|
https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1783591392947712242 ...Honestly, I did a double-take at "Season One" and my first thought was "they're showing An Unearthly Child on the big screen? At its resolution? Are we sure that's wise?"
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 00:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 19:15 |
|
|
Dabir posted:I always took the guns thing as maybe Jack had fought Daleks before, but they were pre Time War Daleks that didn't have forcefields. Tooth And Claw Pretty forgettable, this one. Notable for letting Tennant talk with his real accent for a bit, and the reveal of a counter-conspiracy to stop the werewolf was sweet in a weird way. One of the ones I kind of dreaded rewatching because of how little I took away from it the last time. That's most of series 2, really. I'm not its biggest fan School Reunion The music is absolutely baller in this one. I don't think that action music was ever used again in the whole series, which is a shame. It could have been an equivalent to All The Strange Creatures. The episode fails to satisfyingly answer why the Doctor is such a serial monogamist with companions and never really talks about them once they're gone. or rather, it fails to answer it in a way that makes the Doctor look good, which I guess is what we as fans would prefer in an explanation. Still, if he was perfect we wouldn't love him. The Girl In The Fireplace A preview of the Moffat era, both in the writing tics he'll repeatedly display ("the slow path" will eventually mutate into "the long way round", a doomed out-of-sync time travel romance, the villain is a well-meaning system which is malfunctioning) and the flubs he's capable of. Mickey's line about finding the portal "right under our nose" has stuck with me since I first watched it. The narrative can't think of a way to organically have us realise "oh wow the portal has been under their nose this whole time" but finding the portal has to be an Event, a plot element clicking satisfyingly into place(the big ending being what was right under our nose the whole time is probably Moffat's best tic when it works- "I am your mummy" or making Prisoner Zero impersonate itself, or the final shot of this very episode). So they just have a character announce it. Effectively, a plot twist took place offscreen. I read the novelization of Day Of The Doctor recently and there was a joke about some kind of electrical component being used as castanets, which I didn't get at all. Mystery solved, it was a reference to this episode! Rise Of The Cybermen / Age Of Steel It's very rare that Doctor Who will make me feel embarrassing skin-crawling unpleasantness, but the scene where Rose tries to play matchmaker and Mirror Universe Jackie goes "who do you think you are" does it and then some. I don't know how much Davies wrote on this (isn't the rule that if you write/rewrite over a certain amount you have to be credited?) but that definitely feels like something of his. The unsettling feeling that this Jackie isn't that far away from real Jackie, that all that's separating a good person from a bad person is their circumstances, and good circumstances don't create good people. Also if Davies didn't write the subplot where they try to save Jackie interspersed with clips of Jackie zombie marching to the conversion to create tension, only for them to get there and find out Jackie was already converted offscreen, then he certainly liked it because he used the same trick years later in It's A Sin, which not to go on a tangent but that's the only time I've yelled out loud at the TV in easily a decade. The Jackie reveal isn't that powerful, but it's still a damned good trick. Tell you what, if you don't like Rose then the ending of this episode is nothing but schadenfreude, what with Pete's entirely negative reaction to finding out she's his daughter and Mickey ditching her, all in the span of five minutes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 00:17
|
|
|
Vinylshadow posted:https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1783591392947712242 Yeah someone decided this was a good time to restart the count again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 06:40
|
|
|
is brian may a new doctor? is he going to rip sick guitar solos?
