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@robertcaligari Sarcastic but a fairly valid generalisation, I fear. And as CGI gets better, there’s even more temptation to just ‘blow stuff up.’ Of course most of Who, most of it’s life, has suffered from pathetic special effects and rubber monsters. The recent ep with Tennant and Donna in the blue spaceship was a magnificent exception to that with restrained but beautiful CGI, done the way it should be.
Actually it was the Moff’s dictum that the audience needed something to grab them every five minutes (NOT necessarily an explosion!) and in that I tend to agree with him. But bigger and bigger explosions ain’t it. Look at any classic suspense movie – or Western – the graveyard scene from The Good the Bad and the Ugly comes to mind – minutes upon minutes of building tension and the ‘action’ when it comes is over in a few seconds.

@janetteb I’ve got the American Who movie. I think Paul McGann was okay in that but it lacked, as you say, something of the flavour of ‘real’ British Who. McGann was, IMO, far better in Night of the Doctor, or was that the Moff’s paradoxical-but-meaningful dialogue – or a bit of both?

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@ps1l0v3y0u   I will address just one comment – your last.   It is formally rejected (grin).   These days I wear sandals if catching a bus or a train (because bare feet for some reason make operators nervous) or – usually but not always – at the supermarket.    But not otherwise.   I used to have to wear shoes to the office but now I’m retired, so I don’t.

I just like going barefoot.

 

 

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@ps1l0v3y0u   @nerys    I would take any comment by tRump as the exact opposite of its face value.   That is, if he thinks Kamala is ‘very, very nasty and disrespectful’ I’d regard that as high praise for Kamala.   Only slightly diminished by that fact that almost *everybody* is ‘nasty and disrespectful’ to the narcissistic, malignant tumour that is tRump.

By the way, ‘stop plastic’ is a gross over-simplification.   Phones, computers, cars and aircraft, even electric power wouldn’t exist without plastic.   Or they would be massively bulky, brittle and expensive.   Even packaging – these days I can walk along the beach without, usually, cutting my feet, largely due to jars and soft drink bottles now being made of plastic not glass.   The occasional cut is usually due to some cretin with a glass beer bottle.   NO WAY would I ever want to see soft drink bottles revert to glass!    Of course the real cure is to persuade people not to litter, then it won’t matter what the bottles are made of.   (And stop selling bottled water in non-returnable containers – what a criminal waste of plastic and energy that is!    In third world countries where tap water isn’t safe, there might be an excuse, but none whatever in a country like NZ!)   OK, [/rant]

(Which means, by the way, that the heavy-handed message in ‘Praxeus’ did not go down well with me)

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I was in Paris last week. On Friday the temperature hit 32 degrees. Couldn’t go down by the Seine** so all I could do was go to the Parc de Vincennes and lie on the grass under a tree by the lake. For several hours.

**Because the banks of the Seine have been closed for security reasons. Blame the Olympics. In my jaundiced view, Paris may do something for the Olympics but the Olympics have done *nothing* for Paris, its residents or tourists, other than create expensive hassles. But if it manages another 32 degrees it will have its revenge on the competitors. (Snarky thought while lying in the shade of a tree).

Hope like hell Kamala wins. The thought of what four years of tRump would do to the planet is scary. (Also, viewing the reaction of Donnie when he is beaten by a black woman should be entertaining, if predictable).

cr

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I’ll echo @janetteb ‘s comments.   This forum works because its members are all respectful to each other and because Craig will step in if (and only if) someone gets out of line.

Anonymous, you’re completely wrong to say members are ‘forbidden from discussing what they want.’  I’ve rabbited on about everything from dahlias to my mad driving skillz (recent spectacular lack of) and nobody has ever told me I’m Off Topic.   On The Sofa and The Winchester are two areas where non-Who topics are freely discussed.

 

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@dwnerdfrommars   Thanks!   The weather keeps repeatedly getting better, which is to say it stops actually raining lightly for a little while.    I think I saw some sunshine once.

Anyway, I had a swim (Porth beach, Newquay), which is to say I immersed myself in the water for the required token one minute before deciding it was too freakin’ cold to stay in any longer.   I’m a wimp when it comes to cold water.   One item ticked off the list…

 

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El Nino bad?  La Nina good?   Not that I know any Spanish, but if I were a feminist I’m sure I could see some significance in that.   🙂

 

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Meanwhile, on more important topics – what the hell happened to the weather?   Three days ago I went to Hastings.   It rained, and there was a howling gale next morning.   Then I went to Chichester.   The rain eased but the gale remained.   Then I went for a trip on the Mid-Hants Railway (in the rain) and a quick walk in the New Forest (it was raining) and ended up in Weymouth (rain had stopped but the gale remained).   Today I’m in Newquay, via Dartmoor (raining) and Bodmin Moor (raining)  and – it’s still raining.     I don’t ever remember (in any of my few earlier visits this time of year) the weather being so hostile.     It’s all down to Brexit, I tell you.   (Except – when I was in France – it was raining much more than usual there too…)

Bah!    (At least I haven’t crashed any cars in the last two weeks.)

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@ps1l0v3y0u    Did tRump describe Farage as a patriot?    Well first of all it’s none of his business.   Secondly tRump’s idea of patriotism – well he has no concept of it.   His idea of what is good for the country is anything that makes money for tRump.

Any time tRump mentions ‘patriotism’ Dr Johnson’s savage dictum comes to mind ‘an appeal to patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’    As if Mel Gibson hadn’t done enough to discredit the word already.

