[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well I finally got my re-watch started, at Eve of the Daleks.

The idea of an ever-shortening time loop is quite a good plot device. In one way it faintly resembles CapaldiDoc’s repeated death in Heaven Sent, though the details are of course very different and this only lasts 50 minutes, not billions of years.

I’m not too sure *why* it resets on the death of the Doctor and companions. No, wait: maybe I have it backwards.   Maybe it resets automatically when the ‘countdown’ ends at midnight, regardless of the status of the Doctor et al. So that when they are killed, they stay dead until midnight when it resets to a time when they were still alive. So from their point of view, their death is immediately followed by their revival the the start of the time loop. I think that kinda makes sense. Somehow.

Yaz and Dan are fine as companions in this episode. And they carry their weight in the action stakes.
And Graham and Ryan are at their least annoying.
[Interjection:] Graham and Ryan aren’t IN this episode!
[Me:] Precisely!

The Doctor still talks too much, though maybe not as badly as in earlier seasons. In fact as the episode progresses there’s an awful lot of Rah! Rah! Rah! pep talk from the Doctor, I’d be a bit like Marvin the paranoid android: “Are you trying to motivate me? Because it’s a waste of time.” Obviously my babble-tolerance is way lower than Nerys’s (ref. her last comment).

What the heck, the other characters carry the story.

There are a few loose ends – though the Daleks have been upgraded with rotary cannon Miniguns, they seem to be remarkably bad shots, spraying energy bolts around the place and only hitting a human when it suits the plot. Also, though these bolts appear to be quite easily stopped by lift doors and similar furniture, they can apparently penetrate Dalek armour and shred the steel gas cylinders which Nick has conveniently stored in the basement. And would the collapsing building kill the Daleks? Never mind, worse anomalies happen all the time in Who. But these anomalies are overlookable for the sake of the story

When the Tardis excruciatingly remodelled itelf, I was hoping for a cleaner interior, but no such luck, it still had those weird nodding columns that looked like some bizarre sex toy. (Or does that say something regrettable about my mind?)

In my memory, this looked like the best episode Chibnall wrote. On a re-watch, I’m not so sure whether that was the case, or whether it was just a relief to encounter a finite story after the apocalyptic Universe-destroying Flux.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   I wouldn’t worry about ‘not keeping up.’    I used to comment on episodes as I got them then and then found that the previous comments I was ‘replying’ to were made two years before…   One of the hazards of ‘catching up’ with DVD’s.

But I don’t recall anyone ever being put out about it.

Having watched the movie recently, I can see why you weren’t optimistic for a revival.   McGann was great, the film was OK but it felt somehow American (Canadian?), it just didn’t really feel like Who (old or new).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston     Rose was an excellent way to (re)start a series.   I think by then, production values (and special FX) had got ‘good enough’ (without the rather charitable allowances we have to make even for the last of OldWho).  Even Mickey’s sticky encounter with the bin was – okay.

I would say the Companion has been as prominent and as important as the Doctor, ever since  (I don’t know if this was the case in OldWho).

I do recall at the time there was some criticism of casting a pop singer as Companion, and with the development of a romantic interest with the Doctor, which I think had never been allowed to happen in oldWho.   But I think it was absolutely successful.   It certainly rekindled my four-decades-dormant interest in Who.

I don’t know if it was established in oldWho, to make gentle fun of the Doctor’s physical characteristics (I’m sure there was a joke about Ecclestone’s ears, and his accent “Lots of planets have a North”), but anyway, that has continued ever since.

Please keep posting as you progress.   I have yet to re-start my (much more limited) watch-through, starting at the end of Chib’s era.

(How can you watch Who and chop tomatoes without cutting your fingers?)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@craig     Thank you, Emperor.   🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@craig  –   just to let you know, some pest calling itself Dylan joined a few days ago and immediately spammed half a dozen forums with links to  ??American baseball jerseys???  (together with some bland AI-generated ‘ ‘nice post’ comments)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston  @ps1l0v3y0u   The Moment is definitely and memorably in the cell in the Tower, in the TV episode.  I remember the phrase ‘different case, same software’ and probably said by her.

BUT in the book, that was an internal thought of the Doctor (probably 11) – “The case was new, but the drives and software were the same as the old boy’s”.   (Obviously wasn’t running Windows   🙂     I stand to be corrected (because it’s always a bit distracting working out who’s speaking in the book) but I don’t think the Moment was mentioned in the Tower scene.

I’m not sure when the book was written vs the episode, but I can imagine the Moment’s presence was added in because they had Billie available – so the Moment acquired more personality than it might have done with just another actor.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I should be able to answer your ‘little nit picks’, having just read the book.   But I can’t, quite.   So now I’m just going to *have* to watch the episode again**.   As for the witch/well discussion, as I recall  (dashes off to get the book – damn Moff’s non-sequential chapter numbering…)   Elizabeth ordered them to be taken to the Tower (in Clara’s hearing) and it was the Doctor (11) who said ‘What’s in a tower.   Just another day at the office’ and winked at Clara.   ‘The office’  – UNIT  HQ?

The Vortex Manipulator code – one of the Doctors scratched it into the wall, and Clara and Kate (and hence Zygon Kate) assumed the Doctor would leave them a message.   So Kate (Zygon)’s men were looking for it, one of them texted it through to Kate (Zygon’s) phone attached to the incoming phone dock in the Black Archive, Clara read it and stole the VM.

That’s so far as I can patch it together.   No doubt Moff has worked out an absolutely valid chain of causation, he usually does.

**Since it’s near the top of my list of Ten Favourite Episodes, that won’t be too much of a chore.   🙂

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@whohar    I think Steven Moffat sums up the Doctor really well.   There is something subtly – odd – about the Doctor’s view of life.   Moff could do that supremely well.   Oh, and your addition (humanlike but otherworldly)  – yes I agree.

I think Chibs tried to do the same slight oddness on occasion, but it requires a delicate touch and (maybe I was in a non-appreciative frame of mind) I don’t think he’s got it.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I think Day of the Doctor is the only Who novelisation I’ve read.

Getting a bit further in the book, I’ve notice that the Moment (Rose) doesn’t seem to feature at all in the dungeon in the Tower of London.   I distinctly remember, from the TV episode, her leaning against the wall in the background, invisible to the two later Doctors but (in my view) completely changing the dynamic of the scene by her presence.    (Something long-haired blondes with dark eyebrows invariably seem to do).

I do have to admire the skill with which Moffat ensures that we can always tell which of the Doctors is speaking, even while the narration switches from one to another, often just by their manner of phrasing.   The War Doctor was particularly distinctive in that respect, I can almost hear John Hurt’s voice.

@janetteb   I was intending to get ‘Rose’, but – like you – I couldn’t get hold of it.

