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Transatlanticisms? This was written by RTD… script editor Scott Handcock… Welsh/english… difficult to see how egregious Americanisms could be a deliberate ploy. Or are we saying some unnamed Disney suit is telling them: ‘hey! You don’t have to go to Port Talbot for steelworks. We just gotta a vague idea you’re next to Yoorp; or ‘Americans don’t get loft extensions. Jeez why don’t you guys just build bigger houses?’

Though Tennant does favour the non kosher cockerney cliffs of Ham, I admit. Could this be the end of the regionally accented doctor??

this is all nit-picking. It was great! This be the Fam I like.

Still like to know how long the BBC were pitching Who to prospective streaming networks with deep pockets. Might explain a lot about late Moff and then Chibnall..?

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@blenkinsopthebrave

trolls thought Moff had ruined their childhood??!

That is AU…

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There’s no doubt about it.

fools register to troll; to flog crypto; to smish and phish and catfish. Welcome to your world customer! It might make a good Who script/arc. Wanna see THOSE plushies!

Otherwise the subscript is ‘hurry up and die granddad.’ Not very original. And it assumes no one in the future will be able to change their minds. Das ist verboten, Tommy!

Yes. There was a message last night. This IS RTD! Was it playing to a (very small) gallery? He’s saying what he wants to say, as always. You need freedom: to think, to relax, to live. And what you do in your private life is, believe it or not, private.

Why should the generation who thought they would live forever, who were super-powered by the welfare state and then want to cut it because a fat blonde fool said that might get them tax-cut, then decide to hate the generation who will inherit? Your world customer.

Last night… wasn’t it Good!? Churlish to say bits were rushed. It was NOT a Chibnall era soap driven yawn fest. Hallelujah! But the editing might have been kinder… finding the Meep, the ‘Donna is binary! And alive’ reveal. I suspect Disney will run the full 1.5 hour cut.

Exposition? There was some recap. No Family of Blood/End of Time/Time of the Doctor stylee earnest voice overs (I hate it when that happens).

I do have a problem with a mythical Britain in which there are  steel plants in the south east and yet as many as five houses in a row have no loft extensions. What kinda AU is that?

Otherwise a veritable triumph.

The Boss though? You’d think it would be The Toymaker. But I did like the War CHIEF in the the War Games (when he wasn’t shouting at the security mob). Just a thought…

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We seem to have been invaded by cyber ijits. Including crypto twats. Enjoy DW day guys and gals!

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@thedoctor234

Doctor Iou

I like the image! Got it three times! Not complaining. Not really understanding either… Daleks doing ‘I want to break free?’

Classic Who… what to watch? Fury from the Deep may be animated but it has the reputation of being the scariest ever. So scary that only the bits that the Australian censors excised survive!

If you like Daleks, I always thought the Cult of Skaro, The Army of Ghosts, Daleks in Manhattan through to Journeys End, ruled.

“We imagined your obsolescence!” “Daleks have no concept of elegance.” “You are superior in only one respect… dying!” “Exterminieren!”

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@thedoctor234

Doctor Iou, yes! For the first time in years, I am excited. The teasers look great.

Celestial Toymaker… intriguing choice of antagonist. What exactly is the Toymaker supposed to be?

If you don’t count the Keys of Marinus, ostensibly sci fi, this was the first DW venture into fantasy, also explored by Two in The Mind Robber. The genre disappears for the Three. The Guardians are a bit fantastical, as was The Greatest Show On Earth. Under Moff, Amy’s Choice and even The God Complex would seem to dabble, but RTD’s go-to genre was previously straight sci fi (of various states of squidgyness) with the odd foray into history.

Of course, The Toymaker was due to appear in the abandoned season 23 scripts scheduled for 1986, when Micky Grade discovered the power the Who.  But he would eventually scoff his undercooked revenge ready meal three years later.

So, yes, I’m firing up my trusty meta-detector! What is the message here? Rusty’s back, no holds barred and he knows where the bodies are buried. Unleash the power of your imagin-A-shun shun shun! The board of governors can get romantic with a talking paving slab?

