so much. (A bit late now to say that, of course).

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@janetteb    Ah, correct, South Africa (I’m just watching the commentary to Part 1).   I hadn’t recognised Lenny Henry as Barton, though I should have.    I doubt they’ll make it as far as Oz or NZ, since Who isn’t so scenery-intensive as some series.   But we can hope   🙂

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@janetteb I recall you saying Sacha Dhawan would make a good Doctor. At the time I didn’t know him and looking at his picture I wasn’t sure. But having seen him in action, I agree with you. And I don’t mind the Master being revived, I think I was just making a rhetorical point. I doubt anyone actually believed that the Master(/Missy) was finally, irrevocably dead. I’m pleased they cast an actor who could do the role justice.

I know very well that in Oz it isn’t a ‘ranch’, it’s a ‘station’. Just not sure what the right term was for the house. The, erm, station house looks all right to me (judging only by vague recollections of other Aussie stations seen on TV, I’ve never been to the outback) so I guess if they didn’t get it quite right, they got it ‘near enough’. It would be interesting to know where they did film it (though I haven’t googled it or listened to the commentary yet, may be clues there). The upper-class party at the vineyard (which I guess was supposed to be California) – I would guess Spain. Maybe the ‘station’ was in Spain too.

They seem to be getting most technical details right – the rear loading ramp on the plane was fake, but then it was very well ‘faked’ or CGI’d. I think they had to do that, I don’t think there are any airliners currently flying with rear airstairs, and a military plane would have looked wrong. The cockpit was (I think) a real A320 or a simulator. Normally that would require two pilots for airline operation, it certainly could be flown by one and maybe (for private use) that is permitted (and anyway who’s to know?). The ‘takeoff clearance’ certainly sounded authentic. (Based on my extensive experience of Youtube aviation videos 🙂

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Spyfall

This is my first ever viewing of this ep, and I’m writing my impressions as I watch.

Well this is starting off really well. More 007 than Who. And we’re back to the conventional pre-credit sequence. And then we cut to dyspraxia-less Ryan (bit of a come-down) but then it’s suddenly all Men in Black. And Yaz gets them too. And Graham.

The Tardis up on a hoist with cables dangling off it and the Doctor fiddling with its insides – no, doesn’t work for me. The Doctor is not a mechanic. Stop it, Chibnall. (‘It’ – trying to make the Doctor look like just another guy). “Just draining the water slides. And the boating lakes. And the rainforest floor.” No, stop it already. We know the Tardis has a swimming pool. It might have that other stuff too. But if so, it’s in another dimension, hundreds of cubic metres of water *do not* get drained onto a garage floor through a 1″ hose, and not without flooding the entire vicinity. What was an amusing aside when the Moff did it is just annoying overkill when Chibbers hammers it into the ground. But anyway, the spook convoy collects her too.

Well, somebody’s hijacked their BMW and it’s motoring backwards up the motorway at truly terrifying speed (I don’t think a BMW X4 will go that fast in reverse, and if it will, I doubt the speedo will read but I don’t know that. Nevermind). This is true James Bond stuff, you never just shoot the hero when you can invent some incredibly convoluted method of letting him escape.

And all the MI6 stuff is quite well done, good James Bond feel to it. Stephen Fry is very good as “C”. It even has the standard “Q” briefing. And a good dramatic scene when something starts shooting up the place, and things start walking through the walls. This is a better enemy than anything in last season. So they rush to the Tardis, and a Thing starts forcing its way in – while the Doctor is obliviously babbling – Shut Up and look, you ninny. I think Chibs does this deliberately to annoy me.

I can believe Yaz as an undercover investigator, Ryan less so. At least Yaz is getting a bit more action than ‘Escort them to the stairs’ (Resolution). The Vor guy (Barton) has an impressive office. Right up to standard for a techno master-villain, except he doesn’t seem, at first sight, truly villanous.

I like “O”, he has a nice personality on first acquaintance. His ranch house (what’s the correct term?) at night, with unseen things moving in the darkness, is good creepy stuff. I feel sorry for the two ASIO agents (what, just two?)

O certainly has equipped his ranch with pretty good defences. The transcendental invaders seem to be susceptible to high-voltage electricity, anyway.

Nice fake-out when Barton comes back into his office and says “Show yourselves” at Yaz and Ryan – and the aliens appear. Evidently Barton is in league with the aliens. The the aliens grab Yaz and she’s in a – forest of tentacles? This is scary. [Good stuff.] Are those neurons? Is she in some huge brain? And Yaz gets ‘teleported’ to O’s ranchhouse. Except she now has the look of the other agents – drained of human life. But next morning she looks normal. But – remembering Lin from the previous ep – I doubt she’s got off the hook that easily.

Nice to see that O is a Doctor fan 🙂

So, for a party, the Doctor dresses in formal wear – and bovver boots. The party is a nice James Bond supervillain touch though. (And I thought the way Yaz and Ryan got invites (Barton gave them as an apology for cutting the interview short) was quite credible.) And *of course* Yaz and Ryan’s exploits in Barton’s office were on tape.

And a roulette wheel yet! But do Ryan and Graham really have to act like kids? And the Doctor surely should know that baccarat (?) is not ‘Snap’.

Barton certainly is a cool customer when the Doctor tackles him. I was quite impressed by his response. Give away nothing.

So then the Doctor and gang chase Barton’s limo on motorbikes (which is not cool) and he shoots at them (which is very uncool, doesn’t he have people for that?) with a very low-tech 1911 (or something of the sort, I’m not a gun expert).

Um, if I was the Doctor, I wouldn’t open the hangar doors with them all framed in the opening, considering someone’s just been shooting 45’s at them. But nobody shoots them. In fact Barton is just strolling towards his plane as if he’s forgotten their existence.

I have no idea what plane that is, it has a really weird backside. I have my suspicions… So Barton flies his own aircraft.
… and suspicions confirmed, it has opening rear doors for the Doctor to sonic. So it’s a mock-up, a prop for filming purposes, but very well made (or CGI’d). In previous decades they could have borrowed a 727 or a BAC 111, but I’m not sure any of those are left. And a military aircraft would have looked all wrong. I think the cockpit is an A320 (though I’m not a pilot!).

And I really do like the revelation that “O” is the Master. I did *not* see that coming! And his earlier teasing the Doctor “Look for the spymaster” would have been worthy of the Moff. This is so good, I’ll even forgive retconning Missy/Master’s death in The Doctor Falls.

I’m not sure I forgive – or even believe – the Master just killing the Doctor and friends. I don’t think he could bring himself to do that. But then it seems he’s maybe transmatted the Doc at least to the tentacle (neuron?) forest, so I can credit that.

Hey, this was damn good!! The first Chibnall episode I’d credit with that. Mired in Season 11, I just couldn’t see myself unreservedly liking anything Chibnall did. I was mistaken. I do hope Part 2 is as good.

(Now to read what everyone else thought of it)

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@janetteb     Well thank you again   🙂     I’ve now watched Spyfall (pt 1) for the first time ever and I’m a much happier chappie.    I’l stick my impressions in the relevant forum.   Chibbers may have killed off UNIT, but (spoilers!) he’s revived a character who the Moff killed off.   No prizes for guessing who   🙂

 

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I do remember, when I was young, it was perfectly OK to show lots of people being shot on TV, Westerns revolved around little else, just not a trace of, errm, romance. But Doctor Who must have been very much a childrens’ show in those days. Because at the same time, we had Benny Hill, which was nothing but a comic character chasing delectable young women all over the place with only one purpose in mind. And his show ran for 15 years, apparently. Of course his single-minded pursuit was always foiled in some comically frustrating way. As, I presume, was Nero’s in The Romans.

