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@janetteb

Reminds me of ‘the only water in the forest is the river’   🙂

I actually lived in Perth (with my parents) from the age of 3 till 6.   (I know West Australia doesn’t really count as ‘Australia’, or so I’ve heard   🙂     But it was too hot and my parents fled back to England for a while (where schoolkids thought I was Australian, I’d picked up a bit of an accent, but it wore off) before trying New Zealand a decade later.   My wife has seen more of Oz than me, she has rellies in Sydney and Melbourne and probably the Gold Coast too.

Not entirely sure LOTR gives an accurate picture of New Zealand geography  (grin).

Cheers

 

 

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@janetteb

The ‘outbreak’ in Auckland seems to be under control – it’s limited to about three people. It originated as a ‘leak’ from a quarantine facility – which just shows how sneaky this virus can be. Typically NZ has up to 30 cases at any one time, being overseas arrivals in quarantine – it’s when it leaks out that everyone worries since one case can become a hundred in a matter of days.

We’re hoping no more significant outbreaks since we’re planning to go to Christchurch in South Island to stay with our daughter over Christmas, which means taking the Cook Strait Ferry. Obviously a serious lockdown could disrupt that. I’ve spent the last few days replacing the clutch on Mrs D’s Mazda Tribute 4WD (same as a Ford Escape), because it wasn’t going to get us to Christchurch otherwise. But what a performance! The workshop manual has more plot twists, red herrings and plot holes than a vintage Doctor Who ep. Seriously – “disconnect gearchange cables (see section 5.4)” So Section 5.4 Gearchange Cables starts by removing the gear lever and taking apart the centre console and gearchange mechanism inside the car, and it was only after doing all this that it occurred to me, what has this got to do with the clutch? – and I realised that the ONLY part of Section 5.4 that applied was Paragraph 5.4.7 ‘remove clips and lift cables off gearbox change levers’. It did this sort of thing to me, or tried to, several times. So it’s been a bit of a saga, I hope when I fire it up tomorrow everything works and I haven’t forgotten something vital.

I hope you’re able to have your weekend away, even if you have to take precautions. I take it ‘the River’ is the Murray (you’re in South Australia, right? – forgive me if I’ve misremembered). (My grasp of Aussie geography is a bit sketchy, it was only when I just Googled that I realised the Murray comes out east of Adelaide and not in Melbourne or the other ‘obvious’ place at the head of Spencer Gulf (Port Augusta). I’m embarrassed, I thought my geographical knowledge was better than that). But anyway, even a ‘socially distancing’ weekend can be quite pleasant, so best wishes for that.

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@nerys Can I add my best wishes to the others?

I was going to say we’re relatively lucky (here in New Zealand) but just to remind us that nowhere is 100% safe, someone just tested positive today in Auckland City and it hasn’t been traced to a known source so everyone’s hopping. (There was a minor outbreak a couple of months ago that caused a month-long partial shutdown of the whole Auckland area). Mrs Dent has decided not to bother going out on the town tonight, somewhat to my relief.

@blenkinsopthebrave You just reminded me of another excellent episode I should watch (i.e. A Good Man Goes To War). I was going to watch Magician’s Apprentice / Witch’s Familiar tonight but Mrs Dent is watching Youtube videos on the TV. (But I can always resort to watching DVD’s on my laptop with headphones). I’ll add A Good Man to the list. In fact I might make a list of ‘highlight’ episodes to watch roughly in order. There would be about 50 eps in Seasons 1-10 that I’d rate very good to excellent (and I know this because I made a list of all the episodes and prequels and mini-episodes in narrative order and stuck an ‘X’ beside the best ones).

 

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@janetteb

The Capaldi Tardis was great, wasn’t it? Lots of space, it was three-dimensional (by which I mean, it was on more than one level, it had stairways and a gallery for actors to walk around – a great set for them to just do acting in). And enough design elements to be visually interesting and convincing as a control room, but clean and uncluttered. If you look at any working control room – the bridge of a ship, the control room of a power station or a major pumping station – they all accommodate various bits of equipment and furniture and machinery for the use and convenience of the crew. Capaldi’s control room was like that, but it also looked capacious, elegant and comfortable.

The classic ‘white’ Tardis interior (like the one ‘belonging’ to Clara and Me) was elegantly simple but much smaller. Much less opportunity for the actors to move around. I could imagine living in Capaldi’s Tardis, but after a few hours in Clara’s I’d be bouncing off the walls. Of course it’s canon that there were hundreds of rooms leading off the control room, but we rarely got to see them.

The Eccleston/Tennant interior was larger than the Classic, but cluttered with those odd curvy columns. Essentially one level, it did have a ‘basement’ but it wasn’t really used much. And the console was a bit of a mess. Trying too hard to be ‘organic’. Matt Smith’s Tardis was a bit more multi-level but the interior was even more cluttered. Everything being curving made it hard to see the size of it.

Then it transformed into the very clean Capaldi-era one (I can’t remember the episode, but it was in Series 7 while Matt Smith was still Doctor, I think?) And you could see the size of it. It acquired the bookcases with Capaldi. And yes, it’s the only one I really like, too.

 

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@missy

That certainly sounds … weird.

In fact I was going to elaborate on how weird it all was when I came across the source of that report, on DoctorWhoTV

Jodie Quits! Julia Foster is the 14th Doctor, with Tennant Back as Companion

– the thing is, it’s dated April 1st 2020. And reading it with that in mind, I’m fairly sure it’s a hoax.

(In fact the link, for some reason, brings up a picture explicitly labelled ‘April Fools 2020’ – I don’t know why this is, the article itself doesn’t carry that label).

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@blenkinsopthebrave

That’s brilliant.   You couldn’t make this stuff up.   (Well, you could, but no-one would believe it).    Four Seasons Total Landscaping is indeed a few yards from a porn shop called Fantasy Island  and just across the road from a crematorium.   The symbolism is irresistible.

(It really is.   I looked on Streetview, I’m suspicious that way).

 

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@missy

I think I share your feelings. I watched Season 11 but it didn’t do a lot for me. Season 12 can wait till a DVD boxset comes up at a reasonable price, I’m in no great hurry. Instead, I just rewatched Hell Bent, and then I was going to follow it with Magicians’Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar, but Last Christmas was on the same DVD so I watched that. I’ll do Magician’s Apprentice next.

Personally, I have nothing against a female Doctor but Whittaker just hasn’t got it. She’s a pleasant Yorkshire lass but no menace, no gravitas. (In pretty much the same way as I could never believe Roger Moore as James Bond until he got a bit older and more mature). Grace, or Tasha Lem of the Church of the Papal Mainframe, or Missy, or Ohila of the Sisterhood of Karn, or Liz 10 for example, would have been credible (if they hadn’t already played other characters, obviously). The other half of the problem is the writing, she talks too much and dithers annoyingly in the face of the enemy. Matt Smith’s doctor initially took ten minutes eating weird stuff (fish fingers etc) but by the end of the first episode he was ordering the Atraxi back just to warn them off. Capaldi spent his first 25 minutes trying to figure out who he was but by the end of the ep he was facing down a millennia-old killer robot. In contrast, Whittaker-Doctor was still dithering all the way through Season 11.

And the new Tardis interior is – weird.

So mentally, I regard ‘true Who’ as ending for the moment with Capaldi, and mentally file S11 as a spinoff. That way, I’m less inclined to compare it with Moffatt episodes.

At least, we still have all of Seasons 1-10 on DVD.

