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Welp. Chalk that up to my terrible memory then. For some reason I remember things like the first meeting with RFC being really bright.
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Apr 25, 2015 11:29
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Chairman Mao posted:Ghost Light Please do, all this talk has got me thinking about watching it again, and I'd like to see what I miss!
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Apr 25, 2015 13:24
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CobiWann posted:Possible episode titles for the new season! So as not to get too in spoiler talk, all I will say is this: I like that there's some indication that we will more two-parters this series.
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Apr 25, 2015 15:13
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speaking of, is season 9 scheduled for this fall or spring 2016? I assume it's this fall?
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Apr 25, 2015 20:47
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Attitude Indicator posted:speaking of, is season 9 scheduled for this fall or spring 2016? I assume it's this fall? Yup. Late August/early September premiere, probably.
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Apr 25, 2015 20:51
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I seem to have misplaced the Eric Saward/Ian Levine comic again. Could anyone repost it?
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Apr 25, 2015 21:07
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How is Dark Eyes 4? I picked it up right after it came out but haven't had a chance to listen. Normally I'm gung ho to listen but I wasn't as enamored with DE3 as I was with the first two. On that note, when are they switching back to a more serialized format for Doctor the Eighth?
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Apr 25, 2015 23:32
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Fil5000 posted:I seem to have misplaced the Eric Saward/Ian Levine comic again. Could anyone repost it? 
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Apr 26, 2015 00:28
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Mortanis posted:How is Dark Eyes 4? I picked it up right after it came out but haven't had a chance to listen. Normally I'm gung ho to listen but I wasn't as enamored with DE3 as I was with the first two. On that note, when are they switching back to a more serialized format for Doctor the Eighth? For me, 4 was on par with 3. Not as awesome as 1 and 2, but still some solid 8th Doctor storytelling. Too much Liv and not enough Molly for my tastes. And I think the bi-annual box set releases are to accommodate McGann's schedule, which is why they moved away from more regular releases for the 8th Doctor.
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Apr 26, 2015 00:34
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I think my favorite part of this is "EXPLAIN UNIT DATING". It's really a miracle that 80's Who didn't actually go and try to do that. I bet some of the books in the 90's did, though.
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Apr 26, 2015 01:03
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Day of the Doctor explained it best.
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Apr 26, 2015 01:07
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Whenever I read "UNIT Dating" I think of the Doctor and the Brigadier going out to a cabaret and having to sit through a bad comedian and then a belly dancer  Brig: Very fit, that girl. Extraordinary muscular control. Must adapt some of those movements as exercises for the men. Doctor: They'd take some adapting!
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Apr 26, 2015 01:13
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Mortanis posted:How is Dark Eyes 4? I picked it up right after it came out but haven't had a chance to listen. Normally I'm gung ho to listen but I wasn't as enamored with DE3 as I was with the first two. On that note, when are they switching back to a more serialized format for Doctor the Eighth? I thought DE 4 was the best one since the first one, and also the only one that feels like a coherent story arc since the first one. I was really down on 3, but this is a pretty good conclusion. It's still not perfect, and there are some groan-worthy moments, but it's definitely worth a listen if you're a fan of Eight. Mild warning: the first story is a one-off with no relevance to the rest of the set. They're continuing with the box set stuff, and the next one is...THE DOOM COALITION.
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Apr 26, 2015 01:59
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CobiWann posted:Also, it's the weekend so you know what that means! These prices are stupidly cheap!  Time to load up on some of the ones I don't have. I usually buy a couple of this line a month anyway. Anyone wondering what ones to get, I can heartily recommend the 2nd Doctor outings with Frazer and Wendy Padbury. He does his flawless Troughton voice, and they do these a bit different from the Companion Chronicles with period style stories and music. Completely like listening to a lost episode. She's also uncanny at doing her 20 year old self's voice. On the First Doctor ones, does William Russell do the Hartnell part or does he switch off with Carole Ann Ford and Maureen O'Brien like in the Companion Chronicles? That would be a selling point for me if it's the former. He's not as good as Purves, but he's not bad at all.
