Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
22 November 2018 at 10:32 #65842
@jimthefish WhitDoc . . . seems to have forgotten a lot of life lessons. I quite like the hesitant naivete of this Doc but it sometimes seems to rely a little too much on her not having been remotely affected by the experiences of previous regenerations.
That’s my major problem with her too. And the wide eyes and big O mouth of surprised delight expression is starting to wear on me (very much in evidence in Kerblam!).
@bluesqueakpip The double levels of the Pickwoad sets, plus the varied seating, meant the actors and directors could change levels, fling themselves into a chair, show an explosion by swinging on the railings – lots of stuff. They looked like great sets to act in.
And this one is just a weirdly lit big elevator car with not enough room to move around in, and nothing to do. Thanks for clarifying that — I feel claustrophobic just looking at it and wondering why. The potentialities of the actors’ bodies being expressive and interesting to watch in motion is canceled, especially with four of them in there.
Re this Doctor more accepting of death: CapDoc started out with patches of that in a sort of alien-detachment sense (notably in Into the Dalek, as I recall), and got slammed for it by fans used to the more sympatico SmithDoc perhaps; now WhitDoc is showing some of this quality and it looks like simply more practical perspective that one would expect in a 2,000 yr old time traveler — and I’m seeing some similar criticism of that, here and there. Here’s a point where I think some casting back to earlier experiences as AG Doctors learning acceptance-of-what-must-be-accepted the hard way might help to make this pragmatism more of an asset to the character than a puzzling and off-putting casualness with no visible underpinnings.
22 November 2018 at 09:51 #65841@janetteb I do like Robots of Sherwood. I agree the script is very silly and the ending even sillier. I enjoy it because it is a fun play on the Errol Flynn movie and the banter between Capdoc and Robin is hilarious.
Me. too — I was happily reminded of a bunch of lurid “historical” movies of my childhood, and I found poor Robin’s uncertainty about being real and/or fictional rather engaging. Also the spoon. And lots else about Robots of Sherwood.
And this: discussion requires something more than a mere statement of preference and a dismissal of everyone else’s view points.
Ever so YES. If you approach like a troll, @seeoswald, no point being surprised by being called out as one (especially if “form” is an issue . . . ). So why else are you here, seeoswald? All the stuff you’ve said so far is just a regurgitation of a bunch of generalized and childishly dismissive talking points that have infested DW chat on reddit and other such sites for years. Got something new and specific to offer?
22 November 2018 at 09:19 #65840@mudlark — Good luck with the nose! Here in the American Southwest, oddities with noses (and cheeks, and ears) are taken quite seriously. I’m glad yours is being taken that way too.
20 November 2018 at 07:37 #65795@missy Although only fiction and an actor acting out that fiction, PC’s Doctor always made me feel safe. Strange isn’t it.
I felt both the same, and the opposite — never knew, particularly in S8, which way he would jump, or how far he would go, but simultaneously there was no doubt whatever in my mind that this Doctor’s two hearts were positively molten with passion for decency, fairness, and kindness. That fixed the game in a way, because it would almost always bring him round in the end to a softer landing rather than a hard one.
Not when dealing with Cybermen, of course, because they themselves had no hearts at all (if I recall correctly).
15 November 2018 at 22:07 #65669@mudlark Thanks! And Fermor’s book is one of my favorites, right up there with, say, “Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village” et al.
15 November 2018 at 08:22 #65647@toinfinityandbeyond — GAWD, that clip is *wonderful* — thanks so much! Love it, love it — and they used the middle eight! Hurray!
15 November 2018 at 07:50 #65646@cathannabel I must have told him a dozen times each day ‘Don’t wander off’ with about as much effect as it had when various Doctors gave that instruction to various companions (he did wander off in the middle of Salzburg,
I know the feeling, from when my husband and I did a couple of river cruises, and before it became just too much to even think about. He got lost in Vienna, somehow made his way back across the city in time to get back on the boat for the next leg of the trip! Exciting times . . . I’m glad you got to do this with your Dad.
@thane16 Puro — While in Prague, I had a truly creepy dream of people hanging long white sheet-like cloths from upper story windows in those taller apartment buildings. Someone told me that that was in fact done in medieval times (?) to signal the presence of plague — but did Prague, as an inland city rather than a port, fall victim much to plague? Anyway, that dream probably colored my sense of a sinister air about the place.
15 November 2018 at 07:12 #65645@margaret-blaine . . . under Chibnall, the show seems to be moving in a different direction and the time for theorizing of a bonkers nature may, sadly, be over. Perhaps this has been a Moffat site more than a Dr Who site.
My very thoughts. Even a good story (like “Punjab”) is flatfooted, by which I mean — what you see is what you get, so how much more is there to say about it? With Moffat, what you saw (and heard) was just one layer of what you got, so there was plenty to chat about, and reason to look again; and again. So far, there’s been nothing I want to re-watch; and not a lot I want to say . . .
@jimthefish in all his episodes Chibnall has never shown the remotest interest in the Doctor.
And that, I feel also, is exactly what’s going on here now. She’s like agitated scenery, a sort of — talking McGuffin, as written. What’s going on among the crew is the real focus, and that’s not a bad thing by any means — I recall some discussion during Capaldi’s run of too much close focus on the Doctor/Clara axis and a longing for more ensemble work to offset it (so here it is, solid and sometimes appealingly warm, but — unexciting, IMO). She sets them in motion; they run around looking at stuff and discussing what it is, what it means. The situation they’ve stepped into plays itself out without them messing it up, but — what are *they* there for? What is *their* stake in the outcome; or hers? I’m not feeling it. And I miss that. I miss feeling *involved* not as a companion, but as a traveling alien, a (gun-less) gunslinger for justice and compassion (and, sometimes, dangerous fury). I don’t want to come here and moan about this over and over; but I’m not sure there’s enough else to discuss to stay engaged.
. . . this series is just not doing nearly enough to take me out of my comfort zone. I want it to do it far more. I’m not so much feeling uncomfortable as slightly bored a lot of the time.
Yes. *sigh* Me too.
