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I'll write up more about it later when I stop being so angry, but I was thoroughly gobsmacked by how terrible the end to The Reaping was and surprise sur-loving-prise it was Joseph loving Lidster who wrote it. I hope he never gets within a million miles of the TV show, because he is TERRIBLE.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:25
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That's the chap who sets out to make everything involved have a depressing, misery-porn, twist, isn't it? Let's see, The Rapture, Terror Firma, Master. Yep, that's the one.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:31
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Yep, that's him. My next story is The Gathering which is also by him, and I'm really not looking forward to it at all, which is especially mad because it features Tegan and she's one of my favorite companions  Edit: Oh and your visual guide is pretty neat, it makes me wonder how much effort (and how much use) it would be to try and put together something that lists Doctor/Companion pairings in release order.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:33
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Jerusalem posted:Yep, that's him. My next story is The Gathering which is also by him, and I'm really not looking forward to it at all, which is especially mad because it features Tegan and she's one of my favorite companions Urgh...he always starts off strong, and then the plot just spirals into a crumple of badly executed ideas. Thanks, it wouldn't be too difficult. Could always do something like:  Tad simplistic, perhaps.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:53
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Pesky Splinter posted:That's the chap who sets out to make everything involved have a depressing, misery-porn, twist, isn't it? Let's see, The Rapture, Terror Firma, Master. Yep, that's the one. "Master" is particularly irritating because I think it was very good right up until the twist at the end.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:56
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Wheat Loaf posted:"Master" is particularly irritating because I think it was very good right up until the twist at the end. The moment Death comes into the picture it instantly turns to poo poo. Death-the-entity has no place in Doctor Who, ESPECIALLY not when they're use to strip other characters of agency and independence.
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Mar 8, 2015 21:58
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Pesky Splinter posted:Urgh...he always starts off strong, and then the plot just spirals into a crumple of badly executed ideas. Yeah that seems pretty straightforward. I was thinking along the lines of companion/Doctor faces alongside titles in release order, but that might get a little busy visually. And yeah, the biggest issue I had with The Reaping is that it starts off with a pretty interesting premise and actually goes in a pretty interesting direction before everything goes to poo poo. I was actually quite impressed with how the Doctor deals with the antagonist, but when he returns to wrap things up the story suddenly goes off a cliff into bad writing. When the ending theme started playing with 4 minutes left on the file I legitimately thought it was a fake-out and they were going to suddenly "fix" everything, but then it just started playing ads for the next release and I realized nope, that lovely ending is really it. It seems like the two stories ARE connected though, and I wonder if the repeated numbers/pattern stuff is going to be Lidster's version of "Bad Wolf."
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Mar 8, 2015 22:15
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah that seems pretty straightforward. I was thinking along the lines of companion/Doctor faces alongside titles in release order, but that might get a little busy visually. The only downside to the faces is how big everything would have to be to actually see who is in the episode. E.g:  Nope, just looked up a synopsis, it's linked to stuff in the Gathering. Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Mar 8, 2015 |
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Mar 8, 2015 22:55
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Pesky Splinter posted:Was having a lazy sunday and attempted to make a visual list thing of the audio series, with a vague idea that it could used as a quick reference to doctor specific audios. Is this sort of thing of any use to anyone at all? Ask Big Finish to hire you. They could use someone to organize their information like this. Jerusalem posted:Yep, that's him. My next story is The Gathering which is also by him, and I'm really not looking forward to it at all, which is especially mad because it features Tegan and she's one of my favorite companions Lidster truly is awful. He was also clearly trying to create some kind of an "arc" in these couple of stories(the code word Six keeps hearing, etc.), and they never got around to finishing it, so it remains unanswered. The Reaping is actually tolerable by Lidster standards, because at least it has a companion demonstrating to her family why her time away has been valuable, if handled clumsily and with a needlessly depressing side-story whereas the Gathering, which continues to expand on a bunch of stuff that was in the Reaping and is just terrible to poor Tegan in typically Lidsterian ways, is awful, awful, awful. I look forward to commiserating when you have to come back and vent.
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Mar 8, 2015 23:50
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Who would win in a depression-off between Joe Lidster and Jim Mortimore?