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Apr 26, 2015 02:24
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Rochallor posted:Mild warning: the first story Mild warning: the first story is freaking amazing.
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Apr 26, 2015 02:35
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Mortanis posted:How is Dark Eyes 4? I picked it up right after it came out but haven't had a chance to listen. Normally I'm gung ho to listen but I wasn't as enamored with DE3 as I was with the first two. On that note, when are they switching back to a more serialized format for Doctor the Eighth? The main thrust to the Dark Eyes story doesn't really start until the climax of the second story. The first story is more of a stand-alone; in the context of DE4 it's weird padding, but as a lone story it's pretty good.
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Apr 26, 2015 02:48
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 The Wishing Beast suffers the same problem the other three episode format stories have so far, with one crucial difference. This time the "extra" single episode story - The Vanity Box - is explicitly tied into the 3-parter, offering further background information that was sorely needed and serving to wrap things up narratively, if not quite satisfyingly. It's a sign that Big Finish was getting to grips with the format, and it's interesting to hear comments by Briggs on another audio's CD Extras where he lays out his reasoning for moving to 3 episodes and the challenges that brought about. Unfortunately THIS story suffers from feeling like an afterthought, a throwing together of scraps of different stories that was put together to fill in a gap in the schedule - the story is threadbare, there are few characters and despite being an audio it manages to come across like a cheap episode of the show making the best it can out a tiny set design budget. The Sixth Doctor and Mel are traveling through the vortex when they pick up an odd message coming from a small asteroid. An initial scan warns of dangerously high radiation and no signs of life, but then suddenly the radiation vanishes, lifesigns show up, and a clearer message comes through from two elderly women warmly inviting them to come pay a visit. Everything about it should be setting off alarm bells for somebody as widely traveled as the Doctor, but he decides to land anyway and see what is going on, which is an act of apparent oblivious recklessness above and beyond even what you'd expect from the Doctor at his most flippant. The whole setting, and sadly much of the story, feels to me like an episode of early Star Trek where they landed on a mysterious desert planet populated by only a tiny number of humans, one or more of whom had developed some kind of superpower. As they walk through the forest towards the home of the two old women, they are spooked by what appears to be a ghost (even though the Doctor insists there is no such thing) and they end up making a run for it, reaching the "safety" of the sisters' house, where it quickly becomes apparent they're out of the frying pan and into the fire. The sisters Eliza and Maria are played by Geraldine Newman and Jean Marsh respectively. Jean Marsh should be familiar for her long career, including appearances in the Classic series of Who, and she certainly seems enthusiastic about her role as Maria, happily chewing the scenery as the script dictates. Newman does what she can but she has a lesser role and less chance to shine, mostly due to an over-reliance by the script on her "powers". The two sisters basically play as two crazy old witches from straight out of a fairy-tale, and indeed that is what The Wishing Beast essentially is, a fairy tale that happens to have the Doctor and Mel walk directly onto its pages. Sadly it's not a particularly good fairytale, and while the scenery-chewing is a lot of fun, there is almost zero attempt to cover up the madness and sinister intentions of the sisters from either the audience or the Doctor/Mel, who seem to be largely ignorant of what is going on until explicitly told so by other characters (or the sisters themselves). Any script will unfold to tell the story it desires, but a good script will make it feel natural - here the characters act the way they do only because the script calls for them to do so, and here that requires the Doctor and Mel to mostly be idiots with apparently no awareness of the obvious. To be fair, the Doctor does go investigating to learn more about the planet, but it feels more like he's lightly bemused by the sisters' not being entirely forthcoming about answering his questions, as opposed to a desire to uncover what their intentions are. Mel, meanwhile, just kind of seems to blindly go along with everything happening, though she shares some chuckles with the Doctor about how mad the sisters are, she never seems to quite grasp how openly dangerous they are, or how they are clearly intending her harm. Bonnie Langford does just fine with the material as written, it's just that the material for her simply isn't very good. The sisters practically leer and go BWAHAHA every time they tell her that intend to grant her wish and she just kind of (sounds like she) sits there smiling blankly and not grasping that something's not right. When they do finally reveal they have bad intentions, they practically have to smash her over the head with the fact before it finally seems to dawn on her that hey..... HEY THESE GUYS ARE BAD GUYS!  