|
cargohills posted:I'm pretty sure Burkion was replying to this and was using the magical power of hyperbole I am not literally Hitler.
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 21:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 13:11 |
|
|
Burkion posted:I am not literally Hitler. Good thing or else Rory'll punch you in the face.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:I don't want people to turn off their brains. I want them to put them to better use. I get frustrated by surface-level critiques and nit-picks because there's so many other ways, far more interesting ways, to critique and analyze art. And when it comes to "scientific accuracy" in Doctor Who, it's all nitpicks. please stop calling doctor who art.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 21:58
|
|
|
Attitude Indicator posted:please stop calling doctor who art. Everything is art
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 22:00
|
|
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:Everything is art if you decide to view it like that, if not you might be wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 22:02
|
|
|
Everything is fart, and also art.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 22:02
|
|
|
In a sort of half-hearted defense of DoctorWhat's point, I think it's perfectly reasonable to look at something like Kill The Moon, acknowledge that it has some flaws (in this case, scientific nonsense in a story that's presenting the science as a key plot element) but that those flaws don't detract from the things you liked and valued about that story. An example that's been on my mind a bit is the Big Finish story Invaders From Mars. Looked at objectively, it's a mess. I choose not to look at it objectively, because I love the subject matter, I enjoy the cast, and I just had fun listening to most of it, and if I had to roll my eyes at a bit of plotting (or cringe at certain uses of language), the joy I got from Doctor Who Meets War Of The Worlds played tongue in cheek is what I actually took away from the thing. The catch is that no one would actually be wrong in saying that Invaders was a flawed story, or that Kill The Moon was a flawed story. To me, those flaws largely don't matter that much. To others, they do. Neither of us are wrong. Also, it's been unseasonably warm in Minnesota these past couple weeks. (In that molecular motion is technically possible.) If we were having our usual January, most likely my thoughts about Kill the Moon would take the form of "If the moon were really a space dragon egg, the giant wolf that ate the sun would have had it as an appetizer already".
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 22:05
|
|
|
Burkion posted:Basically DoctorWhat, imagine if we had a tense Doctor Who episode where the Doctor could do a number of things supported by the story, but instead, to save the day, he just starts flying around without any build up and then turns all of the bad guys into puppies with the power of SCIENCE LOVE. Isn't this the climax of Last Of The Time Lords? Aside from the puppies.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 22:26
|
|
|
Fil5000 posted:Isn't this the climax of Last Of The Time Lords? Aside from the puppies. I might have realized that half way through writing that and added the puppies because my first most ridiculous idea was "and the nthe Doctor shoots laser beams until the bad guys die" for how tone deaf it'd be to the morals of the show. Then I remembered!
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 22:52
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:I don't want people to turn off their brains. I want them to put them to better use. I get frustrated by surface-level critiques and nit-picks because there's so many other ways, far more interesting ways, to critique and analyze art. And when it comes to "scientific accuracy" in Doctor Who, it's all nitpicks. Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. When I watch DW, I am already hugely suspending my disbelief at just accepting the basic premise (an immortal, shapechanging alien travels through time and space having wild adventures in a blue box that is bigger on the inside than the outside). If anything, it's even more important that the writers get the more "mundane" scientific details at least in the same neighborhood as "accurate", because if they don't, it ends up taking a person out of the show when they go "man that is such bullshit" when a readily verifiable scientific fact that they know to be true is ignored/shat upon without any plausible explanation other than "well it's just a science fiction fantasy show, whaddya expect"  You are still basically making the "turn your brains off" argument here, it's just that you're claiming the brains should only be turned off when it comes to scientific accuracy, in order that DW can be better "appreciated" somehow.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2015 23:43
|
|
|
Rhyno posted:David Tennant has taken the role of Zebediah Kilgrave (the Purple Man) on Marvel's AKA Jessia Jones, the second of their Netflix series. Holy poo poo, that's gonna get dark 
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 00:26
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:Holy poo poo, that's gonna get dark There's a Secret Smile joke in here somewhere...
