Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
2 July 2017 at 15:19 #60201
@wolfweed @all
One thing I meant to ask last night was whether the “Sontarans changing the course of Human History” is the plot of the Christmas show or just some random thought that popped out of his brain whilst the Doctor was communing in the Tardis ?
2 July 2017 at 14:34 #60197Having seen was Peter has done with the Character, in hindsight it would have worked out better if he was number 13, floating on the edge of becoming the Valeyard. Still, c’est la vie.
2 July 2017 at 14:26 #601951 July 2017 at 23:56 #60164this seemed particularly appropriate.. although not particularly outstanding musically
1 July 2017 at 21:16 #601471 July 2017 at 20:37 #60131re the ring. I couldn’t tell, but the focus on the hand holding does suggest something might have been handed over.
1 July 2017 at 19:46 #60119No I didn’t, but it is a good possibility but I need to rewatch and freeze frame the regen scene in the Tardis. I thought there was something about the hair. I do think that Moff nicely left Bill/Heather open for Chibnall to use in S11 (if he wants).
I really enjoyed that even if it turned out to be more sentimental then I expected (Blood Bath, indeed – I thought Christmas resolution). Moff is definitely an softy. Heather/Bill resolution for Bill was a surprise (I didnt see that happening quite like that), although I did think the Pilot left a door open to something. Likewise the resolution of Nardole and the Ship/Cyberman is left as an open question. Will the Doctor remember and act ?
The Missy/Master end nicely left open, alongside an explana.tion for why multi-Doctor/Master stories dont leave any past memories.
A nice surprise ending. It seems D1 doesn’t want to go either.
1 July 2017 at 15:39 #60100@pedant @Thane15
Pedant, I don’t see anything bizarre about it. You both have seen something that, to a greater or lesser extent (each in our own ways), @bluesqueakpip @jimthefish and myself haven’t. You think the three episodes were, combined and individually, a masterpiece, whereas we see something with greater flaws, that didn’t quite convince in a way that we expected it to.
We can’t expect you to see what we did or vice versa. When discussing it, its not really a question about changing someone’s opinion (it’s not something which is fact based, its about interpretation of an idea and how well its conveyed). What I love to read is your explanations and observations and for your passion in stating your opinions, even though I know I’ll never fully appreciate it.
1 July 2017 at 14:27 #60094I lack the ability to sum things up into a neat phrase like that, but that is exactly what I was grasping at.
carry the weight
As an aside, I’ve have been trying to put my finger on what exactly is about Moff’s era, or rather series 6 to 7 especially, that I seem to dislike (because I think we’ve had a fantastic set of Doctors, Companions and stories over the last 7 years).
I think this phrase sums things up my biggest overall gripe rather nicely for me. Watching those series, my expectations for the finale were raised so high, that the series finale episodes themselves just werent able to deliver the punch that I was expecting.
1 July 2017 at 12:42 #60083🙂
Dark matter. Some stuff, whose affect can be seen and measured but cannot itself be detected. Oh and there’s more of it (by mass) than all the rest of matter in the Universe we do know about. You couldn’t make it up really, could you ?
1 July 2017 at 11:54 #60080@thane15
Puro and Thane
I wasnt a start-up user here, but I was very happy to find it fairly early on. I lurked for quite a while before I dipped my toe and actually wrote something, feeling rather out of place with what was often very erudite discussion. I wonder whether this can be off putting to some. If so, I encourage everyone to say their piece. This one place, where you will be space to say what you think without being shouted down or abused.
For a mixture of reasons, some work related, some Who related (Moff’s vision if I’m being honest), I didn’t catch much of either S8 or S9 and missed out on all of the discussion here, which I certainly regret now. After popping in here, a couple of episodes into s10, I was happy to find that the forum was pretty much the same place it was back in 2012/13 (fewer voices notwithstanding), somewhere that @cathannabel has just described so well. I don’t know any of you personally, but I would (and did) certainly miss reading your thoughts and observations. In my opinion, that is what makes this place special.
In the spirit of friendly disagreement, aren’t your points 6 and 8 (rambling on about the same thing) contradictory ? Not that that matters in the slightest.
As @cathannabel wrote, It all feels very unsettling at present in the Whoverse, with what we know (losing PC and SM), what we think we know (losing PM and MG) and what we don’t know (Who will be Who). Even a poor change can seem better with hindsight:
30 June 2017 at 21:45 #60059I’m sure we’ve all had jobs where no instructions/orders have been issued but we’re still pretty clear what the boss is expecting of us.
Trump/Comey eh ?!
