[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@mudlark     Oh, right!    Just found it.   I did go looking originally, but totally failed to find it.   I missed that there was more than one page of Twelfth Doctor episodes  (should have had more faith in this site!)      I also looked in ‘Steven Moffat retrospective’ (since he co-wrote it) but it definitely wasn’t there.    My fault I guess.

Sometimes forums do take a bit of searching.   Sometimes  On The Sofa  and  Winchester  are quite hard to find (I now know to look under ‘Forums – General’).   There are direct links on the home page but they’re buried way down it.

Coming back to Time Heist, I find it really odd that – on the DVD set – neither Listen or Time Heist has a commentary, I would love to hear the writers’ take on the plot.    But it’s weird, almost as if the boxset producers had perversely said ‘we’ll only do commentaries on the so-so episodes, not the top-rated ones’.   (These are all the series 8 and 9 eps that got commentaries:  Into the Dalek, Robot of Sherwood, The Caretaker, Kill The Moon, Last Christmas, Under the Lake, Before the Flood, The Woman Who Lived, Sleep No More.    That’s it.  All the rest didn’t.   Even allowing that tastes vary, I find it hard to believe that most of the eps on that list outrank  Deep Breath, Listen, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline, Dark Water, Death in Heaven, Magician’s Apprentice, Witch’s Familiar, Zygon Invasion / Inversion, Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, or Hell Bent.)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb

Yes,  Time Heist had the same effect on me – it seemed far better to me this time around (when I wasn’t expecting much) than the first time I viewed the season coming straight off  Listen.

Sometimes expectations lead to inverse results.   I remember the second time I watched Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, it fell very flat because, after the first watching blew me away, I was just expecting too much.   The third time, much later, I enjoyed it again.   The same went for the Beatles film ‘Help’.

Girl in the Fireplace is always a good episode, though.   There is something very Doug Adams-ish about the literal-minded droids just wanting a spare part for their ship.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

So here I am, plodding my solitary way through the abandoned ruins of Season 8, while everyone has fled to the bright lights and the attractions of New Episodes. I’m sure I could try to locate a streaming service of some sort, but I haven’t even watched (or acquired) Season 12 yet…

I can’t find a forum for Time Heist so I’ll just plonk my impressions here – Time Heist – quite an intriguing episode, though tends to be overshadowed by ‘Listen’ which preceded it. The intro certainly grabs you, with the jump from Clara’s flat to the conspiratorial hidey-hole in the bank.

The recorded message, which ends “A team will have been dispatched to terminate you” – so, not wasting time! The usual stock sequence that used to take up ten minutes of screen time in those old ‘action’ clunkers like “The A team”, here takes 30 seconds.

“Open up, and you will be humanely disposed of.” “Please stand away from the door. We do not wish to hurt you before incineration.” – I detect the fine hand of the Moff in this dialogue. PC threats, how nice.

Gotta love the classic heist-movie-style slow-mo shots of them striding in formation through the courtyard. But the Teller is terrifying.

DOCTOR: Oh, don’t be so pessimistic. It’ll affect team morale.
SAIBRA: What, and getting us blown up won’t?
DOCTOR: Well, only very, very briefly.

PSI: Still don’t understand why you’re in charge.
DOCTOR: Basically, it’s the eyebrows.

Interesting collection of crims that Psi projects to distract the Teller from Clara – I can see the Gunslinger, an Ice Warrior, a Slitheen, a Silurian, doubtless others.

It was a pleasant surprise that Psi and Saibra weren’t dead, just teleported. And I never, ever, suspected they were going to be rescuing the Teller. That was a twist.

Is this the first episode where the Doctor deliberately involves Clara in a highly hazardous adventure? (Rather than the adventure creeping up on them?) Never mind that Clara is ‘up for it’, I do rather have to question the Doctor’s judgement. Not complaining mind you.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb Yes, Orson is a bit of a problem. If it was a different writer, I would have said he was just a loose end, or the writer creating a plot twist that later on got forgotten about. But Moffat is famous for setting up things that pay off months later, so that seems unlikely to me.