 

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@dentarhturdent

I will get to The Pilot…

Spyfall was the point at which I started to lose a grip on Chibnall’s Who. Not a fan of Bond anyway, and horrified by the introduction and subsequent dismissal of Noor Inayat Khan. What??? I more or less had to force myself to watch the following series 15 minutes at a time, just to stop myself grinding my teeth.

Asylum of the Daleks was better than your average curate’s egg. Indeed: Soufflé Girl! Eggs! Stir! Mmm n Eat! Loved the scene with Arthur Darvill and crazy Dalek. I probably enjoyed the second half of series 7 more. Akhaten looked good but really was abysmally slight; Centre of the Tardis, unfairly criticised; Nightmare in Silver should have been a two-parter. It is probably easier to introduce a new companion than dispose of your wife’s parents!

I loved The Pilot. Watched that one more often than any other episode in the excellent series 10.

Nardole literally having a screw loose. “I fatted her.” “You got a knock through.” “It’s like a kitchen!” Pearl Mackie is great! I thought she settled into her part more easily than Jenna Coleman as Clara.

I always wondered if there was more behind the scene with Bill noticing the pictures of Susan Foreman and River Song on Twelve’s desk… he’s holding Missy captive at the university where Bill is working in the canteen but she attends all his lectures. Is Twelve a brilliant teacher, or is she brilliant… or is she something else?

Rosie Jane (her deceased mum) also played an unnamed Gallifreyan in Day of The Doctor. These bloody thesps get everywhere!

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Hi @dentarthurdent

Yes, history was originally my field. It was a long time ago and the economic imperatives behind Victorian locomotive design was one of my more obscure studies. I suppose I still get fed up that everyone thinks Nigel Gresley is great (and I’m not saying he wasn’t quite good) but have never heard of George Churchward.

I keep a jaundiced and (hopefully) informed eye on freaky interpretations on tv. Richard Miles’ Ancient Worlds from about years back was excellent: refreshingly orthodox though the end was a bit of a cop out.

I did use lockdown to study Arthur and post Roman Britain: the gap between the freaky amateurs and the academics (who really don’t want to know) yawns. You can get translations of contemporary sources online (though some may be a century old). There’s a lot of interesting, unknown stuff out there.

I would say Power of Three is Chibnall’s best, his earlier nod to EE doc Smith on 42 notwithstanding. Kind of says it all; he’s no Moffat or Mathieson is he?

I even liked Steven Berkoff’s performance!

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@dentarthurdent

Hi! I hesitated to mention Arthur. It’s just a name used to sell books about the dark ages. Many current academics will only rely on archaeology and virtually ignore mythology; they have their funding to think of and really don’t need to be associated with utter nonsense.

Having said that there are two very good candidates for Arthur, neither of them imperial exactly but a cut above your average British ‘Teyern’. I leave it there.

Better not comment on locomotives either…

Of course the Ptolemaic dynasty had far fewer Greek ancestors than the owner of the kebab shop down the road but only because they had the SAME single Greek ancestor a few generations back. The 25th dynasty (C8th BC) probably had darker colouration than the modern Egyptian genotype and, yes, skin colouration is something modern North Africans are sensitive about.

Sculpture of Septimus Severus make him look very North African, and the Roman empire was a melting pot but this was a slave society doubtless with racial discrimination on the basis of colour. After that most people became serfs before Western Europe decided to industrialise slavery again (and indeed industrialise.)

Mesolithic Cheddar man had genetic markers for dark skin and blue eyes. His people were swamped by paler skinned Middle Eastern farmers who were in the turn replaced by the bronze bashing Yamana mob.

Race is a nonsense and a problem!

George III was an enlightened despot but he weren’t no democrat. Nicer than Fred or Catherine (ooh you are so Great) but he was looking after the people only because they were his livestock and cash crop. Britain could have won in North America by giving in to calls for representation and so dividing the loyalists from the radicals. But that would have been politically inconceivable.

I really didn’t like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship; Riddell was obviously there to bag a tricerotops. Chibnall tries to play fast and loose with political correctness ala Rusty but inevitability comes across tone-deaf. On the other hand I thought thought the Power of Three quite good.

