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31 January 2016 at 06:26 #50692
@janetteb Hit the nail on the head — change is the life blood of DW. But too much at once is extra-difficult and hard on everybody, particularly, I think, on fans with more rigid and defensive mind-sets about the show. We just have to trust the new folks (and the old ones — I’m assuming some of Chib’s writers will be veterans of Moffat’s shift) to find the right balance.
And I hope CapDoc is part of that balance in S11 and onward for at least a while . . .
31 January 2016 at 06:20 #50691@puroandson (but really PuroSolo right now — ) Right back atcha, and feel free to entertain the wrathy whenever the urge comes upon you. You’re polite and funny about it, *and* you’ve had plenty of provocation lately even without the Windy One in your hospital room.
Be reassured; from what I’ve observed on other boards, at this point Capaldi is as near to universally liked-to-loved-to-adored as it gets with DW. Many, many sheepishly (or proudly) confessed conversions reported, even on reddit, of all places. Yea, even on YouTube, if you look at some of the fan-tribute videos and music clips re S8 and S9 — just stay away from the known pits of venom, and it’s fine; lots of enthusiasm!
I don’t think Capaldi’s going anywhere any time soon, actually; he’s a guy who clearly likes a challenge, and I think the challenge of shifting to a different show-runner just to see what he can do with it will be very appealing to him. How other players in the mix will come down on the question of doing a regeneration at the end of S10 is unpredictable, but I doubt that he himself is in any rush to walk away at this point, anyway — he’s said as much in interviews. But, you know, shit-stirrers will keep stirring up shit, just to convince themselves that they really do exist. Poor shlubs; what a life.
31 January 2016 at 06:04 #50689@missy TWICE?! Wow! That’s a lot of — um; well, a lot of beautiful, perfectly paced, gorgeously lit and framed, terrifying cauldron full of a seething churn of loss, repentance, and the fortitude of stars. Or something.
Now I’ll have to go watch again, myself. Thanks, for the whetting of the appetite for another helping (or two) of that painfully hot and spicy but wonderfully nourishing — soup?
Well, never mind us; seriously, does CapDoc ever get to eat anything but soup? Is soup the food this Time Lord lives on (Oh, and chips, coffee, and other stuff we’ve never seen him actually *eat*, right? Except . . . soup)?
31 January 2016 at 05:51 #50687Is fine — so far; only please, not so much *screaming* and screaming and screaming, all the time. Please note: this ep passes the Bechtel Test: named female characters conversing with each other but not, for a good deal of the time (I think — too much screaming and shouting to be sure when, exactly, and how long), about the men. More about somehow not dying, and what’s the secret crime that the ship is under attack by the “sun” for?
31 January 2016 at 04:35 #50681@puroandson PuroSolo — I suspect, though, that the Stupids have won and want all episodes to be like Blink or The Family of Blood. I loved them actually -Paul Cornell did a pretty good job in that Human Nature two parter. Mainly, though, the Doctor ran, cried, sobbed, snogged and talked (fast).
Yup. Too much of all that for my taste, for far too long.
I’ve adored Capaldi’s neat and focussed Doctor. Others maybe haven’t and I’m fine with that. Well, actually I want to kill them but the better half of the Hybrid aint in so I’m posting this anyway. 🙂
Thank goodness I agree on Capaldi, so I’m safe — from your perfectly reasonable and entirely justified wrath! [Er — in my ‘umble opinion.]
31 January 2016 at 04:03 #50680@pedant Actually Lost had a known closing date 3 seasons out – of course, that didn’t stop people from completely failing to pay attention at the end (no, they weren’t dead all along)
Yeah, but by then they’d already bumbled themselves into such a raggedy mess of a story that it was too late, in my estimation, to bring the thing to a satisfying end. Actually, I only stuck with it as long as I did because there were, besides all the pretty kids, some adults on hand whose stories I thought might be worth following — the bald buy with the knives, and the older black woman — and the actor who played mr. evil genius (sorry, it’s been a while and I never did re-watch the thing; too disgusted) was interesting to watch.
They weren’t dead? Well, it did seem like a very odd set-up for “purgatory” or whatever, all that para-science stuff. What did you think was going on?
S10 will be interesting but I hope, if Gallifrey features at all, it will be sparingly and with a tightly focussed narrative purpose – exactly like it was in Hell Bent. The moment Doctor Who starts getting bogged down in its own lore is the moment it starts to spiral.
Agreed. Never much cared for Gallifrey. find the obsessive filling-in-of-blanks that so many fans adore to be just a way of obliterating interesting gaps in our knowledge with disappointing assemblages of cliches (it’s mass media after all).
30 January 2016 at 18:33 #50672@puroandson PuroSolo I’ve seen with American interviewers do say the same thing: “here is Peter Capaldi”. In the interview itself, they never say Peter, they use both his names.