Nero’s wife – would that be Messalina? (Just, I’ve heard the name somewhere). Going off on a tangent, it’s probably just as well (for the keepers of public morality) that Doctor Who never visited the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt**, whose goings-on were spectacularly murderous and, um, unconventional. Made Messalina look like an amateur. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘family values’ 🙂 I remember watching ‘The Cleopatras’ on TV and wondering ‘did these people really do all that stuff?’ And, apparently, they did. Our history lessons used to portray Henry VIII as a bit of a suspect character. He had nothing on the Greeks and Romans.

On reflection, maybe it’s as well Chibbers didn’t go further into the society of the Ux, or how their species perpetuated itself, I think ‘inbreeding’ would have been a euphemistic way to put it.

(** Although I do seem to recall that Doc 12 mentioned having made the acquaintance of Cleopatra – presumably Cleopatra VII)

 

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[Well now, went to post this and I see the last post here was – me, a year and a half ago. My views on this ep have changed a little. I’ll post this anyway]

Not sure what’s being ‘resolved’ in the title. Maybe the Dalek shows much resolution? Or is it Ryan’s beef with his father (which I’d completely forgotten about and don’t really care).

Anyway, it gets off to a really good start, sufficiently portentous (and a trace Game of Thrones-ish). Hope it holds up better than Ranskoor av Kolos.

I even like the slighty clumsy and awkward budding romance. [Why is there a reservoir under Sheffield Town Hall? Why not, undergound reservoirs gotta be under something.] And then of course the Thing escapes. I really hope nothing horrible happens to the nice, shy young couple. And that is certainly the biggest, nastiest-looking Dalekoid I have ever seen Don’t Touch It!!

At which point the Doctor & co appear. And (to my relief) nice girl seems to be unharmed (unless of course the Dalekoid got her when we weren’t looking). Graham: I assume it’s roaming around in the water. Doc: It looks like it slid down this wall and into the water! Well yeah, that’s what Graham just said. Clumsy editing? [By the way, no way are those sewers! But I can let that slide].

But all is obviously not well with nice girl. (Name of Lin).

The Tardis materialises in Graham’s front room and smashes a chair. I don’t think the Tardis has ever caused property damage before. I’d make a crack about women drivers but I think Clara and River Song have driven it before (and Me, and Missy have driven other Tardii) so…

Ryan’s dad rocks up. Somehow I have no interest in Ryan’s family relationships, I think it’s just too Coronation Street. (Yet I do with Yaz’s, and with Lin and Mitch who we only just met. I don’t know why).

So now Lin has this Dalekoid on her back, controlling her. (A bit like Donna in Turn Left?) At least it hasn’t turned her into a Dalek skin job, yet. Lin’s laptop must have damn good broadband to access the entire world’s defence capabilities – oh, and I see it brings up the Black Archive, how would Lin know the password for that? The Dalekoid has a spectacular influence on Lin’s driving – it obviously missed the training session on ‘how not to attract attention’.

Ryan giving his delinquent dad a hard time – [yawn. Fast forward… Sorry, Ryan fans]

So Mitch gets introduced to the Tardis. Is it just my regrettable mind or do those nodding columns look like some sort of sex toy for giant intergalactic octopuses?

“There’s been a Dalek buried on earth since the ninth century, waiting to revive”. We just figured that out for ourselves, don’t need to tell us the bleeding obvious, Doc. “Alien psychopath” says Graham. Oh, he meant the Dalek.

Da-Lin breaks into some secure facility and retrieves a bit more Dalek tech. And then obligingly tells the Doc its mission in accordance with Rules for Villains.

The Doc tries to enlist the help of UNIT but finds it’s been – suspended. (I always thought UNIT sounded a bit daft but it was classic Who, I thought at some point Chibbers had said he was going back to old Who? Maybe I got that wrong).

Intercut a touching moment with Graham and Ryan’s dad which almost interests me.

So then Da-Lin emulates the Doc’s episode 1 performance with welding gear in a workshop – except this is slightly more credible. Dalek ‘tank’ yeah, sonic screwdriver never. And Lin makes a valiant attempt to shake off the Dalek. And it seems that, once the Dalek finished its tank, it let her go. Why? Never mind, I’m quite happy about that.

The junkyard Dalek looks good, a lot better than Doc’s junkyard sonic. But surely this is the first time a sonic screwdriver has been able to block a Dalek blaster. Until the Doctor tells the Dalek who she is (which makes her equally unwise IMO, what does she think it’s going to do, self-destruct?) which inspires it to a spasm of Nick Briggs-oid ranting 🙂

So then they pick up Graham and Ryan’s dad (why?)

And the Dalek disposes of a small Army unit.

Then (I know just where this is going and it** got old a long time ago) Ryan’s dad suggests they can use his microwave oven to defeat it. “Help me get the element out – it’s metal”. Well, so’s the magnetron, what of it?
(** ‘It’ being the theme of ‘most useless character saving the day’. Srsly, why can’t useless characters just stay comfortably useless occasionally?)

So then the Dalek breaks into GCHQ. I know it’s called Government Communication HQ but that’s just a cover name for spooky signals interception and electronic spying, I think. I don’t think it controls all transmitters. Or the power grid. Nevermind. The Tardis materialises right after it.

“Stop the signal. Get off this planet.” Possibly the Dalek now has the capability to ‘get off this planet’ but where’s it going to go? Does it have intergalactic capacility? And more significantly, if it did, what’s to stop it finding another planet to terrorise and steer all of Dalekdom back to Earth anyway? And don’t the Daleks know about Earth already, since forever? Nevermind. Maybe its recently acquired military intelligence could be of use to the Daleks, if they really need it.

Not that the transformer out of a microwave could be modded to melt a metal sheet, but anyway where’s it getting the power from? Nevermind.

So then the Dalek (damn, that thing must move almost as fast as the Doctor) grabs Ryan’s dad. So then the Doctor dumps the Dalek into space and (wouldn’t you just know it, could see this coming like a freight train) Ryan grabs his dad’s hand and saves him. “Not bad for a kid with dyspraxia eh?” – well, if Ryan’s dyspraxia wasn’t the second most erratic thing in the universe. The most erratic being the Doctor’s rules – last week she wouldn’t let Graham knock off the blue menace, this week she seems perfectly prepared to literally off Ryan’s dad if it means getting rid of the Dalek.

So, not a bad episode. Had some good bits in it, and some tediously predictable ones. The Moff had the ability to surprise us that Chibbers seems to lack. I did like Lin and Mitch, pleased they survived (which, to give Chibbers credit, was by no means predictable).

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@janetteb Hi Janette. Thank you, but I think you’re being charitable to my slightly snarky comments. 🙂

Overall, I think Ranskoor av Kolos was not as impressive as most season finales. Started well, but then faded into a small-scale drama where Graham shot the villain in the foot. (And somehow the threat to the Earth didn’t feel ‘real’). There were some interesting concepts in the episode – the Ux for example – but they weren’t really developed. Where did they come from? How did their society work? Or the mindbending effects of the planet, and why all the wreckage of old spacecraft? And why were the defences so weak they could be easily defeated by the Doc and companions?

