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@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]

 

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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).

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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.

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Whew!

How does the Doctor know what clothes to wear 500,000 years in the future, before he even looks outside? When Earth fashions change completely in 50 years. And are the same clothes worn all over the Universe at that time? (Incidentally, 500,000 seems a bit – excessive, wouldn’t 5,000 have done?)

I would have jumped – straight back into the Tardis. It’s starting look like that would have been the safe thing to do.

That airlock is remarkably roomy if it only takes six.

‘Nuke this site from orbit’. Yay!! Ripley cheers in the background.

Quite why they need signing when they apparently can understand spoken English, I can’t quite fathom. Still, it doesn’t derail the plot so I don’t mind. Oh, and it seems Aliss is just deaf and lipreadding, OK that explains it.

Carbon-46?? Carbon normally has an atomic weight of 12, with isotopes of 13 and 14. The element with atomic mass of 46 is titanium. Just what the heck carbon-46 could be, I can’t imagine. Maybe the episode will tell us.

Anyway, this episode is seriously gripping me so far. As tense as Oxygen. Or, did someone mention Midnight? Alice is maybe starting to sound a little like Sky Silvestri.

… and this planet is quite definitely Midnight. Xtonic radiation and all. Oh, the Doctor says so. And Shaya says Carbon 46 is diamond – I absolutely cannot make sense of that. Can anyone explain?

All that mercury – which is presumably giving off mercury vapour – is probably not good for anybody’s health. However, it’s a very slow poison, main hazard is it’s cumulative, so not immediately toxic. More immediate, there are six of them, plus Aliss, how are they going to fit in an airlock with a limit of six?

So only four of them got in. Plus the Thing, on Belinda. And then Shaya shoots through Belinda very accurately so as not to kill her, and does what the stewardess did in Midnight, only this time she lets herself fall backwards down the Well. This is a remarkably similar shot to Ripley falling into the furnace in Alien 3. R.I.P. Shaya.

Um, shooting Belinda so accurately she survives is very reminiscent of Mary Watson shooting Holmes accurately and non-fatally in Sherlock. I wonder if Moff noticed the borrowing.

And it ends, as all such episodes must, with Val seeing – nothing – behind Mo’s back.

This was a cracker of an episode. Really, one of RTD’s best.

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@whohar   Yes.   Call that a double retcon.   I was delighted with the ‘fan’ sequence – the fans telling the Doc they were real and he was the fiction – which is true in reality but falsifies the story; then RTD retcons that to the ‘fans’ being fictional and part of the story.   (And I found the way in which they were willing to sacrifice their existence for the Doctor’s benefit, quite touching).

Then in the credits sequence, he retcons it *again* and the fans are, to their surprise,  still there.   This is impossible in the story logic, though it gave me the warm feels.   I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be an ‘official’ part of the story or just a sentimental postscript not to be taken too seriously.   I can’t see how it can be logically accounted for, maybe RTD will explain it in a future episode.

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@blenkinsopthebrave Oh yes, those fans in ‘Sherlock’ theorising over the Reichenbach fall were a hoot. (Just double-checked it was RTD who wrote this episode, I do hope Moff was suitably grateful for the ‘Blink’ reference)

@winston If you like live action / cartoons, have you seen ‘Cool World’ from 1992? It’s my favourite of the genre.

@devilishrobby I think you’re correct about the limited number of films a cinema would have on loan from the distributors. Film duplication would be a very slow, expensive process so only a limited number would be made. As they got old and got broken a few times and rejoined, the copies in circulation became increasingly dilapidated, so I guess less favoured cinemas out in the country would get the tatty copies after more remunerative cinemas had finished with them. Nitrate film stock was replaced with acetate ‘safety film’ about 1952, which means there’s a minor time anomaly with Rock Hudson, who only became a star in 1954. Also, though nitrate film stock was extremely inflammable, I’m not sure it was ever explosive. The most it would do was produce explosive gases – which I guess could then ignite.

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On first impression, this reminds me of Cool World, a cartoon/live action from the 90’s in which a cartoon character was trying to break through into reality.

The people trapped in a photograph (or a frame of a film) rings a distant bell. Sapphire and Steel, maybe?

When they break out of the TV screen into the fans’ living room. Well that’s new. I think the fourth wall is not just broken, it’s shattered. This is surely the ultimate meta. Hey, I admire the fans’ taste – Blink is their favourite adventure. … and – RTD retcons this, the fans were an illusion, reality is restored. I have to say he got me, I love it when that happens.

Quite how the 15 missing people got restored, I can’t follow.

This was certainly – different.

Now to read the comments…

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Yes, Chrissie’s transcripts site is a great site.   And I am impressed by the amount of work that goes into transcribing an episode.   I once transcribed an episode (not of Who) and it took me hours, going back and forward over each piece of dialogue to make sure I’d heard it correctly.

@nerys  Oh yes, I recall now.  Those nanobots put Bond in a diabolical no-win position.   I’m not sure whether such a customisable DNA-linked disease would be possible, even in theory.   I think the most one could do would be to target a particular genetic sequence, but likely only a large group of people rather than an individual.   But as a dramatic device, they certainly worked.

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@winston  @nerys   @blenkinsopthebrave   A belated but warm wish for a happy Canada Day.   From another Commonwealth country on the other side of the world.   To address the elephant in the room – hope your circumstances don’t suffer too much from the antics of the Orange Idiot  (and that’s as political as I want to get in this forum).

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@blenkinsopthebrave ‘Planet of the Incels’ – I like that, though there was only one Incel in evidence and he was running the show.
I agree with your comment on the tone of the episode. The storyline was pretty heavy in places but somehow the deaths didn’t really register with full weight.

@ps1l0v3y0u @whohar It’s quite definitely Eiffel Tower, it has two intermediate stages and Blackpool Tower doesn’t.

@juniperfish Interesting comparison between Anita in Joy to the World, and Sasha 55 in this ep. In both episodes they had many months to get to know the Doctor, yet in Joy to the World that was fully developed over several minutes of TV time, in this one it was just a single remark by the Doctor after she was killed. I felt Sasha 55 was shortchanged by that. (Um, Sasha 55. Orphan 55. What’s with the ’55’? Could just be coincidence).

On a wider level, the last few eps I’ve watched (up to this one) have lacked a long-term fully-developed Companion. Earlier seasons had companions like Rose, Amy, Clara and Bill, whose stories became just as important as the Doctor’s. Yaz, but she was diluted by the rest of the gang (and by appearing in less-than-stellar seasons, no fault of hers). Ruby Sunday was hardly there for long enough for me to become fully engaged in her story. Might get a little better on my first re-watch of that season.

Overall, Robot Revolution was – a bit of a melange, reasonably watchable without really making any top ten lists (best or worst).

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First Impressions –

That Star Certificate – now where have I seen that before? I’m not a betting man but I’l lay a couple of quid that the Robots in this ep want Belinda to be their leader/totem. I’d hate to accuse RTD of pinching ideas but does the SS Madame de Pompadour sound familiar? 🙂

OK, 5 minutes in and I just won a couple of quid. That was quick 🙂

The robots with their smiley-face-screens remind me of Valencia, I mean ‘Smile’.

That space ship looks totally Dan Dare. Or should I say Buck Rogers? That vintage, anyway.