By the way, although PR can be subverted by a small pressure group holding the ‘balance of power’, the exact same thing can happen with FPP – all you need are two main parties fairly evenly matched plus a third small party in the middle.   Admittedly this can occur more readily with PR, since small parties tend to get trampled out of existence with FPP.   But no system is proof against wholesale corruption like we’ve seen in the last couple of US elections.

@nerys   It seems to me the that Constipation was written with the assumption that most elected representatives would have a modicum of integrity, and at least some respect for the truth, and the proper institutions of government.   It wasn’t intended to counter organised subversion, thuggery and corruption from within.   So when you have a totally underhanded and corrupt conspiracy (such as the Republican Party has become), ready to bend or break any laws or customs of proper behaviour, while its opponents the Dems still try mostly to observe the formalities and legalities, the whole system gets undermined.

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A while back Craig mentioned PR (Proportional Representation).   Just my 2p – speaking as a voter, it’s bloody marvellous.   Our flavour in New Zealand is MMP – Mixed Member Proportional.   I get two votes – one for our local MP (this is kind of a sop to our previous FPP electorate origins) and one for a party of my choice.   Of course I can vote the same way on both if I want, or not.   I can even vote for a MP from one party (if I think s/he’s a really good guy) and party-vote another.

In each electorate, the candidate with the most votes wins (as under FPP).   However, the final party numbers are adjusted in direct proportion to the total party vote.   So if a party gets 10% of the party votes, but only 2 MP’s win their electorates, then they are ‘topped up’ with extra MP’s from the pre-election published party ‘list’.

The big plus, for me, is no more ‘strategic’ voting.   I don’t have to hold my nose and vote for B (when I really wanted to vote for C) just because B has a slightly better chance of defeating A, who I detest.    And A no longer ‘gets in’ with 40% of the vote because B and C ‘split’ the opposition vote between them.   Nor is it possible for a party to win with fewer overall votes than its opposition.    It does tend to encourage coalitions but that (in my mind) is not necessarily a bad thing.   They can also happen with FPP.

MMP was introduced in 1996 after a public referendum and after a couple of FPP elections had put parties in power with a minority of the votes.   It ain’t perfect but it’s a lot better than what we had before, IMO.

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Hi @mudlark @janetteb and all

At the moment I’m sitting in a second-floor room in Finsbury Park.   Leaving tomorrow to pick up a car and head for Cornwall via Hastings.   Been too busy to even poke my head into the Winchester for the last couple of weeks, rambling round the Alps having sundry adventures and misadventures.   (At some point I might retail some of them including how I came to park my newish rental car in a narrow (but straight) bit of road, perfectly positioned in line with the white lines, just in the wrong lane and upside down.   And what hurts even more is, my photos of this fine piece of precision parking were on my cell phone which I lost in Paris.   Aargh!)

ANYWAY, several people in the last few days have asked me if I would vote for Corbyn to which I have replied, I’m from NZ so I don’t get a vote.   But it was striking how many young people were electioneering.

By the way, I really *like* Finsbury Park.   Multicultural and cosmopolitan and all that, little food shops everywhere.   And an Underground station within 100 yards and ATM’s all over the place.   And everyone is friendly and helpful.

And I spent hours in the Science Museum yesterday and went back today, geeking out.

Best of luck Mudlark.

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Hi @winston Hope your leg is continuing to improve. I just watched the three specials too – on reflection I think the second one (Wild Blue Yonder) was far the best. Absolutely beautiful ship, stunning CGI that looked ‘real’, and what an awesome corridor (I can just imagine RTD saying ‘Running through corridors? I’ll give ’em corridors!’) And a really good puzzle that took up the whole episode with an entirely logical and well-plotted solution.
The third one (the Giggle) was, I think, pure ‘fan service’ – didn’t really do a lot for me. It was okay I guess.
And we hardly saw anything of Rose(2). After (I gather) a certain amount of hoop-la about a trans/non-binary/whatever-is-the-current-term character, she hardly featured. I just liked her as a really attractive girl, I would have liked to see her as a regular Companion. (Before someone shoots me, ‘attractive’ is not just looks, it’s personality too).

I liked the Seventh Doctor and Ace too (have only seen a few of their last episodes, on DVD, recently). McCoy and Sophie Aldred really did get on well on screen. Given a couple more seasons, maybe all the old grumpy men who complained bitterly about Rose and Ten getting romantically involved might have had something to grump about decades before 🙂

@janetteb The ep of which I spoke was just entitled ‘Resolution’ (the special that followed Chibz season 1). My sporadic watch-through was interrupted by the arrival of the three specials.

Anyway, I’m just about to go off on a 5-week trip to Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland, England) so I might go quiet for a while – depends on whether I have spare time (or wifi) wherever I am.

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@janetteb Well yes, I’ll definitely watch it again. Just, knowing the answer to the puzzle does remove some of the suspense – in a way that most Who episodes aren’t quite so susceptible to. It’s a bit like watching Battlestar Galactica when you know which ones are Cylons 🙂
But still very, very watchable.

I had hoped that Rose(2) would be in this episode. She’s too good a character to just fade out of sight. Besides, she’s called Rose – she’s got to come back 🙂

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If that was Newton (well it either had to be him, or George Washington, and he didn’t seem to be carying an axe). But this guy seems altogether too cheerful and normal for Newton, who was a bit of a weirdo. And as Chrissie at Chakoteya.net noted, Newton did NOT invent the word ‘gravity’, he simply added a new explanation for it. I should be all grumpy about this, but I’m in tolerant mood. (Later addendum: Having just read that ‘Newton’ was of mixed ancestry – I didn’t notice, so to me that’s a ‘so what?’. If he had been obviously ‘black’ I would say that was simply wrong, just as a woman would have been wrong, or an Arab. First, because Newton just wasn’t any of those things, and second, because in those days it is doubtful if any black person would have been sufficiently accepted in society to achieve what Newton did. Unless this was an alternate Universe. Don’t change history without good reason.)

