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Burkion posted:there is a problem with that thinking though. Yeah, and there are problems with that portrayal but it IS the portrayal we've mostly gotten, which is one of the reasons removing them from the show has mostly been a good thing. The Time Lords are the most advanced society in the universe... but they've been resting on their laurels for millions of years now. Hell, in The Deadly Assassin it's revealed that they still don't really understand half of the stuff that Rassilon did/built. I can't imagine their Academy was anything more than designed to grind the next generation into the exact same mould as the former.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:03
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 Ah! But it's always been Time Lord politics and government we've seen in those instances. It's like judging a society's art based on a meeting of senior civil servants.Besides, y'all can hate looms, I can hate DoctorDunce. 
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Oct 10, 2014 03:05
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I agree with Jerusalem. The Doctor is very smart - he just doesn't do well in a controlled environment that doesn't account for his individuality. He's fiercely independent, somewhat narcissistic, hates being told what he can and can't do, and frequently goes on mad tears after ideas that have temporarily transfixed him. He can be a genius without being any good at, for instance, writing a thesis on hydroponics for his Time Lord degree when this week he's really much more interested in orthographical progression.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:18
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But his handwriting is so nice!
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Oct 10, 2014 03:21
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As far as revival nostalgia, I remember seeing ads for the third season while watching BBC World News America. I didn't watch an episode of it until I figured out how to proxy-watch iPlayer. By which point the fourth season was over. But some of that has to do with slow import times, I think. Like, Canada had to wait six months, and we were even longer than that. Then finally someone realized that Doctor Who has a fandom that is closer to TopGear than Coronation Street when it comes to internet connections, and here we are.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:35
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Oh god I started a debate by accident  Like I said, I love Chosen One mythology and stories, so The Other makes me appreciate the Doctor more, but I completely understand J-Ru's point that it makes the Doctor TOO special, and robs his "he could be YOU" appeal.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:25
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HD DAD posted:When the revival started, I was still reeling from the cancellation of Enterprise and yelling at people online about what was in The Hatch. When they announced the revival it was me and one other guy in the office full of nerds who were excited. I wore my t-shirt with the 70's logo on it the day of the premier and no one knew what it was...
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Oct 10, 2014 05:08
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I haven't actually looked at the mythology surrounding the Other, but I'm sure it doesn't explore the part of it that's occurred to me as actually a reasonably smart way to handle it. Sure, it's stupid that the Doctor could be the reincarnation of a mythological Time Lord figure. But an idea that struck me about that was, if you ignore the actual reincarnation element, it makes some sense; Time Lord society reached great heights under a genius leader named Rassilon, but it took someone like the Doctor to get it rolling in the first place. It's not literally him, but it's someone just as off-beat and clever, that could come up with some fantastic ways to make entirely unthought-of things work, that's become a minor footnote in the public consciousness because the current ruling class prefers to just pretend they were destined to rule. That's how I think it would be best to exist. The Doctor isn't the reincarnation of the Other, he's just an average person that thought differently to the rest of his society. But, so was the Other, and his one wild imagination set all of Time Lord society into motion.
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Oct 10, 2014 05:21
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I wasn't as much a fan of The Other as I was Looms in the Cartmel Masterplan. Not for the "Doctor is a chaste permavirgin" stuff, but for the ideal that the Time Lords were so stultified that they had to resort to test tube babies to survive. And it was an ossification of their own doing, out of Rassilon's hubris. It explained a lot of why the Time Lords were the way they were onscreen.
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Oct 10, 2014 05:54
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It's interesting that when RTD brought back the Time Lords in The End of Time, they were more closely aligned to the 'classical gods' idea than they had been for a long time. And then the Doctor tells them to gently caress off back to where they came from anyway. Moffat decided that the 50th anniversary just had to be a Gallifrey story though, the RTD-era fanboy dickhead.
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Oct 10, 2014 12:27
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Astroman posted:I wasn't as much a fan of The Other as I was Looms in the Cartmel Masterplan. Not for the "Doctor is a chaste permavirgin" stuff, but for the ideal that the Time Lords were so stultified that they had to resort to test tube babies to survive. And it was an ossification of their own doing, out of Rassilon's hubris. It explained a lot of why the Time Lords were the way they were onscreen. That just makes me think of Man of Steel. To be fair the initial sequence on Krypton in that movie was the only bit of it I really liked.
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Oct 10, 2014 13:00
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The Doctor being bad at school and rebelling against his enlightened society isn't anti-intellectualist, its classist. Time Lords are a bunch of nobs and the Doctor is just zis guy, you know?