I was going to say the little Roomba robot was a bit too Disneycute, then I remembered K-9. But then, K-9 made me cringe a little, too.

Al looks remarkably like that half-Cyberman in Chib’s episodes.

The ending all seemed a little too easy, like the robots promising peace and cooperation at the end, but then if their entire hostile behaviour was dictated by the Al Generator, I guess it was quite credible for them to have a complete change of mind when it stopped.

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@ps1l0v3y0u @whohar Re the Landwasser Viaduct, it is quite famous and very distinctive – a high stone viaduct on a sharp curve into a tunnel in a sheer cliff. I did check Google Images (plenty of pics of it) to confirm that it was the exact same viaduct. I don’t think I can claim ubergeek status on that, just medium geekery 🙂

While I’m at it, I don’t think the mountain in the background of ‘Everest Base Camp’ was actually Everest, but I can’t be certain. Its pointiness led me to suspect K2 or the Matterhorn, but I think they’re a bit too pointy. But I couldn’t find a mountain that matched, on a brief search (which leaves out most of the Earth..)

ps1l0v3y0u – I share your reservations on popular science. Which is why Kill the Moon is my absolute worst episode. “What if the Moon were an Egg?” probably sounded good as a story idea, but some ideas become untenable when you try to work them out.

Re Empty Child / Doctor Dances / Boom Town, I never noticed / don’t remember so many double entendres, but maybe I wasn’t looking for them. Where did you get your dialogue from? I get mine from chakoteya.net (Chrissie’s transcripts site), which I think comes from transcripts of the actual broadcast episodes. So far as I can see, the two are identical, at least the ones I looked at.

@nerys Bond being dead. I’m trying to remember if, at the end of No Time to Die, if Bond was definitively and permanently blown up. Or did he survive by a miracle – I suppose that wouldn’t technically be a retcon. I do rather hope they don’t do a ‘young Bond growing up’ though, that sounds rather too – Disney.

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@whohar    Well, I used Handbrake to just rip each file in sequence.   So then I had files 1 to 9 on my drive, which i set out to assign names to (and, as you suggested, numbers), for which I consulted tardis.fandom.com, which told me there was a special (Joy to the world) before the season started.   I viewed the first file on my drive, it was Robot Revolution.   So then I ordered Joy to the World on DVD.   Then I continued renaming the eps and the very last  one on Disc 2 turned out to be Joy to the World, too late.    I really should have looked more carefully.

I agree with your comments on continuity.   I don’t usually worry too much unless it interferes with my comprehension of a story.   Same goes for factual or historical errors,   I can note historical errors (such as the Battle of the Currents wasn’t really Tesla vs Edison), and minor geographical errors (like the Orient Express crossing the Landwasser Viaduct in ‘Joy’ which caused me to explode in a frenzy of anorakery, just because I could   🙂   without it spoiling the ep for me.   Or the magic arrow in Robot of Sherwood.

@ps1l0v3y0u   I think Dr Who is quite kid-friendly enough.   Kids are a lot less childish than they’re given credit for, just consider how gory many fairy tales are.   Right from the start, Who had people being ruthlessly killed by Daleks, Cybermen and the like.   This was, apparently, OK.   I still recall the reported fuss when Rose had the temerity to fall in love with Ten, something that happens regularly in every soap on TV – but, I gather, never on oldWho.   I doubt any kids were seriously harmed by that storyline.   I’m not a fan of romances as such, but from my point of view, the possibility, and the fact that the Doc can have ‘human’ feelings, adds a bit of depth to the series.

Dot and Bubble was pretty good.   Not merely because you have to lose some occasionally, to make the suspense – and the wins – credible.

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I see @craig‘s point, that it seemed a bit undeveloped. I’m reluctant to call it his ‘worst’ Christmas ep, I’d just say ‘least good’, and that only because his other Christmas eps were all very good (in my recollection). Except The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe. So, second least good 🙂

@winston Yes, I liked the way Anita calmly took everything in her stride. And I thought it was really lovely the way her relationship with the Doctor developed.

I’ve worked out why the Doctor had to wait a year. The Time Hotel linked up to various places/times in history at times when it chose to do so – in the case of Anita’s Sandringham Hotel this was ‘Christmas’ so the Time Hotel only linked once a year. Which is why the Doc had to wait a year for it to come round again.

@ps1l0v3y0u I think Vilengard was developing a weapon (the ultimate nuke) for sale to the highest bidder. They had no intention of vaporising Earth, it was just a convenient incubator for the thing until it was ready to hatch. At which point they would presumably have frozen it in time and said to the buyer ‘Here you are, park it next to your enemy, flip off the timelock and stand well clear’. The successive captive curators were just a way of making sure the last one would have a psychic link through which they could locate and retrieve their weapon – a link the Doctor broke.

I liked the way the device’s Vilengard Q&A activated automatically because Joy asked a question.
Also, “Vilengard respects the collateral sacrifice made by all aprticipating innocent lifeforms, regardless of race, species or belief system”. Doesn’t regret, doesn’t apologise, just ‘respects.’ Moff has got organisation-speak down pat.

Not my most favourite episode, but certainly one I’ll watch again.

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OK, just watched it.   First thoughts –

[Anorak mode ON] Oh dear, at 1 minute in, the Orient Express is shown crossing the Landwasser Viaduct. Only 5 things wrong with that: 1. The caption says Italy and the Landwasser is in Switzerland 2. The Orient Express never went that way. 3. The Orient Express could never go that way because 4: The OE was a standard gauge train and the Albula Bahn (part of Rhaetian Railways) is metre gauge 5. The line was electrified in 1919 Aside from that, not a bad bit of CGI 🙂 [/anorak]

“Should I make my mind blank too sir?”
“It may not be necessary in your case Trev.” ROTFL!

Joy is kind of irritating at first (she improves later).
But I do like the developing friendship between the Doctor and Anita, the receptionist.
Love the joke about the sink plunger, “Is this armed?” And the in-joke about Anita’s satnav that now takes her where she needs to go.
And my eyes got a bit damp when he had to leave her.

“Many things about this are – suboptimal.” Love it!

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure that’s not how stars form. They require an accumulation of billions of tons of – anything, being squished together by the extremely weak force of gravity – but a force with the unusual power that it’s always attractive, until the pressure and temperature at the core is high enough for fusion to start. Or something like that. You can, in theory, have a tiny sand-grain-sized black hole, but I don’t think you can have an atom-sized star. Never mind, the Who way is more poetic. (Maybe someone who actually knows will correct me 🙂

I found all the timey-wimey stuff a little bit confusing, though not enough to spoil my enjoyment. I guess on re-watching I’ll find it all fits, as I often do with Moff stories.

Now to read through the reactions

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@ps1l0v3y0u    The Blurays?   Thanks for the good wishes.   I couldn’t get VLC to recognise the disc, but Handbrake did.   So I ripped them all to my hard drive and now I can view them in VLC.   Expect a spurt of posts from me shortly   🙂

Each file just got numbered 1,2,3 etc so I consulted the episode guide and found there was a special, Joy to the World, before the last season.   I checked the first file and it was The Robot Revolution.   So, cursing the BBC’s stinginess, I ordered a DVD of Joy to the World, meanwhile wondering if I should have waited until they incorporated it in some future issue of the set.   Then I got to renaming the files and of course,  the very last file was – Joy to the World.   I hate it when that happens!