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Finally!   For what seemed like weeks (but was actually days) typing ‘US election’ into Google gave ‘Biden 264   Trump 214’.   Now it says  290 – 214 which looks decisive.     Anyone sane would concede at this point.

But I’m reminded of a comment made by a competitor in the America’s Cup, that notoriously litigious boat race:   “We sail around for a bit, then we go to court to find out who won”.

I don’t think any US President in living memory has done one-tenth as much as Trump to destroy any goodwill, trust or respect for the USA internationally.   Hopefully American foreign policy will now start to resemble something rational and coherent and not just the outcome of last nights tantrum.

Well, I suppose we can at least extract a bit of schadenfreude in the next few weeks watching the orange buffoon thrashing around desperately trying to avoid being labelled a LOSER.

 

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@blenkinsopthebrave

Thanks for that link.    I absolutely love Hell Bent, more than Heaven Sent.  Heaven Sent was a tour de force, but not fun.    Hell Bent was just a visual and narrative delight from start to finish.

I’m a sucker for genuinely clever dialogue. “How many regenerations did we grant you? I’ve got all night.” Ouch!

Or the pilot of the huge gunship: “Attention! Will all non-military personnel step away from the Doctor.”
(Nobody moves.)
“I repeat. All non-military personnel, please, step away from the Doctor.” (Love that ‘please’)
“At least move the children away.”
– When you’re reduced to begging, you’ve lost control of the situation.

By the way, the gun on that gunship – and the soldiers’ guns, all looked suitably sci-fi but also genuinely realistic and dangerous.

I love that the dialogue on the diner works on two levels – first time through, it appears as if Clara is the one who doesn’t remember. And on a re-watch, knowing that Clara remembers and the Doctor doesn’t, it still works. I like that.

I was wondering what to watch (my DVD-with-all-the-extras of Survival hasn’t arrived yet) but that just decided me – I’ll put on Hell Bent. I need cheering up.

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I first saw a very few early Doctor Who’s.   Possibly even the first ever.   Saw a few later on with Patrick Troughton (who is my canonical ‘Doctor) and a few more with Pertwee, then lost touch.   Never saw McCoy, and in the various still photos I saw I thought he looked rather silly – the question-mark theme didn’t help.   Just recently I saw him ‘live’ for the first time in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot and was more impressed.   I’ve also since seen a bit of him doing Q&A’s at cons, often with Sophie Aldred, and he’s very quick-witted.   Also, there’s obviously a great chemistry between them.   So I definitely like his Doctor (based on his last three episodes).

Never saw the Paul McGann movie but – based on The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot and The Night of the Doctor – I think he would have made an excellent Doctor.  He had presence.

But you may well be right, if Who hadn’t lapsed with the seventh Doctor, it might not have got revived by RTD.   After I lost touch (with Pertwee), the next time I made acquaintance with Who was ‘Rose’.     Watched until about The Eleventh Hour, I have to admit Matt Smith didn’t impress me initially (too young), and lost touch again.   Much later, I saw intriguing references to Capaldi, so I decided to catch up via DVD boxsets and I have to say I now rate the Moffatt years as the best (of nuWho at least).

But I see the Companion as being at least as important as the Doctor to the story (which is why it never worried me when the Companion became ‘too important’ – a charge often levelled at Clara, for some reason, but it could equally be levelled at Rose, Martha, Donna, or Amy, and probably would apply to Bill if she’d had more than a season).

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Since there doesn’t seem to be an episode thread for ‘Survival’, I’ll just post my impressions here.

Well, I’ve just watched Survival, and I enjoyed it. The plot is fairly easy to follow, for some reason it felt like a ninth-Doctor (i.e. Eccleston) episode to me.
I did like the mental image of Ace as a big cat. Speaking of which, the big cats (cheetahs?) managed to surmount the absurdity factor of moggies on horseback and I actually got quite absorbed in the story.

And Ace should stop griping, there are far worse places to be stuck than Perivale. Maybe nothing ever happens but it seems to be a very pleasant suburb for it to be not happening in.

The Doctor, for such a natural comedian, actually managed to convey an air of menace. And Ace starting to turn into one of the feline hunters was entirely believable. In fact the build-up to the final confrontation with the Master, when the Doctor warned Ace that if she fought she’d turn into a hunter permanently, I was half-expecting her to jump on the bike and do just that. It would have been a great exit for a Companion. (Only outside knowledge made me discount that possibility). So now Ace has that dark streak inside her, which is an interesting portent for future episodes.

I am liking Ace more and more, it’s such a shame that when she and the Doctor stroll off to fresh adventures at the end, we never got to see them.

I can quite see how fans would have been dismayed at the cancellation, based just on Ghost Light, Fenric and Survival  I’d say the standard was quite high – eminently watchable stories.   (Am I being indulgent towards OldWho?  – I really don’t know).

(In fact my copy of Survival is an old just-the-bare-episode DVD, I’ve just ordered a copy of the newer release which has a heap of extras on it. Since I’m as stingy as a BBC bean counter, that attests to my liking for the ep).

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Excellent analysis by PhaseShift up there.

This is my impressions of the full remastered ‘directors cut’ version off the DVD.

This is weirder than Ghost Light.
Some impressions:
In the first 15 minutes we’ve had: Men in rubber boats speaking what-sounded-like-Italian-to-me but was probably Russian (and on re-listen, yes); confirmed by a document pouch with ‘Konfidentsialno’ on it in Cyrillic; a British military camp; a WW2 codebreaker attempting to decipher Norse runes in the church crypt; an interesting gravestone with the name Millington; and a Commander A H Millington trying to look like Hitler, with swastika flags, being saluted by a British Army soldier…

I liked the way the Doctor borrowed a sheet of War Office notepaper and typed his own authorisation on it, who needs psychic paper?

Okay, so the plot threads were more tangled than Ghost Light. I thought it was necessary to destroy the computer that had become infected/programmed with pure evil, but apparently that necessity ceased when evil took over Judson.

There was so much going on, it was sometimes difficult to tell who the villain(s) were. The Old One? Judson? Commander Millington?
Millington was certainly unpleasant enough, ordering people shot at the drop of a hat (I appreciated the irony of the Doctor and Ace being rescued by the Russians). I was saddened when Zorin was possessed by Fenric.

One nitpick occurred to me – how did the Russians (or Millington) think they were going to transport the computer to Moscow? And the Russians decided early on ‘from now on, we speak English’, which was odd, since they weren’t dressed as infiltrators, but very convenient for the viewers I suppose.

Did anyone else think the Old One had the most beautiful sad eyes?

The zombies – some of them retained their human form, like Ace’s two friends; some of them were full sea-monster. What was the rule? Had the sea-monster ones been brought with him by the Old One? Or did zombified humans gradually change into seamonsters? If it was explained in the script I missed it.

Aside from that, I think I’ve got all the plot threads sorted out in my mind now.

 

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@janetteb    It seems we have similar views again  🙂

Human Nature / Family of Blood is good, two of the better eps of Martha’s tenure (though it’s hard to beat Blink, of course.   However Blink is not really a Tennant/Martha episode at all).

Actually, the hardest thing about ‘three disks’ is stopping at three.   I could think of maybe thirty episodes of nuWho which are very good to excellent  (I’m sure any of us could, too, though obviously our lists would not be identical).

I found Curse of Fenric to be more bizarre than Ghost Light, in fact.   And the plot threads more convoluted.   It was just slightly tricky working out who the villain was, or rather who or what the villain was inhabiting at any time.   I really can’t see why Ghost Light got the rep of hard-to-follow.

