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20 January 2015 at 09:29 #37443
@purofilion — that’s quite the bargain. Score!
19 January 2015 at 13:52 #37425@purofilion — good that you’re enjoying Angel. It is a great series but I’d say you’ve still to get to the stuff where it really finds its own identity. I’d say for a good part of the first season, it’s still finding its feet and falling back into ‘kinda like Buffy’ mode. But by the end of s1 and certainly by the time you hit s2, the difference between the two shows starts to become more marked.
I’d agree that s4 of Buffy doesn’t really ‘work’ on some fundamental level — I’ll leave more detailed thoughts until the blog. But it does have some amazing episodes. Hush is rightly considered a classic of modern TV. But I’d say that of the whole show it has the highest concentration of average and slightly below average stories. That and the unequivocally awful Beer Bad just drag it down too much, I’d say. But take heart, it ends on a fantastic note and pretty much all of season 5 is a belter.
@phaseshift — it’s definitely true that both the Whispermen and the Gentlemen are drawing on lots of horror antecedents, from Stoker, to Poe to even perhaps Gorey but I think it can’t be denied that the look of the Whispermen does owe a serious debt to Hush. But at the same time my reaction to that is ‘so bloody what’? It looked great and it worked and no one could say that the entire Who story was some kind of Hush rip-off because it clearly wasn’t. And there are other aspects of Moffat’s writing — such as the subtextual/ambient use of nursery rhymes and myth, for example, that show he’s very much been influenced by Whedon.
RE. Buffy’s puritan streak. I think it’s definitely there and as @phaseshift says, that’s largely because it’s hard-coded into many traditional horror tropes anyway. I think it’s on the Innocence commentary, Joss says that he was uncomfortable about Buffy being essentially punished for having sex but that in terms of narrative he couldn’t see any way around it. Anyway, more on this in the forthcoming bloglet.
Something I missed in the s3 one though — and which @pedant handily picked up on during the course of his disturbing leather pants fetish — is the moral murkiness of the Graduation Day parts 1 & 2. A big part of the series arc is the corrupting influence on Faith that having taken a human life has. And yet after all the moralising from both Buffy and Angel, both are more than happy to kill her in order that Angel might live. You might think that Faith actually has a point in being so pissed off with them and calling them out as hypocrites.
And as a piece of foreshadowing, it’s significant that Buffy’s first act as a free agent ‘unencumbered’ by the Watchers’ Council is one that is so morally dubious. You could argue that it shows that she actually needs them a lot more than she thinks she does. And again, this might inform events of seasons to come.
@purofilion, I wouldn’t read too much into Joss’s ‘my marriage is a sham’ line. I think he was just being sarcastic. And incidentally I’d heartily recommend this book. There’s some great essays on various aspects of the Whedonverse and some quite nice interviews from various creatives involved in the shows too.
17 January 2015 at 18:01 #37353RE. Clemens and British TV. Agree though I also think part of the problem is that there’s just not enough drama being made these days. In the glory years, there was lots of drama of varying quality, budget and subject matter. Certainly compared to today. And while much of it was rubbish, it did mean there were lots of avenues for new writers to cut their teeth before moving onto bigger and better stuff. The narrow drama output of today means that doesn’t happen, as well as meaning when a high-profile drama turns out to be a duffer, that it’s far more painfully obvious.
A crap episode with one good scene (Parker – Willow). It’s truly appalling and I think the reason that so many people dismiss some really good stuff about the series. It’s like a black hole, sucking all the joy out of surrounding episodes.
Yep. Agree with that also. I think what bugs me most about Beer Bad is that it just shows the worst aspects of the show’s puritan streak.
S4 has some extremely significant and enjoyable eps but there are also too many lacklustre episodes and Beer Bad itself is so bad that it’s hard to forget (or forgive).
15 January 2015 at 23:55 #37323@pedant — I’d say that we can talk generalities, so long as we don’t veer too into spoilerage. It’s just specifics that should be off-limits. But I suppose there might be a slight risk of colouring others’ expectations even with vague allusion and discussion.
But I am looking forward to giving s7 the sound kicking it rightly deserves.
