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13 May 2015 at 05:57 #40107
@gamergirlavatar Doesn’t the Doctor have to go to some ratification board to affix a monicker on a new species? Hmm. Madame Vastra would make a very good Ratification Board, maybe? I mean, somebody else could name them “The Paper Doll people” or something, and who knows, it might even catch on!
I’m particularly fond of the hand-walking Tardis, and also of Rigsy the Companion to ClaraDoc. That kid needs some extra-terrestrial experience to boost his self-confidence and get him started inventing some new art forms, or saving creative geniuses on other planets from witch-burners, or designing and building new bodies (NOT cyber-armorsuits) for species that have to give up their old ones, etc. We’ve got scientists (mad and sane), warriors, would-be gods, paranoid egomaniacs scheming for ABSOLUTE POWER!!!!!!, bureaucrats, royalty, Zygons, and monsters. Why can’t we have an artist space and time traveler? Sheesh, Rigsy could maybe get the Doctor back to sketching again, doing something that requires not just brains but talent (oh, wait, that was Capaldi who sketched, not any of the Doctors — see what I mean!?). The closest we’ve come is — the Ood! Music is an art, right?
Oh, boggons. End of rant.
13 May 2015 at 04:43 #40106@purofilion Okay then, thanks!
Ichi
13 May 2015 at 01:13 #40100@purofilion Oh damn, if that’s a spoiler I’m sorry — the net has been humming about this for some time, so I assumed — wrongly, it seems — that it was widely known that this acto was tipped for some kind of part in S9 weeks ago. “Spoiler” as I’ve seen it used so far has meant some sort of plot-reveal, rather than ID of someone joining the cast for a bit. I’ll avoid naming anybody in future; meantime, by all means somebody get the post outta here! I certainly didn’t intend to distress anyone.
12 May 2015 at 19:13 #40094Got a good one — I’m reading “H is for Hawk” by Helen MacDonald, and it’s every bit as brilliantly written and absorbing to read as promised in reviews. There’s a nice tangential tie in with the Doctor (besides the fact that the novel is fantasy) — running commentary on T.H White (as a falconer), whose Merlin, in the fantasy novel “The Sword in the Stone”, is a sort of Doctor-figure to the boy Wart. I am reading slowly; it’s that good.
12 May 2015 at 19:05 #40093Proper pants are back again, according to photos of the filming of an episode with Osgood (whichever one she may be); I posted about it on the Faces of the Doctor, hope that’s not regarded as “spoiler” material, but if it is, Craig, could you please move that post here instead? Otherwise that post is just — well — pants.
12 May 2015 at 18:52 #40092Ran across some new pics from S9 shooting (around the return of Osgood, or anyway some version of Osgood), and I am very relieved to see CapDoc wearing one of his more casual outfits (jumper, rather than white shirt and vest, under the now somewhat beat-up looking Crombie coat) but not those goofy tartan pants (pics from the filming of an ep with Maisie Williams), which read to me as “pajama bottoms, probably with footies”, and maybe stuffed toy companions for sleeping as well. I get it that the new series CapDoc has found a workable self in S8 so maybe the whole “power suit” costume will only come out when a special impression needs to be made, but the jammies made him look, to these old eyes, like somebody who had just been tumbled out of bed way too late in the morning (which maybe he was, in that episode, shot at night, but long range)?
No disrespect to previous Doctors and their rather outré clothing choices, but if CapDoc wants some street-funk time, instead of tartan jammie pants I’d rather see blue jeans (with a hole in the knee?) to complement the hoodie (an inspired choice, IMO, worn, instead of a vest, *under* the Crombie so the coat can left open to swirl about dramatically without the guy wearing it freezing to death in cold spring winds). Or maybe camo pants? Except, the “soldier” problem, only that was moderated by the events of DiH, wasn’t it?
Um. That’s it for today’s fashion commentary from me . . .
12 May 2015 at 18:05 #40090@janetteb Right, thanks — I’ll be in San Francisco for a grandchild graduation the weekend of June 13, probably won’t see Strange & Norrell then, but they tend to re-run new show debuts for several evenings during the week after one is first aired, so I watch for it. Yeh, slog is right — I’d heard so much about the book, was very disappointed in self for not being able to find a foothold in the early parts of it (and it looked way too complicated to jump in at the middle). I think the chances of success are high, given the increasing amount of fantasy showing up on prime time TV!
12 May 2015 at 05:21 #40085@janetteb “J Strange and Mr. Norrell” sounds really intriguing to me — I have to admit that I tried to read the novel and just could not get a grip on the thing, so I’m delighted that it’s coming in TV form!
11 May 2015 at 07:23 #40071@purofilion “Top of the Lake” was shown in the states several years ago — the year after “The Killing” wound up here, I think. Then came “The Bridge”, which I think is a US remake, and then the French zombies, and most lately “Fortitude” — all part of a whole new level of hyper-realistic-seeming material with a distinctly European flavor that’s been very refreshing and not at all soapy — a sort of anti-Masterpiece style, heavy on grit and gore and general angst. “Red Riding” was part of that wave, and keeps popping up again as re-runs.
It’s hardly surprising. Our days are dark on so many fronts lately, with no help from political systems that seem bent on falling back into policy positions that seemed to be losing their outworn grip around the turn of this century; but like vampires, they’re roaring back again. The only really bright spot that I can recall was the first season of “Breaking Bad”, which had a really hysterical take on the “Fish Out of Water” template. Then it turned into just another criminal low-life saga, better written and acted than most but basically a U.S. Western cousin to “The Sopranos”, and I wandered off.
