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@winston    Every few years, (most recently about two months ago), I eat something I shouldn’t and get hit by the bug.    It tends to flatten me, I end up with nothing in my stomach and so weak I can barely sit up, and with no appetite for food.   I make the effort(!) to eat chocolate or chocolate biscuits, anything easy to eat and get some sugar into my system since sugar is easily absorbed energy.   After a couple of days flat on my back, recovery is usually quite rapid.

It sounds as if your son had a worse dose of it than I did.   But if he’s eating well I’d guess he’s over it.

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Girl in the Fireplace was an excellent episode.   I loved the bit where the Doctor was about to read Reinette’s mind and she read his.    And the sadness of the Doctor’s return being 7 years late, the Doctor always had a tendency for inaccuracy in his targeting.

And the reveal at the end which showed exactly why the misguided repair droids thought Reinette’s brain was the missing part their ship needed.

Love & Monsters was at its best early on, when it showed the little group of Who fans forming a little social club.   Quite sweet.   (Reminds me a little of this forum, though obviously we’re more virtual.   Did online communities exist when L&M aired?)    The ‘monster’ was pretty naff though.

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@janetteb   Ah, so it’s the girlfriend (and car) which makes him independent, not the cat   🙂      Though cats are very independent, but I don’t think it’s a transitive quality.

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In my crawl through NuWho I’ve reached The Time of the Doctor.    I can’t help but feel this is the weakest of the three ‘Doctor’ eps (Name, Day, Time). It has some good elements but it seemed a bit disjointed. The explanation for the Silents (as a heretical breakaway sect headed by Madame Kovarian) seemed weird, but religious sects often believe daft things. The truth field on Trenzalore was interesting, but hardly used.

I liked the Church of the Papal Mainframe and I loved Tasha Lem – fascinating woman. And she evidently has a ‘history’ with the Doctor – I would have loved to see a bit more of that in other episodes. And, she knows how to pilot the Tardis. Thereby foiling the Doctor’s scheme to park Clara safe back at home. Never works, didn’t work with Rose.

I found it a bit unlikely that the Doc could hold off the Daleks and Cybermen for so long. Though telling the truth (but not the whole truth) to defeat the wooden Cyberman just shows that you can tell the truth and still lie like a bastard.

Once again Clara saves the Doctor, that’s the second time in three episodes. The NuWho Doctor has been saved by every one of his Companions so far, I think. I wasn’t aware that the Doctor’s regeneration energy could be weaponised, but maybe the Time Lords added a bit of oomph for the benefit of their old enemies the Daleks.

So, a passable ep, but not my Top Ten.

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@janetteb   Your eldest has a girlfriend and a cat?   Or was that a misprint for a car (which I think might be more practical use).   Not that I have anything against cats, I like cats    🙂

@winston    I hope your son is fully recovering.   Hopefully it was just a dose of food poisoning or a ‘tummy bug’, but I guess the tests will tell.   At least he’s in a good place to be looked after.

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Hmm, Fires of Pompeii.   Was there any other episode that featured a future Doctor *and* a future Companion in other roles?   (I don’t know of any, just curious).

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@nerys    Initially I just had a British passport with a New Zealand stamp in it that said something like ‘Permanent right of re-entry’.   Then I got my NZ passport so for a while I had two, perfectly legally.   (I wouldn’t have taken out NZ citizenship if either country had required me to relinquish my British citizenship.    In my case tax wasn’t an issue since neither country has the US’s odd tax laws).   And I can understand the desire to keep your options open, or at least not burn bridges unnecessarily.

I don’t think either country much cares which passport I use, though I suppose if I got arrested in Ruritania it might have a bearing on which consulate was more help to me.

Your last comment to syzygy is very true.    Sometimes, when I can’t decide whether to bother doing something (usually of far less significance than your proposed trip), I’m decided by the thought “If I don’t bother and X happens, will I feel guilty for not?”   Of course, usually I do it and it turns out to have been completely unnecessary, but that’s life, can’t predict it all, and I think the few occasions when it did turn out to matter justify the occasions when it didn’t.

This concludes tonight’s sermon in half-baked philosophy   🙂

Best of luck on your very necessary trip.

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About a week ago I was theorising about the numbering of the Doctor’s regenerations and questioning whether Eight’s regen into the War Doctor, or Ten’s regen into 10.5, really counted.

Well, I was wrong.   They did count.   I jut watched The Time of the Doctor and about halfway through, the Doctor specifically says they did.   12 regenerations, therefore 13 Doctors, Matt Smith Eleven being the thirteenth.   And the Time Lords reached through the crack to give Eleven a  spectacularly destructive (for the Daleks) regen into Capaldi Twelve.

So the numbering @devilishrobby gave in his post of September 22nd was absolutely correct.

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@nerys    In case I missed saying it before, good luck and best wishes for your trip.   I hope the long drive is free of any oopses.   They make for great telling later but you don’t need them right now.    And I hope your visit with your family goes well.

@thane16  syzygy   I know the feeling.   That something is wrong, or left undone, and you can never fix it now.   If only time travel was real.   But we always think there’ll be plenty of time and usually there is – until suddenly there isn’t.   I wish I had some magic words that would help, but winston’s already said it better than I could.    Time will help.

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@nerys    Wow, that’s a lot of writing.   Covid – we’re slightly eased to Level 3 now.   (Level 4 is highest, almost everything shuts, 3 is very limited opening, 2 is fairly relaxed and 1 is virtually normal.   The biggest jump for most people is between 2 and 3).

Okay, I’ve got another travel oops.   2016, I was taking the wife, daughter and grand-daughter around Europe in a rental car.   Going from Italy to France over the Mont Cenis Pass, the customs house was open (which is odd, Schengen means they’re normally closed), so I got out my passport just in case and sure enough a gendarme waved us down but all he said was ‘seatbelts, madame’ to my daughter.   We stopped shortly after that for a picnic by Lac Cenis.   That night, after a good day’s drive, we stopped in a pension near Bourg St Maurice and as I put away my laptop at 1a.m. I casually checked my passport – not there!   I walked down to the car to look on the floor – nothing there, nor the second or third time I searched.   I certainly wasn’t going to spend all next day driving back to Mt Cenis to hunt around the picnic area.   I tried the NZ Foreign Affairs website (which was no help, mostly what they wouldn’t do to help NZ citizens).   So next morning I rang the NZ Consulate in Paris and got a French secretary who was as helpful as the website wasn’t – she recommended I report the loss at the nearest police station, get a receipt, then apply online for a new passport and they could have it ready when we reached Paris in ten days, and I should have no trouble at the borders (we were looping east through northern Italy) because Schengen.   So, somewhat relieved or at least resigned, I drove down to Bourg St Maurice and found the police station, which had its own garden fence with a locked gate and a button to push, and I was just reading the sign beside it when – my daughter called out from the car “wait”.    She had just spotted my passport which had slipped down the gap alongside the seat – where I’d already looked three times – in such a way that it could only be seen from the back seat.   (This is the absolute honest truth, I was literally about to push the button for admission when she called out).