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Mar 9, 2015 00:15
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Mortimore means "More death" so him
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Mar 9, 2015 00:21
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As someone who is writing a review of one of his pieces right now, Lidster has NO loving CLUE how to write an ending. And all his stories so far have "game changing'" ideas like Ace's brother or the Doctor's deal with Death that are NEVER mentioned again anywhere else in Big Finish. Lidster doesn't write audios, he writes fan fiction.
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Mar 9, 2015 01:12
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Before I dive into my overview of the Dark Eyes stories, I'd like to cover a completely insignificant thing, but one that's been bugging me through most of the 8th doctor audios. Perhaps one of the most recognisable TV themes out there, the Doctor Who theme has had as many changes, as there have been doctors. All the other doctor audios use the theme (or their most recognisable varient) from their original TV run. The 8th Doctor, as you all well know, had only one live-action appearance (prior to the Night of the Doctor special), which featured a unique arrangement of the theme; starting off, unusually, with the theme bridge (a.k.a the middle 8) before progressing into the familiar dooo-weee-oooo! section. As a result, the 8th Doctor has never had a "traditional" theme run, prompting Big Finish to consult composer, David Arnold to create an 8th Doctor theme for use in the audios. I'm not really hot on Arnold's theme, it just feels kind of flat and lifeless. Just a aural drone, rudely buzzing in the ear. This was, unfortunately, the theme from the very first 8th Doctor story, Storm Warning, all the way up to The Girl Who Never Was, (and Blood of the Daleks) before Big Finish called upon Jamie Robertson to compose a new version. His version is a more upbeat arrangment of the theme from the movie, complete with a kickass middle 8 intro  It's full of zest! There's a great vitality to it, and it resonates well with the slightly frantic nature of the 8th doctor. This was fine, until we hit Dark Eyes, where it was replaced with the Arnold version again, albeit with some slight echo.  Oh well, that covered, time for Dark Eyes. Leaving off directly from the end of the miserable events of To The Death, the Doctor is in an utter state, without companions and feeling lost and aimless. Before the Time Lords intervene with news of a potentially universe-shattering catastrophe, forcing the Doctor to thwart the mysterious individual known only as 'X'. The Doctor, having a purpose again, sets off to find 'X'. The biggest structural difference in the Dark Eyes audios, compared to the previous Eighth Doctor Adventures is the much more serialised fashion of Dark Eyes - much like Zagreus, it's more like a single episode spread over four parts, rather than four episodes sharing an arc (well, at least DE1 and 4 are). The Great War is a pretty fantastic re-introduction to the eighth Doctor; lots of action and a very quick pace, as well as the introduction of new companion, Molly O'Sullivan - a WWI VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) - a woman with extraordinarily dark eyes (voiced very excellently, and very Irishly by Ruth Bradley). Due to a mishap the Doctor encounters in No-Man's Land, Big Finish takes an unusual opportunity to update the Doctor's look; gone is the Wild Bill Hickock jacket, silk cravat, and the flowing, Oscar Wilde hair, and in its place a more modern ensemble, at the time in an attempt to visually bridge the gap between the 8th and 9th Doctors (this was prior to the TV series revelation of the War Doctor); the shorter cropped hair, the leather jacker, and the more relaxed style of dress.  Fugitives, Tangled Web, X and the Daleks are all incredibly strong stories, with the various twists, revelations and surprises being very competently handled, the climax and resolution of X and the Daleks being pretty steallar indeed. Dark Eyes 2, unfortunately takes much longer to get things in motion, the story initially being told out of chronological order. The titular Traitor is the rather dour, future spacewoman, medical technician, Liv Chenka (Nicola Walker - who delivers her lines in an convincingly weary fashion), a character who previously appeared with the seventh doctor in Robophobia. In an arrangement with the Dalek occupiers of the planet, she tends and gives medical care to the human-slave miners, much to their resentment at her compliance with the Daleks. The White Room is a fairly typical story, and doesn't have that much involvement otherwise with the general overall plot of Dark Eyes 2. The plot finally gets going in Time's Horizon, which sets up the secondary antagonist for the series, The Eminence. Eyes of the Master is my favourite story of the lot, if only for Alex MacQueen's Master. I can't overstate how much I love this interpretation; he's simultaneously charming, and slimy, charismatic and blunt, callous, and comedic. The smug, glib, purr, of a dentist before turning on the drill.  