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 00:30
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:Holy poo poo, that's gonna get dark Next thing you know, Matt Smith will be playing Dr Light in the big-screen adaptation of Identity Crisis.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 00:40
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:The "scientific accuracy" of the episode is beyond reproach, which is to say that if you seriously think that the blatant contrafactuals and physics violations actually constitute an inherent problem, then you're thoroughly missing the point of the episode and I have to worry that you might be missing (some of) the point of Doctor Who, or, indeed, the point of all human creative endeavor. I have yet to hear a cogent argument as to why "the moon is an egg" is an invalid premise for Doctor Who and I doubt one exists. And honestly, I can't quite tell you why. Because on the face of it, what you're saying seems right. I've always loved Star Trek, and never for a moment thought it was scientifically plausible. Heck, I love Doctor Who, and I've rarely had an issue with how unrealistic it was, and it's never ruined an episode like it ruined those two for me. You think getting bothered by that type of thing is "missing the point," not just of Doctor Who, but of all creative endeavor. I'd be interested if you could help me understand how that is. What I'm doing wrong exactly. For the record, "that type of thing" to me isn't just getting things wrong, but a kind of aggressive getting things wrong. A deep incuriosity as to how things work in a very damaging way. I'm trying to think of other things that would inspire this feeling in me outside of Sci-Fi, where the water is muddied by a long tradition of lovely science in good stories. Maybe you could imagine some sort of nice realistic character drama that took place in America, and one character is from Canada, and part of that character's backstory is that they had trouble when they moved to America learning the language, because they speak Spanish in Canada. Imagine this is pretty clearly the author's honest ignorance of Canada, and that they just don't really care to learn what language they speak, and they just kind of assumed that countries bordering the US speak Spanish. Would it be wrong of me to think less of that story? The story isn't about Canada, even if it uses a Canadian character, so am I not missing the point by criticizing the story on the basis of how wrongly they depicted Canada? I feel, unless you're explicitly going for a surreal nonsense atmosphere, you need to get stuff like that right, or you're damaging your story because you're damaging your credibility. I admire your... ideological purity. But I have trouble reconciling your high minded ideas with how I actually feel about art.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:13
|
|
|
For me, it comes from both ends; the idea that, say, RTD is more interested in character moments than he is anything else gives you a big insight into why he might choose having the Doctor flown by golden angels and see Kylie Minogue hovering as a space ghost made of atoms. When I was sat there in 2000-whatever thinking "made of atoms? what the gently caress is that?" I was wrong in my conviction that this kind of stuff would sink the show - in fact it only got more popular, because while they might not be able to enunciate it in catchphrases like 'suspension of disbelief' people really, really enjoy that stuff and it was to my loss that I was farting around thinking about science. At the other end, the more you learn about science and the scientific method the more you realise that lots of it is really boring and stuff on TV which is celebrating 'science' really just tends to be celebrating scientists in the way Fireman Sam celebrates firefighters, or else it's Star Trek style put the flibbilator in the gongtron for maximum pipetart.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:25
|
|
|
You're ascribing rather sinister motivations to writing decisions that I don't think hold up under scrutiny. You describe an incuriosity; I think the opposite is (broadly) true. There's a tremendous curiosity, but not about moonegg biology or fireproof forests. The curiosity is about human drama, and I don't think that focus does any violence to natural curiosity or scientific ventures. Of course, that doesn't mean Forest or, indeed, Moon are Good Art automatically. It's all in the executions, after all. I think Moon broadly succeeds at most of what it sets out to do, (apart from "making the spiders interesting", which it clearly TRIES to do but can't quite manage); Forest, on the other hand, also tries to be a Human Drama, but the human drama doesn't follow naturally from the premises established by the episode (and season), which in addition to the inherent failures at what it sets out to do also makes its flagrant flaunting of scientific principals more grating for a lot of people. I'm never going to find scientific inaccuracy in Doctor Who grating. It's not going to "break my immersion", because I don't "immerse" myself in the ways other people do. I immerse myself in the cinematography, the reiterated iconography, the flaunted falseness and affected artificiality. I am, and have been for a very long time, acutely aware of the artificiality of fiction and of the deliberateness of storytelling. I've been paying attention to metatexts ever since I watched The Wizard of Oz as a little kid and realized the symbolism of the switch to color. BBC America's weird advert-squeezing framerate shenanigans piss me off far more than the mass/energy dilemmas of the moonegg. I guess that perspective isn't natural for everyone. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:25
