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12 August 2015 at 14:23 #41754
@indigomoose — and presumably heads off the ‘threat’ of the Doctor regenerating as a woman in the future. Am I right?
9 August 2015 at 11:28 #41687Thought it was looking a bit unloved in here after the Great Database Massacre of 2015.
This is probably one of the single best episodes of the BG show in my opinion. Doesn’t put a foot wrong at all and I think it’s Davison’s finest hour. From his ‘small beautiful moments’ speech to the race against time in the TARDIS, to the look on his face as he realises his failure, he was just brilliant here. There was no question after this that he was indeed the Doctor — Baker’s not inconsiderable shadow that hung over the previous stories not utterly dispelled. And a decidedly different sort of Doctor too. Could you imagine that kind of ending with the previous Doctor? I just can’t see it. The Whoniverse changed with that story and it regained a greater sense of uncertainty, of fear, and of genuine danger.
I thought @thekrynoidman was spot on in his now-lost summation of Adric. That’s exactly what was being aimed for. But unfortunately I just don’t think had anything like the acting chops to carry it off. I think the idea that he was a better fit for Baker is right too. But more than that, I think Adric really needed Lalla Ward’s Romana to fire off too. He needed the snotty, cleverer, bigger sister character to slap down his arrogance.
(Davison’s performance perhaps more than any other Doctor was not suited to a multi-companion set-up. It cried out for the (non-sexual) intimacy of a single companion — a Sarah-Jane or a Romana– and to swamped by the over-full TARDIS. The JNT approach would have actually worked better the other way around, maybe. The Sixth Doctor would maybe have been more bearable with a larger team around him and Davison would have flourished with just him and Peri.)
But Adric does have a good final story and great pains have obviously been taken to make him less of a Truckle than usual. And it does work more or less. Certainly at the time, the silent credits over the broken star was highly affecting. Now it just seems rather on the mawkish side. Perhaps a soundtrack of Champagne corks and streamers in the TARDIS might be more fitting.
Having said that, it’s often struck me that Adric is one character that might benefit from perhaps a one-off return — as an utterly embittered villain — maybe cannibalising Cyber parts — and somehow surviving the crash and hell-bent on revenge for being abandoned at the dawn of time.
9 August 2015 at 10:54 #41686To echo @phaseshift‘s call-out for The Killing Joke — it’s a small but perfectly formed work.
I’d never heard the the dual-role rumour regarding the first Batman. That’s an interesting idea and I think Keaton could have pulled it off. But I always got the impression that he got the gig because Burton saw something beyond the overtly wacky in Keaton — he’s always at his best, I think, when he’s allowed a bit of quiet with his crazy. He’s good at conveying a barely suppressed danger and I think this is what he brought to his Wayne — in the minimal of scenes he has as him, I might add. Bale gets lots more Wayne-time and always still seemed bland and lifeless.
On Nicholson — at that time I think he was the name the more prosaic minds that tend to run studios would light upon immediately and then not be able to get past. Not that he couldn’t have been a great Joker, and he was OK. It’s just that he was indulged just a bit too much. It’s not so much a serious performance we get, but Jack Nicholson goofing around in make-up for two hours.
Compare that with Ledger, who, I think, is the first actor on screen to actually try to give a character performance as the Joker, to take the part seriously in itself. And it very much takes its cue from the Killing Joke version of the character. And he did kind of set a template for genre villains, I suppose. (Though when I try to come up with some examples, I come up surprisingly blank. Although Missy is certainly among them).
I must watch Batman Begins again as I’m possibly being unfair on it. But I think it’s part of a general problem I have with Christopher Nolan films in general. I always find myself admiring their cleverness, their ingenuity, and their wealth of ideas but in the end they rather leave me a bit cold. His work, to me, always sacrifices heart for intellect.
6 August 2015 at 11:36 #41577@craig & @thekrynoidman–
Ledger’s Joker is probably overrated these days but I’d still prefer it to the rather baroque but ultimately style over substance performance that Nicholson gave. I also quite like the first Burton too but the extended bit of nonsense with the carnival floats in the middle just seemed to kill the film’s momentum stone dead for me and it never really recovered.
I’d agree with @craig that the comics are truly the way to go (and I’ve only really read the ‘big ones’ as I’m essentially a Marvel Boy and not really a DC fan). But the main problem with the films for me is that Batman exists in this rather odd world (even by superhero standards) of a hero having an eccentric to say the least reaction to what are the problems of a recognisably real world. It’s not a problem that afflicts say the X-Men or the Avengers because they don’t really belong to that world, even though they walk in it.
