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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).

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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.

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@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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Well we (NZ) are quite slow in the vaccination process  (Mrs D and I are due for our second shots in a couple of weeks) but that’s more due to supply limitations rather than vaccine resisters.   If they eventually do require vaccine ‘passports’ I’m okay with that.   (It’s not really a passport, I think.   Real passports entail long  queues while Customs or Immigration grill you about your intentions.   So far as I can see, vaccine ‘passports’ would be a matter of show it and you’re in, nobody’s going to delay you.   Less hassle than your drivers licence.)

We’re currently in lockdown because Delta got here.   We’ve had a requirement for masks on public transport for many months, now our government has just made masks, and scanning or signing in, compulsory in stores (during Covid alerts).   Up until now it was just strongly encouraged, and almost everybody complied.  I think those who didn’t were just being lazy or inattentive rather than ‘objectors’.   I eventually relented and bought a new $65 (!)  smartphone because my old faithful Samsung S2 won’t run the Covid tracer app (its operating system is too old a version) and ‘signing the book’ was losing its novelty.

Not one of our political parties, not even ACT (who are the nearest to libertarian that we’ve got) saw any mileage in questioning Covid control.    So we’ve been lucky in that respect.

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@winston  Miss Kizlet (I can’t help calling her ‘Miss’) –  well acted.   Even at her most evil and villainous, she was an intriguing character.  (The Moff has a talent for intriguing female villains – Madame Kovarian and Missy, for example).   But ultimately she was a victim of the Great Intelligence too, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her at the end – which I hadn’t expected to feel.

@janetteb    DON’T apologise for Covid.  We were going to get an outbreak sooner or later, from somewhere in the world.   On the whole, we’re getting off fairly lightly.   Just personally, it doesn’t affect us much since we’re retired.   Due for our second jabs in a couple of weeks.   I went for a walk yesterday (permitted under lockdown rules, so long as we ‘stay local’) to our local park, as usual there were a fair number of people walking around in intricate patterns designed to keep a distance from each other.

I think Bells of St John is the best ep of that half-season  (excluding Day of the Doctor, which was a special).   Great fun to watch.   ‘The woman in the shop’ – I’m not sure.   It might have been a throwaway line and Moffatt then had to invent an explanation, but alternatively he might have planned it from the start – he’d be entirely capable of it.

I’ve since watched Rings of Akhaten, which for some reason reminds me strongly of a Farscape episode – they were always visiting alien planets with weird alien inhabitants.   I had a little bit of a problem with perspective – how could they be so close to the sun without getting fried?    And the question of atmosphere was – probably best ignored.

Cold War was a fairly good ep.   The submarine was quite convincing, assuming a nuclear sub is a little more roomy than its diesel predecessors.   (I’ve been in one sub, S-56, which is preserved as a war memorial in Vladivostok.   It wasn’t too cramped, there was room to stand up everywhere.   But it was liberally bestrewn with pipes and valves.   The only thing that might give one claustrophobia was the circular watertight doors at intervals, like the one shown in the episode.   Still, there’s nothing would persuade me to embark in a submarine for real.)   The light grey walls are the right shade of grey.   And of course there’s nothing adds authenticity more than a few signs in Cyrillic script.  (And they didn’t say rude things, as one of the producers in the commentary postulated.   The most prominent one said ‘Missile Bunker’.  Sadly, most were out of focus.)

I did like the old professor Grisenko (David Warner), even though the cast was fairly stock – sensible Captain, fanatical second-in-command, benevolent Professor.   I also liked Clara confidently asserting she didn’t speak Russian and then finding out that she was.   Which raises the question, how long does the Tardis’s translation circuit persist?

 

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Just watched The Bells of St John, which is the first appearance of the ‘real’ Clara.
And it’s classic Moffatt, full of lovely one-liners and loaded meanings that make me flick back the DVD to appreciate them better.

I love that ‘The Bells of St John’ literally refer to the phone bell on the Tardis beside the St John logo.
Monk: Is it an evil spirit? DW: It’s a woman. (Monk crosses himself)

“Actually, he’s about to go on holiday. Kill him when he gets back. Let’s not be unreasonable.” The Moff does casually ruthless better than anyone else. Oh, and it seems HR is responsible for, errm, terminating surplus employees. Nice.

“Did you just hack me?” “Because you changed your mind?” “I hope I did.”