The walkway in the alien ship is very, very impressive. Excellent CGI. 🙂 Given Donna’s ability to wreck the Tardis with a cup of coffee, there’s no way I’d let her drive that golf cart.

Interesting that the aliens use a decimal-based counting system, which makes no sense at all except in the historical context of humans having five digits on each hand. 12, or 16, would be far better number bases to use.

I do like the empty ship. Though its spookiness is very much a throwback to ‘Listen’.

This is back to the old trope of running through corridors – but it’s extremely well done and very effective. (I wonder if RTD decided to do this deliberately? ‘Running through corridors – I’ll give ’em running through corridors!’). Then the situation of two Doctors and two Donnas and how do they tell the genuine ones – always makes for an interesting impasse.

I was slightly chagrined that RTD referred to the Flux, I was hoping that most of Chibz’ assorted pollution of the Who backstory might be lost in the mists of time.

For a two-person episode in which only two things happened (and one of those, with Newton, was just a throwaway teaser), the writing/directing managed to sustain the interest quite well. The idea of the countdown so slow that it couldn’t be understood by the aliens is genuinely original. It made for absorbing watching (even if there was an awful lot of talk) but, unusually, probably not one I’ll watch again because once you know what the punchline is, much of the intrigue is lost.

Still, what remains in my memory a day later is the awesomeness of that ship. Quite the most beautiful corridor I’ve ever seen, and the ‘machinery’ in it was convincing and beautifully engineered. Maybe I will watch it again just to appreciate the classiness of the CGI.

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Oh, and – almost like a throw-back to past times – the DVD includes a decent collection of extras including a full-length commentary by David Tennant, Phil Collinson (exec producer) and producer Vicky Delow. It’s a while since a DVD set bothered to do that, I think.

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My first impressions as I watched it – (Written five minutes into first viewing): – This is more like it! Donna was never my favourite companion but it’s good to see her back. I like her daughter already. And the titles have a distinctly old-Who look about them. This is promising… Oh, and directed by Rachel Talalay. The old firm’s back!

The crashed spaceship is a bit Quatermass-ish. But the cute alien that speaks perfect English – I can’t help thinking Ewoks. Or something Muppet-ish. The two hunters now are – really rather terrible examples of the extras-in-a-rubber-suit genre. Bug-eyed monsters. Terrible. The Doc now has a proper Sonic Screwdriver again, at last.

It seems that UNIT must have been reactivated since the events of ‘Resolution’ where they had been disbanded.

Donna continues to be annoyingly insensitive (as in the old days) but after three seasons of a frequently-annoying Doc, it hardly registers.

The human/oid characters (by that I’m also including the Doctor, Donna (whatever Timelord DNA she might have absorbed) and Rose (whatever her parentage was) are all excellent. The aliens are a bit regrettable. All this is a bit too Star Wars Disney for my liking. Unless there’s some meta-explanation.

And Sylvia actually said ‘Thank you’ to the Doctor, which is the most extraordinary turn of events in this episode.

I did approve when RTD subverted all the cutesiness and the Meep turned out to be the villain and the BEM’s the good guys.

Interesting bit of retconning when it turns out that Donna, having had Rose, can now survive the Vortex or whatever-it-is. And they both gave up their regeneration energy – just like that? A bit too easy?

I like the new Tardis. Not as much as Capaldi’s, but a welcome relief from Whittaker’s crystal grotto. So of course Donna had to blow it up.

Immediate reaction – it started off really well but then it all went a bit Disney. About half the mental age of Moff/Capaldi’s era. I’ll just have to withhold judgement for a couple of episodes.

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@janetteb Sad to hear of William Russell’s death. Apparently his appearance on The Power of the Doctor set a world record for longest gap between TV appearances (as, presumably the same-character-played-by-the-same-actor).

On a different tack, my 60th Anniversary specials DVDs arrived today. I had been intending to trot through the Chibs era (selected eps only!) to remind myself of the backstory before embarking on these, but I’m off overseas in a week so, so I’ll watch them now. I just watched The Star Beast and, as it turned out, I needn’t have worried, because so far as that episode goes the Chibz era might as well never have happened. My impressions of Star Beast were initially good, I liked all the actors and characters, but the monsters were too Disney and then the plot went all Disney too. I’ll reserve further judgement until I’ve watched the next couple of eps. (I posted my first-impression comments in the forum for TSB, now I’ll go and read what everyone else thought).

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@janetteb Osgoods. I wish I could remember the exact sequence of Osgoods. We know she got ‘cloned’ (well, Zygoned) but then Missy killed one, I don’t think we ever found out which one. But did the survivor get Zygoned again, since there were supposed to be always two Osgoods – that I don’t know either.

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So (in my now-spasmodic re-watch of Chibs’ era) I skipped the Battle of – thing, and went straight to the next ep, Resolution. Which is actually quite a good episode. I can (almost) forgive the Beeb for making me buy a one-off DVD then including it in Season 12 set.