@swordwhale More and more I’m shouting “THIS IS THE SERIES I WANTED WHEN I WAS TWELVE!!!”
That’s my problem with it; I haven’t been twelve in quite a long time, and going back to that place is just “been there, done that” for me these days. I have a strong feeling that if Graham goes, that’s it for me: I’m gone too. Sad, but not very; Doctor Who is indeed for everyone, just not everyone all at the same time.
13 November 2018 at 07:43 #65612@blenkinsopthebrave Ye gods. That clip really *hurts*, after all this time — and so much else that has hurt and continues to hurt.
13 November 2018 at 07:34 #65611@bluesqueakpip High ratings — good! Relieved to hear it. Thanks.
13 November 2018 at 07:19 #65610@mudlark Yaz . I thought I knew my Nan … But if this is true, if this is her life, then she lied to me.
Graham. … that girl in there, she ain’t your nan, yet. It’s only later that she’ll decide how to tell it. And I honestly don’t know whether any of us know the real truth about our own lives’.
This was the first hint of serious depth in this new series, for me — a suggestion of the complexity of human identities that are always, with the passage of time, changing (and this is re-enforced, if only in passing, by the change in the mission of the “demons” themselves, from assassin to witnesses). Big sigh of relief from me — there’s hope now, for more than a clever sort-of-supere-hero comic book!
@pedant — OMG! The watch . . . thanks for that.
@jimthefish I like a grandstanding, speechifying Doctor but this incarnation of the Doctor seems to be somehow more sentimentally naive than passionate with it.
Yeh. I expressed myself somewhat similarly over on Faces discussion about this. Whittaker is working fine for the stories we’re getting, but not working, for me, as an ancient alien traveler with a long and often painful history. But maybe, for the newer, more youthful audience DW is hoping to capture, this is where you have to start to get there again later on.
@kevinwho Yeah, man. I want a glint of that “I’m so tired of losing” moment — the *cost* of non-interference. It doesn’t come free. How weird — Walsh’s character is looking more to me like an experienced Doctor than Whittaker does.
@miapatrick Re: the wedding, it was quite sweet, a little too sweet, though that was undercut by the fact we knew she knew the husband would be dead within hours. I know this is a fresh start and all that, but I did think their could have been some extra poignancy from the fact that the Doctor’s wife died still quite recently in her timeline, especially with the hand binding. It’s not as though River was only really married to Eleven.
Yes. There’s a price to pay, for such a harsh and completely unaknowledged severance of this Doctor from her own past. The Doctor is a Time Lord; erasing her own long past completely from her consciousness, as they seem to be doing here so far, is a costly decision.
@bluesqueakpip . . . she, a rebel Time Lord, has to act like everything she hates about the Time Lords. Not interfere while terrible things are happening.
Ah, well-spotted! But that didn’t come through for me, until you pointed it out. It literally didn’t occur to me — because I saw no sign that it occurred to WhittDoc. I’m getting a very disturbing feeling of “Don’t frighten the horses” here — this is core AG Doctor. The Past Matters, including the Doctor’s past — but not here, not up front and solidly, only by inference afterward. Of course, this episode isn’t really about the Doctor, but about Yaz and her family. But still . . .
@tardigrade . . . there must have already been a conversation about going back to save Grace, and specifically the impossibility of that. It feels like that probably should be been in an episode . . .
Yes, that deserved an episode, and I’m disturbed that it hasn’t happened yet. I’m worried that they might veer away from the Graham-Ryan-Grace emotional story because it’s potentially so strong — and this Doctor has, so far, no emotional ballast to pitch against/with it. She doesn’t seem to have any remembrance of River’s fate in the Library, for example, to resonate even a bit with Graham’s loss of Grace (speaking of missed opportunities!).
What are we, without our memories? Obliterate the Doctor’s emotional past and, IMO, you obliterate her/his meaning, and with meaning, existence. And that’s part of why comments are dwindling: there’s little or nothing to comment on about the Doctor herself.
@janetteb Graeme talking to Yaz. it was a good speech but I felt as though it should have been the Doctor saying it.
Exactly; Graham is the wise elder here, and doing the job very well. But the Doctor, who is more “wise elder” than anyone, is an Indiana Jones sort of figure (but more restrained of course) instead. And the really worrisome aspect of this, for me personally, is that I’d rather have Graham continue in that role — which Walsh is doing excellently — than have WhittDoc assume it, because it fits him — but I don’t see how it can fit her, now that she’s been established as something like an adventurous young tour guide in dangerously exotic places . . . which is how I’m seeing her, so far.
This was a good, well-thought out and heartfelt story well suited for our times. I liked it. But I think I’d have lied it just as well without WhittDoc, as long as Graham was still in it.
Maybe I’m just too old for this, now.
13 November 2018 at 05:57 #65609@missy Yes, many of us do . . . Funny, but it was always quite clear that Capaldi himself was not “his” Doctor (“He’s the Doctor, I’m just a guy”), and that the Doctor was separated from human by eons of not-human experience although electrifyingly connected to humanity at certain emotional points.
The thing with Whittaker that I’m finding is that she seems to be her Doctor — but that Doctor is no more alien than my cat is. A human with some enhanced abilities, brilliant tech, and a lot of odd experience, but — us. A good woman to have as your friend: sympathetic (mostly), reliable, scattery but capable, with — so far as I can see — a good heart. One good heart. She pretty Zen, in fact — in and of the moment, devoid of any impulse to reflect. She could just as easily be that adventurous aunt who zooms off to live with the nomads for a year, or gets asked to go help the space station solve a problem and ends up inventing a star-drive and punching through to Alpha Centauri — Victorian England produced a good handful of such women, lone explorers in exotic climes who just couldn’t be doing with Victorian/Edwardian “lady” ness and walked right out of it to do their own (Imperially protected) thing in Albania, Arabia, the Far East, etc..
But alien? No. More Indiana Jones than Starman, so far. Clearly, this is just fine for the current DW purpose. A bit dull for me, though, and I’m not seeing much potential in Whittacker for a blossoming of depths. But you never now . . .
I’ll stay on for stories, and wait to see if there’s more.