9 May 2015 at 04:39 #40012@purofiion Thanks, I’ve got that series on my list — it looks very promising.
9 May 2015 at 01:35 #40000Zygon, Shmygon, in shots from the filming of S9, *why is the Doctor walking around in plaid pajama bottoms* ? Are they footies, with the foot part hidden in the boots? WTF? I mean, it looks as if Moffat wasn’t kidding about the S9 Doctor being much more confident than he was in S8 (where he was still figuring himself and everything else out), so that’s fine if he doesn’t need the “power suit” (coat, vest, white shirt, dark pants, and them stompin’ boots) any more except for special occasions. So the T-shirts and jumpers and the hoodie take over, with the coat on top as needs be — all fine.
But those pants — ????? It’s not the plaid-ness that bothers me, it’s that the fabric looks thin and flimsy, like lightweight flannel p.j’s. Ugh! Aargh!
Oh well . . . (doleful sigh)
8 May 2015 at 17:26 #39984@janetteb What is wrong with the world? Fear; fear of losing what we have (however little that may be), to change. Fear may make companions of us all, but it most often makes us companions in selfishness, idiocy, and destructiveness. Scared people run, resist the irresistible, or shut their eyes and pretend nothing is happening. Enormous changes are already happening — climate change and all its miserable fall-out that we’ve only just begun to realize is real; the replacement of human workers by technology because that’s what makes profit for owners and keeps prices low for the bread and circuses needed to still unrest; massive population shifts starting to pick up speed as wars over dwindling resources continue (e.g. water poisoned by chemicals means less potable water for everyone); and whatever crap is lurking in Left Field that most of us haven’t seen coming yet. Oh, and the mass extinctions of huge swathes of the flora and fauna of our planet + the smaller cultures that haven’t been flattened yet by Western values + languages whose last speakers are dying out.
People are scared for overpowering reasons, some real and some wildly paranoid (see the aggressive panic being whipped up in Texas by conspiracy crazies over military training exercises scheduled in that state being actually a Federal “coup” in disguise). Scared people dig in their heels and demand protection from change, so governments that also dig in their heels oppose change. The diggers-in will be swept away eventually, but they won’t go quietly or quickly, and our grandkids’ kids are going to have one hell of a lot of glass to sweep up afterwards. They will not thank us. Fine with me; we, as a set of generations of humanity, don’t deserve thanks. There’s a price to be paid for our “Golden Age” of wealth for the few, war and ruin for the many. The bills are coming in thick and fast and, surprise, surprise, nobody wants to pay up.
So what’s our job, if we’re for facing the change and trying to adjust to it and steer into less crippling losses and outcomes? I dunno. Do what you can, refuse to despair over what’s beyond your reach to help, and endure? That’s a hard sell. I expect you have to choose it for yourself, and choose to believe that that will make a difference, and that’s a hard, hard slog.
I am too old for this shit, but it’s hitting the fan anyway. That’s how I see it. I hope I’m wrong.
8 May 2015 at 00:13 #39959@denvaldron Oh, I agree — Frobisher is irrelevant to CapDoc’s face-choice unless there’s some deliberate manipulation going on behind the scenes that *made* him relevant but in a hidden way. Many fans, though, seem to have no problem bracketing Lobus and Frobisher together as being part what needs to be explained in S9. I think that’s a product of confusion of just how the T/wood universe and the DW universe overlap/are one/touch each other, on which your breakdown of the contacts between them throws clarifying light.
7 May 2015 at 18:54 #39950So, following up on the discussion about Torchwood vs/and DW universe via John Frobisher’s Capaldi-face, are there T’wood fans here? I tried, I really did, but I remember the show as having a campy vibe that mostly showed up as a sort of feverish overwroughtness (a much heavier does of which led me to abandon “True Blood” early on). This impression is probably a figment of my imagination, but it’s why I T’wood just isn’t something that comes to mind automatically in with DW. Frobisher stood out for me because the character didn’t carry that vibe at all — maybe because his situation was entirely about dealing with the aliens, not who was making out, or not making out, or obsessed over making out with whom, or Jack’s endless series of panful deaths and resurrections.
Now I feel as if I ought to go watch some T’wood, just to find out whether any of that was there, or the memory is just a mix-up in my head . . . No, never mind.
On the subject of doppelgängers (look, something supplied the umlaut automatically! Good thing, since I don’ know how to do those accent signs with my keyboard at all), apparently I *am* one, at least for one person. I was traveling in Germany a decade or so ago, and ran in to a priest somewhere along the Danube (Melk? I think so) who stopped dead in his tracks because he saw me sitting on a bench and thought I was his grandmother’s ghost (and in broad daylight, too!), because I looked “just like” her. That felt weird. I wish the grandmother had still been alive — it would have been interesting to sit down for a coffee with her.
7 May 2015 at 18:20 #39947@nerys Yep — for me, too, Torchwood is primarily an annoying source of confusion about all things Doctor. I watched T’swood for a while, but just couldn’t latch onto it as an interest — but let me continue this comment on the sofa, since it’s not really DiH related.
7 May 2015 at 18:11 #39946@denvaldron Thanks for working these things out. I’ve generally thought of the two previous Capaldi roles together (that is, as both “needing” an explanation (if you’re the sort who needs one — I’m not, but it does keep cropping up). This comes from the many articles and interviews in which both doppelgängers* are raised as if they are the same issue:
and, from a Den of Geek article: “Many will remember even further back when he appeared as a supporting character in David Tennant and Catherine Tate adventure The Fires Of Pompeii. He also popped up as a whole different character in Torchwood,” and the article goes on to refer to this “solution” supposedly suggested by RTD some years ago (the the question of both previous “faces”) which Moffat is said to have been mulling over and considering applying to S9. So thanks for the clarification.
I a lot of fans use a dose of the same, because these dopples do keep getting mentioned together as one puzzle with a solution (probably) in the offing, and I know I’m certainly not the only one who hasn’t worked out the “shared universe” thing and the extent of “leakage”. Maybe put your analysis in at one of the other discussion sites as an “article” — doctorwhotv.uk.com I think is one that posts contributions as articles, for discussion? If they put it up, I’m sure the fans there would enjoy making a meal of it, and nothing says you have to stick around and answer them (at least, I think nothing not — I’ve never tried to contribute, except comments). I haven’t seen any breakdowns of the shared Twood and DW universe anywhere else (maybe buried in past discussions somewhere, but life’s too short).
