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Dabir posted:Well here's the thing, if you get the Cyberman mentality right then anything that improves survival, no matter how slow or clunky it might make you, as long as it keeps you alive better, should be considered an upgrade. It's all so clear now. Cybermen are hermit crabs.
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Dec 6, 2014 02:40
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I'd kind of like to see a design for the Cybermen that's almost entirely stripped back. Let's take the head handles and apply them to the entire body, like a sort of power harness crossed with a life support machine. Darth Vader meets Edge of Tomorrow. They should be constantly be being pumped with regulatory drugs and pain medicine, so that they sound happy all the time, even though every step is agony, and they have lived long beyond their years. I'd also kind of like to be done with the idea of Cyber conversion as their end goal; instead they should be a culture and race who are trying to survive forever, but they have lost everything that makes them unique - no art, no history, no society or identity. They don't show up on other worlds looking to convert the population, because adding more numbers isn't the point, they show up looking for resources instead, even if that means body parts or oil or metal.
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Dec 6, 2014 02:49
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PriorMarcus posted:I'd also kind of like to be done with the idea of Cyber conversion as their end goal; instead they should be a culture and race who are trying to survive forever, but they have lost everything that makes them unique - no art, no history, no society or identity. They don't show up on other worlds looking to convert the population, because adding more numbers isn't the point, they show up looking for resources instead, even if that means body parts or oil or metal. I dunno, I think the Cyber-Conversion is a big part of them, it's basically the only thing that they've got that none of the other big villains do (the Daleks have it sometimes, but not often enough to call that one of their Things). I'd agree that perhaps it shouldn't be their end goal, but it can be incorporated into their 'MUST SURVIVE' thing fairly well. They're a race without any defining features, a culture without any culture. Since they've filed off everything that makes them unique, they'd be all over converting others--being a Cyberman is the only prerequisite to being part of Cyberman 'society', so conversion sits just fine with them in that sense. I suppose the problem is that it's consumed the rest of their character; it should be a prominent secondary ability, but not their main feature.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:19
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PriorMarcus posted:I'd kind of like to see a design for the Cybermen that's almost entirely stripped back. Let's take the head handles and apply them to the entire body, like a sort of power harness crossed with a life support machine. Dunno if you saw the concept art from season 2 that they decided not to go with, but it has the same feel at this: 
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Dec 6, 2014 03:33
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Cleretic posted:I suppose the problem is that it's consumed the rest of their character; it should be a prominent secondary ability, but not their main feature. I can see this, but maybe they convert for rank and file while original Cybermen remain out of the battle? I also like the idea that Cybermen is a name given to them, but they still call themselves Mondasian's. They have an entire armarda that just flies around being constantly patched up, and one of the ships is filled with art and music and real beauty from Mondas that they knew they had to save but none of them can appreciate anymore. They don't make any or really understand it, they just protect its existence. I always viewed them as a group of people who slowly started to upgrade themselves for every day task and then, when Mondas began to die, fully converted themselves. It's a gradual process, a planet dying, and eventually the conversion had gone so far that everyone started feeling depressed, maybe some of the bodies rejected conversion and were in constant pain but by then it made more sense to just turn off those peoples emotions and keep fighting to save the planet or leave it behind. By the time they have left Mondas and are in their fleet maybe 90% of them are fully converted and emotionless, and the remainder either dye out or switch off their own emotions when confronted with what's really happened. So you're left with an army of half machine, half people who travel the stars driven by a need to survive and preserve their heritage but it means nothing to them, it's just the only instinct left in their dead minds.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:46
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PriorMarcus posted:By the time they have left Mondas and are in their fleet maybe 90% of them are fully converted and emotionless, and the remainder either dye out or switch off their own emotions when confronted with what's really happened. So you're left with an army of half machine, half people who travel the stars driven by a need to survive and preserve their heritage but it means nothing to them, it's just the only instinct left in their dead minds. This is absolutely dead on and more eloquently put than I could've managed. I had no idea re-editing clips into title sequence mash-ups was such a big thing, but there are evidently a few good ones. Particularly I like the Psych and NCIS ones, though to be fair I didn't search for many or for long. edit: OK now that I've quit searching, these two are my favorite (an: Friends style - mainly for how it's actually crafted like a sitcom intro, and Sherlock style for the detailed style recreation. Friday night for McGann, ladies and gentlemen! McGann fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Dec 6, 2014 |