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 06:51
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1783452927056650588
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 09:18
|
|
|
Regular Wario posted:is brian may a new doctor? is he going to rip sick guitar solos? Huh apparently Anita Dobson is married to Brian May. That’s awesome.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 15:38
|
|
|
2house2fly posted:
Yeah, why does the music go so hard in that one while they're doing the "typing and looking at a Matrix screen" thing? It's so intense, lol. I think that and Anthony Head are what make that episode (also the whole "You are in a car!" thing from K-9). I don't really like the Doctor's explanation to Sarah Jane, especially since Thirteen kind of doubles down on it later with Yaz. We don't want him to be perfect, but when his flaws involve the people he's carting off into danger, it's just not a great look. I think he probably should have told Sarah Jane that some of his adventures with her made him legitimately afraid that she would die, and that him visiting his home planet seemed like a good time to drop her off, and he didn't have the heart to tell her it was a permanent goodbye. That gives him flaws that aren't "You'll eventually get old and need care and die and I don't want to watch that." Captain Jack is a good "I needed to leave you behind" from that era. I do like the rest of the episode, bad CG and Vaseline camera and all. The Cyberman two-parter is such a good representation of Davies's flaws and strengths, lol. That interaction you note with Rose and her Mom really does hit, for the exact reasons you say it does. It's something Doctor Who rarely does with its time travel, investigate the difference between nature/nurture and how those things can shape a person's life. I think the other side of it - Pete's struggle to do the right thing and feeling like he can't involve Jackie in it - is also cool to watch, as is Mickey looking at his other life. The actual threat, the Cybermen, are handled badly, like in a laughable way (Loomis is bargain basement Davros, "DELETE!" is a terrible catchphrase, etc.), but the human part of it still makes it enjoyable to watch.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 15:38
|
|
|
Bicyclops posted:I don't really like the Doctor's explanation to Sarah Jane, especially since Thirteen kind of doubles down on it later with Yaz. We don't want him to be perfect, but when his flaws involve the people he's carting off into danger, it's just not a great look. I might be conflating this with later Toby Whithouse episodes, but Whithouse generally seems to be arguing that it's fundamentally immoral for the Doctor to offer human beings trips in space and time. So Vampires of Venice has some (light) comparisons between Amy and the vampire girls, suggesting that she's been damaged / corrupted / victimised by her experiences (which is true and happens repeatedly after) and then God Complex goes full mask off and has various characters explicitly talk about these concerns in the text. Amy has a darker and edgier time that pretty much any Doctor Who companion out there, barring maybe Compassion from the EDAs. The series just repeatedly ignores any interest in her feeling or managing her trauma, so the effects are elided.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 15:51
|
|
|
Bicyclops posted:It's something Doctor Who rarely does with its time travel, investigate the difference between nature/nurture and how those things can shape a person's life. I think the other side of it - Pete's struggle to do the right thing and feeling like he can't involve Jackie in it - is also cool to watch, as is Mickey looking at his other life. The actual threat, the Cybermen, are handled badly, like in a laughable way (Loomis is bargain basement Davros, "DELETE!" is a terrible catchphrase, etc.), but the human part of it still makes it enjoyable to watch. The bit in the recent Christmas special where they kind of did that was one of the highlights of that ep for me, seeing a version of the world without Ruby in where her foster mother and grandmother are both miserable. When I rewatched the episode and remembered that bit was coming up I almost didn't want to watch it again because of how downbeat it was
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 19:46
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1783858578148704519
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 20:42
|
|
|
I still can't quite get over Mel being back 40 years on. It's pretty great.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 21:40
|
|
|
Open Source Idiom posted:I might be conflating this with later Toby Whithouse episodes, but Whithouse generally seems to be arguing that it's fundamentally immoral for the Doctor to offer human beings trips in space and time. So Vampires of Venice has some (light) comparisons between Amy and the vampire girls, suggesting that she's been damaged / corrupted / victimised by her experiences (which is true and happens repeatedly after) and then God Complex goes full mask off and has various characters explicitly talk about these concerns in the text. Similar to Tegan, who gets next to zero resolution to having the Mara gently caress her up, not once but twice
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 22:59
|
|
|
I thought RTD and Moffat still got on well, and yet in the photo of the them together RTD is standing 700 miles behind Moffat. Depressing.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 23:21
|
|
|