|
|
|
RodShaft posted:I disagree. There are plenty of great narratives about a few people holding out and having no affect on the greater problem being solved. War movies. zombie movies. Irish plays. This one was just told poorly and focused on the event instead of the characters. I'm not sure we're disagreeing, necessarily, just coming at it from different angles. With war and zombie movies, there's an external threat that the protagonists have to face down, have to survive, have to endure... With something like Waiting for Godot, the point is that nothing is going to happen, and it's an existential examination of stasis and the inevitability of suffering. There's still something happening to the characters, and they are changed by it, or (especially in the latter), the express purpose is that nothing will ever change, but they are, for example, too afraid to commit suicide for fear of a change occurring. The characters still develop via interaction, even if nothing happens. And believe me, I love a good base under siege. But this was "Don't take your medicine. Don't do anything. The Earth mother will protect us." They weren't holding out, really. They were looking for a solution, and the solution turned out to be, "Don't do anything." Profoundly disappointing. It's something that works very well for a movie or play, because we won't be seeing those characters again, I guess is the big difference. But it's also why I burned out on The Walking Dead comic, once I realized that I couldn't remember any character's names other than Rick... Rhyno posted:David Tennant has taken the role of Zebediah Kilgrave (the Purple Man) on Marvel's AKA Jessia Jones, the second of their Netflix series. More of a return to form, if anything... 
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:25
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:You're ascribing rather sinister motivations to writing decisions that I don't think hold up under scrutiny. You describe an incuriosity; I think the opposite is (broadly) true. There's a tremendous curiosity, but not about moonegg biology or fireproof forests. The curiosity is about human drama, and I don't think that focus does any violence to natural curiosity or scientific ventures. "I guess I'm just too special for you all to handle." On that we agree, though probably not the way you'd like.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:28
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:I'm never going to find scientific inaccuracy in Doctor Who grating. It's not going to "break my immersion", because I don't "immerse" myself in the ways other people do. I immerse myself in the cinematography, the reiterated iconography, the flaunted falseness and affected artificiality. I am, and have been for a very long time, acutely aware of the artificiality of fiction and of the deliberateness of storytelling. I've been paying attention to metatexts ever since I watched The Wizard of Oz as a little kid and realized the symbolism of the switch to color. BBC America's weird advert-squeezing framerate shenanigans piss me off far more than the mass/energy dilemmas of the moonegg. Holy poo poo, get over yourself. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:30
|
|
|
Hey, chill out. That's absolutely not what I was expressing. This isn't about me. I didn't want this to be about me. There are loads of things that I want to be about me, yes; otherwise I wouldn't post so much. But this isn't one of them. This is me, responding to a question in the most sincere way I can, trying to articulate a position that I've clearly not been expressing very well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:32
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:Hey, chill out. That's absolutely not what I was expressing. This isn't about me. I didn't want this to be about me. The problem is that you are telling people that they are not appreciating DW the way you think it should be appreciated. It's not how you're saying it, it's what you're saying in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:36
|
|
|
...yeah. I've said some ugly things, haven't I. I'm sorry. I hate people who get all gatekeeper-y about fandom, but sometimes I end up doing the same lovely things from a different angle and that's wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:39
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:...yeah. I've said some ugly things, haven't I. I'm sorry. I hate people who get all gatekeeper-y about fandom, but sometimes I end up doing the same lovely things from a different angle and that's wrong. I still love you. Whether you like it or not.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 01:59
|
|
|
Ok, let me reverse the polarity of this chat...