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Dec 6, 2014 03:51
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What if what we think of as Cybermen really aren't? Instead they're the expendable footsoldiers of the real Cyber race -- that is, the original inhabitants of Mondas -- who use them to establish Mondas's security without endangering any actual Mondasians. The goal is survival after all, right? The Mondasians -- the "real" Cybermen -- would be cybernetic, too, but with very different priorities than what we think of as Cybermen. Presumably the Cyber-Controllers and whatnot would be Mondasians (or directly controlled by them), but they would operate at a safe remove. One can imagine Mondas carefully hidden out there, where the Mondasians stay alive for vast centuries. Maybe some occasionally die (a great systems failure) and some are still even occasionally born, connected to the Grid early on, growing into their cybernetic hardware as part of their development. Body horror ahoy. This dovetails nicely with what PriorMarcus is saying, IMO. The "real" cybermen think and act more like he describes, with the protective force of Cyber-stooges projecting force well ahead of them. If the priority is survival, don't fight wars -- not yourself, anyway. Every death is a failure. Instead, skulk and connive. If you require violence, create expendables to fight your battles for you -- the dumber the better, so they never present a threat to you. But not for the sake of conquest, only to keep the homeworld secret and safe. Only to make it easier to survive. (Well, that was a fun piece of head-canon. Cybermen should be so much more, dammit.  )
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Dec 6, 2014 05:43
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PriorMarcus posted:I hated that scene. It's exactly what the Cybermen shouldn't be. A zombie inside a robot. The shell shouldn't have any autonomy without the body inside still being alive and ticking, because otherwise it's just a robot powered by blood. Counterpoint: Handles  Also speaking of themes, when I listen to them all back to back, 9 and 11s are the best, and the ones I most strongly associate with the revivial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sABWdtN5NV8
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Dec 6, 2014 06:15
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Astroman posted:Counterpoint: Handles Amy's theme is pretty inexorably associated with 11 and the revival as a whole for me as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGKgM7BW41E
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Dec 6, 2014 06:28
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Pretty hard not to associate the 11th Doctor's theme with the revival seeing as we had a good four years where it was half of every episode's music.
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Dec 6, 2014 07:01
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pgroce posted:What if what we think of as Cybermen really aren't? Instead they're the expendable footsoldiers of the real Cyber race -- that is, the original inhabitants of Mondas -- who use them to establish Mondas's security without endangering any actual Mondasians. The goal is survival after all, right? This is sort of what Spare Parts did with the cyber leaders.
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Dec 6, 2014 07:09
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Starting to go through and watch some of the old serials, starting with Genesis. I like how the beginning with the other Time Lord is just: "Yo help us kill-" "No." "-some Daleks." "...Ok."
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Dec 6, 2014 08:21
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PriorMarcus posted:I hated that scene. It's exactly what the Cybermen shouldn't be. A zombie inside a robot. The shell shouldn't have any autonomy without the body inside still being alive and ticking, because otherwise it's just a robot powered by blood. That's why I liked it, because it served to further the idea that the Cybermen are so far gone beyond the original intent of the Mondasians that they've even "logically" reduced brains as being nothing more than another simply replaceable organic component required to further serve the now completely nonsensical idea of "survival". The survival instinct of the original Mondasians has been replaced by a meaningless software imperative that exists purely for its own sake - the "why" of survival has become irrelevant, the identity of the Cyberman hasn't just been replaced on an individual basis but a group one as well - the "race" of Cybermen are just whatever new units they produce. In my mind, there probably isn't nor should there need to be any of the original Mondasians left, they long since went extinct despite their desperation to survive, and what is left is a horrible parody of existence by a race serving an imperative they can't deny but don't understand. Why "We muzzzt survive"? Because "we muzzzt", that's all there is to it. So with that in mind, The Pandorica Opens featuring a hollow, mechanical-components-only Cyberman blindly attempting to replace "parts" with whatever organic elements it could get (including Amy's brain) was just perfect for me. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Dec 6, 2014 |
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Dec 6, 2014 11:36
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PriorMarcus posted:I'd kind of like to see a design for the Cybermen that's almost entirely stripped back. Let's take the head handles and apply them to the entire body, like a sort of power harness crossed with a life support machine. RTD mentioned that the Cybus Cybermen were going to have more handles on the bodies, sort of like you're suggesting. But he was told that there was a greater chance that those handles would become damaged during shooting, creating hold-ups to shooting, so he nixed them.