15 January 2015 at 23:33 #37319@pedant — Sorry, but Beer Bad, for me, makes Go Fish look like frikkin’ Hush. It’s officially my Worst Buffy Episode Ever. The future episode you refer to must be in s7 but I’d argue it’s difficult to pick the truly bad stories out of that season as it’s 80 per cent ropey anyway, with the occasional flashes of old-school goodness.
13 January 2015 at 12:37 #37281@pedant — agree totally. Two eps in and I’m on the verge of giving up already.
But then I thought Broadchurch 1 was just slightly above average anyway. Good but hardly great and certainly not deserving of all the plaudits hurled its way. (For my money, both series of Line of Duty kicks its booty from here to doomsday for this kind of thing.)
And it shows how far we’ve fallen in terms of drama if this sort of thing is held up as ‘the best we can possibly offer’ when it pales into serious mediocrity compared to the likes of Cracker and even the first couple of series of Prime Suspect. And that wasn’t that long ago fer Chrissakes.
12 January 2015 at 17:49 #37264RIP Brian Clemens. A towering colossus of British TV.
10 January 2015 at 23:10 #37217@phaseshift — I hate to say it, but I’ve always kind of liked the Constantine movie. I know it bears almost no relation to Hellblazer but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. And I’ve always liked Keanu in it too. Indeed, I kind of like Mr Reeves in general. Yeah, he’s seriously limited but I kinda can’t help but like him. Even in Much Ado. (Talking of which, was I the only one to find Joss’s version of Much Ado About Nothing a huge disappointment. I was expecting great things but there wasn’t a single performance that I didn’t find flat and/or just plain wrong.)
I haven’t seen the Amazon TV series yet but would like to. I should watch an ep or two before my festive Prime membership expires. It sounds like once again they’ve taken too many liberties. (Interestingly in light of all this Buffy chat of late, I always wondered whether John Constantine was the model Joss had in mind for the young Ripper/Giles. There’s no way Mr Whedon wouldn’t have been aware of Hellblazer, after all.)
@purofilion — I’m afraid you won’t see Charisma in Sunnydale anymore. But when you pop that Angel DVD in the player, you’ll have all the Cordelia action you can manage as she’s now moved to LA to fight demons with the heavy-browed one. But take heart, Anya essentially fills that Cordy-shaped hole and does it in fine style.
I’m about four episodes into s4 and as usual find a very mixed bag but it definitely has its moments — some of them of the huge variety. But I’ll be interested in your thoughts once you’ve got through it. No rush though.
10 January 2015 at 17:37 #37210@barnable–
I’d echo @phaseshift in imploring you to give Angel a go. As @phase says, it’s about the challenges of what you face when you’ve become an adult, and that in itself makes it a darker show. But its definitely great to see where they take Wesley’s character, as well as Angel’s. Not to mention Cordelia’s. I think in the end it is the more satisfying series. It perhaps loses its way a little in s3 when it gets slightly lost in its own darkness but it picks up big time for its last two seasons.
Certainly I prefer its final series and ultimate finale way over Buffy’s. And while Buffy’s ‘mission statement’ is essentially positive and about overcoming restrictions and being yourself and fulfilling your potential etc, Angel’s is perhaps a little more downbeat but still great for all that.
@phaseshift — will definitely be checking out Persons of Interest in 2015. It’s been on my list for a while now.
10 January 2015 at 13:10 #37200I’m just not a fan of the way Joss Whedon always has his characters have something clever or witty to say
@thekrynoidman — I know it can sometimes seem like that but the humour is not the point, I think. It’s about injecting character into even the innocuous line. Otherwise what you get, especially in genre shows, is just flat exposition. Old Who is full of examples of especially the companions becoming cyphers to feed along exposition lines. I think Whedon and Moffat and RTD realised that drama is to a large extent character and not just plot. It’s not funny just for the sake of it. It’s funny to a) disguise the mechanics of the narrative and b) to tell us something either new or reinforce something we already new about who is saying it.
Also don’t let the trolls bug you. Although you seem to have netted a particular doozy example of the breed there.