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@janetteb Agreed. Yes, ensuring continuity would be a full-time job (or a nightmare, depending how you look at it) with a long-running series with dozens of writers like Dr Who. I suspect the timeline is so convoluted by now that I’m not sure any writer could be expected to know it all, even absent inconsistencies. (And Chibs’ cavalier attitude to continuity – as evidenced by his advice to Whittaker not to bother watching previous episodes – surely didn’t help.) Battlestar Galactica famously had a ‘Bible’ that outlined where the series was going – but that was a limited series that was all pre-planned. Not possible with Dr Who. I do get disconcerted by big, obtrusive lapses in continuity, especially if they break the timeline – always a risk with a time-travelling series like Who. Like, who knew what when. But I’m more than happy if it all resolves itself, as in ‘Blink’. Even if I have to watch it three times to disentangle it in my mind.

Of course, Who solved the biggest continuity problem with any long-running series – what happens when the main character quits – in brilliant fashion with regeneration. That was sheer genius. I do suffer a certain nagging uneasiness when watching James Bond with each new Bond because it blows a massive and unpatchable hole in continuity. I was particularly unhappy when it was rumoured the new 007 would be a black woman – that was just too big a change (I’d be fine with that for Who). Quite relieved when it turned out that the number ‘007’ had simply been reassigned (was that the producers trolling the fans I wonder?) I didn’t like the new 007 as a personality but I was fine with the continuity there. (Wonder how they’re going to deal with Bond being dead?)

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u Love & Monsters? While I have a sneaking perverse fondness for it – because the little Who club are kind of sweet – I couldn’t rate it among RTD’s best. The Dalek/Cybermen face-off in Doomsday – I love it. “This is not war. This is pest control.”

@nerys Good point on the hostess’s sacrifice in Midnight. She saved the occupants of the bus, but the alien entity could presumably separate itself from Sky and remain as a threat. Hopefully the tour company knew to take safety precautions, I guess it just depends on which period of history it was. Was it one where any failure got investigated in detail by the regulators, or was it an entirely capitalist one where companies could hide “Passengers assume all risks up to and including death, irrespective of any negligence or act by the Company” in a microdot on the ticket and get away with it?

@translatorcircuit Obviously I fundamentally disagree that it’s essential to have watched all of oldWho to appreciate nuWho. I have an idea of what oldWho was like, and I could even name all of the Doctors, in order, if I think for a moment. I certainly don’t think a knowledge of all the continuity errors in oldWho, intriguing though they may be, would help in appreciating any episode of nuWho. Not even the movie. (I thought McGann was great as 8 in The Night of the Doctor, but – watching the movie later, it didn’t throw any more light on the events of Night).

In fact, and I’m not trying to be rude, I find your encyclopaedic knowledge of oldWho, together with your insistence that any fan needs to know it, rather off-putting. It makes it sound like an obligation rather than enjoyment and it’s unikely to inspire me to want to watch them. (Same goes for Lord of the Rings purists). In fact I can be quite remarkably and perversely stubborn about not doing things everybody says I should do 🙂 (This is why it took me about ten years to get around to watching Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I thought was a popular-science book.) I do like talking about favourite episodes, I try not to show off my (limited) knowledge in discussions. I don’t want to be dismissive about oldWho but… OK, I’ve gone on long enough about that.

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@winston    Our weather is nothing to boast about, best described as ‘extremely variable’.  A couple of days ago we had a storm with high winds and waves coming across the road in some places.   At my house we had the heaviest rain I’ve since since the record-smashing big rains / Cyclone Gabrielle (!) of two and a half years ago.

Your Who garden sounds delightful.   Oddly enough, Mrs D’s dahlias have all sprouted into bushy green plants again and a few of them even have flowers on.   Crazy plants.

I suppose the reason Westinghouse gets omitted is because Tesla is the most ‘interesting’ character and he needs a villain to oppose him, that being, of course, Edison.

My approach to ‘historical’ stories is, ‘could this have happened without clashing with established history’?   If so, it’s OK.   That’s not a rigid rule, but if the writers can make it fit, that helps the credibility for me.

I watch Xena occasionally but Mrs D prefers Hercules.   The Greek gods were fun.   The writers certainly tampered with history quite a lot.   But I did appreciate the way Xena dealt with her enemy Julius Caesar – by subtly persuading Brutus that Caesar was a threat, to Rome and to him personally.  Neatly done!

The Doctor marrying Elizabeth 1 in Day of the Doctor – the wedding appears to be a private ceremony, with the Eleventh Doctor, the War Doctor and Clara Oswald as witnesses.   So when the Tenth Doctor ran off, I guess Elizabeth wouldn’t want to make the story public, and the witnesses were conveniently absent – which is why ‘history’ never mentions the event.   I believe the Doctor later implied that she wasn’t the ‘Virgin Queen’ any longer, but then I’ve always been a little bit – sceptical – of that title.   I would guess (with no evidence) that ‘Virgin Queen’ in this context was more an honorary title and would just mean that she had never been (officially) married, and was reasonably discreet about her male ‘favourites’.

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@nerys I agree with your observations on Midnight. Possibly the best episode RTD wrote, or at least up there with his best.

@ps1l0v3y0u I’d agree that Season 4 was generally pretty good. I wouldn’t rate it the best season, I reckon 6 or 7 would beat it, but not by a lot, and most seasons have a range of quality. How does one rate seasons anyway, by the number of top-notch episodes in them, or by the average quality – would a season with a few brilliant episodes and a few clunkers beat a season with generally good episodes? Even just going by my own rating of episodes (which I’m aware is unlikely to be identical with anyone else’s), I have some difficulty ranking seasons, and I might judge differently tomorrow 🙂

The Well, I see is part of Series 15. I’ve got the Bluray discs which just arrived (couldn’t get DVD’s) so now I just have to brainwash my laptop into recognising my USB Bluray drive and hope DRM doesn’t successfully prevent me watching my discs on my laptop. I hate DRM with a deep-seated hatred. If I can read them I might even try transcoding and compressing them so I can write them to DVD, it’s probably breaking all sorts of copyright laws but I’m not going to resell them so Disney can take a hike. [/rant]

@translatorcircuit The creators of ‘content’ (and that includes the television industry) are not under any obligation to satisfy our requirements on how they make programmes. Or indeed, how their storylines go. To paraphrase some dude about ‘free speech’, I detest ‘Kill the Moon’ but I will defend their right to make it. Even, Chibnall’s several series. (Also my right to say it’s terrible). All we can demand is that they use their best efforts; all we can hope for is that they make content that is entertaining and satisfying to a large number of viewers and – if we’re lucky – suits our tastes… I don’t see their failure to make enough episodes in some years as stealing from the fans. It may be considered a misjudgement, but we don’t own it.

I strongly disagree that it’s essential to watch the first few series. As it happened I did see quite a few episodes of early Doctor Who at the time, but that was so long ago I can hardly remember them. (About the only detail I do remember was some military characters waving broomhandle Mausers, presumably under the impression they looked sufficiently exotic). So for me, ‘Rose’ was the first episode I watched in recent times, and the entire series of nuWho since then has made perfect sense to me. It *doesn’t matter* what Sarah Jane Smith had to do with the Doctor decades ago, in School Reunion she was just a ‘past Companion’ and that’s all I needed to know. There was no plot point that depended crucially on what they did before. It wasn’t necessary, for example, to know what the original Daleks or Cybermen were like to understand or appreciate their modern incarnations. Not even when Moffat resuscitated those painfully-obvious humans-in-suits early Cybermen with rather horrifying consequences in World Enough and Time – having seen the early ones added a few per cent to my appreciation of the episode but not essential.