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@nerys     Oh yes, that tax thing is bizarre.   Considering the popular ‘Murican mantra that taxation is a form of theft, and their scorn for other countries (like Europe) that supposedly tax their citizens for social benefits, I’m surprised they stand for it.   But then I suppose the ones who are subject to it are overseas so can’t protest.    You can get out of it by renouncing your US citizenship but I believe they charge you for that, too.

Cutting up your permanent resident card seems a bit odd, too, since it presumably becomes ineffective.   As a matter of interest, what do you do about passports?   Here, we have to send our old one in and they clip a corner off the cover and return it, presumably in case I want to keep it as a souvenir or something (my old one does have a most beautiful ornate full-page Russian tourist  visa stuck in it, which almost makes it worth the bother of acquiring it).

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As I said, that look has the same regrettable effect for most people.   It’s one that should never be held for more than half a second (in my opinion).   Xena (Lucy Lawless) occasionally used to use a similar look and it made me cringe there too.   Really, directors and editors (if they want their star to look good) could do better.

Back to Whittaker – there was some pretty awful writing that made her seem a bit too much like a Yorkshire lass – partly because she had the same accent as her companions.   (Along with ‘fam’ and suchlike).    Somehow, when Capaldi used some everyday slang phrase, it came across as a strange alien trying it on for size, when Whittaker used it, it felt like her normal vocabulary.

So, I only know her from her portrayal of the Doctor, and – I don’t care for it much.   If she has a deeper range and a bit more gravitas, I would have liked to see it.   (I’ve only seen Season 11, not 12, don’t know if that makes any difference).

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Well,  well, well.   That one came out of the blue, didn’t it?

Now maybe if Moffat can contribute a few episodes…

I’ll sort of half-agree with Missy, I don’t really care who the Doctor is, so long as s/he is British and can act   😉

(Hopefully the writing and direction will be taken care of with RTD in charge…)

 

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@janetteb That Sherlock Holmes series is generally very well made. I don’t think they used any green screen – as I said, the Reichenbach Falls shot was a couple of stunties on wires, actually on location. And I don’t think they even did wire removal, just the wires were nearly invisible in front of the waterfall.

The predecessor of green screen was back-projection, I think, though that dates back decades. Most conspicuously used for scenes in cars where the two leads are talking and the road is unrolling behind them and the driver is randomly turning the wheel with no correlation to any bends in the road they’ve just ‘driven’ down (yes I’m a technogeek, I obsess over this stuff 🙂

Green screen and wire removal (and CGI backgrounds) were certainly a thing by the time they made Xena (late 90’s), but still expensive, which is why they used as many in-camera tricks as possible. And some regrettable rubber monsters (but oldWho fans know all about rubber monsters 🙂 Feature films of the time probably had a much bigger budget for effects.

Talking of rubber monsters, the one in Hide was actually very good. Like most of the nuWho ones.

James Bond was always a hold-out for doing as many stunts ‘for real’ as they possibly could, and it shows in the films. And you can see the few scenes when they resorted to full CGI motion and it’s just not entirely realistic.

Female James Bond – no. Emma Peel – yes, definitely. She was cool. In fact, since about the nineties, there have been plenty of female heroes, I’m happy to say. (Maybe not as many as male, I don’t know, and IMO it shouldn’t be a competition). Not just heroes, but strong supporting characters. A few of my favourites are Ripley, Sarah Connor, Mystique (X-Men), Xena, Aeon Flux, Chiana, Nebula, Six (BSG), several Who companions, Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) from Tomorrow Never Dies, Natalya Simonova (Goldeneye), and dozens that don’t come to mind right now.

Torchwood – I’m not sure I agree with ‘added sex and violence’. I can’t say I noticed any sex particularly (which is not to say there wasn’t, just it didn’t make a big impression on me). As for added violence, what could be more violent than a typical Dr Who Dalek or Cybermen episode? But – Torchwood was much grimmer in tone (I think we agree on that), way more so in Seasons 3 and 4. It’s not the violence in itself, it’s how it’s treated in the episode that makes the difference.

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And as a P.S. –  yes we know that all Rassilon really had to do in Hell Bent was shoot the Doctor fatally and then shoot him again while he was regenerating.   (And that would presumably be that, regardless of whether the Doc had a counter in his DNA, or whether the Gallifrey ‘mainframe’ enabled regenerations).   So presumably he was just being rhetorically nasty.

In fact, an argument against the ‘phone home’ theory is as follows:   It would require, whenever the Doc regenerated, for a data link to be established with the Gallifrey mainframe.   But how would that be possible at times when Gallifrey was timelocked?   So I tend to favour the idea that the counter was encoded in the Doc’s DNA, a bit like the runtime limit of replicants in Blade Runner, and that timelord technology would allow them to reset the counter.

I’m sure all this has been worked out in great detail before, but this is the first time I’m trying to work it out.

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@devilishrobby

Yes but…  (as they say)

The numbering you have given may be technically correct.    Though (as always among geeks) one could quibble.    Does the regen from McGann 8 to the War Doctor count, since it was considerably modified by the Sisterhood of Karn?

This raises the question of how the regenerations were kept track of.   Is it built into the Doctor’s DNA by the Timelord technology?   In which case the clone of Ten couldn’t count.

Or does it ‘phone home’ like an iPhone or Windows 10?    In which case Rassilon’s “How many regenerations did we grant you?   I’ve got all night”  was surely just rhetorical nastiness, since he could have ordered the main system to cancel them.   However maybe it was just more convenient at that moment in time to shoot the Doctor as many times as necessary right there and then.