To me it always seemed that for Batman to work on the screen, you needed to heighten that world, make it more dreamlike and for that reason Burton’s snowy wonderland gone to hell idea worked more than Nolan’s Coppola by way of Michael Mann-esque uber-realism. Because of the essential silliness of the core concept I didn’t think it could be done any other way. Though having said that, the Netflix version of Daredevil has made me dramatically revisit that conviction. It successfully did, in my opinion, what the Nolan films almost achieved. But then they had the luxury of the length of a TV series rather than just a movie. Look how long it actually takes both the hero and the villain to ‘get into character’ there.
Marvel has had many stabs at a Batman figure but perhaps the closest one movie-wise is Iron Man and Marvel lucked out by casting Robert Downey Jr who really sold Tony Stark and gave him a character all of his own. The Iron Man movies are more about Stark than they are about him being in the suit. I think Keaton sold the damaged nuttiness of Bruce Wayne more than Christian Bale did but both versions of the story failed to really sell the Bruce Wayne side of the character. I think the upcoming version might win out here because, contrary to popular opinion, I think Ben Affleck will be able to do for Bruce Wayne what Downey Jr did for Tony Stark.
5 August 2015 at 13:26 #41559@thekrynoidman — The Dark Knight is well worth watching for Ledger’s performance alone. I’m personally not that crazy about the films either side of them. I personally really like Keaton’s take on Batman and would rate Batman Returns as the best of all the films (tie-ing with TDK)
28 July 2015 at 11:40 #41472@ichabod — well, her stuff has a trippy edge too. And I wouldn’t put it past old PKD spiking her….
27 July 2015 at 22:03 #41470If there was, it was probably acid….
27 July 2015 at 11:46 #41467For the cosplayers out there. Some Who people in there but it’s the teeny tiny Browncoats that got me….
26 July 2015 at 13:07 #41460On the Cyber design. I think it’s one of the better ones — the translucent ‘chin’ plate is a masterstroke that emphasises the organic nature of the creature inside. None of the AG iterations have really worked because they just look far too much like robots in their entirety. The latest ones are a nice design but it’s too slick, too robotic. They really need to dirty it up a bit. I’m with Capaldi that the Mondasian Cybermen were the original and best.
Actually I’m really in favour of this version that Who designer Matt Savage came up with for them but which was not used.
My problem with the 80s one is one that is shared with the iterations that came after them too. They’re too militaristic. The Saward assumption and one that’s been built on since is that the Cybermen were essentially soldiers. I don’t see them like that. The 60s versions were essentially scientists gone bad, who had taken up arms to perpetuate their theories. Making them just like ranks of robot soldiers renders them just a bit too boring.
26 July 2015 at 12:59 #41458The Cyber kisses to the past continue. Now we’re on to The Invasion — and why not, it is the best Cyber-story bar none (unless you include Spare Parts ). BG stories tend to really find their feet in episode threes and this one’s quite a belter. Beryl’s is not quite so terrible here but she’s still no Hobson or Cutler. Scott gets to be the proto-Brigadier he’s been lined up to be and Tegan gets to get her Ripley on.
The polythene is a call-back to the Invasion, of course and the cocooned Cybermen of that story. I seem to remember that the tabloids of the day half-heartedly try to stir up some outrage about it as encouraging kids to put plastic bags over their heads in emulation in a way that not one kid did ever.
Cyber campness going off the scale here too. ‘My army awakes… Doktorr!!’. And surprisingly vengeful too.
The Cyberman fused in the door is a great effect though and is one of the few that still impresses today. And a cracking cliffhanger. Although it’s one that is seemingly obligatory for every Cyber story — and there are some that do it better — it nicely amps up the tension.
26 July 2015 at 12:14 #41455After that cliffhanger this episode was initially watched with the open-mouthed astonishment of actually seeing the Cybermen in action again. And, yes, they are rather camp but in fairness it’s not that noticeable and is rather restrained in Earthshock. It’s only by the time we get to The Five Doctors/Attack and especially Silver Nemesis that they’re suffering from their law of diminishing returns. Here all the fruity, fist-clenching ‘Explode The Bomb!!’ malarkey kind of works.
The little flashback sequence is another little piece of fangasm. Certainly I think it was the first time I’d actually seen the Second Doctor talking on screen and possibly Hartnell too for that matter. We’re still a year away from the Five Faces season and I wonder if it wasn’t the enthusiastic reaction to the Cybermen and the flashbacks that persuaded the Beeb to go for that. But it was also a lovely little piece of fan contextualisation, Although it also perhaps points to the increasing obsession with the show’s own past that will actually start to blight the show in the coming years.
