@devilishrobby @blenkinsopthebrave @janetteb @nerys @translatorcircuit

So, your reading of “with or without Disney’s involvement” is that The Mouse is still interested, whereas we all thought he’s skipped away? But why go if he’s interested? They want a better deal. Yeah, that could be out of Trump’s playbook.

But do we know they are still ne…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u @translatorcircuit

Yes, this is real. They put a call out for pitches for a Prod company to produce a Cbeebies version of Who about a month ago.

The pitch said that it should be aimed at pre-school and therefore stepping back from the scarier aspects and focus on the Doc solving problems and overcoming “villains” who were more…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit

WOW! It really IS for pre-schoolers! Urghhh. I DO apologise. I GENUINELY thought that was a mistake/joke.

Embarrassing. Kids Show! Official.

So, the Venn Diagram HAS become THAT small. I don’t like it, and some noise might just help, but this COULD be the end. Though to be fair HE mentioned US, I mean us, the weirdos. In the…[Read more]

@Translatorcircuit   If that was a kilt, why didn’t it have tartan on it?   And why would this Doctor wear one?   I could understand it if 12 (Capaldi) wore one, he was Scottish, as a number of jokes testified.   (And number 9 was from ‘the North’.   I don’t know if 10 (Tennant) was Scottish too?)    Of course we know they weren’t Scottish or…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Was that Lunkwill or Fook?    (Weird the random bits of information lurking under the piles of debris and broken typewriter bits in my memory).     – and (looks it up)  it was actually Vroomfondel.   Bugger!

@Translatorcircuit   Who is actually going to ‘remove’ the rights to Doctor Who from the BBC?   It’s not like some magical li…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit

I think you mean CBBC not Cbeebies. If DW IS indeed being pitched at pre-schoolers then, yes, the end has come.

And perhaps… the end has come. Can you square the iconoclastic demands of the frothing anti-woke brigade with trimming critiques of beancounters and filmschool script neuterers who would much rather be talking a…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit    The only Doctor Who book I’ve read is  The Day of the Doctor, which reflects all the events of the TV episode but also (I think) has a bit of extra content in it.

I tend not to read book versions of TV/movies.   In general, I usually don’t find ‘the book of the film’ very satisfying.   Because film is primarily a visual…[Read more]

@Translatorcircuit    P.S.   I know about Schweizerdeutsch (have I got that right?)

Oh, and Honeychile Ryder was an interesting case. In the book, she was a half-caste Jamaican. Having read the book, I thought Ursula Andress was shockingly miscast, she certainly didn’t look Jamaican  – though I guess most audiences didn’t notice. She was OK in th…[Read more]

@TranslatorCircuit   There were quite a lot of Bond books written after Ian Fleming died, I don’t regard them as canon and haven’t read many of them.

Of course the movies are quite different from the books – Dr No was quite close to the original but they soon diverged and many of the later ones are entirely different from any of Fleming’s b…[Read more]

@TranslatorCircuit   I flatly disagree with you about James Bond, amongst many other things.   Of course it was unrealistic, that’s the genre, you reckon “The Man from Uncle” or “The A team” were any more realistic?   I’m buggered if I can see where the Bond movies were isolationist, since they were located all over the world, with chara…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit “I’m afraid people aren’t saying you shouldn’t watch Star Trek TOS, or early James Bond films, so that’s not fair!”

Well no, the two things are not equivalent. Doctor No and Doctor Who were nearly contemporary (in passing, I wonder if Who was a pun on No?) but there was a vast difference in production values. Dr No was a polis…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit

Good point about early Doctor Who being in black and white. I think the problem of the heavy editing of the early episodes  in colourisation is that it costs a sh*t load to colourise them that and the digitalisation of the film so there has been a temptation to cutdown the stories as in the  war games story so as to reduce t…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit     The problem of changing the lead actor is one faced by all long-running series.   Only Doctor Who came up with a perfectly logical (in the context of the story) explanation.   And I think it was a huge advantage, stopped the series from getting stale.

Generally they just re-cast and hope the viewers will accept it.   …[Read more]

@TranslatorCircuit    That’s the first time I’ve been called disgusting today!    I really, deeply, don’t care.   And if you’re trying to tell me which episodes to watch that makes me almost determined not to.   Sorry ’bout that, I can be a perverse bastard when I want to be.   (That was ‘perverse’, not ‘perverted’.   No, wait….)

Fo…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit

Planet of the Spiders is serviceable but not Robert Holmes playing with tropes because he’s the MAN and he CAN.
Yes, Chris Bailey = The Mara. I’m a huge devotee of the Mara stories, yet so sad we only ever saw hints of a full BAMF Mara Empire. But then you really don’t want a rerun of Stupid Sutekh.

Anyway the Mara are on Harr…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit

Yes. You don’t like Midnight or The Well.

Who resounds with superficial resemblances and echoes. But some ideas may be deliberately referenced. Paranoia is facilitated by people talking over you or continuing looking over your shoulder. It’s powerful stuff.

Where Midnight and The Well wins out is we are shown neither a ma…[Read more]

@translatorcircuit

The gap is the gap is the gap. But the reboot really started with Cartmel. Only Grade still said ‘no thanks.’

Pre Cartmel Who ain’t some holy relic: they all made it up on the hoof, and after fifteen years it began to show. Given good writers it sparked along nicely. But good writers like strong meat: Holmes, Davis, Moff and M…[Read more]

@ps1l0v3y0u Love & Monsters? While I have a sneaking perverse fondness for it – because the little Who club are kind of sweet – I couldn’t rate it among RTD’s best. The Dalek/Cybermen face-off in Doomsday – I love it. “This is not war. This is pest control.”

@nerys Good point on the hostess’s sacrifice in Midnight. She saved the occupants of the…[Read more]

@dentarthurdent @whohar @nerys @translatorcircuit @janetteb

Midnight… you can call it a bottle episode or whatever. It was well done. Love a bit of paranoia. The only problem might be the stewardess’ sacrifice.  Hope the blue ray’s work @dentarthurdent !

RTD best ep? Turn Left and Love and Monsters (ha ha), the Dalek/Cyberman face-off in Doomsda…[Read more]

@nerys I agree with your observations on Midnight. Possibly the best episode RTD wrote, or at least up there with his best.

@ps1l0v3y0u I’d agree that Season 4 was generally pretty good. I wouldn’t rate it the best season, I reckon 6 or 7 would beat it, but not by a lot, and most seasons have a range of quality. How does one rate seasons anyway,…[Read more]