Of course sometimes these long-distance plots have to be modified for production reasons, such as, an actor is unavailable, or a projected episode gets cancelled or changed. I guess that’s my best guess – that Moffat was setting something up, but in the long term it didn’t work out, and Face The Raven / Hell Bent just cut it off. (Would I want to change/lose Face The Raven / Hell Bent for the sake of consistency – absolutely not!) Has anybody ever asked Steven Moffat his explanation?

‘Listen’ does very strongly imply that Orson is descended from Clara + Danny. The thread that’s most difficult to rationalise away is the fact that the Tardis found Orson, which implies a direct connection with either Clara or Rupert-Danny. Of course Orson doesn’t need to have any direct connection with Clara, the Tardis could have found him just following the ‘Danny’ trail. But then Danny got exploded in Death in Heaven, which makes that kinda difficult.

Personally, I just don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem which is apparent watching the episode, and by the time of Death in Heaven, ‘Listen’ is sufficiently far in the past that I can overlook the implication. Even more so with Face the Raven. The plot needs to be sufficiently coherent to frame the situation, without creating distracting questions in the moment of ‘how did that happen?’ As between strong emotional scenes and crackling dialogue, or absolute consistency in the plot, I’ll take the former every time.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

OK, my thoughts in passing, on Listen.

After the very conventional Robot of Sherwood, we have an episode that is startlingly different.

This episode is… different. And it keeps playing mind games on us, we never know what is real and what is imaginary. It manages to be truly scary at times, yet we never find out if it really was a horrifying unknown Thing or just our imagination.

The Doctor’s un-earthliness continues to be weirdly amusing – “You said you had a date. I thought I’d better hide in the bedroom in case you brought him home.” And, much as I love Clara, I laugh every time he manages to be mildly disparaging without apparently meaning to.

Clara has doubts about the Doc’s mental stability: “How long have you been travelling alone?” “Perhaps I never have.”

But the Doc is a dab hand at playing mind games too. Caretaker: How did you get in? Doc: Your door must be faulty.
“What about your coffee? Sometimes, you put it down, and look round, and it’s not there.” Caretaker: “Everybody does that.” And moments later the caretaker looks and – his coffee has disappeared. Cut to – the Doctor prowling down a corridor, drinking the caretaker’s coffee.

I like the moment in young Danny’s room where the Doctor says “Once upon a time – the end” and Danny promptly goes to sleep. Is this the first time since The Day in the Fireplace that the Doc has used his telepathic skills?

Never has a shape under a bedspread been more scary. And, it stayed scary for the entire scene, which is quite an achievement. Kudos to the director for perfect timing.

But then, the empty base at the end of the world is an order of magnitude more scary. When the banging on the door started, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up – this is not a figure of speech, I felt them.

Quite seriously, this is not an episode I would ever watch alone in the house at night. The Moff has just created the most frightening monsters ever with just a bedspread and disembodied noises.

What an episode!

(Now, off to read the rest of this thread)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston    I hate commercial breaks too.   That’s one of the advantages of watching on DVD (along with being able to watch it when I want, and some of the DVD extras are interesting).

I do miss video rental shops (I used to rent Who before I took the plunge and acquired my own sets).    There was something very satisfying about a big well-stocked shop full of DVDs.    A quarter mile from where I worked, there was a video store that specialised in ‘cult TV’ – series, whether sci-fi, fantasy, westerns, period dramas and the like.   It had everything sci-fi – Trek, Who, Blakes 7, Galactica, Farscape, Red Dwarf, Stargate, X-files, yadda yadda…   (not that I followed all of those!).     Sadly, eventually the lease expired and it closed.

(As an aside, I was going to post my comments on ‘Listen’ (because that is where I’m up to) here, but – given that Who is about to resume on TV so I guess this area will fill up with chat, it doesn’t need more from me  🙂   – I stuck it in the designated thread for the episode.)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Leads me to wonder, how do Whovians in other regions of space-time than the UK, manage with new episodes?    (I just do it asynchronous, don’t even try to catch TV series on TV, just get the DVD’s.   So I’m always a couple of years behind the latest, but it’s ‘new’ to me).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Just watched Robot of Sherwood, which is a lightweight episode, enjoyable enough if you don’t take it too seriously.

Ben Miller was good as the (surprisingly rational) Sheriff of Nottingham – “Why would we create an enemy to fight us? What sense would that make? That would be a terrible idea.”