Another one is the casting of Beryl Reid. Sorry, @blenkinsopthebrave, for me she’s one of the low points of the story, and increasingly so over the years. It’s a foretaste of the increasingly irritating light-entertainment stunt-casting of the JNT years. Not that Reid is the worst offender. She’s OK. But her performance somehow screams ‘Look at me, loves. I’m slumming it a bit in Doctor Who dontacha know!’. Personally I think June Bland as Berger outshines her with the greater conviction she brings to the role.
(I do concur with you on Reid in Smiley’s People though. It’s not a role I’ve ever cared for much, finding this version of Connie rather self pitying and pathetic (although that is, indeed, the point, I know) and far prefer the revitalised version we get in The Honourable Schoolboy but there’s nothing to fault in Reid’s performance. It’s more or less exactly how Le Carre had it on the page.)
Another slight criticism is the same one that can be lobbed at this era in general — the cast of frikkin’ thousands. I get that Saward needed Scott and this troops for later in the story but it’s always struck me as un-Doctor-like for Five to bring them all along. He’s got a TARDIS full of bloody irritants as it is, so what does he do, fill it up with even more. It’s actually the reason why Davison isn’t remembered as well as he should be. He was always surrounded by far too many auxiliary characters. It’s also the reason why Androzani is remembered so fondly. Stripped down to just him and Peri, he finally gets a chance to shine as the Doctor. If it had been just him and say Tegan for more of his run, he would be far more highly regarded.
But onwards with the Cybermen’s Greatest Hits package. We’ve done Tomb, now we’re on to Moonbase. Creepy, empty metal corridors and the glimpse of the ‘space plague’. And the sense of impending siege. And not a great cliffhanger but sufficiently carried along on the momentum built up to keep us in fingernail-chewing mode.
25 July 2015 at 12:35 #41416mutters to self ‘must watch Strange and Norrell, must watch Strange and Norrell’.
But, yes, if I were a betting man, I’d be thinking that a small flutter on Harness being Who’s next showrunner might not be an entirely ridiculous wager.
22 July 2015 at 12:52 #4134922 July 2015 at 10:21 #41346@scaryb — OK, that’s me in.
21 July 2015 at 22:53 #41331@scaryb–
No obvious Who faces in the festival line-up but it’s still a pretty stellar collection of faces for all that….
21 July 2015 at 22:14 #41329@scaryb — welcome back, o purple one…. Good to see you back (and you too, @wolfweed). You’ve both been much missed.
ooo, seeing the Magician’s Apprentice three weeks early. That might be kinda cool. Will try and get tickets tomorrow. Would it be something that our esteemed emperor @craig might want to make the trip back to the mother country for, I wonder? Also wonder who the special guests are. Could even be Moffatt himself. Isn’t that round about the time of the Telly Festival? He’s bound to be in town for that.
Henceforth I shall take Jim The Fosh as my alternate title.
Think you’re right about Kennedy btw. I just raised the ‘cashing in’ point as I’d read some ARSEs online trying to make the accusation.
20 July 2015 at 12:51 #41300Not sure Faith, myth and Reason would have enough ongoing momentum to be a thread on its own but I think it’s definitely crying out for a blog
18 July 2015 at 14:48 #41268@ichabod — I believe it was ACD’S then wife who made him change the name. I believe the original name for Watson was something equally risible — Ormond Sacker.
@bluesqueakpip — I believe the new name might have been chosen after the violinist Alfred Sherlock or it might have been after a couple of cricketers of the time.
Quite a nice page about the whole thing here
17 July 2015 at 00:21 #41251@bluesqueakpip — I suppose we should be grateful that ACD was talked out of his original name for Holmes — Sherrinford Hope. God knows, what he would have called Mycroft.
@xtremez — forgot to say, best of luck on the Masters. I’m sure you’ll find it immensely rewarding and a lot of fun to boot….
16 July 2015 at 19:56 #41247@bluesqueakpip — are you saying there’s something funny about that venerable name, that’s synonymous with a fine tradition of slave trading? 😉 I was just trying to spare old Ben’s blushes…
16 July 2015 at 11:36 #41240@XTremeZ–
Alright, let’s do this…
1- Is the doctor considered an atheist ?