The bit of mediaevalism at the start always helps to give an air of gravity and mystery. Though ‘Resolution’ is kind of a vague title, and invites confusion with e.g. Revolution of the Daleks. (In fact how many names like that could one conjure up – Revelation of the Daleks. Revenge of the Daleks. Retribution of the Daleks. Restitution of the Daleks. Constitution of the Daleks. Constipation of the… ooops, not that one. Dissolution of the Daleks. Irritation of the Daleks (what, and make them even angrier?) I must stop this. Termination of the Daleks…)

I’ll skip the points which (I find) I already made at great length a couple of years ago. Occupational hazard of playing catch-up, one keeps tripping over ones own trail. I just noticed a couple of odd geeky things though – why did Lin drive away from the roundabout *on the wrong side of the road*? And then she stops by the right-hand kerb and the police car stops behind her and the plod’s first words are ‘Do you know what speed you were doing, luv?’ – NO mention of driving on the wrong side. Just bad editing or what?

And, “It’s shooting out the cameras to stop us tracking it.” So all you gotta do is follow the trail of shot-up cameras? Not the smartest Dalek in history.

But anyway, it was quite watchable, specially since I fast-forwarded past the tedious bits of Ryan’s family values, but probably the best Doctor 13 episode up to that point.

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@janetteb Oh yes, Bill did raise that. In one sense, our identity is linked with our memories – without them, are we really ‘us’? Clara felt the same way of course in Hell Bent. I thought it was a really nice gesture when Bill/Testimony restored the Doctor’s memories of Clara. And also, possibly the most memorable line in that episode belongs to the Doctor – “It isn’t an evil plan. I don’t know what to do when it isn’t an evil plan.”

@winston Umm, yes of course, the Ten at Bad Wolf Bay. My instinctive reaction (and Rose’s) was that it wasn’t the original – but on reflection, why not?
I will have a great trip, thanks. Our lemon tree was here when we bought the house so it’s at least 40 years old, I think it has two crops a year but that may just be our losing track of time and being surprised when it does it again. Good luck with the exercise, your knee will be a bit stiff to start with but hopefully it improves fast.

I think the show that did the most with a clone was Farscape, with two Crichtons (Ben Browder, the sheriff in A Town Called Mercy). In the episode ‘Eat Me’ (gotta love those Aussie titles 🙂 a villain was cloning people with an instant-copy machine so he could eat their brains – kinda typical Farscape 🙂 Anyway he cloned Crichton and the episode finished with one of those memorable vignettes that every series has from time to time, of the two Crichtons sitting at a table with their favourite gun between them, doggedly playing Rock Paper Scissors and coming up with a tie every time…
Anyway to complicate matters Crichton (both of him) was hopelessly in love with Aeryn Sun, and then the ‘original’ Crichton was heroically killed, and the ‘clone’ just couldn’t adjust to the fact that Aeryn loved the dead one. Anyone who thinks the Doctor’s companions have a challenging time of it should follow the crew of Moya.

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@cedarbranchtardis Hi, yes. I’m originally English, but lived in NZ most of my life. Our scenery is pretty good, and not overcrowded except around Auckland where I live. And the climate is okay, it rarely freezes. But there’s great scenery to be found in – most places of the world, I’m soon due to fly over for a month in France, Italy and England and there’s some pretty good scenery there too.

Back to Who – I expect I could get right up-to-date with the latest Who episodes now, maybe I should check out the cost of streaming services. But I’m a bit old-fashioned, I tend to prefer to have my own copy on a DVD or hard drive so I can watch it when I want. I’ve got used to playing catch-up 🙂

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@winston Good to hear you’re improving even though it’s a slow process, so long as it’s positive progress. I haven’t seen any of the new series either so I’ve been quiet for the last couple of weeks too. (I just ordered the three Tennant specials on DVD so I’ve got that to look forward to, probably after my upcoming trip to France/Italy and UK next month).

@janetteb Lack of rain has not been our problem. We have a small lemon tree which is just starting to ripen now. It’ll be ripe in the middle of winter. Our vegetation is nuts.

On my erratic spasmodic cruise through Season 11 I skipped Kerblamazon, thought I’d try The Witchfinders but I found that even Alan Cumming camping it up outrageously as King James didn’t really draw me in to the episode (partly due to doubts about how rural 17th-century Lancashire folk would have reacted to two black strangers – Ryan and Yaz – interrupting their proceedings. I don’t know the answer to that but I would have thought it would have called for comment, at least). So after ten minutes I gave up, and skipped to It Takes You Away.

It Takes You Away is definitely the best ep of the season, despite its flaws. I wrote some lengthy comments on it but I see I already said very similar things a couple of years ago. I liked the atmosphere. Thought the whole world-between-worlds subplot with Gollum/’Ribbons’ and the unconvincing killer moths could just have been omitted. I found the Doctor’s ‘explanation’ of the conscious alternate Universe very long-winded and confusing, hence unconvincing, could have been simplified a lot, but got clearer as the episode developed. The ‘consciousness’ was rather touching, just wanting to be friends. I thought it distinctly sneaky of the Doctor to say ‘let them go, I’ll stay and be your friend’ and then pointing out why she couldn’t.

I also had a sneaky thought that Graham should have stayed in La la land with ‘Grace’, along with Ryan – and why not, they already killed off the best character in the series, viz Grace, why not collect the full set? – then it would just be the Doctor and Yaz show, which seemed to work better in a later season. The episode raised an interesting question – if you ‘create’ a replica of a person, complete with all their thoughts and memories, how is it not the ‘real’ person?