I’ve just completed watching Red Dwarf as far as the end of Season 8 (IMO, seasons 3-6 were the best, 7 and 8 are fading in quality, to my mind); and all the Daniel Craig  Bond movies  (and it isn’t often I get to mention those two in the same sentence  🙂

– so now I’m about to start re-watching Who from Eve of the Daleks (or somewhere around there) forwards to the present.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

I’m just re-reading Moffat’s The Day of the Doctor. (That was one of my top TV episodes ever). When I first read the book, I think my experience was somewhat impaired by having recently watched the episode. The written word can never match the ‘personality’ that actors bring to the screen. (Can’t think of a better way to put it). So I missed that. And also, the extra material in the book just seemed like a digression from the story, so I was a little impatient to get back to the bits I knew.
Reading it this time round, I like it a lot better. It can certainly stand on its own as a sci fi tale. Notwithstanding that the chapters are all out of numerical order, which is potentially confusing. Probably my foreknowledge (from having seen the TV episode) helps me there. How easily a reader who comes to it ‘cold’ would follow it, I really can’t judge.

Writing and film have entirely different strengths and weaknesses, a good book is no guarantee of a good film, or vice versa. But I think in The Day of the Doctor, Moffat has been very good at both.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit  @ps1l0v3y0u

Memory can be very misleading.   Things get conflated, or attributed to the wrong person.   I once attended a party where the host had a huge Union Jack as a bedspread.   Years later I met him on a bus and he invited me to his wedding reception in a couple of weeks.  I reminded him that last time I saw him he was walking down the road wearing his Union Jack (it was that sort of party).   I would have sworn to that on oath.   Come the reception, he had dozens of old photos tacked to the walls – including one of ME wearing the Union Jack.    I know what my memory did – it remembered ‘Terry’ and ‘Flag’ and linked the two.   (A psychologist called Daniel Simons later described this sort of thing but I thought of it first   🙂

Eyewitnesses are famously fallible; psychological studies have been done where phony bank raids have been staged and the unwitting ‘witnesses’ have happily described the shotgun one of the robbers had when *none of them had any sort of gun*.   And so on.

Sometimes I get so used to modern developments I forget how sci-fi they seemed in past decades.   I remember how strange/spooky The Village looked in The Prisoner, with hidden CCTV cameras and doors that opened by themselves – that really impressed me at the time.   Come the present, I recently absent-mindedly walked into a glass sliding door because it *didn’t* open for me.   Really.   And, I was just reading a thriller set in the 60’s where the subject told his office to phone him back at the hotel desk at exactly 2p.m. with some detail or other, and I thought ‘why don’t they ring him as soon as they find it out?’.   Then I realised that nobody had mobile phones.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u

I’d like to comment but I’m afraid I’m hopeless about dates.   I can remember 1066,1588,1805,1812,1815,1914-18 and 1939-45 and that’s about it.   Also 1923 (when the british railways were ‘grouped’ into the ‘big four’) and 1948 when they were all nationalised as BR (‘cos I’m a train nut) – and that’s it.

If you told me an asteroid was going to hit my house at precisely 3pm on September 11th  I’d be wandering around at 2-45 pm scratching my head and thinking ‘there’s something I ought to remember.   Probably doesn’t matter, I’ll remember it later’.   I’m worse than the Doctor when it comes to dates.

Incidentally, there’s an inherent logical flaw in any adventures involving someone with a time machine, which is, why don’t they just go back in time by half an hour and tip themselves off?   I guess that’s where the prohibition of crossing the timelines originally came from.   Something that subsequent writers have invoked when it suits them, and conveniently ignored when it doesn’t.    The Tardis’s notorious inaccuracy in its destinations is also one of those on-again off-again things, I thought the exchange in The Doctor’s Wife handled that beautifully – “You never took me where I wanted to go”  “But I always took you where you needed to go.”

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi @janetteb   Nice to hear from you.    I was planning to re-watch from the three final Chibs ‘specials’ up to current, but I might push my start point back to this episode, and see if the subsequent Fluxisodes make any more sense to me than first time around.   But that will be in a couple of weeks time, I’m currently watching Red Dwarf seasons 1-8, up to 7 at the moment, with a brief pause to polish scratches out of a DVD.   (I used 2000 grit wet’n’dry sandpaper, followed by a 3000 grit abrasive disc – both from panelbeaters’ supplies – and finishing with Silvo.   My laptop with its slimline DVD drive still barely reads it, the the full-size DVD drive in my desktop PC reads it much better, so I just used that to rip it all to a new DVD disk which my laptop can read.   Probably breaching all sorts of copyright laws, but if someone tries to persuade me that doing the necessary to view my DVD on my own laptop is naughty they’ll have an uphill battle   🙂

@ps1l0v3y0u   I do agree that ‘less is more’ in respect of the Angels, and (obviously) their debut in Blink.   Still, I obviously (from my previous comments) found them well -rendered in this episode.  Interesting to note the steady increase in their capabilities with each successive appearance.   But it happened to the Daleks and it happened to the Cybermen.   It’s probably a ‘law’ that applies to most fictional serial adversaries.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hi @janetteb    Great to hear from you.

Obviously, I agree with you.   Of the JW seasons, I think I found the Flux most disconcerting – partly because I lost the plot  🙂    and partly because universe-wide total destruction I always find depressing, rather than scary.   I most identify with the characters when the danger is individual and personal, like in Blink  or Listen or Midnight.

I only ever watched the Flux through once, and probably won’t again.   As I recall the best episode was the Weeping Angel one (Village of the Angels).

The other JW seasons, there were usually a few episodes that were worth a re-watch, and I did that.   But when I start my (long-delayed because I’m working through Red Dwarf first) latest re-watch I’ll probably start at the last few, viz.  Eve of the Daleks, and work through to the latest Gatwa one.   Because I’ve only seen them once so far.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    ‘Apple-converted-space’ – does that mean that Apple’s ‘walled garden’ has now expanded to include substantial chunks of the Universe?    😉

I think part of my failure to appreciate the Flux came from impatience – we knew the season was supposed to be a six-parter, so when successive episodes seemed to relate to some completely unrelated theme I was a little impatient to know how these linked up, and the ‘stand-alone’ details in the episodes seemed like a time-wasting digression.   So I couldn’t really ‘get into’ the story.

Now I know perfectly well that Moffat did season-long arcs (except they weren’t advertised as such), most notably Series 6, and I was fine with that.   (It started with The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, and ended with Wedding of River Song).   So why was I okay with that series – because individual episodes in between were complete in themselves and I wasn’t impatiently waiting to see how they tied in.   And this in turn was because the series wasn’t advertised as a continuing story.

I don’t know if that makes sense.

I did find the reduction of the Fam  (‘Fam’?   Ugh.   Remind me again why this Doctor got on my nerves?)  definitely helped, though.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Well now, re-reading *all* the comments, it seems most people found it an improvement on the previous episode.   With the occasional fractious nitpicker such as – me (Hi everybody 🙂  who found the plotholes more easily than following the plot.   Frequently Chibs is sadly predictable in the PC-ness of his stereotypes – the stupid British general being a case in point, or Mary Seacole turning into an unlikely war hero.   (Not that what she actually did wasn’t praiseworthy, and she must have been a very determined woman, but spying on the Sontaran camp?   Is Chibz getting her confused with Mata Hari?   As I said before, I’m very squeamish about representations of actual historical figures – which tend to be misrepresentations either by omission or commission.)