12 November 2018 at 04:37 #65558@BJT25 2, Jodie is a proven good actor so why is she the same in all episodes!
That’s the writing: so far, it’s been pretty simplistic and shallow (compared with what we’ve become used to with Moffat, that is), but I’m hoping for better as the writers gain more confidence.
Female roles in the past episodes have been so much stronger. I think the current Dr should re-generate into Clara!
Uh, oh. Them’s fightin’ words in some parts of fandom . . . !
8 November 2018 at 22:58 #654988 November 2018 at 22:51 #65497@pedant O crap on the BMW — I’ve been bashed like that once, no great harm done, by a very old lady driver who told me she’d thought she was on the interstate highway rather than little old Thingie Street, and I found the sheer *shock* of it absolutely — I like a quiet life, thrills and chills and bolts of panic strictly on a viewing screen, than you very much — but cheers on the blood sugar! I’ve been working on my own numbers, and finding it hard going.
8 November 2018 at 22:44 #65495@chiara I think a female actor with a bit more character may have been better (personally I think Rebecca Front would have been quite good)
I think so too; Amanda Tapper, from “Sanctuary” etc, might have done better. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by chipper-upper-lipper-itis, or something, and longing for some moments of reflection, some quiet thoughtfulness, all the stuff (of course) that tends to get left out of programming for young viewers (though Walsh brings some of that, in his memories of his beloved Grace — but WhittDoc has no such moments that I can recall, so far — too busy and flighty, expressing energy and quick thinking in buzzing activity).
8 November 2018 at 22:24 #65494@juniperfish We can’t wait for the Doctor, or anyone else, to fix earth’s problems. We have to do it ourselves. A rather sombre message, for sombre times.
And much needed — and heeded, to some degree, as noted about the mid-term elections here in the US. This part of what CC is doing I do like: the scaling back of the earlier Doctor-braggadocio (though some humor, and a bit of the endearing edging into buffoonery went with it, too). WhittDoc is herself, so far for me, a scaled-back Doctor in other ways, too — less self-absorbed, more brisk and chummy than aloof and alien, more *demanding* of humans rather than pointing out our failings.
I see a good parent to nervous children here, rather than an ancient, experienced, and erratic space adventurer; and maybe that good but realistic parent is also what’s needed right now.
@missrory . . . Doctor has knowledge that, as a time-and-space traveler who needs to keep the Web of Time intact (and who saw humanity pay dearly for a previous self ousting Harriet Jones), there really is only so much she can fix.
Yeah — She can do repairs and upgrades, but she can’t change Entropy permanently, only interrupt it a bit here and there . . . and now knows that, and shows a bit of humility on account of it. I love your comments on those damned, futile, useless “super-heroes” who do nothing about our real problems, just a lot of posturing, muscle-flexing, and game-playing about invented ones — although that does reflect with uncomfortable accuracy the relationship between the current administration and the problems of the nation it administers, come to think of it (though I can really only speak for the US, of course — where it looks like a close fit).
@arch . . . love graham, Walsh is playing the character very well and I love that we have a mature companion again.
Yes; he’s becoming the warm, steady heart of the group, very good and enjoyable work from Walsh.
8 November 2018 at 21:14 #65490@pedant What sort of show is “The City”? What popped into my head was China Mieville’s novel “The City and the City” (prolly not). Mieville is too convoluted for me in book form (I more or less quit at “The Scar”), but I’d love to see a smart screen presentation of his work.
@swordwhale I watched a documentary about Pony Penning Day on Chincoteag (?) the other night — only it’s Pony Penning Week now, I think (I read “Misty of Chincoteag” like any other horse-loving girl). It looked great, and the idea of financing the island’s Fire Station with a yearly Pony auction is ingenious.
As for Dr. Hu — there was an item on him in the science section of the NYT earlier this week, showcasing his odd interests and his book, and I think he sounds like just the sort of scientist Doctor Who would be if s/he actually did research science (and expanding the size scale at the upper end into astrophysics, though maybe Hu looks into that, too). It would make my day if Dr. Hu’s license plate read “DR HU” + some numbers . . . maybe “14”?
8 November 2018 at 20:24 #65489@kevinwho @chiana Great bonkering Bonkers! Love it. If only . . . ! But, no chance.
Me, I’ll be quieting down here, I think, during this season anyway (unless it starts giving something more to chew on). It’s pretty much what I expected from Chibnal, and the fact that I had some glitchy problem getting the spiders ep and everything since and have not yet got around to getting it fixed — a pretty good indication that this isn’t working for me any more. All the anticipation and urgency is gone, for me, but I’ll catch up and watch it all, hoping for some sparks to fly that will work.
Bet I’d feel differently if I had some kids here to watch it with me!
7 November 2018 at 06:06 #65468@troyorsline I did wonder if Pting was Stitch
Gargoyle Stitch; or Stitch mutated into something even meaner that Stitch-at-the-start. Definite resemblance.
29 October 2018 at 08:12 #65114@thane16 (Puro) often political correctness is a term in the pejorative used to denigrate courtesy.
Yes, the evil Right has captured that phrase it and turned it into a pejorative, with great success. Someone once asked author Ursula LeGuin, in an aggressive tone, whether she would describe herself as “politically correct”. She answered, with considerable steel (she was a formidable person), that yes, she would, since she was against slavery, misogyny, racism, exploitation, etc., and would never apologize for being so. The idiot who had asked for this had enough sense, at least, to shut his mouth.
The phrase has (at least) two meanings now: it either refers to common decency and humanity as per LeGuiin’s reply, or the insistence by some on, for instance, referring to manhole covers as “person-hole covers”, and to someone crippled by arthritis as “differently-abled” (and where that line is drawn tends to vary quite a bit, according to all kinds of factors including who else is in the conversation).
29 October 2018 at 07:50 #65110The coda; yes. Absolutely necessary for modern moderns who weren’t there, or anywhere near it in terms of time, to be reminded that this was one of many starts on a path that keeps branching both upward and downward toward a goal that may not be achievable in a hundred years or more (even lots more), but is nevertheless worth fighting for all along the way to offset the inevitable setbacks (see: Right Now).