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And while I’m at it, the writer interviews page is fascinating too:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/writers/scripts/whoniverse/whoniverse-writer-interviews-and-blogs

I just watched the interview with Moffat and amongst the snippets of information, apparently his two favourite episodes of anything he’s written are Blink and A Scandal in Belgravia (and they’re the ones I would have chosen so he must be right 🙂 and coincidentally, Wester Drumlins (the haunted house in Blink) was also Irene Adler’s house. It was also used in ‘Knock Knock’ – I think that house probably has more TV credits than many bit-part actors.

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@whohar I’ve found Chrissie’s site an excellent resource.

Also Tardis.fandom.com which has detailed episode synopses.

Anyway, those scripts on the BBC are good to know about. At least 90% of ‘new’ Who is there. I think we may be lucky in that, for example New Tricks (which ran for nine? years) only has a couple of scripts up.

All of Sherlock is there, too.

cr

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@whohar Thanks for that, that’s a fantastic resource! (And in PDF format too, makes it very easy to download).

As a complement, I’ll mention (though I’m sure you’re aware of) Chrissie’s transcripts at Chakoteya.net.

cr

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@cedarbranchtardis You can usually pick up old seasons of Dr Who on DVD on Ebay for a reasonable price – that’s how I watch the whole of Dr Who anyway. (I make sure any DVD player I buy is multizone so I can play any DVD’s from anywhere).

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@janetteb Wouldn’t you know it, my smug statement about no snakes was disproved in under a day. The news just featured an item about a yellow-lipped sea krait in the Auckland Zoo which apparently washed up on Takapuna Beach a year ago and has been carefully nursed back to health. I’m staggered, since the usual fate of any snake which manages to arrive in New Zealand is instant extinction at the hands of the authorities. I thought that was a legal requirement. But get this – the sea krait is a Protected Species! Apparently as an occasional visitor to our shores it qualifies as semi-native.

Okay, I can understand the rationale – any random snake which arrives in cargo might just find that the climate suits it and multiply, like so many introduced species. Whereas the sea kraits occasionally get here by themselves, obviously the climate doesn’t suit them or they would have spread by now, so there’s no danger in keeping this one alive in the zoo.

Still, surprised the heck out of me. Won’t worry me on my swims, although quite poisonous they’re timid and will swim away and unlikely to bite unless you grab it. Apparently there are quite a lot in the lagoon in Rarotonga but I’ve only ever seen a glimpse of one, disappearing as fast as it could, I’m more worried about stonefish.

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@ps1l0v3y0u @devilishrobby Whooo. This is all way over my head. 🙂 Yes I know I asked for it.

I read it all with interest but I have to admit, the concentration required to properly comprehend it is absent at the moment. I was aware that there were some inconsistencies in Who chronology but, I assumed, nothing too ruinous – then Chibz arrived and kicked the table over. Put it this way – I can just about handle River’s chronology. Or Clara in the Doctor’s timeline. That’s about my level of comprehension. 🙂 The Flux (amongst other things) just leaves me baffled.

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@ps1l0v3y0u I get a bit hazy on Doctor history. Was it Chibs who screwed around with the backstory or did someone in oldWho suggest that there had been a Doctor(s) before One?

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@janetteb I have to admit that my tolerance towards spiders is probably influenced by the fact that there are no deadly ones here and very, very few even poisonous ones. They’re less hazard than wasps.

Same goes for my tolerant attitude towards snakes – we don’t have any. Not even non-poisonous ones.

But yes the moralising was all over the place, a Chibs devotee might say ‘nuanced’ but IMO it was too heavy-handed for that. As Robertson said, building hotels on waste land was a win-win. But then his waste disposal company was taking short cuts to increase profitability and how much of that can be laid at the top boss’s door? It could have been an interesting point but then Robertson turned into a gung-ho trigger-happy gun nut.

Ah well, might watch another and it will NOT be Tsuranga Conundrum, what a surprise.

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I just re-watched Arachnids in the UK. Actually, I found it – not bad. Liked Yaz’s family, and I found the Doctor a lot less grating than previous occasions, I must have got used to her over three series. I wrote a blurb about it over on the episode thread, found I’d written the previous two posts, so I just deleted all the repeated bits and left in the few different comments. Probably just picking the episodes I half-way liked has made me more tolerant.

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Skipped Rosa again. Just started re-watching Arachnids in the UK. Well the American owns a golf course and a hotel with gold paint all over it and is ruthless about firing people and only the absence of a fake tan and a bad hairpiece distinguishes him from we-know-who.

I see the last two posts on this ep were both me. 🙂 So rather than repeat myself, I’ll just mention briefly the changes in my reaction to it this time round:

But surprisingly, when the Doctor delivered the gang home to Sheffield and said goodbye, I felt almost sorry for her. I must have got accustomed to her Yorkshire-lass schtick over three series. She was pathetically, almost indecently quick to accept Yaz’s invitation to tea, and typically (for this Doctor) brash to invite the others. I like Yaz, and I like her father, who instantly welcomes Yaz’s friends. And I like Yaz’s mum, who also happens to look sufficently like Yaz to be convincing – good casting.

But the Doctor keeps going off on weird embarrassing tangents like “Sisters. I used to have sisters.” (SINCE WHEN?) “I used to be a sister, in an aqua-hospital.” (SINCE WHEN? Doctors aren’t nurses and the Doctor was never female before so could never have been a sister). “Actually, turned out to be a training camp for the Quiston Calcium Assassins.” Chibs, if this sort of thing is supposed to establish the Doctor’s alien-ness, forget it. We *know* the Doctor’s an alien. This just makes her an awkward embarrassing one. I think he’s just trying to outdo fish fingers and custard. It’s probably an improvement (for me personally) that I’m going off on Chibs’ writing and not Whittaker’s acting choices. Oh, and the Moff’s Doctors used to name-drop very occasionally for comic effect, Chibs does it all the bloody time (Amelia Earhart) and it gets old very quickly.