Regardless of all that, so far as identities go, Tennant will always be Ten, Smith Eleven, and Capaldi Twelve.   Since they’re all called The Doctor, those numbers are the nearest things to names for them, that we have got.   (And we can’t call them Tennant, Smith etc without stepping outside the universe of the show).

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@aidan    The 7th Doctor was Sylvester McCoy, the last of OldWho.

He regenerated into the 8th, Paul McGann, in the Doctor Who movie.

McGann regenerated into the War Doctor John Hurt in ‘The Night of the Doctor’, a short that preceded the 50th ‘Day of the Doctor’.   The War Doctor was effectively not counted, subsequent Doctors never acknowledged his existence until after The Day of the Doctor rehabilitated him.   At the end of Day of the Doctor, the War Doctor started to regenerate into…

Nine, Christopher Eccleston.

Who regenerated into TENnant, and then later a clone of Ten was grown from the hand that was cut off in The Christmas Invasion(?) so I suppose we call him 10 1/2 but he was never in the main line of succession  (or something like that, I’m a bit hazy on that)

Ten eventually regenerated into Matt Smith Eleven who regenerated into Capaldi Twelve.

But Ten and Eleven weren’t going to renumber themselves to accommodate the War Doctor.

So the numbering was slightly idiosyncratic long before the Timeless Child (was it?) made a shambles out of everything.

 

 

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Well, I just re-watched The Day of the Doctor, for about the fifth time, and it’s as good and entertaining as ever. Liberally sprinkled with little easter eggs for the fans, but none of them are obtrusive or forced.

The interplay between the three doctors is a joy to see. For example their competition in screwdriver sizes (“Compensating?”) or the exchange that went
11: It’s a timey wimey thing.
War (offended): Timey what? Timey wimey?
10: I’ve no idea where he picks this stuff up. (You outrageous hypocrite, Ten, every fan knows exactly when you first used it!)

Or the scene in the cell in the Tower, where 11 sends a message in stone through the centuries to Kate and Clara; War starts analysing the cell door with his screwdriver, then the Interface prompts War to realise that 11’s screwdriver will have worked out the answer by now; and then Clara walks through the door which was unlocked all along because Elizabeth left it that way…

It’s full of witty little throwaway lines, like
“The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries.”

Or KATE: What’s our cover story for this?
OSGOOD: Er, Derren Brown.
KATE: Again?
OSGOOD: Oh, we’ve sent him flowers.

Osgood, of course, with her multicoloured scarf, is a walking tribute to the fans.

And the Interface, personified as Bad Wolf Rose. Billie Piper is always a delight to see. The Moment may have developed a conscience, it has also developed a sense of humour and irony.
War: Ow. The interface is hot.
Badwolf: Well, I do my best.
Oh, look at you. Stuck between a girl and a box. Story of your life, eh, Doctor?

And I’m still noticing things I’d overlooked first time through, like the way in which Ten and 11 were able to crash the party in the barn –
Ten: These events should be time-locked. We shouldn’t even be here.
11: So something let us through.
Badwolf: You clever boys.
Yet again, I love the way that Moff doesn’t tell us explicitly that the Moment did it, just lets us know indirectly. Which leads me to wonder, given that the Moment had some ability to see the future, did it know that the Doctors would work out the idea of freezing Gallifrey in a time bubble, and set the whole thing up? Oh, and a nice touch that Badwolf echoed the last words of Clara’s first two incarnations.

But just about every line of this episode is a delight to watch. I frequently burst out laughing with enjoyment.

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave    Congratulations on your citizenship!

I’m a Pom (English), but I have dual nationality (NZ citizen as well).   For a couple of decades I was basically an immigrant with ‘permanent resident’ status (or whatever it was called), but then the Prime Minister of the day, Muldoon (think mini-Putin), started getting all nationalistic and I was concerned that I might come back from a holiday one day and find that all ‘permanent rights of re-entry’ had been revoked by diktat.   (So far as I know they never were).   What decided it for me was that Britain and NZ both allow dual nationality (very civilised of them) so I didn’t have to renounce my British citizenship.

Voting is quite easy here too, the Electoral Commission takes the view that everyone should vote, and should be encouraged to vote by making it as convenient as possible.   Unlike certain areas just to the south of you   😉

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@blenkinsopthebrave    Thanks!

@winston    You’re right about the forums being a rabbit hole  (of course Youtube is the most famous rabbit hole but there are many on the Internet).   (Where’d that phrase come from? – Alice in Wonderland I think).

Dalek – not only showed the Doctor in a darker light, but wasn’t that the first time Rose seriously challenged the Doctor?   One thing I do like about nuWho is, the companions are strong characters in their own right.   (Not sure how true this was of oldWho, I know Ace was).

By the way, apropos of nothing in particular, I love the quote in your icon  “We’re all just stories in the end.”   From The Big Bang (I admit I had to google it).     I had thought it was  Hell Bent, but that was   “You said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.”    The Moff is a poet.

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@oochillyo   It’s unfortunate your friend got attached to Billy Shipton.   Doctor Who has a knack (and particularly RTD and the Moff) of inventing secondary characters who are much more sympathetic and engaging than just-another-extra-to-support-the-plot.   And generally they’re well cast.  So you do care about them enough to be interested in what happens to them.

I could give a few examples of excellent supporting characters but the list would go on for pages…

I think that’s got to be one of Who’s strengths, it’s not always just about the Doctor, or Doctor + companion.    The Doctor (+ companion) is still the main focus, but if every ep was a Heaven Sent-level of intensity we’d get fatigued.   The other characters add to the landscape, so to speak.

 

 

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@aidan    The spinoff shows.   The only one I know is  Torchwood.    It featured Gwen Cooper  (Eve Myles – Gwyneth from The Unquiet Dead),  Jack Harkness, plus others, and later on Martha Jones for three eps.    The first two series were a bit ‘darker’ than Doctor Who.    But generally, I suppose you could call them similar in tone to Unquiet Dead  (they were based in Cardiff).

But personally, I tend to agree, without the Doctor (and his companion) it’s not quite the same.   Best regarded as a different show rather than Doctor Who lite.

Then series 3 and 4 were fully serialised (i.e. just one story each), Children of Earth and Miracle Day, they went very dark and grim.   A bit too dark for me, and generally I like dark.