9 January 2015 at 23:00 #37156I can take or leave early Who to be honest but it could provide an interesting perspective.
I like the idea of doing the Capaldi overview though. Would love to do The Crow Road and others. But we’ve gotta have some Tucker in there.
Did someone mention doing a villains retrospective? That could be interesting.
Or how about a multi-Doctor retrospective — discuss how Doctors bounce off each other. That would mean the Three, Five and Two Doctors, as well as The Day of the Doctor (too soon maybe?) and The Six and a bit Doctors reboot.
But really happy to dive into whatever is decided….
7 January 2015 at 22:42 #37082@pedant — I think I mean that I think that S3 had the perfect alignment of Scoobies, Big Bad and arc for my money. The show definitely goes on to soar so much higher than s3 in so many ways but when I think of Perfect Buffy, it’s always season three that comes to mind.
@purofilion — you’ll love Angel. Especially if you’re already pining for the loss of ol’ Cap’n Forehead. Again, I think it flounders for a few episodes, trying to figure out just what sort of show it is but around episode 6 or 7, it does figure this out and then it really finds itself. And you’ll see many, many familiar faces pop up, at least in the first season. And it has a killer punch in the s1 finale that will leave you gasping for more. It’s hard to choose between them but sometimes I prefer Angel to Buffy because it goes to some darker places on occasion, but it’s also seldom as laugh-out-loud funny as the parent show. But it will definitely add to your enjoyment of s4.
Will be very interested in your take on s4 in general. It is, as we’ve said above, a source of some debate and controversy.
7 January 2015 at 19:28 #37075@purofilion — it’s a fine season and for my money the best in Buffy’s entire run — although there are others that come damn close. I think it’s slightly let down by the finale. The Mayor was such a great villain, with such a great sidekick that his final motivation was a bit of a waste. It squandered the great Harry Groener slightly although I guess they didn’t know he was going to put in such a start performance when the show was written.
Talking of which there’s a huge hint for a plot development two seasons down the line cunningly hidden in the finale. But don’t worry if you don’t get it because I sure as hell didn’t at the time.
5 January 2015 at 13:00 #36975@purofilion — yes, I found Imitation Game underwhelming too. Cabbagepatch great as usual (but once again just channelling Sherlock) but it really was just biopic by numbers. I am very much looking forward to seeing Birdman.
With regards to Buffy, yeah, I think they brought in Wes because Giles had just become too cool for the more Watcher-ey stuff. But don’t be too hard on him. He goes to some very, very interesting places later.
@pedant is quite right and that there’s a couple of episodes in S4 that will make the most sense if they’re watched alongside their counterpart eps in Angel. And @barnable Angel is definitely well worth checking it out. It’s a great complement to Buffy and has the luxury of going to some much darker places than the parent show.
4 January 2015 at 21:37 #36941@purofilion and @pedant — I think The Wish is one of my favourite eps of the s3. Particularly this time I really enjoyed the idea, the way we got a new take on characters like Larry, and the return of the Master briefly. And also Xander and Willow as vamps. Also the badass version of Buffy is a little foreshadowing of Faith, I suspect. Dopplegangland, great too. Worth it alone for the line: “I’m a blood-sucking fiend! Look at my outfit!’
@purofilion — how are you finding Wesley btw?
4 January 2015 at 15:36 #36932@purofilion — Season 4?? Blimey, that’s fast. How are you enjoying it?
I’m assuming then you’ve enjoyed the brilliant The Wish/Dopplegangland episodes. As well as sniffed back an emotive outburst at the end of The Prom (still probably one of my favourite ever episodes.)
4 January 2015 at 14:09 #36924Just to reinforce a point, here’s a chunk of a review by Clive James from The Telegraph of 1975 discussing Who:
But nothing defines an historical period like its vision of the future, and Flash Gordon, with its thick hero, mad villains, cheap props and clumsy innocence, remains a useful pointer to how simple the world must have seemed in 1936. Switch to Dr Who (BBC1) and you can’t tell the heroes from the heavies, it’s all so sophisticated. ‘You’ve reached the point where your tissues are so massively hybridised that the next metabolic change could be the final one,’ Dr Who tells his friend. Imagine getting Buster Crabbe to deliver a line like that. It would have taken a week.