Despite even his efforts though, even he can't save the abrupt and honestly, unsatisfying ending.Dark Eyes 3 is the weakest of the quartet, in my opinion. While there are highlights, such as the Master impersonating the Doctor, much as he did in the UNIT stories  , for whatever reason, very little of the stories left a memorable impact. The Death of Hope, is probably the best story in this particular drama set. It's very similar in atmosphere to the (otherwise unrelated) War Doctor story, Engines of War - a planet under siege by a seemingly unstoppable adversary.Despite having listened to it less than a week ago, The Reviled is competely forgettable. Even reading synopses to jog my memory isn't helping, that's how much of an impact this story leaves. Masterplan thankfully is a tad more memorable, thanks to the interaction (and enforced co-operation) between the Doctor and the Master, and the reveal of the nature of the antagonist. Rule of the Eminence, again, has its moments, but is honestly mostly mediocre. Dark Eyes 4 is a beast of two halves; the first two episodes, A Life in the Day, and The Monster of Montmartre just seem like sheer filler. Absolutely nothing of any importance happens until the very climax of The Monster of Montmartre. The final two episodes however, are up there with Dark Eyes 1 in terms of quality - a few Eighth Doctor staples aside he briefly gets amnesia again  . Master of the Daleks and Eye of Darkness clear up the lingering plot threads, and leave a satisfying conclusion to the Dark Eyes story arc. Also it has MacQueen asking a Dalek if he "made him a grumpy grump". And if that doesn't make you want this, I don't know what will.
Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 01:58
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CobiWann posted:As someone who is writing a review of one of his pieces right now, Lidster has NO loving CLUE how to write an ending. And all his stories so far have "game changing'" ideas like Ace's brother or the Doctor's deal with Death that are NEVER mentioned again anywhere else in Big Finish. Lidster doesn't write audios, he writes fan fiction. My first encounter with him is in the story you're about to cover; it's still amazing to me that he introduces a pretty decent twist the Doctor has companions he's forgotten because of a memory wipe and a pretty bad twist at the same time it was Davros who did it! And he's been tracking the TARDIS!, and it's treated with almost casual indifference by the Doctor when he meets up with them. I like the concept, but hooo boy, the execution is pretty bad. And the pretty excruxiating time it takes for poo poo to happen.
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Mar 9, 2015 02:12
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I was always disappointed the audios didn't use the TVM theme. I like to think of the Eighth Doctor audios as the TV series that we never got.
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Mar 9, 2015 02:13
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Pesky Splinter posted:My first encounter with him is in the story you're about to cover; it's still amazing to me that he introduces a pretty decent twist the Doctor has companions he's forgotten because of a memory wipe and a pretty bad twist at the same time it was Davros who did it! And he's been tracking the TARDIS!, and it's treated with almost casual indifference by the Doctor when he meets up with them. I like the concept, but hooo boy, the execution is pretty bad. Build up, build up, build up, build up, build up...and then a phrase wrestling fans will be familiar with, "eighteen seconds."
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Mar 9, 2015 02:24
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That's perhaps my biggest beef with Lidster's stuff (that I've heard so far) he throws in all these wild retcons/life-changing events..... and nothing EVER happens with them. Ever. They have zero impact on anything going forward, are never mentioned again, and serve only to poo poo all over established characters/events with laughably "adult" themes that come across as disturbingly nihilistic, which does not fit Doctor Who AT ALL. At least if they had some impact/went somewhere with it, I could at least look at the poo poo he does as having a purpose, even if it is one I dislike/disagree with. But instead all we get is,"It turns out when the Doctor left Susan on that alternate Earth with David, David was actually a Rutan and they were both immediately run over by a combine harvester.... but luckily some of their organs fell into a nearby cloning machine that spat out completely identical copies of them with no memories of these events, and they just went on about their life like normal." Like CobiWann says, it's just fanfiction whose writer happened to produce the work for a company that actually has the license from the BBC to produce works. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 02:33
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Jerusalem posted:That's perhaps my biggest beef with Lidster's stuff (that I've heard so far) he throws in all these wild retcons/life-changing events..... and nothing EVER happens with them. Ever. They have zero impact on anything going forward, are never mentioned again, and serve only to poo poo all over established characters/events with laughably "adult" themes that come across as disturbingly nihilistic, which does not fit Doctor Who AT ALL. This is basically my complaints about Moffat, so...