The other spinoff was of course  The Sarah Jane Adventures  which I think was aimed at a more junior audience.   Apparently quite popular, but I don’t know anything about it.

 

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@aidan   Midnight was almost a ‘bottle’ episode.   (A bottle episode is one that uses very few sets, very few cast members, and so can be produced quite quickly and cheaply.    Midnight had only about 8?  cast – a few more than a strictly ‘bottle’ ep – and really only one set).   I think Declan has expressed why it’s so effective.   And – when at the end, the Doctor asked what was the name of the hostess who sacrificed herself to save all their lives and nobody knew it.   That stung.

Also, we never get to see the monster at all.   Just sounds.    VERY effective (and of course saves heaps of budget).   I don’t rate it equal to Blink but it’s a good second place.

Reminds me of ‘Listen’ in that respect – there’s nothing more chilling and creepy than noises in an empty base where all life has died out aeons ago.

And of course  Blink was another case where ‘less is more’.   It was the very first appearance of the Angels and they were another example of what you can’t see (them moving) is more frightening than what you can see.    By the way, I disagree with Declan that Billy dying spoiled enjoyment of the episode – it was very sad, yes, death of a sympathetic character always is, but sad in a good way, he had lived a full life.    That is another episode where I have to sit down and mentally work out how the timeline works.   Of course like all these episodes, the casting ‘makes’ it and Carey Mulligan was perfect in the part.   She has beautiful sad eyes.   And Finlay Robertson as the scruffy but amiable almost-boyfriend was perfectly cast too, he just fitted in neatly.   I liked the hint of Sparrow-Nightingale romance that was left up in the air at the end – I like to think that they got together but I don’t need to have it confirmed by the episode.

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@aidan

Yes! to that speech by the Dalek Emperor. It lifts the Daleks above the level of just-baddies-to-be-destroyed.

Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead is pretty good as a starter.

Oh gosh, this is going to be *very* subjective!
All I can do is list a few of the episodes (NuWho eps only) I personally liked the most. No guarantee everyone else will agree.
I’m sure others will have suggestions

It depends whether you’re looking for ‘standalone’ eps that don’t require much background knowledge, or whether you’re looking to start a series of linked episodes. These are mostly ‘standalone’ episodes, or ones that aren’t too strongly tied into an ongoing storyline.

Series 1 (I guess you know them) Dalek, Bad Wolf, The Parting of the Ways.
Series 2 – Tennant / Rose:
The Girl in the Fireplace
Army of Ghosts / Doomsday – where the Doctor loses Rose

Series 3 – Tennant / Martha
Blink (which is a standalone Doctor-lite ep by Moffatt, highly regarded by almost everybody)

Series 4 – Tennant / Donna
Midnight (which is a standalone Donna-lite ‘bottle’ episode by RTD)

Series 5
The Eleventh Hour (introducing Matt Smith and Amy)

Series 6 – Matt Smith / Amy
The Doctor’s Wife (by Neil Gaiman – the Doctor meets his Tardis)
The Girl Who Waited

Series 7 – Matt Smith / Amy / Clara
Asylum of the Daleks

The Day of The Doctor (the 50th anniversary ep, with John Hurt)

Series 8 – Capaldi / Clara
Listen

Last Christmas (a Christmas episode with Father Christmas and sarcastic elves)

Series 9 – Capaldi / Clara
The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar

Face the Raven / Heaven Sent / Hell Bent

Series 10 – Capaldi / Bill
The Pilot / World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

This is a hurried list, it’s 3a.m. here! Suggest checking a synopsis of episodes e.g. at Tardis.fandom.com to see if they’re the sort to suit your tastes. If I had to pick any single one of those, I guess I’d say ‘Blink’ or ‘The Day of the Doctor’.

I’M NOT SUGGESTING watching all these in the sequence above. Just watch a couple to get the flavour, then (I’d suggest) picking a season you like or a Doctor/companion you like and working through maybe the half-dozen most significant eps of that season.

I’d be happy to elaborate on what are the ‘essential’ episodes for any particular season – later!

Cheers

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Hi @aidan    Welcome, this is as good a place as any to introduce yourself, and nobody is going to be bothered by typos or grammar overmuch.

I sort of lost touch with the original show partway through Patrick Troughton’s run – if you missed the show when it was on, or maybe the repeat a week or so later, that was it – no rental DVD’s in those days!    So it was virtually a new show (for me) when they re-launched it with Nine and Rose in 2005.    I thought Eccleston was a pretty good Doctor  (mind you, I have to give credit to Billie Piper for really getting me hooked).    Well, both of them.    Eccleston was the exact right degree of slightly odd to contrast with Rose’s everyday shop assistant.

The Parting of the Ways – yes, that was an excellent ep.   I loved the scene where Badwolf Rose disintegrated the Daleks.  That was some really impressive visuals.    In my own spreadsheet listing of all the episodes it’s rated a 5 (out of 5).   I even liked the bit where Jackie unexpectedly came up trumps with Rodrigo’s tow truck.

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@devilishrobby   I expect your knowledge of the oldWho production staff is better than mine (which is virtually non-existent) so I’ll happily take your word that female production staff have been frequent.   What I don’t know (and regardless of gender) is whether it’s usual for the showrunner to double as head writer?    I just Googled and, apparently, yes.   Sounds like a massively busy job and one I think could well be shared among a small group of people.

Personally, I’m fine with the concept of a female Doctor.     I wouldn’t be happy with a female James Bond because that’s not who the character is.   (I was going to say, any more than Robin Hood is female, until it occurred to me what a wicked subversion it would be for Robin to have been a woman cross-dressing – even the name is ambiguous.   Would make Robin’s relationship with Maid Marian … interesting, pre-dating Vastra and Jenny by a few centuries  🙂    But James Bond 007 is nominally the same guy as Sean Connery so they can’t swap him, IMO, shouldn’t and don’t need to.    There are plenty of genuinely female superheroes, I like female superheroes.