You know, I have a feeling that this is at Capaldi’s request, because he’s pushing back against the tendency for people to say his last name as “Cap-ALL-di”, but he prefers “Cap-AL-di”. I saw video of a DW chat session with Moffat somewhere recently where he was asked a question from the audience about Peter Cap-ALL-di, and his answer began with, “First of all there *is* no Peter Cap-ALL-di.” He proceeded to correct the pronunciation, and lead them in several choruses of “Peter Cap-AL-di, Peter Cap-AL-di” before going on to the rest of the answer. So it’s my bet that Capaldi would sail right by being addressed as “Pete”, but for Cap-ALL-di, you’d get the Curse of the Eyebrows — in the kindest possible way, of course.
As for Fringe — grrbbb. It had a lot going for it at first, when it was monster-of-the-week, IMO; and still, when they got to the hero’s mad-scientist father. And I liked Olivia. By the time the whole double-world thing got going, it lost traction for me. At that point I felt that it would have been *much* better if they’d set a closing date and stuck to it, as The Leftovers is doing, rather than wambling on and on having to double back repetitiously and needlessly complicate things to create enough material to keep spinning it out over yet another season, like Lost. I don’t think the closed-ended series had taken a solid hold in TV yet, so they stuck to the drag-it-out model of pushing everything to exhaustion. Mine, anyway.
Keeping track of multiple versions of one character (or more!) over multiple seasons is one of my least favorite things to do anyway. That’s what kicked me out of Orphan Black when I realized they were just going to keep sending in the clones, and I was already sick of it.
@morpho I hate everything right now, even kittens. You want to get that seen to, before it gets any worse! What next, pancakes?!
@craig Thank you! I shall have a look soonest. I’m was never a Torchwood fan because even a little of Barrowman gives me the purple screaming twitches, but I’d re-watch — maybe I was too quick to judge.
30 January 2016 at 00:53 #50653@bluesqueakpip Oh, good — I hope your assessment proves right, and all the angsty ones wrong, for all our sakes!
29 January 2016 at 06:27 #50643PuroSolo @puroandson this: I was only asking about whether Capaldi was referred to like that or introduced like this? In the States? You then say “PLEASE, please don’t put my name anywhere near [some part of] a sentence”
PuroSolo, you are correct. The “Pete” phrase appears in @ob-wan post #50590 as follows: Believe me, Pete’s agent is on the phone right now lining up guest shots or stage work to fill the gap.
I’ve never seen anybody else here or elsewhere refer to Capaldi as “Pete” (not even Jenna Coleman, in public at least), and have no idea how the actor himself would take it (would probably depend on who said it and in what context, ie common sense). Personally, this usage struck me because it was so unusual. It had an over-familiar feel to it, but no harm done, really, IMO.
I agree that Capaldi is probably seen as “too old” by most, but not all, teenaged fans, since we live in an age of ragingly strong peer-group definitions, but maybe under tens see him as just another grown-up — big, powerful, often incomprehensible, sometimes funny, a protector of fearful and distressed people and opponent of bad and scary ones?
29 January 2016 at 04:28 #50641@winston Doctor Who must be a demographic nightmare.
From a show runner’s point of view, I imagine so. You can see the effort being made in S8 to get some lighter material in there, and loose-jointed plots that make groan-ups out of grown-ups (RoS, FotN), but on the whole I think Moffat pretty much went his own way in this series and in S9, taking advantage of the Scots melancholy Capaldi carries to do some darkness that isn’t young-kid friendly, finally fulfilling the promise to “go darker”. So I’m expecting a more “mechanical” sort of approach in S10 — more how do we fix this/outwit the bad guys, less mood, psychology, and angst in general.
Or maybe not — it’ll be Moffat’s last go-round, so he might cut loose for real — only he’s a fan. He would never, IMO, do something that might actually jeopardize the future of the show. So prolly not. I’ll watch no matter what, just to see Capaldi strut his stuff (and, I hope, a worth companion(s) strut theirs). Pleased either way, really.
With Chibnall, it’s the same as for everyone else: let’s see what he wants to do, and what he does, before making a judgment.
28 January 2016 at 09:23 #50622Doctor Who News has a feature with Capaldi giving us a bit of a tour of a UN-run camp for Syrian refugees, with more to come. Here’s the link:
28 January 2016 at 07:47 #50621@doctordani Capaldi isn’t any less popular than Smith really
I think people sometimes get the really crazy Moffat-hatred as including Capaldi too, particularly since there was some very childish horror expressed by some very loud and persistent Tennant/Smith obsessives that Capaldi was too “old” and “mean” as the Doctor. That died away, at least by my observation, over the winter between S8 and S9, partly due to people doing re-watches (thanks goodness for technology!) and changing their minds so radically that they had to go to the DW boards and tell everybody so; and some, I assume, just went away in a huff and took their carping with them. There are a few such voices left, noticeable by their scarcity; but the Moffat-hatred mania continues on the net, and I do think that even though many hate-posters mention that they don’t include Capaldi (“If only he had some really good writers — “), the vitriol tends to splash about a bit.
