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Tie-breaker for serial you'd most like to find an episode from This poll is closed. |
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| The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve |
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33 | 44.59% |
| The Highlanders |
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41 | 55.41% |
| Total: | 74 votes | ||
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McGann posted:The Doctor look like a real prick for not bothering to leave a "Oh btw there were these guys that make you forget they exist..." post it note somewhere at UNIT HQ. Must of slipped his mind.
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Dec 9, 2016 20:02
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LordZoric posted:Must of slipped his mind.  Welp, I'll just see my way out...
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Dec 9, 2016 20:05
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CobiWann posted:Found on Twitter... https://twitter.com/realDavrosTrump/status/805331457648578560
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Dec 9, 2016 20:33
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I wish Republican Dalek were a funnier Twitter account, because there seems like a lot of material to mine there, but whoever runs it just never quite captured the Dalek voice.
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Dec 9, 2016 20:50
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Bicyclops posted:I wish Republican Dalek were a funnier Twitter account, because there seems like a lot of material to mine there, but whoever runs it just never quite captured the Dalek voice. BUT WHAT A-BOUT THE E-MAILS?
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Dec 9, 2016 20:51
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Christmas special trailer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9caU8yjJmk
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Dec 10, 2016 01:42
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Bicyclops posted:He just needs to come up with a snazzy new name for the Dalek extermination ideology. Something with "alt" in front of it. Nah, Daleks are more the ctrl-right
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Dec 10, 2016 02:52
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Just don't forget NUM-LOCK Bad Math Dalek! 
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Dec 10, 2016 02:57
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Davros was actually Person of the Year for every year after his initial victory, what with being the ONLY person left on Skaro. Dalek Reporter: WHAT ABOUT THE THALS? Dalek Editor: THALS ARE NOT PEOPLE THEY ARE INFERIOR! The Dalek reporter has a little press card in the band running around the dome of its head The_Doctor posted:Christmas special trailer! It looks cheesy as hell which I suspect is absolutely the look they're going for, but I hope there is a little bit more to it. After all, one of the best Christmas Specials they ever did straight up just had Santa Claus in it.
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Dec 10, 2016 05:25
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The_Doctor posted:Christmas special trailer! Looks like dog poo poo.
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Dec 10, 2016 12:16
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CobiWann posted:Peri never once referenced Old Bay or referred to Baltimore as "Ball-mer." Immersion ruined. Having lived through the Peri years as they went out on transmission, and having a dad and loads of family from Balmer (Middle River, specifically, as well as olde schoole relatives from Baldymore City itself), I had no idea and would have never guessed she was meant to be from there. Yikes.
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Dec 10, 2016 12:48
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Clearly, David Simon needs to write a Big Finish story called The Temporal Corner, in which Five tries to take Peri back to visit the family, and instead they wind up in a future Baltimore where some kind of Philip K. Dick like drug is being distributed in the streets that lets you experience timelessness.
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Dec 10, 2016 15:12
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Ms Boods posted:Having lived through the Peri years as they went out on transmission, and having a dad and loads of family from Balmer (Middle River, specifically, as well as olde schoole relatives from Baldymore City itself), I had no idea and would have never guessed she was meant to be from there. Yikes. You probably get this all the time (and hell, I do when I tell people I grew up in/near Landover), but I'm so sorry! I have to make the trek to Middle River every week for band practice since my singer moved out there. For those not experienced, this involves what I call the "695 Sanity Check", culminating in the hideous cyclopean visage of the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant towering unspeakably over the highway. The good news is that it gave us our most recent album title and cover, which I have to explain to everyone from outside the area. Which is where we usually play.  If you want a laugh, listen to The Reaping - for the ridiculous depiction of Baltimore (and Fell's Point in particular, which Lidster seems to think is a quaint neighboring suburb), of course, and not the especially Lidsterian misery porn.
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Dec 10, 2016 15:57
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There's a lovely part of Power of the Daleks very early in the first episode. Ben yells "RIght who are we?" and The Doctor says "Don't you know?" It's just such a perfect Troughton moment and it's in his first five minutes in the role.