“When you say ‘mobile phone’, why d’you point at that blue box?” “Because it’s a surprisingly accurate description.”

“Human souls trapped like flies in the world-wide web. Stuck forever, crying out for help.” “Isn’t that basically Twitter?”

When they walk out of the Tardis on the bank of the Thames, it’s almost a copy of the scene in Rose. In many ways this ep reminds me of Rose.

“Blue box. South bank.” “Are we sure this time? Earls Court was an embarrassment.” I seem to remember reading, one of the few surviving blue police boxes really was at Earls Court. Nice verisimilitude.

“I can’t tell the future, I just work there.”

So now Clara – this Clara – has been uploaded to the Great Intelligence cloud and downloaded, twice. So what has that done to her intelligence, I wonder? She’s retained the computer skills package (which includes some pretty good ‘social engineering’).

And this manifestation of the Great Intelligence was far more convincing and threatening, I thought, than the Snowmen.   Altogether an ep that was great fun to watch, with something happening every minute.

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@syzygy I’ve avoided streaming services so far. Partly because Mrs D is in charge of the TV. One of the channels is a ‘old series’ channel, 50’s to 70’s TV shows, and it’s painfully obvious that for every classic there are a hundred which are mercifully dead and I never wish to see again 🙂 But she likes them. So I just hunker down with my laptop and headphones and Youtube or DVDs, and leave her to it.

Also, it’s a smart TV, I barely understand how it works, and I don’t think Mrs D has a clue. We have Youtube on the TV too, but the vagaries of the Youtube algorithm are truly bizarre to contemplate. At one time, for several nights, we had an entire series of a Hmong soap opera (I deduced it was Hmong by feeding the credits into Google Translate. No I’d never heard of Hmong either. But their incidental music was quite pleasant and after a couple of episodes Mrs D was able to tell me the entire plot, just from observation 🙂
Currently we’re having (on Youtube) a whole series of funerals (the Vietnamese ones are the most tuneful). Mrs D finds them interesting, anyway. That at least is better than the string of birthing videos we had at one point (why people put their most intimate moments on Youtube for strangers to gawp at, totally baffles me).   I’m squeamish.

Oops, we’re back to birthing videos.   Up with the laptop screen, bury my head in it, and ignore the noises coming from the TV…

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@janetteb   Yes I like browsing through second hand shops for DVDs.   I used to like second hand bookshops too, but I eventually had to stop myself – I currently have ~1500 books and I’ve got no more room!    Now, I only buy a book if it’s one I really, really want to read…

 

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Oh, the forum just got busy!

@thane16 syzygy – Yes, I sort of thought River had time running backwards (which is impossible and hurt my brain to try and reconcile it) so pretty much managed to wave it away until Darillium made it obvious that view was wrong. I eventually worked out that time ran the same way for her and the Doc (as for everybody) but of course being time travellers, they jumped around so their meetings were ‘random’. So now my brain hurts a little less 🙂

Probably the fact you get few updates about SA is a good sign (for them) – no news is good news. Nobody really wants to live in ‘interesting times’.

Yes I have seen Firefly – in fact I have the DVDs. A friend sent them to me. It very much is a space western. I also have Serenity on DVD. IIRC they also had a remarkable character named River (in fact isn’t River on the cover of the Serenity DVD in memorable pose brandishing an axe thingy?)

At the time I was halfway through Farscape, which coincidentally was also about a band of galactic fugitives in possession of a large spaceship fleeing from the Federation… (oops, no, the Federation was Blakes 7)

So possibly for that reason Firefly was okay but didn’t really ‘grab’ me. I should probably re-watch it without the distraction of an ongoing different show. I have the DVD’s (he says). As I recall, Serenity was pretty much a standalone movie, not so much a Firefly follow-on.

As an aside – The Warehouse (our biggest retailer) has just stopped selling DVD’s. Wtf?? I suppose broadband and streaming video has killed the market. As far as I’m concerned, DVD’s were/are the best consumer medium by far. Obviously way ahead of VHS, in quality and usability (by that I mean, you can jump to any point instantly), but also satisfying to have a thing you can hold onto, you don’t need an internet connection or to pay some monthly fee, and NO ADVERTS. And also they often come with extras like commentaries and ‘behind the scenes’ which are sometimes rubbish but can be very illuminating. And I used to love wandering through video rental stores. There used to be a store near where I worked that specialised in ‘cult TV’ series like Trek, Who, X-Files, Monty Python, Galactica… you name it.