Atheist to what exactly? To Rassilon? I’m presuming you’re meaning to Christian belief? But if he were truly religious it would surely be to the beliefs of his own people. Why would he be remotely invested in the set of creation myths of one daft wee subset (among hundreds) of one daft wee species (among millions) on one daft wee planet (among at least thousands)? There’s none at all that I can see. And from what we’ve seen, Time Lords don’t do supernatural belief. It’s interesting that their most ‘mythic’ figures — Rassilon, Omega etc that their actually historical figures who become mythic because of the magnitude of their acts. And if you allow the Cartmel Masterplan to enter into canon (and that’s a big ‘if’ for many people) then you have Time Lord society based on three major mythic figures Rassilon, Omega and the mysterious third one called The Other. The inference is clear in a number of places that this Other is meant to be the Doctor himself. So, asking does the Doctor believe in God is essentially asking ‘does the Doctor believe in himself?’ (And let’s not even touch the Cult of Pythia that predates this Triumvirate).
As said before, there’s no evidence in Who for the Doctor having any kind of religious belief. He’s an adherent of science and reason (just perhaps less stridently than in the show’s first 20-odd years). The Doctor isn’t human. He just looks it. I always imagine his relationship with humans to be not unlike David Attenborough’s with a tribe of chimps. There’s fascination. Definitely affection. But would your really ask Attenborough if he believed in the Chimp Deity?
2- How long do you think Peter Capaldi will last as the doctor ?
Three years seems to be the going Doctor duration at the moment, with both Tennant and Smith staying that long. It’s my expectation that Capaldi will do that also. Unless, of course, they spring a surprise regeneration on us this year, which I wouldn’t be massively surprised if they did. Personally, I think he’s doing brilliant work and would like to see him do longer and while he’s clearly having a ball, he’s also an incredibly talented and versatile actor who’s no doubt getting lots of offers and probably has lots of other projects he wants to be doing himself, so I expect the standard 3-year stint from him.
3- Who would you like the 13th doctor to be ?
My dream doctor has been and will continue to be Tilda Swinton.
4- Do you think that Benedict Cumberbatceh will make a good doctor ?
I think Cabbagepatch is an incredible actor — and the only thing that made the cliche-fest that was The Imitation Game remotely watchable. There’s really no chance he’s ever take the role of the Doctor though and frankly that’s a fact I’m quite glad of. He’s such an obvious and vanilla choice. We pretty much know from Sherlock more or less how he would play the Doctor. This is not a reflection on Cabbagepatch’s ability, as I say, and maybe he would try something completely off the wall, but I doubt it. We would get Sherlock in Space basically. Let’s have someone who will bring us some surprise, as both Smith and Capaldi have.
@XTremeZ–
On your later points:
we don’t have any proof if the doctor is an atheist or has a sense of religion
Not true. We have lots of proof. Much of it cited by myself and @bluesqeakpip above. I suggest you start with The Daemons, which is handily features in our BG rewatch section. Watch The Face of Evil (originally to be titled The Day God Went Mad, interestingly enough). Watch The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Look at all the little asides about religion in the Tennant/Smith/Capaldi years. There’s nothing — including Smith’s one line about ‘the devil’ that suggest he’s found religion. As Pip says, it could just be metaphor or it could just be that the beast is of the species that founded the human belief in the Devil (although my money’s still on Azal for that one). Another story to check out in this context would be Pyramids of Mars — the Egyptian characters believe Sutekh to be their god Set, and even the Doctor makes that assertion too, but that doesn’t mean the Doctor suddenly believes in Egyptian gods — merely that he realises that the Osirans became the basis for Egyptian superstition.
A time skip is an amount of time between two parts of the story
I think most of us have grasped that what we see on the show is not absolutely everything that happened in the Doctor’s life ever.
What’s stopping us from believing that those adventures affected the doctor’s personality
Nothing, except that all we infer personality from actions, words and deeds and so far we’ve seen nothing — nothing — on screen to suggest that the Doctor has gone some kind of miraculous religious conversion in an unseen adventure. If anything, with Capaldi’s regeneration we’re seeing a Doctor who is even more dismissive of religious belief in others than his predecessors were.
It boils down to the fundamental concept of empiricism. (Something, incidentally, you’re really going to have to get your head around if you want to have any hope of completing your Masters.) If you want to make any kind of assertion — The Doctor’s a Christian, the Moon is an egg, energy is conserved, the force of gravity on Earth is 9.807ms2, then you have to back up that assertion with evidence. Not an opinion, mark you, but independently verifiable fact. Something that other people can go away, verify for themselves without special pleading, something that replicates your own findings to the letter and becomes true not just for you but for everyone who comes across it. The idea that the Doctor is religious emphatically does not stand up to that test. Not at the moment anyway.
I apologies for asking too many annoying questions
Questions are good. But continually asking the same ones in the hope that you”ll maybe get different answers, not so much.