But — I see that coda in my head a bit differently. I see CapDoc delivering it — and a dry, quiet comment following, or just a cast of expression, a glance away, signaling that a 2,000 year old alien with a Time Ship knows that there’s a big back-step coming in the early 21st c, because that’s how we do things; we don’t get actual, lasting *victories* — we get fragile advances, and furious backlashes, and all the rest of of the balancing and rebalancing. Both messages — the “hurray, President Obama!” victory, and the sometimes futile-seeming struggles that must be constantly pressed for their own sake because no victory is ever secure — could have been sent: one for the children, one for the actual adults in the viewership. And a reminder to all that the Doctor *is* an ancient alien, no matter how chipper and energetic, who *has* seen so much of the dark side of history that an awareness of the transitory nature and inevitable costs of achievement must linger in the background . . . we could have had a glimpse of the gravitas that some of us miss so much. Though so far, for me, WhitDoc has no background to speak of, no memory at all, no larger awareness; which may change — “the Timeless Child” sounds promising; and it could be a grand move to play up her rather child-like shallowness for a while and then show her slowly maturing to a full awareness of all that tumultuous and often stark back-story . . .
Anyway, I think Moffat might have done “my” coda, and Capaldi sure as hell *could* have done it with one slow blink and no words at all. So, thankfully, it’s done for me, at any rate, inside my head, a nice call-back to that reaction shot to Clara’s “I’m not going anywhere!” I sure could have used that call-back, to anchor this new Doctor to the one she was only a little while ago.
The review by the rainbow gent — well done, but I disagree. They did *not* stand by and do nothing; the visitors from the future *did* help, just not in the immediate climactic scene which they had in fact helped by preserving from sabotage. Very clever, to make the SF element of the story a completely fictional side-story — time-traveling bad guy trying to f**k with history, but they work to make sure it keeps being shunted back onto its proper track — so that they *can* help without stealing the agency of Rosa Parks’ heroic act. Brilliant stratagem, actually: create a parallel fictional anti-story that fictional time travelers act (also fictionally) to cancel out in the end, thus “helping” by clearing a fictional part of the path to the historic moment. [I really don’t think Moffat would have come up with that.]
So, the message really isn’t “Don’t help”. The message, IMO, is pay attention so that you know *when* and *how* to help — don’t just gallop in like the sainted cavalry — and know when and in what ways your help is *not* needed. In other words, *think* about what you’re doing, instead of exploding into action powered by righteous emotion. This also works to cement the ensemble nature of the main characters, doing their bits.
My hat is off to the writers on this one.
25 October 2018 at 08:30 #64939@miapatrick You can always look back in time and find people who went against the grain in society regarding racism, sexism, homophobia etc, but these are always the exceptions. And it’s tempting and more pleasant to sit here in the 21st century and believe we’d be one of these people if we’d been born and brought up in the past, but it’s statistically unlikely.
Yes, it is. I can’t help but think of how suddenly, after Watergate, it became really hard in many places to find anyone who would admit to having voted for Richard Nixon; a young relative of mine, who at the time of that election, told me that he agreed with his mom, that it was “time for a change”, so he’d voted for Nixon. About a decade later, her stoutly denied that he had done any such thing. Most people — not all, but most — go along to get along, and then lie about it later to be able to still claim membership in the new majority they live among.
25 October 2018 at 05:53 #64935@thane16 Puro — Ah, thanks for that clip from Close Encounters — I can’t watch that end sequence (and its rich, playful score) without tears these days — it seems like some message from the past of a different planet, one still full of curiosity, good will, and the confidence *not* to meet a ET visitor with guns blazing. That’s not us any more (if it ever was, except in the minds of visionary artists); not in the US, that’s for sure, where one political party is trying to shift the blame for its own adherents’ threatening behavior to the party of the victims — an act of calculated venomousness that seems alien to nation that I grew up in.
We’re at war, here, whether we want to recognize the fact or not, and the rights of POC are central to that war. Again.
25 October 2018 at 05:31 #64934@bluesqueakpip while Yaz would have experienced socialprejudice in Alabama, the ‘Jim Crow’ laws largely didn’t apply to her.
Thanks for checking that out; Yas’s relative invisibiliy in general, in that setting, seemed odd.
25 October 2018 at 04:45 #64932@texasferrets Of course they made sure to never show a single person who wasn’t a backwoods racist bigot.
Judging by the newsreel footage at the time of the Montgomery bus strike and the sit-ins, anyone in those hotbed-of-hatred cities who wasn’t a racist bigot mostly kept their mouths shut and helped if they saw a way to do that quietly, for fear of being branded a “n—– lover” and treated accordingly. And that’s something worth a whole story in and of itself, not a diversion from the story of Rosa Parks’s protest.
24 October 2018 at 03:14 #64896@swordwhale Love the boots… I have lived in boots like that forever.
Aghh! Just looking at those boots make makes my feet hurt . . . Ah, well, guess I’m still just a tenderfoot.
23 October 2018 at 02:58 #64828@mudlark Thanks, ducks! Went to lunch with my sister today at a pretty decent Italian place, then discovered by accident a French bakery etc. which looked pretty good — but we were full up. But when I asked for an espresso, remembering where I live, I had a look at their “espresso machine” (“Yes, we have one, right there — you just push the bu’in, and the coffee comes out!”), and decided no, this is some sham chain thing and the hell with them.
So, a day of discoveries ! Like, one of the packages that came wasn’t a blanket that I’d ordered on Amazon.com, but 15 pairs of little notebooks and no invoice, so I guess they didn’t charge me for this set of items *that I never ordered*, but WTF?
Being 79 sure is weird.
21 October 2018 at 02:57 #6473021 October 2018 at 01:44 #64728@pedant Okay, I do not remember 12 being able to “leave at any time”.
In that case you did not pay sufficient attention, which is far enough. Moffat’s writing is unforgiving of those who don’t. But it was spelled out clearly, in text.