@winston Love the cute fez story. Maybe you’re lucky she didn’t call your bluff on the fez, though.

I remember that ‘everyone’s looking at me’ feeling. I eventually cured myself when I was about 20 by reflecting that most people are 99% absorbed in their own affairs and won’t notice much else. (Google ‘the invisible gorilla’). What forced this realisation on me was this – I was at an annual prizegiving dinner and went to the washroom. Which had small circular handbasins and very stiff pushbutton taps that would shoot a jet of water down into the handbasin and up the other side all over the front of ones trousers. Which it did. So then I thought ‘everybody who sees me will think I failed to make it in time’. Oh the embarrassment. So after much headscratching I reasoned, 1, most people aren’t going to notice and 2, anybody who does notice isn’t going to say anything anyway. So I walked back to my seat and – nothing happened. 🙂

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@oochillyo The 50th special – The Day of the Doctor? – that was a great episode. And yes, the Doctor did save Gallifrey.

(Someone correct me if I get this bit wrong, and I’ll try and avoid too many spoilers:)
But time is long, and Time Lord gratitude not quite so long. There was a prophecy that a creature known as the Hybrid would one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey, and the Time Lords thought the Doctor knew something about it. So they – Rassilon – trapped the Doctor in a ‘confession dial’ (getting Clara killed as collateral damage – Face The Raven) to force him to reveal all. But he withstood it for billions of years (Heaven Sent) until he finally escaped – in Gallifrey – and had his confrontation with Rassilon (Hell Bent).
More than that I won’t say (spoilers). Other than, those are three fantastic episodes.

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@oochillyo

Hi Declan

I’m pleased (for you) that you like this episode a little bit better.   Good when that happens.   It’s not one of my favourites, but I do like it better than the previous Master one, Last of the Time Lords.    The Master was a much more interesting person when he wasn’t all-powerful and 100% evil  (and it turned out Rassilon was the real villain of the piece, who woulda thunk it?).   I did like the Master’s last-minute decision to take out Rassilon and save the Doctor.

(Though Timothy Dalton was certainly the best Rassilon, I think.   The one that tried to shoot the Doctor and the Doctor banished was pretty good too (‘How many regenerations did we grant you?   I’ve got all night…’)

I know there have been episodes (and ongoing story arcs) that I’ve liked a lot better when I’ve gone through them in my head and sorted out the way the story ‘works’.   Notably the River Song saga, after I realised that the idea of River living her life ‘backwards’ was misleading and also, not possible.   I was being too literal about the sequence of their random encounters.

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@oochillyo

Umm, yeah.   I did wonder about the Doctor crashing straight through that glass dome and splatting on the floor without so much as a cracked rib – was it ever canon that he was extra springy?

The End of Time – that certainly did have the look of Fate bringing all sorts of disparate threads together (the Master, the Time Lords and didn’t Timothy Dalton make a great Rassilon, the rich guy who wanted to make his daughter immortal, even the vinvocci (cactus people) who were kinda fun).

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@blenkinsopthebrave

I was thinking of things like the first Cybermat which looked like a plush toy (probably because it probably was a plush toy). Also the first Cybermen who were only too obviously human extras in sacks. That is, I found them horribly unconvincing until Moffatt re-did them in World Enough and Time, and *of course* they were just humans in sacks! That’s what Cybermen were.

But I partly agree with you. FX and CGI are not the end, they are the means. Exactly the same way that wide-screen colour TVs and stereo sound are. They all help to tell the story. They don’t help much if the story is rubbish.

So I think, special effects and CGI are necessary up to a certain level of adequacy. Below that, you notice their lack (and in Old Who I did notice their lack. Also in Blakes 7, where even the Liberator’s walls famously wobbled if an actor bumped into them). But I could willingly make allowances for the sake of the story. If the story was good and the acting (I loved Kerr Avon’s sardonic sarcasm) I’d happily watch.