Season 13 Episode 2: War of the Sontarans Written by Chris Chibnall, Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone Yaz posted:I don't want to freak you out, but there's something's very wrong with the universe right now. This episode is... fine! As a standalone episode I liked it fine, and it does a functional job of trying to tie in the overarching season-long story by showing one of the "lower stakes" repercussions of the Flux. That fact that "lower stakes" refers to the conquering of the planet Earth in the present and backwards through time just demonstrates how universally shaking the Flux as a concept is meant to be. Whether it was a good idea to do that is another matter, and it can't help but bring to mind the Time War which as a storyline had already been mined to death by RTD and Moffat culminating in the beautiful, beautiful Day of the Doctor where the Doctor successfully saved the lives of billions of children who were then personally murdered casually by the Master a couple years later and nobody gave a poo poo... but you run with what you've got, and what we've got is six episodes of Whittaker's final (half-)season so I take what I can get! The basic premise of the A-Plot is an idea I dig. The Sontarans took advantage of the Flux to sneak into Earth at the last possible second (more on that later) for the most petty of initial reasons: to get revenge on the little shits who humiliated Commander Linx back in 1973's The Time Warrior! Their plan is to conquer Earth, first in the 21st Century, then the 19th (skipping the 20th?, and then (I think?) onwards backwards throughout history. Cause and effect are upside down as a result, impacts of "later" wars that happen in the past are leaking through into the "present" so that Russia and China have been replaced by the nation of "Sontar" in the memories of the unconquered, putting Earth history into a state of Flux (get it!?!) that the Doctor has to set right before it becomes fixed in place as the new permanent history of Earth. https://i.imgur.com/o6FXfgy.mp4 Now this raises a lot of questions that the show doesn't really answer, or seem interested in answering. That's not necessarily a bad thing, getting bogged down in the minutaie and trying to explain things can often be a bad idea (see Chibnall "solving" the "problem" of The Brain of Morbius), though when considered in the context of the entire Chibnall era it speaks to an ongoing issue where ideas are expressed purely at face value without consideration for the whys or wherefors. Since when do the Sontarans have time travel technology? The Two Doctors was all about their failed efforts to achieve this! There is an explanation for how they knew about the Flux, which raises further questions about how the Daleks or even the Cybermen couldn't figure that out... but how did they know that Earth would survive it? The good doggies weren't coming to protect the planet but to teleport the humans away in their protected ships, it was the Doctor's last minute brilliant strategy of "form a sphere!" that achieved the planet's protection, so the Sontaran Strategy was based on nothing! Are they only based in the 19th and 21st Century initially? If there are more forces further back in history then the Doctor hasn't achieved anything. I assume there aren't, but then the Doctor's plan would have involved ANOTHER full powered fleet (Staak's) returning to the 21st Century and undoing everything Dan and the good Doggy did! So the rear end in a top hat British Lieutenant-General was right to do what he did!?! I bring up all these things to point out that beyond the surface level there are plenty of problems with this episode, but that overall I still found it an enjoyable, easy-to-watch and inoffensive episode of Doctor Who. In the Chibnall era, that's a triumph! https://i.imgur.com/3fODVC3.mp4 And for any other faults, sometimes the show would just pull out a lovely bit like the above and remind me just what could have been. The Doctor, Dan and Yaz find themselves mysteriously on the ground in 19th Century Sevastopol, with no memory of how they got out of the TARDIS beyond the Doctor's vision of a disturbing "impossible' house. The TARDIS has sealed itself up, removing all of its doors, leaving them stranded. Except Dan and Yaz, apparently in "flux" themselves, fade from view, with Dan returning to 21st Century Liverpool while Yaz ends up in the Temple of Atropos on the planet Time, a temple nobody has ever heard of on a planet that doesn't exist. https://i.imgur.com/cqlZMmZ.mp4 The Doctor, still in Sevastopol, meets Mary Seacole and the commander of the British forces, where despite running headfirst into the infuriating but unsurprising misogyny of the day she gets the Lieutenant-General to admit far more than he intended to reveal about his lack of (military) intelligence. She similarly tricks a Sontaran patient into leading her and Mary directly to the Sontaran base, which is both consistent with the portrayal of the Sontarans but also demonstrates the historic problems with trying to make them seem like a serious threat. The Time Warrior and The Sontaran Experiment both did good jobs of showcasing the Sontarans as dangerous, amoral and intimidating, but even before the revival leaned so hard into the comedy aspects the classic series had turned the Sontarans somewhat into jokes. Their arrival as the power behind the power behind the President in The Invasion of Time was a wet fart of a reveal, and while it wasn't intentionally scripted the Sontaran tripping over a lawn chair in that serial seemed to mark the moment where fans considered the Sontarans as more comical than threatening. They're naive and easily manipulated in The Two Doctors, and from The Sontaran Stratagem on they have become progressively less scary and far more comical. So in this episode, we're supposed to see them as a deadly occupying force and a deadly opponent, but they're also repeatedly played up for comedy as they have been in the past. The update to their make-up to be a modernized version of the old classic look is a welcome change, but the characterization remains the same... except for when it doesn't, and we're supposed to find them scary or threatening again. That contradiction undermines both the comedy and the drama, working against what the episode is trying to do and the Sontarans' continued presence as a major force in the season. https://i.imgur.com/S7hDZtH.