Slightly surprised no-one has yet tried to make out Akhenaten and Nefertiti were aliens…

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@dentarthurdent

yes! The golden arrow! Only mind-boggling bad science can trump nerdy ‘bet you didn’t know…’ historical observation that is normally disproved a decade later.

I’m sure a C13th Robbin’ Hoodie looked just as suspicious and ubiquitous as they do today. And what better alias to invoke if you were out of favour with the state? No need to deploy either Tardis or myth. Though I still think the former might be more fun than a golden arrow.

The term ‘myth’ is deployed too easily. Normally, we don’t have much of the relevant history – it’s gone – just a lot of very ancient wordsmiths who made something they thought plausible and entertaining from whatever facts they had to hand (but we don’t). Decent textual analysis can normally boil away the tosh.

For instance, Vortigern and Ambrosius are regarded as ‘mythical’ but they were both without doubt real people from a very long time ago about whom a lot of (occasionally entertaining) guff has subsequently been written.

Of course, a historian also needs to think very carefully before they make something plausible or entertaining from whatever facts THEY have to hand.

Though you would think entertainment and plausibility should be essential for a Who writer!

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hi @dentarturdent

Without a doubt nothing sucks as hard as a phrase such as ‘the end of time ITSELF!’ or ‘the reality bomb!’

I wonder where the universal threat trope originates. Having a race which can manipulate time goes a long way there but, although Doctor One is very down on actually manipulating time (The Aztecs and The Time Meddler), the nature of the threat if Time is changed is not explored at that point (though I need check I player I suspect).

The eventual appearance of The Lords in The War Games (a bit long but not too much… main problem being shouty scenery chewing) is essentially a humanitarian intervention inspired by Two, but thereafter they become micromanagers with Four as their favourite agent.

The first identified ‘universal’ threat is Kronos in The Time Monster then, despite temporal shenanigans on the part of The Sontarans, there’s nothing until The Guardians and The Key of Time. The Guardians represent another major gripe of mine: pseudo religion by the agency of superpowerful beings who seem to exist for no very good reason but that’s my personal rejection of anything of anything more mystical than agnosticism.

After that it seemed to be end of the universe twice a series, well there’s Logopolis… ‘entropy is killing the universe!’ Er, yes? I think you’ll it pretty much defines it, actually. Then there’s Terminus, which surely is only saved from the ultimate Who crud list by Sarah Sutton prancing around in her slip.

There must be more… Terminus, ludicrous though it is, may be the key though… this (the 70’s & 80’s) is the period in which the Big Bang finally displaced Steady State.

Yes, smaller stakes are always more comfortable.

Thought… does this also relate to the death of Historical stories; once The Lords are on the block they all become historical fantasy stories (yeah? Prove me wrong). This what really annoyed me about The Robot of Sherwood: Robert Hode would seem to be genuinely time paradox: an attested retainer for Edward ll who understandably got a bit depressed and then rocks up… a century earlier?? Not kidding, attested again! Two Robert Hode’s? Or a stowaway on The Tardis?

What a wasted opportunity!

 

 

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@dentarthurdent @janetteb @oochillyo

Is there a real claim a primacy for the ‘internal logic’ of Who or any other show? The result is always a compromise between the writer, the director, the producer, the ‘chemistry’ between the characters, production constraints (severe in the case of classic who) and the response to public or establishment criticism.

It’s a wonder any coherent shows are/were made! You certainly need a strong show runner like RTD to beat the various elements into shape. But some shows seem better than others or why are we talking about this?

Personally, with regards to Who, my position is close to Chris Bidmead’s… it’s sci fi, rather than space opera or fantasy. And it certainly shouldn’t be soap! It’s also not horror though it can rightly horrify occasionally. You are welcome to disagree but if the science is bad, the story probably will be too.

‘Kill the Moon’… urghh. ‘Forest of the Night’? Not much better. ‘Robot of Sherwood,’ had other problems. Otherwise a great series.

Unfortunately sci fi is largely about ideas rather than characters and admittedly Bidmead’s approach in the early 80’s wasn’t a roaring success.