I have the impression that Chibnall has a notebook full of interesting ideas, but they’re often only half-developed and not really tied together.

Anyway, I’ve just re-watched ‘Resolution’, will post my thoughts on that.      Then I’m on to completely fresh ground (for me), Season 12.

 

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Well, second viewing of this, but I’ve mostly forgotten the plot from 18 months ago, other than it involved the Blue Tooth Fairy a.k.a. Tim Shaw.    Random impressions:

Well, building a tower of rocks from the top down – that’s new. Too bad we don’t see it completed. But what is this thing which looms through the mist – too bad, we don’t get to see, we just jumped 3407 years. This is really portentous stuff.

So now we got a nervous alien pointing a gun. Last time that happened it didn’t work out too well (for Bill). All I gather from the next few minutes is that Paltracki took something (or recovered it) and some Stenza who might be Blue Tooth Fairy from Episode 1 wants it back. I get that Graham really wants to kill the blue pest, I’m absolutely on his side versus the Doctor in that.

So then we finally see what is, presumably, the tower of rocks. Looks top-heavy. And, it seems, floating in mid-air.

And our pacifist Doctor has brought a bag full of grenades. When Ryan taxes her with her previous anti-gun diatribes she just says “My rules change all the time”. That’s known as lampshading it.

Ryan starts pratting on at Graham about ‘the Team’ and not hunting Blue Tooth Fairy – I’m still 100% on Graham’s side. Then they run into a platoon of sniperbots, who very obligingly do the Irish Firing Squad thing with zero damage to our protagonists. They really are rubbish bots, aren’t they?

So the Ux, these two near-immortal super-capable dimensional engineers, have been conned into thinking the repulsive Blue Tooth Fairy is divine? Kinda hard to credit, wouldn’t you say? In fact I’d say the Ux are raving idiots.

In fact the answer to Blue Tooth Fairy’s diabolical plan is obvious – just shoot the Ux who are carrying it out. But we know the Doctor won’t do that even if they destroy the universe. “Can’t disconnect them. We might kill them”. (And if you don’t, the Universe gets destroyed. There are times I want to kick this Doctor, she’s nearly as daft as the Ux). And when she does have an idea (simultaneously with Yaz) to fix the problem, she just talks and talks and talks while I’m yelling at the screen “Get on with it!!” The Ux seem to change their ‘faith’ remarkably quickly and easily.

Paltracki’s handgun seems to be much more powerful than the big blasters of the sniperbots, they really are rubbish – oh I said that.

Graham has the drop on Blue Tooth Fairy but he can’t pull the trigger and blast the scum. Damn you, Doctor and Ryan, for brainwashing Graham. No way would I trust anything to keep BTF confined for ever, look what happened last time. He’s far too dangerous to leave alive, I’d want to incinerate his DNA. (Isn’t it odd how the Doctor – at least in previous incarnations – has no hesitation in killing Daleks and Cybermen, but this one won’t kill Blue Tooth Fairy).

I did like that Paltraki managed to rescue his crew.

“Fam.” Aaaagh! Ryan: “I thought we weren’t doing fam”. Maybe he’s not as thick as he looks. But then Yaz says she likes it – please writers, I quite like Yaz, stop undermining her.

Well, this ep is not as bad as I previously concluded it was. But not as good as it could have been, I think. The Ux were hard to credit. I suppose the brain-scrambling field of the planet might be said to account for their total lack of commonsense, but it wasn’t really very well communicated. It didn’t seem to inhibit their magical matter-manipulation powers, just their intelligence.

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@winston   If the tree is just resting on your neighbours’ roof (not buried in it)  they’re lucky.  Possibly the roots were still hanging on grimly, absorbing masses of energy and slowing the fall for much of its descent.   A tree falling freely acquires huge momentum, as numerous Youtube ‘fail’ videos demonstrate.     Trees were ‘designed’ (by evolution or whatever) to stand in groups that gave each other mutual support against wind.   Unfortunately many trees in urban environments don’t enjoy that security.

Anyway, best wisher for the tidy-up.

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Well here I am again, second time through…

Seriously, having the Doctor eating dirt and deducing that there’s an alpaca farm 25 miles away (with a low Tripadvisor rating) doesn’t make her seem more exotic – just idiotic. This writer’s gotta be taking the piss in all possible senses of the phrase.

Lovely scenery though (again), and the cottage is sufficiently creepy.

I thought that the revelation that Hanne is blind was quite sensitively handled. Except by Ryan, the clumsy clot, who has to ask if Hanne’s dad didn’t just leave her, don’t expect any sympathy from me next time you fall off your bike Ryan.

This is quite atmospheric, the noises in the forest genuinely scary. Not surprised Hanne wants to stay with the Doctor and co when they go through the portal. The Doc’s instruction to Hanne to ‘protect the house’ are patently absurd, even with Ryan for company (Hanne says a heartfelt “Not him!” Ryan: “What’s that for?” What do you think, genius?)

The Doc very cunningly writes on the wall, “Assume her dad is dead, find out who else can take care of her”. But why not leave someone who has a clue, like say Yaz? Is this just to prove to us that socially awkward people can be valuable?

The troll is – unexpected, and rather incongruous. How did it get there? (Did it escape from Moria? Nope, that was in New Zealand, not Norway). Will we find out? (Apparently it has ‘always been there’, which actually tells us nothing).

Ryan has a moment of brilliance and finds that the fearsome monster was a 6″ dual-cone speaker in a bass-reflex enclosure. But why?

The flesh-eating moths are unconvincing – they look pretty ordinary. How convenient that they decide to eat the troll and let the companions escape. Apparently, into an alternate reality.

Meanwhile Hanna finds her way into the ‘antizone’ …

And the alternate reality turns out to be the afterlife, Eric has been visiting his dead wife Trina. And the noises were just to keep Hanne in the house while Eric was away (which seems a little excessive, frankly).

And now things get seriously weird, because Grace rocks up. How and why? Not explained. But the scene with Graham and Grace is quite moving.

So then we get an info-dump from the Doctor – in the beginning yadda yadda Solitract yadda yadda this is a fake universe created by the Solitract because – why?

And in a crazy way the climactic scene with the Doctor confronting the Solitract (in the form of Trina and Grace) and everyone else getting chucked back through the portal, makes sense. And the Solitract turning into a frog? – well, as soon a frog as anything else, I guess. I kinda liked it.

How they all found their way back through Moria without their string is not explained. But I think everything else was.

And all is resolved in the end (though Erik and Graham are still left without Trina or Grace).

I actually like this episode, despite the unconvincing sequence with the troll Ribbons and the flesh-eating moths. That was really almost superfluous to the story, it looked as if it had been put in to pad the running time. But the lonely Solitract universe (solitude?) resonated nicely with lonely Eric and lonely Graham.

