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Jerusalem posted:It Takes You Away is absolutely superb, just a phenomenally great episode and I hope they can hit those highs again in the next season. I have a friend who just could not get past the frog. The frog was a brick wall for their suspension of disbelief and stumped them completely
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Oct 11, 2019 23:00
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The frog is brilliant, as is the world beyond the mirror. It Takes You Away and Demons Of The Punjab are the two unambiguously great episodes of S11 IMO. Shame about the other nine and their varying drops in quality.
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Oct 11, 2019 23:13
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Burkion posted:I have a friend who just could not get past the frog. What’s that trope where you can only ask the audience to believe in one thing? Any more and it all falls apart?
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Oct 11, 2019 23:31
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I decided to rewatch both of them tonight. "It takes you away" is excellent on a rewatch. The characters are well developed and the plot is interesting even on a second viewing. Ryan's and Graham's characterization is strong, and Grace is great. The downside is that these character details depend on the rest of the series, so it doesn't stand alone quite so well. "Demons of the Punjab" is a really solid historical and it does a good job of mapping out its layers. The Thajarian demons witness lost and forgotten deaths, but that whole idea of the forgotten dead seems to resonate with the way that the victims of colonialism often get forgotten. In that respect the episode plays the educational role that historicals should, too. The characterization unfolds from inside of this plot wonderfully, without clumsy exposition. Still excellent.
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Oct 12, 2019 02:10
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Oh and the poppies in the field for the final showdown 
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Oct 12, 2019 02:52
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Most of the costume's been assembled. The pants aren't quite right, but they were cheap. Once the bigger shirt and boots arrive, I'll post. I haven't dressed up for Halloween in years and the last time I did I was 11, so this feels like a proper regeneration. The_Doctor posted:Ah, you got the American version of the sonic. And no, it doesn’t spin in the show.
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Oct 12, 2019 03:09
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The Witchfinders most surprised me on a rewatch, as I'd pretty much forgotten it existed. The last 5-ish minutes were still bad, but only dropped it down to mediocre Who standard and wasn't so jarring when I knew it was coming. The rest was all good and Alan Cumming's scenery chewing was just as delightful second time round. I'd probably rank it 3rd or 4th in the series overall.
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Oct 12, 2019 11:51
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The_Doctor posted:What’s that trope where you can only ask the audience to believe in one thing? Any more and it all falls apart?
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Oct 12, 2019 12:16
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"Please read the Ts and Cs before entering." That's right, you should always check the Toms and Colins. I wonder if the rules state something like "Any entries using this audio will be shown to everyone in the office and we'll get a kick out of it, but you'll be disqualified" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQeTIjD0T_4
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Oct 12, 2019 17:37
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Payndz posted:Save The Cat, which is the Hollywood screenwriting manual of the moment, calls it Double Mumbo Jumbo. You can have one thing that requires suspension of disbelief in a story (eg, aliens or vampires) but not two (aliens and vampires). I've also heard it called something like "two levels of woo-woo". That’s it! Googling brought up the StC blog where the comments are full of people woefully misunderstanding it.
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Oct 12, 2019 17:50
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Tom's looking a bit gaunt
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Oct 12, 2019 18:12
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Stephen Moore has died.  https://twitter.com/bigfinish/status/1183067469042323456
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Oct 12, 2019 18:20
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I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
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Oct 12, 2019 21:11
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I forgot Patrick Troughton plays the priest trying to warn everyone about Damien in The Omen. It feels like something the Doctor would do... going undercover as a priest to stop an evil child.
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Oct 12, 2019 23:02
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Payndz posted:Save The Cat, which is the Hollywood screenwriting manual of the moment, calls it Double Mumbo Jumbo. You can have one thing that requires suspension of disbelief in a story (eg, aliens or vampires) but not two (aliens and vampires). I've also heard it called something like "two levels of woo-woo". Rather than the number of elements, in my opinion it's more about how they are introduced. If the outlandish things are part of the core premise it can work, if they are presented as a what if. For example, what if a 19th century supernatural world suffered an independence day style invasion could work, because that's the premise. Once you have established a premise and got people over that however, everything should be consistent in the context of that world. You couldn't just have vampires pop up in the finale of Independence Day.
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Oct 13, 2019 03:38
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https://twitter.com/bigfinish/status/1183051197894119424
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Oct 13, 2019 20:48
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Ah yes, the usual ‘seeking undiscovered talent - must have 5 years experience doing the same thing’ conundrum.
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Oct 13, 2019 21:00
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Senor Tron posted:Rather than the number of elements, in my opinion it's more about how they are introduced. If the outlandish things are part of the core premise it can work, if they are presented as a what if. Moffat, though, increasingly went for steampunk whimsy/fantasy/magic, which clashed gears with what was already established. There's no reason why the TARDIS couldn't float on a cloud over Victorian London and drop a ladder down so people can climb up to it - it just felt like it shouldn't. Clarke's Law or no, the Doctor isn't a wizard. Once it got to poo poo like magic trees sprouting over the whole Earth and the Moon being a space dragon egg, I Seinfeld-giffed out of there.