Right! This is where the companions come in, and antagonists too, if the story is up to scratch. Monsters can also transform a show but producers tend to insert them into excellent stories which don’t need them: Primords and Magmabeasts, if they had looked effective that would be a different matter but one was the victim of bad speculative science and the other a man who hadn’t enough time to rehearse in his rubber suit.

When it comes to companions, more is definitely less. You would think Chibnall would have learned that from the ‘crowded Tardis’ era. Dimensional transcendentality reduces multiple characters to cliche and two dimensions. You couldn’t cram in enough dialogue for four main (quite unpopular) characters into the 1.5 hour stories of the 1980’s; Chibnall had no chance in 45 minutes. I understand why he wouldn’t want to have a novel woman doctor playing against a sole companion, but facing down/ignoring any stupid speculation generated by a single female companion, say, would have been far preferable to the worthy lampshading ‘Fam’.

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<p style=”text-align: left;”>@blenkinsopthebrave…</p>
corrupt British governments? Steady on! You’ve got Inferno to come. Suella with a eyepatch anyone?

Speaking of the generally gripping and inventive Inferno, why exactly make the Primords zombie werewolves? If they’e supposed to be adapted to heat, shouldn’t they be reptilian or arthropoid? Mind you Sergeant Benton’s transformation would then be even more horrific. And, ultimately, less hilarious.

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I didn’t realise that Season 2 is almost complete! I do need to check out the first Doctor. I don’t remember Hartnell’s ‘interpretation’, though using that term is a retcon really because as far as he was concerned he WAS the Doctor; no one had even considered regeneration. But still important in  respect to continuity.

The production values of classic Who were very different. Ridiculous monsters, dodgy sets, scenery chewing thesps; they often had to put up with the first take to save time and film.

Personally, I’m visiting the faves and ignoring the stiffs, though I may eventually investigate the four catastrophes of the eighties: Time Flight; Twin Dilemma; Time Lash & Time and the Rani.

wish me luck!

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Not forgetting The Romans from season 2. Duh!

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Hi @oochillyo!

the Girl Who Died as an episode was problematic though the story was fascinating. Same with Woman Who Lived but even more problematic; I really didn’t like Parsley the Lion and pals. The main attraction was the content of Me’s journals – see the post on sofa 11.

Vikings! I met an American ‘Viking’ actor at the Jorvik centre in York… and missed the opportunity to call him a Vinland viking. All the way across the North Atlantic in an open boat with no gps! Also the depopulation of the Greenland colonies is a pretty wild bit of history.

Romans in Dr Who… not many to choose from: The Eaters of Light, The Romans in Pandorica Opens were Autons of course,  Fires of Pompei (where Twelve got his mug) and a brief look at the Roman Army in The War Games… that’s it! Are these the Romans you’re sorry for? Or were you taking of something else? What is worse: no plumbing, or plumbing that gives you brain damage?

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Hi! The theory got a brief outing in 2015. I mention it again:

1. Because I could never really let it go.
2. To see if anyone else found the development of Who from Series 9 onward not just profoundly disappointing but rather weird…

At the time I expected the clues to develop like the River/Amy story arcs, but… nothing…

So was there nothing there? Or was Moffat doing his meta thing; using what was happening to the show in the show? Jonathan Nathan Turner did this in Trial of a Time Lord and the Time War was apparently RTD’s comment on the cancelling of the show. Moffat addressed the centenary of WW1 in series 8 and annoyed very many people.

Series 9 started with talk of the hybrid (was it not his show anymore) and ended with Twelve having his mind wiped.

Goddamn it Moffat. What the dickens were you trying to say?

“The hybrid is Me!”

And, never mind the DNA, I would say to be human is NOT to be immortal.

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Permanent? The BBC do seem to have clawed everything back from the far reaches of the cable channels over the last 5 years. You would have thought there’s less chance of them letting it go again than Sky taking GoT off Sky Atlantic. But who knows?

I’ve gone for The War Games first up. Loving/Hating The War Chief vs The Security Chief: kind of Clint Eastwood opposite Lee Van Cleef but with all the stoopid dialogue very very intact and delivered very very slow and shoutily!