Similarly the technology has made giant strides towards authenticity. When Flash’s pal Dr Zarkov talked nonsense, it sounded like nonsense. When Dr Who talks nonsense, it sounds like Science. ‘He’s been infected with anti-matter. His brain cells have been destroyed. He’ll descend to the level of a brute!’ Dr Zarkov wouldn’t have known anti-matter from his elbow: he just concentrated on running up a ‘new ray’ out of old torch batteries so that Flash could blast the Lion Men’s Gyro-ship out of the sky and rescue Dale.
It somewhat gives the lie to the idea that old-school Who was considered as Asimov for Beginners…..
4 January 2015 at 00:30 #36907@purofilion — Enemies is one of my favourite Buffy episodes and I think the Mayor/Faith double act is just one of the great villainous teams of all time. Harry Groener is just great in this and his homespun, gleeful evil is just a terrific performance. And Faith too is a great character — but spoilerage prevents me from waxing too lyrical about her at the moment. But she’s definitely another Buffy crush of mine. Yeah, she might kill you but you still would has always been my thinking.
RE. Bones. Yes, it does indeed also star David Boreanaz and it is kinda fun for the first two seasons, but it does get wearisome after that. It’s well worth dipping into but don’t go into it with expectations too high.
@pedant and @barnable — I’ve never loved The Pack. Nick Brendon does show some acting chops in it but it has almost no other memorable characteristics for me, even if they did eat Principal Flutie, thus clearing the path for the mighty Snyder. Go Fish is more entertaining and watchable and has some fun moments but it annoys me for breaking up the head of steam that S2 was powering towards. Bad Eggs I’ve also never really loved either, although it too has its moments.
But all these eps would definitely make my list of the ‘worst’ episodes of Buffy, with only a particularly notorious S4 episode (I’m sure you know which one I’m referring to) completing the set. Having said that, it’s a testament to Buffy that even the weaker episodes are still pretty damn watchable.
3 January 2015 at 20:11 #368943 January 2015 at 19:22 #36891@barnable — Happy — and indeed eager — to have a Buffy discussion. I’ll put together a non-spoilery blogpost covering seasons 1 and 2 and maybe we can use that as a forum to discuss everything and anything that’s happened in those seasons and free up here for the ongoing s3-and-beyond ‘live’ Buffy chat….
Will start working on it this evening…
3 January 2015 at 19:09 #36888@elbalk-kev — I suspect @pedant will be along in a moment for a proper word, but in the meantime, I’ll have a nibble on this tasty bait.
The original concept of the show was to be a children’s’ science show
It really wasn’t. Historical educational definitely, but the scientific content has always been more or less total drivel.
As it matured, Doctor Who became the thinking person’s sci-fi show
Again, it really didn’t. It was largely a fantasy show, dressed in some of the trappings of SF. I’d argue you could count the number of stories in the show’s 50-year history that would count as bona fide SF on one hand.
but it did have incredibly good writing with meticulous internal logic
You mean like the Doctor just suddenly deciding to kidnap two teachers just for the hell of it? Or an alien intelligence that thought basing its operations in a) a Himalayan monastery and then b) in an underground transit system was a surefire plan for global invasion? Or how about the fact that the original Master’s plans for world domination were usually foiled by him suddenly realising that he’d be for the chop as well. The logic of the original show was seldom meticulous and was quite often as bonkers as anything that appears post 2005. And we kinda love it for it.
Then Davies left and took his beautiful, logical, lightening prose and gave it to Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes (2010 – 2014)
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Is it that people have simply given up expecting any logic from Doctor Who or from any media in general? Is it that people are so easily impressed by rich visual content that they are willing to overlook the sloppy writing? Or are people so distracted by their various devices and their need to tweet and blog and FB their every waking moment that they simply don’t notice the disjointedness of poorly thought-out plots
Careful now and down with this sort of thing! Your objections seem to have expanded from not just Who to the entire modern world. Is it not more likely we’re looking at some kind of rose-tinted spectacles scenario here? That you’re using Who to fondly look back at a simpler world where money came in shillings, apples came in pounds and megalomaniac monsters came in nice, comforting shades of green rubber and were easily recognisable by their two-dimensional bellowing. ‘Powarrr, Dok-torrr’.