I have since gone back and watched the movie and the last four stories of Seven. In retrospect, though I do like Seven and Ace, they don’t add much to my appreciation of RTD’s first season.

@whohar @janetteb I think HBO might be a better fit to Who than the Mouse. I’m still (as I noted) trying to decipher the Blurays of the latest season. I can (if I have to) commandeer the Bluray player attached to our TV but I’d sooner watch it on my laptop where I don’t have to negotiate for possession 🙂

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@winston    On the subject of techie-angst, I forgot to mention my absolute nemesis, Kill the Moon.   Right from the start it seems determined to violate every physical law it can and wave that in our faces.   (They materialise in a Space Shuttle.   The Shuttle was only ever designed for low Earth orbit, it could never make it to the Moon.   Its cargo bay was unpressurised, so they couldn’t take their helmets off.   It would have NO gravity unless either the rocket motor was running, or it was gliding (which requires air.   There is no air on the Moon).   It lands as a very high-speed glider – if it hit the Moon (as it would, since it can’t glide there) it would just leave a very large new crater.   Should I go on…   🙂

I could handle that with a lot of effort, but I was already annoyed by Clara insisting that the Doctor be nice to the appalling whiny Courtney.    It went downhill from there, and once you’ve lost the audience’s willingness to ‘suspend disbelief’ in a sci-fi episode you’re pretty much sunk.

Historically, I’m more squeamish about recent history about real people that tends to get misrepresented by writers.   I was fine with Let’s Kill Hitler because they didn’t actually kill him*, and it was the sort of encounter that probably wouldn’t be recorded.  If it does no  violence to known facts, I’m a happy chappie**.   I was a lot less happy (i.e. somewhat unhappy) about the Tesla episode because the ‘battle of the currents’ (AC vs DC) was between Edison and Westinghouse (who ‘won’ it but didn’t get a mention), Tesla was a very minor player.

*Not because I’m opposed to the idea of killing Hitler, but somebody would have noticed if they had.

**The prize for that has to go to a very different series, ‘Hercules’ where Hercules defeated Caesar’s attempted invasion of Ireland (yes I know he never did), as Caesar was sailing away in defeat his scribe said “This was Caesar’s only defeat, but I have a duty to record the truth” and Caesar said “You have been a good and faithful friend, Scribulus (motions to guards) and I shall miss you. (splash offscreen)   Caesar never suffers defeats.”  I thought that was a great retcon.

Your weather – we rarely get it that hot.   23C is about as warm a it usually gets, maybe 25.   30 would be exceptional.   Probably Auckland’s location on a narrow strip of land between two oceans moderates the temperature a lot (but also results in highly variable weather as rain bands drift across us).

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@translatorcircuit If you’d care to point out where ‘consulting an episode guide’ would have improved my comment please feel free to.

As it happens I usually consult tardis.fandom.com about anything I’m unsure of, or the transcripts at chakoteya.net. But I can claim familiarity with all of post-gap Who, having watched each ep several times at least (maybe less for Chibs’s tenure). In fact I’ve got it all on DVD, also the last few eps of Seven and the movie. I’m outside the UK so I can’t use iPlayer and I’ve never used a VPN, not going to bother just to watch pre-Gap Who (and I have no other use for a VPN). So my exposure to those episodes is fragmentary. I don’t need an excuse for not having seen them in their entirety, it isn’t a requirement for being a Who fan so far as I’m aware. Anyway, you seem to have confirmed my general impression that those older stories were typically 4-6 episodes long, so I’m not sure how ‘consulting an episode guide’ would have helped.

Re ‘Blink’, I doubt if anyone transported 70 years back in time would react by killing themselves (unless, of course, they were of a suicidal disposition). Most displaced people make the best out of the conditions they find themselves in. Maybe they would try to recreate modern tech (but how? Do you know in detail how a microwave oven works, or even a foodmixer? The overwhelming majority of inventions are dependent on a vast industrial background. Consider even a primitive gadget like tape recorders – they depend on the supply of mylar tape and fine magnetic coating which are highly sophisticated chemically. Also, plastic helps a lot. I suppose an electric guitar might be within the realms of practicality, and of course knowing that something can be done and has will have been done is half the battle). Maybe if they were of that inclination, they might start organising protests against – something, but most people aren’t. But I think 90% of people would just keep their heads down and try to make the best of their new circumstances. It’s interesting to speculate anyway.

(In that connection I’ll revert to an old thesis of mine, that most inventions arise when the technological climate favours them, too early and the necessary infrastructure isn’t there, too late and someone’s already done it. Take aeroplanes, flight was ‘in the air’ in 1901, if the Wrights hadn’t managed it there were a dozen others not far behind. Or the first steam locomotive, if Richard Trevithick hadn’t managed to put one of his high-pressure boilers on wheels, someone else would have. (And I’m not in any way denigrating the Wrights or Trevithick by saying that, they were the people who successfully did it first.) In fact the *only* invention I can think of, that might not have happened otherwise, was Henri Giffard’s steam injector for locomotive boilers – it seems highly counter-intuitive, it was in no way a development of anything existing, and there was no desperate need for it since the piston pumps already in use, worked.)

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@winston   I think that episode with the Shard was (from memory) quite modest in the amount of CGI it used.   Probably the biggest amount was the zombies with dishes in the backs of their heads.   Similarly the alien ships over Stonehenge (incidentally that caused me a minor techie-angst because I’m sure the ships would have been too high to make out, but I’ll cut the program that much slack).   Either way, the effects were adequate to the episode.

The beach is fine but I haven’t swum since the start of May.   The water finally got a bit too cool.  We’re well into winter now, which means generally low temperatures (‘low’ being 10 – 15 degrees C during the day) with the occasional lovely fine day which is still cool but warm in the sun.   Pity temperatures can’t be posted, if you sent us a little of your excess warmth then we’d both be having really pleasant weather   🙂

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@translatorcircuit Just shows how radically opinions can differ. You call Midnight crap, I think it was one of RTD’s best, and all the better for being a bottle episode. Being stuck in the ‘bus’ with unknown noises going on where nothing should be alive, really made for tension and suspense. And I loved the irony that the stewardess, who originally seemed a hostile character, was the one who saved them all – and nobody even knew her name. There was a moral and a message in there, one that was built into the screenplay, and nobody needed to stand up and spell it out for us at the end (something I hate).

One that I find broadly similar, both in its scary intensity (and its comparatively low budget) was Moff’s ‘Listen’. Also of course ‘Blink’ which had virtually no CGI other than the usual Tardis dematerialising. But then, as against that, there was Wild Blue Yonder, which was a bottle ep with a huge amount of green screen / CGI appropriately used, it looked beautiful and wouldn’t have been nearly as good without the CGI.

