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Which non-Power of the Daleks story would you like to see an episode found from? This poll is closed. |
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| Marco Polo |
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36 | 20.69% |
| The Myth Makers |
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10 | 5.75% |
| The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve |
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45 | 25.86% |
| The Savages |
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2 | 1.15% |
| The Smugglers |
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2 | 1.15% |
| The Highlanders |
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45 | 25.86% |
| The Macra Terror |
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21 | 12.07% |
| Fury from the Deep |
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13 | 7.47% |
| Total: | 174 votes | ||
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Jerusalem posted:Goddamn do I love that story, and Troughton, and the trio, and the Cyber-Controller's voice, and the music, and even the dodgy American accents for the pilot and crew. Just a wonderful episode all around. Hopper is pretty much Captain Kirk without the acting talent and every American make sci-fi stereotype and its fantastic. And all this scene gets is the Doctor ragging on Jamie about his knot work!
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Mar 24, 2016 09:53
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"Now there is a distinct element of risk in what I'm asking you all to do, so if anyone wishes to leave they must do so at once. Not you, Jamie." is one of the great "comedy lines that don't spoil an otherwise mostly serious scene" in Doctor Who
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Mar 24, 2016 09:56
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The Second Doctor and Jamie are just not fair when it comes to comparing Doctors and Companions. Because if you throw a third party into the mix, it just makes them better. Man I wish the BBC didn't take down all of their Classic Who stuff. That was the best legal way to really watch it.
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Mar 24, 2016 17:16
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Burkion posted:Man I wish the BBC didn't take down all of their Classic Who stuff. That was the best legal way to really watch it. I heard they deleted the digital files to make space on their server!
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Mar 24, 2016 21:49
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Jerusalem posted:I heard they deleted the digital files to make space on their server! I wonder if Mugabe has a copy saved!
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Mar 24, 2016 21:57
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Is Classic Who part of the new Amazon deal?
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Mar 24, 2016 22:48
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I think so, although I don't know whether they'll have every episode available. I think that the classic Doctor Who DVDs are still good value, they aren't that expensive (at least here, dunno about America) and they usually come with good special features and the like. Also it makes sure that you don't lose them when the BBC fall out with whatever video source you are using!
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Mar 24, 2016 23:01
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Several of the North American Classic Who DVDs are out of print now and fetch a pretty penny on eBay. It's been very tempting to just sell all of mine and replace them with region 2 copies. For instance, there's two copies of Time Flight on eBay right now; one is $35, the other $60. I think I paid $8 for my copy. Big Mean Jerk fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 24, 2016 23:13
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who on earth would spend $60 on loving Time Fight? Here they had to bundle it with the first story of the next series to get anyone to buy it
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Mar 25, 2016 00:22
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IceAgeComing posted:I think so, although I don't know whether they'll have every episode available. Nothing but new series has been mentioned in any of the announcements. [clutches DVDs and VHS tapes]
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Mar 25, 2016 00:34
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The DVDs are remarkably good value for money (the special features are incredible), but yeah don't pay those ridiculous prices for "out of print" copies when they're still being sold relatively cheaply in different regions. Just buy a multi-zone player or check to see if the one you own is already capable of being changed to multi-zone.