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:17
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:Ok, let me reverse the polarity of this chat... This makes me feel uncomfortable.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:19
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:Ok, let me reverse the polarity of this chat... Suddenly the words POLICE BOX look out of place. It's like he's wearing a Doctor Who costume so he can get close to children, and then reveal that he is Truancy Bot, come to arrest them for their crime of skipping out.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:22
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:Ok, let me reverse the polarity of this chat... The Doctor doesnt' need any more chances to make out with the TARDIS thank you
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:23
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:Ok, let me reverse the polarity of this chat... I don't like what you're doing here. I don't feel like I have a lot of outs. [/achewood_reference]
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:31
|
|
|
CobiWann posted:Ok, let me reverse the polarity of this chat... I hate everything about this.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:33
|
|
|
Sydney Bottocks posted:I don't like what you're doing here. I don't feel like I have a lot of outs. [/achewood_reference] Moffat made a friend's arrest of RTD after Planet of the Dead aired. That's why we had to wait so many months for Waters of Mars.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 02:34
|
|
|
I just listened to Butcher of Brisbane and it was drat good. My exposure to Talons of Weng Chiang was not seeing it, but reading the novel as a kid. I watched it in full for the first time before listening to the audio. This was without a doubt continuity-wise a difficult story to pull off. The 4th Doctor met Magnus Greel at his death, in Victorian London when Greel had traveled there back in time from WWVI. Before that, in the Doctor's timeline, another Doctor, perhaps the 4th, marched with the Filipino Army on Reykjavik at the end of the war. And now here we are with the 5th Doctor, mucking around with Greel before he leaves the 51st century and it all as to happen in a way to not mess up any of the Doctor's previous timestream. Greel was experimenting with time travel, but in lovely way which damaged people irreparably. It was one of these early experiments which hit the TARDIS, causing Nyssa and Turlough to fall into the 51st century, a few years before WWVI. Nyssa actually is ENGAGED to Greel.  And Tegan and the Doctor arrive 3 years after Nyssa and Turlough arrive.This story really hits a lot of great beats. We get to see how Greel became "The Butcher of Brisbane" (with a great Tegan connection) and how a guy that is the "Minister of Justice" was involved with time travel machinations. We get to see some interesting glimpses of the 51st century, how a future Earth with colonies experiencing an ice age would be, and how it would produce technology like Greel's time cabinet, rejuvinator machine, and Mr. Sin. The threads of the Doctor/Tegan and Nyssa/Turlogh tie in great, with some good scenes for all of them. A new "mad scientist" in the vein of Davros is introduced, to explain how Greel actually got his tech. It all wraps up quite neatly, dovetailing into what we saw with the 4th Doctor. It's particularly chilling when the Doctor starts muttering about "...and Weng-Chiang was the God of Plenty!" and is getting more and more worried/frustrated/trapped by being caught up in events he is way too close to, a doomed dance that he knows exactly the ending to. The only missed opportunity that I saw was with the Time Agents. The concept of Time Agents from the 51st Century was introduced here, with Greel ranting about being followed by them. And of course, in the new series we meet 51st century Time Agent Captain Jack. This audio was a perfect occasion to dovetail in the two series. Sure, it's beyond debate now that the new show is a continuation of the old, and Big Finish is in canon. But it's still always nice to see some elements from the new show showing up in the "old" via audio. It's tough because BF can't use new series characters or monsters/aliens created for it. But they could probably get away with us seeing some sort of Jack-analogue, complete with a Vortex Manipulator on his wrist. Unfortunately the whole "Time Agent" thing Greel was freaking out about was simply the 5th Doctor bullshitting him and pretending to be one. It's heavily implied that he made it up on the spot, "I'm a...Time Agent...yeah, that's the ticket!" So how the hell does Captain Jack's organization fit in to that? Besides that, it was a great story and well worth the listen.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 04:12
|
|
|