That said, I could see some of the younger kids preferring Smith, and the grown-up stuff S8 and S9 both dealt with. Spanning the age-range of the DW audience is one hell of a balancing act, and it’s never going to be achieved satisfactorily for 100% of the very broad demographic that the show has acquired over time.
27 January 2016 at 08:16 #50576@puroandson PuroSolo Now we watch Fringe and are pretty bored.
Yeah, well . . . my sister and I call each other up to yell, “Guess what’s on television tonight? NOTHING!” We’re hoping for the return of “The Leftovers” soon, but that is probably not a show for teens, who tend to be confused enough as it is. “Game of Groans” will be back sometime soon so there will be joy in Mudville, but I don’t live there any more. An SF series called “The Expanse” is getting good buzz (unusually sophisticated far future space opera), and I know folks who enjoy those dumb damn zombies, but argghh. I don’t know if any of this (fairly new series) gets shown outside the US. There’s a fake Doctor Who that just got started, with “Time Masters” and a bearded Arthur Darville as Rip Somebody, Time Adventurer, with comic-book levels of violence so no doubt the plotting and characters will be likewise. Anybody watching “Black Sails”?
All in all, a pretty dismal outlook, but things change. I see “Jack Irish” listed as available through Acorn.tv, so will take a look (thanks).
27 January 2016 at 08:01 #50575@puroandson @missy I guess there’s a line in the sand somewhere. Hmm, now where was that line in the sand from? 🙂
I’ve always felt the “line in the sand” metaphor is basically a poignant and rather wistful one: one swipe of a strong breeze, and where is it then?
26 January 2016 at 21:30 #5054426 January 2016 at 09:19 #50519@zepyr101 Just registering annoyance with needlessly crude and provocative language and unspecific mud-slinging, in case you choose to think that relative quiet on that score = assent, in any particular.
26 January 2016 at 09:12 #50517@puroandson Son of Puro Please tell your mum that the hospital was only brought up at all because I asked, in response to an earlier post of yours. Do pass any blame along to me; and nobody here, I’m sure, thought there was any attention-bidding going on (other members have posted personal bits here from time to time *ahem* without no such reaction to follow, so I feel secure in saying that). Apologies, in any case.
I have, by the way, the same reaction to BG (except for most of Tom Baker), although I enjoyed most of it very much when I watched the original broadcasts. People’s tastes change pretty radically sometimes . . . I’m glad you spoke up as a young person who loves the Moffat/Capaldi seasons (so far), because I think we need to hear from the “youth audience” that the BBC wants the show aimed at — the more the better — to help inform our opinions about their reactions.
I suspect that @lisa is right about a *majority* of younger viewers in their teenaged years finding S8 and S9 a bit tougher going than they’re used to from DW (and some twenties and more as well — they all are pretty vocal on other boards, from what I’ve seen). I hope Chibnall doesn’t head more for surface action and simpler, more transparent stories, mainly to please those voices. But it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s part of his brief.
My concern is that a less complex show could be less appealing for Capaldi to work in, after Moffat’s seasons; but who knows, he also might find that a refreshing challenge! We’ll just have to wait and see . . .
25 January 2016 at 17:35 #5045925 January 2016 at 07:44 #50444@puroandson Son of Puro — Ah, that’s hard. Lamb and fluids, here’s to ’em. Thinking of you both tonight.
ichi
25 January 2016 at 06:12 #50440@puroandson I would love to write an impassioned plea to Capaldi to stick with 2017 but I fear he may step down too. . . to me, Moffat presided over the best years of Who by a long shot. I loved RTD but Moffat blew me away -and many others too.
Me too. But I think we all understand that if he’s not comfortable staying on with CC in charge (or for any other reason!), Capaldi *should* step down post-Moffat, and keep the best of the DW experience untainted by a tough and troubled denouement. As the man said, “Some things just end, because they have to.” That line is a summary of the past — but also prophetic, isn’t it? If not sooner, then later. I hope for later. Now, drink your wine; I’m pouring mine!
Cheers! Ichi
25 January 2016 at 06:00 #50438@jimthefish Re CC as Moffat’s successor Show runner: He might rise to the occasion. Quite apart from anything else we don’t want to become the Chibnall equivalents of the wailing anti-SM brigade. Let’s judge him on the work.
Sounds good to me. Even if his writing skills aren’t that great, he might come up with some good arcs and find excellent writers to fill them out.
But, if you’re right about this, too — . . . his work, if pedestrian, is crowd-pleasing. And possibly that’s what the Beeb is wanting for the moment after the inspired but sometimes risky approach of the Moffat years. I suspect that our theorising will become a lot tamer though — then some of the natives used to high-octane Moffat are going to get pretty restless pretty fast. If so, I hope CC’s “character” strengths will be strengths enough.
@kharis Torchwood is unreasonable, bombastic and boring, plus Broadchurch put me to sleep. This is my fear, the fear he hasn’t produced anything that held my interest, except the episodes during Amy and Rory’s time, which gives me hope. His run may be wonderful, but I doubt I will have something to personally look forward to.