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Dec 10, 2016 19:49
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I really like The Reaping, even though nobody else does. It's the thing that made me want a proper Cyberman story about depression, which I can't quite believe still hasn't been done.
vegetables fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Dec 10, 2016 |
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Dec 10, 2016 20:41
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Tom Baker is still lovely. 
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Dec 10, 2016 21:05
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"I can't do that.... but I can say it!  "Tom Baker rules 
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Dec 10, 2016 21:15
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Rhyno posted:There's a lovely part of Power of the Daleks very early in the first episode. Ben yells "RIght who are we?" and The Doctor says "Don't you know?" I like the contrast in that Polly is more willing to believe this is the Doctor while Ben remains skeptical for a long time. Also her playing along with the "Lesterson listen" bit in Episode 2.
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Dec 10, 2016 21:41
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vegetables posted:I really like The Reaping, even though nobody else does. It's the thing that made me want a proper Cyberman story about depression, which I can't quite believe still hasn't been done. Oh dear God yes, that's a thing we need. The very definition of flat affect, body forced to keep moving through external means... Would have to get an excellent* writer to handle it, though. * No, I did not do that on purpose. But speaking of 80s, Who....  Looks like someone wants to encourage my early JNT obsession!  Thanks Cobi! You know what I like!
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Dec 10, 2016 22:12
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Girls are stupid because they can't do maths! And they can't do maths because they're stupid! - Adric, Four to Doomsday
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Dec 10, 2016 22:19
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"I speak Aborigine!" proclaims Tegan, who is apparently master of a few hundred distinct dialects. I'd like to think this was like the time she thought she was piloting the TARDIS when it was all being controlled from elsewhere, and when the TARDIS auto-translates the Aboriginal's language for her she just went,"Woah, apparently I can speak Aborigine and just never knew it!" Maxwell Lord posted:I like the contrast in that Polly is more willing to believe this is the Doctor while Ben remains skeptical for a long time. I loved that bit too
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Dec 10, 2016 23:36
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vegetables posted:It's the thing that made me want a proper Cyberman story
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Dec 11, 2016 01:21
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Woah now let's not say things we can't take back
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Dec 11, 2016 01:45
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That was nice. Just a simple sort of video Christmas card.
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Dec 11, 2016 01:49
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Upon rewatching I found I really dug the simple animation they used for Power. So can we get some BF audios animated now?
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Dec 11, 2016 01:51
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Rhyno posted:So can we get some BF audios animated now? Could... could we get Spare Parts animated? 
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Dec 11, 2016 01:55
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You can't just put animation on an audio story and expect it to be any good, they're different media with different writing (and performance) requirements.
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Dec 11, 2016 02:04
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It'd also be a lot of work without having a lot of the direction already done for you.
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Dec 11, 2016 02:30
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Plus, I think the priority should be the missing episodes. After all, those were MEANT to be visual.
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Dec 11, 2016 03:12
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MrL_JaKiri posted:You can't just put animation on an audio story and expect it to be any good, they're different media with different writing (and performance) requirements. It would be kind of hilarious to have animation of a giant rock rolling down a hill, getting blasted at the last second by a space-ship and then the debris spilling down over an army of Cybermen..... while the companion is standing next to the Doctor pointing and shouting,"LOOK DOCTOR! A GIANT ROCK IS ROLLING DOWN THE HILL... AND IT JUST GOT BLASTED AT THE LAST SECOND BY A SPACE-SHIP! ....NOW THE DEBRIS IS SPILLING DOWN OVER AN ARMY OF CYBERMEN!"