 The Nowhere Place is a really difficult story to like. It's a structural mess with no real sense of flow, the main supporting character is really badly written, and the other supporting characters might as well not exist. But it evokes some really striking imagery, the backstory of the "monster" is pretty drat cool, and it sees a welcome (if surprising) return of Maggie Stables as Evelyn Smythe, who as always shares a wonderful chemistry with Colin Baker as the Doctor. The conclusion feels like a bit of a cop-out, and it never really engages with the moral conundrum it introduces, or the Doctor's own sense of guilt over his part in resolving the issue - but there is something to be said about the surprisingly straightforward and simple way he reduces the problem to an easy solution, and how it exposes the horrific, incomprehensible creature at the heart of "The Nowhere Place" as not only a victim itself, but as prone to failure and mistakes as the "lesser" beings it engulfs. In 2197, a fighter pilot named Armstrong stationed on a spaceship in Earth's solar system hears a mysterious bell. When a drill takes place, he fails to get to his ship and launch it, and seems confused and frightened when chewed out by the ships' Captain. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Evelyn are heading to 21st Century Earth when the Doctor suddenly panics and hauls the TARDIS away through time and space. Curious himself what could have caused his sudden alarm/revulsion, he and Evelyn both hear the same bell as Armstrong but the TARDIS - despite scanning it earlier for the Doctor - records that they heard no sound. Investigating further, they arrive on the spaceship and, following some troubles with the Captain, follow Armstrong to a cargo-hold where a door is bizarrely placed into the wall of the ship facing out into space, a door with no airlock. It opens and Armstrong steps through it, and on the other side Evelyn sees.... nowhere/nothing/nobody. The Doctor is inside the TARDIS scanning, and when he returns he informs Evelyn dramatically that according to the TARDIS, the door is 50 billion years old. The premise is fascinating - a 50 billion year old door to nowhere sitting incongruously in the wall of a spaceship in the year 2197. Things get even weirder when the Doctor puts his ear to the door and hears, of all things, a train from the 1950s. Unfortunately, things kinda fall apart here as the terror of the door (it opens periodically and more and more members of the crew are drawn into "nowhere") gets sidetracked throughout episode 3, as the Doctor takes Evelyn (who has herself heard the siren song) with him back to England in the 1950s and lands them on the train he has identified as the source of the bell they keep hearing in 2197. While there is a very deliberate reason for this, it means the tension and stress of the survivors on the ship - the Valiant - is completely lost, it's a base under siege story where the Doctor and companion just hop up and go somewhere else for another adventure halfway through, and then come back expecting the tension that had been ratcheting up in the first two episodes to still be present. The third episode diversion is important to the Doctor's understanding of what is happening in 2197, but it wrecks the flow of the story, removing the sense of tension. The return in episode 4, where we find Captain Oswin suffering what is essentially a nervous breakdown after 2 months of failing to keep her crew from the undeniable siren call for THE DOOR, is meant to get across just how much she has suffered, which in turn is meant to explain why she acts the way she does and why she does the things she does. But that third episode diversion has basically derailed the story, and though "fixing" this would require reworking the ENTIRE story, I can't help but feel it was a mistake to produce the story in this way. Supporting character wise, the major non-Doctor/non-Companion character is Captain Tanya Oswin. The idea of the story seems to be that Oswin is a no-nonsense officer who makes tough decisions and doesn't allow personal considerations or her own concerns to get in the way of procedure or duty. As the story unfolds, her composure unravels as she fails to deal with the threat to the Valiant, so by the end her actions - desperate and dangerous - are meant to feel believable. Unfortunately, the way the episode is structured both Oswin and her crew - who have a vital role - come across as utterly incompetent and hilariously inept. Oswin seems totally out of her depth, which to be fair she is (even the Doctor is!) but she comes across as reactionary and dithering, constantly questioning herself or making petty little comments re: the Doctor or her own crew. She hardly inspires confidence as an authority figure, and I could never quite tell if we were meant to commiserate with her impossible situation or consider her a liability making the situation worse. By the fourth episode, two months have passed since the Doctor and Evelyn last saw her, and she's basically gone off the deep end. This is meant to explain her desperation last-gasp tactic to destroy THE DOOR, paralleling some of the crazed characters we got during the Pertwee era, but to be honest her characterization doesn't feel all that different from the first 2 episodes, and it wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility to think she would have done the same thing when in "control" of her faculties. Her final decision, though integral to the resolution of the plot, sees her removed from the story entirely, and we never get a chance to see her face up to the consequences of those actions, nothing beyond an off-hand comment by the Doctor about what she chose to do. Episode 3 introduces two completely