Or has the show been purposely dumbed down to appeal to a more mainstream (i.e. North American) audience?
This is not only nonsense, it’s offensive, bigoted and condescending nonsense to boot. In terms of genre TV alone, in the past 20-odd years, North America has produced Buffy, Angel, Game of Thrones, Firefly, Fringe, the X-Files and the BSG reboot. And I’m afraid to say it, some of those shows wipe the floor with anything the original Who ever came up with (and quite probably anything the new series has managed either, although on occasion both iterations have had moments of massive inspiration and genius).
Hire a serious writing team and bring back the science and logic of Doctor Who
Yes, bring back those fish people, giant spiders that teleport via Buddhist incantation, robots that can grow to enormous size and then be destroyed by really, really fast rust, time-travel machines run by ‘zygma’ energy. (That Who uses these concepts is not a criticism btw, but is merely to emphasise that Who is not and never has been a straight SF show. It’s a fantasy show. And as such, Moffat’s take on the show is entirely consistent with the show’s past.)
And now I think of it, there seems to be something extremely familiar about this conversation….
2 January 2015 at 11:43 #36837@barnable — as I said, I don’t think I can be any more specific in my criticisms of S4 in fairness to @purofilion until she’s reached the end of that season. Indeed, we might be colouring her expectations of it by even having this vague conversation now. But I’ll be more than happy to discuss this again in endless specifics when there’s no danger of immediate spoilage.
I don’t think Tom has been my favourite Doctor for a long while now. He’s still quite high up but he’s definitely slipped a few notches of late. All I meant really was that the Tom/Liz interation was probably the most effortlessly successful of the show’s run. I think they spring to mind more readily as the quintessential shorthand of the show than any other pairing. And so it is with the s3 Scoobies, I think.
30 December 2014 at 11:46 #36659@pedant — Gingerbread is an odd episode. It used to be on my list of ‘meh’ episodes but again I really enjoyed it this time. Probably because I’m reading Marina Warner’s No Go The Bogeyman at the same time. They kinda fit together. It is Thania St John’s only episode for Buffy, although I think you can kinda see Jane Espenson’s fingerprints all over it. The Buffy and Willow’s moms’ stuff is great. And there’s some fantastic Snyder moments too. I think Armin Shimmerman does brilliant work as Snyder in this season.
30 December 2014 at 11:38 #36658@barnable — I too know the one you mean It definitely appears in an episode and one from season one, I think. I’m pretty sure it might be Witch but I’d have to check.
And the overall merits of s4 is definitely is one of the most vexed questions of the Buffiverse and we should all definitely give it a go ourselves once Puro has completed it.
s5 is pretty, pretty awesome but I just think s3 trumps it. It’s just when all the elements of the Buffy mix were at their most perfect distillation. It’s a lot like when Who had its Tom and Sarah-Jane line-up. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the other eras of the show, which often had superior episodes, it’s just that that period just had the perfect mix of swagger and talent and vision. There is a reason, after all, that the proposed animated series chose s3 as its setting. (Again I can debate this more lucidly when we’ve all done the entire run.)
28 December 2014 at 22:01 #36556@pedant — I will also be interested in @purofilion’s take on S4. (For what it’s worth, I definitely fall into the camp that thinks S4 profoundly underachieved at the very least, with a couple of notable exception episodes and that s6 kicked ass — if for nothing else for having the best Big Bad of the entire show.
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This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by
JimTheFish. Reason: To turn it into something at least remotely resembling English
28 December 2014 at 09:28 #36523@purofilion — I predict that you’re going to get a huge kick out of Season Six, but that’s jumping the gun more than a little.
For me S3 is Buffy at its most perfect. It’s got the best distillation of the Scooby Gang, a near-perfect run of episodes (no Bad Eggs or Go Fish to slightly derail the flow here) and a great and memorable Big Bad. Plus it’s got Faith.