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Mar 9, 2015 02:35
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The two don't even begin to compare, and nihilistic is absolutely not a word I would ever apply to Moffat's writing of Who, which I've felt has generally gone for a fairytale/storybook feel, most keenly in season 5 but cropping up all over the place since then. Hell, the Doctor's banishment of The Boneless in Flatline is pretty much the Doctor as a wise old wizard who the bad guys crossed and pushed too far after he gave them multiple chances.
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Mar 9, 2015 02:38
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Pesky Splinter posted:As a result, the 8th Doctor has never had a "traditional" theme run, prompting Big Finish to consult composer, David Arnold to create an 8th Doctor theme for use in the audios. I have the opposite opinion, I really like the Arnold theme - the understated, old-school synths really fit McGann's soft-spoken, timeless portrayal. And the fact that it sounds so different from all previous arrangements (remember, at this point all the other Doctors had the Baker-era mix) implied that we'd be getting different kinds of stories. It would be a while before they fulfilled that promise, but... I haven't gotten to the point where I'll be hearing the Robertson theme, but I'm kind of dreading having to hear the "throw in ALL the MIDI patches" bombast every time.
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Mar 9, 2015 03:04
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Pesky Splinter posted:Was having a lazy sunday and attempted to make a visual list thing of the audio series, with a vague idea that it could used as a quick reference to doctor specific audios. Is this sort of thing of any use to anyone at all? These are great. Very great. You spelled "Zygon" "Sygon" in "The Zygon who Fell to Earth," though.
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Mar 9, 2015 04:16
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Pesky Splinter posted:Was having a lazy sunday and attempted to make a visual list thing of the audio series, with a vague idea that it could used as a quick reference to doctor specific audios. Is this sort of thing of any use to anyone at all? That's excellent. I have a text file with McGann audios that has a similar purpose but that's much nicer and easier to navigate. I think one with companions on could be useful for doctors who aren't McGann, where from what I can tell their audios are divided by which companion they have and not necessarily all in one chronological order like Eight's mostly are. I'm a massive spoilerphobe and I'd consider it a spoiler to know which companions are and aren't in Eight's audios since they're designed to be listened to all in sequence anyway. Also there's that one spoiler about one of Six's companions that I'm forever glad I managed not to know about before I reached it. But other than those exceptions I can definitely see it would be useful to know which audios go with which companions.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:11
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 The Reaping works well in a lot of ways, it's a story that with some rewrites, some editing, and most importantly a completely different writer could have been really drat good. Delving into Peri's thinly sketched backstory while simultaneously doing a superior job of referencing The Tenth Planet than the godawful Attack of the Cybermen did, there was a lot of potential here. But there was also Joseph Lidster. When it comes to Big Finish's stories, I quite honestly rarely notice who the writer is, and even if I look it up as part of my review I quickly forget who wrote what in a way I rarely do for the televised series. What this means is that every so often I find myself listening to a story that so startles me with some amazingly poor choice or terrible "shock" ending/reveal, which leads me to look up who wrote the story, and the answer almost always inevitably comes back - Joseph Lidster. I know very little about the man, his history, or what else he has produced for Who outside of the few Big Finish stories I've listened to, but apparently Russell Davies singled him out as a writer with great potential (and he worked on both Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures). That's high praise, and of course everybody is going to have their own tastes/likes/dislikes etc - but Lidster's work almost always leaves me feeling vaguely dirty, like I've come into contact with something nasty and unpleasant. I don't mean the man himself, I'm sure he's a perfectly nice and lovely person, but his writing just rubs me the wrong way. He seemingly has a tendency to "retcon" Doctor Who, to introduce past "truths" about the characters in the show, including the Doctor himself, most of which tend to be rather unpleasant or traumatizing. There is an argument to be made for that kind of story, but the major problem for me with Lidster's stuff is that these huge game-changing events he brings into his stories (at least so far) go NOWHERE. In Master he reveals that the Doctor and the Master were bullied by another young Gallifreyan as kids, they ambushed him, the DOCTOR killed the kid, they swore an oath of silence, and then the physical personification of Death itself switched out their memories so they always