14 July 2015 at 20:34 #41197Luckily I must have taken the Doctor’s advice, said “I deny this reality!” and then played with some Lego
@whisht — I find that still works even today. Especially when I’m working.
14 July 2015 at 19:19 #41195I’ve gone on record before about the excellent AL Kennedy being on my wishlist for Doctor Who writers. After last year’s short story/novella thingy The Death Pit, she’s extended it to a novel, reviewed here and extensively on the web. I haven’t read it yet, although am currently reading her latest batch of short stories, many of which are sublime. I’m in two minds about this. There’s some accusations that she’s cashing in on a known brand as the market for literary fiction dries up. Not sure I buy that. But equally wonder if Who is the best outlet for her talents. I shall more than likely be checking it out anyway.
Now, all we have to do is get SM to commission a TV story off her….
12 July 2015 at 14:57 #41137@xtremez — Yes, I think that line is definitely open to interpretation. Just not sure it’s enough to sustain a ‘does that mean the Doc has found religion’ angle.
12 July 2015 at 13:55 #41135@phaseshift, @purofilion and @xtremez
That’s interesting and funny about Trek — and I suppose it’s a show that’s probably killed more ‘Gods’ than other. It also struck me that one of the interesting things about Firefly was that it was a SF show that directly engaged with religion and is set in a universe where Faith and superstition is still definitely a big thing. Similarly BSG, which explores it even further. For my money, Baltar in BSG is one of the best, most interesting, and most conflicted characters of any SF show (and possibly of any show). In any other show he’d be a cardboard villain, but he’s a profoundly troubled and weak man who constantly wrestles with guilt, and the conflict of Faith over Reason.
I think @purofilion is dead right when she says that Moffatt has taken great pains to remove the ‘Lonely God’ religious undercurrent (which was always meant to be taken metaphorically rather than literally in my view anyway) and replace it with something more anarchic, secular and based in fairytale rather than religious mythos.
@xtremez — can you be a bit more specific in your citations as I’m not sure which episode you’re referring to. But as to an ‘act of faith’, you can look back to Curse of Fenric — the haemovores could be stopped by an act of faith and this was what the Doctor was advocating. But it didn’t amount to an expression of religious belief (notably it didn’t save the ostensibly religious characters in the show). It just meant personal faith in whatever was most important to you (e.g. you could see McCoy silently reciting the names of previous companions as his ‘faith’). And, as is currently being discussed on the other thread, there are probably more allusions to Norse mythology in the show than there are Christian ones.
I’m assuming you’re referring to the God Complex with ‘the devil’ line. I think it’s pretty clear from that episode that the creature is as much really the Devil as Sutekh from Pyramids of Mars is really the Egyptian god Set.
12 July 2015 at 12:31 #41126I’ve taken the rogue html out of your post. It usually creeps in when you cut and paste from another website or occasionally application.
@purofilion–
I actually think the likes of MIT are probably a lot more relaxed and easy-going than the Academy on Gallifrey. I think Time Lords have been shown to be obsessed with pomp and ritual, which is why I likened them to Oxbridge colleges. I’ve just finished reading The Unexpected Professor by John Carey (great book and the man is something of a hero of mine. What a Doctor he would have made) and he has an anecdote that during a series of sit-ins at Oxford in the 1970s, one of his duties as a Warden was to nip down in the middle of the night and keep an eye on what the miscreants were up to. But he couldn’t just throw on a dressing gown — no, he had to don the full regalia of his office — gowns, sashes etc to do so. I think the Academy would be like that — dogmatically obsessed with ritual. You probably couldn’t go to see your tutor unless you were wearing the correct gown, cowl, collar and carrying the banana of Rassilon in your right hand. This is what the Doctor was rebelling against — but maybe explains why he does tend to wear the same costume throughout a regeneration — the idea of having some kind of formal, identifying attire has been ingrained in him.
@bluesqueakpip & @purofilion & @xtremez
RE. the religious thing. I just don’t buy this ‘evidence from absence’ argument I’m afraid. To take the fish fingers and custard analogy, it’s not possible to assume that the Doctor suddenly took against the food just because you don’t see him eating them in every episode (or saying that he still did). Similarly, there is a clear throughline throughout Doc 11’s time with the food — eats it for first time in 11th hour, seen eating it again in Power of Three and then isn’t there a call-back to it in Time and the Doctor? Unless you’re specifically told otherwise, and we weren’t, you have to assume that previously held distinctions stand.