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/6wdKWgg.mp4 So which is it? Are they deadly monstrous soldiers who massacre armies or are they comedy dunces who get easily played and manipulated? A writer with a deft touch could walk that fine line. Chibnall is unfortunately not a writer with a deft touch. It doesn't help that the Doctor's strategy to defeat them is based on an unbelievably stupid piece of planning by the Sontarans who have apparently never heard of "shifts". Way back in The Sontaran Experiment it was established that Sontarans need to regularly refresh the nutrients and atmosphere contained in their suits while on Earth, and thanks to Mary Seacole's observations the Doctor figures out they are on a 27-hour-cycle. Except they're ALL on a 27-hour-cycle, synched up for the entire army, meaning there is a roughly 8 minute window when EVERY SINGLE SONTARAN is out of commission and vulnerable. The Doctor, aided by Mary, the Lieutenant-General and the surviving men of the massacre, sabotage each ship's supplies so the Sontarans will have no excuse but to retreat back to the 21st Century. As mentioned above, this strategy was entirely reliant on "my best person" (Dan, who she barely knows) taking care of the problem there, and since Dan and the good doggy had just taken out the 21st Century fleet then the Lieutenant-General blowing up all the ships actually saved Liverpool from being immediately invaded yet again by some now very angry Sontarans and no longer having any method of dealing with them. Dan's own little adventure involves sneaking into the Liverpool docks after being rescued by his parents (who are very charming and sweet, and I don't think ever show up again?) where the same contradictory problems as above are in full effect. We see Sontarans brutally execute humans who have snuck into the docks, but also Dan is able to seemingly easily sneak through the docks, into a ship, get through sealed doors using his very human hand on a Sontaran handprint and access computer systems, all while taking out Sontarans himself with a wok. He does end up cornered and about to be executed until the good doggy arrives to save the day, and I got a good laugh out of,"I've still got a human in this hunt!" as Karvanista notes that he and the Lupari accept responsibility for not spotting the Sontarans sneaking in. That does raise another of those niggling questions though: if they're all pair bonded to a human, and if you can in fact leave a ship without hurting the sphere around Earth, then why didn't a large contingent of Lupari come down to the surface and fight off the Sontarans? How did the Lupari whose bonded humans were killed by the firing squad react to this? Did Chibnall even think about that when he raised the "pair bonding" concept or does he not think about it beyond Karvanista and Dan? https://i.imgur.com/DotdxJz.mp4 To be fair, I do love the interactions between Dan and his good doggy. And really if it wasn't for the ongoing overall issues with Chibnall's run on Who, I could forgive a lot of these little hanging questions just like I'd often overlook those "Hang on, but doesn't that mean..." moments with RTD's writing. But, you know... the last two seasons of Chibnall's Who up to this point... Yaz meanwhile ends up in the Temple of Atropos, as confused as Commander Vinder who has also shown up there as little flying robots demand that they "repair" without explanation of what that means. Atropos obviously brings to mind the Three Fates of Greek Mythology, also known as Moirai, and the parallels continue when the little robots finally explain they're here to repair the "Mouri", voiceless guardians standing on podiums, two of them "burned out" like circuits, seen only as brief flashes of corporeal forms within standing robes. Yaz here demonstrates some more of what has been one of her few defining characteristics: using her police training to try and calm who she speaks with and get information from them. She briefly meets Joseph Williamson, wandering grumpily through the temple and showcasing a surprising openness to the notion that he may have found himself outside of 1820. Where her subplot best shines though are in her interactions with Swarm and Azure, who arrive unexpectedly and claim to be able to repair the Mouri, getting the initial trust of the robots until they grasp who they are truly are. Swarm and Azure are delightful, the "Sugar Skull Gang" as they came to be affectionately known in the Season 39 thread as Flux was airing, clearly having a great time and enjoying themselves immensely. When Vinder pulls a gun and tries to shoot them, Swarm doesn't just teleport around to dodge his attacks but takes the opportunity to troll him mercilessly by striking a variety of poses as he taunts him to keep shooting, with Azure then joining in so she can have part of the fun too. But their true glee is in mocking Yaz, taunting her "What Would The Doctor Do" message on the palm of her hand, laughing at her "linear" perspective on time - she's never met them, and they've never met her... but they also know that they will and how that will go, as the first pieces start to be put together of an overarching theme throughout the season that never quite properly gets laid out clearly: Swarm and Azure serve "Time", but not the controlled and navigable time we're familiar with, but rather the wild and chaotic unrestrained time that exists simultaneously forward, backwards, sideways and always in the moment. The Planet Time doesn't exist, insists the Doctor, but she also - once able to get back into the TARDIS - noted that something appeared to be corrupting the TARDIS, before it gets hijacked and brought back to "0" in Time and Space. The intention is clearly that something else happened before time as we understand it in Doctor Who came to be, something that that the Doctor doesn't know (or remember). These ideas never quite coalesce in the way they should have, leading to a final episode confrontation between the Doctor and Time that feels like it came out of nowhere even with all this setup, and doesn't appear to have actually gone anywhere. In that sense, it's a lot like the the Chibnall era itself: an interesting idea not executed well. https://i.imgur.com/oHUvzCS.mp4 Swarm and Azure destroy the burned out Mouri, and the Doctor and Dan are summoned to the Temple in the TARDIS. Swarm taunts her, telling her that time is beginning to "run wild" and that his repairs are short term, taking glee in revealing that a horrified Yaz and Vinder have been jammed into the place of the burned out Mouri. When she tries to rush to Yaz's aid, she's warned that Swarm will turn them to ash if she touches them, but the alternative isn't much better, once he activates them as part of the new "circuit, all of time will blast through their bodies and burn them out in seconds. Azure begins a countdown, both of them relishing the horror on the Doctor's face as they turn time against the Time Lord, and we end on a good old fashioned cliffhanger in the best Doctor Who tradition. That's War of the Sontarans, really. It's got all the same problems as much else of the Chibnall era, but it also does what a perfectly serviceable episode of Doctor Who does, and where it works it does work well. As a follow-up to the first episode, it shows us a somewhat more understandable, lower-stakes situation for the Doctor to deal with before she's drawn immediately back into the bigger plot, and ends the episode leaving the viewer (hopefully) wanting to see what happens next. https://i.imgur.com/r94Ixvj.mp4 Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Apr 27, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 03:03
|
|
|
I really hate the "updated" design for Sontarans, that is all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 03:37
|
|
|
Saw a promo for the new season during the NFL Draft. This has been your commercial update.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 04:45
|
|
|
I wasn't aware they weren't a new thing when they first showed up. Just looked em up and... you really can't go wrong with Sontarans. All of these are fantastic in different ways! Similar enough you know that's a Sontarans immediately. I now look forward to all future and past Sontaran designs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 05:32
|
|
|
You can go wrong with Sontaran designs, and they did.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 05:37
|
|
|
Yeah they look dumb as hell with the helmets on looks like we agree
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 05:39
|
|
|
I think it is very important they be short, which is one of the few things that isn't good about The Two Doctors
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 05:51
|
|
|
Sontall-ha!
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 06:57
|
|
|
Vinylshadow posted:Sontall-ha! Strax meets Amy, turns to River and says,"Son tall, so what?"
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 07:00
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:Season 13 Episode 2: War of the Sontarans just starting this ep. right now and for all the deserved grief ch. got on his run -- he does new things at least? like i've never seen doctor who revival in greyscale like this, and the house looks like straight out of 2005 deviant art and its awesome.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 11:44
|
|
|
The house was a fantastic visual look, yeah. That's one of the many frustrating things about the Chibnall era: a lot of great ideas on paper, some genuinely awesome visuals, a thoroughly overdue and welcome look at expanding on the diversity of not just the actors on the show but those working on it, but then the key integral aspect of actually making really good Doctor Who too often fell flat. But there was gold in them thar hills, they just refused to dig more than a couple of feet, except for where a torn and dirty piece of paper that said,"Iunno, more Doctors before Hartnell?" had fallen out of Robert Holmes' notebook, that's where Chibnall hired a full excavator and told them to man it 24/7.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 11:54
|
|
|
LOL at the new Paternost Gang box where they working undercover on an estate, and Vastra goes to see the Lady of the house's lawyer and they turn out to be The Fourth Doctor
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 13:43
|
|
|
Ahaha, that's fantastic 
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 13:49
|
|
|
Davros1 posted:LOL at the new Paternost Gang box where they working undercover on an estate, and Vastra goes to see the Lady of the house's lawyer and they turn out to be The Fourth Doctor This is what made me return up give the previous series a go, and it is very much a decent Jago and Litefoot replacement. Some of that might be ellie higson appearing as well though
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 14:05
|
|
|
So she's reaching up in the low angle shot, but when it cuts to the wide angle she's standing there with her arms by her side. A basic continuity error which is indicative of the shoddiness of Chibnall's production. Unless this is an edit made by the gif maker.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 18:02
|
|
|
Updog Scully posted:So she's reaching up in the low angle shot, but when it cuts to the wide angle she's standing there with her arms by her side. A basic continuity error which is indicative of the shoddiness of Chibnall's production. Unless this is an edit made by the gif maker. Its a video so you can see that the actual order of the shots is the distant shot then the close up shot.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 18:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 19:15 |
|
|
Lampsacus posted:just starting this ep. right now and for all the deserved grief ch. got on his run -- he does new things at least? like i've never seen doctor who revival in greyscale like this, and the house looks like straight out of 2005 deviant art and its awesome. Chibnall’s take on Who had a lot of new things, and very little that was familiar, so his take had the universe feeling more cold and lonely somehow?
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2024 18:48
|
|