And (back to Fenric) the vampire zombies – I assumed they all turned into the hideous fish creatures, but Ace’s two friends didn’t, just looked like they’d had a month of wild partying, so I assume the fish-creature zombies had somehow travelled through time along with the Big Bad fish, and vampire victims just kept their original form as zombies.   There were some neat ironic reversals, the Commander looking like Hitler (was this a secret Nazi spy cell?  Apparently not, it was just the Commander overdoing the ‘think-like-the-enemy’ meme);  the Russian soldiers rescuing the Doctor and  Ace from the British Army; the Big Bad Fish turning good but being inhibited by Ace’s faith in the Doctor from finishing off the real villain (I must admit that took me by surprise).   Made it hard to tell who the villain was.   I liked Ace’s role better in Ghost Light, in Fenric there were times when she felt stereotyped domestic, and I always hated those 40’s hairnet bob hairstyles.

Off to listen to the commentary and the DVD extras now…

 

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Well now, I was going to watch ‘Survival’ next after Ghost Light, when I realised Curse of Fenric came in between them so I bought it online and…   it’s just arrived.   2-disc set, and includes a 104-minute re-edited movie-length version with additional CGI and remixed soundtrack (so it says), so that’ll be interesting.   And also a commentary track with McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Nick Parsons who I assume is the villain.    Plenty of DVD goodies.    The only  McCoy/Ace I’ve seen was in Ghost Light last week, but I’ve since seen a little of them in Q&A’s at cons (thanks Youtube) and McCoy in particular strikes me as a very quick-witted actor.

Oh, hope blenkinsop and winston don’t mind me adding in my choice of desert island disks – after a few seconds’ thought it’d be:

Asylum of the Daleks – because it’s fun, full of surprises, clever dialogue (I’m a sucker for clever dialogue) and a couple of neat plot twists which Moffatt gave us all clues about and I never saw coming

Magician’s Apprentice / Witch’s Familiar – also fun, and wild – Capaldi on a tank with an axe, Missy being outrageous  (I’m cheating and counting that as one single double ep)

The Day of the Doctor – also, fun.   Two Doctors bickering, plus John Hurt, Clara, Osgoods, and The Moment

If I was allowed a fourth, it’d be Last Christmas, for the sarcastic elves deliberately pointing out how impossible they are and the dream-within-a-dream plot which hangs together logically.   Probably.   I think.

Oh, they’re all by Moffatt.   What a surprise   🙂

Well,  on to The Curse of Fenric…

 

 

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I just watched Ghost Light (all three parts). First of OldWho I’ve seen in five decades, first McCoy ep ever.

I’ve just finished a saga through all of NuWho from Rose to Resolution (end of S11). I recently ordered Survival (as the last of oldWho) and Ghost Light which was said to be deeply weird and incomprehensible. Well, I didn’t find it so, first watch through (without having read any synopses) I could find it quite easy to follow generally, even if some of the fine detail was a little fuzzy. It was multithreaded but with a straight timeline and no more complex than a Moffatt episode, and it felt much more like a Moffatt than a S11 Chibnall. It didn’t have heapings of social commentary, for a start. And on the strength of Ghost Light I’ve just ordered Curse of Fenric, which I will watch in order before Survival.

The DVD extras and the commentary (by Sophie Aldred/Ace, the writer, the script editor and composer) were very interesting and informative – more so than many new DVD extras. After watching those I now understand the whole story. From the interviews and some fascinating rehearsal/filming footage it’s obvious the whole cast enjoyed making this ep, and McCoy and Aldred had a blast.

I like McCoy’s Doctor – apparently he was keen for the writers to ‘go darker’ and it’s a great pity the series was canned before he got the chance. And I very much like Ace, she has heaps of character and reminds me a bit of Clara (in assertiveness, not in storyline). She certainly wasn’t going to let herself be overshadowed.

The sets and production values – especially the Victorian house – were excellent, though of course the 1980’s special effects are just adequate (with a bit of leeway allowed) to not distract too much from the story. Great pity modern FX can’t be pasted in (which of course would be impossible without a full remake). And while a remake was suggested somewhere in this thread – umm, no. The chemistry between the Doc and Ace would be – different, with different actors, and I don’t think it would be fair to McCoy or Sophie. Better to make a genuinely new episode.

 

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…  umm, great.   I’d heard Ghost Light got really weird, but I found I could follow it okay.  And Ace certainly held her own.   She reminded a bit of Clara – not in her storyline, but in her attitude.

Talk of Chibnall going back to the style of Old Who doesn’t stand up, this Old Who ep felt a lot more like a Moffatt ep to me.   It might have been Earth-located, but it wasn’t continually waving Social Conscience at me.

I liked McCoy and I liked Ace.    Watching the DVD extras, it looks to me as if they got on well together.

The other OldWho ep I’ve got is the last one, Survival.   Quite looking forward to watching it, now.

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Okay, I’m watching  Ghost Light.   The first OldWho I’ve seen in decades, first time I’ve ever seen McCoy.   I’m five minutes in so far, and already I like Ace.   I don’t mind that the Doc keeps trying to shut her up, they’re characters, and I’m sure she can look after herself.   We shall see…

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testing  – oh it is working.   Tried on another thread & it ate my comment.   Sorry for the noise

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Well that was no Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (thank goodness)
It started well, with a sweeping concept (the Pacific Islands weren’t part of the known world 900 years ago, but I can overlook that) but then it scaled back to something much more mundane.

Chibnall can’t do dialogue nearly as well as his predecessors. As some reviewer commented, the initial scene with the two archaeologists would have been warming with RTD, funny with the Moff, but just kinda awkward with Chibnall.
And it had large chunks of East Enders dropped into it – e.g. the scenes with Ryan and his father. Doubtless very touching but it ain’t NuWho. And I’ll defend that contention – almost all domestic scenes with previous NuWho docs this century have been either quite brief, OR have included the Doctor, or both.

And that bloody microwave oven wasn’t a Chekhov’s gun, it was a Chekhov’s cannon.

When I realised what the ‘octopus’ was, I was quite apprehensive (and almost offended) by what Chibnall might do with the Daleks; but I have to say, he did quite well, and didn’t perpetrate any massive retconning. I was quite pleased (and surprised) that Lin survived her Dalek experience. I don’t know why the Dalek would leave her alive as a witness but I can invent a reason – it needed her help to settle into its shell and then she crawled away while it was setting up shop – not great but that’ll do.

The home-made Dalek shell was convincing – though where it got the advanced weapons from in a farm workshop I don’t know, but hey, Dalek magic. It was genuinely frightening in being able to massacre squads of soldiers (I wanted a main battle tank to shoot it with a depleted uranium discarding-sabot round – that would’ve fixed it – but I understand there isn’t always one handy). Its final disposal seemed a bit anticlimactic – lost its grip?

I still can’t see the 13th Doctor as an alien, just as a Yorkshire lass who talks too much. Not enough gravitas, I think Yaz has more (though this may just be because she has a lot fewer lines). And in fact, as someone noted, why didn’t the Dalek latch onto Yaz instead? It would finally have given Yaz (who I like) something to do, generated some genuine companion danger, and reduced the passenger count. Nothing against Lin (who was good), but the Tardis was getting quite crowded. Especially with that hokey interior with those six bent crystal columns nodding at each other. ‘Bigger on the inside’ worked best when the inside was truly ‘big’.

Final note – it seems the Doctor has – finally – fixed her problems with the Tardis navigation circuits, which as recently as Witchfinders were all over the place.