Similarly with religion. The First and Second Doctors, while not making any explicit statements either way, are pretty strong adherents of empirical reasoning and show no inclination to any kind of religious belief whatsoever. The Third Doctor in the Daemons at least comes out pretty strongly for Science with a capital S over religious and magical belief. There’s nothing in the rest of the BG Doctors to contradict this point until Doc 7, who seems to have a bit more of a mythical edge about him towards the end as we started to see the first glimpses of the Cartmel Masterplan. During the RTD era there is a flirtation of religious imagery but I think that’s largely to do with RTD who, while being an atheist, is clearly fascinated by it. But that doesn’t mean the Doc has suddenly become more religious but is maybe, as Puro says, just a bit more tolerant of it than he was in his 3rd incarnation. But then again, we’re back to the 12th Doctor saying ‘you’d only start worshipping it) which strikes me as quite Pertwee-esque so maybe he’s un-mellowed with age again.
But it goes back to the old adage (once again) ‘if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage’. It’s perfectly the possible the Doctor found religion in some unseen adventure (the assumption usually being Christian, I suppose. But what if he suddenly converted to Islam, became a Wee Free, Scientologist or Adherent of the Cult of Skaro?) But it’s by the by, because if you’re going to try and argue for it you need at least some evidence as your starting point. Otherwise you’re Neil Fox on Brass Eye.
We have had this conversation before on these boards, of course. Personally what I find most bemusing is this desire to claim the Who narrative as a religious parable of some kind. None of the other SF big-hitters have to deal with it.
11 July 2015 at 15:44 #41117@bluesqueakpip and @ XtremeZ (welcome btw) — I think Pip pretty much has it spot on. The first three or four Doctors at least are arch-rationalists — probably reaching its most direct manifestations with Pertwee vs Ms Hawthrone in the Daemons. The Doctor is initially a scientist and a kind of pseudo-academic and my impression of Gallifrey is that it’s like a really, really big Oxbridge university, with much of the pomp being not unlike the sort of drivilesh that you have to put up with if you go to these institutions. So, I think initially we’re looking at a kind of Dawkins-esque ultra-rationalism with religion being something ‘primitive’.
But there does seem to be something more spiritual, or at least less strident in the AG iteration. The Doctor as Lonely God, the Christian imagery that RTD (rather playfully) flirted with, the fairytale mythos of the Moffatt era and so on. I think it possibly has its roots in some of the tropes of the last McCoy season and the subsequent Virgin adventures etc.
As to canon, I think Pip is right that the only answer to that is that if its been granted some form of licence by the Beeb then it’s canon unless we’re explicitly told that it isn’t. There’s actually very little over the years that I could say can’t be more or less comfortably slotted into canon. With the possible exception of the Cushing movies and there have been attempts to do that also. (I personally don’t think it’s necessary to do so.)
11 July 2015 at 15:34 #41116@bluesqueakpip — your words are more true than you know. Everyone (except me 🙁 ) does seem to be buggering off to Greece on ‘a great idea for a colour piece’ type things while my life is full of ‘haircuts’ and ‘defaults’, shock referenda and evil Troika at the moment…
9 July 2015 at 23:17 #41092@thekrynoidman & @blenkinsopthebrave — to be fair the new series has still managed some corking cliffhangers — did anyone see The War Doctor coming? But they’re narrative ones these days rather than things like revived monsters, which, as you both say, wouldn’t survive the internet.
A blog on the show’s top cliffhangers? Now that’s a capital idea….
7 July 2015 at 18:39 #41050@kharis — I’ve taken the liberty of slightly amending your post as it teetered dangerously close to spoiler territory. Although these are very old stories, we take the approach on these rewatches that there might be some seeing them for the first time so we avoid discussing anything that didn’t actually feature in the episode in question.
Hope you don’t mind.
@barnable — good to see you back and glad you enjoyed the Firefly blog.
7 July 2015 at 16:13 #41045@blenkinsopthebrave — I get the production reasons for the use of the androids to hide the surprise of the cliffhanger but was just pointing out that it doesn’t really tally with any Cyberman modus operandi before or since. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a criticism and I do indeed remember the whole WTF-ness of the reveal at the time.
And the androids were great. So much so that they’re whole look, as I say, was pinched and given a weird performance-artist-ey style makeover for the Raston in The Five Doctors. I seem to remember also seeing them at the Blackpool exhibition and thinking they were even scary when you saw them close up. Which you couldn’t say for a lot of the props when you saw them up close. The Cybermen included.