7 May 2015 at 06:13 #39936@nerys Up the page, you said you didn’t remember John Frobisher, the bureaucrat, a descendant of Lobus C. — quite rightly, since Frobisher’s story was not DW but Torchwood, the story about the aliens who come demanding 10% of the world’s children. The Frobisher character is the second “old” use of CapDoc’s face in the DW/Torchwood universe, Lobus being the first, and I think somebody came up with the idea that Frobisher looks like Lobus C. because he is a descendant of that man’s progeny.
I don’t think it’s established to be so in Torchwood, so the writers may just ignore that or throw it away when they get to doing their own explanation, in S9, of where CapDoc got that face, why it’s a face familiar to us from two previous characters in the DW/Torchwood universe. I’m a bit hazy as to whether in fact DW and Torchwood actually are meant to share the same universe, because I didn’t take to Torchwood and didn’t stay with it or get into conversations about it.
6 May 2015 at 07:16 #39908@janetteb Lucky you Ozzies! On a similar note, the great big symphonic DW music show is coming to New York, or rather to Brooklyn, in October — I’m tempted, but gigantic public events and a city stuffed to the brim with excited fans aren’t really my thing, so I probably won’t go . . . I got some very nice speakers on sale, that are now hooked up to my computer, much more my style. $50 a ticket, I think, which is actually pretty cheap for New York. Announced a couple of days ago on the Doctor Who News site. The build up to S9 seems to be getting into higher gear . . .
6 May 2015 at 07:09 #39907@nerys About reading more into a scene than “what was there” — I do that all the time, and I do it with pleasure because there’s *always* more “in the scene” than whatever the writer had in mind to put there. The printed story is a machine that transfers a concept from the author’s mind to the reader’s — but the reader has to reconstruct the story in her mind from the coded signals of printed words, so every reader’s head-version is unique. Same with the best of TV, I think.
As long as people return to a story, in whatever form, and find new and different meanings and subtexts in it, to me that means that the work has a spark of life in it. That’s what creators hope will be the future of their creations: interpretation, re-interpretation, argument, a place for their work in the continuing cultural conversation, lasting, you hope, after your own life-spark has gone out. You draw your material from the culture, shape it, and then feed it back into the culture through the minds of your audience.
I once write a sort of fan-fiction piece changing basic assumptions built into “The Phantom of the Opera” in all its versions. I wanted to see how the story went if Christine was a stage-wise young singer used to dealing with controlling men, instead of a prize — a half-imbecilic but talented child — fought over by a dashing aristocrat and a homicidal, sociopathic genius. That’s what I put into the story.
Imagine my surprise when a psychiatrist in New York began e-mailing me what amounted to a searching and perceptive psychological diagnosis of the Phantom as I’d presented him, including a theory that the Phantom’s character had been partially shaped by the death of an infant sibling. That was what the psychiatrist *found* in my version of the story, although no such idea had ever entered my mind; yet his analysis rang true. His playful exploration of the story enhanced it for him, and for me too. He built out something that I hadn’t known could be there, let alone planted there myself.
I think that’s what we do here (together, thanks to the internet) when we analyze and bonkerize DW; we weave a creative response to what the writers and actors have made for us to play with. I don’t see anything to apologize for in that. It demonstrates that they’ve done a good job, providing entertainment that continues to occupy and exercise the interested viewer’s mind long after the broadcast is over.
5 May 2015 at 18:23 #39887@nerys RE the volcano scene: “Even in a dream state, what is the purpose for choosing that place? Is it some echo from the past, similar to his reason for choosing that face? I still would like to see them explore that more . . . ”
Maybe we will, if the “this face” issue is addressed by an actual return to the Pompeii/Vesuvius episode. I’d be content, though, with what we got: the clever use of a brief, typical vision of “Hell” — a desperate betrayal on the edge of an erupting volcano — and then an actual visit to the cold, technological Hell/Heaven devised by MissMaster, where the dead become part of the operating system of a high-tech weapon of mass destruction commanded by a raving lunatic.
Very satisfying, IMO, although it’s about the purpose of the writers in choosing that place, not the Doctor’s choice of an illusory Vesuvius (or some other volcano) for the confrontation with Clara. That one’s easy, though: Clara asked to go visit an active volcano (so she could use lava to melt the Tardis keys).
5 May 2015 at 17:53 #39885@IAmNotAFish You know, the political part was just as much a turn-off for me as the lawyer part. I’ve been steering clear of politics for a while now. Pressures at home and watching the apparently unstoppable decline of my nation (“a republic, if you can keep it” but apparently we can’t) has been wearing me down, and I’m supposed to be minimizing stress. Basically, I’m just not up to it these days, but hope for rebalancing and recovery in the near future; then I can tell the kids that a couple of seasons of TGW on DVD would make a great and welcome Xmas present!
5 May 2015 at 17:23 #398845 May 2015 at 06:38 #39875@jphamlore — well, interesting, or having a secret, or something, yes, I think there was some comment to that effect about the attractiveness of Danny. But can Clara have sensed that about him and have been attracted by it at the same time that she’s so obviously set him up in her mind as the “normal domesticity” polarity, while the Doctor — who’s carrying quite a bit of darkness and secrets right up front — functions as the reckless adventure polarity? There’s no domesticity about the CapDoc, so his pull is clear — it’s opposite to normal family life with Danny. If Danny has darkness, it’s even a domestic sort of darkness — contained in scale and connected to someone else’s home and family life (the boy’s), so maybe that’s the bit of dark leavening that helps to make DomesticDan more attractive to Clara, who’s used to thunder and lightning on an interplanetary scale these days.