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Oct 13, 2019 22:44
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Box of Bunnies posted:""The scriptwriters sometimes try to make Dr. Who use expressions like "centrifugal force", but I refuse. If it all gets too technical, the children don't understand and they lose interest. After all, it's an adventure story, not a scientific documentary. And Dr. Who isn't a scientist. He's a wizard." - William Hartnell On the flip side of this though Hartnell had a habit of questioning plot inconsistencies and character anomalies. His attention to detail allowed him to provide continuity, even to the extent where he knew what button on the TARDIS console did what. Indeed, in the show's early days, Hartnell had predicted that it would run for years.
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Oct 13, 2019 23:04
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Payndz posted:There's no reason why the TARDIS couldn't float on a cloud over Victorian London and drop a ladder down so people can climb up to it - it just felt like it shouldn't. Clarke's Law or no, the Doctor isn't a wizard. Once it got to poo poo like magic trees sprouting over the whole Earth and the Moon being a space dragon egg, I Seinfeld-giffed out of there. Counterpoint: all of those things are great, actually. Even the magic trees--it's just that the story they're in is bad.
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Oct 14, 2019 00:12
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Payndz posted:This is what soured me on Moffat's run as it went on. The show's premise is "quirky alien has a spaceship/time machine that can go to anywhere in the universe at any time; adventures ensue". On the face of it it's ludicrous, but it works because the TARDIS is just a sci-fi Thing that brings the hero into each story. Emphasis on sci-fi. Unacceptable things (because Moffat): TARDIS that can orbit (or tow) a planet hovering in midair; trees rapidly growing over the Earth; Moon being an egg. Apparently acceptable things (because Davies?): Sentient walking trees showing up to watch the end of the planet Earth along with a woman who's been turned into a flat piece of skin; alien who turns back into an egg after looking into the TARDIS console; Doctor flying through the air and acquiring magic powers because people believe in him. If you find yourself having the kind of conversation that might lead to you defending the idea that the Force has to be explained by the existence of microscopic midi-chlorians, my advice is to stop having that conversation. The Doctor travels to stories, which is why it's only slightly peculiar when he ends up in the Realm of Fiction, and stories operate in many different ways.
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Oct 14, 2019 01:23
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Also the entire universe was put back together by a slightly mad Scotswoman's memory of how things were, channeled via an old man in a committee-assembled body Major Konging a prison cube made by angry pepper-pots into an exploding box that is bigger on the inside. Things are gonna be a little weird.
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Oct 14, 2019 02:18
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Related to nothing, I apparently forgot I still had an active subscription to BritBox here in the US, so my brother and I have been catching up on watching classic DW. He originally got me into the series back in the day, but had only really seen Pertwee and T. Baker episodes as they didn't have Hartnell or Troughton on PBS back when we first started watching it as kids, and by the time 1980s DW made its' way to PBS he'd already moved on to other interests. So it's been fun helping him get up to speed on the Second Doctor's run.
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Oct 14, 2019 09:10
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Narsham posted:alien who turns back into an egg after looking into the TARDIS console; Doctor flying through the air and acquiring magic powers because people believe in him.
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Oct 14, 2019 11:10
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Payndz posted:I thought those were terrible as well (don't forget that the Doctor had been shrunk into a sad-faced CGI gremlin at that point). Again, it's a matter of "at what point do you lose your suspension of disbelief?" It happened often enough in RTD's run, but to me became more egregious in Moffat's because the whole show was being swung into whimsical clockpunk fantasyland. Which I guess I just don't like, so have a harder time rolling with the base level of woo-woo. I feel like, at least to me, the reason Moffat's slip-ups on suspension of disbelief stuck out more was because his run overall felt more self-serious and like it was attempting to be more... perhaps not realistic, but more like it takes place in the real world, so the times when it just goes totally stupid stand out much more. RTD's run on the other hand has this... consistent, low-level 'camp' feel, this self-awareness that everything is silly as hell, where even the episodes set in the modern day don't actually feel like they're taking place in the world outside your window. I'd say a good comparison are their Cyberman stories; Moffat's Cyberman stories all had a significant bent of outright horror going on (regardless of how well that worked) and always feel like they're meant to be taken seriously at face value, while RTD's Cyberman stories had smaller nods to those horrors while mostly spending its runtime reveling in how ridiculous the situation could be. So while RTD's most egregious moments are probably worse than the most egregious ones from Moffat, RTD's feel better because they don't feel as out-of-place. I don't think we have a full grasp on Chibnall's in the same way, because I could see his inevitable 'completely insane' moment going either way. So far his run's felt extremely grounded and realistic, if occasionally overly simple, so something harming that is gonna hurt. But at the same time, I can also see Whittaker absolutely selling the most wildly melodramatic and farfetched climax possible and make it a loving joy.