‘Adequate’ isn’t the same as ‘perfect’, by the way. CGI isn’t quite there yet. For decades James Bond avoided CGI and did it the hard (and dangerous) way with real-life stunts, and it really did show. When they finally started using CGI (Tomorrow Never Dies, I think) the movie suffered visibly in places because of it. I don’t mean the invisible car, that was well done, obviously had to be CGI, and it worked because we have no comparison to judge it by, but when e.g. Bond’s ice yacht fell off a cliff, the motion was just wrong. Modern movies that rely too much on CGI with exaggerated perspective and dizzying zooms – it gets tired.

Back to Who – I think the FX and CGI in modern Who has been perfecty adequate. e.g. Asylum of the Daleks – looks great, and nowhere does anything look ‘false’ to me. Or the ‘spoonheads’ in The Bells of St John that I just watched. It props up the story perfectly and that’s all it needs to do and all it ought to do.

Old Who – um. Watching ‘Survival’ I really want to think all the actors are cat people but it stretches my powers of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ beyond their limit. I still like the episode, love Seven and Ace.

I first watched in the 60’s too (wasn’t allowed to watch Quatermass though, maybe I was too young). I agree, imagination made up for a lot of deficiencies and doubtless my expectations of ‘FX’ have risen with the surroundings. Imagination *still* works well – just think of ‘Listen’ and how scary those totally unexplained noises where there should be no life, were. And that bedspread rising into the air behind ?the Doctor and Clara? – just a bedspread?

I talk too much.   Love the Slyther, though.

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@oochillyo @janetteb

Fate piling up on characters – it depends how it’s done. I found Wilf in The End of Time, quite annoying. I didn’t mind his character before, but he *would* go and get stuck in the cubicle with a deadly dose of radiation building up, wouldn’t he?
On the other hand, Clara’s death in Face The Raven was just as much a case of the circumstances neatly falling into place as if Fate was stacking the deck. But I didn’t mind that, and much though I loved Clara, I think it was a fitting way to go. (And also, unlike Wilf, Clara – and not the Doctor – paid for her mistake. Well, the Doctor later paid a terrible price, but that was a different episode and also, it was really the fault of Rassilon).

(For a series where fate really was weighted against them, see ‘Farscape’. Anyone who saw ‘Henson’ in the credits and thought ‘Muppets – warm fuzzies’ was sadly mistaken. One episode that I perversely like (because I don’t generally like ‘gloom’, I like my escapism escapist) was the standalone ‘Different Destinations’ where the crew are visiting a monument to a historic ancient siege when they get zapped back in time to the event, and everything they do to try and help the besieged (a group of nurses and a few soldiers) just makes things worse and by the time they are zapped back to ‘now’, the monument is to a massacre).

I did like Thomas Hardy when younger. Partly as a reaction to Dickens, whose style I found to be far too elaborate and heavy-handed, particularly when he was trying to be humorous (I wouldn’t dare say ‘funny’). A simpler style of writing seems to age far better. And also, I grew up in west Hampshire, and when we moved to Auckland in my early teens I was slightly homesick, and Hardy really seemd to have a ‘feel’ for his Wessex countryside. That counted for me more than his slightly Victorian characters.

Things that really ‘bug’ me in Who? Not many. Donna’s unfortunate first appearance when the Doc was just mourning the loss of Rose and Donna crashed in and shouted at him. Season 11 on – many things (and I won’t get into that).
Some of the truly terrible ‘monsters’ from Old Who. I make allowances for limited budgets but I guess modern FX and CGI have rather spoiled us.

Something that bugs me but Who is mercifully free from (prior to S11 anyway) – characters who preach little morals. If the story doesn’t provide its own lesson then having some character telling you what it is, doesn’t help. When I was a teen and cowboy Westerns were a thing, in some series at the end of every episode one of the characters would do a little homily on the moral of the story and it would make me cringe. Probably why I’ve liked black humour ever since, I’m a reactionary.