It’s late. I am overthinking; sorry.
5 May 2015 at 06:31 #39874@nerys On choosing faces . . . are we sure the Doctor *does* choose his new face? Has he always regenerated inside the Tardis? Maybe the Tardis makes that choice for him, for reasons of “her” own — he does say in Deep Breath “I never know where the faces come from.” They just arrive, and he’s stuck with the new one. So could the choice of faces by a way the Tardis has come up with to keep him on message, since she also has recently taken up this habit of taking him where it thinks/knows he needs to be? It could be the Tardis using a face fem the past to remind him of something, not himself talking to himself at all. Or even the Time Lords themselves, since they’re in charge of regenerations in a larger sense, even from their pocket universe hide out?
Oh, that’s just bonkers . . .
5 May 2015 at 06:26 #39873@jphamlore On technically competent people not being as good as non-techs like Clara, because non-techs have to stretch farther to prove worthiness as companions: well, it would be interesting to see what kind of other attributes an Osgood or a Perkins would have to develop as companions to become vital to the Doctor, since he seems to have a better technical grip himself, as pilot of the Tardis, than other Docs have been. He can do his own tech work, it seems. For some reason, though, I’d really like to see CapDoc (or any Doc) in overalls and dirtied up, wrestling bits of the Tardis’s innards out onto a work floor with Perkins, to figure out necessary repairs or adjustments — I get a sense of some different direction that kind of experience would provide, though I’m not sure what direction that would be, other than just pseudo-scientific gobbledegook, and a little of that goes a long way. Some demanding practicality for a bit, I guess, rather than such a strong stress on abstract intellect, and a more SF flavor? That’s not enough; but still . . .
The tech companion would be, I think, more of a “sidekick”, stylistically speaking, and maybe the series has just moved past the point where that would be satisfying, at least for a while. They’ve been dealing out some very heavy and unexpectedly deep emotional material in NuWho, so going back to a Batman/Robin sort of configuration would be a let-down.
The non-tech companion seems to be there for a different kind of competence: emotional competence, social competence, even ethical competence, with all of which the Doctor needs help in his dealings with humans and other species. That’s been working very well, IMO, striking some sparks, smoldering some smoke, creating some murky but intriguing tension. I don’t think most fans are ready to turn loose of that now — it’s a pretty rich mix, and perfectly suited to both leads’ strengths.
Let’s see where they go with S9. It needs to be beyond that deep psychological and emotional territory, at least as it’s shaped up to this point. Where next?
5 May 2015 at 06:12 #39871@nerys Well, it’s a clever idea, and I like it. But we *did* see Danny alone with Clara, where the Doctor’s viewpoint shouldn’t have had any bearing — so I’m not sure it can really be justified. When she was with Danny, it would have been better all around (certainly better for Danny as a character) for us to have seen something more of what Clara saw in Danny, apart from him being a nice, sad guy willing to put up with her vagaries. So that theory works well as head canon, but doesn’t quite fit what we were shown, IMO. Erk; I *want* a good fit, because it’s so perfect as another angle on 12’s harsher and more intolerant nature (compared to SmithDoc). But —
5 May 2015 at 00:11 #39857@lisa Oh, she *absolutely* is, I’m sure of it! The whole costume and noting but the costume, a vital part of playing the role! And your no more bananas than anybody else around here . . . “bonkers” is just another word for “bananas”, isn’t it?
4 May 2015 at 23:33 #39853@denvaldron I think I am acquainted with that particular black dog of rage, as are so many people who struggle with their chosen art and their circumstances (or the art and circumstances that have chosen them). Which Greek philosopher was the one who said this: “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”? Words to live by, but so much easier said than done . . .
4 May 2015 at 23:19 #39851@phaseshift Good Heavens, Dickens! How could I have forgotten Dickens, one of the most successful hacks of all time?! Maybe we’re talking about the confusion that has succeeded the time-honored division of fiction writers into “gentleman authors” who *could* write fiction because they had other sources of income, and pen-pushers (another term for “hack”, as I recall) who wrote for pay, having no other inflow of money? These categories are shiftable, too, culturally and in time — I mean, Shakespeare wrote what was pop culture at the time, and was supported at least in part by patronage, and now . . . ? Actually, a friend of mine who keeps company with psychics told me that Shakespeare is still reincarnating, and was (as recently as ten years ago) a journalist. I can’t say that I found the idea absurd (well, except for the psychic part, but I’m not entirely sure about that either).
4 May 2015 at 23:02 #39848@denvaldron Re “hack”, I take your point. It’s a well reasoned position.
Congratulations on the acceptance of your novel.
4 May 2015 at 22:51 #39846From Burrunjor, who has since left the building — but still, this disturbs me: “He had her want to shag the Doctor just because she was a woman. I mean how sexist is that? Just because the Master is now a woman he wants to shag his mortal enemy LOL. Plus there is also the fact that she called herself Missy just because she was a woman I mean WTF.”
This is so marked by a desire to be anti-sexist, coupled with a very common level of ignorance, that it is very dismaying. The idea that the Master wants to shag the Doctor “just because” the Master is now female is given the lie by many examples of pretty easily detectable erotic tension between the Master and the Doctor in earlier seasons of DW, with the Master occasionally making insinuating advances; so this supposed wish to shag the Doctor predates the Master’s switch to a female body and is a part of the Master’s domineering and, presumably, sensual nature. Well, plenty of people have missed that, from what I’ve read. Okay, not such a biggie.
What *is* a biggie for me is the matter of Missmaster now calling herself “Missy”. As far as I can see, the “Mistress” is still the Master in every respect except for his/her physical form, including being a rather old-fashioned serial villain complete with the usual sexist assumptions that go with such a stereotype. He has merely acquired a nifty new toy: a female body, with which to play-act a masculinist parody of femininity complete with the voracious sexual drive that so many cultures project onto women and then punish them for (supposedly) having. His “femininity” is a game; its all show, and hasn’t altered his inner self one whit.