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Dec 11, 2016 03:50
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Jerusalem posted:It would be kind of hilarious to have animation of a giant rock rolling down a hill, getting blasted at the last second by a space-ship and then the debris spilling down over an army of Cybermen..... while the companion is standing next to the Doctor pointing and shouting,"LOOK DOCTOR! A GIANT ROCK IS ROLLING DOWN THE HILL... AND IT JUST GOT BLASTED AT THE LAST SECOND BY A SPACE-SHIP! ....NOW THE DEBRIS IS SPILLING DOWN OVER AN ARMY OF CYBERMEN!" Honestly. it might even be funnier if it was just a shot of their faces as they talked and the sound effects happened, and their eyes kept getting wider and wider as things progressed.
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Dec 11, 2016 03:51
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Real Time was animated when it was released, so there's that! (Real Time is not very good)
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Dec 11, 2016 09:05
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Bicyclops posted:Honestly. it might even be funnier if it was just a shot of their faces as they talked and the sound effects happened, and their eyes kept getting wider and wider as things progressed. Doctor Who meets the current incarnation of Mark Trail After The War posted:You probably get this all the time (and hell, I do when I tell people I grew up in/near Landover), but I'm so sorry! I have to make the trek to Middle River every week for band practice since my singer moved out there. For those not experienced, this involves what I call the "695 Sanity Check", culminating in the hideous cyclopean visage of the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant towering unspeakably over the highway. Worse -- I grew up in Delaware with a dad who refused ever to go by the turnpike, anywhere. So when we went back to MR to visit, it was along the Route 40 corridor. Now, this was in the 1970s, so it was creepy, rural Silent Hill-type Rt 40 and not the shiny strip-mallified current Rt 40, with shabby one-story motels (boasting air conditioning!) and the old sneaker factory (which was still in use at the time) being just about the only cultural highlights along the way. Trust me, that trip mades a journey down the Timelash look like a holiday to Vegas.
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Dec 11, 2016 09:44
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 The third Boxset from Big Finish featuring the "modern" UNIT from the television Revival of Doctor Who, this is also their first story to feature a villain explicitly from the Revival as opposed to a Classic series villain or an entirely new creation. The Silents, the spooky and unnaturally tall memory-altering aliens from season 6 & 7 of the Revival, return in this audio form attempting both to escape the clutches of a now hostile Earth as well as gain some measure of revenge for the "Kill us all on sight!" message the Doctor fed into the Moon Landing broadcast back in Day of the Moon  Synopsis: UNIT and a crusading journalist attempt to uncover the mysterious disappearances of visitors to the hole of an elderly, blind philanthropist who wants nothing more than to help those down on their luck. A thorough investigation reveals absolutely nothing to worry about, there is nothing there, the case is closed, no need to investigate any further. What I thought: A great opening story that sets the scene well, correctly focusing on a far more intimate story before trying to widen the scope of the audio and up the stakes. The Silents are used to great effect here; as I suspected when they were first announced they are basically perfect villains for an audio story. While the Weeping Angels are such a visual creature and a lot had to be done to make them work in an audio, the fact we can't see the Silents actually works well despite their fantastic look - the hissing, groaning, wheezing, clicking noise of their approach and their whispered commandments that cannot be denied are just as strong (perhaps stronger) in an audio-only format. Nick Briggs does the voices and does them very well despite NOT being the voice on the TV series - it's quite interesting listening to the behind the scenes stuff and hearing an "undoctored" Silence, as it is nowhere near as chilling/scary as the modulated voice. As noted this is a rather intimate story, largely taking place in 2 locations (with a couple of brief scenes in other areas) and is almost navel-gazing. Because of the nature of the Silents, the investigation isn't being taken particularly seriously and there is more concern on more personal factors, including the welcome return of Ramon Tikaram as Colonel Shindi. Shindi has recovered from his injuries from UNIT: Extinction but hasn't quite regained the use of his legs yet despite supposedly being completely healed. Put on rather boring surveillance duty as a way of easing him back into active service, Shindi  Synopsis: Politics is spreading even among the UNIT staff, while the returning Sam Bishop can't help but notice that everybody seems oddly uninterested or concerned with some very troubling and obvious signs that something is going on with a recently abandoned investigation. What I thought: The tension continues to ramp up nicely in