I just checked “Heaven Sent”, looking for the You Can Leave At Any Time clause, and of course got sucked in and watched the whole thing. I still saw nothing about CapDoc being able to leave the castle any time he wished, let alone a repeating element of that: he talked, rather, about being “trapped”, and his problem was how to get out without spilling some secret that he warned us he could “never, ever tell.” Is there something perhaps at the *very* beginning of HS, before the title sequence? I watched it in my iTunes library, where it starts very abruptly at Capaldi’s voiceover line, “As you come in to this world, another comes with you.”
Our context for this subject was the suggestion of a different start for Whittaker, confined in an asylum while recovering from regeneration fugue that the (possibly villainous) staff reads as madness. It’s bonkerizing, just *after* the fact of TWWFtE; I get that you don’t like it, but isn’t bonkerizing part of what this site is for? A paragraph of plot summary doesn’t make a fanfic, certainly not any fanfic I’ve seen.
As for the half-human horror, I don’t like it either, and I’m not suggesting that it be revived (gods forbid, in fact, with Susan or anybody else) — it’s an example of a far-fetched move in DW’s past (that turned out to be over-reach, and was dealt with afterward by perfectly sensibly as you point out). I was alluding to how elastic the boundaries can be in this show; you can try and fail miserably, but the fact remains: you can try, and if you’re good enough to pull it off, you can succeed (see also Heaven Sent). DW canon is, as they say, loose.
Personally (and this is true of the next ep too) I’d like to see crisper dialogue editing. There were a few moment s of “You say your line, I’ll say mine”.
I didn’t see that somewhat clunky timing until re-watching Heaven Sent, but now I do, and yes, attending to pacing would help.
19 October 2018 at 22:11 #64692@pedant A dark, gloomy….custard cream dispenser.
Dash it all! Now I want one of those. Only, chocolate mousse for me, thanks.
@thane16 The colourised sequence reminded me of the interior of sclerotic bowel.
Er — yes. I was trying to put my finger on it — uh, trying to come up with something visceral like that . .
@rob LOL!
@miapatrick A version of the Doctor that you don’t like isn’t the end of the show. It’ll probably come around again.
Cannot be said too often; which is a good thing, since it seems it needs to be said so often.
@lisa Just I’ve been a bit impaired I guess by my hopeful expectations
I don’t know the Sara Jane Adventures at all, but I think I get what you’re saying, and I have a similar view to yours, so far. In general, I find that expectations are great killers of joy and satisfaction, and so best avoided where possible.
@mudlark The one thing I would never accuse him [Chibnal] of, however, is of being a sell-out hack who writes what he is told to write (by the suits at the BBC, I presume you mean).
Another thing that can’t be said too often, whenever a fan of the show is running the show. They write a rebel Time Lord; I think most of these folks are rebellious themselves, and sometimes quite daring (“Heaven Sent”). I respect them for it, and wish those critical of them would do likewise.
. . . a Clerk of the Meeting whose job it is to determine the consensus – the ‘feeling of the Meeting’. And it seems to work, with remarkably little friction or delay.
Reminds me of the way the pueblos out here work (or used to): government by consensus, but it did make them very wearing to deal with since everyone had to allow, if not positively agree. I think that’s all changed now — to have any traction with the BIA and Congress, these groups had to adopt the colonial model of a “town meeting” format run by elected officials.
19 October 2018 at 21:34 #64687@pedant As was repeatedly stated, he could have left at any time. So maybe add “stubborn” to “patient”.
Talking about the Confession Dial, you mean? Okay, I do not remember 12 being able to “leave at any time”. I remember that he could give up a certain secret and then be released (or not — it was by no means a fixed bargain). Not the same thing. If you are determined not to reveal your secret, you musst break out on your own terms, which he did. If you mean the Pandorica, I don’t really remember that story well enough to answer.
As for the “half-human” thing, they sort of did, didn’t they, with McGann? And then just ignored it out of existence afterward? It’s what writers do: torture the hero/heroine. They put 12 in the Confession Dial, and then found a way to get him out again without “giving up”; if they want to, and dare to, CC&co could “reveal” that she’s been half human all along (or turn her half-human mid-way), and then later un-reveal it again, or do some wibbly-wobbly to un-make her half-human again — and get away with it, if the story is strong enough. It would have to be very strong — and a lot of fans wouldn’t accept it anyway. So it goes. Devoted fans wait for things to change again. We all know how to do that. I’m probably going to be doing it for the next several years, although maybe not.
@miapatrick . . . if we divorce it from the real world and plant it squarely in the Who world, we’re back to the fact she has two hearts, and people know about aliens and many people know about The Doctor.
So, it’s an asylum with a wing that’s secretly being run as a prison for mutants and weirdos with extra hearts etc., or for aliens. The writers’ job is to figure out how to make the implausible convincing enough to fly (and a past setting or a Doctor/Master story could work well too). I’ve done that for a living as a writer, and it’s an exciting challenge, and great fun, and it’s intended to pass on the fun to the audience (as much of it as the writer(s) can convince).
@missrori Thirteen so far doesn’t have the broody, rough-edges magnetism and melancholy that attracted me to Twelve and got me back into DW after I lost the thread in Tennant’s first season.
Me too, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? A fresh approach, a lighter touch, a more family-friendly show was promised, and I think that’s what they’re delivering. There are things about it so far that I like fine (like the rivalry between Epzo and Angstrom), and I hope to love such things enough as we go along to not mind that the first female Doctor is nonetheless not my Doctor — but will be<i> </i>their<i> </i>Doctor for many, many others.
19 October 2018 at 07:50 #64666@miapatrick someone turning up with a fully developed fantasy world in which they are, notably, a pacifist, gun hating alien, would get a referral to primary care at best.
In the real world, sure. In a show like this, where anything goes — all they’d have to do is to get round those problems in a way that convinces viewers who aren’t all that familiar with what would really happen. And my point is that for many years, before the asylums were all shut down in the US, at any rate, to cut costs and appease champions of civil rights for the mad, it wasn’t that unusual for a woman to be locked up for somebody’s convenience — this is, in fact, a feminist issue, so I think it could have been made good use of, on the grounds of poetic license. These things still happen — extreme gaslighting of us “weaker-minded” “hysteria-prone” “neurotic” women is not always a fantasy. I think it could have been a very interesting approach, but of course, aye or nay, it’s entirely moot now.
