Doctor Who: "I've finally run out of corridor...there's a life summed up."

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Which non-Power of the Daleks story would you like to see an episode found from? This poll is closed.
Marco Polo	36	20.69%
The Myth Makers	10	5.75%
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve	45	25.86%
The Savages	2	1.15%
The Smugglers	2	1.15%
The Highlanders	45	25.86%
The Macra Terror	21	12.07%
Fury from the Deep	13	7.47%
Total:	174 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

The_Doctor posted:

In other news, Eve Myles has said she's done with playing Gwen Cooper, so no returns to Torchwood.

Buh bye.

That's so weird; on an interview that came out with a really recent Torchwood audio, she said that she loved the character and would keep playing the role for as long as they offered it to her.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 11:58

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 16:18

Box of Bunnies: Apr 3, 2012; by Pragmatica

Torchwood was trash and I never had any attachment to Gwen because of that fact but she was okay in Stolen Earth/Journey's End and I always had a bit of a girl crush on Eve Myles so I'd hoped she would come back for a run of better stories with Big Finish.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 12:30

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

Box of Bunnies posted:

Torchwood was trash and I never had any attachment to Gwen because of that fact but she was okay in Stolen Earth/Journey's End and I always had a bit of a girl crush on Eve Myles so I'd hoped she would come back for a run of better stories with Big Finish.

I haven't gotten to her second (and I guess last) audio with Big Finish yet, but the first one she was in was pretty great.

# ? Feb 18, 2016 12:32

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

Talking of Big Finish...

http://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/coming_soon_reverse/doctor-who---the-collected-10th-doctor

# ? Feb 18, 2016 13:10

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

Hmm, I wonder if we're getting Strax and/or Davros in that second one; or if those actors will be playing different roles

# ? Feb 18, 2016 13:12

MrL_JaKiri: Sep 23, 2003; A bracing glass of carrot juice!

twistedmentat posted:

Romana I was in a lot more episodes than I remember.

Precisely 6 stories in fact

# ? Feb 18, 2016 13:26

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

jivjov posted:

Hmm, I wonder if we're getting Strax and/or Davros in that second one; or if those actors will be playing different roles

Playing different roles, as is Niky Wardley

# ? Feb 18, 2016 14:36

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

Oh poo poo, Alice Krige's in that third one! The Borg Queen!

# ? Feb 18, 2016 15:58

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Dabir posted:

Oh poo poo, Alice Krige's in that third one! The Borg Queen!

She was also in the Tom story "Phantoms of the Deep"

# ? Feb 18, 2016 16:12

Rochallor: Apr 23, 2010; ふっっっっっっっっっっっっｃｋ

I'm honestly not as excited about Ten audios as I am that one of them is written by someone who doesn't already have two dozen stories under their belt!

# ? Feb 18, 2016 20:21

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

And none written by Briggs

# ? Feb 18, 2016 20:54

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

Just finished Planet of the Spiders and moved on to Robot.

I'll miss Pertwee - I feel like his run got stronger as it went. Towards his last season/series his performance started to suggest that he was a pretty significant influence for Matt Smith's interpretation, beyond the ties, even.

And you guys weren't kidding about the chase scenes. I want to see that 25 part horse chase with his mate Roger, now that I have seen the helicopter/hovercraft/hovercraft/helicopter/speedboat/hovercraft chase.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 05:57

Burkion: May 10, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

CommonShore posted:

Just finished Planet of the Spiders and moved on to Robot.

I'll miss Pertwee - I feel like his run got stronger as it went. Towards his last season/series his performance started to suggest that he was a pretty significant influence for Matt Smith's interpretation, beyond the ties, even.

And you guys weren't kidding about the chase scenes. I want to see that 25 part horse chase with his mate Roger, now that I have seen the helicopter/hovercraft/hovercraft/helicopter/speedboat/hovercraft chase.

I wonder how much longer Pertwee would have gone, should Roger Delgado have never died.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 06:03

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

Burkion posted:

I wonder how much longer Pertwee would have gone, should Roger Delgado have never died.

Hm first I read about that. Sad poo poo. According to their wikipedia articles, there had been a planned story to wrap up both Third Doc's and The Master's storylines, The Final Game. Did that story ever get put down anywhere?