this story while the larger picture unfolds. Sam Bishop returns and immediately notices how odd everybody is acting, nobody seems interested in pursuing a case that was just abruptly dropped, nobody seems to find the sudden disappearance of a high profile philanthropist at all peculiar. Kate's informant can't understand why UNIT are being so dismissive when they're usually so paranoid (in a good way), while the usually open and friendly Josh Carter is rather surprisingly becoming the ardent supporter of an until now rather comically inept and backwards-thinking businessman who has decided to take up business. The obvious parallels to Trump and (probably more intentional) those who so openly pushed hard for Brexit might be a little too on-the-nose for some, but Nicholas Day as Kenneth LeBlanc gives an enjoyable performance of a rather pathetic (and thus dangerous) man who has decided against all logic to become a politician and is himself surprised at how the public seems to take to him and his message. I very much enjoyed the way the story plays with the Silents' abilities. The UNIT staff aren't any more special or prepared to deal with the memory-altering aliens than anybody else (hell, the Doctor was as subject to their abilities as anybody else) and what eventually twigs them to uncover the truth really comes down to the by now well-established charaterization they've enjoyed in Big Finish (though I still think Josh and Sam are largely interchangeable). They might not remember what actually happened to them, but they know themselves well enough to know that their indifference to the obvious signs that something else happened is NOT right. If this was a cast of strangers then you could expect people to be puzzled but not too concerned about characters being snappy or dismissive when pressed on a subject. But Kate, Osgood, Josh, Sam and even Shindi all know each other enough to know how the others would normally act and pick out that there was something more to the situation, and that proves to be the thread they tug at that unravels the whole sweater. Why does Kate remember getting to the front door and then leaving before entering the house when Osgood remembers going inside and going up to the attic? Why did they bring in a full tactical squad of soldiers and then decide not to use them? Why did they find shell casings in the attic of the now abandoned house? Even if Miss Faversham got tired of public life would she really abandon all her beloved cats? Picking away at all this doesn't make them remember the Silents, but it does leave a Silents-shaped hole in their memories, and the outline of that is all they need to know to get back on the right track and go after a foe that, as far as they can tell, isn't aware that now they know once again that it is out there.  Synopsis: A new day is dawning for Britain with the unstoppable rise of a new political force. A man who should be trusted. A man who should be voted for. A man who should be killed. What I thought: Sadly just as thinks seemed to be ramping up strongly, this is where the story hits a bump in the road. The weakest of the four chapters, the political stuff mostly falls flat because it's been such a side-plot and the sudden thrust into the main spotlight doesn't feel earned and fizzles to a rather wet ending. While the way it all gets so smoothly dismissed actually fits in with the story as a whole, it still makes it feel like the entire chapter was a waste of time. Josh Carter acts completely out of character which is, again, quite deliberate but results in feeling off, and a lot of the tension is removed by the prologue that reveals his return to the flock (not really a spoiler, right?) before the bulk of the action in which he is acting AGAINST the team takes place. Where the story does work well is in the tiresome and irritating investigation into the Silents, which is used in this and the previous story nicely to comic effect. UNIT is used to discovering a problem, taking its measure and then coming up with a solution and that is enormously complicated by the fact that every time you lose sight of a Silence or its image.... you forget all about it. Researching it is a nightmare, the crew constantly having to write their reactions down while perusing television and internet and then constantly checking and rechecking their notes and THEN having to constantly share and reshare that information with other colleagues.... many of whom will have forgotten what they're even looking for by the time the conversation comes up. Osgood eventually develops a very primitive version of the eyepatch solution seen in season 6 & 7 of the revival but even then it is a very rickety solution. They slowly figure out the Silents' motivations, Kate makes a pretty large leap of logic but does ascertain that the Doctor rather absentmindedly just wandered off after putting the "Kill us all on sight" message into the Moon Landing broadcast, not bothering to tell anybody at UNIT about the 8 foot tall memory-altering monsters running about the planet being chased by momentarily irate humans. The Silents are first were concerned with survival, these weren't quite the arrogant "Rulers of the Earth" seen in The Impossible Astronaut, but a hunted group of survivors desperate to stop the humans from hunting and murdering them. But the moment they started to