The spider-haunted flat is definitely creepy. In fact the idea of a plague of giant spiders is good. Makes a change that they weren’t a laboratory experiment that escaped, but a bit more nuanced than that.

By the way, the scribbles the Doctor makes on the map are wrong – there’s only a blank space in the centre because she’s neglected to join up a number of pins. She’s as bad with a marker as Trump with a hurricane.

“I’ve heard you’re only running [for President] because you’ve hated Trump for decades.” No Chibs, that bit of misdirection won’t work, we know it’s Trump. I do rather like it when the gang wind him up – “They don’t need giant spiders. They’d just pop a tiny poisonous one on your pillow.” I like Jade, too. I must be feeling very tolerant tonight.

Overall, I don’t mind this ep. Robertson is a caricature but he’s the only really badly written character. All the others are well cast and sympathetic characters

Oh, the music – something clattering away in the background like a single-cylinder donkey engine – very distracting.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Did Clara’s Tardis have a stuck chameleon circuit too? I know that last sight we had of it, was as the diner, but that may have been just director’s shorthand to make it clear to us which Tardis it was (or, in-universe, because it hadn’t landed somewhere else yet so the chameleon circuit hadn’t operated to reconfigure itself).

Why bury it? Dunno, maybe the Vogons sorry Judoon could detect artron energy and earth masked it?

I can’t really follow your last paragraph, I’m too hazy about oldWho.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Umm yes, I thought the lighthouse was going to turn out to be Ruth’s Tardis. Can a Tardis disguise itself inside as well? I guess the writers wanted to have something to dig up. But an American Diner would have been too big to easily bury. But then, continuity-wise, an American Diner would have been just as ‘wrong’ as a police box.

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@janetteb I like big spiders. Possibly because the only poisonous spiders we get here are small and quite rare. We used to have a few Avondale spiders (immigrant Australian huntsman spiders) in our garden but I haven’t seen one for decades, which saddens me. But anyway…

The one with Jo Martin as Ruth Clayton (the Doctor) was Fugitive of the Judoon. Incidentally, strong reminiscences of Human Nature / Family of Blood though I guess it’s hard NOT to repeat previous story themes. I guess Ruth’s Tardis was made that way for the visual recognition by viewers and to hell with continuity.

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@dwnerdfrommars I don’t entirely blame you skipping all of Thirteen’s episodes. However there were some that weren’t too bad. I think the best was the third from last special, Eve of the Daleks. The Power of the Doctor was also okay, as I recall.

The special at the end of Season Chib 1 (aka Season 11), Resolution, was okay. As it happens it was the first Chib episode to feature a returning monster (Daleks) and also the first to use a DP, editor and director who had worked with Moffat, so tardis.fandom.com says. Maybe this is why it seemed better to me?

And Fugitive of the Judoon was okay, it featured a female Doctor (Ruth) who I liked. (At least partly because she was an improvement on Thirteen). And a villain who reminded me of Servalan (Blakes 7).

I think Praxeus could’ve been good except it had an environmental message that was too heavy-handed for me (and I’m a raving Greenie!)

And The Haunting of Villa Deodati was quite good, though it slandered Byron or maybe Shelley (I can’t recall which).

Series 13 – um. Village of the Angels I seem to recall was okay, mostly because of the angels, and also because it was the only episode of 13 that I could make any sense of.

And Eve of the Daleks and Power of the Doctor as previously mentioned.

That’s not a lot, is it?

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@pa1l0v3y0u Yes Rory grew to be a useful character. Initially he was a bit of a spare wheel. But he did improve vastly with time (even if he was an Auton?)
Danny always rather annoyed me, too intense, too controlling, too insecure. Absolutely the wrong boyfriend for a dominant character like Clara.

Best incidental character I think was Liz 10 (Sophie Okonedo). (Actually, I would have loved to see her as the Doctor).

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@ps1l0v3y0u Oh, and you mentioned the Lady Doctor. I have no problems with a lady doctor, or a black one, it’s perfectly explained by regeneration. My practical problem is that I just can’t see any trace of Doctor-ishness in Whittaker’s portrayal. Also, “fam”. And “I’m the Doctor. Sorting out fair play throughout the universe.” Aaaaaarrrgh! Not even Capaldi could have got away with that uniquely bathetic line. And the ‘fam’ was too many. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd’ and all that. Even Rory and Danny were a bit superfluous, having three companions taking turns to speak a la Charlie’s Angels managed to undercut much of the dramatic tension.

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@ps1l0v3y0u Well I skipped Woman who Fell to Earth this time round. I get uncomfortable when the interior of the Tardis goes up in flames for no apparent reason (as it did when Eleven arrived, also). But that was just a minor point. And cobbling up a Sonic Screwdriver with gas welding gear in a garage – seriously? The fact it looks like a Cybermen sex toy doesn’t help. Oh and the other thing, crashproof Doctors – Ten crashed through the roof of the building in The End of Time, and I was uncomfortable about that too.

And one thing that I don’t think has been remarked on before, but what a strange coincidence that the new Doctor who happens to crash in Sheffield has a strong Yorkshire accent. I don’t think that’s happened before (like, previous Doctors have had accents, but so far as I recall it hasn’t been determined by which bit of Terra they happened to arrive on, or Twelve would be speaking Cockney).

Ghost Monument we just mentioned.

