@mudlark @cathannabel @janetteb et al

I’d heartily add to the Years and Years recommendations. It is very RTD-esque but none the worst for it. It’s also a long overdue BBC foray into drama dealing with contemporary issues rather than desperately trying to avoid them in costume and/or crime drama.

@pedant

I’m very much looking forward to…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

Yep, sorry about that. The etheric beam locators must be on the blink….

Just a bit of drive-by bad news. Paul Darrow, best known as the mighty Avon in Blake’s 7, has passed away. He’ll also be remembered as Captain Hawkins in the Silurians and (more notoriously) as Tekker in Timelash. The man was a legend and will be sorely missed.

OK, here’s a cool thing for Christmas. Neil Gaiman talking about new apocalyptic poetry and its inspiration on him and with added Peter Capaldi reading The Magic Wood by Henry Treece. (Available for the next 29 days only).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06w8xl5

@blenkinsopthebrave

The regular Xmas films Chez Fish go something like this:

A Christmas Carol (various versions on rotation but more often than not the Muppets win out)
In The Bleak Midwinter (of A Midwinter’s Tale if you’re American. Much overlooked and a great little film)
Home Alone
Trading Places
Gremlins

And of course, as @pedant says…[Read more]

@craig

I think I guess the owner of that little gem, which actually makes me think that you might be right and that we’ve been getting visited by some botskis of late. Which is kind of a compliment, I suppose….

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

BBC APPROVED SPOILERS...

@bluesqueakpip

More like The Twin Dilemma.

And yes, that was true of the pretty flat progression of the BG show but we’re in a whole different world now. Unless you’re actually a soap opera then there’s no drama that doesn’t build up to something more than ‘wooo, it’s that utterly mediocre second-tier villain from the first episode’. In this day…[Read more]

Well, at least it answered that age-old fanboy question: ‘What would Timelash have looked like on a decent budget’.

For a mid-late-series episode this would have been passable but for a finale it’s pretty damn poor.

So, looks like it’s 2020 after all….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/89823d93-ca6c-486b-9c82-2a71cd1560bb

@pedant @bluesqueakpip @miapatrick

Yeah, this doesn’t contradict anything that was coming out of the rumour mill. Whittaker and Chibbers were always going to on board for s12, as far as I know.

Not sure about spurious though. A single source so far but I’ve seen no denials of a delay or a split season. I wouldn’t be massively surprised if either…[Read more]

@pedant

oooh, I’m hearing Giles say it and I’m thinking still when he’s in school librarian mode, so I’m going to go for s2 or s3.

(rummages around on IMDB.)

I’m going to go for I Only Have Eyes For You…..

@pedant

It’s an interesting analogy and I think it’s definitely there but (and this feels oddly like something we’ve discussed on the Buffy threads) its kind of comparing apples and oranges. Who has not been ensemble show for a long time and I suspect that the way its mythos has panned out means that it never can be again.

The issue I think is…[Read more]

@kevinwho

Nothing to apologise for. It was an interesting post.

In answer to your question, I think Who’s real strength is that it does something audacious every so often. It’s the episodes which push the envelope slightly that seem to get remembered. All of the ‘classic’ stories are atypical in some way or another. Genesis of the Daleks is…[Read more]