7 July 2015 at 00:23 #41032Well, that’s quite the belter of a cliffhanger and as @craig says, a pivotal moment for Who fans of a certain age. I certainly remember it being the awed talk of the playground the following day. And it does mark the beginning of a sort of mini-era of Who — not only the controversial Saward years but also the arrival of what ended up being the campest era in Cyber-history. Brace yourself for lots of fist-clenching and purring of ‘Exceeellent’. (And I realise that sentence sounds a whole lot filthier than I intended.)
This possibly also marks the beginning of the show becoming so self-referential (something that many thought led to its troubles a few years down the line). Earthshock is so great for fans because it’s essentially a Cyber-greatest hits. Look at this episode. It’s essentially a slavish remake of Episode One of Tomb of the Cybermen with a dash of Aliens thrown in. Gus Van Sant, ain’t in it. (And it’s interesting that it seems to almost fulfill Who’s original remit too with a bit of educational chat on the dinosaurs’ extinction event thrown in too. We can undoubtedly thank Chris ‘Chuckles’ Bidmead for that.)
There’s some crap here too, of course. The marines are rubbish. Aside from the terrible acting (the professor especially), they’re the most inept bunch of military dolts that Who has produced (and there’s been some stiff competition for that title over the years). Aside from their tendency to fall over a lot, there’s also the whole ‘look the scanner’s picked up something anomalous in a cavern where a bunch of scientists just died, shall I tell my superior? Naaah.’
That said, the scenes in the caves are really quite suspenseful and I’ve always found those androids kind of creepy, despite looking like a close relative of the Raston Warrior Robot. Lurking in the shadows really works for them. The death of Snyder is one of the more memorable redshirt Who deaths, as @blenkinsopthebrave says (welcome back, sir, by the way). But it’s an odd thing for Cybermen to use androids though, isn’t it? Why not just send a couple of Cybermen to do the same job? Aside from that it would have knackered the cliffhanger?
The other key element of crapness can be put into one word. Adric. What an absolute whining arse the boy is. It’s hard to imagine too many of the other doctors putting up with half the stuff that Davison does. Could you imagine him dealing with Capaldi? He’d have booted his backside out the TARDIS doors in two seconds flat. As would Pertwee, either of the Bakers or even Smith, I suspect.
However, he does illustrate the key problem of this era — the bickering, over-full TARDIS. Look how much of this episode is taken up with the regulars nagging at each other. And the old-school Whovians have the cheek to bitch about AG Who being too much like a soap opera.
Which brings us nicely onto the great work Davison does here. I’ve said before that he’s a Doctor who never really gets his due. And this is one of this finest stories. And even when surrounded by a lorry-load of whining arse-achers, he’s still never anything less than watchable.
6 July 2015 at 09:44 #40992@kharis — If you haven’t seen the original Alien then that’s something you should probably remedy in all haste. (Assuming you’re old enough to view an 18 certificate and even if you’re not, you should probably do it anyway.)
5 July 2015 at 17:50 #40973@lisa, @purofilion, @bluesqueakpip et al–
The press releases suggested that in order to preserve continuity the Doc and River as the Doc is going to be essentially kept in ignorance of River’s identity, so they may not even have that many scenes together, depending on how they do it. But however they do, it’s clear the dynamic between McGann and River is going to be significantly different to either Tennant or Smith because he won’t ever be able to know who she really is. I don’t think there’s going to be much ‘Hello, Sweetie’ and ‘Spoilers’ stuff.
It is going to be interesting though.
5 July 2015 at 15:38 #409704 July 2015 at 19:19 #40948@phaseshift — It is indeed shaping up to be a bad year for losing some much-loved faces. And I think we should probably add Brian Clemens himself to that roll-call of mortality….
4 July 2015 at 15:36 #40942I had been intending to write a blog commemorating the late, great Patrick Macnee and his contribution to popular culture and pretty much the lives of anyone interested in SF or fantasy TV. But then I realised that we’ve already done so with @phaseshift‘s Rewind TV blog on Too Many Christmas Trees a couple of years back and what with the blog itself and the comments below, there was really nothing that I could possibly add to it. I’d recommend that newer members check it out and leave any further thoughts on The Avengers, Macnee etc there, should you be so inclined.
I’m afraid the actual video link no longer works, but below is the full Honey For the Prince episode, a true Avengers classic, and also featuring the recently departed Ron Moody (an almost-Third Doctor at one point).
3 July 2015 at 10:51 #40930@fatmaninabox — yes, I’m pretty sure that any new series will almost certainly not be a continuation of TSCC — it’s unlikely they’d get Lena Headey these days if nothing else. At least not until she’s finished her Cersei duties.