Back to the Doctor, s/he’s a different case entirely because s/he can regenerate, so why not.    That said, I think Jodie Whittaker was… miscast and probably misdirected.   And not helped by some horrendously clunky writing.   “I’m the Doctor, sorting out fair play throughout the universe.”    The unintentional bathos of that makes me cringe.   Also, “fam”.   And someone should tell Jodie that goggling at something with her mouth open makes her look like a goldfish.   It does most people.   The director really should have caught that.   And while I’m at it, I sincerely hope the next Doctor gets a new Tardis interior, the crystal grotto with the nodding pillars just doesn’t do it for me.   I’ll shut up now.

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Hey  Declan  @oochillyo     Of course you wouldn’t be intrusive!    I can only speak for myself, but the more comments in this forum the better.   Gives us something to chew over, maybe reply to and anyone not interested can just skip over them.

(At least, that’s what I tell myself when I wonder if I’m talking too much  🙂

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Hi @janetteb

No apologies ever required for NOT posting, it’s not an obligation. My ‘Hullooo’ should be read, not as an exhortation, but merely mild surprise that everyone seems to have gone silent after the babble of conversation a week ago. 🙂

Anyway, our lockdown seems to be persisting – we’re still getting about 20 cases a day, not getting worse, but like one of those annoying coughs that just won’t clear up, they just won’t go away.

Back to Who – yes you’re probably the only one who prefers Nightmare in Silver to The Doctor’s Wife, but it is indeed a most enjoyable episode. I wish Who could get Neil Gaiman as showrunner.

That wasn’t really a ‘review’ of The Name of the Doctor, more just scattered impressions. It is much easier to see how the pieces fit together on a second or third watch-through (like many complex Moffat episodes).

I assume Vastra, Jenny and Strax were somehow teleported to Trenzalore by the GI and his whispermen? (I had previously assumed that they were there in spirit only, but then they remained after the whispermen evaporated, and the Doctor told them the Tardis would get them home). River was there through her psychic link with Clara, which is why the GI couldn’t see her.

The big development, of course, is that Clara spread herself throughout the Doctor’s timeline. I don’t see how that changes canon, though, the Doctor has always had help from his companions, and every single nuWho main companion has saved the Doctor (or sometimes, the Universe) at some point. Rose, Martha, Donna, River, Amy, Clara, Bill.   I have no trouble with a companion I like (and I like most of them) being ‘too important’ in the story.

Showrunner. Nothing wrong with a female showrunner in principle. The New Who custom seems to be, de facto, that the showrunner is also a writer of episodes and the overall story editor. How common or essential that is I don’t know, maybe it only worked out that way because RTD and the Moff had a clear vision of where they wanted the story to go. Female writers who were pretty successful were Sarah Dollard (Face the Raven, Thin Ice) and Rona Munro (Survival, Eaters of Light). But whether they have the experience, desire or temperament to be showrunner I don’t know. (That ‘don’t know’ isn’t meant to express doubt, just ignorance). Whoever does get the job is going to have a daunting job to recover it from the controversy that has surrounded it.

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Hmm, this place seems to have gone dead.    Where is everybody?   Hulloooo??

Well, here in Auckland not much is happening.   Still in Level 4 lockdown because ONE case of Covid got loose a month ago and spread to several hundred…

I’ve reached The Name of the Doctor in my re-watch, just some impressions:

This episode is excellent, much better than I recalled – I’d somehow conflated it with ‘The Time of the Doctor’ and that, combined with it being overshadowed by Day of the Doctor, made me seriously underrate it.

The Paternoster gang are always amusing. I love the by-play between them and River and Clara. Strax’s off-duty pastime of slumming it in Glasgow is a very Scottish joke.
It takes a re-watch to realise that the interactions between the gang, Clara and River, and the Whispermen are all coherent and carefully worked out.
The Great Intelligence is a far more formidable foe in this episode than he was in The Snowmen.
Clara is a very determined young lady, isn’t she?

I was struck by the uncharacteristic bitterness and disgust the Doctor ended with in “It actually is the Tardis. My Tardis from the future. What else would they bury me in?”

Nice little exchange (the Moff always manages to pack several layers of meaning into any utterance):
Strax: The heart is a relatively simple thing.
Vastra: I have not found it to be so.

The Doctor’s timestream is really rather visually beautiful.

The episode ends rather abruptly, I’d expected a few more minutes just tidying off the Doctor and Clara’s escape from his timestream and extricating them all from Trenzalore. But I guess we can fill that in for ourselves and the Moff wanted to end on a high note – introducing John Hurt.

 

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@winston     Oh yes, that charcoal monster (good description!) in the library gave me the shivers too.

It was a good ep, though maybe suffered slightly from closely following the other Tardis-centric ep The Doctor’s Wife  (closely following for DVD-watchers, probably well separated on TV).

Carrying on – The Crimson Horror – this was a fairly so-so episode, for me. The Paternoster Gang offered some light relief. But Thomas Thomas offering navigational instructions – that was a little bit too much of a wink at the audience.

So then, Nightmare in Silver. Somehow, this episode feels very Gaiman. I’d previously dismissed it as just average, partly because I’m not a fan of Cybermen, but re-watching I’ve notched it up a couple of grades, partly on account of the excellent dialogue and partly on the interplay between the Doctor and Clara. Worth an instant re-watch just to enjoy the interplay between the characters.

Clara: I trust the Doctor.
Captain: You think he knows what he’s doing?
Clara: I’m not sure I’d go that far.

Some find the kids annoying, but I don’t mind them. They’re not too obnoxious and they seem to quite enjoy themselves when they get the chance. And Angie redeems herself when she recognises Porridge as the emperor. And Porridge (Warwick Davis) is, as always, an engaging and sympathetic character. I’m resolutely not PC but I love it that the shortest person in the episode is the Emperor.

Tricking all the Cybermen into trying to compute a chess problem – genius! And it’s excellent writing by Gaiman, that credits his audience with knowing the factoid that chess is almost uncomputable. I’d missed the nuance of that, first time round. I’m sure there’s more to catch on re-watch.

Doctor: Can someone untie me please.
Clara: Do you think I’m pretty?
Doctor: No, you’re too short and bossy and your nose is all funny.
Clara: Good enough.

So, going to re-watch it again now.

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… and Journey to the Centre of the Tardis. This was an intriguing episode, even if it did feature a very obvious Reset button (which they duly lampshaded). We got to see the swimming pool – which was vast, and looked absolutely glorious. And the library, which well deserved Clara’s comment ‘Now you’re just showing off’. The books were intriguing, I would have liked to see it at more length.