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Dec 6, 2014 16:38
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Fucknag posted:Starting to go through and watch some of the old serials, starting with Genesis. I like how the beginning with the other Time Lord is just: Even back in the day when the Daleks WEREN'T super omnicidal super jerks capable of wiping out everything, the Doctor still knew that the one exception to his kill rule was the Daleks. Because gently caress Those Guys.
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Dec 6, 2014 17:18
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I just joined the "go watch 'A Christmas Carol' because Netflix finally added it" train and what a great episode. I just wish the show would give up on this weird forced conflict they're trying to do, it's sucked all the soul out of the show 
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Dec 6, 2014 22:28
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Dec 6, 2014 23:29
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Kazy posted:
By which you mean "actual characterization".
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Dec 6, 2014 23:29
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Dabir posted:Pretty hard not to associate the 11th Doctor's theme with the revival seeing as we had a good four years where it was half of every episode's music. You say this like it's a bad thing... Jerusalem posted:In my mind, there probably isn't nor should there need to be any of the original Mondasians left, they long since went extinct despite their desperation to survive, and what is left is a horrible parody of existence by a race serving an imperative they can't deny but don't understand. I choose to believe that somewhere out there, Zheng is still tooling around. In his original body, walking around all the upgraded guys in a silver suit like a boss.
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Dec 6, 2014 23:42
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Now I wish he were still the Doctor, so there could be a scene where his shirt gets ripped off and he's just buff as hell.
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Dec 6, 2014 23:45
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sunsweet posted:Now I wish he were still the Doctor, so there could be a scene where his shirt gets ripped off and he's just buff as hell. That'll happen in the 60th anniversary story.
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Dec 6, 2014 23:49
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I can't begin to tell you what I'm thinking right now.
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Dec 6, 2014 23:54
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egon_beeblebrox posted:That'll happen in the 60th anniversary story. "Well, we can't really have the older actors back, they're too fat. Except Matt, but he's also too big." 
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Dec 7, 2014 00:01
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sunsweet posted:Now I wish he were still the Doctor, so there could be a scene where his shirt gets ripped off and he's just buff as hell. Clara: You got REALLY bored, didn't you? 11th: You have no idea! 
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Dec 7, 2014 00:14
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"GAZE AT THE MIGHT OF THE DAL-EKS!" "Gaze into the fist of the Doctor!"
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Dec 7, 2014 00:24
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That head looks so fundamentally wrong on that body, my brain can't even begin to process it. 
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Dec 7, 2014 00:39
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Star Platinum posted:That head looks so fundamentally wrong on that body, my brain can't even begin to process it. That's nothing, behold Carrot Top: 
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Dec 7, 2014 00:48
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sunsweet posted:Now I wish he were still the Doctor, so there could be a scene where his shirt gets ripped off and he's just buff as hell. He'd leave the bow tie on, of course.
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Dec 7, 2014 00:58
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Uh Oh! Somebody skipped the Head-day! Or maybe he needs a manly full-beard to round-up that tiny head.
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Dec 7, 2014 01:15
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I wish it was tennant who got ripped, because then I could use my "Make the basis of your society the man who never would.., Skip leg day" joke.
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Dec 7, 2014 01:16
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SiKboy posted:I wish it was tennant who got ripped, because then I could use my "Make the basis of your society the man who never would.., Skip leg day" joke. Holy christ I am laughing way too hard at that. Lifting humor.
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Dec 7, 2014 03:24
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Dec 7, 2014 04:56
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The Doctor did have two hundred years at Trenzalore to get buff...
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Dec 7, 2014 05:20
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CobiWann posted:The Doctor did have two hundred years at Trenzalore to get buff... That is true, he looked fit as by the end of it.
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Dec 7, 2014 05:39
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SiKboy posted:I wish it was tennant who got ripped, because then I could use my "Make the basis of your society the man who never would.., Skip leg day" joke. I call this move my "Sonic Swole-driver."