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@blenkinsopthebrave I’ve just watched through Season 10 and of course I agree about the brilliance of the Moff’s writing. Though for me, World Enough & Time was probably the highlight, even though it was so dark. I was very relieved that it had a ‘happy’ ending (so far as Bill was concerned) with Heather. (‘Happy’ being relative, of course). I think my favourite episode of all would be Hell Bent, or possibly The Day of the Doctor. Twice Upon a Time was okay, nice to see ‘Bill’ again, and like Winston, I did like that Testimony gave the Doctor his memories of Clara back. (Um, just watched ‘It Takes You Away’ and it occurs to me that the other-universe incarnations of Grace and Trina – who thought they were real – echoes ‘Bill’ in TuaT. And similarly the ‘demons’ in the Punjab were ‘witnessing’ peoples’ deaths very like Testimony. Do I see a pattern here? 😉

@janetteb Well I’m almost through re-watching Season 11 so I’m about to encounter Season 12 (was that the Timeless Child season?) for the first time. It will be… interesting. If it’s as dire as I’ve read then I would agree that RTD should retcon it out of the timeline, but of course that’s me pre-judging it.

@winston Glad your family’s safe. That sounds like a very large tornado you had, to cause such widespread damage, and I’m saddened about the trees, too. I’ve never been through a really damaging storm (I was in Rarotonga about four decades ago when a cyclone was imminent, but the centre just missed the island). And in the past we’ve had a couple of large trees come down in our garden but by a very fortunate fluke they just missed causing much damage. We did have a big 50′ wattle tree on our boundary – it was a lovely tree overhanging our lawn, but it would have significantly damaged our house or flattened the neighbours, depending which way it fell – I regretfully had it cut down a few years ago (and that really hurt because I’m an unashamed tree-hugger). Until then I used to feel slightly uneasy any time there was a storm warning.

 

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My impressions of The Witchfinders –

Strange that the villagers don’t notice how weirdly these strangers are dressed. OR that Ryan and Yaz are, err, black. I’d guess that in rural 17th-century Lancashire, black people would have occasioned some remark at least (if not an accusation of being a demon or ‘witch’s familiar’. I doubt the villagers would ever have seen a black person before). I think this is the first S11 episode where dress is a significant issue. Or does the Tardis translation field include a perception filter?
I’m not questioning Team Tardis’ (ugh!) decision/motivation to not dress appropriately, I’m questioning the villagers’ total disregard of the strangers’ alien appearance. This is especially strange in a context where witchcraft is suspected and hence people would be acutely aware of any unusual occurrence. It grates with me – ‘howcome these people haven’t noticed?’ But then the villagers (other than Willa) were a bunch of nondescript sheep who just reacted as required by the plot.

“Thirty-five witches we have tried” – in fact the Pendle witch trials of 1612 only involved 12 victims (two of them male). And these were formal judicial trials, and the victims were charged with murder by use of witchcraft, not just ‘being a witch’ or crop failure or suchlike. This would be a major black mark in history.

And I see Mudlark previously in this forum highlighted the difference between ducking (a non-fatal and sometimes merely symbolic punishment for gossips and scolds) and ‘floating’ an accused witch in which case those who sank (and were thereby deemed innocent) were supposed to be hauled back to the surface and emphatically not allowed to drown. Presumably Becca (the nasty paranoid witch-killer woman) had distorted the procedure into a “no-win” for the accused. The real historical James would never have allowed a blatant miscarriage of justice like that.

But Graham addresses this later when he says this place – Bilehurst Crag – is not known in history. And it’s further covered at the end when James says that the village will be abandoned and the events will never be spoken of again. So, a classical cover-up. OK, that fixes it, for me.

The psychic paper is certainly *very* effective to convince nasty witch-killer woman that the Doctor is Witchfinder General – although I think there was no such official position, it was the self-proclaimed title of a real evil bastard, Matthew Hopkins, thirty years later.

Alan Cumming is having waaaay too much fun as King James, all through this episode. As camp as row of frilly pink tents, to borrow a phrase. But James is the first person to actually notice that Doc, Graham and Ryan look – unusual. “Are you actors?”

But the first sign of anything alien/supernatural is when a tree root starts groping towards Willa. Finally, scifi arrives. And there’s quite an effective zombie sequence.

Why does the Doctor keep babbling away in such a way that nobody would take her seriously? How many episodes will it take before she gets a clue that talking flat-out in strange (modern) jargon is not going to impress the natives? Hey, James is not as oblivious as everyone else in this episode, “You bewitch us with your alluring form and your incessant jabber, but I knew you were unnatural from the very start.”

But the Doctor appeals to James as an expert in witchcraft – which he apparently was. That was a good tactic, James was superstitious but not unintelligent, and reputedly was often “sceptical of the evidence presented in witch trials, even to the extent of personally exposing discrepancies in the testimonies presented against some accused witches.” (Wikipedia)

Becka, on the other hand, with her vicious paranoid obsession, is seriously getting on my tits (modern jargon). Somebody should do a public service and off her. Can’t help but be satisfied when she gets possessed by the mud. She looks to have been a thoroughly nasty piece of work even before the tree infected her. (I must admit I have a horror of fanatics who are convinced that they are right, however much it costs everybody else). But I can’t really see her cutting down the tree by herself – that’s hard work!

The tree people aren’t very convincing monsters, though. Even though Morax-Becka does the usual fiendish-monster-trick and tells the Doctor the whole cunning plan, the Doctor’s defeat and reimprisonment of the Moraxes was a little hard to credit.

So, not a bad episode. Not as many loose ends as I expected.

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@mudlark   I sympathise with your historical misgivings.   As I said to devilishrobby, I’m a retired engineer, so my groans are usually elicited by mechanical absurdities.    I find I have to allow a moderate degree of leeway – so long as something looks ‘about right’ I let it pass.  For example, I approve of the East German ‘circus train’ in Octopussy (James Bond) which was hauled by a Norwegian steam engine which looks near-enough German – a British engine would have stuck out like a sore thumb.    (On the other hand, I can’t ever stand to watch McGyver, I have this theory that their lawyers ordered them to make every ‘clever’ trick as ludicrous as possible so that if some viewer tried it, it would never work in the slightest degree, thus giving them a defence in any lawsuits that ‘no reasonable person would believe it’).

I do prefer it when historical stories are reasonably accurate (in conformity with my patchy knowledge of history), though obviously you as a historian would be more sensitive to that aspect.

I believe the original premise of Who was to illustrate technology and history with the Doctor and companions as passive observers.   I don’t think that premise survived the Daleks.    In respect of Demons though, it almost achieved historical compatibility – aside from the tacked-on Doctor/aliens moments, the story itself could quite credibly have occurred in that place and time without altering any history, I think.

The next episode I’ve just watched, The Witchfinders, is very much contra-historical in that the evil Becka drowns 36 alleged witches (whereas the notorious Pendle witch trials only involved 12 victims) so this would have been a huge black mark in history.  However, the writer ‘fixes’ it in time-honoured fashion by having King James decree that the village of Bilewood be abandoned and nobody ever speak of the events – a cover-up which has obviously been successful.    (I recall an episode of ‘Hercules’ set during Julius Caesar’s attempted invasion of Ireland – as the remains of the Roman fleet sailed away in defeat, Caesar said to his scribe, who had been industriously recording all the details of the disaster, “You were a good and faithful friend, Scribus – I shall miss you” [shouts and splash offscreen]    )

But anyway, I’ve got some comments which I’ll post in the ‘Witchfinders’ thread, I was going to say “I’d be interested in your take on it” but I see you already made a long post in that thread, the sun is shining outside so I’d better go for my walk while I can, and when I get back I’ll have time to do justice to reading it all.   ‘Later’, as they say.    🙂

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@devilishrobby    I occasionally trip over an episode of Casualty for about ten minutes (before I switch away because I don’t want to get hooked on their current storyline!) and my immediate thought is, “how do these people ever find time to, like, treat any patients?”