I would normally have answered some of @ps1l0v3y0u ‘s points, but honestly, I can’t recall enough of the ep to comment intelligently.   Maybe if I re-watched I would have an  apocrypha…  an apocalypse…  an epiphany (got it!) and realise how it all made sense, but I’m not sure if I can summon up the mental effort.  This is probably why theatre critics get notoriously bitter and twisted.    To those who enjoyed this episode, I apologise for my negativity.

(As an aside, what does  <span class=”Apple-converted-space”> </span>  mean?   Is it some quirk of ps1l0v3y0u ‘s system or of the Forum’s editor?)

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    I wasn’t aware of the attempt to speed up story development of which you speak.    Maybe just the 6-ep season which were all ‘chapters’ of the one story passed for that, I don’t know.   I tend to be a couple of years adrift of the majority of fans here, right now is as caught-up as I’ve ever been.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u
Wow. You really are boldly going where no man who values his sanity has ever gone a second time. (That came out rather clunky, didn’t it?) The Flux.

With respect, I do your posts somewhat – gnomic. I have to scratch my head (or the episode list) to catch some of your references. (As an aside, I’m running Debian Linux, and I’ve never appreciated its ability to run six desktops simultaneously, more than when considering your comments, that way I can have your comment on this Forum open in one, the text editor where I’m writing this in another, Tardis.fandom.com’s timeline/episode synopses in a third, and (if necessary) Chrissie’s transcripts page in the fourth. (Now I guess someone’s going to tell me Windows can do that too, whoopee do, about time 🙂
But I found it worth the effort.

Back to your comments – the Skirmish of Ranskoor Av Kolos, I wholly agree about. Spyfall I liked part 1, but it fell apart in part 2. Fugitive of the Judoon was probably the best of that bunch.

Revolution of the Daleks was, IIRC, okay, but nothing to write home about. We did lose two-thirds of the Terrible Trio, which was a plus, not least because it gave the remaining third i.e. Yaz, a chance to become an actual character. I find Bradley Walsh much more convincing as MC of The Chase than being the father figure on Who. And as for the awkward relationship between Graham and part-time dyspraxic Ryan, that was – awkward. And yawnsville. I found the little Who fan club in Love & Monsters far more emotionally engaging, and that was just one ep.

Anyways, on to Halloween Apocrypha. It’s still unclear to me why faithful doggie Karvanista started the episode by trying to kill the Doctor, annoying as she could be. I eventually got that the Lupari were obliged to protect their designated humans, in Karvanista’s case Dan, though trying to off another human would seem to be a direct clash with some other designated Lupari. (I guess technically the Doc wasn’t human so didn’t count, but Yaz did). What happened when a human died, could their Lupari go off duty? And what happened when another small human arrived, did another Lupari get assigned? So how did they deal with the human population explosion, did Lupari also reproduce frantically? Dunno.)

I liked Dan much better than Graham, dunno why since he was functionally similar. Maybe better casting, and he wasn’t handicapped with Ryan hanging around his neck.

You were, I think, particularly gnomic about the robots in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, but I eventually clicked. Mitchell and Webb are much better in their own series.

As soon as I saw Mr Williamson’s strange fetish about tunnels in 1820 Liverpool I thought it must have some connection with the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, who opened their steep tunnel from Edge Hill down to the docks – but that was in 1830. I’m still not sure if that was an abortive draft attempt to tie in with history. When I first saw Willamson I thought it might be a doppelganger for George Stephenson – as someone who admires Stephenson I’m much relieved it wasn’t. The plus’s of being featured in Who are outweighed by the probable mangling of history, George (or his ghost) dodged a bullet there.

I remember at the time, being confused about what was going on and who was who. Exacerbated by jumping from one situation to another apparently at random. Even reading Tardis.fandom.com’s detailed synopsis doesn’t completely cure this. This confusion persisted for the remainder of the Flux season, probably exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t really muster any enthusiasm for the characters. Moff used to do season-long arcs, but he used to keep his storyline relatively straight. Note to Chibs – disentangling complicated arcs really takes a bit of mental effort, and the viewers need to be really ‘invested’ in the characters, or they won’t bother. (Admission – I wasn’t, so I didn’t).

Never mind, the light at the end of the tunnel is Eve of the Daleks.

I’m due for a rewatch of RTD 2.0, I might go slightly further, back as far as Eve and start from there.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   I think the reason for 15’s regeneration was to use some of the regeneration energy to disturb the universe sufficiently to being into existence Poppy, a virtual kid of which he had no memory and only existed in Conrad’s dream world.   (Or something like that).

@whohar    Jodie Whittaker’s appearance wasn’t cringe, but it did seem a bit like ‘let’s wheel out another old character for the fans’.   I thought it was going to be Ten/14, which might have been more fitting given his extensive experience with regeneration…

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   I pretty much agree with your ranking of RTD  Who season enders.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@whohar   Who *was* one of the least macho sci-fi’s, once.   The last few eps, the Doc has been getting increasingly macho, shooting things with his enhanced sonic gun – I mean screwdriver, posing with macho orchestral music blaring – kind of the opposite of what RTD said.   Maybe Disney got at him – the Star Wars influence.

I did find the sudden transition 10 minutes from the end, from battle to domestic bliss very disconcerting.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit   If that was a kilt, why didn’t it have tartan on it?   And why would this Doctor wear one?   I could understand it if 12 (Capaldi) wore one, he was Scottish, as a number of jokes testified.   (And number 9 was from ‘the North’.   I don’t know if 10 (Tennant) was Scottish too?)    Of course we know they weren’t Scottish or northerners or from anywhere except Gallifrey, but it seems individual Doctors could identify as having some ethnic/geographical origin.   Quite why all Doctors regenerated as humanoids, rather than e.g. Sontarans, would be an interesting question.   I suppose the gallifreyan phenotype was humanoid so they regenerated into something not too physically different.

Your point 1 – the Time Ring.   Okay, I didn’t know it had been used before, I withdraw my minor point of criticism of RTD on that score.   But does that really matter to my understanding of this episode?   It’s obviously a time/teleport device, like the Vortex Manipulator or any teleport bracelet.

2.   Again, the background of the Zero Room doesn’t really impact on my understanding of the episode, since it’s described quite well in the dialogue.

In general, any of these references back to old episodes are dealt with in such a way that you don’t have to know the backstory, deliberately for the benefit of new viewers.   So I maintain that I don’t need to watch all of oldWho to appreciate nuWho.   It’s fine to watch older eps if you want to, but not essential.   Can you point me to any factoids from oldWho that are essential to understanding any nuWho plot?