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Oct 10, 2014 13:19
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Y'all are just corroborating my "First Doctor is Bart Simpson with a Time Machine" hypothesis. Pwnstar posted:The Doctor being bad at school and rebelling against his enlightened society isn't anti-intellectualist, its classist. Time Lords are a bunch of nobs and the Doctor is just zis guy, you know? It's an age-old protagonist type. See also: Pimpernel, the Scarlet After The War fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 13:21
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Pwnstar posted:The Doctor being bad at school and rebelling against his enlightened society isn't anti-intellectualist, its classist. Time Lords are a bunch of nobs and the Doctor is just zis guy, you know? "Classism" against the entrenched powers, the upper-class, and the nobility should be encouraged. To quote the David Warner Doctor: "My sympathies lie with the oppressed. If you want them, stop being the oppressors."
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Oct 10, 2014 13:32
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DoctorWhat posted:"Classism" against the entrenched powers, the upper-class, and the nobility should be encouraged. Oh for sure. The current season seems be be looking at the Doctors past as one of the upper class~ and how he ran from it, with the Robin Hood comparison and that P.E. teacher mouthing off at him.
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Oct 10, 2014 13:39
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Jerusalem posted:Personally I find little trouble in seeing the Doctor as the type of student who got bored in class or struggled to concentrate long enough to actually sit down and study when there were other more interesting things to focus on. Give him something that interests him and I bet he nerds out like nobody else and would spend hours working on it, but lay down a structured and rigid program of study and he starts fidgeting. The Doctor not being interested in rules or structure or order is a big part of his character, and something that doesn't really change across the regenerations. He'd have been a terrible student because he'd either be daydreaming or getting into trouble or skipping class.
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Oct 10, 2014 13:41
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Some of the brightest and most intellectually curious people I know did terribly at school because it was an environment that just didn't suit them. It's not anti-intellectual to not get on with school/organised education.
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Oct 10, 2014 14:08
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After The War posted:Y'all are just corroborating my "First Doctor is Bart Simpson with a Time Machine" hypothesis. I like to think of him as the Time Lord version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes with a time machine. 
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Oct 10, 2014 14:23
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Bicyclops posted:I like to think of him as the Time Lord version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes with a time machine. Did Calvin not already have a time machine? 
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Oct 10, 2014 14:38
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Android Blues posted:I agree with Jerusalem. The Doctor is very smart - he just doesn't do well in a controlled environment that doesn't account for his individuality. He's fiercely independent, somewhat narcissistic, hates being told what he can and can't do, and frequently goes on mad tears after ideas that have temporarily transfixed him. So the Doctor has ADHD?
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Oct 10, 2014 14:39
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Bicyclops posted:I like to think of him as the Time Lord version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes with a time machine. 
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Oct 10, 2014 15:35
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Yeah, okay, I can picture like half the Doctors saying this.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:55
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Cleretic posted:Yeah, okay, I can picture like half the Doctors saying this. The other half are Hobbes.
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Oct 10, 2014 16:02
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So I've been listening to music from the revival, and man the series has a lot of enjoyable music. A thought popped in my head. Is it crazy for the Doctor to fall in love with Rose? I'm not really talking about how it was presented, but more the concept itself? Personally, I hate that Rose got her own Doctor Real Doll, but I never minded the idea that the Doctor did fall in love with her.
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Oct 10, 2014 17:25
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 < Rose
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Oct 10, 2014 18:15
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Next up on "Who wears it better?: Stetson Edition". Is it the Eleventh Doctor? or http://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/dark-eyes-3---individual-covers-revealed "Hello, you."
