@thane16

sorry about my user name…

the Silence, The Papal Mainframe, Madam Kovarian: was The Tardis exploding with River inside because the universe was collapsing, or the universe collapsing because it was disappearing up its own crack because of the exploding Tardis? Or did Kovarian’s bunch of crazy crazies (shomebody shtop me!) do it (ho…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

I meant ‘The Girl who Died’; ‘The Girl who Waited’ was Tom MacRae; that was very good, ‘The God Complex’ too, a strong return after ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ aka the day the Third Reich disappeared.

I always wondered if ‘Midnight’ was a steal from AC Clarke’s A Fall of Moondust… just a bus full of tourists versus an incredibly host…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Q & The Pit, the film is a bit Hammery, and die-hard fans criticised it, but I thought it delivered.

I don’t remember the tv show. Spike Milligan lampooned the original version in ‘The Scarlet Capsule’

”unexploded German skulls? I hadn’t thought of that…”

@nerys

Chibnall. Whitaker. I won’t start ranting again. Everyone is probably being a bit unfair, conscious of a previous show runner who may have saved the show for a few years but ultimately got it cancelled. We don’t want that again. The people involved with the show don’t either, so they stay schtum and we won’t find out what went on for a f…[Read more]

If 60’s sci fi is to anyone’s taste, I just got back from the gym to see ‘Quatermass and The Pit’ on the schedules. Genuinely terrifying. Recording the second half.

Reluctant to watch ‘Chicken Run’ because the gits told Julia Sawalha she was too old. As a voice artist. Don’t chickens get old? Almost mentioned Mel Gibson’s tendencies ther…[Read more]

@dentarthurden

Flatline was… as good as you could get in 45 minutes. I fully expected the return of The Boneless, once they’d mastered the dimension of time. The only issue was their motive.

I always admired Asimov’s ‘The Gods Themselves’; the problem of communicating with the truly alien when, as Wittgenstein kinda said, ‘if a lion could speak…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Black Orchid… I checked! Well the first 2 minutes anyway. The Tardis materialises at The Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. We get a brief glimpse of a 2 cylinder GW tank. I think it must be a guest loco or this was a composite shot because their current 7200 class is not yet fully restored and only left Barry Island in 1…[Read more]

Black Orchid… 5 matierialised the Tardis at an actual railway station. Can’t remember a train. I could check on I-player but, well, that was Black Orchid.

George Stephenson made an appearance in Mark of the Rani but without Locomotion or Rocket I’m sure.

Dimension robbed by The Boneless, a itsy bitsy teeny Tardis nearly got pranged by some Brist…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Apparently Taw Valley was used to promote the books, but Christopher Columbus thought it looked too ‘modern’

You can paint a Hall red. The newly inaugurated British Rail painted a ‘King’ blue!

Tom Anderson: “ain’t you the kids who painted my King blue?”

Butthead: “no no no…”

Beavis: “we made you sell your house and then rented…[Read more]

@mallow

Someone else made the point that the appearance of the goblins may be related to the line of salt in Wide Blue Yonder… I am reminded of Time Bandits and the heroes’ drift out of history into the realm of fantasy. So… yes the ship disappears. It wasn’t particularly robust was it?

Was the ending abrupt? When it comes to WHO it’s not just…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Film adpaptions…

I have two theories about The Hogwarts Express:

1. The GWR actually sent 2 Castles to be tested against Gresley’s A3’s but the magical world liked them so much they snaffled one, obliviated everyone and painted it red.

2. It’s supposed to be a rebuilt Royal Scot. Kings Cross… St Pancras…

In any case, the c…[Read more]

The other thing I really really liked was RTD’s deployment of the lampshade.

”What are you doing? Do you usually grab rope ladders descending from the sky?” (I may not have that word for word)

Reality of the situation… quite correct

Get the Doc to say it… and it has been said. No going back now. Cut!

He saved the show twice. And he’s gett…[Read more]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>@dentarthurdent</p>
Yes. I should probably read Fleming. What am I saying? I really haven’t the stomach for it.

The best of  ‘The Schoolboy’ leads from Le Carre research into the state of Indo China in 1975. He was apparently so horrified that he abandoned his publisher’s wishes for a longer Tinker Tailor arc. Hen…[Read more]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>That should read ‘The Honourable Schoolboy was the sequel to Tinker Tailor (the book) – sadly never adapted, and pretty flawed.’</p>
Don’t post on the bus!

@dentarthurdent

sorry, the handle is an infeasible mix of letters and digits. My advice is type @ and copy the rest from the ‘grey’ unhyperlinked name from the previous email.

Some adaptation leeway is essential. Haydon is shot in the film. In the tv adaptation Prideaux rabbit punches him. In the book you just don’t know but Prideaux has previ…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave

sorry for inflicting The Five Docs on you. Suppose I’ll have to look it again myself.

It was not a glorious WHO era… the next story ‘Warriors from the Deep’ was supposedly the one that killed classic WHO. Makes you wonder how (a) barnstormer like Androzani could still be made.

I still maintain that time lords and ladies…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent

Tinker Tailor… a lot of people got very angry about the film: Haydon wasn’t dispatched in the right way. Guillams’s girlfriend was the wrong type of flute player… I thought it was fine. The tv adaptation is probably superior though equally claustrophobic and dry.

Le Carre’s Britain is broke, scruffy, compromised and no one can c…[Read more]

@mudlark

Robert Holmes… I meant ‘animal exploitation’ of course! How I hate spell check. I only looked up the other Lulubelles because I couldn’t believe it was down to Floyd + Geesin!

River could be prior to ‘Mel’ in ‘Let’s kill Hitler’… if the Silence and Long Joan Evil Cow had vortex manipulators. Cos it looks like that tech had got everyw…[Read more]

WHO has left the flimsy realm of soft sci-fi and entered a whole new gooey and sticky universe. Maybe it’s just a Christmas Bauble Universe (see what I did there?) like a flagship tv show with a seasonal special stuck to it.

It’s not like that.

Observation: Lulubelle was the name of a blackface musical in the 1920’s and a related 1940s film…[Read more]

I mean ‘Before the Flood’!