Yeh; I’m pretty much where you are with this, but damned if I’ll allow the downer of future unknowability to spoil S10 for me! I guess I look at it (taking a broader view) this way: Moffat + Capaldi = three seasons of blade-running, out there on the edge and taking positively acrobatic risks, not always successfully but always a thrill. I’ll have ’em boxed on my shelf to look at whenever I need to. After that, maybe it’s time to turn and please the much less risky, less exciting, less rewarding (for me and people like me, in this at any rate) viewers who want something more solid and consistent, particularly those who’ve stuck with the show through the wilder ride we’ve had with CapDoc. Hardly anybody can *live* out on the edge for long periods of time, so change isn’t just inevitable: it’s necessary and good. Some of us may not stay on board; but the ship needs to sail new seas (or maybe old ones, but just not the one we’ve so enjoyed, for a while).
@puroandson Son of Puro This is from Son of Puro and my Dad (for help). Puro is down.
I hope you mean her computer is down — but if she’s out of action for now, give her best regards and good thoughts from Ichi, will you? Well, same if it’s just the computer of course, though on a different level of concern . . .
@kharis Oh my stars! I am cranky over this news. Maybe I should get some sleep and some wine before I post again.
Gods, yes — luckily some kind DEM has furnished me with a fresh bottle of table red, which I too will use in an effort to reboot my older, happier, pre-Chibnall mood! Cheers, chum — although I too am a bit to old to regard a possible years’-long reign of mediocrity over S11 ++++ with anything but dismay. Still; thanks to re-watch tech, we’ll always have the Grand the Grand Moff and his CapDoc!
23 January 2016 at 11:17 #50351I am full of foreboding, but fending it off with a cheap but tasty red table wine which lives in a wire wine rack on top of the fridge (no cellars around here, to speak of). I do see that Steven Moffat has done, as he said in an interview recently, “a ridiculous amount of Doctor Who” and must be ready for pastures new. But I hate it that he’s taking everything he’s learned about avoiding misogyny away with him (yeah, it was deployed in the latest Sherlock, but I find Sherlock a bit dull, compared with the inbuilt variety and flexibility of DW), and leaving us with somebody who maybe hasn’t learned much about that . . . did someone mention cybermen in bikinis? Date rape (Torchwood — I remember that queasy feeling)? Urg. I fear that if the standard set by Moffat with lessons under his belt doesn’t hold, not to mention the standard of agile intelligence, Peter Capaldi will slope off to do something more interesting, having made his mark.
And leave us with . . . what? I shudder to think, frankly. Will the women writers disappear? No more Rachel Talalay to direct? A guys’ club again?
And I hated Broadchurch, which sure doesn’t cheer me up.
More wine; and then, sleep. Maybe something will have changed for the better in the morning . . . .
22 January 2016 at 23:04 #50333@toinfinityandbeyon Yep, just came across this — so it looks as if they’ve found their crucial spare part. I’ve got mixed feelings about this, since “Broadchurch” bored me to death, but what the heck — the only *really* difficult bit is waiting til spring of 2017 to see what they come up with!
A year; a whole year! The reasoning makes sense, but still — a year!
22 January 2016 at 16:51 #50323@pedant [Moffat] tries not to back future writers into corners – nor be backed into a corner.
That’s exactly what drives the plot obsessives crazy. They want canon at any cost, but Moffat protects the flexibility of the show by keeping some issues undefined or unresolved. I think some of the obsessives can’t tell the difference between plot-blur to keep healthy wiggle-room for future stories, and plot-blur out of not bothering to think something through and cast it in stone forever. Or, they can tell the difference but won’t acknowledge it because they’re angry at not being catered to, so they start screaming about “lazy writing” as if Moffat were some school kid turning in a one-page instead of a two-page homework assignment.
22 January 2016 at 08:15 #50317@janetteb You go, girl! That’s exactly my idea of a solution. If ever there was a TV show that invites the viewer to fill in gaps and obscurity with their own ideas, DW is it — and that’s part of the fun, IMO, part of the invitation to the viewer to be more than just a passive watching of events. Love that aspect of DW, although I know that for some fans sometimes it’s a source of irritation.
22 January 2016 at 02:40 #50314@pedant Thanks. It’s never bothered me that much, but I know some fans have tied themselves in knots over it . . .
21 January 2016 at 18:36 #50307@puroandson PuroSolo Damn. I left off the “g” — Pangborn, not pan-born! Yes, that’s the duet. And if you know Mozart, you really don’t need to know Pangborn, just to keep things in perspective . . . !
21 January 2016 at 10:22 #50302@puroandson PuroSolo, lecture your heart out, I know just about enough to follow and enjoy. Have you ever read an old SF novel by Edgar Panborn called “A Mirror for Observers”, SF/fantasy, beautifully written and containing as a crucial element, as I recall, a performance of the Waldstein? I think I learned to aspire to write evocatively about music from that book.