30 June 2017 at 21:30 #6005630 June 2017 at 20:41 #60052A few years ago, I have to say that I thought the Doctor was a male role that should stay male (even though I watched Romana as the prototype female Doctor), but things move on. My opinion has changed. I will be very disappointed with someone like Kris Marshall (or the list @wolfweed posted). Not because they aren’t suitable, but because its passed the time that something different was done. I don’t see any real excuses for more of the same.
30 June 2017 at 20:13 #6004830 June 2017 at 20:10 #60047@jimthefish @pedant @missrori @blenkinsopthebrave
I’m not exactly looking forward to CC (and will be even less so if the next Doctor turns out to be formulaic) because I watched all 3 series of Broadchurch. His stated aim (showing the impact of major crime on the victims) was well enough done, but the surrounding investigations were a complete mess saved by decent acting. It’s not so much his idea(s), but delivery. I also wonder if the show runner should concentrate a bit less on writing stories and more on the larger, creative picture.
30 June 2017 at 16:24 #60029I buy into what both of you write. However, I dont see need for doom and gloom yet. Chibnall must have chosen the new Doctor with an eye to fitting into his conception for D13 over the next 3 three years or so. Whilst there’s a risk that Chibnall’s idea wont fly with the audience, I’m sure Chibnall has enough of an ego to do what he wants to do and not retread RTD’s approach. For the same reason I dont buy any by committee approach. After Broadchurch, Chibnall has enough clout to do what he wants. From the leaks, it seems his approach will be more general audience friendly, which might suggest a more “fun” Doctor with less references to the recent past. I suggest that might also mean the stories will become more adventure/mystery based and less character driven.
If the BBC is really insisting on a safety first approach (and I’m not convinced that is their style with drama) then, regardless whether the regen is seen or not tomorrow, you’d have to bank on Bill surviving and being de-cyber-converted, even if that wasnt Moff’s original idea. Loosing her for a new companion and new Doctor might have been Chibnall’s original idea as well. Hpwever, Pearl has been a hit this season. If she’s not the new Doctor, then safety first demands a reprieval surely.
30 June 2017 at 02:45 #60007This guy is suggesting the “rumour’ that we get to see the next Doctor’s face on saturday, before D12 gets back things under control (following on from the pre-title sequence last week). That would work as a way to break the news, but keep things untol Christmas as well. I notice the Sun (crap newspaper but generally has good source access) is saying something similar.
He names Kris Marshall. However, it strikes me that Moff might well have used a false face picture into the FX effect to avoid spoilers if the rumour is right.
30 June 2017 at 02:20 #60005http://www.hypable.com/pearl-mackie-next-doctor/
it seems someone else likes one of “our” theories
30 June 2017 at 02:05 #60002@thane15
As an objects gets closer to the black hole, its rotation speed actually increases whilst it looses angular momentum (which is why particles spiral towards the black hole). As they get closer together, they heat up through friction and get very hot, eventually producing x-rays.
the combination of these two effects cause large objects to stretch and elongate and eventually break down into smaller pieces. @pedants spaghetti.
30 June 2017 at 02:00 #60000Does Mini MS have a reputation ?
I dont really pay any attention to twitter so I count me as highly ignorant !
29 June 2017 at 23:32 #59988I rather suspect Moff’s “blood bath” is going to be quite a literal description. That said, it’s standard form to leave the Master is a very dodgy situation, so there must be some hope that they both end up in that situation.
29 June 2017 at 19:58 #5997429 June 2017 at 19:34 #59970That was sort of what I was expecting to see, with D12 and D1 (plus teams ?) working together to achieve some goal. Until proved otherwise (which might be soon) I still believe the regen started when Bill shot D12.
29 June 2017 at 19:31 #5996929 June 2017 at 19:29 #59968Your brothers a bright guy ! He right that physics at the largest scale (Relativity & gravity) and quantum physics (smallest scale) dont reconcile at all (In fact Einstein couldnt accept quantum physics could be right) and spent the end of his career trying to find a way to make things work. Along the way, he invented the maths that support an expanding universe, but rejected his own idea as he couldn’t believe that the expanding universe conclusion was correct (even after the first real world proof was first documented by Edwin Hubble after being proposed by a French mathematician).
Its interesting to note that even the brightest and best can be blinded by their own prejudices. The real bane of science (along with plenty of other areas of life). At least within science, the evidence always wins eventually, which is something that cant be said elsewhere.
The latest proof of general relativity is the very recent detection of gravitational waves in space-time. As I understand things (and I probably dont), all other “forces” such as the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism all have a force particle apart from gravity. If gravitons exist and can be detected, then the unification of General Relativity and Quantum Physics should become a lot easier.