# ? Feb 19, 2016 06:06

Rhyno: Mar 22, 2003; Can't post for 10 years!

I remember watching Planet of the Spiders for the very first time as a child. Now I had seen plenty of Fourth serials but I'd never seen the end of Three and it loving traumatized me and left me a sobbing mess. I was so upset my parents thought I'd gotten been molested or something.

It was a rough time.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 06:43

Small Strange Bird: Sep 22, 2006; Merci, chaton!

Rhyno posted:

I remember watching Planet of the Spiders for the very first time as a child. Now I had seen plenty of Fourth serials but I'd never seen the end of Three and it loving traumatized me and left me a sobbing mess. I was so upset my parents thought I'd gotten been molested or something.

I watched that on its first broadcast. It was the first time as a kid that I'd seen a beloved character 'die', and it came as a real shock. I knew there had been other Doctors before him from the Radio Times anniversary special (which I've still got somewhere; most of it, anyway...), but was too young to remember Troughton, so watching Pertwee gasp out his last words was a real :stonk:

moment.

And then I had to wait months to see more of this weird-looking new bloke who couldn't possibly be as good a Doctor as Jon Pertwee...

# ? Feb 19, 2016 15:38

Tim Burns Effect: Apr 1, 2011

jivjov posted:

And none written by Briggs

Same with the second War Doctor set, so maybe it'll be more interesting than the first one was.

# ? Feb 19, 2016 20:56

TL: Jan 16, 2006; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; Fallen Rib

I was playing this beauty earlier tonight:

# ? Feb 20, 2016 06:40

Rhyno: Mar 22, 2003; Can't post for 10 years!

There was one of those in an arcade in the West Mall in Sioux Falls, South Dakota sometime during the years 1990-1993. They went under in 1994 and my parents refused to buy that machine for me.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 06:52

Clouseau: Aug 3, 2003; My theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters, and you don't like my tie.

My sister owns one, and there's one on location here in Chicago. It's a pretty decent game, and Colin Baker's doctor power in it is by far the best one. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

Anyway, it's being ported to the game Pinball Arcade soon for anyone curious.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 07:09

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

That's some spectacularly bad art.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 09:31

MrL_JaKiri: Sep 23, 2003; A bracing glass of carrot juice!

timg please

(Although the big versions show you they knew exactly what they wanted to emphasise with Peri)

# ? Feb 20, 2016 11:47

Tim Burns Effect: Apr 1, 2011

MrL_JaKiri posted:

timg please

(Although the big versions show you they knew exactly what they wanted to emphasise with Peri)

not nearly as bad as Leela's weird crotch

# ? Feb 20, 2016 11:55

After The War: Apr 12, 2005; to all of my Architects
let me be traitor

Someone's at MAGFest! When I went a few years ago, they had the machine, but it was non-functional.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 15:37

NowonSA: Jul 19, 2013; I am the sexiest poster in the world!

Bicyclops posted:

Which Doctor Who villain do you think Donald Trump is? I find it kind of hard to choose.

Seems like a regular old Dalek to me, maybe one of the leader Daleks. All the other Daleks eat up everything he's saying, while outsiders are like WTF.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 16:20

Fil5000: Jun 23, 2003; HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

NowonSA posted:

Seems like a regular old Dalek to me, maybe one of the leader Daleks. All the other Daleks eat up everything he's saying, while outsiders are like WTF.

He's Simm era Master. Adept at saying the things enough people want to hear to get into some sort of position of power with the intent of ruining everything when he does.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 16:34

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

The Pinball Arcade guys just finished up a Kickstarter that's going to digitize the Doctor Who table.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 16:38

TL: Jan 16, 2006; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; Fallen Rib

After The War posted:

Someone's at MAGFest! When I went a few years ago, they had the machine, but it was non-functional.

No, though MAGFest looks awesome. I was at the Silverball Pinball Museum in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It's wonderful, you play a flat rate for a set amount of time and get to play any of the dozens of classic machines they have. They've also got some old arcade video games too. It's a fantastic little spot.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 16:46

2house2fly: Nov 14, 2012; You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!

Fil5000 posted:

He's Simm era Master. Adept at saying the things enough people want to hear to get into some sort of position of power with the intent of ruining everything when he does.