Devon – I’ve been through Devon several times.   Probably the most isolated part would be Dartmoor.   I’ve been through Brisbane a couple of times as a transit passenger, it’s my favourite Aussie airport for that, the transit lounge has all the architectural merit of a farm shed but it’s *comfortable*, which outranks 90% of the (far more pretentious) airports I’ve been through.   Neither place struck me as ‘totally isolated from the known Universe’.   Trying to think of a place like that – in NZ, might be the Waitaanga plateau, or parts of the Mackenzie country or even Fiordland.   But surely Australia has many parts of the Outback that would fit that description.

I agree the electronic music was more distinctively Who.   But I don’t mind the orchestra as such, if it’s used with restraint, just that in this episode there was so much ‘heroic’ music going on it distracted from the story and became bombastic.   This would actually have been a (slightly) better episode with a more restrained soundtrack.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Having just read all the comments –

I agree with @ps1l0v3y0u that the middle of the series was stronger than the start/end. But then, as far as endings go, RTD has a habit of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it. I don’t think that works particularly well with Doctor Who, it tends to distract us with the minutiae of UNIT which diminishes the human interest of the Doctor and his companions. This was, though, way better than last season’s finale.

As @cathannabel said, I think Anita had totally fallen for the Doctor (that interlude in the Time Hotel was charming), and her boyfriend was very much a consolation prize. And seeing the Doc and Rogue established (for her) that her daydreams about her and the Doc could never have happened.

Just comparing RTD season finales with Moff’s, I’ve noticed that RTD tends to have world-shattering themes – where Moff is much more limited, more personal, and therefore (IMO) much more effective. I’m thinking of Death in Heaven, or Hell Bent, or The Doctor Falls. I know this finale was very personal indeed (the Poppy sequence), except it felt somehow tacked-on, as if the ending had been grafted on when it became known that Ncuti was going to leave the show. I could be wrong about that, of course.

As @jimthe fish noted, Omega was a fairly short-lived disposable (and quickly disposed of) villain, and any big threat would have done.

I agree with @whohar, the regeneration didn’t grab me as much as previous ones have. And this may be because we’ve seen so many regenerations now, or because this Doctor – after just two seasons – just hadn’t impressed himself on my subconscious as much as previous Doctors, not only that but we’ve had four Companions in two seasons – Rose(2), Ruby, Anita and Belinda – so they too feel ‘temporary’ and the effect of the Doctor regenerating on his companions was diluted. I’m not sure I’m putting that very well.

And who is Anita’s boss? Evidently someone with some power, but a complete mystery to me.

The scene where Omega emerges and eats the Rani – I was expecting something more cunning from the Doctor, somehow playing the Rani and Omega off aganist each other. Like, say, the three-way standoff between Ten, the Master and Rassilon in The End of Time. This Doctor has been getting more violent, and his (is-it-still-a-) Screwdriver more and more powerful, as the series goes on.

And I agree with @jimthe fish, that I’d like to see Billie Piper as the Doctor for a good long time – say 3 series at least – (assuming they ever get made) so she can settle in to the part. Rather than just being the temporary title-holder. I have no logical problem at all with Billie (Rose) being the Doctor, after all Capaldi was the Doctor perfectly convincingly even though he’d previously had a significant role in an episode. And Billie had no problems with being the Interface for The Moment. So in the world of Doctor Who, all things are possible.

@miapatrick – I like that idea very much – that Rose looked into the Time Vortex. She is still full of the energy from that. Does that link her to the Tardis? Or does she still loom so large in the Doctor’s memory that, like The Moment choosing her for its Interface, the Tardis picked her as a ‘familiar face’. We know that happened with Capaldi and his earlier appearance in the Pompeii ep, and Rose has a stronger reason for being present in the Doctor’s memory. Whatever the options, that’s a good canon reason for her reappearance.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Great to see Anita again! I like the return of the Time Hotel.

Okay, so it was Omega – as theorised in various posts on this site, I think.

Why is the Doctor wearing a skirt?

All this Unit personnel starting off to save the world with the stirring music is a bit – bombastic. Can’t say I like it. RTD has a tendency to go OTT on these things.
It was really nice to see Rose (2) and Ruby again, pity they’re just bit players in this episode. Rose just had a walk-on part. Just too many people.

The Doctor says he has the only Tardis in existence. Has he forgotten the American Diner? Or does he have no memory of that?

Time Ring. Is that new? Couldn’t the Rani have used a vortex manipulator?

So all this exchange between the Rani and the Doctor in the Unit control room – just lost me. I understand it, mostly, but I just can’t muster up any enthusiasm. RTD has jumped the shark. “Open the parallax cannons. Fire!” “Galvanic beams at maximum. Fire!” This is the sort of gobbledegook Doug Adams took the piss out of in Hitchhiker.

That ‘Zero Room’ looks remarkably like the Pandorica. And I’ve just realised why I find it hard to muster a lot of feeling for Belinda – in the last couple of series we’ve had Rose (2), Ruby, Belinda and Anita – and it takes longer than that to build up an attachment to a Companion.

Quite why the control room is shaking and bits of ceiling falling down, I don’t know, since the Bone Beasts haven’t reached it yet. And exactly what function the Rani’s Seekers are supposed to perform, other than looking weird and chanting ‘Omega’, I don’t know. Or why there needs to be four (?) of them.

Of course Omega’s double heartbeat is very reminiscent of the Master’s dah-dah-dah-dah from The Sound of Drums. I have to say Omega is one singularly ugly – corpse.

Jeez, give the symphony orchestra a rest, will ya. It’s just over the top.

Well, I have mixed feelings about this episode. Don’t hate it, but it’s all a bit Star Wars Disney for my tastes. Of the double episode, the first third of Instalment 1 was (I think) the best.

And it was nice to see Rose (1) again at the end.   Be fun to see where that’s going.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Was that Lunkwill or Fook?    (Weird the random bits of information lurking under the piles of debris and broken typewriter bits in my memory).     – and (looks it up)  it was actually Vroomfondel.   Bugger!

@translatorcircuit   Who is actually going to ‘remove’ the rights to Doctor Who from the BBC?   It’s not like some magical licensing authority decides who gets rights to what.  The Beeb would have to sell them and they wouldn’t come cheap.

Also, it’s a matter of copyright law and who-owns-what.   There’s an interesting article at

The Strange Copyright of Doctor Who

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    Thanks for that.   That clarifies it a little for me.

I actually liked the first half of the episode better than the second half.   I don’t usually go for those ‘everyday’ eps, but the hints of something odd make it more interesting.   Of course the biggest oddity is that the Doc and Belinda are married.   But still, I found the Truman Show touches, like the yellow coffee mugs, were intriguing.   RTD could have gone on for a lot longer in that vein before he blew it wide open with the giant dino skeletons.   (They were never explained, by the way, but I suppose we could put that down to a quirk of Conrad’s consciousness).