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Oct 10, 2014 18:32
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Trip Report: Key To Time Boxset The version in common circulation is the 2009 remake of the 2007 Special Edition. Easily obtainable through the usual channels (I got mine from ebay). Package quality: It's probably the best collection in Classic canon. The current version is a simple slipcase, but its the stuff on the discs that matters. Transfer Quality: Varies with episode. It wasn't a painstaking job. Film shots have quite a lot of grain (Androids of Tara). Stones of Blood, which was shot entirely on video tape, looks quite flat in the outdoor scenes. Even indoor video is grainy and a bit interlaced on a HD TV. It needs another go with some serious sandblasting. In some cases it's a blessing with the later awful props. But you won't care too much! The Arc: Unusually for Doctor Who, it was decided to have an overarching arc for Season 16. Blake's 7 had started airing in January 1978 and there is a strong shared history between the two shows, so it's more than a little coincidental that Key to Time aired in September 1978 with a theme connecting its episodes. The White Guardian commands the Doctor to retrieve the parts of the Key To Time so that reality may be jump-started to restore the balance between the White and Black Guardians, good vs evil, order vs chaos. They have a tracer to help them seek out the pieces, which are in addition hidden as various objects: a piece of metal, a planet, even a person! Episodes: My favourites have always been the first three in the series: The Ribos Operation, Pirate Planet and Stones of Blood. Ribos has pure panto-force acting with a dodgy monster but still manages to entertain. Pirate Planet is probably the best story of the run (you can't argue with a parrot vs dog war), and I don't care what the haters say about Stones, it's got two fantastic female characters and the most annoying judges in hyperspace and a lot of very funny dialogue. After that the quality, both script and production, begins to nosedive. The Androids of Tara is a flawed Prisoner of Zenda rip-off and can't sustain the central conceit of believable androids. The Power of Kroll is prop disaster central but redeemed a bit by one of the nastiest characters ever written for a Who serial, and The Armageddon Factor suffers from a lack of production values and having to tie up the series, but has great performances to balance some of the weaknesses. Characters: Tom Baker probably reaches Peak Baker in this series. Some of his most witty and quixotic Doctor turns here: even in Power of Kroll he manages to keep it rolling. This is also Mary Tamm's run and we get a real Time Lord who can match the Doctor in wit and intelligence. K9 Mark II is introduced because Mark I is back on Gallifrey with Leela and the little TARDIS family is complete, until Lalla Ward appears in the series finale to take over from Tamm. There are some very memorable supporting characters, and there seems to be a bit of a theme about them. Ribos has three, Garron, Unstoffe and The Graff, all recklessly played to the hilt. Pirate Planet has the insane Captain, Stones a psychopathic female criminal, and a delightfully batty Professor. The bad guys are also the focus of the remaining episodes: a wicked mastermind Prince in Androids, a cold-blooded killer for profit in Kroll, and probably the biggest bloodthirsty warmonger of the lot in Armageddon Factor. Extras: This is the reason you buy it. Practically a shrine to Mary Tamm who sometimes does double-duty on commentaries and clearly bests even Tom Baker. Don't forget to try the production subtitles which often has fun information! The documentaries are all top-notch except for the occasional oddity like a bizarre and unfunny science excursion with wacky doctor and an overenthusiastic effects designer. There's a metric fuckton of them too, generally a documentary on each episode and another on one aspect of the whole production series of the time. Photo galleries, trailers, design shots, extended and deleted scene (not many outtakes), and a weird one called continuities which consists of the various BBC announcements before and after each episode (yeah, thrilling stuff). There's a whole disc devoted to the special features as a wrapup of the series on the last disc and a special documentary on Tamm. Fun things to do: Explore the continuity errors of Tom's bitten lip as it weaves its way through the production. Spot the references to Douglas Adams books. Gasp in awe at the wobbly sets. Try to watch every single continuity extra on each disc until your brain melts from BBC announcement variations.  out of 5 eeks.
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Oct 10, 2014 18:38
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I really really love the Key to Time season. Even when it misses, Baker is still fun and the interactions with Romana are great.
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Oct 10, 2014 18:49
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I love the Androids of Tara, with its wacky robot dukes and Tom Baker swordfighting, but yeah, Prisoner of Kroll I recall being a disaster. The rest of them are all pretty fun.Spikeguy posted:So I've been listening to music from the revival, and man the series has a lot of enjoyable music. A thought popped in my head. Is it crazy for the Doctor to fall in love with Rose? I'm not really talking about how it was presented, but more the concept itself? Personally, I hate that Rose got her own Doctor Real Doll, but I never minded the idea that the Doctor did fall in love with her. If we're generous and put the Doctors age in Time Lord terms, Ten is at least in his late 50s to early 60s, so it's a little weird.
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Oct 10, 2014 18:59
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Bicyclops posted:If we're generous and put the Doctors age in Time Lord terms, Ten is at least in his late 50s to early 60s, so it's a little weird. Moffat had Eleven go from 900 to approximately 2,000 off screen at some point, and of course it was treated as something along the lines of a drunken bender. But on the other hand it gives room for a lot of Eleventh works in other media.
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Oct 10, 2014 19:34
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Spikeguy posted:So I've been listening to music from the revival, and man the series has a lot of enjoyable music. A thought popped in my head. Is it crazy for the Doctor to fall in love with Rose? I'm not really talking about how it was presented, but more the concept itself? Personally, I hate that Rose got her own Doctor Real Doll, but I never minded the idea that the Doctor did fall in love with her. Differently people will have different answers. I like the Doctor loving his companions and having weird feelings come up because of everything they go through but I don't like the whole being in love with Rose thing. I thought it was p. funny though that like 5 episodes into Eleven's run Amy tries to bang him and he's terrified and running away from her. Craptacular! posted:Moffat had Eleven go from 900 to approximately 2,000 off screen at some point, and of course it was treated as something along the lines of a drunken bender. I maintain that The Doctor did this purely so that Rory wouldn't be the oldest person in the TARDIS.