gain even a slight reprieve their old arrogance returned, as they determined to wreak as much havoc on the humans as possible before departing the planet and leaving humanity to tear itself apart. Constantly several steps behind, UNIT is able to slightly muddle with their plans, preventing half of their intended targets from being killed. But it is what happens next that really damaged this chapter - a large amount goes unheard so as to set the scene for the final chapter. So the listener is left to themselves to fill in the gaps (like UNIT had to with the Silents themselves) and on the fact of it what seems to happen is a hugely popular politician who just beat the sitting Prime Minister in her own electorate is torn to shreds live on television by his own supporters and then... everybody just shrugs and goes back to their normal lives like nothing happened. Plus UNIT, despite all their careful steps to bypass the memory-altering abilities of the Silents just.... forget to keep doing that? It's obvious that there was more than met the eye there and the Silents had taken steps to make these things happen, but because the listener never hears them and this is never confirmed, I could easily forgive a listener for thinking the writer just got bored and kinda glossed over the ending. Still, it did lead to this rather lovely line: Kate Stewart posted:Let's be careful here, we don't want it to look like UNIT is staging a coup. Which.... well, technically we are....  Synopsis: With the Silents dealt with once and for all, UNIT takes the lead in an unprecedented act of international cooperation. A space station waits for Osgood and Bishop while on the ground the whole world is watching and ready to hear the very important message they have to say. What I thought: Things get back on more solid ground in the final chapter, though the time skip feels as odd here as it did in Day of the Moon. The story most retreads ground already covered in the previous chapters, but in a way that makes sense and is informed by those earlier parallels. The Silents have, quite smartly, figured out that telling UNIT to forget them will just cause UNIT to eventually find their way to getting in their way. So instead they inform a very pleased UNIT that they not only remember the Silents, but that they defeated them once and for all and therefore the case is closed, well done UNIT for winning! So UNIT happily goes about its next task, taking the lead in an international scientific project to enable cooperating countries to share and distribute information. Osgood and Sam are chosen to represent UNIT as they go into space to install and operate the final pieces of equipment, but upon arriving they black out and wake to find the crew rather horrifically murdered, drowned by a thin layer of water spread over their mouths and noses. The world watches agape as video but not audio shows the two UNIT operatives standing among the corpses of the best of a number of nations, and if there seems to be a third person onboard nobody seems able to remember them... including Osgood and Sam. The unfortunate aspect of this story is that while the international space station is an obvious jumping off point for the Silents to escape Earth, no seeds were explicitly planted for the eventual operation and everything needs to be explained in exposition dumps in this final chapter. Yes it all makes perfect sense, but even a few lines here and there in previous episodes might have made it feel a more natural place to get to. The story also introduces two entirely new characters, or in one case an entirely new race of aliens, both of whom play a fairly significant role but come completely out of nowhere and have to be treated like a known quantity by the other characters. Better though are the characters of Shindi and Josh, largely sidelined for much of the previous three chapters which works well in showing the two of them coming together and using their common ground to force their way past their own repeated assurances that the Silents were defeated to ask the other that all important question.... how? Another character reaches the same conclusion but it has little impact on the actual story, she appears to only be present to allow the Silents to be creepy "on-screen" a few more times. I don't begrudge that, because their voices are fantastic and the line,"We are observed!" is dripping with menace, but the character has been present throughout the whole story and never really felt like she achieved much that wasn't already covered in a better way by some other character. I am a big fan of the conclusion though, which cribs heavily and unapologetically from Day of the Moon but puts a far more positive and uplifting twist on it. Instead of an arrogant Silence mockingly taunting,"You should kill us all on sight!", we get a heavily edited Silence assuring the human race they are strong and brave and masters of their own destiny, that they can work together and make the world a better place. As the final message of the remaining Silents before they are gone from the story, it's an ironic and much appreciated message. The epilogue is also good, as Kate ponders the problem of how to remember not only what they did, but that anything ever needed to happen in the first place. Her solution is rather amusing, and who knows how effective it might be, but it