On voice pitches — I’m watching an old cop-and-crime show called “Bancroft”, and the woman in the lead role in that show has the kind of tonal register I’d find more convincing and more pleasant to listen to than Whittaker’s voice. Also moot, of course! To me, opportunities not thrown away so much as not perceived, and I’m sorry about it. But I’m also a grown up, and I like grown up (in the sense of depth, not sex) entertainment. *shrug* Tough!
19 October 2018 at 05:41 #64663@pedant There is literally nothing in canon that supports the idea that the Doctor would remain contained, and about 50 years worth that suggests the opposite.
The Doctor, fully in his right mind, was “contained” for four and a half billion years in the trap that was the Confession Dial. I think that counts. And I think the new female Doctor being both locked up and very disoriented in a mental ward and having to fight her way out of an unusually complicated and therefore dense regeneration fog to recapture her own strengths and escape could have been a tense, scary, and shocking situation — but too disturbing for the young viewers Chibnall is trolling for. This illustrates what I’ve meant about the necessary differences between a deliberately mature DW (Moffat: “We decided to grow the Doctor up”) and a DW deliberately tailored to “youth” and “family viewing”.
I was fascinated by Moffat’s DW. Chibnal’s, so far, is a comic book with an interesting relationship between two or three of the companions, but a pleasant but rather flat figure as its protagonist. I’m finding the latter worth a watch, but not compelling — and that really is okay with me, because I am no longer the intended audience. I can watch, and enjoy, in the same casual way that I watch and enjoy other programming, but — just this far in, mind you — I don’t see myself as a fan of the show now, the way I was when the Doctor was Tom Baker, or Eccleston, or early Smith, or Capaldi.
I hope to be drawn back to fan-status as the new series continues, but I won’t cry about it if I’m not. 12 was my Doctor, and those series left me satisfied and wanting more at the same time (which I think is how it should be). For now, I’m in for the new Doc — bought the series on iTunes to avoid the godawful advertising. I think that will help, for starters.
19 October 2018 at 05:18 #64662@troygorsline I found that Tardis interior very dark, gloomy, confusing, and cluttered-seeming. Looked at it again, and I thought, this looks like the Tardis that 12 would have ended up with, while his Tardis interior would be much better suited to JoDoc. All that gloom and smouldery orange just seems so divorced from the cheerful optimist with the popular mechanics can-do attitude — it doesn’t suit her, as she’s been presented so far, at all, IMO. It’s like a Girl Scout troop leader living in The Hall of the Mountain King.
Maybe the poor old Tardis just needs to acclimatize herself to this new Doctor and do some brightening up inside.
18 October 2018 at 21:54 #64654@arbutus . . . the “test” was not to kill a defenceless victim, but to find a random human without help from among the population of an entire planet. Actually quite a hard thing to do, except that he cheated.
And flat out murdered several people who were not his target, and then mutilated them to take trophy teeth. Tim Shaw doesn’t qualify, by himself, as a Big Bad, but he sure is nasty and was bent on being just that nasty to Carl on the crane. See, if Carl had been one of the companions, already part of the new Doctor’s new team and beginning to soak up her style of morality, I could see her rebuke as legit. But he’s not. He’s a basically timid, currently terrified young man in the grip of an alien, threatening monster that’s killed his workmate already — why would he be willing to wait for this also alien and strange (to him) woman who’s bargaining with said monster and has no weapons?
Do you think Pertwee’s Doctor would have rebuked Carl like that? Or Tom Baker’s? Under these circumstances — I don’t think so. But further developments should shed more light on such matters.
18 October 2018 at 21:31 #64652@cathannabel Gravitas comes with that male voice. Even those of us most passionately enthusiastic about the gender switch have some adjusting to do
Indeed.
@bluesqueakpip . . . convention of calling women by their first names – but that’s because of the historic subordination of women in our society. Women are called by their first names – just as children are.
And that’s exactly what caught my attention when Whittaker was first announced as the new Doctor. I found the use of “Jodie” almost from the get-go, rather than “Whittaker” in the style of the guys, Tennant, Capaldi, et al, demeaning in a perfectly mindless way — not meant consciously but oh, so there — and reacted against it. It really bugged me, but your summary of the problem, above, lays it out much more clearly than I could think it through t the time.
@arbutus A guy can be a CEO in jeans and a hoodie, but a woman executive has to wear a power suit.
Well put; and I don’t recall, in those early video shots of people skateboarding around the playground parts of the Google offices (or was it Apple?), seeing any females on skateboards, or in jeans. But there weren’t many (any?) women in those shots anyway . . . were there? Drat. Memory glitch.
18 October 2018 at 21:11 #64647@thane16 . . . the sound of three legs . . .
This phrase delights . . . so evocative of . . . something???
. . . Zombie movie made in the UK where the oldies were fighting off zombs with walkers.
Gods, I loved that movie! Funny as hell.
@mudlark . . . white chocolate barely deserves the name at all
So true! Thanks; I’ve never seen its utter lack of actual chocolate-ness explained so clearly. It’s just as bad as I’ve thought it was for years.
@pedant . . . the idea of the Doc being contained in a psychiatric ward is funny. Well, laughable anyway.
I took it a different way entirely: the Doctor in post-regen confusion locked up in a psych ward where “authoritative” people (mostly male) keep telling her she’s wrong about everything and crazy to boot is also deeply not funny, given the history in reality of women being locked up and treated that way (and much worse) for non-conformity of various kinds; I was thinking that could be a very uncomfortable intro to the Doctor’s sex switch and some of the negative reaction to it back when it began to be discussed . . . too uncomfortable for a “family friendly” show, probably, which is apparently (and quite rightly, I think) going to go touch fairly lightly on the implications of the Doctor’s sex-switch throughout. IMO, it’s not unthinkable to take that concept seriously.