The one thing that gave me major trouble was the golden arrow at the end. Yes I know they needed a McGuffin that required the co-operation of Robin, Clara and the Doc, but its execution was lacking. First, I doubt anyone could shoot an arrow far enough to hit the ship. But far more difficult – why would hitting the ship give it any extra power? I can accept needing gold for ‘power grids’ or whatever. But the arrow had no time to be built into circuitry. And gold certainly couldn’t be used as a power source, its unreactivity (along with its conductivity) is what makes it so valuable. (I’m an engineer, I have my own idiosyncratic set of things-I’ll-suspend-disbelief for, and things that just don’t work for me).

A pity, after they went to the effort to explain why the weather was so unseasonably warm.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@blenkinsopthebrave       “Chibnall wrote the latter. And I loved it. Why did Chibnall fail to deliver (in my opinion) when he became show runner?”

I’m always a sucker to try and answer these questions. I’ll try not to start any fires 🙂

The Silurian episodes were competently-written enemy-alien stories. But if you take ‘The Power of Three’ for example, it had a really fascinating premise – the cubes – but it failed to deliver in a convincing way. I was quite disappointed by that, I felt the cubes were so neat they really deserved a suitably ingenious explanation.

But I don’t think Chibnall has the Moff’s talent for (a) really clever, ingenious and witty dialogue, and (b) keeping track of complicated plots. (I know (b) doesn’t appeal to some, but it does to me).

So I think Moff was able to inject enough originality into the series to make them successful. Not every episode of course. And of course I like his style so I’m biassed.   For example, the next ep I’m due to watch is ‘Listen’, I just can’t imagine anyone but the Moff ever writing that.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Still plodding my way through my rewatch of Who…   Into the Dalek

– a very well-written episode. It did borrow one major element from ‘Fantastic Voyage’, but beyond that it was its own episode.   Random reactions:

What a bastard Journey Blue’s uncle is, wanting to shoot the Doctor just on general principles.

Danny Pink I instinctively disliked in the first two seconds, having once myself experienced the travesty that was ‘cadets’ in a school. It took a couple of minutes to realise he was human, specifically when he was kicking himself re-living the conversation where he gave Clara the brush-off. That was just so ‘true’, every guy has done that, I think. But not every guy has had a girl as quick and intuitive as Clara to rescue them from their mistake.

“I’m his carer” “Yeah, she’s my carer – she cares so I don’t have to.”

The Doctor has a savagely sarcastic streak. “Is Ross here?” “Yeah, top layer, if you want to say a few words”. Ouch! No wonder Clara observes “He’ll get us out of here. The difficult part is not killing him before he can.”

“I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek.” That’s telling him, Rusty.

Journey Blue would have made a good Companion, I think. But the job was already taken. I did like her version of “It’s smaller on the outside” (yes I know it’s not new).

CLARA: So, er, who makes you smile or is nobody up to the job?
JOURNEY: My brother. But he burned to death a couple of hours ago, so he’s really letting me down today.
– that stung.

There were a couple of, um, logistic glitches, where I couldn’t be sure how they got from point A to point B. And their ‘escape’ from the Dalek was simply glossed over, not that it was important for the plot. But on the whole, the episode worked well.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well they seem to have Ood, Sontarans, Weeping Angels and Cybermen.   Wot no Daleks?

All I can say is, they better not waste the Weeping Angels…

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@oochillyo Interesting concept, though I think it would be more suited to a spinoff than a series of Doctor Who.

The problem I can see is, that as soon as we the audience start seeing things from the point of view of someone, we start sympathising with them, even if they are ‘evil’. That certainly happened with Battlestar Galactica with the Cylon ‘skin jobs’, though in that series the effect may have been intentional.

But I really don’t think there’s any mileage for a TV series in trying to make the Doctor disliked. The producers need people to like the Doctor (and companions) as much as possible so they’ll keep tuning in. Admittedly we all love to watch interesting villains (like the Master or Missy) BUT we always want the hero (in this case the Doctor) to win in the end. Also, the concept of seeing it from the point of view of different villains (in different episodes) means the audience ‘identification’ with the protagnists is weakened. And making the Doctor disliked undercuts the main Doctor series.