The Doctor putting an hour limit on the self destruct, then cutting it down to half an hour, and threatening to halve that again – I’ve never seen Eleven so believable and menacing.

I couldn’t quite follow the logic of the future scorched versions of themselves – okay, the core was damaged and time was leaking in erratic ways, but why would their future selves be hostile to their present selves?

And I’m still not sure of how that big friendly Reset button actually worked. Did the Doctor magic it with his sonic in some way?

Anyway, a very watchable episode.

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We’ve been watching, nightly after midnight, the 1984 Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett.   It was made by Granada, not the Beeb.   Last night was ‘The Final Problem’, the Reichenbach Falls episode where Holmes and Moriarty got killed off.   They actually went to Switzerland to film it, and found an enormous waterfall (bigger, I think, than the actual Reichenbach, but I can’t swear to that).   And they actually lowered a couple of stuntmen on wires down the face of this fall – you can just make out the wires (this was the days before CGI wire removal, and I think before green screens.   And anyway, it would have had to be the world’s biggest green screen   🙂     So, quite impressive for a 1984 TV production.

Back to Who – I just watched ‘Hide’.   Very good.   They managed to make the forest in the bubble universe really spooky.   And the deformed monster was quite nightmarish, even though not malignant.     I’m not sure how the bubble universe ‘worked’, but near enough.   One of the better haunted-house episodes.

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@janetteb I like that Prague story. When I plan a visit to Europe I spend dozens (maybe hundreds) of hours on the Internet checking timetables and fares and booking travel and accommodation down to the last detail. It isn’t a chore, I enjoy it. And the plan works 95% of the time. The other 5% is often the interesting bit 🙂

Probably the nearest I came to disaster was in 2017, when I arrived in Montpellier main station on the train on Friday afternoon. My pre-booked Fiat 500 was all ready at Europcar, everything went smoothly till the last little detail, when they swipe your credit card to reserve the damage deposit. I proffered my fancy new-style Visa card with the electronic chip – sorry, Msieur, the machine cannot read that. It required the old-style card with the raised lettering. There was no way around it, I offered to get cash from a machine, or could they enter the account number by hand – no way to do it. Didn’t I have *any* old-style card on me, not even one from a chain store? (I think by then the clerk would have tried a video rental card if I had one on me) – nothing. I asked all the other rental desks (they’re all next to each other) – they all use the same model of terminal. That was the low point. So I booked into a cheap hotel near the station, run by a black North Countryman, phoned a friend in Auckland to see if he could get my other credit card from my wife and courier it to me after the weekend, and resigned myself to spending four or five days in Montpellier watching the gaily painted trams chasing each other round in circles. Then I rang my wife – who reminded me that I’d tossed my old superseded card in a hidden pocket in the bottom of my suitcase. Which the Europcar desk accepted next morning with great relief, never mind that it expired in a week (long before my rental would finish) and had technically been voided as soon as I used the new one.

 

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@missrori    What I did find helped a lot with my driving test was, I left off taking it for quite a while, just getting in practice driving with my father in the car.   So by the time I took the test, I knew very well how to drive, didn’t even have to think about the mechanics of driving, all I had to concentrate on was answering the questions right.    Which took a LOT of stress out of it.

I’m up for another test in a year – it’ll be my first in 47 years.   Have to re-learn all the bits of road code that I’ve long since forgotten.

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@missrori    I have somewhat of a one-track mind but I find I can influence, to a moderate but useful extent, which track my thoughts are going on.   Just occasionally, maybe once a year, I find myself unable to sleep at 4a.m. with my thoughts going round and round like a stuck record.   All I do then is give up any attempt at trying to sleep, accept I’ll be pretty useless the next day, and read a book to derail my morbid train of thought.  That’s far less painful than struggling futilely to get to sleep.

But learning to drive is certainly worth the effort if you can fit the time in somehow.   It’s not something you have to do to a set timetable, even if you have a couple of months gap in your practice, it comes back as soon as you start driving again.   And it vastly increases your potential mobility if you can rent a car (or drive a borrowed one) should it become necessary.

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@missrori I assume you’re young (or at least younger than some of us old relics who saw the first episode of Doctor Who when it was screened and yes I do mean old Who 🙂 So you can take the long view. You have the time. The world will gradually recover from Covid, one way or another. Most people want to travel and commercial imperatives will cause the world to open up, and adapt to Covid the best it can. Not to get too political but most of the anti-vaxxers will realise they’re only disadvantaging themselves and quietly get the jab. Hopefully Covid will fade into the background like the Asian Flu and AIDS.

I know it sounds hackneyed, but I guess just count your blessings (and though they may seem curtailed right now, I would guess they’re still considerable compared with anyone in Afghanistan right now, or Saudi Arabia, or East Germany in Cold War days, or New Orleans right at this moment, or almost anyone at all in the 19th century). It sort of works for me. And the Internet is a marvellous window on the world.

Will you excuse a short digression? When I was a teen I read a short story by Robert Sheckley entitled ‘The Store of the Worlds’ (which I have *just* realised was a pun on H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds. It only took me 50 years to notice that! Mind like a supercomputer, that’s me). Anyway, the synopsis is, the ‘store of the worlds’ was a shack that offered an experience we’d call ‘virtual reality’ (this was written long before VR was a thing). Experience the world of your dreams – any dream you wanted. Mr Wayne was hesitant about this, the price was extremely high. So… he walked out of the store and thought about it, all the way home on the train. And in the following months, while he did the household chores and helped his son with the boat and tolerated his office job and worried about the international situation with H-bombs everywhere (this was the 60’s) and coped with the odd household crisis, it occasionally crossed his mind, but he was too busy with daily life… “How was it?” asked the store owner. “Quite satisfactory, thank you” said Mr Wayne. And he paid up – a pair of boots, two coils of wire and three cans of corned beef – and walked out into the radioactive rubble that was his world now.
So – that story had quite an effect on me. Not so much the ending as the fact that Mr Wayne’s dream world was – the boring everyday life that he’d lost. What I took from that was, I should appreciate what I’ve got, while I can. That doesn’t stop me trying to make things better, of course, but enjoy the good bits, whatever they may be.

I really don’t know if that helps. I can’t put myself in your place. My only excuse is, you did ask and that’s the best I can manage. If it all seems irrelevant twaddle please just ignore it.