You’re certainly racing ahead now. We’re just about level-pegging now in my own rewatch. Right, must get back into it…
26 December 2014 at 20:54 #36441Well, that was really good. I’m glad that SM is continuing his tradition of the last few years of using the Christmas episode as a continuation of the narrative rather than a ‘time out, it’s Chrisssstmasss!’ episode. Lots to love in this episode too and setting up the Doctor and Clara nicely too.
I think I have to agree that we haven’t yet seen the end of the ‘dream crab’ story too. Think this may be revisited. I’m very glad Danny stayed dead though.
Best Christmas special since A Christmas Carol and quite probably bests it.
RE. JC leaving. Yep, I think @pedant is right and The Mirror got played like grandma’s old pianola. Or they thought that running the story might force the Beeb to blink and rush out an announcement and get them an exclusive. As it is , all it’s done is made them look like eedjits.
22 December 2014 at 18:31 #36325and a big eating of festive humble pie to @juniperfish who was dead right about Marti Noxon. On this reflective rewatch, I definitely agree she’s had a rockin’ season two. Bad Eggs notwithstanding.
22 December 2014 at 18:16 #36324@purofilion — good to hear the Buff is pulling you into its vice-like grip. I hate to say ‘I told you so’ but …
and a big ‘yay’ for the Cordy-crush.
20 December 2014 at 14:43 #36296OK, quiz time. Which Doctor should you travel with. I got 12, which kind of pleases me. For a dreadful moment there I was worried that I might get Hartnell. I look terrible in black and white.
20 December 2014 at 14:02 #36295@purofilion — yes, Innocence is, in that often misused word, a total game-changer. It’s usually the episode that leads to chronic Buffy addiction I’ve found.
It’s probably also the first time Joss will have punched a hole in your chest and pulled out your still beating heart. But I’m afraid it almost definitely won’t be the last.
I also love the scene in the car. But I also love Willow confronting Xander about Cordelia. Especially the fact they used to have a We Hate Cordelia Fan Club.
18 December 2014 at 21:54 #36270@phaseshift — The Long Kiss Goodnight is an incredibly underrated film in my book. Smart, funny and great action sequences. But it was on TV a couple of weeks ago so I’ve had my fix. (It’s also a good companion piece for the excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)
@Purofilion — you should probably check out A Muppet Christmas Carol if you haven’t seen it already. It’s lots of fun and Michael Caine is a surprisingly effective Scrooge.
@pedant — I kind of know what you mean about the Stewart version but for me it’s a more complete adaptation than the Sim one, which is sometimes over-dominated by the central performance. Yes, Stewart does become a bit Actoorrrrrr dahling sometimes but his performance is also smart enough to play the little scenes well. I love the Sim performance for as you say it’s paranoia and bravura but it’s Stewart (for the moment at least, chances are I’ll change my mind again by Christmas) who gives me a glimpse of the real man behind Ebeneezer and who will bring a tear to the eye before the film’s over.
And now that I look over this post in its entirety — I’m suddenly struck that I really, really want to see Samuel L Jackson play Scrooge.
18 December 2014 at 00:42 #36264@purofilion — RE. festive faves. Well mine, which will probably be watched throughout the festive season are, in no particular order:
The Buffy episode which @pedant alludes to above. And which we can’t even begin to talk about.
The Santa in the Snow episode of Bones. Because it’s a bit of fun.
The All Through The House episode of Homicide Life on the Streets. A dead Santa, a gangland immolation, Christmas trees, poker and eggnog. What’s not to love?
Batman Returns — very Christmassy, I think. And the best Batman film, Dark Knight included. (sometimes alternated with Edward Scissorhands a la @pedant)
Kenneth Branagh’s In The Bleak Midwinter (or A Midwinter’s Tale if you’re American.) Hard up actors put on a production of Hamlet in a draughty old church over Christmas. Great little film and it’s really annoying that it’s not yet on DVD. My old VHS version just ain’t what it was.
A version of A Christmas Carol. These days I veer towards the Patrick Stewart version which I think is one of the best. Although I alternate it with the Muppets and Bill Murray in Scrooged.