One thing I agree with you about (and also I think with @winston, @nerys, @janetteb and @blenkinsopthebrave please guys tell me if I’m wrong there) is that special effects can’t compensate for deficiencies in the story or the acting. But (I think) a certain minimum level of special effects is essential to avoid the viewer having to make allowances for unconvincing or amateurish effects. I have that problem with many of the effects even in late Doctor 7 (pre-gap) episodes, let alone the earliest Doctors. Maybe back in the day the FX were acceptable by the standards of the time, but we’ve become used to a vastly higher standard of FX. The original Cybermen are just so obviously extras in suits, it’s painful. I found all the nuWho Cybermen to be so much more convincing. It wasn’t until Moff’s genius in World Enough and Time, in showing the process of turning Bill into a proto-Cyberman, that I realised that that was the point, and those early Cybermen changed (in my perception) from embarrassingly unconvincing aliens to humans trapped in a cybersuit – and so, retrospectively, authentic and horrifying.

However I don’t think ‘less FX and more episodes’ is likely to help. Writers have only so many good ideas and it’s far better to give them time to polish their scripts, than to spread them (and the budget) too thinly, else you just end up with alien-of-the-week episodes that all start to seem the same. (As for EastEnders and Casualty, I can’t comment authoritatively because I never watch them, or Coronation Street, but I have the impression they’re mostly just humdrum hardly-differentiated soup.) I’m probably showing my ignorance but those low-budget episodes of Doctors 1 and 2, weren’t they mostly six-part stories? So they equated to just six to eight 3-hour stories per year with (I dimly seem to recall) quite a lot of padding, though it’s so long since I watched one that’s probably a risky assertion for me to make.

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@janetteb I heartily agree about big-budget overkill. I actually felt that about the UNIT tower in the finale of the previous season (Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death). In fact UNIT should be a businesslike, unobtrusive, un-ostentatious organisation (in my opinion), not trying to look like some mad dictator’s vanity project.
(I must admit I haven’t seen the latest season, the discs just arrived but my laptop’s drive is only DVD, I do have a Bluray drive but I’ll have to switch laptops – haven’t got round to it yet. So I’d better get on that.)
I’m not arguing in favour of the sometimes-painfully primitive OldWho levels of ‘special effects’ that one has to make allowances for when viewing. I think most of RTD v1.0 and Moff’s seasons had about the right level of production values. Special effects need to be sufficient to support the story, not usurp it. A good and necessary use of CGI was Wild Blue Yonder, which was almost entirely blue screen / CGI, but – because the story was set on a spaceship, and concentrated on the Doctor and Donna – it worked, for me at least. With most stories, that level of CGI would be a distraction.

That’s my 10c, anyway   🙂

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@pa1l0v3y0u   I got ‘Russ’, it was the ‘Legend and Empire’ that puzzled me.   Notwithstanding that they were the two most recent eps I’ve viewed.   Which kind of demonstrates the impact that RTD’s finale had on me.   🙂

Legend of the Sea Devils was one of Chibs’ last three specials, watchable if you weren’t too critical.   Roughly on a level with Curse of the Black Spot, I think.   Eve of the Daleks was Chibs’ best IMO, and Power of the Doctor was, IIRC, okay I think (can’t remember a lot about it).

Back to RTD’s two-parter – yes, I found the Time Window a bit confusing.   The Vlinx looks like a joke, or maybe a Disneydroid, and I agree, no explanation of where it came from or what it does.   (Or if there was I missed it).   For some reason I don’t like it much, though.

But I have high hopes for the new series.   Or at least, some of it, even if it’s a bit uneven.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u With respect, could you sometimes be a little more specific in your references to past episodes? Sometimes I’m not on the same wavelength and have trouble placing your references. For example, Russ’ Legend and Empire – I first thought of Legend of the Sea Devils, had to refer to the episode list to realise it was Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death.

But yes, they were a bit clunker. Like many of RTD’s finales, they had everything but the kitchen sink – UNIT, old Companions brought back, a universe-sized mega-threat – too much already. Not that I objected to seeing them, but not all at once.

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@winston Well, as I’ve already said, Season 5 at first ‘lost’ me to Who, probably because I was still recovering from Tennant withdrawal. (I now like Smith and Capaldi just as much as Tennant. I guess I’m a bit slow to accept change). On later re-viewing, I’ve enjoyed those episodes more. I still find S5 middling good, best episodes (for me) were the Pandorica Opens / Big Bang. I thought Season 6 was better. But (looking quickly over the episode list, and taking seasons as a whole) I think Season 9 would be my favourite season. Obviously we all have our personal favourites.

@thane16 I liked Planet of the Dead best of the three specials. Lady Sousa was great, I was sure she was going to become a Companion. Apparently they had much difficulty in filming it, including that the bus got seriously bent on the ship on the journey out and they had to work around it.

Hungry Earth – Amy & the Doc on the hill was supposed to emphasise (or tease) the absence of Rory? But I still don’t get the rationale for them being there, unless they’d gone there deliberately to catch a last glimpse of Rory – but why, if Amy couldn’t remember him? I’m probably missing something.
The reappearance of Rory as an Auton, who then sort of decided he was going to become a human (or as good as), was a welcome surprise. Though I have to say, I’m never very enthused with Companions’ Significant Others – Mickey, Rory or Danny. Probably partly influenced by the fact that they were all to some degree disapproving of the Doctor. (The same went for most of their mothers, come to that).

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@thane16 Moff *is* clever, in fact I think he’s a genius at writing dialogue that is witty, ironic and surprising. (I’m a sucker for interesting, original turns of phrase, whether in book fiction or in TV drama). I think Moff’s era was the best of Who. RTD’s first era was very good too (I don’t know enough about his current one to judge it).

To be honest, I wasn’t that enthused by Hungry Earth / Cold Blood (and that was before I knew who the writer was). I was intrigued by the brief scene of the Doctor and Amy watching from the distant hillside, but that was never followed up or explained so far as I know? (Chibs planting the seed of a future story thread?)

@whohar One point from your list – Zygon Inversion was credited as Peter Harness / Stephen Moffat. (As an aside, although I really like the Zygon eps, Peter Harness also wrote Kill the Moon which is the absolute worst ep of NuWho – in my estimation).

But I’m not surprised writers other than Moff and RTD wrote some excellent eps, there are many other good writers out there. Toby Whithouse, Jamie Mathieson and Neil Gaiman come to mind. Though whether Moff (as showrunner) had any hand in reviewing or ‘polishing’ some of the other stories, I don’t know. I’d be surprised if he didn’t have some input into some of those (ditto RTD in the first 4 seasons).

@ps1l0v3y0u Series 7 was excellent – and for me that includes the whole of the series, not just the second half. Asylum of the Daleks I love, especially the hidden-in-plain-sight trick Moff played on us over Souffle Girl (where does she get the milk?) He got away with it because Jenna can do ‘upbeat’ so well. Unlike some viewers, I absolutely love it when a writer does that. And A Town Called Mercy (Toby Whithouse) – I thought that was great. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was a clunker (oh, written by Chibs), and The Power of Three started out really well with the enigmatic cubes but fell flat in the finale (also Chibs – maybe he’s better at thinking up intriguing plotlines than he is at resolving them).

While I’m at it, The Girl Who Waited was a classic with a tragic moral dilemma – which Amy should Rory save. (Also, the Doctor lies like a bastard when necessary). I think I cried at the ending.
I liked The Wedding of River Song too – both in A Town Called Mercy, Wedding, and Angels Take Manhattan, Amy had turned into a formidable character. (In Wedding, I must admit I cheered when Amy left Madame Kovarian to be zapped – “River Song didn’t get it all from you, sweetie.”)