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Dec 7, 2014 08:37
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"Deltoids and the Bannermen"
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Dec 7, 2014 12:01
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I'm the Doctor. I'm a bodybuilder. I'm from the planet Swole in the Constellation of Gains. I'm 17.5 stones, 5% bodyfat, and I'm the man who is gonna save your back and all the vertebrae you're destroying with your lovely deadlifts. You got a problem with that? edit to include my semi-random Youtube posting http://youtu.be/hCnZZ-_s1jQ?t=2m11s "I've reversed the polarity of the neutron flow. That's all I can do." - Three "Has anyone considered...talking to time?" - Five McGann fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Dec 7, 2014 |
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Dec 7, 2014 16:01
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 Other Lives is such a weird story, it's incredible refreshing in some parts and utterly infuriating in others. It manages to give all three main characters their own distinct storylines without feeling cluttered (though it's no surprise C'Rizz's is the weakest) and generally just has an air of fun about it even in spite of some of the more troubling aspects of Victorian England it plays around with. In the end it is pretty drat contrived and doesn't so much drop plot-threads as just let them meander off to unsatisfying resolutions, and there is one bit in particular that comes across as particularly dark - feeling like it was inserted in from another story that didn't quite have the same air of ridiculousness this story otherwise appears to embrace so readily. The Doctor takes Charley to London in 1851 to see The Great Exhibition, something he'd planned to do a few lives earlier in order to celebrate Adric's death, only for Tegan and Nyssa to wreck his good time. I say he takes Charley because gently caress you C'Rizz, we're going to see something loving incredible in a time and place where you'd be treated like a freak so you get to stay in the TARDIS the entire time we're gone t  . Dressing Charley up in period-appropriate costume, the two head out amongst the teeming crowds to take in the industrial wonders of the day. Charley is particularly excited, what with the Great Exhibition having taking place closer to her time-period than her time-period is to our modern day, it's something she always wanted to see and now she gets a chance. She quickly gets separated from the Doctor as she rushes about, leaving the disgruntled Doctor to ignore a furious woman trying to catch her son who, like Charley, was to explore the Crystal Palace at his own pace.Unfortunately for the Doctor this puts him squarely in the sights of the ridiculously named Mr Fazackerly, a stickler for the rules who takes an immediate disliking to the Doctor and takes great relish in kicking him out of the exhibit when he discovers he doesn't have a ticket. This is the first example of one of the more refreshing aspects of this story - so often in Doctor Who people tend to just take the main characters at their word, particularly the Doctor. That can work, especially when it is down to the Doctor projecting such an air of confidence/authority that people assume he MUST be somebody who knows what he is doing. But more often than not it is a shortcut for the writer to bypass the messy but more realistic suspicion, questioning and reticence of most people to a complete stranger walking in and trying to dictate terms to them. In this audio, the main characters are frequently talked over, ignored, have their opinions or objections dismissed outright or are left in a state of shocked silence as accusations are levied against them. This is particularly the case for the Doctor in this story, as he is frequently finding himself the victim of circumstance and mistaken identity and seemingly powerless to convince anybody to just shut up for half a second and listen to him clever his way out of the situation. In fact, at one point he finds himself tossed in jail accused of being a revolutionary, where he is threatened by actual revolutionaries who accuse him of being a member of the establishment. He quickly reveals he managed to lift the keys off the jailer, which you would expect would mark the moment he earns the trust of his fellow prisoners... only they proceed to all escape while leaving him locked up inside! In fact, the Doctor quickly learns to just shut up and go along with somebody else's plan instead, because every time he opens his mouth he just seems to dig himself in deeper. Meanwhile, Charley finds herself constantly screwing things up. Unknowingly meeting her childhood hero - the Duke of Wellington - she ends up trying to foil an assassination attempt on a couple of visiting French dignitaries which results in her getting kicked out of the Great Exhibition and believing the Doctor has taken off in the TARDIS without her. Left to wander the streets half a century before she'll even be born, she meets the atrociously named Rufus Dimplesqueeze (good lord, these names) who seems strangely delighted with every bit of nonsense she babbles to him... eventually revealing the reason why - he thinks she is a prostitute and all this nonsense is her cover for her business. Scandalized, she storms out and chooses to spend a night sleeping in a doorway before eventually paying a visit to the only person she knows in this time and place - the Duke of Wellington. C'Rizz, convinced