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 01:32
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 I wish The Zygon Inversion was an accurate title, because the title alone suggests it wants to turn on its ear completely the themes and perceptions from The Zygon Invasion and that never actually happens. Like many of the red herrings (intended and otherwise) of series 9, it seems to be going one way before doing something completely different. In the greater sense of the season I thought that worked, but for this two parter it just leaves the entire thing feeling like a disjointed mess of half-implemented ideas, saved by the performances of the lead actors - ESPECIALLY Peter Capaldi who delivers a bravura performance that almost makes me not notice or forget the rather terrible message he is actually imparting. http://i.imgur.com/wqyyhpb.gifv It's a shame because there is actually a lot to like in this episode, including FINALLY demonstrating the actual thoughts and feelings of one of the "most of them" that the Doctor keeps mentioning: the Zygons who are happy to just have a place to call home, where they can settle down and just live their lives for a change. This guy is very clearly shown as a victim and an important distinction is made that he's not on anybody's side, that he doesn't give a poo poo one way or the other about the politics or unfairness of the Zygon situation or the troubles the humans are facing - he's just a dude who wants to live his life, and he is happy just to have a home. He represents the "normal" Zygon, the refugee who comes to a new country and isn't concerned with opening old wounds or transplanting old conflicts, they just want to have what they lost when they were forced to flee - a home, a place to live their lives and be themselves without some rear end in a top hat third party showing up to tell them how they should feel or what they should be doing. His anguished complaints both to Bonnie and later the Doctor and Osgood are that he doesn't want to be involved, and he doesn't understand why BOTH sides can't just leave him alone instead of trying to turn him into a pawn. It's the most "human" face the Zygons get after a full 40+ minutes of every one of them being terrorists greedily demanding the world for themselves and the utter destruction of their enemies. It comes probably too little and certainly far too late, but at least it is there and demonstrates that either Harness or Moffat realized that they'd been far too one-sided in their depiction so far, as well as demonstrating that those who suffer most in a war between ideologues are the poor innocents caught in the middle. http://i.imgur.com/SSbmQRB.gifv Beyond that, there's also the glee that Jenna Coleman takes in her performance. Given a dual role, she plays both Clara and Bonnie. The former is trying to figure out a way to escape her mental prison, get one over on Bonnie and work with the Doctor even in spite of her predicament. The latter is delighting in her plans finally coming to fruition, attempting to restrain her rage when running into blockades, and seemingly having a blast in being completely and utterly intractable when it comes to her devotion to her cause. Coleman revels in both acts and the scenes of her interrogating herself, with both versions of her getting the upper hand in different situations, is a real treat. I especially like the opening where Clara is living in a mental dreamscape that always feels just a little off because everything is designed to insist that what she is seeing is normal and the dream-logic makes her accept it despite her initial reservations. Bringing to mind the low-quality VR from Rick & Morty, Clara encounters things like a tube of toothpaste that reads,"THIS IS TOOTHPASTE", and her newspapers are just gibberish with pictures of seahorses on the front, but laid out in such a way that it looks like she thinks the newspaper should. Using the television as a window through Bonnie's eyes is a neat idea, and it would have actually been fun to see an episode centered more around this concept alone. True, we got just that in Last Christmas which was excellent, but Clara kept in a dulled mental state by her Zygon captors manages to make it feel distinct from that story.   Similarly, the Doctor and Osgood get some more time to spend together, furthering what was one of the better elements of the previous story. Their walk from the beach allows them to cover a variety of topics and again does more to humanize the till now mostly shallow characterization of Osgood. The Doctor offers her a chance to continue on with him as a companion at the end of the story and based on their interactions together in this and the previous episode it is something I wouldn't have minded seeing, though hopefully with the fangirl aspects and terrible question-mark motif being dumped (it's paying tribute to what was lambasted as a terrible creative decision even at the time it happened). But of course she declines, not because she doesn't want to go but because she has work to do on Earth, and that remains true to her character as well. But what everything boils down to is the one scene that utterly dominates the story, representing the very best and worst of the episode simultaneously. Both sides finally confront each other at the place where the peace treaty was initially signed, the Black Archive, where Bonnie finally gets her hand on the Osgood Box. Except when she arrives she discovers at last why it is called that, because there are TWO boxes - one blue, one red - and lifting the lid on both reveals two buttons, one marked truth and the other consequences. This is what it all boils down to, as the Doctor reveals that he set things up so that in the event that the peace failed, both sides would rush for what they thought was a super-weapon to instantly end the war before it even began (or to ensure that it could not be averted once begun). Why did he do this? To save lives, because his long history with war has taught him that all the death and destruction almost always inevitably ends up with representatives of both sides getting together and talking. So he tries to