thought the Master was the killer and not the Doctor. That is a gigantic thing to just throw out into a story, and it's presented as the Doctor facing up to a hard home truth about himself.... which then proceeds to have ZERO impact or change on him as a character. In another story, we learn that the 8th Doctor traveled with a sibling pair of companions who were kidnapped, had invasive brain surgery performed on them by Davros who then did the same to the Doctor and wiped his memories of the two and kept them for his playthings while the Doctor gallivanted off around the universe none the wiser. These two characters and the Doctor are reunited, he proclaims that he remembers them, one of them then dies and the other... just kind of sticks around on Earth doing their own thing while the Doctor just heads off after a quick goodbye. And it is no different in this story, as Lidster takes the opportunity to play around with Peri's backstory, introducing a couple of characters only mentioned in passing in Planet of Fire, forcing Peri to listen in tears as her best friend and her own mother talk about how much better life was without her around, and then.... well I won't "spoil" the ending, but the ending is atrociously bad, a cynical and (even worse) pointless wallowing in misery and pain for absolutely no reason. Peri ends the story fleeing in despair from her home to return to her travels with the Doctor, and yet the MASSIVE personal trauma she must have experienced here is something we already know will have zero impact on her as a character, at least in the televised appearances we've seen with her. Lidster's work has zero impact because it never goes anywhere, and so the term "misery porn" gets thrown around a lot - like it is fanfiction that somehow got licensed by the BBC. He seems obsessed with the idea of being "mature" and "adult" with situations involving death and pain and guilt and misery but it never goes anywhere below the surface level, the terrible things he inevitably seems to write feels like it is there for its own sake, and not any actual artistic merit. As for the story itself - Peri and the Sixth Doctor arrive at the Gogglebox, an installation in the earth's moon (in the future, obviously) where all media/news has been archived and can be viewed/listened to/accessed by the interested visitor. As the Doctor hunts about for a book he misplaced there at some point in his lifetime, aided by the bored clone of the original guide who has been working there for a couple of millennia now. Peri looks up the news in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland (her accent is supposed to be from Baltimore?  ) in the period shortly after she originally left earth, and is startled to discover her best friend's father was murdered. Convincing the Doctor to take her there, she has a strained reunion with her mother (voiced by Claudia Christian from Babylon 5) and catches up with her old friend Cathy, while the Doctor can't help investigating the murder and discovering the local police are surprisingly helpful and disturbingly easy to convince. The narrative is split in these two parts for much of the story, and then everything comes together with the Doctor and his new "companion" (who is accused of the murder) joining up with Peri's group in the graveyard where the dead man had his office as an undertaker. Both have independently figured out the culprits are the Cybermen (they're right on the cover of the audio, so it is good that the reveal isn't treated as a cliffhanger) , and it is nice that Peri figured that out in her own right rather than needing the Doctor to explain everything to her. The Doctor tracks down the leader while Peri, her mother, Cathy and her brother Nate attempt to keep the converted corpse of Cathy and Nate's father from attacking them. The Doctor fears that the Cybermen have figured out how to convert corpses (predating Dark Water/Death in Heaven by almost a decade) but quickly discovers the truth is that he's been baited by a dying Cyberman with access to time travel technology which has, in its desperation, essentially run a con-job on the Doctor. That's probably the most genuinely interesting part of the story, as the Cyberman insists its relentlessly mad logic must be followed and leaves the Doctor seemingly with no choice but to do as he is told. The Doctor's solution to the conundrum he faces is well done, but does have an air of cruelty about it (not entirely out of character for the 6th Doctor to be fair), and reminds me in some ways of the way the 10th Doctor gave the Family of Blood exactly what they wanted in the worst way. The references to The Tenth Planet are well handled, and though it was a cruel ending, there was a strange sense of satisfaction to be had to listen to the "modern", almost revival sounding Cybermen finding itself surrounded by "inferior" original model Cybermen (including one from Spare Parts) who don't recognize its advanced technology but do recognize it's "defective" modeling, and ignore its protests as they offer it the same thing it meant to offer them - it becomes "like uzzzzzzz", converted into a Cyberman like them, it's advanced technology removed, it's "illogical" knowledge of "impossible" things like time travel suppressed or deleted, its personality swallowed up in the name of meaningless survival). The other half of the story is all about Peri learning the truth of "you can't