@blenkinsopthebrave Vincent and the Doctor was what got me back into Who. I have to admit that I was captivated by Tennant, so when we had lost Rose, and Martha had left, and Tennant regenerated, Smith’s early debut left me cold. So I lost touch with watching it on TV, besides the randomness of me remembering when to turn the TV on. Some time later, on a quite unrelated website, someone mentioned Bill Nighy’s excellent ‘Curator’ and that prompted me (I think) to start renting series DVD’s and I got back into it. I appreciate 11th Hour better now, having got used to the characters.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Oh yes, re Daleks, Moff made major forays into Dalek history.   Chibs used them as villain of the week – nothing wrong with that, you can write a perfectly good ep with that format.   Considering what he did to the Time Lords, the Daleks were probably lucky he didn’t give them his undivided attention  [/snark]

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   Of course, Twice Upon a Time!   I’d forgotten about Rusty.

Chibs had two Dalek episodes, IIRC, Resolution (which was one of his better episodes) and Eve of the Daleks which was his best  (and I say that as a non-Chibnall-enthusiast).

I liked Ace, but I think Sophie Aldred is a bit too old now to play that part.   Yes I *know* they brought her back in The Power of the Doctor,  Chibs’ final episode and (as I recall) also a not-bad episode, but doing a cameo role in one ep is far different from playing a major continuing role.

Maxil – I thought you meant he was Capaldi, but Google tells me it was Colin Baker.   OK, I get the point.   I think you can usually get away with it.   Thinking on Monty Python’s Life of Brian, I never had any problem with John Cleese playing about six different roles *in the same movie*, in fact I hardly even noticed.   Maybe I was laughing too hard.  (As an aside, in New Zealand where the pool of actors is quite small, even if you include part-time extras, when ‘Hercules’ and ‘Xena’ were making one episode a week, we got quite accustomed to seeing the same dozen beefy guys as outlaw thugs one week, Roman legionaries the next, and barbarian hordes the week after).

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@ps1l0v3y0u    Well, Ruth is quite unlike Rose, physically (though of course regeneration could be used to account for that).   I would very much hope Billie is the new Doctor.   As for the fact that she’s already been a major character – well, Capaldi was also a Doctor who had previously appeared as an incidental character.   And, Rose had also looked into the time vortex powering the Tardis, which might have had some lasting effect on her.

As to the Moment (or its interface), according to the episode, The Moment simply chose Rose as a character from the Doctor’s past which should be pleasing to the Doctor.   (It confused past and future, but that’s just one of those things that happens).   Whether the Interface turns out to have any deeper connection with the Doctor – well, we’ll see.

By the way, I don’t think the Daleks were in World Enough and Time, that was Cybermen.   Daleks did appear in at least two of Chibs’ episodes.

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@ps1l0v3y0u      Billie Piper as the Doctor?    Wow, I’m right back into it.   My enthusiasm has been revived.   I *love* Billie Piper.

Hopefully she’ll be the Doctor, or at least in Who, for quite a while.   She certainly seems to be well disposed towards the series, judging by the several times she reappeared after Rose’s demise.   Most notably as The Moment in Day of the Doctor.

I think it’s time I rewatched from The Star Beast onwards and picked up the last season DVD set.

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u    That passage I quoted – I think Ohila may very well have been there for a quick readthrough, since it was only the prologue (released before the ep itself I think) with just the two speaking characters.

Agreed that talented actors can contribute much to the episode if allowed, though  they’re probably a headache for the writers who have to rewrite lines.

Re your hypothesis, which is (I think) roughly that Chibs was trying too hard to be quite different from Moff’s episodes – well, maybe.   But I also think he just lacked the talent to match those.   His best episode was probably ‘Eve of the Daleks’ which (IMO!) would rate as middling good in a Moff season.

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@whohar I have no objection to the episode focussing on Tesla. But suggesting that the competition of AC vs DC was between Tesla and Edison, as the episode goes out of its way to imply, is wildly misrepresenting the reality. The principal players in the ‘War of the Currents’ were Edison and Westinghouse (the Wikipedia article, a detailed account which runs to many pages, mentions Tesla just twice in the text). In fact George Westinghouse bought Tesla’s patents (among many others). It is in fact a fascinating story, but possibbly too complicated and mundane to make a good Who episode 🙂

@ps1l0v3y0u I was just using the example of the nuWho docs, i.e. the ones I know about, for checking previous incarnations. I’m not so familiar with the BG ones (though obviously I know who they are).
Whether the script read-throughs helped Moff to sharpen the dialogue, I don’t know. (I genuinely don’t know, I’m not being cynical about it). But either way, I think Moff had a gift for engaging dialogue. I think my favourite passage in all of Who is the Doctor’s verbal fencing match with Ohila (of the Sisters of Karn) in the prologue to Magician’s Apprentice:

OHILA: He has asked to see you. His servants seek you everywhere. Will you go?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: Why do you always lie?
DOCTOR: Why do you always assume I’m lying?
OHILA: It saves time. The truth – will you go?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: When?
DOCTOR: Soon.
OHILA: Why? Did something happen?
DOCTOR: No.
OHILA: Was it recent?
DOCTOR: Yes.
OHILA: Whatever it was, you owe that creature nothing.
DOCTOR: He and I’ve known each other a long time.
OHILA: You’ve been enemies for all of it.
DOCTOR: An enemy’s just a friend you don’t really know yet. Sorry. What, was that me being cynical again?
OHILA: Aren’t we friends, Doctor?
DOCTOR: That’s different. I don’t like you!

I love the way the Doc lies continuously and Ohila just cuts straight through his lies, without animosity.

 

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@pufferfish @devilishrobby @mudlark
Yet more American interference in British institutions! First it was Trump and Musk, now it’s The Onion. How dare they!
(OK, to be serious for a moment, I got a good laugh out of it. Well done Onion.)

Actually, I think the full text of The Onion’s incvestigative journalism is worthy of reproduction here:
MOSCOW—Explaining that Russia’s patience on the matter had finally reached a breaking point, officials in Moscow confirmed Friday they had expelled six British diplomats who would not shut up about Doctor Who. “London must realize that their diplomats’ incessant jabbering about Time Lord physiology and whether Daleks or Cybermen are stronger can only go on so long before it requires a response,” a Kremlin spokesperson said via state media, adding with visible annoyance that whenever Russian officials had tried to discuss serious diplomatic issues with the six self-described Whovians, they would invariably steer the conversation back around to whether the worst Doctor had been Paul McGann or Colin Baker. “Even when we tried dosing them with nerve agent to get a little peace and quiet, these dorks would just keep on speculating about whether one TARDIS could canonically materialize inside of another TARDIS. With their expulsion, our message to the West is unequivocal: We do not care who the Doctor is. We do not care who the Master is. We absolutely do not care about whatever the fuck that big skin creature is. And so long as the Kremlin stands, we will never watch your dumb little TV show for children.” At press time, Moscow suggested that they would potentially readmit the diplomats if they got into some real sci-fi like Battlestar Galactica.

(Who was that ‘big skin creature’? Absorbaloff? A Slitheen? I don’t know.)

@nerys @whohar
I agree that Eve of the Daleks, Fugitive and Villa Diodati were well written.