to leave the TARDIS by Charley, runs straight into a con-man who is so obvious that only a literal alien from another dimension could get fooled by his patter, which is a bit of luck. Convinced to walk into a dark isolated area, C'Rizz finally starts to suspect something is up when Crackles refers to Charley (whose name he got from C'Rizz) as a man but at that point it is too late, as he gets knocked out by Crackles. He wakes up to find himself chained up and forced to strip naked and put on a thong (I am not making this up) and put into a cell with a midget called Maxi. Crackles runs a freak show and is taking advantage of the Great Exhibition's drawing power to make money from the crowds rolling up to see the industrial wonders, and considers C'Rizz's unique look as a great new headline act. C'Rizz of course is hardly enthusiastic about the idea, but Crackles' whip doesn't seem to be interested in debates. Charley and C'Rizz's storylines quickly merge together as the Duke of Wellington decides to make use of Charley's similar frame to double for missing French noblewoman Madame De Roche. Spotting one of Crackles' advertisements for his freak show, Charley insists that they liberate C'Rizz who - despite his alien skin coloring and texture - becomes the stand-in for Monsieur De Roche. This is kind of ridiculous but by this point in the story, the Doctor-less companions basically seem to have decided to just roll with whatever they run into since it isn't like they have any other options. Attending the Great Exhibition so the public can see the French Nobles (there are all kinds of fears about revolution and international incidents if it is revealed they are missing), the utterly ridiculous scheme seems to be working until the Doctor spots them and sees right through the disguise. In their delight at being reunited they break character and reveal they're absolutely NOT the French, which by a stroke of luck coincides with the return of the real Nobles due to a remarkable bit of timing. The trio quickly say their goodbyes to the Duke of Wellington and get the gently caress out of dodge before anything else can go horribly wrong for them. The basic story is surprisingly straightforward despite the equal time given to all three characters. However this also means that very little space is given to the other storyline threads running through the audio. The political atmosphere of the day is very loosely explained by the Duke of Wellington and by the nature of his character it is unclear just how much of his fears are justified and how much is the product of his old, insulated worldview. There IS an assassin running about but he slips between being a dedicated revolutionary and a straight-up mercenary only interested in getting paid, and we never get any sense of exactly WHO hired him (though it doesn't necessarily matter). Dimplesqueeze (ugh, that name) reappears later in the story with a ridiculous connection to another character, and what they know about him kinda seems to clash with what information we already have. The set-up of the dilemma the other character is in is ridiculously contrived and the awkward dinner that takes place with the Doctor left me none the wiser whether the guy had rumbled the game or if he was a weirdly spoken idiot. The line,"I left my whiskers in Africa" is pretty hilarious though. The Doctor's own storyline is so weird that at first I thought he was being set-up in some way by the assassin who left him locked in the jail. His savior's sad realization that the Doctor is not who they want him to be is almost sad except the situation is so bizarre and contrived that it is hard to take them seriously. The Doctor just kind of up and abandoning them with nothing more but a,"I'll check in on you someday if I'm back in the area I guess  " feels really weird, and that is made worse by the utterly nonsensical "happy" resolution that happens in the closing seconds of the story, though it does have a pretty great closing zinger. There is also an incredibly dark moment featuring C'Rizz late in the story that feels really out of place for this story, which has generally been lighthearted in tone. It serves well to further the characterization introduced at the end of Terror Firma but is otherwise a bad fit for this story. Other Lives is a weird story, but a fun one. You'll just need to be prepared to accept some contrivances in the plot, poor resolution some of the introduced plot threads, an eye-opening "what the hell?" moment with C'Rizz, and some very weakly defined supporting characters that were the cost of the equal treatment given to the three main castmembers. Enjoyable but weird, but certainly not cookie-cutter. It was still a pretty dick move of the Doctor to take his companions to a place where one of them wasn't allowed to leave the TARDIS!
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Dec 8, 2014 00:52
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My stepdaughter just saw the Matt Smith picture. First, she now wants to see the new Terminator movie and I have to figure out if I can show her the first two. Second, she's wondering why DDPYoga isn't making me look like that.
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Dec 8, 2014 02:16
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CobiWann posted:First, she now wants to see the new Terminator movie oh god, what have I wrought!?
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Dec 8, 2014 02:19
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