You can deviate from the normal formula of ‘heroes – good, enemies – bad’ occasionally, or for a limited number of episodes. I can think of a number of episodes of various series** that were the more interesting for breaking the usual rule of ‘good guys win’. But they need to be the exception, not the rule, otherwise the ‘good guys’ are seen as useless and not worth cheering for.
(**For example, Danger Man, Blakes 7, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, just off the top of my head, had episodes which gained impact because they were more nuanced).

So I think that concept might work for a single episode (and it could be a highlight of the season), but it would need to be really well-written to take advantage of the novelty factor.

That’s my thoughts anyway.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@devilishrobby Was ‘starting from scratch’ with JW and her all-new companions a mistake? I don’t know that it was, after all Eleven (Smith) started out with a brand-new Amy, and that worked fine. I must admit I found the change from Ten disconcerting at first, but within an episode I was hooked on the story.

@winston I think just one principal Companion is inherently a much stronger set-up. I know that technically, Rory was also a companion, but it took a while before he became significant and (sorry, Rory fans) Amy was always the primary companion; the relations between the Doctor and Amy, and Amy and Rory, were always more significant than between Rory and the Doc. Similarly with Rose and Mickey, and Clara and Danny.

@blenkinsopthebrave T’nia Miller (the General’s female incarnation) would make a good Doctor. While we’re speculating, how about Orla Brady (Tasha Lem, Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe) or Eve McIntosh (Madame Vastra). Or, of course, Michelle Gomez, but that’s obviously impossible since her character is so strongly established. I’m just enjoying myself speculating.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@devilishrobby   With much better scripts and much stronger direction, Jodie might have been a more credible Doctor.   She’s reputed to be a good actress, but (IMO) that doesn’t really show up in Season 11.   An ancient alien from outer space? – nah, just not convincing.   Also, companions.   Too many of them, and they all have the same accent as the Doctor – howcome?    In NuWho at least, the companion has been as important as the Doctor – Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara, Bill.   And they have all challenged the Doc on occasion, in fact the interactions between the Doc and unruly Companion have been a major source of interest.   But I just can’t get enthused over Ryan the dweeb, Graham who’s hung up over Ryan, Yaz who looks like she could be intelligent but has nothing to do.   Too many, so none of them have much impact.   Grace was the one who showed the most promise and she promptly fell off a crane.

Also, I find strong female companions more interesting than male ones (is that sexist?   Don’t care  🙂     But that doesn’t actually preclude a female Doc, I don’t think the Doc’s gender matters too much in that respect.    Think Madame Vastra and Jenny (now Jenny would make a good Companion).

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@missy

You’re evil.   But you know that already    🙂

Maybe RTD will be able to revive it – again.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@cathannabel

I’ve been trying to think of a suitable passage. You’d think, with all its mighty storylines, Who should be full of them. Trouble is, almost all those marvellous lines were very story-specific.

I did like the quote Winston chose for an avatar – We’re all stories in the end. (from The Big Bang). But I’m really not sure whether any part of that speech would be suitable.

I like the way this was echoed in Hell Bent –
CLARA: Is this a story or did this really happen?
DOCTOR: Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten.
and later
CLARA: You said memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.

– but again, I really don’t know how any of that would fit.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@cathannabel   You have my sympathy too.   If I can call any suitable words to mind I’ll certainly post them.

@janetteb   If you’re ever looking for some wording, the whole of Doctor Who is up on Chrissie’s Transcripts Site at http://www.chakoteya.net/index.html  – it’s an awesome resource.    For example Tomb of the Cybermen is here:   http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/5-1.htm

And if you can’t remember which episode a quote came from, I’ve just discovered the index page has links to two search engines that search the entire transcripts in a flash.

(Disclaimer: I have no connection with that site other than as a frequent user).