short circuit the process, to bypass the killing and destruction and get to the actual talking. All that is great, just great, except unfortunately not only do they botch the execution, but even a cursory look at the actual wording of the Doctor's impassioned speech reveals a (surely unintentional) horrible message. http://i.imgur.com/trcDprp.gifv Because the idea here is supposed to be the revelation that the human and Zygon sides are essentially identical (hence Osgood's refusal to say which species she actually is), that both are complicit in the aggression that has occurred, the mistakes that have been made, the blood that has been shed. Both are violent and looking for a solution that wipes out the other side, their idea of peace being the removal of the other side of the equation. But they get it so, so wrong, and primarily I think for the most cosmetic of reasons.... they wanted to keep the camera focused mostly on Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman.  This type of framing is typical, the Doctor in the center with Bonnie on the right.... and off to the left, you can barely see Kate's hand which itself is resting over an identical box that could supposedly wipe out the Zygons. The majority of shots are of Capaldi and Coleman in frame, or jumping back and forth between them. Kate gets the odd shot here and there, but the understandable desire to keep the two leads the focus of the camera has the unfortunate side effect of effectively negating or making Kate Stewart extraneous, which in turn gives the impression that it is really only Bonnie who is the subject of the Doctor's strident objections to war. Both Bonnie and Kate are meant to be mirror images, both equally culpable in the potential start of a war that will kill millions (and pretty much guaranteed to wipe out the Zygons entirely). Too much emphasis is put on the Doctor pleading with Bonnie,while Kate comes across as more heroic/noble because she is the first to stand down and choose not to use her box. The Zygon splinter group is painted too clearly in the role of the villains (particularly with the use of the ISIS imagery in episode 1) and thus the emphasis is more on their moment of revelation, on Bonnie standing down and accepting the status quo. Even worse, she only does so AFTER she realizes (and the Doctor confirms) that the box itself is empty, the whole thing was just a prop to get her to stand around long enough to talk to her. I'm of two minds about that, because on the one hand it indicates that Bonnie is doing exactly what the Doctor begged her to do, she is thinking. Instead of being full of frustration and fury and lashing out wildly, Bonnie is thinking clearly and it is only at that moment that she figures out that of course the Doctor wouldn't have placed super-weapons for anybody to use. But on the other hand, it creates the impression that she only backs down and pursues peace because she figures out there isn't a weapon to use and, having lost the element of surprise and being outnumbered by others she has no choice but to step back. The trouble is that the show takes a very simplistic approach to a very complex issue, which probably shouldn't be a surprise given that this is a show designed for dinner time viewing with the whole family, but does raise the question of whether it would have been better not to tackle the issue at all. Obviously in the context of the show, the expectation is that we believe/agree with the idea that the Zygon splinter-group were simple reactionaries pushing for a fight because they were immature and hadn't thought through any of the consequences - they're explicitly referred to as the "younger brood" in the first story, not as intimately familiar with the horrors the older generations faced after losing their homeworld.   And in the end, nothing is actually resolved, everything just goes back to the way it was. There's not even a mention of Kate and Bonnie going back into negotiations to address Zygon concerns and acknowledge that the humans had done some hosed up things in the way they handled assimilation. Instead Bonnie just gets slotted into the pre-existing system that she herself revolted against initially. The idea that she is able to give a fresh perspective is a nice one, but the Doctor's (rather beautiful) plea to them to talk and think kind of gets glossed over and what we actually see suggests that things just go back to exactly the way they were before - mostly unavoidable given the story is based explicitly in modern day London and they wouldn't be able to make any visible changes, but at least a few lines here and there might have helped to get the sense that there was more going on behind the scenes. The peace that the Doctor forced them to negotiate in Day of the Doctor should not be something set in stone, but an ongoing and evolving process of give and take to prevent this type of situation from happening again. One line by the Doctor creates an unsettling thought rather than the optimistic way it seems it was intended. In the barely two years since the peace treaty was made, things have apparently gotten so bad that 15 times before the humans and Zygons have ended up in the Black Archive preparing to wipe each other out before the Doctor convinced them to stand down. If the status quo just keeps being restored to what it was, then "15 times before" becomes a dark portent for the future - this poo poo will just keep happening and resetting forever. We're not supposed to see it that way, of course. If we take the episode purely at face value, it's a rather uplifting story about how the Doctor forces a radical, thoughtlessly violent person to actually stop and think, and more importantly that once you get two sides into the same room and they talk to each other they start to realize that they're not so different, that they have more in common than not. That's a wonderful message, and it almost works because holy poo poo does Peter Capaldi absolutely sell the poo poo out of his impassioned pleas for an end to violence. But the words he says are - not intentionally - condescending, patronizing and completely overlook the very legitimate