I don't know that he's intent on ruining everything, he just wants to achieve the highest office in the land so he can do what he wants and will say or do whatever is necessary to get there. Which i suppose would make him the Twelfth Doctor.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 17:00

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Bicyclops posted:

Which Doctor Who villain do you think Donald Trump is? I find it kind of hard to choose.

Henry van Statten.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 19:16

Jet Jaguar: Feb 12, 2006; Don't touch my bags if you please, Mr Customs Man.

They had one of those in my dorm and it was great, though the stage that raises and lowers to enable multiball targets had a tendency to trap your ball. Then the entire game would reset. Though maybe it was just that one machine--I've never had a chance to replay it on a different one yet.

# ? Feb 20, 2016 20:16

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

I remember the comic store I went to in the early 90s had this and The Star Trek TOS pinball and it was always hard to choose which one to play.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 00:12

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

Short Synopsis: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Long Synopsis: The Doctor and Lucie arrive on an apparently abandoned space station, where they discover a collection of robots who have developed sentience and gone insane. As Lucie attempts to avoid being "dismantled" for spare parts, the Doctor ponders whether breaking a cycle is worth coming at the cost of their own lives.

What's Good:

The Opening. It's excellent, just superb. Two robots flee a mob, one an older model who can't keep up as its body breaks down. Forcing the younger robot to go on without it, it attempts to face its death with some dignity. This is cruelly robbed from it when the mob - lead by "The Mighty Titus" - takes great glee in dismantling it while it is still activated, ripping parts from it and handing them around to the others. The victim robot screams in pain and begs for mercy, laughed at by the monstrous perpetrators. Worst still is when they remove its physical memory, and all personality disappears from the robot's voice, becoming a buzzing, panicked cry begging to know who it is, what it is, why this is happening before finally, mercifully there is nothing left of it to run and it shuts down. As an opening, it sets the stage and informs the listener of key facts - that the robots have personalities, that they feel pain and have emotions, that the "Cannibalists" are monstrous and cruel, that the fate for their victims is too horrible to imagine. The sound design in THIS section is incredibly well-handled, and is remarkably effective. If the rest of the audio had been more of the same, this would have been a classic.
The story. The overall story is very good, presenting an interesting moral conundrum for the Doctor to face as well as a compelling setting and characters. There is a rough equivalent to Hell Bent here, as the Doctor considers the timeframe provided to him by the robots for the age of the space station and takes note of the odd level of decay it has obviously suffered. The robots' own history has been mythologized, with the Spire Robots still true believers while the Cannibalists are very much "atheists". But both have taken one particular robot's function to heart and embraced fully the concept of it as a supernatural force to be avoided, not so much the Devil as a Big, Bad Wolf or other fairytale monster. When the Doctor realizes that he and Lucie have merely been inserted into an ever-repeating cycle, with their own actions just maintaining the status quo, he has a very important decision to make. He can save himself and Lucie but doom the station to continuing down the same path it has been on for untold ages, or he can refuse to be a cog in the wheel and let everything fall apart, dooming everybody/thing including themselves. The decision is taken out of his hands, but while the end result is heavily telegraphed that is not at all a bad thing. It makes perfect sense, plays off the established characterization and "rules" of the society, and creates hope for the future
Lucie's unorthodox protrusions. It's crude as hell, but I have to admit to getting a good laugh out of the robots complete failure to understand gender, and their confused attempts to understand two very prominent physical traits that Lucie has. An ending "poem" extolling Lucie's virtues is hugely amusing to the Doctor, and is a nice comedic note to end a pretty dark story on.

What's Not:

The sound design. And this is where it all falls apart, unfortunately. Because while the sound design in the opening pre-credits sequence is excellent, it's a loving mess afterwards. The robots all scream and yell constantly, with a constant buzzing undertone ever-present, and distortions to the voices sitting right on the "makes me shudder" line. The entire thing becomes an incoherent mess, I had to struggle to get my head around what was going on because characters are constantly talking over each other, the distortions and sound effects jumbling over each other, creating a wall of noise that steamrolls over everything. It's incredibly frustrating, extremely irritating, and a drat shame because it massively detracts from the perceived quality of the story being told.