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@nerys     Thanks!

Last time I looked online at the ‘places of interest’ they were scattered all around us, though not at the time(s) I’ve been there.   Feels a bit like dodging bullets   🙂   But of course wearing a mask and avoiding people helps.

You’re lucky at the moment, as far as covid goes.   Currently we’re in the middle of an outbreak, several hundred cases which all started from just one case a couple of weeks ago.   Hopefully our lockdown will contain it within a couple of weeks.   Mrs D and I are due for our second vax shot in a week.   But I guess we’ve been lucky to have been free of covid for most of the last year.

‘Unforgotten’  I don’t know anything of.   So many series…

I did watch Luc Besson’s ‘Lucy’ the other night, with Scarlett Johansson in the title role.   Started of as one of the most hair-raising thrillers, with Lucy in the grip of Chinese gangsters none of whom spoke English but just shot anybody at the drop of a hat.   There was a funny-scary moment when they ordered her to open the briefcase she had been forced to deliver and she looks up and sees them all sheltering behind bomb shields.    After that it goes a bit like Kill Bill and ends up all mystical and 2001.   Doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense but quite diverting.

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@winston     Thanks!   Currently in lockdown, so just me and Mrs D.   Actually I had a birthday a couple of days ago, according to my dentist (or rather his computer system, which knows altogether too much about me.   If he drops down dead, his computer system will live on, making appointments, sending out Happy Birthday emails on the appropriate days…)   I’d completely forgotten about it but I just suddenly got a year older.   Ah well…

As it is, lockdown isn’t too bad (for me).   We live in the suburbs, I can go for a walk to the local park (carefully avoiding getting close to anybody), to the supermarket (all masked up), and I’ve got the Internet.   I hate to think what it would be like without the Internet!

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@missy ‘Allo allo was, I think, very much in the traditional ‘music-hall’ style – full of cartoonish characters, double-entendres and risque jokes. That’s not normally my favourite style of humour – too obvious – but Allo Allo did it so supremely well I couldn’t help but like it. And (SPOILERS!!) I loved it that Rene finally got to elope with Yvette Carte-Blanche in the final episode.

I agree that American remakes of British shows rarely work. Probably because, if a British show is successful (and they wouldn’t remake it if it wasn’t), it will have developed its own characteristic personality or flavour, and it will be playing to its strengths. And Americanising that completely changes the flavour, and probably won’t be playing to its strengths. It certainly doesn’t ‘work’ for aficionados of the British original. If the general idea is borrowed (without trying to copy the British show too closely) then it will probably do better.

Deep Breath and Capaldi – I love it too when he goes all Scottish. What’s with Clara’s tartan skirt, by the way? Or is it a kilt?
(By the way, I notice a strong Scots flavour in Who – David Tennant, Amy, Capaldi, Moffatt. I suppose numerically there are far more non-Scots people, but it’s the Scots that seem to be prominent. And there’s nothing wrong with that (Englishman speaking).

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@nerys   OK, I agree, ArriveCAN does look to be a bit awkward to use, depending on your circumstances.    But they did (as should always be done) allow for people without the latest whizzbang fashion accessories, oops I mean smartphones   😉

Here, our Covid Tracer app only runs on more recent versions of Android (and a few cheaper smartphones are still being sold with earlier versions).   My $18 cellphone doesn’t do ‘apps’ and my Samsung S2 runs a too-old version.   But they do allow paper sign-in as an alternative, always.    But anyway, I eventually weakened and splashed out $65 (reckless with my money, that’s me!) on a base-level Vodafone E11 smartphone that runs a recent Android.    The app is better than paper sign-in, it has bluetooth contact tracing and keeps a record of where I’ve been that I can consult if necessary (rather than the authorities having to track me down from my sign-ins).

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@thane16    syzygy –

Yes you did (suggest a Western inclination).   I’m sure that’s right.

But I was thinking of a narrower definition – within ‘Western’ there are many subdivisions, I think.   British, French, American etc.    But – to be honest – I don’t think I could adequately define the characteristics I’m talking about.   I run the risk of arguing in circles, or talking myself into a dead-end where I’m not making sense.   So  I’ll drop it, if I may.

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@thane16  syzygy   Yes, undoubtedly British TV has its share of cringeworthy programmes.    Sturgeon’s Law applies – 95% of anything is rubbish.

I believe ‘New England’ is, I think, considered to be more restrained than the rest of US in general.   Just how true that is, I wouldn’t presume to judge.

So, do you think there’s anything in the theory that British-influenced cultures predispose us to like Dr Who (as suggested by the fact that most of the people active on this site at the moment come from old Commonwealth countries)?    Or just coincidence?     I tend to think there’s something in it, but I do have trouble nailing down just what it might be.   And they do say that explaining a joke kills it, so maybe I shouldn’t try.

 

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@winston From four posts back – if you (Canada) see mostly US TV, one would expect your tastes to be much more ‘americanised’ than the rest of us (except that I think we all got plenty of American content on our TVs too). But there seems to be a general impression that Canadians are much more reserved and quieter than Americans, I don’t know how true that is.   So I’m not sure how valid blenkinsopthebrave’s supposition about ex-Commonwealth countries is.

Deep Breath – I’m about four episodes away from it. In between is Day of the Doctor, of course. I must leave a good gap between those so ‘Day’ doesn’t overshadow Deep Breath. Deep Breath is probably the best introduction to a new Doctor, and Capaldi is excellent at displaying his cockeyed way of looking at the world. I like Clara’s reaction, too, she’s unsettled and angry, but with no-one to be angry at. (I recall the first time I experienced a (mild) earthquake, after a few moments of uncertainty, my first reaction was a sort of undirected anger – this should not be happening, something was very wrong and *somebody* must be at fault. This surprised me, I wouldn’t have expected that reaction). For Clara, she’s just been severely shaken up in the Tardis, seen the Doctor regenerate into a stranger with peculiar manners, and been stranded in Victorian London. Not surprising her reserves of tolerance are gone.
This gives all the interactions between the Doctor, Clara, Vastra, Jenny and Strax a bit more ‘edge’ and adds to the humour of the situation.
And I like the ambiguity of the half-face man’s demise at the end – did he fall or was he pushed? The Doctor was very enigmatic on the subject.