Villa Diodati runs into one thing I’m a bit queasy about, incorporating real recent-historical figures into the story and often misrepresenting the actual facts as a consequence. Deodati runs into that, I suspect some of the behaviour of Byron and his associates was slanted, though I’m not sufficently expert to confirm that. Chibnall’s episodes were really prone to that, considering the number of recent historical figures that got written into the stories. Worst example (to me) was the one about Tesla though, it really screws around with the recorded facts of the ‘War of the Currents’ between Edison and Westinghouse, in which Tesla was an incidental player – and Westinghouse never got a mention.

Chibnall did have the ability to create some likeable (fictional) characters. Some of that may have been down to casting naturally sympathetic actors, but I think his character creation abilities were better than his dialogue or his plotting abilities.

Eve, and Fugitive, on the other hand, don’t do any violence to historical figures, so I’m fine by them in that respect. As Nerys said, Eve of the Daleks didn’t always make sense, BUT it was no worse than a typical Who episode. I think one had to be quite critical to find the inconsistencies and they were fairly easy to ignore – as in most Who episodes. I don’t think Chibs ever wrote an episode as chock-full of blatant impossibilities as Kill The Moon.

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@everybody 🙂 Well we all seem to be broadly unanimous about Chibs’s tenure.

Re @ps1l0v3y0u ‘s comment ‘The theory that a Ladydoc shouldn’t in anyway ape a ‘blokedoc’ is not necessarily unsound.’ Decoding that (with respect, sometimes your comments are a little – cryptic or convoluted) – I agree – as far as that goes. Going further, each Doctor should be their own character. Ecclestone, Tennant, Smith, Capaldi were all perfectly distinct characters in themselves, they didn’t need to copy previous Doctors to appear ‘Doctorish.’ So in that respect, Whittaker shouldn’t ‘ape’ any previous Doctor. However, IMO Chibs carried that too far. Though the male Doctors I just named didn’t consciously copy their predecessors, they had all watched the show and were familiar with what a ‘Doctor’ would and wouldn’t do. A quality I can’t define but ‘I know it when I see it.’ And Whittaker hadn’t watched the show. I still think she was mis-cast but I’m sure being unfamiliar with previous Doctors minimised her chances of being credibly Doctor-ish. I guess we’ve all read of instances where actors have taken an interest in ‘protecting’ their recurring characters, as in ‘XX (my character) wouldn’t do that.’ I think it often helps to keep a series with episodes penned by various writers on the rails, much though it may annoy writers and directors, but again, Whittaker had no way of knowing what to ‘protect.’

@janetteb   I agree about RTD’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink series endings. Sometimes bigger is not better. It gets too apocalyptic and actually diffuses the threat. It also makes the heroes’ position seem utterly hopeless (which is slightly depressing) and consequently detracts from the credibility of the final last-minute triumph.    Most of the episodes I remember as outstanding actually involved a few principal characters and a finite threat.

 

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@mudlark That’s roughly what I do if I’m embarking on a long post. Well, actually I compose my message in a text editor, then copy the finished message into the Who webpage editor.
Also good insurance against hitting ‘Submit’ by mistake halfway through, or when I have afterthoughts.

For the rest, I agree with all of your comments.

@janetteb I believe JW herself said that Chibs had discouraged her from watching previous episodes. It seems extraordinary to me, that a serial character wouldn’t wish – and be expected – to see what character he/she was being asked to emulate. Oh, here it is: https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/jodie-whittaker-i-was-told-not-to-watch-doctor-who-before-my-audition/
In other words, JW did propose watching them and Chibs told her not to bother. Huge mistake IMO, even if he wanted a ‘fresh perspective’, I think watching a few of them would have given her an idea of how to approach the role. For starters, she might have been less annoyingly daffy and dithering, which (I’m guessing) she might have thought was strange and alien. And yes, I think it was miscast as well. I have a suspicion Chibs disliked Moff’s Capaldi episodes and was trying to distance himself from them, and trying a bit too hard.

 

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(De-lurking.   I’m still here, just I haven’t had occasion to comment recently).

@janetteb   Interesting post, and I agree with all that.   Except, I wouldn’t even give Chibs much credit for establishing a lady Doctor (I’m mean!)   Missy had already established that Time Lords can be female, and so did the general in Hell Bent who regenerated as a female when Capdoc shot him.    It was about time for a female Doctor.   Actually, I think Chibs royally stuffed it up and did the concept of a female Doctor a disservice.   I was absolutely prepared for a female Doctor, but the writing – and the dramatic interpretation – of Jodie Whittaker’s doctor was so ‘off’ that after the first few minutes of The Woman Who Fell to Earth,  I said to myself ‘that’s NOT the Doctor!’   She was more like one of those annoying sidekicks who one wishes would run into a Dalek.    Doctor Ruth would have been immeasurably better, or Liz 10 just for example (yes I know being Liz 10 would probably disqualify her from being a Doctor, but stranger things have happened).   Or for that matter, Grace (Graham’s wife) who got so needlessly killed off in the first episode.

Jodie Whittaker slowly improved over the years, but that awful initial introduction biassed me against her.   Initial impressions are very powerful.   (It took about ten years for my opinion of Donna to mellow after her shockingly brash first incursion in Runaway Bride, I only finally accepted her as a likeable character in the recent episodes with Tennant Mk 2.)

I too found Graeme rather tiresome, and his relationship with on-and-off dyspraxic Ryan tedious and uninteresting.  Nothing against Bradley Walsh, who I think did the best he could with some terrible lines.    The last three specials, with Dan in place of Graham, and Yaz finally being given some better writing, were almost acceptable.

I’m not a fiend for continuity, but where Doctor Ruth fits in does bother me.  Though I do appreciate the visually dramatic reasons for digging up a Tardis police box.   What bothers me more is the way Chibs completely trashed the Doctor’s timeline.   And the Flux episodes completely jumped the shark, and I’m not sure any amount of retconning could fix it.   I deal with it by mentally ignoring that whole chapter in Doctor Who.

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@nerys  @ps1l0v3y0u      It also threatens the New Zealand movie industry,  depending on the details of exactly what is going to be sanctioned, er, tariffed.    Probably tRump has no idea how he’s going to implement it.   Typical tRump, misses the target but causes the maximum collateral damage all over the place.

Short term it will harm the film industries of a number of countries which depend on Hollywood outsourcing productions.   Longer term it could mean the end of Hollywood as the centre of the global movie industry as other countries develop their own movie industries.    I don’t think that would be a bad thing.

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@janetteb  @winston    That’s TWO good results we have to ‘thank’ Trump for!    Mainly for the exact opposite result from what Trump demanded, so I’m not sure thanks are warranted.   More like schadenfreude.

At this point I can’t think of any country whose voters are so ignorant, that an endorsement from Trump or his gang members wouldn’t be electoral poison.   Apparently the deranged idiot is so delusional he’s released a picture of him as the Pope.   Is there anyone left on Earth that he hasn’t offended or insulted?   It would be hysterical if he didn’t have the power to destroy economies and ruin lives.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I hadn’t known that about DSotM.    Or if I did, I’d forgotten it.

I suspect Thorgerson came up with the Newton’s Prism idea first (and all the Floyd immediately said ‘that one!’ according to, I think, Dave Gilmour).   And so the pyramid link was merely inspired by similarity of shape.  But that’s just my guess.