As for God the composer — I recall a comment from someone during an intermission interview at a Met performance of Cosi, in which the man speaking (some sort of music scholar, think — this was years ago) said that when as a child he first heard this music, he thought the duet between the two ladies on the subject of their two adoring suitors was angels singing to each other, and what a bleak enlightenment it was to learn later that it was two women singing about their boyfriends. Mozart understood the art of angels, lived and breathed it, whatever they are (and I speak as a longtime atheist here, who nonetheless can’t deny the existence of sublimity).
21 January 2016 at 05:13 #50296@grannym @purandson I have to admit that I haven’t looked back at BG Who much — I saw most of the classic series as they aired, and enjoyed them for the novelty of this shape-shifting (within limits!) space grampa and his traveling companions, in what passed for outer space on tv in those days; and for the UK wit, which has always appealed to me (Goon Show, anyone?). Re-watching them just doesn’t work for me now. Maybe I’ve been fatally seduced by the much more polished and detailed look of AG Who (despite signs of budget constraints here and there — goofy looking skovox blitzer etc.), and by faster pace and more sophisticated filming savvy.
And I thoroughly enjoyed “Husbands” — partly because of the moments in that story that harked back specifically to the loss of Clara (he hasn’t laughed like this in a long time . . . and things that end because they must). What a neat way to move us forward (by going backward into the past), seeing how the Doctor is coping with the loss of his friend and his bleached-out memories of her. He’s traveling alone, no idea for how long since those events, and he’s managing pretty well (so bring on S10 — he’s not prostrate with sorrow and regret; he’s ready to go).
PuroSolo — I love S8 more now than I did when I first saw it! “Bravura” is a good word for that whole series, IMO, Taking chances, hitting it out of the park, fizzled connections and all. Perfect set-up for S9’s change of tone, and now “Husbands” has completed the deck-clearing we needed for whatever comes in S10. Whatever it is, it will be a surprise for me, because I can’t even begin to imagine (partly because I don’t *want* to imagine — I’d much rather be surprised when the time comes).
20 January 2016 at 00:42 #5027420 January 2016 at 00:33 #50273@puroandson PuroSolo — Well, maybe someday I’ll get myself invited to an Ozzie SF con, and swing by — not likely, but you never know . . . Thanks for the kind thought, anyway.
Poetry — I only have a few scraps of it engraved on the inside of my skull (“From too much love of living . . . ” Just found that misquoted on a page about Swinburne! Bit of a shock, but glad my memory kicked in with a correction). I took a nifty little compendium of “Best-Loved Poems” to spouse’s facility, and we both ended up smiling when I read some oldies aloud — “The Highwayman”, some Kipling stuff, etc. — the rhythms seemed to please, whether or not any meaning registered. I was using that instead of haiku (the quick mental refocus required by the haiku form is no longer possible), but somebody walked off with the book! Okay; hope they enjoy it. I’ll get a new one, and keep it in the car for when I visit up there.
Anyway, it’s the music in older poetry that works for us too, I think.
19 January 2016 at 21:43 #50258@doctordani Capaldi’s doctor is an odd mix of being the most stand-offish and the most accessible, which therefore makes him the most complex and three-dimensional. I think he’s so likeable because of his flaws, and because of the depth the man who plays him brings to the party.
Too true. The melancholy Scot air that Capaldi uses goes much deeper than mere weariness, IMO, and it gives his Doctor a sort of grounding gravitas that works really well. It’s rooted in “Scottish philosophy”, rather than in childish sulks.
The Moffat-hatred has all the maturity of the mean-girls syndrome: the knee-jerk nastiness of the high school clique of bullies ganging up on the Smart-but-Shy One. Doesn’t work so well, once the smart one pulls self together and starts putting his or her gifts to work out in the world. But mean-girls can’t stop; too jealous and insecure. Too bad.
19 January 2016 at 21:24 #50256@pedant Also, look around you. There’s actually intelligent discussion going on, right now, but you you are too busy being outraged to partake.
Oh no, you’ll drive Stampy away, and it really is a bit too much fun to keep him/her around a bit, n’est pas? That said, ain’t it always the way? Too busy being “clever”, that one, to even try to learn to articulate thoughts worth expressing — a skill gratifyingly often observable around here.
And yeah, I think some people hate the movie DW because of the insertion there of a comment that the Doctor is half human. It’s been ignored by the writers ever since, and then was addressed as you point out, AG, in just about the same throw-away tone as the original assertion. So I think it’s about as non-canon as anything in DW ever is . . .