Rosa – the one Who ep I’ve never watched and probably won’t. Klutzy dweeb Ryan in Alabama doesn’t look like it’s going to be fun. If he doesn’t manage to get hinmself lynched – well, he must have showed a lot more situational awareness than I’d give him credit for.

Arachnids – I actually quite liked Yaz’s family. I really couldn’t see why, later on, she spoke of them as if they were the family from hell. Maybe the plot demanded it. Anyway, the hypocrisy of shutting all the spiders away to suffocate slowly, then criticising Mr Not-actually-named-Trump for shooting the big one was not lost on me. Except – did he know where to shoot to kill a spider quickly, or did he just add some extra pain to its decease? What’s a spider’s nervous system like? My sympathies are all over the place on this one, mostly with the spiders. Might re-watch that.

Tsuranga Conundrum – all I remember is a ludicrous ‘monster’ and some pregnant guy. I’ll skip that.

Demons would have been quite a good ep of some other series. Most of the interest wasn’t with the Doctor or ‘fam’ (ugh!) and, as you say, it rehashed Testimony.

Kerblamazon – I seem to remember the villain had worthy aims of social justice but terrorist methods, talk about mixed messages. And he convinced the company to See The Light and give its workers – well, about a quarter of the minimum they’d get in any European country. Also, the Doctor suddenly losing half her IQ and gushing over how thrilled she was to get a parcel.

Witchfinders – mostly intriguing for the guy who played James camping it up, he was enjoying himself way too much. I’ll re-watch.

It Takes You Away was actually quite good, and a bit spooky. Possibly the best of the season. Def re-watch.

Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (hey the title was the best thing about it) – huge build-up to the impregnable fortress which got defeated just like that, what a comedown. And Graham didn’t kill blue teeth boy which really cheesed me off, I can think of no justification for leaving such a nasty and dangerous specimen alive.

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Well I thought I’d finally give Thirteen a chance. Selected episodes only. Gave the intro a miss (not fond of blue teeth boy). Started The Ghost Monument and what’s the first scene? – Whitdoc being annoying and nagging some guy about how he should pilot his own ship. As is well known the Doctor can barely pilot the Tardis, and suddenly s/he’s an absolute expert on some unknown make of spaceship? And she continues to be annoying and talk too much throughout the rest of the episode. Ryan the dweeb is sulking, Whitdoc is playing at the insufferable jolly-pep-talk girl guide troop leader in between nagging. The best character in the episode is the villain (the race organiser). Psychic floating strangling rags, really? Of course acetylene is inflammable, anything from 3 to 83% in air IIRC, which is an extraordinarily wide range, but I’ve never heard of an ‘acetylene field’.

The alien planet is quite well done. The whole concept of the space race and the Tardis ‘ghost monument’ is good. Could’ve been quite a good episode with a bit of tidying up the script. Didn’t like the magic fairy grotto Tardis one bit.

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@winston Skyfall (James Bond) or Spyfall (Dr Who)? Think you meant Spyfall, but I’m guessing.
I just watched No Time to Die, the last James Bond (so far). In which he did. Die, that is. Probably. But you know what these fictional characters are like, 007’s almost as bad as the Doctor for regenerating…
No Time to Die is actually quite a good movie, as the James Bond franchise goes. The dilemma of finding out that he carries a virus specifically engineered to kill his girlfriend or his daughter (who he only just found out existed) if he ever so much as touches them is very moving. A bit like the Doctor’s dilemma in Hell Bent where he daren’t remember Clara. But unlike the Doctor, 007 has no Testimony to fix things for him. (Or does he? I guess the next movie will tell us).

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@ps1l0v3y0u Well I remember Spyfall as being, on the whole, one of the better episodes of the series (not that the standard was very high). BUT I seem to remember cringing when Noor Inayat Khan was brought into it, I get uneasy when real people** are represented (and inevitably misrepresented) in fiction. And the other thing I disliked was when the Doctor dropped the Master in it by pointing out his dark complexion to the nazis. That makes her somehow complicit in racism. I don’t think Twelve would have done that.

** Real people who are recent history, I don’t really care about Julius Caesar or Mark Anthony or King Arthur.

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@devilishrobby Yes I know that. The Absorbaloff was pretty naff, but – for a Doctor-lite episode – I found it quite absorbing. I mentioned it because I seem to recall it got a lot of flak as ‘worst ep.’

Actually, I have another candidate for worst ep ever, Kill the Moon. On the one side, it broke every single rule of basic physics or mechanics it possibly could, starting with the Space Shuttle gliding(!) to a landing on the Moon and ending with the magic flying space dragon laying an egg as big as itself. And on the other, character, side, the Doctor buggers off and leaves it to Clara and Special Needs to (possibly) commit nuclear suicide because it’s ‘not his job to decide’ – since when? And even worse, it turns out that Special Needs naively childish anthropomorphic emotions were the ‘right’ choice. Ugh. The one bit of true-to-character was when Clara tore a huge strip off the Doctor at the end.

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@janetteb @ps1l0v3y0u I too missed the Baker years (both Bakers!) so I really can’t comment on them. (I’m very slowly nudging back into oldWho territory from the back end, so to speak, i.e. Seven’s last season.) Colin Baker does (from what little I’ve seen) appear to be an abrasive character, though he was okay in the Five-ish Doctors.

But on the subject of Worst Episode Ever (that I’ve seen, which effectively means NuWho) – Love and Monsters wasn’t that bad if you overlook the slightly cringey reference at the end. I think I’d nominate The Tsuranga Conundrum which I’m about to watch skip over in my sketchy voyage through Season 11. All I remember is two things – the naffest cutesy cartoon monster ever (they might have got away with it in Red Dwarf, it would fit right in) and the man who was pregnant, which probably sounded like a neat ‘what-if’ idea until they actually tried to implement it when it fell flat with a soggy splat. If there are any worse episodes than that they’ve mercifully faded from my memory.