That said since we have no evidence what dark matter and dark energy may actually be, there is almost certainly a deeper, simpler form of physics yet to be discovered.
.
29 June 2017 at 19:06 #59963@wolfweed @jimthefish @blenkinsopthebrave
The first Doctor/Christmas special rumour seems to be true, based on the latest pictures. However, I think you’d need the next Doctor to appear as well if you gave the regen element of the Christmas story away before hand. That’s perfectly possible, but would seem to go against Chibnall writing the new Doctors first scene. Could they be co-writing the Christmas story ?
29 June 2017 at 18:28 #5995929 June 2017 at 17:50 #59955On one hand that doesn’t surprise me, but it would certainly be a shock. Any source/attribution for the rumour ?
29 June 2017 at 15:28 #59944@thane15
@mudlark is right. The key word is Relative. We all, regardless of location, see time pass at the same rate. 1 year is 365 days etc for all of us. What happens at extreme speed or in proximity to extreme mass, is that time passes at apparently different speeds relative to each other. In effect a person (observer) traveling close to the speed of light, or close to a black hole can “time travel” to the (distant) future without that much time passing in their personal frame of reference.
Einstein’s theory (and mathematical proof and subsequent physical measurement and tests) doesn’t pass the “common sense” test. Time is a constant in each individual frame of reference, but doesn’t act like a constant in very special circumstances.
29 June 2017 at 14:07 #59938@thane15 @tardigrade @wolfweed @ichabod
This is why the tardis has an R in its name 🙂
Keeping the science simple, time passes for each observer at the same rate everywhere in the universe. 5 years is the same duration whether you are on the earth, the lowest level or deck 0f of the ship.
If you travel at close to the speed of light, or get very close to something with a lot of mass, like a black hole, to an outside observer, the rate at which time seems to pass will be different for each observer.
The classic example is if you go off on a space ship at very close to the speed of light for a 5 year round trip. For a passenger 5 years will go by just like it does on earth. However, when you get back, you’ll find 100 years (say) has gone by on Earth. From an earth observer, time has slowed down on the ship, but on the ship itself, you wont have noticed any difference at all. 5 years is 5 years to each individual regardless of where they actually are.
This has actually been measured in earth orbit (a space shuttle experiment I think) using atomic clocks. I may be recalling badly, but at 120 miles orbit, time passes relatively “quicker” by a very small amount than on earth. I think the measured difference is equivalent to 1 second over about 80 days compared to earth orbit.
In Moff’s spaceship, (for illustrative purposes) 1 day in deck 0 is equivalent to 10,000 days on the lowest deck [and 1,000,000 say on Earth]. As @tardigrade explained at no point can time run backwards. Even the lift, (unless it travels instantaneous at the speed of light) doesn’t work outside Moff’s imagination. In the 5 minutes (lets say) the Patients travel to level 0 and back with Bill, many years will go by from the lowest deck perspective.
@blenkinsopthebrave explanation isnt a fitting end from a hard sci-fi perspective, since it can’t happen in the real world. However, it is a nice sci-fi concept if it provides a way for the Doctor to save Bill from being shot and then cybertised without the Doctor having to go on a Clara style mission to rewrite time.
@thane15 When I first mentioned continuity error above to @wolfweed (and I’m not referring to what anyone else meant) I meant in in the classic TV/Movie sense. Someone on set made a mistake with the digital setting between filming different scenes, by accident. The clocks were on screen for a very short period of time, you’d need to freeze frame it to see the difference at all. I think @tardigrade was making a similar suggestion (apologies if I’m wrong on that count).
28 June 2017 at 22:07 #59900🙂 I knew you had your tongue firmly in your cheek on that one, although the idea may well turn out to be right.
Perhaps he has a lot of catching up to do with Missy, now they’re mates.
28 June 2017 at 21:45 #59897A lot of British TV Drama is filmed in 60 minute episodes. As a viewer I rather wish Who had the same episode duration.
I hope Chibnall will attempt to do a few things differently. I watched all three Monk stories back to back (without any pre-watching), which certainly made me appreciate the whole story line more than the individual parts (although the last episode was the weakest delivered). Extended episode stories can work, but I think its a bigger challenge and would probably need 1 or 2 writers working together on the entire plot, before breaking it down to write each episode individually. I suspect it would also need quite a long development lead team to get right.