While cheerfully exploring in the forest (which he ran away from in fright no so long ago) he meets the "ghosts" that inhabit the place, where he just as firmly insists that they simply cannot exist. The story feels unsure how to progress with these "ghosts", going out of its way to acknowledge that they're not truly dead and this is more a matter of their physical selves being slowly chipped away leaving nothing but a psychic essence... but then frequently refers to them as spirits in search of peace or being tormented in a horribly purgatory. Similarly with the Wishing Beast itself, the urge seems to be to acknowledge it is NOT a supernatural force, but it is for all intents and purposes a demon, just one with the label of "being from another reality" slapped over the top of it. Doctor Who has a history with beings of cosmic power, but the way this is handled just further serves to make this story feel like a rejected Star Trek: TOS story with a find/replace run to change Captain Kirk to the Doctor, and Enterprise to TARDIS. There's also an utterly embarrassing piece where the sisters deal with ghostly incursions by pulling out.... their vacuum cleaner. Hooked up with a powerful device, it is able to somehow break down what limited physical presence the "ghosts" still retain, but it creates a ludicrous mental image of two batty old women running around menacing some whinging ghosts with a hoover - hilarious, true, but the atmosphere of this story seems to want to go more towards fairytale horror than over-the-top comedy. The Wishing Beast is referred to as "brother" by the sisters, and as with everything they saw this turns out to be a half-truth. The Wishing Beast is a combination of two beings, one of which is the long suffering Daniel, merely a child at the time the ship carrying he and his sisters crashed on the asteroid. The only survivors, he grew to hate them as they grew progressively madder, and a voice spoke to him in the dark offering him his greatest wish - to be a mighty beast that everybody feared, instead of a scared little boy dominated by his sisters. Despite being a grown man, Daniel still has very much a child's mind, and comes across as sullen, sulky, and quick to blame everybody but himself. The three-episode-structure and his own late introduction mean that his character development suffers, as he rushes from this state to one of seeking to help the Doctor - though to be fair even this seemingly selfless decision comes across more as turning his sulky, self-hating behavior against different victims to the ones who have suffered for centuries on the asteroid. With the Wishing Beast defeated if not destroyed, the Doctor takes the oddly detached point of view that they should just leave, because without the sisters or Daniel there to attract passersby, it will simply sit marooned on the asteroid, abandoned and powerless forever. It's a weirdly passive "solution" for the Doctor, a problem somewhat compounded by what follows. The Vanity Box follows almost directly on from the events of this story, with the Doctor promising to take Mel somewhere more fun than a radioactive asteroid in the middle of nowhere. He figures London in the 1960s will be "fabulous" enough, but manages to land in Salford instead, which is hardly glamorous. Faced with this conundrum, he decides to go to the pub and have a drink (a more and more common feature of Big Finish audios featuring the Sixth Doctor!) where he is intrigued to hear about the new owner of the beauty salon, who has managed to perform "miracles" by seemingly taking decades of age from the dowdy Northern housewives. His attempts to investigate are quickly rebuffed, which leads to him getting dressed up in drag and putting on an atrocious Northern accent (I couldn't help but think about Christopher Eccleston's recent interview noting how the Northern accent is given a comedic or "lowly" association in television) in order to get in a closer look at the mysterious Vanity Box that the salon owner reserves for special treatments. Getting a far closer look than is good for him, he discovers the origin of the Vanity Box and discovers the connection to the Wishing Beast, which eventually leads to his figuring out most of the unanswered questions from that story. Everything wraps up in a neat little bow, and the effects of the treatment are reversed.... though the story basically relies on our prior knowledge because as far as I can remember no negative consequences to the beauty treatments are ever indicated in the actual story itself - as far as the inhabitants of Salford know, the salon owner was working legitimate miracles, and the salon owner himself was innocent of any wrongdoing apart from his awful attempt at a French accent. In the CD Extras, it is mentioned that the years taken off the age of the women are also taken from their lives (so the results switching back at the end would indicate those years were returned) but if that was ever noted anywhere in the story itself, I didn't notice it. The Wishing Beast has the same pacing issues as other three-episode-stories, but makes an attempt to ease these issues by making the standalone episode an integral (if external) part of the story. I can't help but wonder why, if that was necessary, they didn't just do a four episode story in the first place and give it more time to breathe. The CD Extras on Frozen Time make mention of the issues Big Finish was having with fitting in with the 22-25 minute limitations of single episodes, as well as the pacing of a 4 episode format as opposed to the more streamlined Revival series format, and their fears about scaring away potential new viewers without alienating the classic fans who supported them from day one. That makes Briggs' insistence that they won't even shift to that single episode format themselves kinda funny, since around the same time they were working out the new 8th Doctor Adventures format with Paul McGann. But it also goes some way towards explaining to me why they experimented with the three episode format, and I think the willingness to experiment with the format they used should be applauded, along with the insistence that they would try not to let this come at the cost of the stories they were trying to tell. Whether 3 or 4 episodes though, I can't imagine that THIS story wouldn't have been disappointing, because the cheap feeling, the ludicrous characters and "props", and the odd behavior of the Doctor and Mel make it notable only for its negatives, while its positives are hard to identify.