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@thane16    syzygy – I agree, particularly about Listen and Flatline.   Grumpy Doc (that sounds like a couple of the seven dwarves, doesn’t it?  How appropriate…) in his mini-Tardis was hilarious.    And Listen was truly scary, demonstrating how hair-raising you can make ‘nothing’.

[Oops – this was in response to your previous post, I’m a bit out of sync here…]

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@missy

” And don’t look in that mirror. It’s absolutely furious.”

That whole scene was absolutely hilarious.   With the Doctor, just regenerated, getting everything backwards or, maybe, just at 90 degrees to reality.

He had me at  “Oh, you two. The green one and the not-green one. Or it could be the other way round, I mustn’t prejudge.”

I love it when a one-liner stands conventional logic on its head.

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@blenkinsopthebrave

Interesting thought. Doctor Who does have a very British slant – not by intent, so much as circumstance. He may be an alien, but he’s a British alien. (Reminds me of the story of the guy walking through Belfast one night when he feels something hard in his back and a voice says “Are ye Catholic or Protestant?” So he thinks very quickly and says “I’m an atheist.” And the voice says “Catholic atheist or Protestant atheist?”)

Um, I like Doctor Who the way it is, in that respect, and I’d be unsettled if it got, say, Americanised. It’s not that I like Who *because* it’s British, more that it’s part of the flavour of Who. And I guess I have a British sense of humour – though I say that with some reservations because I find it hard to define what a ‘British sense of humour’ is. For example music-hall humour leaves me cold – Are You Being Served, Dad’s Army, Hi-de-hi, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum – just bore me. On the other hand I love the Goons, Monty Python, Red Dwarf, ‘Allo Allo (which is the nearest to the Dads Army genre that I can watch), Yes Minister. So which is the true ‘British humour?’

I mention humour because I think that varies much more between cultures than, say, a sense of tragedy or drama does.

So anyway, maybe that’s something we all have in common. (I don’t mean we should all like the same comedies!). I mean we may all have a slightly British-influenced way of looking at things.

I wonder how the American fans see it.

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@winston

I had regeneration shock with Matt Smith and thought this young bumbling idiot could never, ever, replace Tennant.   But within a few episodes, he did.

I didn’t have any regen shock with Capaldi since I knew he was coming.    And he’s still my favourite doctor.   With that face of his he looks dour and ferocious, so the contrast when he rides in on a tank, casually playing crashing chords on a guitar, is sublime.    And he was the perfect contrast to the upbeat personality of Clara.

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@nerys
I googled. I figured they must have thought of non-techy people. This page
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/arrivecan.html
is quite helpful. It’s probably best to think of ArriveCAN as a bit like a visa application (but a lot simpler than getting a transit visa for Belarus! 🙂 You have to submit quite a bit of information about your plans should you contact covid. The interface is an internet website AND/OR an app on your phone, you can use either.

Halfway down that page it’s got a list of FAQ’s including:

“If you don’t travel with a smartphone:
Submit your information within 72 hours before your arrival to Canada by creating an account and signing in online. Print or take a screenshot of your receipt and take it with you when you travel.”

“No data on your phone when travelling:
Submit your information before you leave and take a screenshot or printout of your ArriveCAN receipt to show upon entry into Canada.”

“No computer or smartphone:
You can sign in online on any computing device, like those found in Internet cafés or libraries.

If you don’t submit your information through ArriveCAN, you:
may be denied boarding if arriving by air and may be denied entry into Canada if crossing at a land or marine border crossing (if you are a US citizen or permanent resident residing in and traveling from the US or French citizen residing in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon travelling for discretionary purposes)

Canadian citizens, permanent residents or persons registered under the Indian Act and foreign nationals eligible to enter Canada under another entry exemption (such as foreign work, study, compassionate grounds) will not be denied boarding or entry, but you:

won’t be eligible for the fully vaccinated exemption
may face additional delays at the border for public health questioning
may be subject to fines or enforcement action”

So I hope that helps a little bit if you feel the need to travel.

Actually our (NZ) government is a lot stricter. Arrivals, except from a very few exempt countries (and it just got a lot fewer since NSW had its outbreak) MUST spend 14 days in a pre-booked quarantine facility. No quarantine booking, no entry. (It used to be quarantine at home, but OF COURSE a few morons broke the rules and spoilt it for everybody).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

As a digression from Doctor Who (is this the right forum?) – a short while back I watched ‘The Fifth Element’, found it entertaining, and on the strength of that I ordered Luc Besson’s ‘Valerian’, which arrived last night. I’d describe Valerian as Fifth Element on steroids, or maybe Avatar on LSD. Based on a comic book, apparently it’s what Besson would have liked to do at the time of Fifth Element, but had to wait ten years until the effects technology made it possible.

A short while ago I dissed movies that substitute CGI effects for story or acting. Well, Valerian is wall to wall CGI (literally), but it works. It looks real. The story and acting are adequate, but predictable, and the co-stars are likeable enough, and that’s all they need to be. Much of the interest is the dazzling array of bizarre aliens that parade across the screen. And (going by the ‘making of’ video) virtually all the ‘sets’ were not actual sets with CGI extensions (as in Dr Who), but 100% CGI. And so were the aliens. Not actors in prosthetics (like Who) or animatronic puppets (like Farscape), but motion capture CGI. But they look as physically solid and real as any of the prosthetic creatures in new Who.

So, an entertaining watch, keeps up the pace, never slow or gloomy, and many of the (CGI) visuals are quite beautiful.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys    So far as showing a test result, it should be possible to save it as a file to a smartphone’s memory, and then it shouldn’t matter if it could get a connection or not, it will still display the file.     Alternatively, just print out the test result and show them the piece of paper.   I do this with tickets in case my smartphone dies on me (or I lose it).   Actually having a piece of paper can be quite reassuring.

(For example, when I went across Russia and Europe by train in 2017, I loaded all my tickets onto my Samsung S2 that had a SIM card that only worked in some countries.   Had no trouble displaying tickets when needed).

Disclaimer:  I don’t know the details of your country’s Covid app, specifically if it will download or print out a test result, but it might be worth your looking into it.   I would guess there is a paper-based alternative for people whose smartphone won’t run the app for some reason or another.    I’m sufficient of a Luddite that I don’t trust things ‘online’ unless I can download a copy.

 

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