So, reasonably watchable.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

That is one of my absolute favourite stand-alone episodes.    It is actually a classic tragedy, but with no villain except Time.   Amy seems fated to suffer these glitches of the timeline.

But it set up a situation at the end where there was no good answer.   The classic ‘trolley problem’.   Far, far worse than just facing terrible consequences, is having to choose between two equally terrible consequences.

It is magnificently built up.   At first it just looks like the familiar rescue-the-fugitive problem where Rory just has to track down Amy and rescue her from the Handbots.   But then we get the reveal that Amy is now Old Amy and she doesn’t want to lose 36 years of her life.   Awkward.   Amy and Old Amy ‘meet’ and find they quite like each other, sharing common memories.   And then they *both* want to be rescued.   And the Doctor knows this is impossible and is forced into a flat-out lie.   He knows what the consequences are going to be, but what else can he do?

And then we almost forget that incompatibility, watching the McGuffins of Rory fiddling with wiring and the Amys fighting off the handbots to get back to the Tardis, and start to think the Doctor’s gobbledegook about reality compensators might be true, right until the Doctor shuts the door on Old Amy.   But, at that point, what else could the Doctor do?    The only thing he could have done differently at that point would have been to forbid Rory from opening the door to let Old Amy in, rather than putting it on Rory to decide.   Which might have led to a cataclysmic Doctor-Rory confrontation but wouldn’t have changed the outcome.   And it leaves Old Amy telling Rory not to let her in…

I just glanced through the transcript before I wrote this to get a couple of recollections straight and I can’t even read that without going a bit sniffly.   An absolute masterpiece of an episode.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hmm,  well I’ve reached the end of S11 with Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos.   The episodes were gradually improving (Demons of the Punjab, Kerblam, It Takes You Away, and I posted my comments on them on the relevant pages) but I’m afraid Ranskoor raised a continual string of nitpicks which I won’t post since the thread for that episode had already noticed most of them.

Also, I came to this site while watching Season 10 when reading reviews of episodes I really liked, the Guardian’s reviewer gave a pointer to this place as being more positive than the Guardian’s ‘below the line’ comments pages which were full of negativity, so this site was more agreeable to me.   I’m acutely conscious of the irony that with some of the S11 eps I’m actually agreeing with the Guardian ‘below the line’ comments that I previously shunned.   Probably better if I don’t import it to this site.

So, I’ve still got the New Year (?) ep ‘Resolution’ to watch.   After that, whether I’ll spring for the S12  DVD set I haven’t made up my mind yet, which is the first time in my progression through the eps I’ve queried that.   I might break my usual no-spoilers rule and actually read some S12 reviews to see if it’s worth it.

However I also have the ‘last of old Who’ eps  Ghost Light  and  Survival  to watch; I’ve never seen a McCoy ep so that will be a new experience.   From all accounts  Ghost Light was really weird so it will be interesting to see if I can follow it.    (Could it be any weirder than ‘Fall Out’, the final ep of The Prisoner, I wonder?)

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb    Oh, good.   Makes it worth me posting.     I think I will give it a re-watch.

In fact I think (as someone suggested) it might have made a better series finale than Ranskoor av Kolos, it had the necessary quality of cosmic peril  (the Solitract potentially destroying the universe),  the ‘book-end’ resolution of the Grace thread, and the cosmic confrontation between the Doctor and the Solitract.    The only narrative oddity I noticed was the cave and Ribbons, which could have been skipped (they could have gone straight through the mirror into Solitract-land), but it didn’t actually contradict any other element of the story.   The location was indeed quite scenic – it was apparently in Wales, with the fjord and further mountains added in post, but very well done.

(I’ve just watched Ranskoor av Kolos, I wrote a review of that but it was all nitpicks about inconsistencies so I don’t think I’ll post it, most of them were raised by previous commenters in that thread anyway).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well the last page of comments seems to have been about comparative linguistics. Not that I object – fascinating subject.
But I came here to talk about ‘It Takes You Away’, so I guess I’ll just leave this here:

Interesting bit of world-building, feels more like the Who I’m used to.
I still can’t ‘see’ Jodie as an alien, even if she is eating dirt; though I think she improved a lot in this ep. Partly the casting, and partly the writing – it’s taken them a long time to get this far.
There were a few moments in the ’empty’ house that reached almost ‘Listen’ levels of spookiness.
Leaving Ryan to mind the blind girl might have been a way for Ryan to improve his non-existent people skills but it was a bit hard on the girl, I thought. I was absolutely sure she was going to use her Differently Abled blind skills to lead them all out of the cave in the dark, kudos to the writers for not doing the obvious.
Ribbons resembled a leftover from Hercules, or maybe Gollum. I still can’t figure where he came from. And the flesh-moths looked too furry to be properly scary. And what was the deal with the Doctor’s piece of string and Ribbons talk about guiding them, when everybody subsequently found their way between portals with apparent ease? Just a red herring I guess.
The meeting with Grace was very moving (and so would be the father’s meeting with Trine, but Grace – who we know already – overshadowed that).
The Solitract – once I got my head around the slightly incoherent explanation and worked out it was a conscious being rather than a phenomena – was an interesting concept. I was quite happy when it turned into a frog, as well that as anything else. I wouldn’t have minded a bit more screentime with the Solitract. But I thought the resolution was just too easy – the Doctor persuades the Solitract to let everyone else go in exchange for her, then in the space of 2 minutes, to let her go too without keeping her promise to tell all. She could (as someone commented) at least have given the Solitract a telepathic information transfer, surely?
Like most episodes this season, the resolution felt rushed, as if a bit more editing and attending to details would have improved it.
But overall, this was the most enjoyable episode so far this season. I might watch it again (which was my habit in previous seasons but will be a first for this one).

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KerblAmazon. Interesting concept for an episode.
The robots reminded me of the Johnny cab driver in Total Recall.
The System decided the Doctor’s most suitable aptitude was janitor? That would certainly have evoked some funny/sarcastic dialogue in the Moff’s day – though as someone in this thread pointed out, that would have put the Doc right next to the source of the problem.
I don’t see any skill from Team Tardis with the bubblewrap packing (okay, major nitpick 🙂 Having clumsily tried wrapping things myself, and having despairingly watched the skill with which shop assistants do it, I noticed this. Ryan at least should have a clue; surely the cast could have been given a quick ten-minute practice run? And they got away with a lot of talking on the job. In fact the first quarter hour was really slow.
Very good fake-out by the writer, twice in a row, in that the villains weren’t the two human bosses, and it wasn’t the System (although the System was pretty harsh in killing Charlie’s girlfriend in the hope of discouraging him). Although, the Moff would have planted many clues for us – I didn’t notice any in this episode, not even on a re-watch. This was the first ep of Season 11 that I bothered to re-watch; typically, Moffat dialogue would have layers of meaning, and you could enjoy it as much the second time through (when the dialogue would have subtly different undertones of meaning from what you knew was going to happen) as on first acquaintance.
The Doctor, as usual, talks far too much. And Ryan’s dyspraxia made one of its transitory appearances.
On re-watch, I think I noticed a few more inconsistencies – why would drone #1 be able to understand the ‘source code’, normally that would be compiled into machine code, which is all a bot would ‘see’, and surely there would have been dozens of updates since. Oddly, that bothers me far more than the magic sonic screwdriver. Though the System hijacked drone #1 to deliver its message anyway (but why couldn’t it have used any of the maintenance bots for that?) And ‘all the power being drained down to Dispatch’ like it was subject to gravity – okay, probably not intended by the writer. And, the system on detecting organic lifeforms entering Dispatch tries to *shoot* them (inaccurately)? That could well have been skipped with no loss of drama. And a soundproof cell and a liquidizer in the basement? Well, maybe it was for product testing and recycling of damaged/obsoleted stock, but a couple of lines of dialogue would have helped (see, I can think of a plausible reason in 20 seconds!)
But, on the whole, I liked it. I couldn’t care less what ‘message’ it might or might not have been trying to send about workers’ rights or commercialisation or terrorism, which seems to have so divided the commentariat.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi @janetteb

Yes, the demons not being evil was a pleasant surprise, particularly since they looked so ferocious.   It was actually quite a clever twist, since they always appeared in the vicinity of someone who had died a violent death, which naturally would make them the prime suspects.