new characters and a background story for them as they go about their own "adventure", which the Doctor and Evelyn interupt before making an abrupt departure after the Doctor gets his head around exactly what is going on. The voice of one of them appears at the end of episode 4, but otherwise they're just there for the one episode and then gone, and while it's all in service to the greater story it makes them feel like a distraction - I can't help but think the story would have been served better by having the 2197 story with frequent interludes to the 1950s and what is going on with those two. By isolating it so clearly in episode 3, it manages to make episode 3 feel extraneous even though it is in fact vital to the overall story, and providing for the 2 month gap Oswin suffers between episodes 2 and 4. There is some interesting stuff there about the human spirit for exploration and how the smallest things can spark the biggest things, and that is integral to the story, but when you've got a story set in a 22nd Century spaceship spend an entire episode on a 1950s train, you've got be careful about maintaining the flow of the narrative... and this story doesn't do that. Evelyn is a surprise "return", for me at least. The last Evelyn story I heard had quite the level of finality to it, and was an excellent send-off for the character in my opinion. Of course the nature of Doctor Who stories and the Big Finish schedule in particular means there is no reason we can't have a "final" story for a character and then just have more stories show up later that are set BEFORE that story. Such is the case here, as we find the Doctor and Evelyn are still in the midst of their adventures together, and they're just as solid a pair as ever, with a wonderful chemistry between them. I certainly don't mind hearing more Maggie Stables, and she gets some good stuff here as she finds herself just as susceptible to the siren song of THE DOOR as the other humans. There is a reason for that (and why it doesn't affect the Doctor the same way) and Evelyn proves the catalyst for the Doctor figuring out what is going on. By the 4th episode though she is pretty much reduced to just standing around like a prop waiting for something to happen - she provides the drama around the desperate decision the near-insane Oswin feels she has to make, as well as a personal stake for the Doctor beyond the notion of the whole human race (and it's future history) being at risk... but she doesn't offer much more in her own right, she's just there waiting for the Doctor to come save her, or to die as a result of Oswin's actions. The "monster" is great, in concept at least. In one of the more striking bits of visual imagery the story evokes, the nameless being is described by Evelyn as nothing more than a terrible open mouth, containing untold billions of faces of strange races screaming in terror and rage within, all the voices joining in horrible unison to boom,"TIME'S END! TIME'S END!" over and over again. It evokes a sense of dread in all, but for the humans there is a siren song aspect to it, even as they beg not to, they can't resist answering that call and walking through the door to "the nowhere place" where they join the chorus of all previous victims. The Doctor is revolted by the thing, not because of its physical appearance but because its nature offends his sense as a Time Lord - and once we learn who and what the thing is, that makes perfect sense. The almost banal nature of what caused the creation of the creature is kind of perfect, and its undeniable urge to summon others into its trap makes perfect sense, especially when the Doctor cuts through all the bullshit and makes it face up to its own nature and how wrong it's actions are, how petty and pathetic it is. Of course a place like "Time's End" is never going to be a strictly linear progression of cause and effect, and it turns out it's "revenge" has pretty much caused the same accident that forced this all to happen in the first place, just as Oswin's own clearly petty and fearful actions are going to cause her own problems. The Doctor finally finds a solution to the issue, setting things back to the way they are "supposed" to be, but as he tells Evelyn, he can't say that he actually did a "good" thing - just that he did the best he could, and that is all any of us can ever do. The Nowhere Place is a great concept poorly executed, with weak supporting characters, a disrupted narrative flow, and a resolution that shows so much promise but suffers from the weak story that precedes it. I'd far rather have this type of interesting failure from Big Finish though, than a well-executed but safe (and ultimately boring) story that just feels generic. Big Finish seemed to be guilty of the latter for a patch around the time the revival was announced/the first season aired, but by this point they seem to be finding their footing again. They won't all be winners, and this story isn't one, but it could have been because they were at least willing to give something odd and interesting a try. To paraphrase the Doctor, it might not have been good, but Big Finish tried their best.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 06:49
|
|
|