Here in NZ our long-running nightly soap (which I have also never watched) is “Shortland Street” which I believe is set in a medical centre / clinic – doubtless the same applies.

Being a (retired) engineer, rail fan and car nut, my groan-worthy moments usually come when TV/movies feature railways, aircraft or cars.   But mostly I’ve given up noticing when they call a locomotive a “train” or when any old car automatically backfires whenever it starts.

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So now the secret is out.   That would explain a lot.   What’s the odds that Putin is a Dalek ‘skin job’?

(Not sure the correct terminology, I borrowed it from Battlestar Galactica)

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@janetteb   Demons of the Punjab could likely have made an excellent human-interest story without the sci-fi elements at all.   But that’s not my thing, I’m told the Beeb’s recent-historical dramas (Upstairs Downstairs, Onedin Line  etc etc) are very well made but not my taste.   That society is not my taste.   The Doctor Who episodes set in the recent past capture my interest (if they do) through the involvement of the Doctor and companion(s) – Deep Breath or the Ice Fair one for example, and in Demons they were only observers.

Kerblam, I agree with you.   Promising premise and (again) very well shot, but could have been much better with a bit of a rewrite.

I think the next one is the King James (?) witchcraft one.

By the way, we’re well into winter now.   Precisely two weeks ago I was floating happily around wondering how much longer the tail end of summer could hang on.   (Well I got my answer.   🙂   )    It just seems hard to credit right now.   No complaints, anyway.

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@janetteb     Ah well, congratulations.    And when Freddie’s finished singing,  Day of the Doctor is an excellent upbeat episode for the occasion, I think.

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Again, the cinematography and sets are excellent. About all that keeps me watching, frankly. Very spooky when Yaz is walking through the warehouse between racks of packages.

The Doctor is all annoying and preachy again. And making threats which are as gratuitous as they are unconvincing.

And howcome the arrogant manager guy Slade is suddenly meekly taking orders from the Doctor, for no apparent reason?

Wasn’t it convenient that the very first paper the Doctor pulled out of Slade’s filing cabinet was the critical one? And all of Kerblam’s technical information is stored in glass cases in the foyer? And that a Mark 1 delivery bot has the capacity to examine the entire system?

Why does Kerblam need a ‘liquidisation tank’ at all?

I was expecting the ranks of delivery bots to turn out to be Cybermen. But apparently they were carrying packages with bubblewrap which contained some incredible explosive which vaporised its targets. (Why not just nerve gas?) And the system blew up Charlie’s girlfriend because Charlie was the evil genius mastermind determined to destroy Kerblam by killing all its human customers in protest against automation, and it thought blowing her up would make Charlie repent? Ffs, this is way too convoluted for my disbelief to stay suspended.

So the System was the good guy (well, except for its little wibble of blowing up Kira), and Kerblam management decided that the logical response to Charlie’s fanatical human-centric terrorism was – to do what he wanted and employ more humans. Nice.

There were bits of this that I wanted to like. For example, Slade and the HR manager were both on the ‘good’ side but didn’t trust each other enough to let on. But it was written so cursorily that the flipflops in their attitudes were hard to credit. I think it could have benefited from some judicious editing.

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Demons of the Punjab

I see I wrote a bit about this on my first time around, so I’ll cut the bits where I repeated myself.

Scenery is great. Sound design is excellent, background music is haunting and quite lovely.

Yaz trying to explain their presence to her ?grandmother? is a bit awkward. And then she defies the Doctor’s instructions of ‘just an hour’ (shades of Father’s Day?)

The Doctor continues to recite technobabble (yes I know previous Doctors did, but their writers used to try and keep it in check. This series it flows unabated).

The demon warriors and their ship are quite well done. But trust the Doctor (this one) to antagonise them and nick their container of souls. Yaz: “Still not interfering are we?” I like a bit of sarcasm.

So it’s really a simple story of sectarian conflict in the days of Partition, with the Doctor and sci-fi sort of tacked on. It would work exactly the same way if the Doctor and companions and the demon witnesses weren’t even there. Not even Yaz. Did it feel as if the Tardis crew were ever in peril? No, not really. It’s very nicely filmed, well enough written that I kept watching, but not really sci-fi at all. And therein lies the problem. It just doesn’t grab me, this genre is not my cup of tea. And I like Yaz but am I invested in Yaz’s story the same way I was with Rose, Amy or Clara? No, because they were primary Companions and Yaz is only one of three so she hasn’t had time to really engage my interest. Maybe she will later on, I hear she plays a more prominent part in later seasons.

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Well, plodding desultorily through Season 11, I rewatched The Tsuranga Conundrum (the first ten minutes of it anyway. Then I gave up and went to Youtube. Maybe I was in a odd frame of mind.) First, let me say the set was absolutely beautiful, probably the best I’ve seen on any Who episode. Clean white walls with a two-tone blue stripe. Why couldn’t the new Tardis be like that? (Tardis, if you’re somewhere around, I hope you’re taking notes). Seriously, what a chance was missed to make that the new Tardis!

But, for the rest – the ‘what if men got pregnant’ was a sort of one-line joke idea that fell flat in the telling, as I recall. And the rest was just routine base-under-siege, I think.

I notice the Doctor now name-drops historical figures copiously; RTD and the Moff used to do that occasionally, usually to humorous effect, with this Doctor (or this showrunner) I get the impression they’re just there to spice up a flat line or two. And the other quirk, of frequent references to random alien races, is straight out of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker, except it was genuinely funny when DNA did it, usually informed by some weird alien logic; here it just feels like an attempt to reinforce the Doctor’s alien-ness.

So then my impressions on Demons of the Punjab (which I liked rather better) and Kerblam, I put in the appropriate slots. I’ll make it to Season 12 eventually.

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@jimthefish   Yes I recall how how well Billie Piper did, against initial prognostications, that’s why I’d hate to see her performance retrospectively clouded by a less-than-stellar ‘Rose 2’ (if Rose 2 is supposed to be the ‘same’ character, which I note she may not be).     (Understand, I have absolutely no knowledge of Yasmin Finney, I hope she does really well).

I will hie me off to ‘Spoilers’ at this point.

 

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Ummm. Yasmin Finney as Rose. I’m rather conflicted about that, for two reasons. One, obviously, is that Yasmin Finney looks nothing like Billie Piper, and since Rose is not a Timelord, how could that happen? Okay, she did look into the Tardis core, and I guess RTD will find a way to make her change of appearance work (regeneration?). But it better be good.

The other is that Billie Piper as Rose (or the Interface) was one of those fortunate actors who the camera loves, as they say. Just leaning against a wall in the background, she drew your attention like a magnet. I’d be reluctant to see her legacy impaired by a less than stellar performance. I haven’t seen Yasmin Finney in anything, I hope her acting is as good as her looks. But she better be good.