I did notice RTD was being terribly ‘woke’ (dreadful word) with the attitude to women and the disability thing.   But he did make use of it with the plot device that nobody could ‘see’ disabled people  (a ‘somebody else’s problem’ field?).   Or, actually, accounted for by Conrad’s consciousness being totally ‘ableist’.   But in that case, why did the disabled people even exist?

On the other hand, Conrad wasn’t the least bit racist (which seems out of character for him) since brown people did exist.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit    The only Doctor Who book I’ve read is  The Day of the Doctor, which reflects all the events of the TV episode but also (I think) has a bit of extra content in it.

I tend not to read book versions of TV/movies.   In general, I usually don’t find ‘the book of the film’ very satisfying.   Because film is primarily a visual medium, and the skill of the actors in conveying emotions and expressions is hard to capture in print.

But in general, books have a far more complicated plot than TV / movies.   A movie screenplay would often shrink down to the size of a short story, so a lot more plot needs to be added in, to make a decent-length novel.   (And here I’m talking 200 pages, not a 800-page blockbuster).    As a result, books are often very different in tone and style than the movie of the same title.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

These are my reactions bit by bit on first watching. Well, I can see where the Disney $$ went, and this ep looks great.

The Rani – obviously there’s a lot of background that I could know, but whether the lack of it is a major impediment depends on how RTD? wrote the episode.

Seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son – that multiplies to 343. Can’t think of any significance in that (but my brain won’t stop doing that sort of stuff 🙂

Um, Belinda and the Doctor – in bed together and apparently a steady couple. Well this is new. Also unexpected, there wasn’t much hint of romance before. Took Rose and Ten two full seasons. What goes on? Oh, and they’ve got a daughter? That was quick! And the TV forecaster promises fine weather all over Great Britain (which is pushing credibility a bit) and New Zealand (now I know this is some alternate reality!)

And the announcer is reading Doctor Who. This is meta turned up to eleven.

What’s with the whole cupboard full of yellow mugs. And – Ruby?? What the ???

“I have someone expressing doubt”. This is going all Truman Show, except I suspect the ‘producers’ will be a lot more ruthless than Truman’s were.

Mel has a bin full of broken yellow mugs. This is getting surreal. I kinda like it. And immediately we have gigantic dinosaur skeletons walking around. OK, RTD isn’t going to build up the suspicions slowly, is he?

Doctor Who’s workplace instantly reminds me of the Ministry of Information in ‘Brazil’, Terry Gilliam’s black comedy, though Who’s ‘world’ is a lot less run-down and gloomy than Gilliam’s. That in turn had elements of ‘1984’. I’ve just realised – ‘Mr Smith’? Winston Smith! And Conrad posters with Big Brother-ish slogans on the walls. RTD acknowledging his inspiration, I think.

Back to Belinda and family, and we’re right back in Truman Show territory. She can’t remember the birth of her daughter. And another yellow coffee mug smashes. “That was quite a slip”. Probably why the rubbish bins have ‘Slip’ written on them.

I’m liking this.

I’ll make a prediction now (before I watch any further) – Belinda and the Doctor are in some kind of illusion ‘world’. The other characters aren’t real.

And now, the Rani. Her, um, bone palace is off the clock. Wall to wall insanity and Disney $$. A vague resemblance to a James Bond villain’s control room. The sensordroids (I call them that) are sensing very strong doubts, which pleases the Rani, I would have thought it should do the opposite.

And this is where it gets positively surreal. Conrad (the rat from three episodes back) is apparently running the Earth for the Rani (or something like that). And the Rani is relying on the Doctor’s doubts reaching some critical figure.

I like the way the test for doubts (I suppose) is coffee mugs smashing. Oh, it’s things falling through tables.

And then Doctor Smith and Belinda are arrested by the Thought Police, all very 1984. Notice that the crown on the door of the police car is a totalitarian-looking design – nice touch, that. The Monks in The Lie of the Land had a very similarly angular symbol.

Umm, then it gets even more surreal. So far as I can understand it – the entire ‘world’ has been generated by Conrad in order to trick the Doctor. So now the Rani is using the Doctor’s doubts in order to break reality so she can somehow find Omega. And she’s dispensing with the world as no longer needed. (Which means the entire population was fictitious, so that takes away the impact it would otherwise have had.) Still, all this is getting a bit too Chibs-like and Flux-like for my liking.

Umm. Well, it started off really promisingly. Then the last third, I think it jumped the shark. Or maybe I’m just not fond of universe-shaking epics.

Just have to see what the next episode brings.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Panache.   I like that.   Yes this did feel more entertaining than a typical Chibs episode, even though I can’t put my finger on it, maybe ‘panache’ will have to do.

The glitter gun, I thought the Doc was going to sail through the doors of the Tardis.   And before that, I thought the Tardis was going to materialise around him, I’m sure it’s done that before.

And I did notice that first Kate, now the Doctor, are getting more unforgiving.   Is there a reason? – maybe the next episode will give a clue.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit    P.S.   I know about Schweizerdeutsch (have I got that right?)

Oh, and Honeychile Ryder was an interesting case. In the book, she was a half-caste Jamaican. Having read the book, I thought Ursula Andress was shockingly miscast, she certainly didn’t look Jamaican  – though I guess most audiences didn’t notice. She was OK in the role. Interestingly, she was ‘re-voiced’ for the movie by Nikki van der Zyl (also German) because of her strong accent. Also different – she walked out of the sea wearing the famous bikini. In the book, she wasn’t. Wearing anything, that is. I would have loved to see that!

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit   There were quite a lot of Bond books written after Ian Fleming died, I don’t regard them as canon and haven’t read many of them.

Of course the movies are quite different from the books – Dr No was quite close to the original but they soon diverged and many of the later ones are entirely different from any of Fleming’s books.

Bear in mind that the movies were made for British and American audiences, I think that explains why so many characters – even the villains – spoke English.   Of course this is always a problem for movie makers making a movie for a specific audience – they really have to stick to English (or French, or German, or whatever audience they’re targeting) – the audience needs to understand what all the characters are saying.   Subtitles are a very clumsy way to ‘solve’ this.

Danger Man (pre-Bond, pre-Who) solved this quite cleverly – many of the foreign characters spoke their own language but you could tell from the context what they were saying.   You didn’t need to speak e.g. Spanish to understand that the boss villain said (in Spanish) “Cover him!   Get his gun.   If he moves, shoot him”  or that sort of thing.

At the time of the early Bond books, the USSR was the main enemy, and this was reflected in Casino Royale and  From Russia With Love.   But as the Cold War thawed, Bond’s enemy became international crime syndicates like Spectre, and the villains came from anywhere – Italy, Germany, Spain, USA, and Britain itself.   Why so many German actors?   I think because when they speak English their accents sound a bit foreign (not necessarily German).   Bond’s most famous villain, Enrst Stavro Blofeld, was German-Polish-Greek, and became a Polish national.  Played by seven actors of various nationalities, three of them British.   Goldfinger was American (I think).