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys     Odd you should mention Bond.   I’ll get to the new Bond in due course, (thanks for not spoiling it!), but in the course of trying to tidy up my den, I rationalised my DVD’s, earmarked a few duplicates for disposal, and decided to complete my Bond collection (now DVD’s are fairly cheap).   So last night I re-watched Goldeneye (just got the 2-disc edition).  One of my favourites – Pierce Brosnan was the best Bond IMO, and Natalya Simonova one of the best ‘Bond girls’.   And their intro stunt, the bungee jump off Verzasca dam, set a world record at the time.   And the next movie – Tomorrow Never Dies – was equally good, Michelle Yeoh was great, and I think Jonathan Pryce was the best villain ever – there’s just something about his delivery that makes you think he’s on the edge of losing it completely at any moment.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@oochillyo   Yes, it seems fairly clear that the droids think they have a mission to perform, and don’t care about collateral damage.   In fact they don’t even recognise that collateral damage might be a thing.

This was evident in the following exchange:   REINETTE: I have seen your world, and I have no desire to set foot there again.
DROID: We do not require your feet.

Very literal-minded, these droids.**

I’m happy to talk about these things and no, you’re not tearing my ideas apart and anyway, it wouldn’t matter if your ideas contradicted mine.   It might be better to say that contrary ideas make me re-think mine to see if I’ve argued correctly.   It’s part of the reason this forum is interesting.   Also a lot more civilised than (some of) the Youtube comments pages     🙂

** Reminds me of a verse from Kipling’s Song of the Machines –
Remember, please, the Law by which we live
We are not built to comprehend a lie
We neither err, nor pity, nor forgive
If you make a slip in handling us, you die

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@oochillyo    Well, the ship is actually named after Madame de Pompadour.   So the droids, having cannibalised the ship’s crew for parts (so, it seems their cousin droids in Deep Breath weren’t actually doing anything new), just wanted ‘one remaining part’ – Reinette.   I don’t think they were operating with a deep knowledge of neurophysiology, I think they were just going by ‘part numbers’ – one Madame de Pompadour central nervous system required, one located.    They obviously didn’t realise that this would just kill her.   At least that’s what I think.   I could be wrong, they may have had access to amazing technology that would allow them to successfully wire her brain into the ship.   I don’t think that was clarified in the episode.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@oochillyo    Actually the identity of the ship was addressed specifically in the episode.   There was a piece of control panel (or something) labelled “SS Marie Antoinette     Sister ship of SS Madame de Pompadour”.    (Actually, I thought the second part of that was kind of excessive, normally the Moff gives us credit for joining up the dots ourselves).

So they were both time-travelling space liners from the same era.   SS Madame de Pompadour had crashed and the repair droids had succeeded in opening up time windows on Reinette’s era and were waiting till her brain was properly matured to fit (presumably in place of their damaged master computer).   SS Marie Antoinette had crashed aeons earlier and its droids had, with the passage of time, patched themselves up with human bits and lost all sense of mission except reaching the ‘promised land’.

(There are loose parallels with the Grebulon ship in Mostly Harmless (the fifth book in Doug Adams’ Hitch-hiker trilogy).   Their master computer had been destroyed by a meteorite which also knocked out the damage sensors so the robots carrying the backup computer fell out of the hole left by the meteorite.   Which left the remaining crew, when reawakened, trying to reconstruct their memories).

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Deep Breath.   So, I’m on to Capaldi.

This was an entertaining opener for Capaldi, with assistance from the Paternoster Gang and some lovely quirky Doctor quotes.

Don’t look in that mirror – it’s absolutely furious.
You all sound all – English. You’ve all developed a fault.
I’m Scottish. I can really complain about things now.

Strax was funny as ever –
May I take your coat?
Clara: Not wearing a coat.
Strax: What’s that? (pointing)
Clara: Clothes.
Strax: May I take your clothes?
Clara: Probably not.
Strax: Are you wearing a hat?
Clara: It’s hair.
Strax: No I think it’s a hat. Would you like me to check?

I love the way the Doc and Clara are psychoanalysing each other in the restaurant on the assumption that the other placed the ad. And the Doc actually got Clara to say ‘Nothing is more important than my egomania.’ An oldie but it works every time. Clara and Capaldi just work perfectly together, even when they squabble. Especially when they squabble.

Half-face man is a really good creepy villain. The moments when Clara is face to face with Half Face Man and holding her breath are truly scary. And facing down the Half Face Man when he was trying to extract information from her – Clara was magnificent. But – did he jump or was he pushed?