Look at the sort of woman he’s playing: she’s handsome, attractive in a dominatrix sort of way, clearly rich and powerful (you don’t support a Nethersphere and a Cyberman army as your hobbies on the pay of a call center worker), well and classily dressed Victorian style, and not (apparently) under the thumb or any kind of control by a father, brother, son, husband, estate executor, or other more socially powerful male. She has all the advantages, it seems, of your standard upper class male human being (compare and contrast Rose). He’s certainly not the equivalent of transgender M/F, since (as far as we know) all he had to do was regenerate; he’s gone through none of the mental and physical ordeals of a process meant to transform the outer self to match the already feminine inner one.
So what is he? He’s the Master, playing and enjoying what I feel sure he regards as a jape, a gas, a temporary role that he means to savor to the full in terms of using it to torment his antagonists. The leering, taunting way he informs the Doctor that he couldn’t very well keep calling himself “The Master” makes this pretty clear all by itself; and personally I find it depressing that a fan like Burrunjor could see all of this as the program being “sexist” and the creative team making decisions about Missy’s behavior and character on that basis. The sexism is there, all right, a full-blown cartoon — all on the part of the Master him/herself– and that’s a huge part of the joke. This isn’t Jane Eyre we’ve got here; it’s more the guy in black stockings in the Rocky Horror Show, or maybe Vampirella. If fans think they’re defending feminism when they attack this gender switch as “sexist”, well, that I just find that dispiriting in the extreme.
Which is why I *hope* our departed friend is young, and has many years to grow past his (or her) shallow assessment of “Missy” as DW sexism (not that there isn’t any — but this ain’t it).
4 May 2015 at 22:06 #39844@denvaldron I am a professional writer, and I thank you for the kind words about my ilk. I will, though, point out that you can be highly talented and still be a hack, when hackery pays better and the table needs food on it. Many of my colleagues have written SF and fantasy that’s made the Nebula and the Hugo ballots while also turning out series novels (of higher than usual quality, usually, which readers are quick to note) to pay the bills. I expect if you’d asked some of those early writers of the Doctor, more than a few could have been persuaded to admit that they had unfinished novels and short stories at home that they prized as their favored work and hoped to find markets for.
In my experience, working writers (and actors) seldom turn down a work opportunity (unless it’s really awful, maybe like being in 50 Tons of Trash or one of its inevitable progeny) that pays; that’s part of the job, and if you are a free lance, you can always run into a bad market or a shift in taste and find yourself to be also a hungry lance. Some writers use pseudonyms for this work, some proudly put their own names on it; depends on the author. Unless you hit the big time and/or good, steady money — George Martin doesn’t feel the need to write anything but what he’s writing — you keep your options open, but you don’t throttle down your talent.
p.s. I like Kill the Moon. Except for the spiders, because I’m an arachnophobe. And thanks for the Benedetti Doctor; I liked her too.
4 May 2015 at 19:53 #39838@bluesqueakpip Poor Clara, if that’s how it is, and I’ll certainly second the Master as the Doctor’s “stalker”, always with a thread of homoeroticism mixed in there someplace; that was certainly played in by Delgado, and played outright with Simm. MixMaster, though? Still only a thread in the weave or her craziness, or a big fat stripe across the cloth?
Being the metaphorical “child” caught between the doting Dad and the loopy Mom — I know of at least two real-world examples, one quite close to me, and the amount of genuine pain and personality distortion spawned by it is so massive that I’d be very leery of a show like DW getting into it, even for dramatic purposes. Although Clara is *already* an unworldly child, what with that leaf and all, so maybe the magical element would be enough to de-nature the poisonousness, even for kids watching who are living with something all too like it.
@jimthefish Yes, they were jobbing writers, and the aim was initially not much higher than standard TV fare for youngsters at the time, I suppose. The show outgrew them, and is now outgrowing many fans who still think in those terms, only with tastes somewhat elevated above Buck Rogers and Tarzan. I don’t think a female Doctor will have the slightest effect on most still hanging onto that mind-set, except to drive its holders away cursing and snarling. The longer the Doctoressa is postponed, though, the fewer fans will flee, given what seems to be a solid liberalizing movement among young viewers (though not all of them, by any means). Still, that will be a fascinating and rambunctious day, I think.
4 May 2015 at 19:23 #39836@bluesqueakpip Did they let McCoy keep his accent? You know, it’s a long time since I’ve seen one of his episodes, and I can’t remember the voice, but of course Dunoon qualifies! Whereabouts in Scotland is it? If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten . . .
4 May 2015 at 14:27 #39823@pedant Oh, you’re right! Thanks! I got the two series confused, maybe because I don’t watch on Netflix, so I must have seen the remake on regular TV just as I did “The Resurrected” — ? So all 3 “versions” have run into each other in my brain like undercooked scrambled eggs.
4 May 2015 at 14:18 #39822I love it that a surprising number of our wandering Doctors have been played by Scottish actors (albeit only one with his native accent on display); it reminds me of their intrepid forebears who left their homeland as trained engineers carrying the science of the Industrial Revolution with them. One that comes at once to mind is the fellow who went to Russia to advise — Catherine the Great, I think, although his name escapes me. I hope I’ve got that right — if I go look in Wikipedia, I lose my text here, so I’ll just fly blind and hope I’m not too wide of the mark. Anyway, them — passing through, helping out (making more money than they could make at home, but, well, Scots — ).