@shinymckshine, @wibblywobblytimeywimeystuff Now that you mention it, I’d have preferred for her to have cobbled up something quick and dirty as an interim solution (that would occasionally glitch), later to be replaced, with relief and delight, by a proper sonic created by the Tardis for this Doctor. It’s not a cheat to have JoDoc make one, and it gave us a nice sequence of hasty engineering by the new and clearly capable Doctor; but I can also see it as a missed opportunity to do something more fun and more interesting with the sonic-less situation.
But nobody can please all of the people all of the time. I retain hope for better.
18 October 2018 at 20:47 #64644@miapatrick don’t know about the characterisation. He’s set up a situation with two male companions linked by someone they both loved who is dead.
Agreed, I like that, and the novelty of it. My doubts about characterization are actually centered on the Doctor, rather than the companions. Of course, Moffat said the show was really all about the companions, more so than the Doctor, and this little nugget of an unusual connection between Graham and Ryan certainly echoes that, in a good way. It was the characterization of the Doctor that I’m worried about, really. But it’s too soon to tell.
18 October 2018 at 20:42 #64643@thane16 . . . recent CTs and MRIs show low pitch calming to most but not all species.
That makes sense, since in many species warning cries — “Danger, danger, everybody to get from street!” (Alan Arkin in “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!”) — are usually pitched high to carry well and be instantly comprehended by the hearers. But high pitches are also used to indicate “I am non-threatening, don’t fear me” and even “I wuv you, you little cutey pie, come to mama”; while low ones can also indicate menace, as with a growling dog or big cat. And a low, slow voice in humans, both male and female, is sometimes associated with seductive excitement, isn’t it? “Come wiz me to ze Kazbaaahhh . . . ”
Dang. Old movie day for me today, apparently. Memory is such a clown sometimes!
18 October 2018 at 11:14 #64623@thane16 NO DESSERT? I may not even have a crumb of cake from all this long way off, but I will defend to the death your right to a humongous slice!
Me, I have to settle for muffins. The only bakery in town that knows how to bake at high altitude (we’re 5,000′ up here) has gone crazy with veganism, so 90% of what they put out now looks delicious but tastes like glue and has the mouthfeel of wallboard. So I’m reduced to buttermilk cupcakes with chocolate frosting and white chocolate chips (too sweet even for me) stuck on the top. Aargh. It’s a co-op, and I’m a member, so I complain from time to time.
Fat lot of good it does me . . . Go on, man, demand your rights! LET HIM EAT CAKE!
18 October 2018 at 10:55 #64621@thane16 Whuzzit? Who’s going to mod you off?! On the internet, nobody minds if you throw up . . . <ggg> Or if you have an opinion to express, in the tradition of bonkers-ism.
18 October 2018 at 07:17 #64609@shinymcshine What I found most offensive though was when the Doctor started talking to him about changing and becoming a new person. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to let him off the hook for being a psychokiller that easily. This kind of writing betrays a lack of seriousness about the situation and characters. This villain needs to be brought to justice, not deported.
Excellent point; and I was also startled and offended when the Doctor told the crane operator off for attacking their attacker — he wasn’t shooting at Tim Shaw from a safe distance, the kind of thing the Doctor often deplores, but making a risky move close in. I didn’t like her reactopm. I didn’t like it a lot. It’s hardly a secret that the Doctor talks a good game of pacifism, but (like any flawed being) sometimes ends up shooting somebody and apparently enjoying it (CapDoc’s final battle with the Cybermen). They hit the right note when Angstrom (what? Albarians aren’t humans, but this one has a Scandinavian name?) used her knife to cut the rags off epso’s face when the sonic didn’t help: sometimes the Doctor is idealistically right, but situationally wrong, in a potentially lethal sort of way.
IMO, they need not to make their first female Doctor — still a veteran of many bitter battles — obstinately idealistic. He/she’s been around the block too many times to miss the fact that sometimes, you gotta hit back and hit hard, instead of trying to talk your way out of getting killed.
And I love your alternate story line! Especially her transposing the Tardis into a male partner instead of a (male) Doctor’s female one (in her mind, anyway). Very provocative, and controversial as well. What fun that would have been . . . You should be in that writers’ room. It could have been a fascinating story of very different regeneration confusion to set against “Deep Breath”, in viewers’ minds.
Damn! If that’s your bonkerizing, then baby, you’ve got game.
18 October 2018 at 06:52 #64607@juniperfish I hope the writers’ room has had some deep conversations about authority and a female-embodied Who.
Exactly. There are other aspects of this, of course, than costume; voice pitch is another, and it’s a doozie, IMO. I’ve seen studies supporting the idea that humans find lower voices (in both men and women) more impressive and authoritative (again, a moment of political comedy/tragedy — Trump’s ambitious son in law, Jared Kushner, is said to speak so rarely on public media because he has a high, weak voice that he doesn’t want people to hear; and HRC took lessons to help lower her speaking voice while she was campaigning, to good effect). Whittaker’s voice has a lower register that I think is far more pleasing than the higher pitches she goes to in dangerous moments. Not good for authority, IMO.
@pedant . . . Smith. Capaldi. Jodie. There’s part of the challenge, right there
Too right. This started from her selection announcement, as was so noticeable that I’ve been using her last name instead of her first, in any comment anywhere, to try to help make the difference both obvious and significant. And I think I’ve slipped up a few times.
@mudlark: . . . to refer to anyone by their first name alone when speaking to them or to a third party was to imply that they were very much a social inferior. Manners and conventions have loosened, but it is undoubtedly troubling and significant that women in the public eye are so commonly referred to by their forenames or even their nicknames in the press and by all and sundry.
This. See: “Trump” v “Hillary” to this very day (in internet conversation, not news media). That is *not* accidental. The exclusive use of a former first lady’s first name is an obvious jeer and a put-down understood by everyone — because this does mirror, in a distilled form, a common misogynist habit of speech.
@lisa It’s bugging me that its almost as if CC is trying to make her feel too “youthful” for a Doctor we all know to be thousands of years old?