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Yeah.

I wondered if she was RTD’s PA threatening to send me a cease and desist letter. She certainly didn’t call me ‘dear’!

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Yes. Monica may be a problem, I’m afraid.

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Yes! This seems like a much better venue.

OK. Cut to the chase… The Timeless Child was horrific, and not in a dramatic way, but is it really enough just to put it down to Chibnall not being up to it? His skill set certainly didn’t help matters but I’m not totally down on the episodes he wrote before he was the show runner. They’re not remarkable but also NOT embarrassing.

The question is what was he trying to do at that point and why? This is a difficult one for me because I really don’t like engaging with that story. Was it simply a device to kill off the pesky Time Lords… again? Was it just is designed to dismiss a dubious quote from a tv movie at the flaky edge of canon?

You need to look at who is spouting the universe-altering exposition of The Timeless Child. The Master is mad enough to need a 10/6’ hat, and he’s even less likely than The Doctor to first destroy a cherry tree and then emulate George Washington. I think Russell can probably lay that plot aside and forget about it.

The Doctor’s mother however… aside from speculating on what’s going on in season 9, and why, The Girl Who Died plays some very curious cards. There are Twelve and Clara, trudging into the Viking village, and Clara immediately sees that Twelve recognises Ashildr.

“Too much time travel. It happens…<span class=”Apple-converted-space”>  </span>(premonition) it’s just remembering in the wrong direction.”

Well, we learn later that Ashildr becomes immortal. And in the next episode she’s become a bit bitter at the Doctor. They must have had a run-in some time… in the future.

Which brings us to Twelve talking baby. Curious that this should crop up again. Especially in relation to electric eels! This is not the strongest Moffat/Mathieson plot device. But strictly speaking the baby talk was Eleven in A Good Man… and then Closing Time. Both instances are well before Clara (though she’s been all over The Doctor’s time stream) but Twelve will have shown off, and it’s just as well Clara can explain because most of that scene really does sound like The Doctor’s paean to… who exactly?

Is Russell’s dismissal of Time Lord/human mixed heritage a problem if Ashildr is in fact a Mire hybrid? Never mind Twelve inheriting his face from The Fires of Pompei, wouldn’t he HAVE to help defeat the Mire, then resurrect Ashildr, if he wanted to avoid disappearing in a paradox?

The Woman Who Lived doesn’t do anything more than provide a few hints of where the narrative might go/have gone. Three cradles. Three young plague victims. Three is a significant number. The Cartmel plan was built about a legend of three wasn’t it? How interesting that in all Me’s volumes, Twelve should find THAT episode? Almost as if he was looking for it… and yeah, the kids are dead but then The Doctor knew all about Gangers in The Rebel Flesh didn’t he?

And Ashildr doesn’t like her original name but why choose THAT name? However it’s spelt. Knightmare. Nightmare.

Who then might be The (K)nightmare Child?

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Not sure if this the right place for this but…

…up until The Timeless Child I was kind of holding on by my fingertips. But that episode really did make me want to wipe my hands. So I fell off that particular cliff.

But hey Rusty’s back! Is it safe to come out now?
More importantly can we now talk about what really happened in the Chibnall era? And just as relevantly, what might have happened at the end of the Moffat era.
I’m thinking the reaction to Season Eight, the WW1 centenary narrative, the Soldier and the Officer, and most significantly all the cyber soldiers blasting off and exploding. Never mind ‘heaven’ turning out to be a nifty piece of Gallifreyan tech, you’re clearly a very naughty aetheist, Steven.

At that point did the authorities get interested (as in the 70s and 80s)? Did they take a look at and then balk at what Steven had planned for 2015? Too much older man/younger woman, too much funny godless stuff, too much continuity worship, too much meta writing. Enough! they said. Write it again!
But meta ran through Steven like a stick of rock. And he rather liked elements of his original story arc.

That was why The Girl who Died/Woman who Lived was so very odd; Ashildr was supposed to be the Doctor’s mother.
Discuss…

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