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Apr 26, 2015 08:48
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So the Toxx thread just did The God Complex, and I was half-tempted to ask him what he thought was in the Doctor's room, but I decided it's better to post here. Because I hated how Time Of The Doctor actually went and showed us what was in there and it was just the crack. I loved the ambiguity of not knowing, and Eleven's reaction to seeing it. "Of course. What else could it be?".
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Apr 26, 2015 13:22
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Oh yeah, that sucked. It was much better ambiguous.
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Apr 26, 2015 13:24
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Yes, the decision not to show it was one of the better decisions they've ever made, and revealing it in Time of the Doctor did exactly what I always feared it would, suck the air out of it because what was revealed could never match up to each person's individual take on what it might have been. I actually second-guessed even posting in that thread that I really liked how they handled it in the actual episode, because I didn't want it to come across as being "clever" about the eventual reveal a year+ later.
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Apr 26, 2015 13:34
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The crack was still better than Smith's own version of what was in the room.
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Apr 26, 2015 13:41
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Yeah I really disliked that take, but it goes to show how much stronger it was leaving it unrevealed. For Smith, that really was the most horrible thing he could think for the Doctor, and each of us in turn had our own idea of what his fear might be, and all of us were free to project that until Moffat explicitly revealed it was the crack, which for me (and many others) fell flat because it simply didn't compare to what we had in our own heads.
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Apr 26, 2015 13:44
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah I really disliked that take, but it goes to show how much stronger it was leaving it unrevealed. For Smith, that really was the most horrible thing he could think for the Doctor, and each of us in turn had our own idea of what his fear might be, and all of us were free to project that until Moffat explicitly revealed it was the crack, which for me (and many others) fell flat because it simply didn't compare to what we had in our own heads. I like the idea of what Smith described, although the way he did it was pretty lackluster. Although the concept's probably more fitting for Ten than Eleven, who seemed a fair bit less concerned with his own mortality.
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Apr 26, 2015 13:46
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I can understand why the crack is a fear; it represents the destruction of everything. The universe he's spent his life protecting. And not just that, but retroactively, too. But... ehh. Speculation is funner.
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Apr 26, 2015 13:50
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What did Smith say?
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Apr 26, 2015 14:15
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The crack never bothered me particularly in that it's what this Doctor fears, not necessarily what the Doctor fears as an ongoing character of 50 years. It goes back to his first story and means his ultimate failure. The fear isn't the crack itself per se, it's that, over the course of this life, he was unable to make a difference.
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Apr 26, 2015 14:18
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Dabir posted:What did Smith say? He thought the Doctor would have seen 10 men hanging, with an 11th lined up for the noose next to them.