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Oct 10, 2014 19:37
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Craptacular! posted:Moffat had Eleven go from 900 to approximately 2,000 off screen at some point, and of course it was treated as something along the lines of a drunken bender. My philosophy on literally any time that the Doctor is talking about his age is that he's just making up a number, which is at least loosely supported by the actual show. It's enough to know that he is ancient by human standards and the details as to how much time he spends in each regeneration are mostly unimportant. Why would he even bother measuring his internal age in Earth time as a time and space traveler, anyway?
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Oct 10, 2014 19:51
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Bicyclops posted:My philosophy on literally any time that the Doctor is talking about his age is that he's just making up a number, which is at least loosely supported by the actual show. It's enough to know that he is ancient by human standards and the details as to how much time he spends in each regeneration are mostly unimportant. Why would he even bother measuring his internal age in Earth time as a time and space traveler, anyway? I love the line Eleven has where he admits he can't even remember if he's lying about his age any more.
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Oct 10, 2014 19:58
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docbeard posted:I love the line Eleven has where he admits he can't even remember if he's lying about his age any more. Yeah. I have my problems with Moffat, but I did really like Day of the Doctor, and Matt Smith was really great in it. I actually really miss his interpretation of the Doctor. A plot with the Doctor being too mean and condescending for his companion is interesting, but I kind of hope they put it to rest at the end of the season. That moment at the end of Kill the Moon when he yammers about how special Courtney is and gets exuberant is one of the few where he's gotten to play the Doctor without yelling at somebody or seeming vaguely disinterested in how they feel. It was really great to see Capaldi play it, as well as his shocked upset when Clara yelled at him. I want to see more of that and less of him yelling "Shut up!"
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Oct 10, 2014 20:03
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Craptacular! posted:Moffat had Eleven go from 900 to approximately 2,000 off screen at some point, and of course it was treated as something along the lines of a drunken bender. That's okay, C Baker regularly gave his age as older than the Doctor in the revival. I think we can just say that the Doctor lies about his age a lot.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:07
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Honestly, 2000 years seems like far too little time for a creature whose backyard is the entirety of time and space. How much of it can you have seen in that amount of time? None of it, no matter how many decimal places you take it to. Even if he'd been on Earth living one year per year for that whole time, he's barely even "ancient". He's as much a mayfly as any of the people he travels with. The character could be a million years old. I'm not saying he should be, but it's a thought. E: the explanation for the Doctor mysteriously de-aging between the classic series and the revival is that he got some of his time shot off in the Time War.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:13
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Bicyclops posted:I love the Androids of Tara, with its wacky robot dukes and Tom Baker swordfighting, but yeah, Prisoner of Kroll I recall being a disaster. The rest of them are all pretty fun. Kroll is very very cheap, even to the point of making a gag about a monster costume, not to mention the torture of underground plant rack! My issue with Tara is the pacing which makes the story crumble for me, and the silly bit with Romana being mistaken for an android to the point of almost being chopped up. Count Grendel is a great bad guy, almost in Master league for evil subtlety, so some of it does balance out. And Robot Reynart is a bit funny I admit, that bit on the throne was comical.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:23
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Just watched The Doctor's Wife again, (most def my favorite episode. Just everything I love about this show wrapped in a single episode.) Am I correct in thinking the Tardis says I love you right before she fades out of existence and back into the box?
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Oct 10, 2014 20:34
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qntm posted:Honestly, 2000 years seems like far too little time for a creature whose backyard is the entirety of time and space. How much of it can you have seen in that amount of time? None of it, no matter how many decimal places you take it to. Even if he'd been on Earth living one year per year for that whole time, he's barely even "ancient". He's as much a mayfly as any of the people he travels with. It's just the TARDIS Translation Matrix turning Gallifreyan years into localized years.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:51
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Solaris Knight posted:Oh god I started a debate by accident Huh, I feel the opposite about Chosen One narratives. I don't like them, partly for having more than a whiff of predestination, partly because they tend to be very conservative narratives even when executed by progressive writers. The Doctor shouldn't be the reincarnation of a God, or the Destined One, or anything like that, ever. Not because "he could be you", but because what makes him special is the choices he makes, not who he is. And at the root of it, his choice to steal the TARDIS and ditch the Time Lords. The Doctor, ingrained by his training, will often insist things are fixed, and then eventually choose to go around and find another way. That was the entirety of what revival season 6 was about. which makes this season really disturbing. I maintain this is intentional.
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Oct 10, 2014 21:19
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