go home again". She has been gone for years (both with the 5th AND 6th Doctors, despite only having the two televised adventures with the former) but as far as everybody else knows she has been gone for 4 months. In Planet of Fire she told her stepfather Howard she was going to spend 3 months in Morocco and be back in time to return to college, only for him to strand her on his boat so she'd be forced to return home with them. So after 4 months, everybody seems to assume she has basically dropped out, and her mother is furious at her about her selfish and thoughtless actions, and still thinks of her as the same young, flighty woman she was in her first appearance. Apparently Janine and Howard broke up (the actual actor died in the early 90s) over whatever part he played in seemingly scaring her off, and Lidster takes the opportunity to introduce some anger from Peri over how quickly her mother moved on from her father's death. Given the small timeframe the story deals in (only four months absence!) it does mean there appears to be an awful lot of compression going on. A whole hell of a lot seemed to happen in those 4 months - Janine and Howard broke up, Janine and Anthony (Kathy and Nate's dad) became incredibly close friends to the point Kathy thought they might get married, Anthony moved the family into the graveyard, Daniel's wife died and he took to sleeping rough in the graveyard, Anthony got attacked by the Cyberman, Anthony died, Daniel was arrested for the murder. I can't help but think it would have made more sense to have let at least a year pass, but the framework of the story only allowed for a couple of years to work within because of the events of Planet of Fire and The Tenth Planet. So Peri finds herself at odds with her mother, and in one particularly cruel section, while almost uncontrollably weeping she eavesdrops on her mother and best friend chatting about how much better life was without her around, and how once she is gone things will be much better again. When the time comes for her to demonstrate the growth she has had as a character, it should be the moment where everybody realizes how much she has changed. Instead, people seem rather nonplussed or easily convinced when Peri and the Doctor reveal there is an alien threat, that they're time travelers, and that the Doctor is an alien who regenerates into a new body when he dies. There is no real moment where Peri gets to stand up and make herself be heard, to prove herself to the people who think of her as the "old" Peri, to show that she is an adult now, a mature person capable of making her own decisions and not a child who childishly runs off to Morocco for an adventure with two strangers, no cash, and a tiny two-piece bikini. In fact it feels like a bit of a regression, as after the story ends (with Nate suffering another seemingly needless cruel turn of events) she decides to return to her old life - living with her mother, going back to college, saying goodbye to her life with the Doctor. It's all wrapped up in a decidedly unsatisfying way - Daniel is unceremoniously murdered, Miss van Gysegham has a bizarre interlude calling up what seems to be an estranged or invalided husband to beg forgiveness, the mind-controlled police just kind of wander off (what happened to the heavily publicized state of emergency and various media warnings about the Doctor?), Cyber-Anthony shutdown awaiting instructions... did the Doctor just leave him there? What happened to the other time machine? So the Doctor just leaves, returning to the Gogglebox where he looks up Peri and discovers something shocking. He returns to Baltimore, where he and Peri reunite and go back to traveling together. Why? Because something horrible has happened. Something pointless and cruel and stupid and utterly unnecessary. Like I said before, I won't "spoil" it, because the writer does a fine job of that himself. In other words, Joseph Lidster happened.
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Mar 9, 2015 08:11
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Jerusalem posted:The references to The Tenth Planet are well handled, and though it was a cruel ending, there was a strange sense of satisfaction to be had to listen to the "modern", almost revival sounding Cybermen finding itself surrounded by "inferior" original model Cybermen (including one from Spare Parts) who don't recognize its advanced technology but do recognize it's "defective" modeling, and ignore its protests as they offer it the same thing it meant to offer them - it becomes "like uzzzzzzz", converted into a Cyberman like them, it's advanced technology removed, it's "illogical" knowledge of "impossible" things like time travel suppressed or deleted, its personality swallowed up in the name of meaningless survival). I'm actually genuinely surprised that this sort of thing has only happened here, as apparently only a small part of a completely unrelated audio. I've never thought about it before, but two different eras of Cyberman meeting seems like an amazing exploration of the concept itself. If the entire motivation of the Cybermen is self-preservation, how would they respond to themselves from the future? Would they embrace the technology upgrade, or would they be unable to even recognize themselves in their future? That's grounds for a fantastic Cyberman story, and while I'm not sure how you'd do a full story around it I'd love to see it.