I suppose one hopeful factor is that RTD wrote Rose before, so he should have the ability to write Rose 2 well – and should be motivated not to sabotage all his earlier work. So Yasmin should have, err, rather better material to work with than Jodie did.   I live in hope    🙂

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Ten *really* didn’t want to go,did he?   🙂

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@winston    I am absolutely not complaining about the swimming – it’s lasted a month longer than it usually does.   (Interesting to see that very few other people have  kept swimming though, I think they’re reacting more to their usual expectations than to the actual water temperature).    Incidentally, it isn’t “just me” imagining things, saw a weather scientist on TV a couple of days ago explaining that NZ has been getting unusually warm currents around it this year.

I think our autumn’s pretty well over now, though, but our winter never gets really cold (I can only ever remember seeing ice on puddles once, and we only get 2-3 frosts a year.   Never seen snow here (though our lawn was white with hail once).   That’s Auckland, which is surrounded by sea.    Further south and a little higher up in the middle of North Island they do get proper winter.

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@janetteb   “the rain follows the plough”sounds utterly daft to me.   Why would it?    More likely to follow afforestation,which is the exact opposite of ploughing.     Ploughing marginal soils which could just support semi-arid vegetation was a sure recipe for disaster, the ‘dust bowl’ in the US Midwest being a classic example.   [Here endeth this week’s environmental rant]

SA could well be the driest state (on average) on the driest continent (on average).   It sounds like they should then be the driest in the world, but in fact that doesn’t preclude other countries on other continents actually being drier.   Such is the nature of averages.

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@janetteb   Well, Robertson made a couple of good points about re-using derelict sites and even just how far up the chain of command responsibility extends – can you condemn the chairman of the board if a subsidiary goes rogue?   (When a space shuttle explodes or a 737 Max crashes, how far up do you place the blame?    The source of heated, err, debates on Youtube comment lists).   But his points were completely undercut by the rest of his behaviour which was an exaggerated caricature of everything we love to hate about (some) purportedly mega-rich Americans.

Our summer tends to linger on with fine weather – often the most settled weather is towards the end of summer.   And then quite abruptly drops off into winter.   But I think our summer this year has lasted far longer than normal – until last Sunday, to be precise.   Autumn started this week.

But you said “the driest state is getting drier”.   Is that a reference to South Australia?   I’m surprised, I would always have thought West Australia was the driest, what with the Nullarbor Plain and the northwest ranges.   Maybe the southwest corner  south of Perth has a dampening influence.   And, I see (looking at the map) that SA could claim half the Nullarbor.    My impression is that the ‘interior’ is so different from the coastal fringes that quoting rainfall on a  ‘per-state’ basis is probably quite misleading.   But (since my only actual experience of Oz is Perth, and that a lifetime ago) I only really know from TV.   Please correct me if I’m talking nonsense   🙂

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@janetteb   You mentioned Arachnids in the UK a couple of days ago.    You said you felt it was “as though it was veering on pro corporate, even with a faint hint of Trumpism at the end.”   Really?   I thought it was wildly anti-corporate (and I tend to be fairly anti-corporate myself, also a tree-hugger, but I thought Arachnids was way over the top in that respect).   Mainly because the ‘corporate’ line was voiced by Robertson, who was so wildly exaggerated as to discredit anything he said.

I did like Yaz’s family, and Jade the scientist, but some of the preachiness made me roll my eyes.   It’s an episode I half-liked (or, liked half of), I would have liked to like more, if only it was a bit better edited.

(I wrote a lot more but stuck it in the forum for the episode).

In other news, I think our summer is – finally – over.   Last Sunday was overcast but warm – about 20 degrees – and calm, I popped in for a token dip, and it was so pleasant I floated around for 15 minutes.   Monday and Tuesday, the air was the same but the water had dropped off a degree or two.    Ever the optimist, I tried going in and came out a minute later.   Wednesday was fine and sunny but with a southerly breeze that my car said was just 16 degrees – not even tempted.   So that’s it for summer, I think.   It’s been a remarkably long one.

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I see I already posted about this ep, but that was 17 months ago and it’s right above this one.   Busy group this…   🙂

Robertson is an almost exaggerated caricature of the obnoxious American businessman. (Was he deliberately aimed at Trump? I don’t know, I think if one looks at the most extreme caricature of a billionaire with political ambitions then Trump almost self-selects. Not that I have any objection to heaping derision on Mr Trump, other than Doctor Who shouldn’t get too overtly political, but if the writers had intended they could have put in a lot more identifying touches).

I thought the scene where the Doctor dropped the companions off and was visibly reluctant to leave was quite well done (though she was a tad too quick to jump at Yaz’s invitation, I would have dissembled a bit, maybe that’s just the Doctor being not-quite-human).

I do like Yaz’s family. The whole scene in their flat is quite light and engrossing, even the little rivalries. And the cobwebbed flat next door is good and spooky. And quite scary. When Ryan was peering under the bed I was sure the spider was going to do the Alien face-hugger trick. I like the scientist Jade, too.

Robertson seems determined to make a heap of trouble for himself. Unjustified dismissal, which is probably a civil matter, but possession of an automatic pistol in UK is a criminal offence (without the proper licences) and pointing it at people doubly so; and then virtual kidnapping of Yaz and her mother.

The giant spider grabbing Robertson’s henchman is pretty standard horror stuff, but quite well done. Also standard, the spider webs trapping them all in the hotel. So then they have a discussion in the kitchens about spiders and politics and Robertson appears a little more human. (Oh, and Jade: “I heard you’re only running because you’ve hated Trump for decades” – so Robertson definitely is not an alias for Trump.)

And we have another scary moment with the corridor full of spiders pursuing Graham and Ryan.

But anyway, leaving aside Robertson’s litigious threats, his modus operandi of ‘repurposing industrial sites into leisure venues’ sounds admirable to me.

So then we have a long, long, rather tedious preaching session on the perils of toxic waste and uncontrolled landfill and mutant spiders and it’s all Robertson’s fault (at this point I’m starting to feel almost sorry for him).

And then we have another preachment by the Doctor about not shooting the spiders (she is tiresome sometimes) and a rant about shooting things by Robertson that is so heavy-handed and transparent it makes me (as an anti-gun sort of guy) embarrassed. So then the Doctor wants to trap the spiders in the ‘panic room’ so they get a ‘humane, natural death’ (Jade’s words, actually). What, starving and eating each other? (Unless they can cut off the air and suffocate them first).

And the obligatory Ryan-has-a-cool-idea, of luring the spiders with some sort of noise-that-claims-to-be-music (who woulda thought they were rap spiders?).

Then the big momma spider, which has grown too big and is suffocating, is shot by evil Robertson. Who gloats that he’s going to be the next President. Now previous Doctors would have done something about that (think Tennant in Christmas Invasion).

[I wrote a para about spider physiology but I see I covered it in my last post (right above this one) 17 months ago…]

And at the end, the three decide they want more adventures with the Doctor. Would be fine if she didn’t ruin it with “Look at you. My fam.” [Aaaargh! No!] “No, still doesn’t quite work.” [At last a flash of sanity…] “Team Tardis?” [Nooo, please kill me now!].

So, much of the episode was quite good, interspersed with a few really clunky and clumsy scenes.   If they edited about ten minutes of preaching out of it and fixed a couple of minor details (like dialling back a little on Robertson) I could quite like it.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave   You’re correct about the British influence on NZ society  (though as a Pommie immigrant I always found it best to avoid comparisons.   I think that applies universally, any visitor to anywhere is best advised not to imply “we do it better where I come from.”)