Also, of course, pyramids and supernatural / astrological / ‘space’ themes have long gone hand in hand.   Numerology loves the Great Pyramid.

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I do realise that Sarah did hit the gelignite, and Sutekh suppressed the explosion, though not for long enough.   As Derek Lowe said in one of his brief but entertaining essays, Nitrogen atoms really do want to be free.   Though nitroglycerine is notoriously fickle.

It wasn’t Sarah’s marksmanship I was doubting, but whether she’d ever get the opportunity, or would some robot loom from behind her before she could fire.

Re production values, I couldn’t help noticing that the Beeb’s 11-minute ‘summary’ was far crisper and had bolder colour than the episodes on Dailymotion.   Was that the Beeb doing some remarkable digital resoration/enhancement, or that Dailymotion had lowered the definition for bandwidth reasons?

P.S.   Pink Floyd – was that a pyramid on their poster to which you refer, or simply the famous Newton’s prism from DSoTM?   (I’ve got that album, and it’s noteworthy that nowhere on the outer cover does the title or any other words appear.  The Floyd obviously thought it was sufficiently striking and distinctive to be instantly recognisable.  They were right).

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Thanks Craig for posting that! I just watched the whole two hours.

Random thoughts –

The fez guy has strong undertones of Dr Phibes, doesn’t he? (That probably wasn’t original with Phibes, either, of course).

“He must be building a rocket.” Because of course rockets must be involved in any devilry.

Nice to hear the Dr Who music v1.0 again.

Did Tom Baker’s scarf get ever longer over time?

I was really on tenterhooks about whether Sarah was ever going to get that shot off and hit the gelignite.

That thing with the two guardians, one always lies and one never does, is a really really old one. I suppose it was necessary for the Doctor to explain it, since some viewer in Outer Mongolia might not have heard of it. 🙂

It was actually quite watchable, though I think most episodes of NuWho have more zing.

 

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@winston   There probably are sharks but they never come inside the reef, it’s too confined for them.   The only thing people-sized organisms have to worry about is stepping on a stonefish – rare, but very nasty I believe – but any form of rubber-soled ‘reef shoes’ are a protection.   Oh, and the coral has the sharpness of coarse sandpaper if you brush against it.   There are poisonous sea snakes but they’re very timid, I’ve only ever seen one and it was running away.

The only other thing to ever attack me were triggerfish – up to six inches long, they normally behave themselves, like any other lagoon fish but at some particular time they get all territorial and will attack anything, leaving a hairline circular bite mark on your ankles a few millimetres across.   Annoying like mosquitoes are annoying, little sods.   But this isn’t that time of year.

Thanks for the good wishes about our house.

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@scaryb     – but someone’s gotta do it.   🙂

Meanwhile back in Auckland they’ve had the remains of another tropical storm, with high wind and rain warnings.   Hope our house (and garden) is undamaged when we get back in 1.5 weeks.   Nothing I can do about it here, so it’s fairly easy to not worry about it.   Just go and look at some more fish.

cr

 

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On a lighter note, totally unrelated to Who but the animal lovers might find this amusing. I was snorkelling around in the ‘lagoon’ (which in Rarotonga is just a pool amidst the coral, extends to the inside of the solid flat reef), looking at the small tropical fish, when, rounding a coral head, something huge and dark flashed past my mask. Whooa! Startled the heck out of me.   I looked round and – it was a dog, swimming extremely fast. He carried on to the far edge of the pool, fully 120 yards from shore, turned round and swam back. No sign of his owner, or any other reason, I can only assume he does it because he just likes swimming.

I can’t make any Who connection, just found it sufficiently odd and quaint that i wanted to share it.   🙂

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@winston I guess we all understand, and if you can’t talk to us who can you talk to? An ice storm is certainly an odd one in the way of natural disasters, but no less serious for that. I’m afraid I’d go spare if I was without power for a day, let alone ten. Pleased to hear your house at least is undamaged, but I sympathise with your feelings for your garden and trees. I hate it when a tree gets cut down (I’m an unashamed treehugger). We had a 50-foot wattle tree in our garden that leaned over our house and I was nervous any time strong winds were forecast, for our house or the neighbours, so eventually I regretfully had that cut down. The lemonwoods (pittisporums) I planted to replace it are now a non-threatening 20 feet. I know it seems easy to say, but your garden will grow back, in time.

We had our disaster in January 2023, when there was unprecented rainfall in Auckland – one spot recorded three times the previous all-time record. Large areas flooded, many slips on the steeper hillsides. A few roads are still closed now. I went outside at midnight and watched a shallow sheet of water flowing rapidly across our back lawn – but we were very lucky, our house was above flood level. It was very ‘patchy’, some areas badly hit, some escaped. Then two weeks later Cyclone Gabrielle came through and hit some of the areas that the previous storm had missed. There are many pleasant places that are now – not quite so pleasant, and will take years to recover.

I think many others here have had their own disasters.

When I was younger I thought that all those Biblical disasters were a thing of the past, but it seems Nature will do its thing and we’re provoking it into doing it more often. And, I think, parts of Nature just keep on having wild events, then Man came along and tamed it and expected his solutions to be permanent, where all they’ve done is hold the minor disturbance back until it becomes a major one. Don’t I sound apocalyptic? Probably a result of watching ‘Good Omens’.

I’d happily send you some nice warm water, sand and sun – in fact you can have the sunshine, too much of it for me, I’m taking amiodarone to keep my pulse regular after a period of atrial fibrillation and a zap – which worked – but one of its many side effects is, I have little protection from sunburn, so I’m having to slap on liberal quantities of SPF 50 including the shiny patch on top of my head. First world problems. 🙂

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Hi all @nerys @janetteb @blenkinsopthebrave and @thane16
Just de-lurking from Rarotonga where I’ve been for 4 days; another 3 weeks to go. (Weather’s been OK, typical Raro which is to say unpredictable but generally warm. Lagoon’s great for swimming and snorkling and bothering the fish, not that they seem to be very bothered.) I’m watching a DVD because Cook Islands television is about what you might expect on a remote Pacific island (think, like a country district c. 1960, i.e. virtually unwatchable), and Internet is – limited and expensive, so Youtube is right out. So I took the precaution of bringing a dozen assorted DVD’s with me. (I’m at an age when going out and partying all evening is no longer optimal, and also Mrs D is now scarcely mobile, with the aid of a stick, poor dear).

My 2c worth (he says, finally getting to the point), I’m re-watching ‘Good Omens’, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant, and finding it just as quirky and delightful as the first time. I love the banter between Crowley the demon (Tennant) and Aziraphael the angel (Sheen). Excellently adapted by Neil Gaiman from his and Terry Pratchett’s book. There are just so many nice little blink-and-you-missed-it touches. I get the impression that Tennant / Sheen / Gaiman were having fun when they filmed it. And I loved the hidden-in-plain-sight tweak at the end.
I’ve also got in my little stack, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’, a similarly quirky series, incidentally featuring Peter Capaldi as the angel Islington, who turns out to be [no I won’t – spoilers!]

Sorry to be mentioning stuff y’all saw years ago, but I’ve always been well behind the times. Not sure when I’ll get the new series of Dr Who.

 

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With all due respect, and I noted your caveat –

Who owns the Sun?   (Googles)    Rupert Murdoch.   Thought so.

Says it all, really.    🙂

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