And – this is a weird ‘bug’ – the ‘Charlies Angels syndrome**’ – group scenes where all the characters get one line each in turn. As in the scene at the end of Journeys End where everybody turns up and they’re all taking a hand in helping to fly the Tardis – this is patently phony since it’s usually flown by one. Fortunately Who doesn’t do that often. (**Because it was rumoured that the three Angels in the original TV series had contracts that guaranteed them equal time, to the point of their agents counting lines in the script).
[End of ‘Things that Bug Me’]

 

@janetteb

Yes, I definitely liked Snowmen better on a re-watch. I think the first time, comparing it mentally with Asylum of the Daleks (which was spectacular) and Angels Take Manhattan (which was – dramatic), it suffered a little. Tough comparison.
Tardis interior – well, really Smith’s new Tardis and Capaldi’s are the same, just with the addition of a few furnishings. Either one is gorgeous, and streets ahead of any others. And it is three-dimensional, it leads you to expect more rooms off the control room (in a way that older ‘classic’ Tardis interiors didn’t. You tacitly accepted that they existed, but weren’t really deep-down believing it). I’d guess I’d give the edge to Capaldi’s, but it’s close. Obviously the Tardis couldn’t ‘redecorate’ too much, with Clara inside.

 

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Well, just watched The Snowmen and couldn’t resist bursting into print…

I’d remembered this episode as sort of middling, probably due to its Victorian setting (not my favourite period for stories). But it’s a lot better than that. The Great Intelligence is a fairly uninteresting villain, and the snowmen not very frightening, but it’s the frills on the story – Clara and the Vastra menage – that make this episode interesting and enjoyable.

Vastra, Jenny and Strax are a great vehicle for comedy, offending stereotypical Victorian sensibilities at every turn. “Good evening, I’m a lizard woman from the dawn of time, and this is my wife.”

The first acquaintance with Clara, she’s bold, rash and willing to take risks. In someone with less personality than Jenna Coleman, I’d find her really irritating – as it is, I find her highly attractive.

The business with Strax, Clara and the memory worm is hilarious. And Clara is as quick as lightning on the uptake – talking the Doctor out of using the worm on her, for example.

The Doctor has found a clever new way to park the Tardis – in a cloud of invisibility, hovering in mid-air (so no-one’s going to bump into it). Pity Clara’s nerve fails her at the last minute and she runs back down the staircase, leaving only her scarf behind (isn’t that a quintessential element of fairy stories?).

So then, much later, Clara is the first human to see the new Tardis interior – and it’s truly beautiful. Clean, spacious and elegant, it makes the previous one look like a junkyard. The best Tardis by a mile. And the Doctor has finally figured out that Clara (who likes souffles, by the way) is The One – his new companion – and Clara (who as I said is lightning quick) – divines exactly what he’s thinking. “I never now why. I only know – who.” And gives her a Tardis key. This is the first time we’ve seen the Doctor cheerful since he lost Amy and Rory. And Clara is thrilled and excited and ready for adventures with the Doctor… At which point, just like the Angel that got Rory, the ice woman grabs Clara and drags her to her death. The Moff did it to us *again*. The effect on the Doctor must be devastating. (And for all the fans who knew Jenna was the new Companion – they weren’t expecting that!)

And there’s a major anachronism – the biscuit tin in which the Doctor offers Simeon chunks of the ice woman has an Underground map on the lid – first designed in 1931. Though I suppose the Doctor could well have picked it up on one of his travels, so I guess it isn’t an anachronism at all. Kind of difficult to have anachronisms with a time traveller. Oh, but then the Doctor points to it and identifies it as the 1967 version. (So much for my wannabe geekery.) Which I guess proves that humanity survived Simeon’s plots anyway.

And then Clara dies, echoing Oswin’s words, and sets up the mystery of who Clara Oswin Oswald really is. I love a good mystery.

 

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@winston I do agree with you about endings – even if they’re not going to be ‘happy endings’ they can be sad but hopefully not depressing. I guess Doctor Who is escapism and I want to be entertained and not depressed. This is absolutely not to say that Bad Things shouldn’t happen, bad things are what heightens the drama. But I do very much like the way Moffatt handled the exits of all his companions. Much better than ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ or its modern counterparts (which just illustrates that getting rid of a surplus cast member is an age-old problem).

@janetteb Yes, there is the problem of, why would anyone give up travelling with the Doctor? That problem was half acknowledged in the last couple of Ponds episodes, when Amy and Rory tried to establish an ordinary life on Earth for themselves and had problems settling down.
However, I disagree that Martha’s initial exit wasn’t fitting. I liked Martha, she was highly intelligent, she realised she was hopelessly in love with the Doctor and he was never going to get over Rose so she did the only sensible thing and walked away. Was she the only companion who ever left the Doctor for their own good? The only NuWho one, anyway, I think. That was fine, to me. I actually think her couple of recurrences with Unit or with Mickey kind of devalued that a little bit, but not enough to upset me.