Reasons for filming in Spain – probably budgetary, as always.   It was shot just 40 miles from ‘A Town Called Mercy’, which of course was also the scene of many famous spaghetti westerns, so I guess much of the necessary location equipment would be available for hire locally.  (I know India has ‘Bollywood’ in Bombay (Mumbai), but the Punjab is 800 miles from there).

Also, they’d save quite a bit on air fares and flight times.

It’s surprising how much gear a ‘location’ shoot involves.   Just getting it all on site at the right time must be like planning a major military operation.    A friend and I were wandering through Woodhill Forest (west of Auckland) one day, hunting old ‘Xena’ locations, and we came on a lonely big white truck with no names on it at all, just parked and deserted.   When I touched it I could feel an engine running, but we could hear no sound at all – it was that well silenced.   Very impressive.   There was a thick cable running into the trees which we followed for 300 yards and came upon a film crew who were, as always, polite and friendly but uncommunicative (they always have a few spare minders to stop stray members of the public from walking into shot).   Must have been at least 50 people there.   We worked out later it was ‘Legend of the Seeker’ from Renaissance Pictures.

I’ve only come across one other location shoot, at The Gap at the south end of Piha beach (my favourite beach).   They too were very polite and offered me coffee and cakes from the lunch tent – I still don’t know what production it was but a lot of stuff has been filmed there and even more at Bethells just to the north.    Which reminds me, it’s spring here in upside-down-land and as soon as my flu-which-is-almost-certainly-not-covid clears up, it’s ‘beach time’ again  🙂

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Here I am, forever playing catch-up…   anyway, I’ll leave this here, someone may read it some time

First impressions of Demons:

What took the Doctor so long to realise they’d landed in northwest India bang on Partition? I mean, the entire audience had surely realised that long before. But maybe we’re all primed to expect that…
And, even more, howcome the Doctor didn’t realise what was likely to happen when she let Yaz near her granny, considering what happened when s/he took Rose back to see her dad?
Interesting that the aliens turned out to be benign and benevolent – I quite liked that, although they seem to have borrowed the idea from Testimony (Twice Upon a Time). “It’s not an evil plan. I don’t really know what to do when it isn’t an evil plan” – 12th Doctor, the Jodie doc seems to be encountering non-evil plans quite frequently these days.
Certainly I thought the writing was a bit crisper than the last few eps, though I still miss Moff’s brilliance or even RTD’s.    The Jodie Doctor continues to be wordy, Moff’s Doctor would have said twice as much in half the words.

And the actual evil ‘demons’ turned out to be, not aliens, but just people.
So, they went to Grenada to film this one. South Africa, Spain, for 3 out of 5 eps – wish they’d had a budget like this in the Moffat years.

But overall, I quite enjoyed this one.

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I’ve just been reflecting on one quite disturbing development at the start of Season 11 – the Tardis  (and I don’t mean the redecoration).   It was implied in RTD’s days, and made explicit in Moffatt’s, that the Tardis had some sort of close psychic link with the Doctor.   Regenerations sometimes upset the Tardis, for example when Tennant regenerated into Matt Smith, but I don’t think she (it) ever rejected the Doctor?     But in The Woman Who Fell to Earth / Ghost Monument the Tardis dumped the Doctor out the front door at 10,000 feet and went off to sulk halfway across the galaxy.   Can they really trust each other again?

I’ve just watched The Tsuranga Conundrum, where the Doctor was again separated from the Tardis (though this time, not the Doctor’s or the Tardis’s doing).   I thought the hospital ship looked absolutely fabulous, clean lines and beautiful.   Liked the antimatter drive (though the technical explanation went on a bit long, it could have been cut in half without losing anything).   The Pting made me want to swat it, it looked like an escapee from Farscape.   Crichton or Aeryn would certainly have swatted it.     (Actually, it looked remarkably like the Vork, from ‘Beware of Dog’, though the Vork was in fact benign.   It still got killed though, that was Farscape after all…)    The other plot development, the pregnant man, was a one-line joke that I’m sure has been made many times before and it then predictably turned into the same old pregnancy-won’t-wait story we’ve seen in every soap this side of Jupiter.   I’m just not fond of medical emergencies, I’m squeamish and prefer to leave the gory details of peoples’ insides (and mine, incidentally) to people who are paid to deal with it.   Wasn’t expecting it on Who.  Consider it my equivalent of  ‘spiders’.

 

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Hi @janetteb

Yes, New Zealand has the huge advantage of being an island, and the current government did most of the right things and acted fairly promptly.   We were helped by seeing what was already happening overseas, but also, our current government is fairly popular, which undoubtedly helped greatly.   None of the other mainstream parties could see any political advantage in undermining the Government’s lockdown/quarantine measures.   We’re in the middle of an election right now but most of their criticism has been of the occasional failures of quarantine or quibbling about the management of lockdowns, not questioning the need for them.   So whichever party wins, it’s certain that immigration restrictions, quarantine of arrivals and anyone who tests positive for covid, and lockdowns in the event of any outbreaks, will continue at least until a vaccine is found.   We do have our share of conspiracy theorists and lunatic fringe, but – on this issue at least – there are very few of them, everyone has seen the overseas news.

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Hi @janetteb

Spiders. I live in Auckland, NZ (we’re just about to drop back from level 2 Covid to level 1, by the way, Auckland had an outbreak of a couple of dozen cases, mostly only a couple of miles from where I live). But we have very few poisonous spiders and they’re not bad, I think about one person a year gets bitten and no-one dies. We did have lovely (I know you won’t think so) big ‘Avondale spiders’ – I live not far from Avondale – they were Australian Huntsmans that somehow got established. Generally harmless to people, we had one in our garden but I haven’t seen one for years.

But then, in Australia, *all* the wildlife hates you and wants to kill you, or so I’ve heard 😉 We’re luckier here, I like to walk through the bush and I usually go everywhere barefoot, the worst hazard is common yellow wasps. We also have centipedes, which creep me out far worse than spiders, but I’ve only ever seen one big one (6″) and that was caught by a friend’s kids in their garden in the bush.

Anyway, Rosa – I just *know* it’s going to be a story with a moral, and while it’s a very worthy story, it isn’t Doctor Who. I watch Doctor Who for escapism. Also, my aversion to preachiness even extends to things I agree with. For example I’m broadly anti-gun, but I don’t need the Doctor telling me so every five minutes. Of course what is ‘preachy’ is very much personal opinion, some of the Daily Mail readership seem to see the mere fact of the Doctor being female, or Yaz’s mum wondering if Yaz and the Doctor have something going on, as pushing all sorts of feminist/gay messages, I don’t notice that unless the script starts belabouring it. There used to be some popular American TV show, now mercifully faded from my memory, where you could guarantee that the last two minutes would be the ‘hero’ telling his listeners (and the audience) what the moral of the story was. Ruined the whole show for me.