On that note, A Christmas Carol is the only Who Christmas special I can really be bothered revisiting. Although I may add The Snowmen to that now too.
Trading Places and Home Alone. Just because you’ve gotta.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles — I know it’s strictly Thanksgiving Day but it works for Christmas, I think.
Die Hard — it’s fast becoming a modern cliche to hail this as a festive favourite but I must admit it does find its way into the DVD player most years.
And finally… Wonder Boys. Not Christmassy in the slightest (although it does have lots of snow in it) but just because it’s my most favourite film ever and tends to get rewatched a few times over the year.
17 December 2014 at 09:09 #36255@purofilion — slow and steady wins the race. My Buffivision will probably be curtailed next week as I start to watch my traditional festive faves.
@barnable — we’ll definitely have a detailed conversation RE. Cordy at some point but in fairness to Puro, we should probably keep any Buffy chat contemporary to where she’s at in her watching, to avoid inadvertent spoilage. (Realise I jumped ahead a couple of episodes upstream but I did reproach myself in the strongest possible terms over it.)
16 December 2014 at 23:40 #36243@purofilion – worry not. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that you’ve not seen the last of ‘Ripper’….
16 December 2014 at 14:43 #36241@purofilion — Yep, Halloween is lots of fun. And great for the introduction of Ethan Rayne. It’s a real shame the Ripper spin-off never came to anything. I’d have quite liked to have seen something featuring Giles in Ripper mode and Ethan on a regular basis.
16 December 2014 at 01:43 #36232@pedant — you’re right, s02e04 is Inca Mummy Girl and isOz’s first appearance and he is very cool. Seth Green is rather the epitome of cool guy, not just for Buffy but because he’s also Joker in Mass Effect, in my opinion. Rewatched Phases tonight, which is an ep I was never really crazy about before but which I really enjoyed this time around. Dodgy prosthetics and all. I’m still predicting major Buffy obsession for puro and family quite soon. It usually kicks in big time around the Surprise/Innocence two-hander.
@purofilion — Yes, the events in Sydney are quite shocking. I lived there for a spell in the late 90s and was in and around Martin Place a lot. Though I must admit not being able to place the coffee shop in question. I do seem to vaguely remember another pretty bad and similar incident happening out Burwood way, I think, at the time. All very sad though.
15 December 2014 at 13:42 #36215@purofilion — yes, the mighty Spike. I thought his turn on Torchwood was great fun and it was a shame he didn’t return. Although I suspect the reason was he showed up Barrowman to be, er, a bit too lightweight.
I’m almost exactly halfway through the second season in my full Buffy rewatch — finding it quite invigorating, haven’t watched any for a good five or six years now so enough time has passed for it to be not too familiar.
14 December 2014 at 17:40 #36209One more final thought on the cultural relativism of the portrayal of the war in earlier episodes. I’d argue that part of the point of the story is that it seeks to contextualise WW2 as being part of a wider, ongoing conflict. The war, the Viking battles of centuries earlier, they’re all just minor skirmishes in the ongoing war between Fenric and the Doctor — it’s a conflict that exists throughout all time, the past and the future. Whether we find it acceptable that WW2 is used in this way — what with it being just about still in living memory — is open to question. But I’d say it’s fair enough.
14 December 2014 at 17:35 #3620811 December 2014 at 21:03 #36180@juniperfish — RE. Dollhouse. As @pedant says the unaired pilot points to something slightly different but I’d agree that it just didn’t work. I’d say it was Whedon’s moment of hubris or at least something he didn’t think through properly. It was basically an idea for a movie that just was never going to work as a TV series. A concept where your central character is ‘reset’ at the end of every episode just isn’t going to work. I think it was Pam Douglas who put forth the theory that successful TV shows have a ‘vertical’ arc of development as well as the traditional ‘horizontal’ one of movies and Dollhouse went out of its way to ignore that. It gets a bit better in season two though.