28 June 2017 at 21:37 #59896Have you got you’re calculator out to work out how many thousands of years it would take ! 68 days is just under 100,000 minutes forwards, for each 17 seconds backwards at level 0. I made that 240 days per minute, but calculating in base 60 isnt one of my strong points !
🙂
28 June 2017 at 21:22 #59893deliberate or continuity mistake ?
I’d be a bit annoyed if having written a story based on some real science he then added in a real world impossibility. However, a good story is a good story and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.
28 June 2017 at 20:44 #59889She has several spoilers. The one that stood out for me was the picture on the canon camera. It seemed like a very familiar hair style to me !
28 June 2017 at 19:44 #59878The average 4 part story would be about 90 minutes if you take out the titles and recap of last weeks cliff hanger. You could probably take off another 4 or 5 minutes running time if you didnt need 3 cliff hangers per story. Its hard to account for the impact of lower budgets, fewer smaller sets and less location filming, but I guess you could take 5 to 10 minutes of wasted scenes per 4 part story. The pacing in old who (old TV in general) is also slower.
My finger in the air guess would refilming an old who 4 parter today would probably need about 70 minutes screen time. That’s not much different to any of the extended duration special AG Who stories.
28 June 2017 at 18:20 #59870Thanks. I wonder if the cyberman in the pictures with the Doctor and Missy/Master are Cyber-bill ?
I suppose we’ll find out next week. If she isnt in that episode (and it only makes sense to keep it secret is she’s playing a name character) then an older Susan must be a real possibility. In which case @blenkinsopthebrave ‘s hope just might be coming true.
28 June 2017 at 17:35 #5986828 June 2017 at 16:19 #59865You’re reply to @jimthefish sums up the he situation in BG Who better than I wrote.
One thought though re
On the other hand, we all know the Doctor will (and needs to) take control of the situation. It saves a lot of time and redundant exposition to short-cut him into the leadership role.
Some of the very best Who stories, certainly in BG era, benefit from a mysterious build up, setting the scene and the key characters. I think one problem with many AG stories is that they jump into heart of the story has been too fast.
28 June 2017 at 16:11 #59863@thane15
You’re right, having placed the TL’s at the centre, they could then be removed from it permanently, but that hasnt happened. The opposite in fact, they keep getting brought back. Three times now – brought back and destroyed again, brought back, saved them but shunted them a pocket universe, brought back into this universe (but hidden away), just what can you do.
One thing seems clear. They cant be brought back into this universe with any prominence as Moff has made it absolutely clear that this would bring us back to a new Time War scenario, which I dont think is anything we want to see on TV (let alone be done without a film sized budget).
You can write Rassilon (End of Time) as a good person making desperate decisions at desperate point regardless of consequence, an absolute dictator or (better) something in between. However, after he has fallen from power, the “what next” is quite limited. Executed. Exile on the run hiding and/or seeking to return to power or on a path to a personal redemption. But that’s about it.
What you can’t do, is make Rassilon into a personal enemy of the Doctor. If you do, you’re just creating Master 2.0 (which is ultimately why the Rani concept didnt worked – in fact moff should retcon her into a Master). [The Valeyard idea could have worked, but failed as the portrayal was yet another Master, buts that’s a different matter].
It seems to me, we’re a bit stuffed right now. Getting out of this hole is going to take a very good idea isnt it ? (or a lot of retconning).
Still, we’ve seen some excellent stories as compensation :).
28 June 2017 at 14:06 #59847Whilst I agree with you that BG Who would not have been worse off if the TL’s were never invented by Malcolm Hulke and Terence Dicks , the Doctor’s origin was a story that was always going to be told one day. I think they did their best to make the Time Lords as irrelevant as they could to the wider Who universe.
The War Games/3 Doctor time lords were passive bureau/technocrats monitoring with universe, with no society to speak of. At worst the Deadly Assassin showed they liked to dress up for special occasions. Up to this point, I can’t really see how there existence changed or narrowed the Who universe or the impacted Doctor to any real extent.
The next step, making the Doctor an occasional unwilling agent of the Time Lords to interfere in the universe (culminating in Genesis of the Daleks) seems like a reasonable development of the initial conception of the TL’s, but I don’t think changed things in the BG universe to any large extent. Certainly, after Genesis, the BG Time Lord stories were at best poor and more than a bit silly.
When RTD was developing AG Who, I don’t really see how the existence (or otherwise) of the TL’s affected things in any significant way, except that there would have been some pressure from older BG Who fans to revisit them at some point.
I haven’t read what RTD’s thinking was, but it seems to me that his decision, bringing the mythic Time War to the TV show and destroying the Daleks/TLs in the process, changed Who Universe mythology more, in one single stroke, than in the whole of the BG series.