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Oct 14, 2019 11:51
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Cleretic posted:I don't think we have a full grasp on Chibnall's in the same way, because I could see his inevitable 'completely insane' moment going either way. So far his run's felt extremely grounded and realistic, if occasionally overly simple, so something harming that is gonna hurt. But at the same time, I can also see Whittaker absolutely selling the most wildly melodramatic and farfetched climax possible and make it a loving joy. My takeaway so far is inverting the usual standard of quality scripts and acting produced on a budget of $16.50 so it's now in the business of lavishly bringing to life the most dire of farts, a status quo made even more agonizing by the actual good stories, Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away.
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Oct 14, 2019 12:51
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I've never been bothered by the wizard-y/fairytale tone of the Smith run, to be honest (it's clearly not a Moffat-specific trait, given he didn't bring that to the Tennant or Capaldi stories). I think Moffat eventually ran into big problems with plotting and characterization, but the tone definitely helped distinguish his own particular take on the Doctor. IMO one of the fascinating parts of this program is how distinct the various Doctors can be, not just in personality, but in terms of how their run works tonally and setting-wise, and by doing that, Moffat essentially ensured this characteristic of Classic Who would be kept in the revival. It's not for everybody, though, so I totally get it. And I probably have bad taste because I also enjoy the camp of RTD's run.
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Oct 14, 2019 12:59
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Rochallor posted:My takeaway so far is inverting the usual standard of quality scripts and acting produced on a budget of $16.50 so it's now in the business of lavishly bringing to life the most dire of farts, a status quo made even more agonizing by the actual good stories, Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away. Yeah this is exactly how I feel
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Oct 14, 2019 14:41
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In case you’re wondering what Rob Shearman has been up to, it’s writing nearly 650,000 words for a series of CYOA books. https://twitter.com/pspublishinguk/status/1183700354145423360
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Oct 14, 2019 16:15
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The_Doctor posted:In case you’re wondering what Rob Shearman has been up to, it’s writing nearly 650,000 words for a series of CYOA books. Yaz 
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Oct 14, 2019 18:36
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I've never been bothered by the wizard-y/fairytale tone of the Smith run, to be honest (it's clearly not a Moffat-specific trait, given he didn't bring that to the Tennant or Capaldi stories). I think Moffat eventually ran into big problems with plotting and characterization, but the tone definitely helped distinguish his own particular take on the Doctor. Eh, there's definitely signs of it in Moffat's RTD era scripts. The Girl in the Fireplace especially, but also the endings to The Doctor Dances and Forest of the Dead. The latter literally ends with River reading a bedtime story. Rewatching them in hindsight, it's easy to see them as indicative of the shape that Moffat's showrunning would take.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:17
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Speaking of trends in the scripts, someone on Twitter pointed out that, with the amount of times it happened during the time he was in charge, Moffat probably has a weird memory wipe fetish. "Your mind is erased in Doctor Who!" 
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Oct 14, 2019 20:22
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I can think of one, maybe two memory wipes in Moffat's era - Clara doing it to Twelve and I guess River getting manipulated by Kovarian? I deffo don't think I'd call it a fetish because it's consistently portrayed as a violation.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:40
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I absolutely adore Eleven as a fairy tale just like I love Twelve as a burned out former rock star and Thirteen's enthusiastic adventurer. Doctor Who rules because it can be so many different things.
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Oct 14, 2019 20:44
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DoctorWhat posted:I can think of one, maybe two memory wipes in Moffat's era - Clara doing it to Twelve and I guess River getting manipulated by Kovarian? Twelve offered to do it to Bill too until she was all "yeah, gently caress that," but that (particularly in conjunction with the way Twelve and Clara's story ended) felt like something a lot more specific and deliberate than "Moffat loves erasing peoples' memories".
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Oct 14, 2019 20:49
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LividLiquid posted:I absolutely adore Eleven as a fairy tale just like I love Twelve as a burned out former rock star and Thirteen's enthusiastic adventurer. I liked Eleven best as an awkward crumpled academic, but that was only in his first season. What remained consistent was that he was also a loving wizard who made most of his other incarnations look like chumps. I actually quite liked that Twelve wasn't as competent or confident, despite the bluster - it was all down to willpower for him. Like, his best moment was punching a wall for a couple billion years
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Oct 14, 2019 20:55
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I miss those big moments. Thirteen seems really down-to-earth and human by comparrison and all her stories are self-contained.
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Oct 14, 2019 21:28
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I think last series would've sat better with me if the finale wasn't so blah. Maybe it's what I've been conditioned by RTD & Moffat, but BoRAK was a big ol' pile of un-fun dumb.
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Oct 14, 2019 22:15
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DoctorWhat posted:I can think of one, maybe two memory wipes in Moffat's era - Clara doing it to Twelve and I guess River getting manipulated by Kovarian? The second episode was basically about ritualistic memory wiping. With some marvellous misdirection, I might add; of course people would remember Terrence Hardiman as the Demon Headmaster, and immediately see him as the bad guy.
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Oct 14, 2019 22:53
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