Of course colonial countries defined themselves by reference to the ‘old country’, that’s where the colonists came from and so it was the society that they patterned themselves after.

As to whether the colonial relationship influenced early Doctor Who – I don’t really have an opinion on that.    I’m not sufficiently familiar with early Who,

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb     Most of the companions in NuWho came to a sudden end, and it always carried a huge emotional impact.   Even though RTD or the Moff usually ‘softened’ it a little (Rose, Amy&Rory, Clara, Bill – for which I at least am thankful) but of course we didn’t know that at the time so the impact was undiminished.

In Grace’s case though it was too early (we’d hardly got to know her), too sudden and too random to carry as much impact as it might have had.   I got the impression she was just there to be written out again so as to set up the situation between Graham and Ryan (which I honestly don’t find very interesting).

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Well now. Obviously there could be very many differing ideas of what ‘Englishness’ is, I can only give mine.

I am English (though I’ve lived in NZ most of my life). My (only slightly romanticised) picture of ‘England’ is of leafy, narrow country lanes and little villages. (Never mind that 90% of the population lives in cities). And a quick tour of southern England shows that a remarkably high percentage of the countryside is still like that – and I think it’s delightful and worth preserving. I would like to think that even the inhabitants of tower blocks feel the same way. So long as they do, I don’t care if their parents came from Sydney or Kingston or what colour they are, I’m happy to accept them as English.

Along with that goes a certain degree of understatement and reserve, and a sense of justice and fairness (I know I just derided the Doctor’s declaration “I’m the Doctor, here to ensure fair play throughout the Universe” as bathetic, but it was the clumsy way it was expressed that triggered my English sense of absurdity).  And also a feeling that loud, noisy, boastful people should be taken down a peg, not rewarded.

So that’s my idea of ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’, and it’s quite compatible with Commonwealth citizens. Though they’re not essential to it, IMO, but in practice I think interchange between England and the Empire has been going on for a very long time. And I’m sure it’s had a broadening influence on English consciousness.

(Umm, I was thinking of Kingston, Jamaica, but Kingston Ontario would do as well 🙂

Oh, and the ability to take the piss out of ourselves (I love this:)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb    I wasn’t particularly taken by the Tennant Tardis’s ‘coral’ look.    Or in fact by the early Smith (Season 5) interior.    Series 7 and Series 8 (Capaldi’s) were, I think, the best – elegant, spacious and clean (oh I said that before didn’t I?)

All the Tardis interiors are here: https://thedoctorwhosite.co.uk/tardis/interior/

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

I get the Doctor sounding Yorkshire, disconcerting as that is, but what’s the alien Angstrom doing with a ?Yorkshire? accent? And Epzo as well? Is this region of space the Yorkshire of the universe?

Not sure how jettisoning half his spaceship helps but I’ll give it a pass. Or why the Doctor explains the stabiliser operation to Yaz instead of just doing it herself (since Yaz promptly lets go of them anyway)

At least this ep is a bit brighter and sunnier than the first.

The Universal Translators are an answer to a question I hadn’t yet thought of asking. Good continuity, that. (Babelfish, anyone? In fact the whole scene in Ilin’s tent is pure Hitchhiker’s Guide).

“Toxic atmosphere, killer water. Very dangerous planet, Yaz.” Wait – what are they breathing then? Doesn’t look very toxic to me.

The whole sniperbot thing left me cold. Ryan shooting them all up (because he played shoot-em-up video games – of course) and the bots reviving – all so predictable. And the bots are appallingly bad shots. But the heavy-handed sermonising from the Doctor about guns had me totally sympathising with Ryan (and I *support* gun control!) So then she magically generates an EMP and ‘kills’ all the bots – how is that morally better?

Wasn’t it nice of the engineers who created the killer planet to leave a complete info-dump written on the floor for anybody to read? And the best they could create was floaty scarves. Talking floaty scarves. Telepathic talking floaty scarves.

Howcome Angstrom suddenly knows about the ‘acetylene fields’? And just what are they? Methane occurs naturally in swamps, but not acetylene. But anyway, since it is indeed lighter than air as Ryan says (why do I get the impression chunks of this series have been made to show just how useful Ryan the dyspraxic teen really is?) – it would float up and disperse in the atmosphere, not hang around in a convenient layer six feet off the ground waiting to be ignited and incinerate the floaty scarves. And anyway acetylene burns much faster and hotter than depicted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVqCTUthoPM

I like that Ilin capitulates and declares joint winners because of pressure from Epzo (and no preaching by the Doctor). And I do like that the Tardis magically materialises to save their bacon. But not the attack of Crystal Cave Syndrome that it’s suffered.

So, I like this better than the previous ep. But once again the ‘monsters’ are naff, and not remotely up to the ‘deadly killer planet’ it’s claimed to be. A little more attention to the monsters and ways of defeating them might have improved the episode.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@jimthefish    I’ve just rewatched Woman Who Fell to Earth and Ghost Monument  and I emphatically agree about Jodie’s costume and the Tardis.   Now I’d be the first to admit that my fashion knowledge is zero, but when the Doctor triumphantly appeared in her ‘new’ duds I thought she looked like something out of a pantomime.   The current equivalent of Seven’s hated cardigan.

And the Crystal Cave Tardis of course, coming right after Twelve’s magnificent spacious and elegant control room – ouch.

New showrunner please note  (I’m sure he already has)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Not Who-related but,  I was sad to see Dennis Waterman just died.    (I’ve just started watching New Tricks right through).   He’s probably best known for Minder, but I could never really like that series, I kept wanting him to plant one on Arthur Daley.   Liked him better in The Sweeney alongside the great John Thaw, and of course in New Tricks.

Other news, I took a dip today and cut it short, the water’s cooled off again, it’s definitely toying with me.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

#janetteb    Yes I would have liked to see Grace as the Doctor.   And also about the deficiencies of Chibnall’s writing (mind you I’d been spoiled by six seasons of the Moff.   I suspect, even many of the scripts he didn’t write, he may have had a hand in adding a sparkle to them).

I will admit “better than Kill the Moon” was damning with faint praise, and maybe a bit snarky.   I think my comparison with Closing Time was probably fairer – it’s not one of my favourite eps but I don’t dislike it.    But yes, as a series opener, The Woman Who Fell to Earth was quite underwhelming.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@devilishrobby    Yes but Jo Martin (and I must admit I haven’t got as far as watching that ep yet) was, I think, only an alternate Doctor in one episode?    Not the main Doctor for a whole series?

I agree that Timelords can be any colour** or gender, however it’s one thing to state it and another thing to actually do it.   I’m completely neutral on this, so long as the Doctor has sufficient gravitas to play it successfully.

(OTOH, I firmly believe that James Bond is a white guy. Because he just is, and James Bond can’t regenerate.    I love female superheroes, black or white, but make yer own!)

(** Interesting point, I originally said ‘any race or gender’, until I realised that Timelords are all one race – Gallifreyan – aren’t they?   Presumably the Gallifreyan race is genetically highly variable.    Or have I got my Timelord/Gallifreyan ethnography all screwed up?)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

The Woman who fell to Earth

Starts unexpectedly with Ryan’s Youtube channel – so who else tried clicking on the other channels down the right hand side of the page? (they didn’t work)

When the blue thing appeared and Ryan pulled out his phone – and didn’t immediately post a selfie with it to Facebook? He’s definitely odd.