Hope the cat’s visit to the vet was successful, please continue…

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Hi @winston
If you’re intending to watch all of NuWho in order, may I recommend the page at tardis.fandom.com that lists all the eps (you may know it already) https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_television_stories

I found it was the best way to keep track of the inter-series specials (particularly the after-season-4 ones at the end of Tennant’s turn), and it also lists many of the ‘prequels’ and ‘webisodes’ in Seasons 6 to 9 which are well worth watching, though it tends to list them after the relevant season.  But it does give the original airdates so I actually made my own list with all eps and specials and extras in order so I could watch everything in the right order.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Spiders.

Okay, first, I liked this ep, liked Yaz’s family (and her Mum) and the researcher Jade. And some good scary moments (scared me, even though I like big spiders). Would have liked it better but for the plot holes around spiders.

I do agree with the Doctor’s disapproval of guns, except that Chibnall seems to be undercutting his own argument, every time. (In Ghost Monument, no you don’t shoot the sentrybots, just zap ’em with a nuke-like EMP – how is that better?)

But ‘everyone’ seems to have swallowed the implicit idea that shooting is a quick and painless death. This is complete BS. Unless Mr Big was an expert on spider anatomy, and a crack shot, all he was doing was inflicting random pain on it. But was the spider even suffering (before it got shot), or was it slowly drifting away? Humans deprived of oxygen do not suffer, they just lose consciousness (it’s the build-up of carbon dioxide, not lack of oxygen, that triggers the breathing/choking reflex). Maybe spiders are the same. So Mr Big was just torturing a dying creature. Chibnall could have made that obvious, but he let Mr Big off the hook. (And why didn’t the Doctor just sonic Mr Big’s gun to jam?)

And the spiders in the ‘panic room’, where it was implied that it was more ‘humane’ to let them die ‘naturally’ than shoot them. Well, given that shooting is far from painless, maybe it was, but it sounded unconvincing. I prefer to think that Jade would have come back (and did, because they’re still there) with a few cylinders of nitrogen to flood the room’s ventilation system, that would do it.

These plot holes could so easily have been fixed with a couple of lines of dialogue. Why do I get the impression that most of Chibnall’s stories are at first-draft stage and could have done with a bit of decent plot editing?

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Oh, scary episodes?   I think it has to be  Blink, Midnight, and Listen.   It’s always the things you can’t see that scare you the most.   In Blink, the Angels are moving when you can’t see them, so every time you do see them it’s a shock.    In Midnight, you never see the monster (and the mob turning on the Doctor is almost as scary).   And in Listen there are two scenes, one is the Thing that you never see clearly under the blanket, the other even more scary is the banging at the end of the world when there should be nobody there.

But in terms of scary, and it’s not sci-fi, but I think the scariest few minutes I ever saw were in an old Clint Eastwood movie called Play Misty for Me.   Eastwood played a DJ who had an affair with a woman who proved to be mentally unstable (probably couldn’t be made now because, stereotypes) but anyway, she had already stabbed a police detective to death with extreme violence so we (the audience) knew what she was likely to do, and we knew she was waiting somewhere in his house for him, but Eastwood didn’t.   And he came home and the camera followed him as he casually and unsuspectingly wandered from one room to the next, every time he walked through a door you didn’t know if this was going to be the moment she attacked, and when it wasn’t, the tension went up another notch…

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Well, with Good Omens I had an ubergeek moment when I realised the Witchfinder had stuck a pin in a real 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey map. In the wide shot the shape of the roads and river looked familiar to me, I guessed Henley on Thames (it was pure chance I went through there a couple of times on visits) and bingo! – with a bit of searching the map matched exactly. In the close-up, they’d just expertly replaced the word ‘Colstrope’ with ‘Jasmine Cottage’. I was really chuffed at finding the exact location of their mythical cottage. Everything else was unchanged from the real map.
It struck me as a bit odd, because ‘Tadfield’ was supposed to be near Oxford, which would suit with the topography of having an airfield nearby, much too hilly around Colstrope.
Then I found out that my insane map skillz had discovered – what Wikipedia and all the world (except me) knew already, what a let-down.    Seems ‘Jasmine Cottage’ really was filmed at Colstrope Farm, near Hambledon village. The film makers cheekily stuck a pin in the precise position of their filming location (even though it was quite wrong for their story). Not sure if it was an easter egg or thumbing their nose at obsessive map geeks like me. 🙂

Okay, back to Who.   I watched seven minutes of ‘Rosa’ and realised I wasn’t enjoying it.   It wasn’t fun.   I’ve watched ‘Mississippi Burning’ but I don’t really need heavy social history realism on Who.   So I just read the very full synopsis on tardis.fandom.com (there doesn’t seem to be anything significant on terms of the overall storyline) and jumped to the next ep.

I wasn’t expecting anything much, written by Chibnall and with a leaden title like ‘Arachnids in the UK’ – but I was pleasantly surprised.   Liked Yaz’s family, liked Yaz’s mum, liked the woman scientist, the spiders were really creepy (and I *like* lovely big spiders in real life, google ‘Avondale spiders’) but the shot of that mass of them scuttling towards us down a hallway really creeped me out.   The big boss was suitably nasty, if a bit disconcertingly uneven (he fluctuated from gung-ho to cowardly, from obstructive to informative as the plot required), I was sure he was going to try and dispose of all the witnesses.   And really, the old Doctor would not have let him get away with walking out of the hotel claiming a victory, remember what the tenth Doctor did to Harriet Jones?   The scenes with Graham and Grace’s memory were truly sad.   And Jodie’s character is improving, she still did a bit of heavy-handed lecturing but not as much as in the first two eps.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi @janetteb

Nice to hear from you and know I’m not just talking to myself  🙂

As far as having 3 companions goes, I don’t mind them, I just think it diffuses the relationship with the Doctor (which could be either a good or a bad thing).   So far (2 episodes) Ryan and Graham are okay, I moderately like them.   I think Yaz looks the most interesting, but so far she’s not had very much to do, hopefully she gets more in the next few eps.

At times it did feel a bit as if Chibnall was writing an ‘introduction to Doctor Who for new viewers’.   If S12 is better (in your estimation, and I know different people have differing viewpoints, but yours seems to be fairly close to mine so that’s hopefully a good gauge) then that’s encouraging.   I haven’t ordered S12 yet but I will when I get a bit further through S11.

Good Omens (the book) is fairly close to the TV series in its plot, the biggest addition in the TV series is Aziraphael’s and Crowley’s backstory through history, and also (I think) their respective ‘trials’ at the end.   (And I was fooled completely that they’d swapped identities – cunning).   I think they had to add those bits to make up the running time, six hours is a huge length to stretch a story to, I think Gaiman did extremely well not to have any slow flat bits.   Other than that, the TV series is pretty faithful to the book.  And the book is written with Pratchett and Gaiman’s customary skill with words, I’m happy to say.

Speaking of which, have you seen the movie of ‘Stardust’ – I thought that was rather charming.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well, I watched the first two eps of Season 11 so far, and called a brief halt.   I have my doubts (in advance) about ‘Rosa’ (Parks?) because it seems to me there are many ways it could go horribly wrong (but I haven’t read any reviews or anything, I don’t till after I watch the ep).   I’ll be relieved if it works, I’m just not so fond of recent-historical figures.