grievances that Bonnie's splinter group had even if they went about addressing them in horrible ways. The message of,"I forgive you" is a lovely one, but it again has that unintentionally patronizing sense of his issues/concerns superceding their own. Not only do they get no apology for the screwed up things that happened to them, but the Doctor actively dismisses and derides those complaints as irrelevant. There is a disconnect between the intended message and the words written, a level of privilege that goes unacknowledged. It creates a strange dichotomy, because I simultaneously think it's a great scene and an awful one - awful because of what is being said, but great because of how Peter Capaldi is saying it. If only the words matched the emotion he brings to bear, but sadly they do not. They say a person's reach should exceed his grasp, but unfortunately with Peter Harness, which I think it's great that he is trying so hard to tackle harder issues, I don't think he has what it takes to do them justice. http://i.imgur.com/Z145Cis.gifv Apart from that one scene that so dominates the story, there's a lot of weird stuff going on in the episode that I'm still utterly confused by all these months later. Some things are straightforward matters of the writer forgetting about particular characters/events once they're no longer relevant to the ongoing story, such as the captive Zygon, the pilot and presumably the commander and whatever soldiers she had left who might have been onboard the Doctor's plane dying in the explosion. But there are other things like the bizarrely disinterested humans sitting around watching the "normal" Zygon forced to change shape. Similarly the odd policemen following the Doctor and Osgood are I think meant to be Zygons? But if so, then does that mean the youths watching the man forced to change were Zygons too? If so, were they part of Bonnie's group? If not, why didn't they help him? If they were humans, why did they just sit blankly staring straight ahead while a man suddenly formed giant pustules on his face and ran around in a panic? There's also a very peculiar line from the Doctor at the end of the story that I guess now was either just an odd bit of writing or was intended as another red herring for the overall season arc. Clara asks if the Doctor thought she was dead and he claims it was the longest month of his life, and when she laughs that off as she was only gone a couple of days, he grunts back that HE will be the judge of time. At the time I wondered if this was part of an out-of-order theme where we'd discover at the end of the season that the Doctor had intruded back on his own timeline to have more adventures with Clara prior to her dying in some future story. I was half right, in which case this means the line was intended as a way for the Doctor to demonstrate the depth of feeling he has for Clara as his friend and companion - but if so, it's delivered and shot in a very misleadingly dramatic way that seems pregnant with meaning but really goes nowhere. Not a bad encapsulation of The Zygon Invasion/Inversion really. The latter story is far better than the former, but it never answers for the very unfortunate imagery and allusions it makes, and the climactic scene is utterly brilliant only until you think about what is being said for more than a few moments or peek even a little deeper under the surface. Again though, I can't stress enough how incredible Peter Capaldi's performance in that scene is.... I just wish they'd written something better for him to bring those considerable acting chops to. Sadly, that certainly wouldn't be the case in the story that follows this one, the sleep-inducing Sleep No More
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Mar 26, 2016 09:15
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I wonder if there was any particular reason Capaldi kept dropping into an American accent in his monologue. Perhaps it was intended as a reference to something I'm not familiar with.
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Mar 26, 2016 13:28
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Wheat Loaf posted:I wonder if there was any particular reason Capaldi kept dropping into an American accent in his monologue. Perhaps it was intended as a reference to something I'm not familiar with. I read it as part of a game show-type spiel. "Fingers on buzzers!"
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Mar 26, 2016 14:07
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gently caress "The Zygon Inversion", just...oh my loving god I genuinely unironically sincerely hate that piece of hackneyed regressive garbage and it's literally the only episode of DW I will genuinely seriouspost about in this thread. That episode is such the loving worst, it encapsulates everything wrong and misguided with Peter Harness as a scriptwriter, his regressive and downright dangerous viewpoints that infects the entire thing with a hardline conservative miasma of privilege and racial essentialism. It's the worst. It's the worst.
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Mar 26, 2016 14:54
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Yes
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Mar 26, 2016 15:00
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The BBC online shop is shutting down! They're having a massive sale! However all the Classic series DVDs seem to have vanished from the listings...
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Mar 26, 2016 15:34
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The_Doctor posted:I read it as part of a game show-type spiel. "Fingers on buzzers!" He should have done an Angus Deayton impression for that. 
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Mar 26, 2016 16:51
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The_Doctor posted:The BBC online shop is shutting down! They're having a massive sale! However all the Classic series DVDs seem to have vanished from the listings... Wait, what? Does this have any implications for the classic DVDs on amazon.co.uk? I was just getting ready to get a region 2 DVD player and start acquiring....