does a good job of showing the difference between her and the "scatter-brained" Doctor - he dealt with the immediate Silents menace and then moved on. Kate is stuck in one time and space, and she knows she needs to stay prepared to deal with a repeat of any threat to that time and space because it's the only one she has. Final Thoughts: This is a very good audio, using a Revival-era television monster to enormously strong effect through the audio format. Yes it has plenty of issues, notably that third chapter dip, but also in the rather poor use of some of the supporting characters, who seem to suffer due to the (welcome) attention paid to developing character for the majority of the main/recurring cast. The journalist/mole from Extinction is the biggest disappointment, not that I was a particular fan of her character in that story in any case, but her return here paints her in one light pre-introduction and she spends the rest of the story acting like a completely different person. Nicholas Day gives a very good performance as LeBlanc but he can't do anything with the writing/pacing/editing/structure of the story he is in, and it mostly feels like the waste of a pretty good actor and a promising character. But my problems with the story don't overshadow what I liked about it. It's creepy, it's atmospheric, the voices of the Silents are just fantastic, and the writing has a lot of fun with working with the gimmick and gets a hell of a lot of mileage out of it. I wouldn't say this is a good intro to Big Finish's UNIT range (Extinction is, however) but it IS probably my favorite of the UNIT stories so far, and probably the best Big Finish use of Revival-era creatures/monsters/aliens so far. I really hope to hear them again in a different range, the voices are just too good not to use and the memory-altering ability is basically a get-out-of-jail free card for dealing with any particular continuity concerns that might crop up. Hell, I'd listen to them in any range, but really it's the thought of the chessmaster/manipulator 7th Doctor facing an opponent he keeps forgetting exists that really gets me excited. If this is the only time the Silents appear though? Well then they picked a hell of a good story for it to happen in. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 11:07
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I can't think of any Who story which seriously considers that the Cybermen might have a point, and might be better at being civilised than we are. I think that could be done really well, as monsters that want to change who and what you are are much scarier if there's a sense that they're right to do so.
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Dec 11, 2016 15:41
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vegetables posted:I can't think of any Who story which seriously considers that the Cybermen might have a point, and might be better at being civilised than we are. I think that could be done really well, as monsters that want to change who and what you are are much scarier if there's a sense that they're right to do so. Spare Parts probably comes closest (the augmentation process was originally to zzzzurviiiive, after all), but self-determinacy is the closest thing Doctor Who has to a consistent morality. After all, every alien invader has considered themselves more "civilized" than a humanity that needs to be uplifted, eliminated, or used as raw resources. We've done every one of those things ourselves, and Doctor Who is very much informed by that colonial history. Even if someone chooses at first the undergo process, the nature of cyberconversion ensures they will never be able to make their own decisions again. If it was merely bodily upgrades without the identity loss, it wouldn't be the Cybermen. (But you should read the comics I posted earlier, they're the closest thing I've seen to telling something from the Cyber-Viewpont.)
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Dec 11, 2016 16:56
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Holy poo poo Vengeance on Varos - the doctor grapples with and dumps two goons into an acid bath; cue sad trombone.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:39
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CommonShore posted:Holy poo poo Vengeance on Varos - the doctor grapples with and dumps two goons into an acid bath; cue sad trombone. Now, hold on, he surprises one guy who falls into the acid bath by accident then pulls the other one in after him while he's trying to get out.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:26
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CommonShore posted:Holy poo poo Vengeance on Varos - the doctor grapples with and dumps two goons into an acid bath; cue sad trombone. I have some thoughts on this topic however you'll forgive me if I don't join you.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:40
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| # ? May 9, 2024 23:10 |
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CobiWann posted:I have some thoughts on this topic however you'll forgive me if I don't join you. These next few years' worth of Doctor Who may prove a bit of a slog....
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Dec 11, 2016 18:46
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