I find it curious that you find it easier to understand Dr Who when read aloud, rather than reading it yourself.  For me it’s quite the opposite, I can read French fairly well (just have to look up the occasional word), but spoken French – I just can’t keep up with.   And this is because, spoken French I have to first interpret the sounds I hear into French text I understand, then translate that into English, all the while listening to the next bit of French.   When reading, I can read at my own speed.

But good translation is extremely difficult to do.   I think, the better the writer, the harder it is for a translation to do it justice.   Because words have many shades of meaning, and a good writer like Moffett can write dialogue with many levels of meaning – the same words directly translated into e.g. German will have different alternative meanings, so much of the flavour is lost.   And, there is cultural background which is different.   It is said that Germans don’t ‘get’ British humour – but that’s nothing, Americans  often don’t ‘get’ British humour either, even though they share 95% of the same language.

I didn’t mean to write so much about it.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit   I flatly disagree with you about James Bond, amongst many other things.   Of course it was unrealistic, that’s the genre, you reckon “The Man from Uncle” or “The A team” were any more realistic?   I’m buggered if I can see where the Bond movies were isolationist, since they were located all over the world, with characters from many countries.   I honestly can’t see where Bond was any more anglocentric than Dr Who.   And since Bond worked for a variety of British Intelligence, OF COURSE his enemies were foreign.   Beside, if he’d been confined to hunting down spies in London or Birmingham or Newcastle, it wouldn’t have had the same appeal to British audiences anyway, a large part of the attraction of Bond movies is that they travelled to exotic overseas places.   So of course his enemies were foreign, as were quite a lot of his friends.

I’m surprised you can stand to watch Dr Who, which is also very British in places.

Incidentally, not that it matters, but I think Brexit was one monumental cock-up, though it pales into insignificance compared with electing Trump.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

As the Doctor gets sucked into space he is yelling. Can I raise the most common and most commonly ignored quibble – “In space no-one can hear you scream”.

I still can’t reconcile myself to this ‘mavity’ business. Still strongly suggests we’re somehow in an alternate reality.

The frozen people – space is neither hot nor cold. A vacuum has no temperature. (Just consider a vacuum (Thermos) flask). Brain damage starts to occur after 4 minutes without oxygen, longer if extremely cold (a technique used to assist, I’m told, in e.g. heart operations). So I’m pretty sure all those people would have died from oxygen deprivation long before their temperatures dropped by evaporative/radiative cooling to cryogenic survival temperatures. Never mind, this is one I’ll overlook, even though it clashes with ‘Oxygen’.

But the theme of the Evil Corporation is still extant, I see.

The Sonic Screwdriver is turning into quite a weapon.

I don’t think I’ve seen the Doctor so bloodthirsty before, as when he keeps zapping Kid. Not that Kid didn’t deserve it.

The ‘revival booth’ idea is kind of impractical, how long would it take to drag in and revive 100,000 people. Say a minute each, that’s 1600 hours or 67 days, non-stop. Still, it gives us an excuse to see a few interesting aliens. Oh, I see they’re batch processing them. Okay.

I think I would have liked to see some sort of revenge on The Corporation for its predatory behaviour. Not sure what, maybe a DNA mutation transmitted by TV signal that could turn every ounce of Poppy Honey mildly toxic? Thus destroying the Corporation. (See, I can think of wacky ideas, too).

So, speculation (some of it) confirmed, Mrs Flood IS the Rani. Though I gather from various comments in this site, the Rani was considered a pretty naff villain. I never saw her myself (down boy, Translatorcircuit).

Okay, an interesting episode. Not a great one, but diverting enough, even if only a case of sit back and goggle at the monsters. By the way, I guessed Cora was a Hellion. Something about the hairstyle, though that would have concealed far more substantial horns than the stumps that she had.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit “I’m afraid people aren’t saying you shouldn’t watch Star Trek TOS, or early James Bond films, so that’s not fair!”

Well no, the two things are not equivalent. Doctor No and Doctor Who were nearly contemporary (in passing, I wonder if Who was a pun on No?) but there was a vast difference in production values. Dr No was a polished, big-budget motion picture in the well-established secret agent genre, based on a best-seller series of novels and shot on location – and it showed. Dr Who was made on a shoestring – and that too, showed. I don’t think fairness comes into it, it is what it is.
Even Blakes 7, made 16 years later, suffered from barely adequate props and FX and I only watched it because the characters and the dialogue were excellent.

So, between Dr No and No Time to Die, there is not a huge yawning gap in production values. If you liked No Time To Die you’d probably also like Dr No.
Whereas, in Who, between Doctors 1 and 15, or even 1 and 9, there is. By the way, I don’t mind black & white. I don’t think colourising it helps much.
Danger Man pre-dated Who by a couple of years, but – being a Secret Agent series – it didn’t need much in the way of special effects so doesn’t suffer nearly as much.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb Even ‘older fans like us’ have grown accustomed to a vastly higher level of production values than we found acceptable in the early days. And even as late as Seven, there was a big (and visible) difference between Seven’s last eps and Rose.

@ps1l0v3y0u Ooh, lists. I must admit I can’t (or won’t) comment on docs 1-6. For 7, The Curse of Fenric had some fairly unconvincing monsters, The Greatest Show on Earth looked very like a ‘bottle’ ep and the ‘gods’ were only too obviously carved polystyrene shooting ‘little yellow points of light’. Even ‘Survival’ with the cat people, they looked more cuddly than menacing. As I recall, only Ghostlight really held up well, primarily because it was mostly ‘haunted house’ and no rubber monsters. But I have to admit I only watched those eps once each, about a year ago, I should probably re-watch.

For 8, The Night of the Doctor was very good for such a short episode. Written by Moff of course. The Doctor Who movie was – interesting, but didn’t really feel like Who.

Your listing of the War Doctor (Day of the Doctor) was a bit confusing, in Who’s timeline he came between 8 and 9, but in screening of course he was well into 11. Still one of the best eps of those seasons.

For 9, I’d pretty well go along with your list.

For 10, you do like Love & Monsters don’t you? I find it kind of cute, even though the monster is naff. But I’d go – Girl in the Fireplace, Human Nature/Family of Blood, Blink (of course!), Midnight,Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, The Day of the Doctor (already mentioned)

For 11, I agree, it’s hard to choose just 5. I’d go with Vincent, Hide, Doctor’s Wife, The Girl Who Waited, Asylum of the Daleks, A Town Called Mercy, The Bells of St John – and a few more

12, even more so. Listen, Dark Water/Death in Heaven, Last Christmas, Magician’s Apprentice/Witch’s Familiar, Zygon Invasion/Inversion, Hell Bent (rather than Heaven Sent, which was a tour de force but not nearly so much fun), Oxygen, Extremis, World Enough/Doctor Falls. I miserably failed to keep that down to 5, didn’t I?

13 is easier, for all the wrong reasons. It Takes You Away, Fugitive of the Judoon, Eve of the Daleks. I’d be scratching to nominate any more. But then I’ve only watched each ep once, so some I can’t really remember the plot.