For me, this is the gravitas issue: CC & co are trying to appeal to the young, in part by (as they’ve stated outright, I think, in interviews) stressing 13’s newness with lots of energy, enthusiasm, and an optimistic tone, which reminds me very much of Smith — but SmithDoc is often described as “an ancient alien in a young body”, the “ancient” part signaled by him being overcome by sudden waves of gravitas rooted in having so much experience before this body ever began, much of that experience quite grim.
We’re getting the youthful up-notes from Whittaker, but the only down-note I can recall is that moment of uncertainty — and it’s not connected to the past at all. She doesn’t have a clue, so far as I could tell, that she’s failed such promises to people before, with dire results (e.g. poor Bill and unhappy Ashildr, only moments ago),
This lack of reference to the past, A past, his/her past, is of course part of the fresh, new beginning they’ve been promising. But without that long past with its very dark passages, how is this Doctor to connect with his/her own gravitas, that weight of very mixed experience that creates the soberness of character and deliberation based on wisdom? It’s possible that CC wants to omit this quality almost entirely in the name of “freshness”, since Tennant had rather a lot of it, and Whittaker isn’t Tennant; Smith did gravitas with great effect, and Whittaker isn’t Smith; and Capaldi made gravitas the cornerstone of his Doctor, and Whittaker can’t be him either.
So — maybe they ignore that whole aspect of the Doctor’s nature, or anyway postpone it and only let it develop a little, or gradually, as time goes on and adventures (including failures) create new cautionary memories (if they’re allowed to).
@shinymcshine It also felt too much like a video game as it progressed but not in a good way.
I felt that too, as soon as Malik’s character laid out the route and objective, more so when the apparently blind “sniper” bots chased them in the ruins. Jeez. I’d be a better sniper than those tin cans, with my eyeglasses off!
Someone needs step up and capitalize on the rich character development of the show and not just create a space shoot ’em up. That’s George Lucas’ job.
Well, see, here’s the thing: I think that rich character development is exactly what CC & co are trying to skate over, first because they want it to be more kid-friendly (equated with “shallow, and action-y like a video game”). Adult watchers coming off of the RTD/Moffat years that offered character development and (sometimes) real depth have been “spoiled” by finding literary values in a TV serial about space travelers. I suspect that CC’s skill with characters seen in B’church is being deliberately put aside, because this isn’t B’church (a dour exercise in sadness and bad mistakes, not kid-friendly at all). It’s supposed to be “family viewing” — soft-pedal distress, and steer clear of despair and anguish entirely, guys, for fear of frightening (or baffling, or boring) the colts and the fillies (and their parents).
I’m seeing my pre-series concerns fulfilled, but Time will tell.
17 October 2018 at 06:40 #64593@lisa Jodie is trying to make her mark as the ‘all Doctors combined’ alpha female Doctor
Some comments I’ve seen have pointed out Jodie throwing bits of the other Doctors into her performance, but I have to admit, I’m not seeing that, and I remember that in interviews before the season started she said that she hadn’t watched DW before, and was asked by Chibnal *not* to watch it she she could keep her own personal fresh new take on the role. That may have changed by now, or not; but I don’t see call-backs to previous Docs going on here, where others note that she’s playing it a bit like Tennant, or Tennant x Smith, or keeping some of Capaldi at the start (besides the outfit). I feel she’s a fine sort of generic Doctor, but I’m not feeling any backbone of continuity with any of the Docs who came before her.
It’s weird to say this, but — I find I’m a lot more interested in the companions, and even the others they all encounter in ep 2, than in this Doctor. I’d like to know more about these people, and even the evil game-boss, but I’m not feeling that there’s anything much more to know about this Doctor than I’ve already seen (except for the tease from the murderous rags, “Timeless child” I think it was?).
Maybe this actor just isn’t working for me in the role; it happens, as we all know. Or maybe it’s Chibnal’s tone. Well, it’s literally early days, and I’m in for the season and hoping for better. As it is, this is just what I was worried about, not re Jodie herself, but the way the show is presenting itself to reach, teach, and reassure a younger viewership.
17 October 2018 at 05:47 #6459216 October 2018 at 22:22 #64583@mudlark Yes, the sonic did what we know it’s supposed to do — I just felt it was used an awful lot in ep 2, but you’re right — it was warranted. Just felt a bit intrusive.
16 October 2018 at 22:20 #64582Yep, they’ll get to Jaz soon, I hope. Meantime, good point about who she knows! I also really liked her greeting to the Tardis — it had occurred to me that a female Doctor’s relationship with a (so far) female Tardis might be interesting, and it was — very warm and sweet.
16 October 2018 at 21:33 #64578@mudlark Agreed on the Tardis — I loved the spaciousness of 12’s ship, full of stuff but never cluttery — like, you know, space. That in itself was a sort of statement of authority, a Time Lord’s ship. This new one — dungeons, no dragons. I will try to ignore it until (?) it begins to seem natural by sheer habituation. As for the police box as a mere entryway, I noticed that there was a sort of — vestibule effect in 12’s Tardis too, but not an actual hallway into the interior as here. It just feels like more clutter, to me. And where’s the balcony, second floor, whatever that was, with books?
I have a sinking feeling that this Doctor doesn’t do books, much. More likely, engines, maybe gekkos, hamsters, maybe a quagga . . . ?
*Sigh*
16 October 2018 at 21:21 #64577@miapatrick the things I love about Moffart Who the most are the things that made it difficult for him to follow
Exactly! So heading in new directions, in search of different strengths, is an excellent strategy for Chib & co. It feels a bit ploddy by contrast, but that can make room for good character work — which is definitely needed for Jaz, for example. Maybe next ep.
@janetteb I fear I am going to miss Moffat.
I already do; quite a bit. Am trying to adjust by remembering the pleasures of first reading Jules Verne, as a kid, and loving it’s more — Victorian? — pace . . . and it was sort of Steam Punk, too, wasn’t it?
@missy After watching the episode with JD he told me that he’s rather watch a SM than’”this Chibnall bloke.”
Haw! That’s funny. Well, me too, but as has been pointed out, Moffat had plenty of haters, and I think a period of less high-profile writing (which this seems to be so far) can be refreshing for them, if a bit pedestrian for Moffat fans.
-
AuthorPosts