19 January 2016 at 19:17 #5025219 January 2016 at 06:16 #50232@doctordani . . . introducing ambiguity about the ‘hybrid’ had a greater purpose here, and was a set up for that discussion between him and Ashildr about why he’s so preoccupied with protecting Earth, i.e. because he’s half human
Well, it keeps that bit of kerfuffle alive, I suppose, and anything that maintains DW’s flexible backstory is worth keeping, if only to give future show-runners and writers maximum leeway to refresh the stories with material about unresolved issues. Personally, I like my Doctor fully alien and so in need of the humanization he gets from his companions; which is really, I think, just reconnection with the natural inner reserves of empathy and compassion that a TL is *not* supposed to have. That he does have such hidden depths is part of what makes him a “rebel” TL, IMO. I would also love to see more attention to his past, by the way — but it’s a delicate balance. We must always leave him his mystery. If you want plain old human male + immortality, we got that with Capt. Jack.
@missy The switch of making the Doctor forget Clara, was pure genius – in fact the whole episode was pure genius. I unashamedly bawled my eyes out.
Yup. It hit me when her painted image was left behind in bits by the departure of the Tardis: it’s over, and they’ve both moved on in the most definite ways. Thank you, Steven Moffat, for an absolutely brilliant resolution of this quite amazingly varied and vibrant love story, or *whatever* the hell it was . . . and by the way, I think the writing has been, by and large, excellent: clever, efficient, and wide-enough ranging in tone to please the varied audience.
@ob-wan How does her story end? Traveling around with another immortal woman, like two old spinsters on holiday (except for the fact that they both look about 15-years-old). How anti-climatic.
How nasty a remark about two physically young women off adventuring together. What on earth made you think that this is a den of reactionary machismo-hounds here? Personally, I’m delighted to see Clara fly off in her own Tardis, the closest thing to a female Doctor the BBC will (reportedly) allow Moffat to get, and with her own companion — a fitting reward for ambitious, bold, impulsive Clara. As for subtlety and nuance, I think the lack is in the eye of the beholder in this case: what Capaldi brings is *range* — goofy comedy, affectionate satire, a dash of camp, scenery chomping where suitable, the stillness and poise of an ancient being, the intense psychological subtlety of, say “see me” in Deep Breath or the end of “Husbands” on Darillium. And daring of a gifted, mature professional, who’ll take a crack at anything and make it work or die trying (a rare occurrence, because Capaldi *is* so gifted and so intelligent — see his comment in the Extra on Heaven Sent, re not knowing whether it really would work until they could see the whole thing done, so he throws himself into it with his best — which, it turns out, is very, very good).
The limitations mentioned in your post are, IMO, all yours. Please, don’t subject yourself to “cringing” your sour way through Capaldi’s run; nobody’s keeping you, and I doubt you’d be missed. *Sigh*. I’m not as tolerant as PuroSolo, nor as polite as Son of Puro (a true gent). Tut.
Actually, @pedant put it much more succinctly (thank you, p): If all you have is the ARSE-laden ramblings of a hormonal teenager, then prepare to get used to us pointing at you and laughing. Seriously. Read the thread and see the sort of standards we aspire to around here. ‘Cos this ain’t Youtube.
Likewise PuroSolo (the kind one): the viewer doesn’t comprehend the nature of the tank scene and has difficulty recognising modernistic references leading to a belief that a loud entrance isn’t nuanced -when, actually, it is exactly that -if you understand the reference in the first place.
Yeh.
@puroandson we just might need to define visceral? No? I won’t. 🙂
I will, or give a start, anyway: felt in the guts, which are your viscera; powerful feelings not bothering with the brain but rooted in the depths of the body: fear, pain, ecstasy, hunger, rage, love, et al. Art that strikes that deep strikes home, and is not forgotten. PuroSolo, modify? And I like “lustrous” a lot, for Heaven Sent. Yes; yes, it is.
@craig Um; can we ditch the dentist, please? (I know there’s a great joke about this lurking around here someplace, but I just can’t put me finger on it . . . )
19 January 2016 at 05:25 #50231@purandson PuroSolo — You are so welcome! Just think — 20,000 Strand cancellations would be significant even today. “Justifiable homicide” indeed! I’ve read some of ACD’s comments in correspondence. I went through my Sherlock Holmes phase like almost everyone else, in my teens, and read at least one biography of ADC — and that was well before the modern phenomenon of “fandoms” flowered into what it is today (I’m speaking of the fifties). ADC was *very* pissed off, and probably still would be today, to see his historical novels vanish under the avid popularity of Holmes and Watson. 120 yrs is pretty impressive. And of course the device of regeneration has allowed the Doctor to change with the times, much as Holmes has in the mass media.
My spouse’s law firm had a partner (copyright and intellectual property) who was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars (fan clubs). They have meetings in Santa Fe that Saul would attend; he was much the liveliest, most cheerful, and quickest-minded of the partners. Holmes, like the Doctor, doesn’t attract dunderheads.
Well. Not that many . . .
19 January 2016 at 02:49 #50228About ACD and Holmes, and the reaction to his “death” —
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160106-how-sherlock-holmes-changed-the-world
18 January 2016 at 18:44 #50207@missy Of “Heaven Sent” + adjectives –“Mind-blowing” just seems so, so weak somehow . . . but it was. Also I found it viscerally painful, and that feeling lasted for a couple of days. Like a . . . toothache? The kind you keep poking back to your mental foreground with your tongue, because damn it. Something. Because, beautiful/horrible?