Final Thoughts:

The Cannibalists is a really drat good story hobbled by overly busy sound design. It does a great job of world-building, provides interesting characters, has some interesting things to say about faith/prophecy and makes good use of its robot gimmick to resolve the situation with a straight-forward logical and literal interpretation of an off-hand comment made by the Doctor earlier in the story. The Doctor's musing on whether it is philosophically right to doom the society to continue down its path even if it means his own death is really well handled, and I doubt it is a coincidence that this so clearly parallels what we knew at the time about the Doctor's eventual decision to end the Time War. But the sound design is terrible, making it a struggle to follow what is happening or distinguish individual voices. It often confuses events (I'm positive one robot was melted at one point, only to show up alive and fine later on) because it is a struggle to get through all the buzzing and distortions and clanging and multiple characters screaming at each other. What could have been - if not quite a classic - a very good story suffers as a result, and in the end I found myself thinking,"Man there's a really good story in here.... I just wish I could actually hear it."

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:08

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

I like how the opening scenes of City of Death make it look like the Doctor and Romana are a couple. This confused me as a kid because I figured that's exactly what was going on, but during the early series, the Doctor was pretty much asexual.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:22

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

Well of course he has no interest in humans or aliens past, present or future, but Romana is a Time Lord.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:27

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

twistedmentat posted:

I like how the opening scenes of City of Death make it look like the Doctor and Romana are a couple. This confused me as a kid because I figured that's exactly what was going on, but during the early series, the Doctor was pretty much asexual.

The great thing about the Doctor/Romana relationship is that you could look at it as playful flirting, just a straight-up mentor/protege relationship, or that they were legitimately a couple. The Doctor never showed any interest in females before Romana (the 1st Doctor got engaged but that was absolutely played for laughs) but that made sense because they were human and it just wouldn't make much sense. But Romana was another Time Lord, it made sense that they could be a couple, and the way she grew as a person from her initial arrival to her eventual departure made the closeness between them work.

You could say that it was just a natural result of the real-world relationship between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, but there was a similar perceived level of attraction/flirting when Mary Tamm was in the role (though to be fair, who wouldn't be in love with Mary Tamm? :swoon:

)

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:28

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Jerusalem posted:

The great thing about the Doctor/Romana relationship is that you could look at it as playful flirting, just a straight-up mentor/protege relationship, or that they were legitimately a couple. The Doctor never showed any interest in females before Romana (the 1st Doctor got engaged but that was absolutely played for laughs) but that made sense because they were human and it just wouldn't make much sense. But Romana was another Time Lord, it made sense that they could be a couple, and the way she grew as a person from her initial arrival to her eventual departure made the closeness between them work.

You could say that it was just a natural result of the real-world relationship between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, but there was a similar perceived level of attraction/flirting when Mary Tamm was in the role (though to be fair, who wouldn't be in love with Mary Tamm? )

I guess that makes sense. I forgot that Baker and Ward were a couple at one point, though I certainly saw Romana 1 and the Doctor being a mentor/mentee relationship, but thinking about it, yea there is a flirtatious aspect to their relationship, though its much more low key than with Romana 2.

And Mary Tamm vs Lala Ward is like do you want sexy or cute.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:34

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

twistedmentat posted:

And Mary Tamm vs Lala Ward is like do you want sexy or cute.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:40

jivjov: Sep 13, 2007; But how does it taste? Yummy!; Dinosaur Gum

Jerusalem posted:

Lucie's unorthodox protrusions. It's crude as hell, but I have to admit to getting a good laugh out of the robots complete failure to understand gender, and their confused attempts to understand two very prominent physical traits that Lucie has. An ending "poem" extolling Lucie's virtues is hugely amusing to the Doctor, and is a nice comedic note to end a pretty dark story on.

The EDA line sure likes to bring up Lucie's tits. Just trying to appeal to a younger audience or something?

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:47

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 16:18

Jerusalem: May 20, 2004; Would you be my new best friends?

jivjov posted:

The EDA line sure likes to bring up Lucie's tits. Just trying to appeal to a younger audience or something?

They do the same with Peri too, I think they just really enjoy making jokes about boobs v :shobon:

# ? Feb 21, 2016 02:49

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