4 May 2015 at 14:00 #39821@Burrunjor Thanks for the cites re MixMaster’s being acted as in some kind of twisted but sexual love with the Doctor in The Icky Kiss, and her weirdly seductive comment that her “hearts are maintained by the Doctor”. I’d missed the first, and forgotten (!) the second. It’s possible that she made that remark in the interview to bolster her presentation of Missy as an extravagantly loony character, but also possible that yes, she was playing the scene as derived from the ravenous sexuality that misogynistic men like to attribute to “women of a certain age” but restrained, in this case. Although the three ridiculous little kisses on the nose before pulling away again made the entire incident self-consciously ridiculous at the same time, so I’m not convinced it was serious on her part. There was an overblown, clownish vibe to it that rather undercuts the “out of control passion” demonstration and turns the whole incident into parodic humor, IMO. Still, Gomez said what she said, so doubt remains.
As for her hearts being maintained by the Doctor, that’s part of her grabbing his hand and pressing it to her chest, and again rings as dark humor to me, because I see it as part of her elaborate teasing of him, telling him he *knows* who she is and showing him her TL set of two hearts, but holding back her identity in a sort of mocking dance. But also the gesture harks back to the Simms Master, which was played with a strong erotic current uniting Master and Doctor, and it seems to me to be a deliberate echo of that connection — it’s about the two hearts, as I see it, not at all about the now-female breasts — that slots into meaningful place when the “Master” identity is outed. The gesture confirms to me that this woman is the Master, flaunting his/her female form like a drag performance by a man.
But sometimes we see what we want to see, and you clearly are repulsed by the idea of the Master regenerating as a woman, or by the idea that the Master in a female body would play with that body’s sexuality that way. I’m not, so where you see It-couldn’t-be-the-Master, I see that self-same Master making the most of shocking the Doctor with a bizarre parody performance of coy but barely controllable female lust.
I like my interpretation better.
4 May 2015 at 05:54 #39814Damn; my say about Clara *and* about Osgood, sorry.
4 May 2015 at 05:29 #39813@purofilion Oil on troubled waters, always good. And yes, the device of Osgood’s death seems to work very well, more so the more a viewer is invested in Osgood — but I’ve had my say about Clara until we get some new material to think about, so no worries on that score.
The “sexual assault” comments about Missy kissing the Doctor may come from some remarks I came across right after Dark Water first aired here, to the effect that Missy’s surprise attack was pretty much what the Doctor had coming to him because of SmithDoc’s repeated behavior of grabbing women and kissing them without invitation or leave, back before S8 started. So, some said, now the Doctor knows what it feels like to be treated in a similar manner. I can’t say for sure, having missed a lot of S7 because I didn’t care for it, but that was the gist of the “sexual assault” charge.
Well, there’s something to it, I think: you don’t show someone respect by French kissing them against their will and then laughing it off as a “joke” or a “compliment” (or “part of our welcome package”). In this case, the two being aliens whose long past relationship is still pretty murky to us, I’m not sure we can go as far as calling it a “sexual assault”, particularly since MixMaster seemed perfectly ready to do the same to Clara. That does seem to complicate the issue a bit.
But the kiss certainly wasn’t a *friendly* gesture between two people who see each other as equals. With all that dominating aggression on one side, and a clear, cringing desire to escape on the other, “unhealthy” would be a better term, at least?
4 May 2015 at 04:27 #39809@nerys That’s an interesting way to look at it — as if we’re seeing Danny through the Doctor’s prejudiced eyes all along (even when the Doctor isn’t actually present on-scene), and only come to recognize his inner goodness and courage when it’s too late . . . I like it. Myself, I kept waiting for a few moments between Danny and the Doctor alone, officer and soldier, finding a touch of common ground in their losses to warfare. The closest we got was in Last Xmas: The Doctor: “Brave.” DeadDan, without even turning to look at him: “Already dead.” Fine.
4 May 2015 at 04:24 #39808@purofilion I agree on the mom’s bad cooking; it was stretched out way too long, and I was drying for her to pull a great reversal on them all and sneak off to France and return as a Cordon Bleu chef and knock their socks off; but no, alas. Not so far, anyway (I’m still mooching around at S13 or something — well, the one about the collapsed tunnel and the wild guy in the woods, “The Green Man”, which I liked quite a bit.
I caught “Les Revenants” accidentally last year, the French original, and found it amazingly compelling, for a complete enigma; also fun, with all those French actors moping about smoking and being triste, as French actors are wont to do. Loved the style of it. So I looked in on the American remake, “The Returned”, and pretty much hated it — clunky, full of FBI and other nonsense, just way, way off. In another country, you might say. Actually, I preferred “The Leftovers”, American from the get-go and with its own brand of enigmatic creepiness, a much better match for Les Revenants IMO than “The Returned” in all kinds of ways.
Afraid I never made it very far into “The Good Wife” although it’s good TV. The problem was — lawyers. Another damn show about lawyers. I was all lawyered out (we’ve had so many of these over the past couple of decades!) and just kept switching channels to get away from them. My sister loved the show and tried hard to convince me, but erg. Maybe in part it’s because my husband was a lawyer, and I spent a bunch of time in his offices downtown typing out my first couple of novels in the Word Processing Center . . . I dunno. I like spooky stuff better anyway. A *haunted* lawyer, now that’s more my speed! And to think they’ve just rolled right over that possibility in “Better Call Saul”! Which I don’t watch either. More lawyers.
4 May 2015 at 04:11 #39805@nerys Oh good, come and scintillate with us! Thing about Pompeii — *did* he do the right thing? Isn’t Lobus’s descendant John Frobisher, who is forced to make deals with devilish aliens and who then kills his family and himself, thereby “righting” an imbalance created by Lobus and *his* family having been rescued by the Doctor in Pompeii? It’s a crude equivalency — Lobus must have lots of other descendants, not likely only one branch — but metaphorically the reversal later of the good deed the Doctor did in Pompeii reminds us that all deeds have their good *and their bad* consequences (so it takes tremendous and steady nerve to act heroically at all if you think about it).