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Mar 9, 2015 09:11
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Trin Tragula posted:Who would win in a depression-off between Joe Lidster and Jim Mortimore? Nigel Fairs.
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Mar 9, 2015 10:02
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Cleretic posted:I'm actually genuinely surprised that this sort of thing has only happened here, as apparently only a small part of a completely unrelated audio. I've never thought about it before, but two different eras of Cyberman meeting seems like an amazing exploration of the concept itself. If the entire motivation of the Cybermen is self-preservation, how would they respond to themselves from the future? Would they embrace the technology upgrade, or would they be unable to even recognize themselves in their future? That's grounds for a fantastic Cyberman story, and while I'm not sure how you'd do a full story around it I'd love to see it. It is a neat idea, though it would require the more advanced side to be handicapped in some way (as happens in this story) to prevent a repeat of the Daleks massacring the Cybermen in Doomsday. The really interesting part would be in hearing their interactions, hearing their "logical" arguments slamming against each other in their relentless, unbending way. The first thing that really came to mind for me is a line from an old Grant Morrison comic where an alien entity that takes the form of a corporation has its "business secrets" exposed to the "primitive" earth corporations. They proceed to destroy the corporation (in a legal sense, "killing" its ability to compete), and it is referenced as something like,"It's like watching dinosaurs tear a UFO to pieces."
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Mar 9, 2015 10:07
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I've said it before and I'll say it again - Lidster's endings simply don't work. In a way, I'm reminded of how you'd have this great huge myth arc episode of The X-Files where a long running plot point is solved or a mystery revealed...and the next week, Mulder and Scully are in Oklahoma investigating a kid who controls lightning, without any mention of what they've just been through.
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Mar 9, 2015 10:44
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Jerusalem posted:It is a neat idea, though it would require the more advanced side to be handicapped in some way (as happens in this story) to prevent a repeat of the Daleks massacring the Cybermen in Doomsday. The really interesting part would be in hearing their interactions, hearing their "logical" arguments slamming against each other in their relentless, unbending way. Yeah, like with every theoretical Cyberman plot, it starts unravelling when they start fighting. I'd agree that you'd probably have to handicap the more advanced Cybermen, some way to handle their obvious technological advantage. The only way I can see an equally-matched Cyberman on Cyberman fight going is if the 'older' Cybermen were so old that they still have some degree of autonomy, free thought and strategy. So while the new ones might have the raw firepower to win a straight-up fight, the old Cybermen still have enough un-augmented brainpower that they can out-think the new model's rigid thought processes. That would demean the argument that would be the entire reason to do such a story in the first place, though... Yeah, the only way to feasibly do it would be to have a small amount of new Cybermen up against a large number of old. Handicapping the newer ones in any way other than numbers just feels like it wouldn't work as well. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 11:57
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Jerusalem posted:
Ugh, yes, I remember that now. I had actually managed to forget about her part of the ending. It very clearly seems to be gearing up toward Peri asserting her independence and demonstrating her growth to the people in her old life, which could have been such a liberating thing for her character and for the story. It could have been so satisfying. And then it just fizzles out. What you say in your first paragraph is spot on. It's a story that wobbles as it tries to finds its legs, but it could recover. Unfortunately, Joe Lidster is there to put a banana peel in front of it. The Gathering is infinitely worse, though, so have fun with that. 
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Mar 9, 2015 14:03
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Cleretic posted:Yeah, like with every theoretical Cyberman plot, it starts unravelling when they start fighting. You could always not have it center around them fighting. Them getting along would be a far more terrifying prospect.
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Mar 9, 2015 14:26
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MikeJF posted:You could always not have it center around them fighting. Them getting along would be a far more terrifying prospect. Pandorica Diplomacy Conference?