But I’ve ordered Ghost Light, I’ve read that it has a weird plot and spooky parts so I guess that qualifies as a spooky ep?  The first of Old Who that I will have seen in recent decades  (I saw the odd Troughton and Pertwee ep when it was first on, yes I’m that ooold, but never a Sylvester McCoy ep)

Currently partway through watching Good Omens, I loved the book, didn’t know there was a TV series till I was watching Tennant at a con Q&A on Youtube (he’s in it).   Like it very much so far.   If you’re going to have a cast of thousands, that’s the way to do it.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Ummm.   Well, I just posted my impressions of The Woman Who Fell to Earth on that thread.   I was – not horrified, but rather disappointed.   Chibnall does not have the genius for dialogue that the Moff had.   “I’m the Doctor” – at last, finally, but – “sorting out fair play throughout the universe”.    Whaaat?   Who wrote that?   How could Jodie bring herself to say it?   Do they know what ‘bathos’ is?   (Maybe it was intended as a funny line but neither the star nor the director have the timing for that).

I’ve just watched The Ghost Monument.   Like the storyline, great scenery, plenty of drama, only one scientific howler (acetylene rises but it keeps on rising, if there was enough left to ignite there would be, not burning but a massive explosion – acetylene is combustible at anything from 3% to 83% in air, which is a hell of a wide ratio – but I can overlook that).   So, quite a watchable story overall, with even a bit of traditional running-down-corridors, with a satisfying conclusion.    But will someone please stop the Doctor from being so didactic and preachy, it’s just annoying, could someone please make Chibnall cut her speeches in half.   We usually get the idea, whatever it is, it doesn’t need repeating twice over every time for the hard of comprehension.   Zapping robots with a nuke-like EMP is better than shooting them with guns, believing in yourself is a  Good Thing, Teamwork is also a Good Thing, I’m expecting Family Values to raise its head any moment.

And the new Tardis – would be an interesting cavern in a magic castle.   As a space ship, it’s a cluttered mess.   This leaves Capaldi’s great spacious control room as far and away the best Tardis.

I think I’m going to mentally draw a line under Doctor Who at Twice Upon a Time, and regard S11 like a spin-off, that way I can be more charitable about it.    Oh my gods, I’m turning into one of those moaning Old Fans aren’t I?   I’d better stop right now.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Just re-watched with the commentary track (J Whittaker and the director) on.   Her Yorkshire (?) accent was much stronger on the commentary track, I found it a bit distracting for a Doctor  (which is odd, since I didn’t find Eccleston’s accent weird, nor Tennant or Capaldi’s Scottish ones).    But I’m starting to get used to it.   Not sure if I could say the episode improved with second watching, since I had the commentary track to distract me.   Maybe I’m ready to move on to the next ep.    If the Doctor acquires a bit more gravitas and the dialogue peps up a bit, I’ll accept it, if not I’ll (mentally) draw a line under the end of Moffat/Capaldi’s Doctor and regard season 11 like a spinoff.

(P.S.  Before someone shoots me, I put the ‘(?)’ after ‘Yorkshire’ because I’m no expert on accents, I’m sure somebody will correct me on that).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well, just watched it for the first time.     Ummmmmm.    Definitely liked Yaz.  Ryan and Graham were okay, didn’t annoy me.   Jodie Whittaker, I just can’t get enthusiastic about.   Too bland.   She just doesn’t have the impact a Doctor should.   Not helped by the fact that many of her lines were – uninspired.   They didn’t have the sparkle of a Moffat dialogue.   She did a lot of explaining stuff we all know already.   And she really should avoid the goldfish look and keep her mouth shut.   Maybe she’ll grow on me, Matt Smith did.

Grace, now, I really liked.   And she was courageous and adventurous.   AND THEN THEY KILLED HER!  Wtf???   (Actually, I would have loved to see her – the actor that is – as The Doctor.   Now wouldn’t that have triggered a few people.)

The ensemble companions aren’t really my thing – scenes where each one takes it in turn to ‘contribute’ something useful just set off my ‘contrived’ detectors like almost nothing else.

The plot was generally okay.   The writing did actually make me feel sympathetic to some of the red-shirt minor cast – the security guard for example.    But it all felt a bit – routine.

The villain was kinda hokey.   Creepy, but a bit Ice Warrior, and the info-dump he did explaining his entire setup in one go was very obvious (“*INFO-DUMP*” jumped into my brain as soon as he started).   The Moff would have broken it up with (funny/sarcastic) interjections from the Doctor or companions.    The information-gathering ball of snakes was a far more scary ‘monster’.

Not that it matters, but the ‘coming soon’ bit on the end credits was weird, all those people-I’ve-never-heard-of due to appear in future eps does nothing for me, why should I care?   I just hope their bit parts are well written.

As I said, ummmmm.   Hope the next eps improve.

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Weeeeell, just watched Twice Upon a Time (well, a couple of days ago).    Which was pleasant watching, nothing earthshaking like World Enough and Time.    It did have probably the best line in all of Doctor Who – “It’s not an evil plan.   I don’t really know what to do when it isn’t an evil plan.”

Nice bit of fan service with the first Doctor and his Tardis, and I really did like that Testimony gave the Doctor back his memories of Clara.

So now, I’m about to venture into 13th Doctor territory for the first time ever.   Not sure how I feel about this, I’m hopeful if not confident.   I think the Moff will be a very hard act to follow but I usually manage to take each episode on its own terms.

I was actually ready to do this two days ago but then Youtube showed me a link to a Doctor Who panel at some Con, which of course linked to another, and I disappeared down the Youtube rabbit hole for two evenings.   There’s a huge amount of Who peripheral footage on Youtube.   So now I’ve got gigabytes of Con Q&A’s on my hard drive, I’m ready to resume Season 11.    Here goes…

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

P.S.   Mondassian Cybermen.     When I first saw a picture of the original cybermen, I cringed.   The most pathetic ‘monster’ ever, only too obviously a person wearing a sock on his head.    Worse ‘special FX’ than Lost in Space.    (Steven Moffatt apparently felt the same – he thought they were rubbish).

Now I have their ‘origin’ story from World Enough and Time, they are by far the most convincing and scary Cybermen of all – precisely because they *are* a (mutilated) human in a sack.   What previously detracted from their believability, now adds to the horror.    I never would have thought that possible.

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World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

I’ve just re-watched through them and, wow.  Incidentally, the phrase ‘World enough and time’ is from a poem ‘To his coy Mistress’ written by Andrew Marvell c.1650.   Is this Moff having his little pun on Mistress?   The poem itself is a bit Omar Khayyam-ish, roughly ‘I would take a world of time, but life is short, so we should get a move on’.   Or as Billy said in ‘Blink’, ‘life is short and you are hot’.   I could imagine all sorts of implications for the finale double-episode.

But anyway, the first scene in the space ship is Missy at her most delightful, so what happens next is truly startling and shocking.   Did anyone, ever, imagine for a moment that the blue alien would actually shoot Bill?    (And yet Moff managed to mingle incredibly dark with genuinely funny lines –  “if somebody kills you and it’s not me, we’ll both be disappointed.”)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a darker fate for a companion than what happened to Bill.    Repeating myself, did anyone ever imagine for a moment that Bill would actually be fully converted into a Cyberman?   At that point everything seemed utterly hopeless for her character.   Seeing Bill slowly realising that she was a Cyberman was probably the most heartbreaking sequence in Who.   So I was utterly delighted when Heather showed up to rescue her.