I don’t think the scene in Dark Water took place at the eruption near Pompeii, only because the volcano in Dark Water was in fact an illusion that the Doctor provided for Clara to work out her stratagem in, using the “dream patch” to distort her perceptions. It wasn’t a real location at all, and vanished as soon as he took the patch off her palm. Although he could have used memories of Pompeii’s volcano as the model for the illusion on, I suppose. Still, that was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream . . .
But none of that means he can’t revisit the Pompeii of his past and reconnect with Lobus. ?? Time will tell . . .
4 May 2015 at 04:00 #39804@Brrunjor — Whoah — where did Ms Gomez say that Missy *wanted* to “shag” the Doctor and that’s why she assaulted him? The incident didn’t read that way to me. I thought of it as Delgado, more or less, playing in a ruthless, campy way with his new, female identity, using it to tease and to be physically aggressive toward the Doctor in a sort of deliberate parody of courtship. But I don’t read that as being “in love” with the Doctor at all, and hope my posts didn’t suggest that I do.
My take on her was that s/he’s very lonely and wants to reconnect with the childhood that she and the Doctor shared back on Gallifrey. Also he’s a famous and formidable figure now in the universe, and s/he wants to hitch a ride on his fame (nobody talks about “the Master”, so far as I’ve observed, but the Doctor’s name is known far and wide). I’m still seeing the masculine Master in Missy, using an outrageous parody of the femme fatale as a weapon against the Doctor, but by no means feminized within. Everything that looks sexual from her is aggressive in a sort of macho way, and aimed at making the Doctor play the “weak” feminine role, to humiliate and control him.
It’s Clara who loves him; Missy is perhaps what Clara might be (toward him) if Clara did *not* love him: predatory, cruelly playful, vampiric even.
Can’t *wait* for S9.
4 May 2015 at 00:49 #39797@burrunjor Moffat may have called earlier writers hacks, but I betcha he hasn’t said that about anybody on his own writing team; and they are manifestly nothing of the sort, but I’m not going to waste my time arguing the redness of carrots to a blind fish. Nobody *said* the guards were hypnotized; *I’m* saying it because it makes sense, in the tradition of fans finding work-arounds for whatever needs a little explication to fit; and because it’s written into the character of the Master that h/she can somehow escape whenever the needs of the story require it.
*Please* avoid this weird hater habit of blaming the writers for a characterization that you don’t like (an example of what might be called “hack thinking”). When you do that, you insult the actors by ignoring them, or minimizing their abilities. They do make a small contribution — all their experience, talent, and skills — and that’s not chopped liver. Gomez’ acting + the writing made MixMaster fun and horrible, which we did need her to be in order to believe in her grotesque plan to win “her friend” back by corrupting his ethical inclinations.
I do wish people who lob terms like “cheap thrill” about had some workable idea of what they’re talking about. Do you really think Osgood’s death was a “cheap thrill”? Okay, I’m not gonna go there — but you do tempt me to be cruel. I don’t like that much.
I didn’t think MixMaster teleported; I thought she just moved very, very fast, an unusual power for Time Lords considering that the Doctor doesn’t have it, but possibly one a diligently obsessive and nuts Time Lord could develop.
MixMaster was jealous of the offer to Osgood, but sexual jealousy isn’t the only powerful jealousy, just as “shagging” isn’t the only form of friendship (this, by the way, is a *really* important lesson to learn). S/he and the young Gallifreyan who became the Doctor used to “run together” as kids — we’d say “hang out together” now, probably — as best buddies. The grown-up equivalent of that for them would be to travel together now. That’s what s/he wants — Missy is lonely; s/he wants the Doctor to value her company *at least* as much as he values the company of Who-the-Hell-is-this-Osgood-person-anyway — and he clearly doesn’t. So, murder.
Hi, @IAmNotAFish — good to see you here again.
4 May 2015 at 00:04 #39793@workaholic84 — There must be some good speeches and lines from Rory and Amy, don’t you think? They’re the faithful, long term couple who stay together, unlike the Doctor and River Song, so that might be a more fruitful source.
3 May 2015 at 23:59 #39791Aye, well, it can’t be hearts and flowers and flying unicorns around here *all* the time <smirk>, can it. I have to admit that I never got on the Osgood-love bandwagon, probably because I may have been a nerd in school but I wasn’t a *science* nerd, and besides, that was a long time ago; so she didn’t appeal to me that much that quickly. Nevertheless, her evident good will, quick wits, and enthusiasm made me sorry to see her go. As a reminder of the unfairness of not just the toxic nature of some people but the unfairness of the world, her death served a good purpose in the story.
It would be a good thing if, the next time the Doctor wants to invite someone aboard to be a companion (he’s done it twice in S8, with Perkins and Osgood), he pauses to remember the loss of Osgood (for himself and for viewers) and perhaps temper his invitation with caution . . .
3 May 2015 at 23:46 #39789@purofilion @Bluesqueakpip Thanks for “brilliant” — it felt good to fire a salvo back to the type of substance-less, error-ridden attack on a character that I’ve come to associate to the knee-jerk trolls on other, more negative sites. I’ve already stood down on the subject so far as that poster is concerned. Since you say his writing “sparkles”, I look forward to seeing some of that sparkle in future.
Meanwhile, I do owe a rather twisty thanks to denvaldron for posting something that drew Bluesqueakpip’s excellent answer, because Bsp had some good points in reply that I hadn’t considered, and I appreciate having those points raised. I hadn’t traced back Clara’s role with school kids so thoroughly — it is a solid through-line, and worth noticing — and I hadn’t thought of her as the somewhat spoiled, very pretty young woman with prospective boyfriends trailing her at every step (maybe because we weren’t shown that, but it could easily be inferred from many of her lines and scenes, such as “If you think my pretty face — ” in Deep Breath, etc.). There are, gods know, plenty of studies showing that “pretty people” get better treatment most of the time than ordinary-looking ones, so she’ll be used to getting her way as just her due, at least to some extent. Which makes the Doctor a good foil for her, because for the most part “pretty” isn’t a factor for him so she gets no edge on that score.