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Mar 9, 2015 15:41
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Jerusalem posted:The Reaping Well, at least it doesn't indulge in the fan theory (one which I believe grew out of Peri talking in her sleep in "Planet of Fire") that Peri was molested by her step-father. That's something, right?
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Mar 9, 2015 16:19
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Wheat Loaf posted:Well, at least it doesn't indulge in the fan theory (one which I believe grew out of Peri talking in her sleep in "Planet of Fire") that Peri was molested by her step-father. That's something, right? They even wrote a book about it!
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Mar 9, 2015 17:37
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Wheat Loaf posted:Well, at least it doesn't indulge in the fan theory (one which I believe grew out of Peri talking in her sleep in "Planet of Fire") that Peri was molested by her step-father. That's something, right? bobkatt013 posted:They even wrote a book about it! Ugh. I'm sure we all watch the show and at some point say,"Huh, you could read some disturbing connotations into that...." and admittedly there is a lot of potential misunderstandings in seeing a young Peri hanging out with her shirtless stepfather as he offers to take her out onto his boat to give her money. But it clearly wasn't intentional, and writing "official" stories about it smacks of that same kind of,"Look how MATURE we can be with Doctor Who!" screw-ups that characterizes Lidster's work on the show. At least Lidster avoided even the slightest implication that there was anything going on (or even considered) between Peri and Howard. I go back again and again in my head to what Cobi said, it basically comes across like fanfiction, but at least fanfiction can be safely fenced in and avoided - licensed material opens up a whole new can of worms.
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Mar 9, 2015 21:39
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Jerusalem posted:Ugh. I'm sure we all watch the show and at some point say,"Huh, you could read some disturbing connotations into that...." and admittedly there is a lot of potential misunderstandings in seeing a young Peri hanging out with her shirtless stepfather as he offers to take her out onto his boat to give her money. Its the implication - Peri's stepfather Dennis Reynolds.
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Mar 9, 2015 21:44
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bobkatt013 posted:Its the implication - Peri's stepfather Dennis Reynolds. So you're saying Howard was some kind of GOLDEN GOD?
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Mar 9, 2015 21:45
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Jerusalem posted:So you're saying Howard was some kind of GOLDEN GOD? Yes he is also five stars.
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Mar 9, 2015 21:47
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Christ. The fact that on a long enough timeline, every long-running female character is going to have a writer put them through some kind of sex abuse just drives me nuts. There's a distinct difference between "mature" and "adolescent,' and if the stuff you're leaning on starts to resemble work by Frank Miller, it's probably the latter.
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Mar 9, 2015 21:47
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Cleretic posted:I'm actually genuinely surprised that this sort of thing has only happened here, as apparently only a small part of a completely unrelated audio. I've never thought about it before, but two different eras of Cyberman meeting seems like an amazing exploration of the concept itself. If the entire motivation of the Cybermen is self-preservation, how would they respond to themselves from the future? Would they embrace the technology upgrade, or would they be unable to even recognize themselves in their future? That's grounds for a fantastic Cyberman story, and while I'm not sure how you'd do a full story around it I'd love to see it. David Banks, in his books "Cybermen", theorized that there are several different species of Cybermen (i.e. CyberMondasians- the ones who stayed on Mondas, CyberNomads, who left, etc), and that when one group encountered another, they would combine resources and become a new strain of Cybermen (The CyberNomads merging with the CyberTelosians, to become CyberNeomorphs). It was basically his way of reconciling all the various costume designs over the years.
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Mar 9, 2015 21:58
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Bicyclops posted:Christ. The fact that on a long enough timeline, every long-running female character is going to have a writer put them through some kind of sex abuse just drives me nuts. There's a distinct difference between "mature" and "adolescent,' and if the stuff you're leaning on starts to resemble work by Frank Miller, it's probably the latter. It is really disappointing (and disturbing). I think the closest thing we've actually seen to a story that does explore an actually mature (and not adolescently grim or salacious) look at something to do with a character's sexuality is in The Doctor Dances where they "dance" around the issue of the Doctor as a sexual being. Even that is damning with faint praise, and I think the well has been poisoned by poo poo like sophiealdreddrippingincumbookcover.jpg
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Mar 9, 2015 22:14
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