 

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@janetteb Of course you’re in SA. I know that perfectly well! I just had an absent-minded moment, listening to the news from Victoria. My apologies for my error. I do hope SA can continue to evade the virus. Our (NZ) vaccine rollout continues to progress slowly but steadily, and I don’t think we (as a country) could really justify trying to jump the queue on vaccines.   But navigating the hazards of covid is a balancing act for most governments.

Yes Moff is good at handling the exits of favourite characters. I really do like the way he manages to soften the blow. We really do have it both ways – there is the shock of a loss (the angel that gets Rory and Amy, Clara’s Raven, and Bill getting Cyberised) – but then he softens it in some way. Some fans criticise that that undercuts the dramatic impact of the loss, but I don’t see it that way.   It makes the loss less abrupt, less final, less … wrong.

But then Moffatt is very good at characters in general. I just watched The Snowmen and it struck me how engaging the characters of Vastra, Jenny and Strax were, and particularly (of course) Clara. They’re characters I instinctively like. If some writers suit some actors particularly well then the Moff and Jenna Coleman were an ideal pairing. But then the Moff’s writing goes well with many actors. Anyway I couldn’t restrain myself from writing a lot of comments on Snowmen, which I’ll post later.

Cheers

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@janetteb I see the covid has reached you (again), hope the lockdown is only needed for 7 days.

I just got to Angels Take Manhattan – imprisoning people for their time energy, now that’s a real lockdown. And a horrific idea.

The ep starts off almost idyllically (is that a word?), but the moment we see that angel fountain it’s obvious there’s danger around. The fountain’s real, by the way, not down to the BBC art department, Streetview shows it’s the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. What an ideal ready-made prop.

I thought the Angel Statue of Liberty was a brilliant idea that suffered in the practical execution (how could it move around without being seen?. Also, we know it’s actually hollow and made of iron and copper, not stone). But there was some real tension in the roof scene and Rory and Amy falling off the roof (even though we’d been told that would probably be the Reset button). And then, just when we thought the drama was over, a stray Angel zaps Rory. That really was a shock the first time I watched the ep. So naturally Amy has to follow him. It was never stated what the Doctor did about that Angel, but considering the fate of the Family of Blood, I imagine it would be something suitably drastic. They can be damaged, as the Angel in Grayle’s possession illustrates. Volcanic lava lakes or quarry stone crushers come to mind.

But overall, a good episode, if not outstanding, and a worthy finale for Amy and Rory.

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@janetteb    The only episode I remember fondly from 13’s first season is the Norway one.   I didn’t mind the frog.    The Punjab one would have been okay as an episode in a historical drama but there’s hardly any sci-fi in it (and what there is, resembles Testimony from Twice Upon a Time).

I’m afraid I can’t warm up to Jodie Whittaker, what kills it is the way she goggles like a goldfish when anything surprises her.   I think she could have been a lot better with better writing and direction.

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Oh, and I did like the brief guest appearance of Brian Cox early on in the episode.

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To be fair to Chibnall, apparently (as JimTheFish noted in Who News) much of the brevity of the climax of Power of Three was down to Steven Berkoff, the villain, who sabotaged most of the takes.    (According to the Internet which as we know is always accurate).   This would certainly explain why the villain’s appearance was so brief and why he was so easily defeated with a wave of the sonic, why his ship conveniently blew up with an overload, and why the Doc so easily reversed the casualties.   Solomon (in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) got far more screentime and he was only endangering a ship full of dinosaurs and six humans, not the entire population of Earth.

Still leaves the motivation for the cubes a little thin, though.

I do agree that ‘Ravens of Death’ has a distinctly Moffatt ‘feel’ to it,  of course there’s also the raven in ‘Face the Raven’, I wonder if Moff suggested that or if Sarah Dollard picked up on the Raven reference?   (And my virtual apologies to Chibnall if that was indeed his phrase).