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Mar 26, 2016 18:58
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Amazon should still be selling them.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:06
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pgroce posted:Wait, what? None whatsoever.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:18
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I imagine you could probably get them a little bit cheaper from Amazon, in any case.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:22
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They're currently £6 on Amazon UK, the newer and longer ones are probably slightly more. That's pretty decent; although I don't know how much shipping would be
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Mar 26, 2016 20:32
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I know they'll do free shipping if you spend more than £20, but I don't know if that applies to international orders.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:34
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I haven't done it in a while, but the trick is to order enough that you offset the shipping charge. Generally, 6-10 DVDs.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:41
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Toxxupation posted:gently caress "The Zygon Inversion", just...oh my loving god I genuinely unironically sincerely hate that piece of hackneyed regressive garbage and it's literally the only episode of DW I will genuinely seriouspost about in this thread. When I first watched the season, Sleep No More was by far my least favorite episode. I thought Zygon Invasion was bad, but Sleep No More was just utter poo poo. Upon a rewatch, Sleep No More holds up a little better (it's still not good!) but holy poo poo Zygon Invasion has just gotten worse with each viewing. It's really, really terrible and I'm dreading whatever episode Peter Harness writes next. At least with Mark Gatiss Sleep No More is such an aberration and you can expect him to probably slide back into solid but unremarkable for the greater bulk of any episodes he writes.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:27
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Also if you order from Amazon UK from outside the UK, they'll knock the VAT off the price, making it a bit cheaper than the list price.
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Mar 26, 2016 23:00
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So I finally decided to buy a Big Finish subscription for the first time on a whim, mainly because I wanted the 3 upcoming Master stories. Since my other options were either the previous 3 stories or the next 3, I chose the ones that are already out, that feature the 5th Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan. 5 is my one big DW gap, since I've only listened to like 2 of his BF stories and have seen none of his TV stories (not even Caves  ), but I think these have finally made me a fan and I'm not even halfway through with them yet. The Waters of Amsterdam is a pretty good story, and I LOVE the first two episodes of Aquitane.Not sure where I was going with that, other than to say that the 5th Doctor is Cool and Good. edit: Also I'm really glad I got the whole first series of the Lost Stories in that Humble Bundle for like  otherwise this sale would've crushed my wallet more than it already has.
Tim Burns Effect fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Mar 27, 2016 |
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Mar 27, 2016 02:05
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Jerusalem posted:When I first watched the season, Sleep No More was by far my least favorite episode. I thought Zygon Invasion was bad, but Sleep No More was just utter poo poo. What really damns Zygon Invasion (aside from being utterly awful and rascist at the worst possible time to pen such a script) is that it tries to rely on building up to its second half in Zygon Inversion like someone telling a rascist joke while going "no, wait, really, the punchline's great  " as everyone's telling them repeatedly to just stop it. Sleep No More isn't a great episode, but I still like it for trying to do something clever. It didn't really land it in the end, but at least it tried.
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Mar 27, 2016 02:16
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Jerusalem posted:When I first watched the season, Sleep No More was by far my least favorite episode. I thought Zygon Invasion was bad, but Sleep No More was just utter poo poo. Sleep No More just felt like a waste, honestly. Ignoring the whole found footage camera deal, that it's badly paced, the characters are never developed, that the rheum monsters look bad, the twist, and so on - the germ of "scientist creates a machine to eliminate the need for sleep, but unintended concequences happen" is a pretty solid idea to work from; just a shame the execution was boring and muddled as gently caress. Zygon Invasion made me simultaneously bored and angry. Who shouldn't shy away from political stuff, but the ZISIS/refugees stuff is handled so clumsily, and tonelessly, it's loving abhorrent. You pretty much hit the nail on the head here: Jerusalem posted:They say a person's reach should exceed his grasp, but unfortunately with Peter Harness, which I think it's great that he is trying so hard to tackle harder issues, I don't think he has what it takes to do them justice.
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Mar 27, 2016 02:41
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Tim Burns Effect posted:(not even Caves FIX THIS. (Yes, it is THAT good.)