14/15: Wild Blue Yonder, Boom, Dot & Bubble, The Well, The Story & The Engine – oh, we agree exactly on those 🙂

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit     The problem of changing the lead actor is one faced by all long-running series.   Only Doctor Who came up with a perfectly logical (in the context of the story) explanation.   And I think it was a huge advantage, stopped the series from getting stale.

Generally they just re-cast and hope the viewers will accept it.    Batman, for example.   And quite a number of Bond villains, I think Ernst Stavro Blofeld was at least two different actors.

The Bond series actually broke the fourth wall and addressed it directly when a girl turned down the second Bond (George Lazenby) and he said “This never happened to the other fellow.”     Obviously the number 007 can be reassigned, I don’t think they ever suggested that Bond’s name could be reassigned.   Though, if it was just a cover name, that would perfectly explain the change of actor.   BUT the problem with that is that James Bond has the same personal backstory in all episodes – so, unless that was a deep-cover illusion, that’s a problem.   (And why would they create such an illusion, there’s no reason for it).

I don’t think they promote isolationism, where did you get that from?   You’re missing some good ones.

I’m not a trekkie, at all.  The original series just failed to grab me, the only character I found interesting was Spock.   The sequels are, if anything, less interesting.

WARNING:   Blakes 7 spoilers below

Definitely an addict of Blakes 7 (even though it suffered from the same low-budget sets and FX as early Who) – I loved the sarcastic dialogue.   You claimed ‘The Well’ was copying some Trek episode where only one crewmember survives – well, how about B7’s final episode ‘Blake’ where none of the crew survive?   What a way to end a series.   But then, it’s not a new trope in Sci fi, remind me how many of the crew survived in Alien, or Aliens, or Alien 3?

Firefly was, I think, very much a Western set in space.    Didn’t really grab me.

Battlestar Galactica (the reboot) was absorbing, but mainly over the ongoing mystery of who was a Cylon ‘skin job.’    So I’m not sure that a re-watch would be as good.   But I did like that not all the humans were good, and not all the Cylons were bad.   Added some depth to it.

Farscape I was a keen viewer of, it had some insane plot twists and turns, double- and triple-crosses, some wild scenarios that I think only Red Dwarf ever matched, of course it had real ‘aliens’ thanks to the Creature Shop  –  who would have thought Muppets could ever be so sinister.   And some very Aussie black humour.    It occasionally overdid the ‘right stuff’ US jingoism but only in a very few episodes.   Also, it tended to overdo deathbed scenes when a main character died.   But on the whole, great stuff.

So my top four would be nuWho, Red Dwarf, Farscape and Blakes 7.

Oh, and The Prisoner, which was a groundbreaker and gave rise to so many memes.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@janetteb   Thanks for that.

That Red Dwarf podcast, sounds like you were all having fun   (I assume you were the janette mentioned?)

FWIW, I think they at their best around Seasons 3-5.    I just watched Back to Reality, which is as meta as you can get – the crew find that they’ve been in a total immersion video game for the last four years, they’ve just returned to Earth, then it turns out the returning to Earth was the illusion, induced by the Despair Squid.

But, of the early eps, probably my favourite is Kryten, with the three dead female crew – only Red Dwarf could make that funny.   “They’re dead.”   “Are you sure.”   “They’re all dead.”   “But I was only away for two minutes.”   Red Dwarf could never be accused of being tasteful.

Anyway, this is kind of Off Topic, not that anyone ever seems to worry too much.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u If Doctor Who had been reduced to a ‘nice safe soap’ I don’t think any of us would be here. I find soaps as interesting as – soap.
I like having a nice safe boring life, I find it interestingq2, but if I filmed it and stuck it on Youtube nobody would waste time watching (deservedly). So neither do I wish to watch anyone else’s banal existence, I can get that at home. Even worse is half a dozen people’s, chopped up into 5-minute chunks. In fact I hate that about soaps, the way they flip from one subplot to another every few minutes, that’s the way to kill any dramatic momentum or suspense. [/rant]

I do like it when a story goes meta, so long as it doesn’t do it too often. But as you say, it needs a strong storyline to attach itself to. The format of Who, with time travel, I guess is very conducive to meta.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@translatorcircuit    That’s the first time I’ve been called disgusting today!    I really, deeply, don’t care.   And if you’re trying to tell me which episodes to watch that makes me almost determined not to.   Sorry ’bout that, I can be a perverse bastard when I want to be.   (That was ‘perverse’, not ‘perverted’.   No, wait….)

For example I’m sufficiently perverse not to like Tolkien much, either.

But as far as nuWho is concerned, I don’t think it’s necessary to be familiar with the old episodes to judge the quality of the writing or the standards of the production of new ones.  Continuity is a different matter, but the timeline is so long and convoluted by now that early Who has faded into the mists of time.   I’m not saying continuity can be disregarded, just that errors of continuity from last week or last year is a lot more obtrusive and significant than errors from oldWho.   IMNSHO.

As to which are the good and bad episodes, my opinions are almost the exact opposite of yours.   And so far as I can tell, there are more people here who share my views on that, than share yours.   If you’re not being deliberately contrary, it just shows that tastes can vary wildly.

Now I’m off to watch Red Dwarf.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u     Um, I googled –  Welsh and German are not agglutinative but  fusional.   (I.e. tacking many words together, is how I interpret it).   Agglutinative languages ‘have a clear one-to-one correspondence between morphemes and grammatical functions.   Each affix added to a root word clearly indicates a specific grammatical feature (e.g., tense, number, gender).’   Well that’s as clear as mud.   My head hurts.</span>

I’ll take a look at that discussion in On The Sofa.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston   Well, this one, as well as Midnight, reflected the fact that a hidden monster is often scarier than one you can see.   ‘Listen’ also used this technique (and in fact, was there even a monster there)?   Still, the noises on the moonbase when there should be no life anywhere, really made my hair stand on end.   Literally.    Alien (the first one) also used this, where you never saw the alien until the last couple of scenes.   Though in that movie, the alien monster was entirely as scary as anything one could imagine.

But I think the scariest one I’ve watched was an old movie ‘Play Misty for Me’, in which Clint Eastwood as a swingin’ DJ was being stalked by a past, um, jealous girlfriend who was completely insane and who had just stabbed a detective to death, unknown to him.   He returned to his house and the camera followed him as he walked casually from room to room completely oblivious to what we knew was going to happen – but we didn’t know when.   The tension built up to the almost unbearable.

I entirely agree with you about this episode (and Midnight) – two of RTD’s best, IMO.   I think it’s the general consensus too.

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@winston   Yes, it did have a fairytale feel (or whatever is the African equivalent of fairytale).

I’m still enamoured of my theory that it’s an allegory for the Beeb and the Doctor Who series.   A vehicle (or an entity) entirely powered by stories, constantly demanding fresh stories, sucking them out of writers and showrunners and demanding more to keep the enterprise going.   🙂     I wonder if RTD or Moff ever felt like that.