I do wish, though, that they’d just left it at “Tell them I came the long way ’round,” instead of that rather silly ambiguity about Me being the hybrid. There are reasons, naturally, for inserting a reminder there at the end about the hybrid; but it just doesn’t work for (small m) me, and detracts from the near-perfection of “Heaven Sent”. It’s not as if the DW audience *needed* a “cliff hanger” to lure them into tuning in the next weekend for “Hell Bent”.
18 January 2016 at 18:22 #50206@missy Not the Raven — it’s a middle-European (?) folk tale, about the hugeness of Eternity and the smallness of men (even great men, like the emperor), one of many in which authorities find wisdom by turning to humble country folk for answers. Anybody remember if the fellow whose challenge was how to render the hard surface of the world softer for royal feet wherever they might tread? The answer to the question was not to cover the world in leather, as had been suggested by the king’s advisors, but for the king to wear shoes; not sure whether the person providing that answer was shepherd, peasant, sage, or passing knight errant (it’s rarely a woman of any station, as I recall).
It’s the Doctor’s solution to the problem of the diamond wall that throws a strong emphasis onto the bird (“one hell of a”) rather than on the wisdom of common folk (and corresponding foolishness of official royal counsellors).
The second shadow in this case is a metaphor for your personal death, brought into existence when you’re born, following you until it gets you in the end; in this particular case, the Veil, a version of Death that kills its victim many times over — and yet, being the Doctor, he outwits it repeatedly and escapes it in the end — only not really, because *someday* — ! A bit like Clara in her Tardis, I think. S9 is so much about death.
18 January 2016 at 09:10 #5019716 January 2016 at 07:48 #50180@lesames Not to worry, we’re not beastie show-offs here. But you might want to take your comments over the the “Hell Bent” thread instead of here.
@superfreak Well, there are people who don’t like all kinds of aspects of S9: the rather murky tease of “Sleep No More”, anything about Clara, the Fisher King, Ashildr, etc.; a concentration on themes rather than action-y plots, and relationships rather than comic-book style confrontations (Wham! Pow! Arrrrgghhhhh! The Rani!) that they hoped/expected to see; elements not explained to their satisfaction; Steven Moffat, etc. I am, as you can guess, not sympathetic to what I regard as mostly nit-picky complaints, which just means that I found the emotional sweep of the season simply over-rides that stuff. But for people whose sensibilities catch on these things which then pull them out of the story, it must be very annoying and frustrating. Personally, I feel the way I think you do about it: delighted and grateful and still happily thinking it all over and savoring the savory bits, which I find plentiful. We are the lucky ones, IMO, not letting the ideal of the perfect spoil the accomplishments of the very very good (and sometimes heavenly).
@missy Oh, boy; 12 minutes! All of “Heaven Sent” might just put you into a delirium of astonishment and anguished joy. It gave me a bellyache from being wound tighter and tighter — some of the most masterfully successful audience manipulation I’ve ever seen and appreciated. I’d go watch again now, but then I’ll get no sleep tonight. I want to be fresh for a movie theater broadcast of “The Pearl Fishes” tomorrow, courtesy of the Met Opera in NYC.
Anyway, enjoy! You might want some brandy after . . . just to settle your system.
16 January 2016 at 07:26 #50179@missy As to bringing it on herself — I don’t agree. She gets a sort of Rube Goldberg accidental death, more indirect than Danny’s, but just as unpredictable and “ordinary” as his. I think it’s in the Extra with this episode that Moffat talks about how they took care to make it impossible to lay *blame* for this event on any of the characters — it was just exactly the kind of thing that the Doctor has been afraid would happen to her just because she went with him into dangerous situations, and in spite of any precautions he might take (like getting Ashildr’s promise first). And yet, how could he prohibit her from getting the thrills of competence and courage that she came with him to find? As Moffat says, her plan was perfectly sound, based on her past experience with the kinds of trouble that the Doctor gets into. She just wasn’t thinking about it in a “legal” sense — how her taking Rigsy’s tattoo voided that promise by changing the binding effects of Ashildr’s contract with the Shadow/Raven. Adventurers aren’t lawyers. Usually.
Which doesn’t mean she wasn’t, at some level, looking for just such an outcome . . . and it was very weepily satisfying. As for Maisie Williams, I thought she did a sterling job, but she doesn’t really connect with me, as an actor — yet. Maybe someday. Nobody “works” for everybody (see Mersey’s non-connection with Capaldi — no negative reflection implied on anyone).
16 January 2016 at 07:09 #50178@arbutus — can’t get the thing to load, but will keep trying. @pedant *Love* those headless monks!