I quite like Yaz, pity they never did much with her (at least this season).

And I very much like Grace, best character in the episode. Shows the best presence of mind in the train incident – warns the other pax not to run up the track as “it could be live” though I have to nitpick that she shows slight ignorance here, this line isn’t electrified, and if it was, it wouldn’t be third-rail as in London. But many people wouldn’t know that. And she does know where they are, between Hathersage and Grindleford – which is excellent continuity if they were teaching Ryan to bike ride up on Millstone Edge and his bike ended up in Rough Wood. (Check out the OS maps on Streetmap.co.uk)
(Chrissie, in her generally excellent transcript at Chatokeya.net, thinks it’s Froggatt Edge, which is two miles south – possible, since Ryan and Yaz raced from the wood to the scene of the train in Yaz’s car. However, the nearest station to Froggatt Edge is Grindleford, and (since they live in Sheffield) the train would immediately enter Totley Tunnel heading east. If they were on Millstone Edge as I surmise, they might well have walked down to catch the train at Hathersage, one station further west).
And further Googling shows that the scene on the ‘edge’ was shot at Garth Hill just above Taff’s Well, northwest of Cardiff.
What, me, obsessive? (You shoulda seen me working out where they filmed every scene in ‘Xena’ 🙂
And the Doctor hasn’t even appeared yet…

So, how does the Doctor crash through the roof of the train unhurt? (But then Tennant Doc crashed through the ceiling in his last episode, also unhurt, so I guess we just have to handwave that one).

“I’m calling you Yaz, cos we’re friends now” – based on what? This Doctor’s all too chummy for my liking. “Team.” (ugh!) “Gang?” (Better…) “Fam?” (Aaaaarrrghh!! Please nooo!)

Karl was most unwise to decline Yaz’s offer of a lift, since Grindleford to Sheffield is at least six miles. He’s gonna be a couple of hours late at work.

OK, DNA bombs make no sense (I think) but they’re no more impossible than many other things on Who. They would, if activated, presumably stop our cells reproducing, which would spell certain death after a matter of weeks. Seriously, to eliminate witnesses, a nerve inhibitor would be far quicker.

And the Doctor wipes Ryan’s phone – that is a capital offence in youth circles – and is annoyingly glib about it – makes me want to hit her. And she talks too much. And dithers. And is too preachy.

And this ep is showing signs of Charlies Angels syndrome. (It was rumoured that all three actresses had clauses in their contracts for equal treatment, so they all said their lines in rotation one after the other. It’s very distracting when you notice it.)

As for the DIY sonic screwdriver… the Tardis can manufacture sonic screwdrivers. Not someone in a workshop with a welder, a soldering iron and a sledgehammer. And it looks like a sex toy.

The blue tooth alien is intimidating until he takes his helmet off, then just disgustingly repulsive. Also, a pretty naff villain. Who obligingly tells us his entire evil plan on request. Subtlety isn’t really Chibber’s forte, is it? And his victim is one lonely guy with self-confidence problems? This is the worst villain since the Absorbaloff (Love & Monsters).

Somehow the Doctor’s well-intentioned preaching fails to make blue tooth menace mend his ways. It wouldn’t convince me either. Can’t help but compare that with, say, Capaldi’s rant in Zygon Inversion.

And Chibs completely sabotages what should be Whittaker’s most dramatic line. “I know exactly who I am. I’m the doctor. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe.” [Aaaaaaarrrghh!!! Has Chibbers ever heard of ‘bathos’? This has to be the most bathetic line I have ever heard. The Moff and Capaldi could use bathos for comedic effect. Tragically, I don’t think Chibs and Whittaker are trying to be funny].

And when Karl kicks blue tooth alien off the crane, the Doctor says he had no right to do that! Err, the alien that was specifically hunting Karl for a trophy? Add hypocrisy to the Doctor’s attributes.

And then they kill off Grace – the best character in the episode – for what? Dramatic effect?

And finaly the Doctor manages to accidentally propel them all into deep space, which is a pretty good cliffhanger.

But what’s with the ‘Coming Soon’ list of two dozen assorted actors? Are they all in the next episode? Are we supposed to be impressed? Never mind.

So, leaving aside my initial disappointment that the Doctor is not in any way the equal of Capaldi, how would I rate this episode? Well, the villain was uniquely naff, too many companions for any one to really catch my attention – better than Kill The Moon, maybe about equal with Closing Time or Night Terrors…

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well, I just rewatched The Woman Who Fell to Earth. Now last time I watched it I was mourning the loss of Capaldi, Bill and Clara, and the Tardis. I thought maybe this time around I would be more used to Whittaker’s version, and her dithery mannerisms would grate less on me. Unfortunately, discounting those – even if Capaldi was in it – it would still be a not very good episode, with one of the most unimpressive and least convincing villains ever. What sort of ‘formidable warrior race’ sets a challenge for their future ruler to hunt down some poor unsuspecting human – something any terrestrial back street heavy could do in his spare time?

And also the wit, the humour, the subtlety and the multi-level plotting that I’ve grown accustomed to from the Moff is completely missing.

I wrote quite a screed of random comments and impressions of this ep (something I’d promised to avoid. Obviously, I lied) and posted them out of the way in the forum for the ep. Right after the comments I posted a year and a half ago! (Actually, I was kinder than I recalled being). But my comments this time around are similar but not quite the same, so I’ll leave them there.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Ooookay.   That’s new.   Just hope he gets better writing than Whittaker did.    RTD is showrunner, he did it before so hopefully he can do it again.

It also depends very strongly on the companions, of course.   They have always been just as important as the Doctor in determining the success of the show.   (My subversive streak wonders if the new Doctor will have a white girlfriend.   Now that would really put the cat among the pigeons   🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb    I love spiders, especially the big hairy ones, but we have the luxury of having virtually no poisonous spiders** (also, no snakes).    I found a lot of bad logic in the Arachnids script which I’ll get to in due course 🙂

**The only poisonous spiders are found in driftwood on the beach, they’re quite rare and non-aggressive.  Virtually a non-existent risk compared with the common yellow wasps.

I’ve googled a bit and found out that geckos use Van der Waals forces (which I remember very dimly from undergraduate chemistry. Something to do with interaction between electron orbits in adjacent atoms).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3785-gecko-tape-will-stick-you-to-ceiling/
So these little beasties are experts in submicroscopic atomic physics. Aliens indeed!

In other news, I went down to the beach today, went in for my two-minute the-hell-with-it token dip – and stayed in for fifteen minutes. The water seems to have warmed up a degree. I think it’s just playing with me.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Errm – correction, I was wrong about suction not supporting a gecko, I was fooled by the square-cube law and it would do so easily. Pulling up a picture of a six-inch gecko – assuming its body approximates to a cylinder 1/2″ diameter and 2″ long (1.2cm x 5 cm) – a bit like the physicists’ spherical cow – that’s a volume of 5.6cc which (if equivalent density to water, which people are and probably also geckos) weighs 5.6 grammes.
Now scaling off the picture, its ‘finger’ pads appear to be say 1mm by 2mm, which (with twenty per gecko) is 40 square mm or 0.062 square inches, which at 15psi gives 0.93 pounds or 422 grammes – enough to support 75 geckos! Though it still looks ‘wrong’ to me and I still don’t see how they can generate any suction on Semi-gloss White.

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