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@jimthefish    Now you mention them, Jamie Mathieson or Sarah Dollard have both written good episodes.   Though Whithouse certainly has showrunner experience (I think he did ‘Being Human’ for example)

Re Power of Three, a quick Google seems to confirm that Steven Berkoff was, um, ‘difficult’, and I guess that does explain why the climax was so very short and the villain so easily dealt with.   The first two-thirds was a good steady (and intriguing) build-up.   Though I still think there’s a logic gap in that a race that could build such technologically unbeatable impervious cubes shouldn’t need a whole year to perfect an assault that would only kill a third of their intended target…

Neil Gaiman would be a good choice, and he’s got heaps of experience I think.   However, on his website he’s just announced he’ll be doing Good Omens 2 and Anansi Boys simultaneously, so I guess that rules him out.  Though it depends how long a hiatus between seasons Who undergoes, I guess…

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… and so, on to The Power of Three.   (Ponds don’t have long to go…)   Started well, with the enigmatic cubes, they were mysterious and entertaining.   And went well till 2/3 the way through the episode.   The problem is, having started so strongly, what do you do for a payoff?   Well this was an anticlimax – a wave of the sonic and everything is fixed.

And, the absurdity of studying mankind for a YEAR in order to figure out you can electrocute them?    And then, only doing a third of the job, and having to send a ‘second wave’ of cubes – which no human is going to go near after what happened with the first lot…   this super-advanced, able-to-manufacture-indestructible-cubes-that-far-exceed-human-technology race is really, really dumb.

I did like ‘Ravens of death’ – though, given the nod in The Day of the Doctor (‘The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries’) I rather uncharitably (uncharitably towards Chibnall, that is) suspect that line was inserted at the suggestion of the Moff.

 

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OK I’ll toss my cup of petrol onto the fire   🙂    Just been watching  A Town Called Mercy  (Toby Whithouse)  followed by  The Power of Three  (Chris Chibnall).   And I can’t help contrasting them – Mercy was brilliant and gripping all the way through.   Power of Three started with an intriguing concept (the cubes) but wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.    And I couldn’t help reflecting on the theories that floated around when the Moff was about to retire, that Toby might have become the new showrunner.   What might have been…

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

A Town Called Mercy – I really like this episode.

Had some classic lines in it.   Written by Toby Whithouse, but worthy of the Moff.

“Why would he want to kill you? Unless he’s met you.” – Amy (to the Doctor).

“I speak horse. He’s called Susan, and he wants you to respect his life choices.” – The Doctor.

“Everyone who isn’t American, drop your gun.” – The Marshal (to Amy).

“Frightened people. Give me a Dalek any day.” – The Doctor.

There was real tension when the Doctor faced off Walter (the 18-year-old) with a gun and talked him out of shooting. Marvellous scene.

I hardly recognised Bill Browder (Crichton of Farscape) as the Marshal, but he was a really good character. I was *not* expecting him to get shot half-way through.

What I liked was that nobody was simply malicious or evil, not even Kahler Jex or the gunslinger. All their questionable actions – the Doctor trying to throw Jex out of town, Walter and the townsfolk wanting to do the same, Jex trying to avoid the gunslinger’s attentions, the gunslinger wanting to kill Jex – were all based on either self-preservation, wanting to protect themselves and their families, or a desire for justified retribution. The gunslinger just wanted Jex and didn’t wish to hurt innocent people (in that way Jex had programmed him well). Jex’s terrible actions in the past – creating killer androids – he made a powerful argument that they were prompted by patriotic motives in a terrible war. And Jex redeemed himself at the end by blowing himself up.

“He behaved with honour at the end. Maybe more than me.” – The gunslinger.

As Western episodes go, this was a really good one. Well-written, and the motivations of all the characters were entirely convincing. And visually striking.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@nerys    Well, I have plenty of space, or did have.    My problem is, it inevitably fills up with interesting things which I can’t bear to throw out.   (So really, I’m the problem).   For example, 500 VHS tapes (remember them?)   I disposed of 300 a few months ago, there are still around 200 in the living room which I must bite the bullet and dump (because, though I never watch them, they’re all catalogued and indexed).

DVDs are far more compact and manageable, and of course far higher quality picture and much more usable.   And of course, frequently DVDs have all sorts of extras on them, varying from highly interesting to pointless.   In the case of Doctor Who there are all sorts of ‘Webisodes’ which add to the ongoing story…

I also have ~1500 books which are a much more intractable problem…

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@craig    Minor website matter – in Dr Who News on 24th June, ‘osdffdsfg’ or somesuch posted a mountain of rubbish with several commercial links in it.   May I suggest respectfully nuking it from orbit?  And maybe banning Mr alphabet soup.

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