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Apr 26, 2015 14:20
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Burkion posted:He thought the Doctor would have seen 10 men hanging, with an 11th lined up for the noose next to them. See, I loved that. How many Doctors actually looked forward to their regeneration*? A man dies, and experiences all the pain and suffering, but that same man lives with all those memories. Kind of dark... *Exception - the War Doctor
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Apr 26, 2015 15:12
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CobiWann posted:See, I loved that. How many Doctors actually looked forward to their regeneration*? A man dies, and experiences all the pain and suffering, but that same man lives with all those memories. Kind of dark... I agree myself. I liked that idea- it's the kind of macabre stuff that Doctor Who is known to dip into. It's either that or a room filled with people burning. You know one or the other.
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Apr 26, 2015 15:14
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I pictured the Doctor seeing himself in that room. The fear being what he has the potential to do to the universe if he goes off the rails.
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Apr 26, 2015 16:23
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TL posted:I pictured the Doctor seeing himself in that room. The fear being what he has the potential to do to the universe if he goes off the rails. That's always what I figured. Not even a darker version of the Doctor. Just him, exactly as he is, manic and chipper and brooding and sometimes spinning and waving his hands. Hell, it was even somewhat set up in Amy's Choice. While I still disagree with Toxx on what grade the episode gets, at least I can agree that the people's fears made no sense. Maybe some people were consciously afraid of being publicly humiliated or getting berated for bad grades, but I'd be willing to bet deep down they have an unconscious fear of drowning in hornets or falling feet first into a rusty and dull wood chipper or any number of things that can be found on the Internet. Fear is irrational and rarely conscious. Still a great episode though, but that's because of the characters and not the plot.
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Apr 26, 2015 16:31
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I figure most peoples' fears are more elemental concepts than that. Like, if you asked somebody, they'd come up with a scenario that involved their greatest fear, but really it's going to be something fairly abstract, like "not accomplishing anything in life" or "the sensation of falling" or "failing as a father". If you want to show it in concrete terms, you have to build a really compelling scenario around that fear.
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Apr 26, 2015 18:07
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I liked the idea of the War Doctor.
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Apr 26, 2015 18:42
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I hated the idea of the War Doctor, and would have preferred poor, battered old Eight to have to push the big red button.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:18
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My personal "head canon" for the doctor's room is that there was still something else in there, but with the crack on the back wall too.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:19
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We're all being pointlessly obtuse about this, though, because we all know that what was really in the Doctor's room was Adric.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:21
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It totally should have been The Valeyard in that room. Especially if 11 knew he was on his last life.  Barry Foster posted:I hated the idea of the War Doctor, and would have preferred poor, battered old Eight to have to push the big red button. I have a feeling though it would have been a story about 9 being he one in the Time War, as Moffat had been pitching it to Eccleston. I think if he was ever planning on bringing back 8 for more than the short, he would have just done so. Casting Hurt would have been unnecessary, even without Eccleston's participation. I do like the idea that 8 was preserved as fairly innocent and upbeat til the very end.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:32
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And the existence of the War Doctor doesn't preclude a bitter and jaded period of 8's life. The war had obviously been going on long enough for the doctor to 1) explicitly decide to have no part in it 2) encounter people who would literally rather die than have any kind of involvement with a time lord 3) make a decision in less than 4 minutes that if he's gonna regenerate, might as well be a warrior
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Apr 26, 2015 21:51
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CobiWann posted:See, I loved that. How many Doctors actually looked forward to their regeneration*? A man dies, and experiences all the pain and suffering, but that same man lives with all those memories. Kind of dark... Though he wasn't exactly looking forward to it, the 9th Doctor was somewhat unique in that he immediately accepted his death and joked around about what it meant was coming. Sure most of that may have been for Rose's benefit, but I got the idea that having had the chance and rejecting a repeat of what he THOUGHT he did in the Time War, he was at peace with the life he had lead and was not at all upset that he was going to get a fresh start. The only really comparable one would be the Third Doctor, I guess, whose last story was all about his fear of death and change and how, with the help of his old mentor, he was able to come to terms with that and die in peace.
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Apr 26, 2015 23:25
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Jerusalem posted:The only really comparable one would be the Third Doctor, I guess, whose last story was all about his fear of death and change and how, with the help of his old mentor, he was able to come to terms with that and die in peace. ...or it was all a long-term plot by the Master!
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Apr 27, 2015 00:33
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