But I’m going to have to watch it again to get the story clear in my mind.   And sometimes it helps to have watched it already to keep the characters straight in my mind.    (The same way I tend to only remember people’s names on the second or third meeting – when first introduced, unless they’re very striking in appearance, I don’t have a mental image to hang the name on, so I promptly forget it.   By about the third meeting I’ve built up a mental image and can put a name on it).

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Yes, I’ve heard that about German (didn’t say I knew any German, just to clarify).    I’d guess Welsh is an agglutinative language too? – I was thinking of Llanfair P G and its famous station sign.

My lack of knowledge of oldWho is showing, I’ve never seen those old eps with Richard Briers.    From what I’ve seen of him, I don’t think he really fits the role of (presumably) a massive power behind the scenes.    His menacing turn in New Tricks worked entirely because he looked like an affable, fussy but slightly creepy old gent.     In other words, like Richard Briers.

Is there any particular significance to October 5th?

Boom, and Dot and Bubble, are I think the two outstanding eps from the previous season.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u    And your last bid wins.

Richard Briers – was he ever in Who?    Best known, probably, for acting with Felicity Kendal in The Good Life.   Though I much preferred him as the obsessive Martin in Ever Decreasing Circles.   (Lovely title by the way).

I do remember him from an episode of New Tricks as the serial poisoner (now that’s topical isn’t it?) who attempted to kill the detective Brian (also an obsessive, what is it with British TV and obsessive characters) by poisoning him with Vitamin D.   That was definitely a dark role.   I thought he was quite effective in that, mainly because he did come across as affable and rather creepy.

But anyway, by the ‘central 5’ I take it you mean from Lux to Interstellar Song Contest?   Lux I thought was OK (and original for Who), The Well was very good (and dramatic), Lucky Day I thought was a bit weak (but then I’m not a great fan of Unit but I don’t like it when the public turn on the Doctor or Unit, maybe because it’s uncomfortably credible), The Story and the Engine was very different and very good, not least because the actors were excellent.   Interstellar Song Contest I haven’t watched yet, coming up next.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Is the always-hungry-for-stories ‘It’ an allegory for the BBC and the show, I wonder?

The barbershop is evidently some sort of ship, powered by stories. Analogous to a Tardis? Oh, and it could be a metaphor for the Doctor Who series itself.

The Doctor opens the door and yes, it is a Tardis. So, who is the Barber? Oh, it isn’t a Tardis, it’s a hut on top of a giant intergalactic mechanical spider.

The Barber looks like a Bond villain. Excellent casting there, good-looking but with a menacing presence. I keep expecting him to address the Doctor as Mr Bond. 🙂

And – this Doctor was Ruth? (Oh yes, I think we knew that. Still, it’s a shock and a pleasant surprise to see her here, if only momentarily).

Well, that was – different. Not your usual Who story, or even SF. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Oh, righteous glee definitely exists.

Justified Poetic Appreciation – well, that might be more accurate, trouble is, it’s lost the maleficent element of schadenfreude   🙂

‘schadenkarmafreude’  ??   Clunkier words have existed, it might make sense in German but just too long for English.

It is entirely possible the word I’m looking for does not exist in English.   I believe there is (apparently), in some African language, a word that means ‘two people looking at each other knowing that some thing absolutely needs to be done, and each hoping the other will volunteer first.’   I think we’ve all been in that situation and there is no English word for it, so far as I know.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   @janetteb    Definitely my favourite episode since, um, Boom or Wild Blue Yonder.

I’ve just noticed another similarity to Aliens in the plot, in the ‘dropping down to scout a base which has been massacred by some unknown enemy’.  Though I guess it’s a common enough scenario.

Quite aside from ‘let’s take off and nuke the site from orbit’.

These troops don’t give me the queasies in the same way that the Unit troops did in Lucky Day, probably because they’re on a different planet.

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

@ps1l0v3y0u   ‘Righteous glee’.   Um, it fits more or less.   I’d be reluctant to adopt it though, because ‘righteous’ implies some sort of moral judgement and I can’t stand righteous people.    And it’s more ‘satisfaction’ than actual joyous glee.

Sorry for nitpicking.   🙂

A couple of other things that occurred to me –  RTD was taking dead set against the shambles that is Internet ‘influencers’ and conspiracy theorists.   With which I thoroughly agree.   (Of course one man’s truth is another man’s conspiracy).   I’m less enthusiastic about knocking demonstrators, who can be on the right or wrong side of history, but I think more often right than wrong.

The other thing that makes me – queasy, is the sight of Unit troops going into action.   Yes I know that in-story they’re in the right, but I never like the sight of armed troops anywhere but a battlefield.   I’m even more queasy now we’ve seen video of armed unidentified masked Gestapo thugs [I typed “ICE agents” but autocorrect sneaked in] snatching people off the street for the crime of looking like ‘immigrants’.   That was the sort of thing that was alleged to happen in Iron Curtain countries during the Cold War.   [/politics]

 

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Ruby’s back. I can’t remember the circumstances of her leaving, it was lost in the apocalyptic mish-mash of the last season ender. Still, good to see her, but I’m afraid the position of Companion is taken.

Definitely spooky in the warehouse – what are those things, Autons? Is the thing that flashes across the screen the Thing from the Well?

Apparently not. It’s a thing called the Shreek.   (Not Shrek).

And this is turning into a boy-meets-girl romance story. With a notable absence of the Doctor. And also, Belinda.

Is Ruby working for UNIT now (or would that be still?) This story is a throwback, apparently.

That was a hell of a jump scare when the Shreek pops up to face Kate.

And OF COURSE Conrad didn’t take the antidote and brought the Shreeks down on the village because that’s what boyfriends do, right? So Ruby goes out hunting them armed with a poker. Great.

I’m going to be politically incorrect now and say that UNIT going hunting Shreeks with a wheelchair-bound person in tow stretches credibility.

And then Conrad turns out to be a total rat and the Shreeks are guys in monster suits. They were lucky they didn’t get shot. So much for the romance.

Oh, there’s that Vlinx again. I still can’t figure him out, still looks like a leftover from a Disney movie.

I have to say I rather enjoyed seeing Conrad get what he worked so hard for – an encounter with the Shreek. Schadenfreude*. Or maybe karma*. That close-up of Conrad face to face with the Shreek came straight out of Aliens.

Well, it was nice to see Ruby again. The rest of the episode was okay, but I’m not an enthusiast for UNIT.

(* I’m looking for a word that means, the satisfaction you get from watching someone get their just desserts. Schadenfreude apparently just means enjoyment from watching someone else’s misfortune, but that could be someone completely innocent. Karma basically means you get what you deserve, but that could equally be good as bad. So the word I want maybe doesn’t exist).

[Dentarthurdent @replies]

Hmmm.   Only 19 posts before mine.   The Intertoobz should have been erupting over this one.   With enthusiasm, I mean.   Yes, I think it was that good an episode.

[Author]

Posts