Astroman posted:Tegan and the Doctor arrive 3 years after Nyssa and Turlough arrive. I'm still a long way off from this story but I'm really interested in hearing it. This quoted bit irritates me a bit though, especially since I just listened to a similar thing happen in The Kingmaker - the fact they keep making the (MORTAL!) humans be stuck slowboating it through time while the long-lived Doctor makes the same trip in a couple of minutes just seems so bizarre to me, especially given these stories are characters from the television series and we know it will all eventually reach their final televised stories where they sure as hell won't look like several years have passed since they started journeying with the Doctor.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 06:53
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:I'm still a long way off from this story but I'm really interested in hearing it. This quoted bit irritates me a bit though, especially since I just listened to a similar thing happen in The Kingmaker - the fact they keep making the (MORTAL!) humans be stuck slowboating it through time while the long-lived Doctor makes the same trip in a couple of minutes just seems so bizarre to me, especially given these stories are characters from the television series and we know it will all eventually reach their final televised stories where they sure as hell won't look like several years have passed since they started journeying with the Doctor. Turlough and Nyssa aren't human.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 06:56
|
|
|
That reminds me, probably my biggest irritation with Moffat is his habit of skipping decades at a time. The Doctor spent more time dossing around doing nothing at the end of series 6 than he spent with every revival companion combined, and then he spent most of his entire lifespan on Trenzalore making toy trains with hyperdrives. I think he was hanging out being glum for years before meeting Clara too. The story really doesn't need for there to be these vast time skips and I don't understand why he put them in there, considering "a long time passed offscreen" is something that's incredibly difficult to communicate in a satisfying way in a TV show at the best of times. I did like old Matt Smith at the end of Time Of The Doctor though, so maybe it was worth it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 07:07
|
|
|
2house2fly posted:The story really doesn't need for there to be these vast time skips and I don't understand why he put them in there Because he's a Big Finish fan, I'm guessing? Someday, when Big Finish has the rights to the new series, they are going to relish those gaps as storytelling opportunities.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 07:09
|
|
|
2house2fly posted:That reminds me, probably my biggest irritation with Moffat is his habit of skipping decades at a time. The Doctor spent more time dossing around doing nothing at the end of series 6 than he spent with every revival companion combined, and then he spent most of his entire lifespan on Trenzalore making toy trains with hyperdrives. I think he was hanging out being glum for years before meeting Clara too. The story really doesn't need for there to be these vast time skips and I don't understand why he put them in there, considering "a long time passed offscreen" is something that's incredibly difficult to communicate in a satisfying way in a TV show at the best of times. I did like old Matt Smith at the end of Time Of The Doctor though, so maybe it was worth it. He apparently does it to accommodate Big Finish and other forms of Past Doctor Adventures like the Titan comics.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 07:10
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:Turlough and Nyssa aren't human. There's nothing to indicate they don't age like humans though, particularly Turlough who was attending school for human youths and may have looked a bit weird if he was aging at a remarkably slower rate than the other kids. They also did it with Peri and Erimem, and though Erimem never appeared on the show, Peri has only a couple of stories with the 5th Doctor before he regenerates and yet she not only goes on multiple adventures with him via Big Finish, but spends two years living in the 15th Century during one of them. I know it's being a bit pedantic, but given how small a timeframe we're dealing with when thinking back to the first and last 5th Doctor/Peri televised adventures, throwing in a random 2 year gap amongst the many other adventures feels really quite silly.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 07:14
|
|
|
DoctorWhat posted:He apparently does it to accommodate Big Finish and other forms of Past Doctor Adventures like the Titan comics. Have you read the new comics? In a spot of brilliance they ditched the tv companions and introduced new characters so they're not locked into the tv episodes. The series for Twelve has Clara but Ten and Eleven are doing their own thing and they're excellent.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 07:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 13:11 |
|
|
What is the actual reason behind the BBC not giving Big Finish new series rights, does anybody know? Are there more lucrative deals elsewhere that hinge upon exclusivity?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 07:18
|
|