16 January 2016 at 07:08 #50177@puroandson Lovely! I love the delighted smiles that these eruption bring — thank you!
16 January 2016 at 06:38 #50176@puroandson
PuroSolo — I’m with you on the anger; these losses never seems “fair”, although I maintain that we don’t have a clue, really, whatever we may believe. I’m thinking of Robin Williams, whose death made more sense as suicide in some form when it became known that he’d been suffering with Parkinson’s disease for some years (that, at least, is what I read recently). Parkinson’s brings dementia in its later stages. For such a witty, agile mind watching itself slowly dimming out, a pre-emptive death might have been a welcome release. Or not; how can we know? Moving through our own perceptions and constructions of the “real”, we rarely glimpse the roots or the results of our own actions and decisions, let alone anyone else’s.
Well, that’s one glass of wine; now for the one that sends me off to sleep. Maybe tomorrow, “Sleep No More” instead, and see how that works. Hard to imagine it as an effective soporific, but why not?
16 January 2016 at 05:53 #50174@missy For whatever help my comments were, you’re welcome of course.
And yes, dead is “dead” in my book as well — because whatever happens to the soul, assuming there is one, without the body it inhabited it’s no longer that person, with all his or her connections with family, friends, colleagues, etc., but something (or nothing) else.
15 January 2016 at 06:27 #50154@kharis Hmm. A bit like that daft bloviater Hydroflax in “Husbands”, with his exploding booby-trap body.
15 January 2016 at 06:23 #50153@missy It’s a good example of an “unreliable narrator” story: a film put together *by the bad guy*, Rasmussen, so we have to assume that he has edited the footage from the station cameras (and helmet cams of various characters) to make the story *he* wants to tell, for his own nefarious purposes having to do with spreading the Sandman predators out into the universe via the film (I think). So it’s presumably heavily manipulated material to begin with, crafted to manipulate the viewers’ understanding.
Within that framework of deception, we see a story of the Doctor and Clara pretty much failing to get a grip on the situation, let alone solve it or save the lives of the rescue crew they find there. They end up escaping the Sandmen in a state of confusion and defeat. Moffat said somewhere that he was happy to take on a story in which the Doctor fails, for a change, and its placement just before Face the Raven is ominous: it shows us a failure which Clara should have noted and taken as a warning that the Doctor can’t ALWAYS be relied upon to solve whatever puzzle lands on his plate.
On the other hand, how do we know that he really did fail, or that he didn’t turn around and do something clever right afterwards that saved what was left of the day? That certainly wouldn’t appear in Rasmussen’s film.
The ambiguity is deliberate, complicated by a dizzying succession of shifts of viewpoint (which camera are we seeing things through now?), and probably not meant to be solved until a “part II” can be provided in a later series (probably S10).
15 January 2016 at 06:02 #50152For those who don’t already know this stuff (I was surprised to find elsewhere that Rickman went to a Montessori school as a kid), a rough round-up about Rickman. Look at how dorky he looked as a youngster, playing Tybalt! And what a uniquely beautiful man he became.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35313578
I really hate these losses, coming thicker and faster . . . No need to remind myself that I’m of an age to see mature artists that I admire die younger than I am now; I keep getting rude reminders from reality. Sometimes if feels as if the serene ruthlessness of time takes out everything but the damn garbage . . . As someone remarked online this a.m., good entertainers go, and leave us with the Kardashians and Justin Bieber (and the rest of *that* list is too long even for the internet). Loved this man’s work, and that he was a Lefty as well.
Didn’t he also play a bad gunslinger in black in “Quigley Down Under”? I don’t see that listed anywhere, so maybe not, but I seem to recall . . .
@purandson Son of Puro, thanks for your good advice and kind thoughts. I think it’s a bit harder to cope with repeated wallops like this in the dimmer days of winter right after the holidays. Luckily, we get to commiserate on-line with people of like mind, and cheer each other up — one upside of the electronic life.
Puro Solo — thanks for you kind words; and stay off Youtube-Boobtube! It’s an unhealthy place, except for music clips and funny cats.
13 January 2016 at 09:46 #50109@miapatrick historically women seem to be frequently either raised onto a pedestal, or pushed down into the gutter,
Yep; and the pedestal wasn’t *ever* a pedestal of intelligence and abstract thought, but one of idealized “purity” and a weird high-mindedness empty of actual thought. Since women were not to be permitted to be Thinkers or Doers, really (unless very privileged, usually due to some association with upper class men), all that was left was to be the sweetly passive guardians of morality and conduits of prayers and forgiveness (yeah, vast over-simplification of a very complex and changing situation, does anybody here want or need extended essays on this stuff?).
As for River, it didn’t stick with me that she’s supposed to be an academic, because (as you point out) I can’t recall ever seeing her *being* one, or hearing her talk like one; too busy talking like, er, a pirate . . . ? (Stop thinking of Robert Newton! Well, no go ahead — that’s kind of the exaggerated acting style that I see in Kingston when she plays River.) And that’s what overwhelmed these other qualities, for me:
. . . she has always been shown with a balance of insecurity and ego, a kind of bravado. She is after all a very old human, but a very young timelord. But she’s always been smart, and calculating and, I think, humanly (and timelordly) flawed.
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