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Mar 27, 2016 03:29
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Gaz-L posted:FIX THIS. I own the DVD, I'm just still committed to my watch-it-all-in-order-a-thon, which means at my current pace I should get to it like 2 years from now (last one I watched was The Claws of Axos and that was like a month ago). Tim Burns Effect fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Mar 27, 2016 |
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Mar 27, 2016 03:35
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The_Doctor posted:The BBC online shop is shutting down! They're having a massive sale! However all the Classic series DVDs seem to have vanished from the listings... How does an online shop for a major entertainment/media outlet just "shut down" in Current Year? Like did someone at the BBC decide "OK, that's it, this whole 'Internet' thing is played out, it's a fad that's over. Nobody is going to 'e-shop' anymore, pack it in!"
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Mar 27, 2016 04:12
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Astroman posted:How does an online shop for a major entertainment/media outlet just "shut down" in Current Year? They could just be deciding to focus all efforts on content creation and not devote time/resources/money to their own shopping service. They probably see WAY less business than, say, Amazon.co.uk.
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Mar 27, 2016 04:22
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Astroman posted:How does an online shop for a major entertainment/media outlet just "shut down" in Current Year? BBC Online Shop posted:Why are you no longer selling DVDs, Blu-ray discs and branded merchandise? Fun fact: this is the same reasoning Adobe gave for ending support for their DVD authoring software called Encore. If you're a small fry who just wants to do small-scale sales of professional looking DVDs of, say, a web series (not that I would know  ) basically your only options are Adobe software that was discontinued in 2012 or nothing at all.
Tim Burns Effect fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Mar 27, 2016 |
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Mar 27, 2016 04:52
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Goddamn cloud-based streaming millennials and their war on physical media  This is a serious post
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Mar 27, 2016 05:23
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Physical media is for Jerks.
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Mar 27, 2016 06:08
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Depending on how their store was built, there are also costs to running the thing. For example, they may have done the math and figured out it would be easier to kill the whole store than reinvest money in new software/design/testing/integration of a platform upgrade. Or maybe they're wiping the servers to store new episodes of The Big Bang Theory...
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Mar 27, 2016 06:26
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Neddy Seagoon posted:What really damns Zygon Invasion (aside from being utterly awful and rascist at the worst possible time to pen such a script) is that it tries to rely on building up to its second half in Zygon Inversion like someone telling a rascist joke while going "no, wait, really, the punchline's great Pesky Splinter posted:Sleep No More just felt like a waste, honestly. Ignoring the whole found footage camera deal, that it's badly paced, the characters are never developed, that the rheum monsters look bad, the twist, and so on - the germ of "scientist creates a machine to eliminate the need for sleep, but unintended concequences happen" is a pretty solid idea to work from; just a shame the execution was boring and muddled as gently caress. It's weird that while I think Zygon Inversion is a better episode than Zygon Invasion, I also think it's "worse" because it's far more dangerous. At least with the first story, it seems so nakedly anti-refugee/immigration that you can pretty much go,"Well that's just abhorrent" because it's right out there for you to see. With Inversion, on the surface it's so much better and well-rounded and Capaldi's performance in his big speech is so good that it's easy to pump your fist and go,"drat right Doctor, good on you!" even though the actual message/conclusion is still pretty drat abhorrent. Sleep No More is just the germ of an interesting idea not executed particularly well, compounded by feeling like this was the red-headed stepchild of an episode that got the short end of the stick when it came to budget allocation or any post-production attention. That scene with the fire and the sacrifice.... 
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Mar 27, 2016 06:39
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 17:19 |
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Gaz-L posted:FIX THIS. Someday, SOMEDAY there will be a proper review, but a lot of what makes Caves so good requires repeat viewings. The first time you're enjoying the ham and the backstabbing and the Doctor's sacrifice, but on rewatch you see how meticulously structured it all is. It keeps so many balls in the air dancing around each other, it's breathtaking - Holmes was finally able to combine the crime drama he loved and started his career with and the sci-fi that became his wheelhouse. (Ribos Operation, being a con artist story, comes out of a different tradition.) But what's really impressive is how it beautifully it achieves everything Saward tried to do throughout Davison's run by aping Holmes. The Heart of Darkness colonial/homeland treachery. The treatment of human life as an expendable resource. Black and gray morality. Mirror imagery and the loss of identity. The self-defeat of violence and coercion. And throughout it all, the Fifth Doctor at his most steadfast, unwavering, standing out sharp against the horrific backdrop. The "never cruel nor cowardly" line always makes me think of Five over any other Doctor, and his final story exemplifies it. And now my copy is signed by Peter Davison! 
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Mar 27, 2016 08:39
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