And this time, the Doctor did come back for Clara. Under that craggy exterior there’s a surprisingly perceptive alien consciousness. “Clara, I’m not your boyfriend.” Clara: “I never thought you were.” Doctor: “I never said it was your mistake.”

P.S. On the Series 8 DVD set is a half-hour Q&A with Jenna, Capaldi and the Moff. And Jenna commented how truly scary the actor for Half-Face Man could be on set, in a robotic non-human way. Also of interest was an argument between Capaldi and Moff on the merits of Mondassian cybermen – could this have been the origin of the Cybermen in World Enough and Time?

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hey, thanks  @mudlark!

It’s been a fairly relaxed marathon, I’m just slowly working through them.   I watch very little TV, most of what I watch is DVDs.   Or Youtube, much too much Youtube.   And I have a stack of things ex Youtube on my hard drive to ‘watch later’.

Mrs D watches quite a lot of TV, but now we have a smart TV, she’s discovered Youtube and she just tends to follow where the algorithm leads, sometimes with bizarre results.   We’ve seen rather a lot of funerals, too many birthing videos (why do people feel the need to put their most private moments on the Internet for strangers to gawk at?), a whole series of a tolerable Hmong-language sitcom (without subtitles), currently a lot of movie-length Nigerian soaps whose actors seem to think that emotion is best conveyed by shouting at each other.   I manage to screen out most of these with my laptop screen up and heapdhones on.     Being a Cook Islander, she also likes Rarotongan/Tahitian music videos, which are much more pleasant.

I do have a huge stack of books waiting to be read, too.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston

The way I look at it, Doctor Who is written for adults but suitable for children. By that I mean it has the level of plotting and acting that I would expect in a good adult series, it simply avoids too much focus on themes unsuitable for children.

What attracts me to a series is good writing and good acting. Original situations and interesting characters and dialogue. And I have a liking for black humour and irony. Occasionally I burst out laughing with delight when a character delivers a particularly telling line.

Nothing loses my interest faster than a scene where I can predict the entire dialogue in advance.

Doctor Who offers plenty of opportunities for, as you put it, multi-layered plots. Of course the time travel / sci fi element helps enormously in making this possible. My favourite example is the diner scene in Hell Bent where the dialogue in the diner scene is ambiguous, and it clicks sharply into focus when you know (at the end) that it’s the Doc who lost his memory.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston Love & Monsters, I was actually a little sad when the Absorbaloff ended the idyll of the little social group. However, the show may be made in part for children, but of all ages. Probably better to call it a ‘family’ show. That certainly didn’t prevent it from getting quite dark at times, for example – well just about every second episode, come to think of it. Cybermen were pretty horrific, think of the fate of Bill Potts. Or Dalek ‘duplicates’, humans who have been taken over by the Daleks. Or just the death toll in The Parting of the Ways.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

I’ll keep my comment brief – my limited experience of hospitals has been quite positive. Maybe I’ve been lucky. Never encountered any criticism, not even when A&E was plastering my face up after a homemade firework exploded like an incendiary (and some harsh words would have been fully merited, even if superfluous). My one long stay, just a week for a heart operation, was actually very pleasant (of course I know nothing of the op itself). Just being able to lie on my back, pleasantly relaxed by painkillers, and do nothing, (without the usual nagging feeling that I really should be doing something productive), in a warm, bright, comfortable room, was very pleasant indeed. (To my surprise, after being sawn open down the front (because how else would they get in? – it had never occurred to me to wonder before) the painkillers were morphine the first night, methadone the next, then – just paracetamol! I had never realised how effective paracetamol is).

I did take a couple of books (which I was too dozy to read) and a portable CD player with a couple of CD’s – mostly Rod Stewart, I’m slightly embarrassed to admit (this must have been before I rediscovered Pink Floyd). I only had a couple of visitors, a couple of guys from work called in, which I appreciated, but that was all I needed, visitors were actually a slight mental effort and I was enjoying being lazy.

The biggest hassle was weekly blood tests to calibrate the rat poison for the next six months.   I’m not good with needles and I was more apprehensive of those than I had been of the operation itself.   Weird, I know.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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…)

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

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.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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   😉

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@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

[Author]

Posts