It placed the Time Lords and the Time War at the centre of the Who universe. By bringing back post Time War Daleks, RTD also made it inevitable that the TL’s would reappear eventually.
I think I understand why RTD did it. It allowed him to write the character of the Doctor in a completely new way, as a complex flawed hero, which might (would ?) have been much more difficult to do without the Time War. Certainly, the characterisation and character arcs of both the Ecclestone and Tennant’s Doctors (and Smiths ?), could not have been written the way they were without the Time War as key background.
Furthermore, I suggest that this one decision is the most important foundation stone upon which AG Who Universe has been built. We could debate the pros/cons of this decision, but it has been made. By placing the Time Lords/Time War at the heart of AG Who mythology, it became inevitable that the Time Lords had to be very different from the initial BG conception of passive technocrats.
28 June 2017 at 00:04 #59821@wolfweed @blenkinsopthebrave @jimthefish
Hmmm. The photo’s suggest WW1 and WW2 as you suggest. The ice regen scene from last week suggests Antarctica (and Tenth Planet giving a link to the first Doctor). The picture of Susan from episode 1 was either a sign post for fans or a complete red herring leading to Susan. There are different levels on the Ship, which could be a call back to the War Games concept (or not).
Fascinating.
27 June 2017 at 23:33 #59817What’s your favourite story then ?
27 June 2017 at 17:18 #59787🙂 I have to agree with you there.
I think the biggest difference is (I hope) that the Christmas story will include the regeneration proper and will (like The Time of the Doctor) be the concluding part of what is essentially a three part story.
27 June 2017 at 16:31 #59784On the simulation idea front, I think it could be a let down to use it again. I think that Moff would need to have a very clever idea indeed to avoid spoiling the end of the S10.
However, I think Moff can have his cake and eat it here. If the plot of the Christmas show becomes “save Bill” (and Missy ?) then a story line where he changes his past and these two episodes become a timeline that never happened/happened differently is a plausible end game.
27 June 2017 at 16:17 #59782I don’t disagree that Heather and the puddle might turn out to be nothing much (I think it will depend on whether Chibnall wants to keep Bill as the companion or not). The trailer nicely left out any direct references to Bill’s fate and the flash forward suggests the Doctor ends up alone. How significant that might be will (probably) depend on the plot of the Christmas story.
However, the ground damage caused by retro-engines (which is quite quaint), on the university grounds, close to the Vault, in hindsight, looks like someone coming to call on Missy (or perhaps the Doctor). I certainly agree this could easily be a red herring from Moff – he’s got plenty of form. On the other hand, it could be a reason why she doesn’t remember the Ship, which Simm Master implied she ought to.
27 June 2017 at 10:24 #59761On Bill’s fate- hers is a character I’d be sorry to see killed off after such a short period, but the cyber-conversion process hasn’t, I think, been reversible in the past. This is a very early version of the process though, so maybe that’s not 100%.
I’d be surprised if the technology existed on board the ship to do this. I would expect the Doctor to remove the cyber-control circuitry and for Cyber-Bill to play a role next week. After that, anything is possible surely, once they leave the ship (if of course). However, I suspect a reference back to the intelligent liquid and Heather may well be more likely. I also felt that the first part was left a little hanging (too many unanswered questions).
26 June 2017 at 14:36 #59716@thane15
Puro
We view things in a quite different way, even though I can’t disagree with the essence of what you write. My gut, visceral reaction immediately following the episode was that I had not just watched the last episode featuring Clara. I was so certain that Moff had an additional level planned for the Clara arc that it wasn’t even a cliff hanger ending. I could have been wrong (and often am), but that was such a strong impression for me at that moment.
You’re right, a companion death shouldn’t be an epic event, but when there have been more Doctors than companion deaths, combined with a characterisation of the Doctor, who is willing to sacrifice anything, including himself, to prevent it from happening then how can such a death not be part of an epic story line in AG Who ?
26 June 2017 at 11:35 #59708@thane15
Having written that, unlike the Raven ,where the episode never felt epic enough for me to believe that Clara was gone forever. This episode (and the next one) are epic, so the hope may prove to be futile.
I meant it in purely televisual terms. Killing a companion is so rare that it has happened only once in 50 years. The Raven was a great story, but it lacked the “IT” factor. The style was too low key for me to even consider the possibility that Clara was gone for ever. Whenever the next companion is killed off for good, I expect any show runner to make a very big deal out of it. It would be a regeneration size event.
-
AuthorPosts