No, I didn’t think Heather’s rescue was ‘too easy’ or too ‘deus ex machina’, since we were told all about Heather in episode 1, and of course I had completely forgotten about her (like everyone else).   But so what? – logically, it made perfect sense that Heather could have been keeping track of Bill, and when would there ever be a stronger reason for her to show up and rescue her.   I don’t need Moffatt to have kept waving clues in front of me, I *like* it when the writer tells me what he’s going to do in Scene 1 and then takes me by surprise when he does exactly that.   I know there are similarities to Clara’s ‘rescue’ – but obviously not enough similarity that I was led to suspect what was coming.  And I refuse to indulge in the miserly game of ‘if only XX hadn’t been rescued the same way’ – I like Bill, I loved Clara, I’m happy for both of them.

So, fantastic season ender.   I think I still like Hell Bent best, just because it was more fun to watch, but World Enough / Doctor Falls is right up there on the top shelf.

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@oochillyo

Hi Declan, since I’m watching them all in order, the ep I’m about to start next (with due solemnity) is  World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls.    Because I know it’s the end of the season, the end of Bill, Nardole, the 12th Doctor, Missy, and Moffatt.   The end of almost everything, in other words.     (Yes I know there’s Twice Upon a Time still to come, but that’s not a regular ep).

 

Suggestion for something for you to watch (are any other guys reading this?   Please suggest something for Declan, if so)

If nobody else has any suggestions, and if you want something less serious than World Enough and Time, how about a favourite like The Doctor’s Wife?   Or, if you like Amy,  The Girl Who Waited?   Or, if you haven’t watched it many times already, Blink?   Just random suggestions.

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@oochillyo

Declan,  since the alien is, well, alien, then maybe it could be a humongous bacteria.   That’s no more improbable than any other explanation,I guess.   🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

One thing I have to retract from my post at 11:10pm – the yo-yo wasn’t ‘wrong’ as I stated, the Doctor employed it *after* touchdown, not before.   (The synopsis at  tardis.fandom.com  had events out of sequence).   But the Shuttle would still have made a new crater when it hit.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Maybe my previous post should be in the Kill The Moon forum, which I am now reading, but there’s another point I’d missed, made by Badwulf on 4thOct2014, that the Space Shuttle wouldn’t even be at the Moon because it could barely lift one maximum-size H-bomb into low earth orbit  (Shuttle capacity 24 tonnes, Tsar Bomba weight 27 tonnes)…   why (for the purposes of the story) didn’t Earth just build a super-rocket?

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Kill The Moon – My reservations are twofold: First, I think Doctor Who was maybe unwise to tread so close to the edge on the abortion issue (and I don’t think this is the place to debate that so I won’t give my views on it).

But secondly, and I’ll happily discuss this, is the physical/mechanical impossibilities which are not only featured but lampshaded. Now Moff lampshaded the improbability of Santa and his elves in Last Christmas *but* then he ‘fixed’ it. Not so in KTM, no fix would have worked (other than, ‘it was all an illusion’).

First, the Moon is ‘getting heavier’, with no apparent cause. How? That’s a violation of conservation of matter, one of the fundamental principles of physics – particularly flagrant when you’re invoking physics to explain why that extra mass is causing catastrophic tides on Earth. Then, blowing up the Moon with just 100 H-bombs? – wouldn’t even scratch it, and in any case, if it did disintegrate the Moon all the fragments will just stay orbiting about the same centre of mass. Next, the Space Shuttle, which is a glider when it lands – how did glide to a landing on the Moon with no air to glide with? How was there any apparent gravity to operate a yo-yo? – there should have been NO ‘gravity’ as the Shuttle headed ballistically towards impact.
Next, not a physics point, but how would you get everyone on (half of) Earth to agree to switch their lights off at an hour’s notice? And finally, how does a newly-hatched creature lay an egg of equal size and mass to itself? Oh, one more thing, when that moon-sized dragon flew away – wings? In space? How does that work without air to react against? And flapping in real time, say a 2-second period with an amplitude approximately equal to the Moon’s diameter, which means a peak velocity of 4000 km/sec, or an acceleration of about 400,000g – just exactly what materials is the dragon made of?

Why does that kill the story for me when I can accept ‘bigger on the inside’ and time travel? Because the Tardis is alien tech, whereas the whole premise of KTM is explicitly based on Earth technology and actual physics (for example, the moon having effect on tides).

It’s a matter of context and consistency within the story. The Doctor can ride his old Triumph bike up the Shard (in The Bells of St John) because he’s ‘fixed’ it with alien tech. I’m happy with that. But we *know* that if Clara tried riding her perfectly-ordinary little bike up that it would instantly fall off and seriously injure her, because ‘real’ earth physics applies. Following any story requires an assumption that things will work as they do in our world *unless* there is some special reason, supplied by the story, for them to work differently. Fire and bullets and lack of air will kill you. Water is wet and (some) things float on it. People can’t fly (without help). And so on.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by  Dentarthurdent. Reason: Corrected accleration to 400,000g

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi Declan

Kill the Moon – I see you concentrated on the human relationships.   It wasn’t that that turned me off KTM, it was the atrocious physics (but then I’m an engineer).

However, to answer your points (with what I remember from a few weeks ago) –  first off, Courtney was really, really annoying.   I would have chucked her off the Tardis for everyone’s safety, you just *know* she’s going to do something stupid that endangers everybody.    I think Clara was quite wrong to force the Doctor to take her.

I would absolutely have killed the moon alien *if* it was sure the alien would kill all life on earth.   But of course this was a huge unknown.   I absolutely sympathise with Clara’s fury at the Doctor abdicating responsibility and putting her in the hot seat – he *must* have known the probable results (or been able to predict them), it’s the sort of thing he does all the time.   Was he just leaving Clara to it to teach her a lesson? – totally uncalled-for, hugely excessive, friends don’t treat friends like that, and risking the future of life on earth on a last-minute decision by Clara or anybody else is NOT the sort of thing the Doctor would do, ever.   (I just read the synopsis at tardis.fandom.com, the Doctor *did* know.   That is virtually inexcusable).

So, even on ‘relationships’ factors, I wouldn’t have liked the ep.   The only good thing was the monumental clash between Clara and the Doctor at the end, but (IMO) that could have been engineered in a far more credible way without having the Doctor go so out-of-character.

I seem to recall the lights-on/lights-off scenario was contrived because communications were breaking down.   The time for a radio signal would be the same as the time to see lights – just over a second.

Think I’ll make a separate post of why the ep totally failed in physics terms – you can probably safely ignore it   🙂

 

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@oochillyo

Hi Declan

Up to you if you want to share your thoughts on Kill The Moon.   I’d be interested,  can’t promise to agree but that doesn’t matter.    This is a democracy   🙂

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

P.S.   Intriguing that the Tardis’s translation field extended to the cave the Romans were hiding in and the cairn at the Gate – and presumably the Doctor must have ‘fixed’ it so the field persisted inside the Gate forever, for the benefit of the Picts and Romans (or maybe by the time the field wore off they would have evolved a pidgin)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well, I survived Who going full Edgar Rice Burroughs (the Martian one).    So now I’m up to Eaters of Light, which I like a lot better.   The Roman soldiers/deserters were surprisingly decent fellows, I was much amused that they found Bill’s sexual preferences quaintly old-fashioned.   (That’s two lots of deserters in a cave in two episodes).    I actually understood the rationale for the Romans/Picts guarding the gate at the end of the ep, much better this time around (better than my first view a year ago) – due to the time slip, their ‘lifetime’ inside the gate was virtually ‘forever’ in our world.

I have a slightly melancholic feel watching this ep, because I know it’s the last ‘regular’ ep, tomorrow is the beginning of the end.

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