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@winston I agree about the awfulness of the 6th Doctor’s outfit. I recall Seven complaining about the jumper with question marks on it – he didn’t know how lucky he was. (Well actually, he must have seen Six’s amazing technicolor dreamcoat so maybe he did know). Seven of course actually was/is a clown by disposition, but like all good comedians he knew when to play it straight and could be quite sinister when called for.

The next most awful outfit after 6’s must have been 13’s (Whittaker) by the way, that looked like a clown suit too. Or, those horizontal stripes across her chest and the long coat make her look like Heidi the Goat Girl from some cartoon fairy story. Though not remotely as bad as poor old Six, what were they thinking?

Incidentally, pineapple on pizza is great. I wish you many happy pizzas (Not too too many, mind, lest you start to look like Jabba the Hutt too 🙂

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@winston Good to hear you’re slowly recovering, though it must seem too slow. Hopefully you’ll be able to enjoy summer when it arrives. DON’T apologise for posting, I’m sure we don’t mind as long as Craig tolerates us all (and he’s usually remarkably tolerant 🙂

Our weather, since you mention it, has been poor for the last week. I had a swim a couple of weeks ago, water was just okay, that might have been my last for the season: since then the weather’s been poor, the tides have been useless and I’ve had gout. So a fine day might tempt me out to see if the water’s still okay, or it might not.

I’m about to fish out my Season 11(?) DVDs – that’s the first season of Whitdoc I think – and view a few selected episodes. See if they’ve improved in the interim. Also, old episodes of Danger Man, they got quite good towards the end of Season 2.

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@nerys Resuming the James Bond theme, I just watched Skyfall and Spectre. Skyfall was quite good (I gather it’s highly regarded amongst the Bond genre), though I do have to question his wisdom in taking M to a deserted house in the highlands without stocking up from Q’s gadget collection first. And I thought the new Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) was quite delightful, but I do have a slight continuity problem in that she’s suddenly brown. I can rationalise the changing M’s and Q’s in that they’re a position, not a person, but Moneypenny is very much a person, dammit. (But then, Bond…)

Spectre tried to outdo Skyfall and failed. It’s actually quite a good film, though I had a couple of problems – one was when Bond was chasing the Land Rovers down the mountain using a Britten-Norman Islander (where did he get that from) – 40 knot stall speed so IF the Land Rovers were going flat out on snow (but why would they?) he could stick behind them, but then he knocked the wings off, how could he ever control the direction to intercept them down slope? Never mind. And the other one was, escaping from the desert lair, he fires one shot at a gas tank and the entire building complex explodes. In fact that whole escape was just far too easy, one exploding wristwatch and he walks out of it with Madeleine. ‘With one bound, he was free’. It should have been far more difficult than that.

The other thing that intrigued me in retrospect, when I watched No Time to Die, (and I’d long since forgotten ‘Spectre’), the opening ‘home alone’ scene with young Madeleine Swann seemed quite un-Bond-movie like, and so the switch to adult Madeleine with Bond was an abrupt transition, but it was evident that she was the same girl, grown up, and had ‘somehow’ hooked up with Bond. Imagine my fascination then, when I saw Madeleine describing that whole scene with precision in ‘Spectre’, and realised No Time to Die was an exact follow-on from the end of Spectre. Continuity? In a Bond movie?

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@winston Well it’s great to hear your surgery was a success. But I’m sorry to hear that you’re still in pain. I had assumed they could give painkillers for it but I was forgetting that that seems to be an area where medical science isn’t yet perfect, no such thing as a 100% effective yet completely harmless painkiller. Hopefully the pain will diminish over the next few days.

I’m afraid I’m not very good at expressing sympathy. (Just like the 13th Doctor, come to think of it.) I’ll just wish you the best for your recovery.

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@winston I’ll just wish you the very best with your operation, and your six weeks’ enforced bed rest.

I have no idea if this will help, but when I had a heart valve repair about 15 years ago, I almost enjoyed the ‘holiday’. NOT the operation itself (which of course I have no recollection of whatever), but the week I spent in hospital afterwards. It was such a novel experience to be lying in bed, doing absolutely nothing, (which would normally make me feel quite guilty because I should be doing something constructive), with an absolutely cast-iron excuse to just relax and be totally lazy for once. I don’t know if you can lull yourself into that frame of mind but it might help.

One other thing, I took books and portable CD player and headphones – I found I never read the books, took too much mental effort, but the CD player I used almost full time. If one is trying to rest, and getting into the most comfortable position, sometimes listening to music is the most relaxing thing. I guess the current equivalent would be a MP3 player.

But anyway, best of luck with the operation.

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@ps1l0v3y0u That ‘browser history’ has been a running joke ever since The Eleventh Hour, when the Doc advised the helpful Jeff to delete his Internet history. I have to say, I know the feeling.

Twice Upon a Time was a big lightening-up from The Doctor Falls. In fact, as the Doctor said, “It isn’t an evil plan. I don’t know what to do when it isn’t an evil plan.” And the Doctor’s sole achievement was in rescuing the Brigadier and the unknown Toby Whithouse German from their fatal predicament. But I think that was just as well, trying to top The Doctor Falls would have been difficult and possibly too grim for a Christmas special. Anyway, I class it as a ‘B’ episode – good but not quite A-list. Which is okay.

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