I felt the same way about Manson at first — I thought she was pretty bad at first and was cutting her some slack because, well, because she’s Shirley Manson goddammit, but then felt it was inspired. Like Summer Glau, she nailed the whole weirdness of how a Terminator would struggle to interact with humans.
Same with Garret Dillahunt too. OK, he’s not as imposing as Arnie but he’s definitely got something really rather sinister about him. Especially as John Henry. Which kind of gets to the nub of what a Terminator is — essentially a huge metal toddler with lots and lots of guns. He also deserves kudos for infusing singing ‘Donald, Where’s Yer Troosers?’ with genuine and unsettling menace. I’m not sure Arnie could have pulled that off.
3 July 2015 at 00:06 #40925Not often you get to say this these days, but nice piece on the Guardian on the ridiculously overlooked The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The new Terminator movie by all accounts sounds like a load of old pish (despite having our esteemed Mr Smith in it). But there is talk of a new TV series and if there’s any justice it should be the a revival of TSCC.
1 July 2015 at 21:39 #40912@whisht — I’m Dana Scully, which I wasn’t expecting at all but which by no means displeases me…. Observe my flowing red locks….
1 July 2015 at 18:45 #40909Which SF hero are you? Kinda fun.
1 July 2015 at 12:32 #40902@purofilion — it’s all chillin’ now.
Oh, and for gamer Boy-llion, here’s the trailer for the latest episode of the really rather excellent Tales of the Borderlands. Also very Firefly-ey….
I love the design of the Borderlands world. Could watch it all day.
30 June 2015 at 19:28 #40882@bluesqueakpip — certainly I think Who and the popularity of the Daleks helped cement her reputation as a force to be reckoned with pretty early on. And it’s also definitely hard to pinpoint one highpoint in her career. But I do think Widows was a far more influential series than it’s often given credit for and my personal favourites are the Budgie/Minder aspect of her work. (Although the ITV4 reruns are showing Minder to be slightly creaky around the edges and not holding up that well. I wonder if Budgie would be a similar disappointment in this day and age.)
30 June 2015 at 15:25 #40880Nice puff piece for new biog of Verity Lambert. Just makes me like her all the more. Obviously, Who is what she’ll probably be remembered for but I’m in two minds whether it is actually the greatest achievement in what is surely one of the most stellar careers in British TV.
30 June 2015 at 12:18 #40877@purofilion — Afraid work doesn’t really come on clear schedules for me. Some nutters start gunning down people on a beach or Greece goes into meltdown and suddenly there’s stuff for me to do.
Oh, and Boy-llion should definitely check out Borderlands (if he hasn’t done so already) for that full Firefly-esque gaming vibe….
29 June 2015 at 12:31 #40868Sorry not been around much. Mucho busy workwise and major computer upgrade work into the bargain.
Good to see another Browncoat on the site. I know there are not too many gamers one the site, but the trailer for the new Mass Effect game has landed and it looks might fine. It also strikes me as having more than a little of a Firefly influence to it:
25 June 2015 at 22:11 #40836Patrick Macnee has died aged 93. The man is such a legend that I feel a proper tribute blog must be in order.
24 June 2015 at 23:22 #40810@bluesqueakpip, @purofilion and @arbutus–
Sounds like the first meaning, then. That is, there’s no such thing as ‘Celts’, really, because it’s just a romantic way of saying ‘Welsh’
There are at least two Irishmen of my acquaintance who would take major exception to that. (But that doesn’t mean that they’re in any way correct to do so.)
This stuff is all a bit hazy but I believe there’s strong genetic evidence to link the Irish and the Welsh (as well as linking the Irish to the Basques). Certainly lowland (i.e. non-Gaelic) Scots have a pretty strong link to the Welsh. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza wrote a rather good book on this a good few years ago now — Genes, Peoples and Languages — but as I say it’s all rather hazy.
22 June 2015 at 09:47 #40764@purofilion — RE. Torture in Farscape, I wouldn’t know as I’ve only seen a couple of episodes really. And it’s been removed from Netflix UK so I shan’t be catching up on it anytime soon unless I can get hold of some boxsets quickly.
RE. Game of Thrones. I must admit that by the end of s4 I was getting pretty bored of it all. So much so that haven’t even bothered to watch more than a couple of episodes of s5. I’m not massively keen on the fantasy genre in general anyway and I increasingly find it just a grind to get through an episode and this season sounds as if it were very much treading water anyway.
21 June 2015 at 20:55 #40760Thanks to @bluesqueakpip and @fatmaninabox for dealing with the spammage. Have been rather indisposed today….
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