It also didn’t occur to me that the two-hander structure of S8 might be in part tailored to Peter Capaldi’s being a man in latish middle age rather than a twirling dervish of a lad like Matt Smith. I’d thought of it more as the dramatization of the Doctor’s existential crisis needing a strong and almost omnipresent companion as an anchor, mirror, and sometime guide, but that’s in the story. Bsp’s point is a reason grounded in real-world considerations, and I am a sucker for solid thinking like that, especially when so much of our discussion is necessarily about (and in) abstractions.
3 May 2015 at 23:14 #39788@bamergirlavatar I disagree about the split among fans between those who like Clara and those who don’t (the anti-Clara’s yell the most, IMO, because they are, and know that they are, in the minority except on a few discussion boards dedicated to hating whomever), but I do take your point about the importance of Clara’s appearance at the orphanage and interaction with “Rupert”/Danny. I lost sight of that, partly because her being at the barn with the young Doctor distracted me from this other bit of time-travel by Clara — but also, I think, because nothing much was made of her contact with Rupert; or, more likely, whatever was made of it zoomed right by me and I missed it. Now I wish *she* had remarked upon it in the way you have — wondering about the significance of her early contact with Danny as “Rupert”. Or did that happen too, and I’ve forgotten?!
I don’t think there’s much chance that Danny will be important to S9; so far as I can tell, the ones doing the talking about him are us, not the writers. His being under-written as a character in S8 can’t be “cured” by a return to him in S9, so I think he’s truly gone (although Clara *ought* to think about him from time to time — she *did* promise DreamDan to think about him, if she needed to, for 5 minutes every day, in the Xmas special).
I saw the pics of the big armored thing from the S9 shoot — could it be a robot? Or maybe somebody in very primitive armor only used for fighting with distance weapons, so you don’t need much in the way of flexibility in your armor? It certainly looks like a hellish costume to have to wear, though I’m sure it’s nowhere near as heavy as it looks.
3 May 2015 at 19:03 #39780@Bumunjor Good grief, another one! Yep, nobody here know a single thing about story-telling. Moffat said exactly why Osgood was sacrificed, and you either accept that it worked or you don’t think it did. I found the sequence logistically sound: the Doctor casually invites Osgood to come join him as a companion sometime, and does so in Missy’s hearing; Missy, whose plotting is intended to result in *herself* traveling with the Doctor instead of anybody else (she wants her “friend back”), retaliates with a spiteful murder aimed more at the Doctor than at Osgood herself. Missy sings a little song (I take it to be an exercise of TL hypnosis that disables the guards, though more might have been made of its effect), works free from her bonds (typical Master talent), and kills Osgood. The Doctor returns, and finding Osgood’s eyeglasses stomped on and Osgood gone, absorbs another loss brought on, really, by his cavalier dismissal of Missy and invitation to Osgood, and building up his dread of this madly murderous person that his old friend still is, even in her transformed state. She is not just a bad person; she’s madly destructive, and her immediate instinct to destroy is all too easily set off by *his* behavior toward her.
I don’t know anything about telling a story either, of course, but just as an outsider and idiot I would venture to observe that that’s a pretty tight, economically written little story right there, serving as part of the plot line that leads to the Doctor determining to kill Missy himself rather than allow Clara to take on the necessary task for him.
Still don’t see it? Look again; or don’t. NMFP; yours.
3 May 2015 at 18:46 #39779@denvaldron We’ve already had many interesting discussions of Clara; they just didn’t happen to include people serving up Clara-hater talking points, until now (lucky us!).
An observation: *all* TV characters are “collections of traits”, and Clara’s original “traits” were assigned to her per her function in the story, just as the Doctor’s traits were, way back in the beginning, assigned to him. Lead characters generally get the benefit of more developed back-stories, and add value to a show by exhibiting some degree of growth and change over time, as a way of more realistically mimicking the development of real people. Both Clara and the Doctor have received this treatment. Apparently you don’t find Clara’s “collection of traits” convincing or pleasing. I shared your view, through S7, but found her roaring to much more realistic life in S8. You dismiss her depth of background; it’s sufficient for me, because her foreground — her performance and place in S8 — has been powerful and compelling.
Please give examples of every character expounding on how wonderful Clara is (counter example, right off the bat: Mdme Vastra’s lambasting of her rejection of the “new” Doctor in Deep Breath; want more?). How are her reckless impulsivity, her outbursts of temper (justified or unjustified), her deceitfulness about each man to the other, her selfishness in trying to hang onto both relationships and postpone choosing between them forever, her shallowness in rejecting the new Doctor, her weakness in betraying the Doctor by trying to blackmail him, etc etc, examples of her being presented as “perfect, brilliant, witty, insightful, amazing, gracious, compassionate”, let alone “yadda yadda yadda”?
S8 was a two-hander; most episodes “revolved around” the developing tensions and relationship between two major characters, the Doctor and Clara, both caught up in the crises of a really bad post-regeneration recovery. If you don’t “get” why the Doctor forgives Clara’s blackmail attempt and then tries to get for her what she was demanding in the first place, well, that’s a pity; but says much more about you than it does about “Dark Water”.
If you have any interest in more of my opinions (or those of anyone else here) about this character, I suggest you check back over the past discussions of each pertinent episode of NuWho, plus the “companions” discussion, and find out for yourself. Your post, above, to me bears a heavy “trolling” taint, but I’ve taken on your points as presented as an indication that unsupported character-assassination doesn’t fly by unchallenged here as a rule. Beyond that, I’m certainly am not about to recap half a year’s commentary for you.
Meanwhile, I am personally done talking with you on this subject until you bring something serious to the table.
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