RE. Buffy. Yeah, there are definitely other talents who struck off well with Whedon and Espenson produced many of the great, more comedic stories. I feel that Noxon often overdid it with the angst though and missed Joss’s lighter touch. I do still feel that David Greenwalt doesn’t get the credit he deserves for both Buffy and Angel.
11 December 2014 at 15:30 #36175@purofilion — Cordy actually has an interesting character arc, and it doesn’t go in direcctions you might expect (although sometimes it does). You’ve still got all the best ahead of you, I think . Season One, the show was still finding its feet, although there’s still lots of fun episodes and great character moments. But it’s not until the season finale Prophecy Girl that I think it truly becomes the show it is. The Master (no relation) is a great villain, I think. Real menace undercut with humour.
And at least the English teacher survived. Unlike the poor old biology teacher who I think I liked much more.
10 December 2014 at 22:36 #36163@purofilion–
Why doesn’t someone kill Cordelia?
Oi! Now I know Cordy can sometimes come across as a bit monstrous, but … who am I kidding? She’s a monster … but lovely with it. Well, kinda.
10 December 2014 at 22:31 #36162@phaseshift — a masterful analysis of McCoy’s influence. And, definitely the template that sees us through the Virgin Adventures and through to the new series. There are certain stories in Who’s history that are crucial ones that define and guide the entire show — The Daleks, The Tenth Planet, The War Games, Genesis of the Daleks and The Curse of Fenric was the last of these until the new series.
I loved those last few McCoy stories, to see a Doctor who was clearly not telling everything, who was often a bit of a bastard, even to his companion (in the cause of the greater good), who already saw all the pieces and just gave them a final nudge here and there to drop them into position. I had kind of expected Capaldi’s Doctor to be something similar but I think they’ve gone out of their way to emphasise that he’s not a particularly ‘in control’ Doc and I think that’s the right move.
On the story in general, it’s a testament to this story that Fenric is so well remembered that he’s often held up as a possible returning villain, despite only having appeared in one story, and at the tail end of the show’s dwindling popularity. I’d love to see another Fenric story personally. And I thought Dinsdale Landen did great work as him — so much that I was sorry when Sorin became Fenric. Landen had him gliding malevolently about like Richard Dawkins on a bender.
But as others have said, it’s nice that an entity dubbed Evil Since The Dawn of Time is so accommodating that he agrees to finish a chess game first. If only all the Doctor’s foes were so agreeable. Did the Daleks ever put their universal domination on hold until they’ve finished a grand slam snakes and ladders tournament. Maybe they’re just so bitter in the first place because no one ever invites them to play Twister at parties.
9 December 2014 at 13:29 #36133@purofillon — Ah, Cordelia was definitely the girl of my dreams. Probably because it was almost certain that I’d have no chance at all with her.
Giles is great too and the man has almost certainly had a lasting influence on my wardrobe. (Something quite Eleventh Doctor-ey about early Giles I’m finding now.) You can see why ASH was often talked about as a potential Doctor. But if you’d been in the UK in the 80s I’m afraid ASH would be indelibly burned in your memory as the yuppie bloke from the Nescafe ads.
But I am enjoying my current fest and it’s fun to have a chat with others about it, so maybe we should convene here every so often, or perhaps create a series of blogs to discuss the episodes anew.
9 December 2014 at 12:18 #36130@whisht — well, inspired by @purofilion I have now started a marathon rewatch of Buffy from the beginning. Now in the early eps of S2. (Puro, your crush surely can’t be on anyone besides Cordelia??)
6 December 2014 at 20:54 #36071@strax — I’m afraid I can’t take the credit for it. I just thought that there are more than a few webby geeks on the forum who would find it of interest, myself included.
6 December 2014 at 18:14 #36068One for the deeply nerdly out there. A TARDIS built entirely in CSS/HTML…
2 December 2014 at 21:04 #36012@craig and @purofillon — do like me a bit of Kermode. Used to not but totally revised my opinion after reading The Good The Bad and The Multiplex. Like the description of Transformers but for me it’s still trumped by Charlie Brooker’s description of the movie as ‘like being shat on by an angry dishwasher’….
1 December 2014 at 20:13 #35958It surely has to be The Cloven Hoof….
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