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Another thought that struck me after some time thinking about it: as much as I praised Dhawan playing “The Doctor” upthread, surely the more interesting way to do it would be to have Whittaker playing the Master’s mind in The Doctor’s body. Would have given Jodie a bit more to do in her valedictory episode, and would have been more heartbreaking/horrifying for Yaz to see this person she loves become completely different in front of her eyes. Feels like a really obvious wasted opportunity the more I think about it.
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Oct 25, 2022 22:50
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 14:17 |
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Chibnall was obsessed with surprise cliffhangers. And to be fair to him, he was good at them! Doctor loses the Tardis and teleports everyone to deep space, Spymaster, surprise Tardis in the ground, oh gently caress she's a weeping angel now, all good stuff. He just then answered every one with the most boring followup imaginable, if he even bothered to follow up at all ....wait isn't the universe still 99% blown up from the Flux? They got over that quick enough. DoctorWhat posted:Please stop characterizing Moffat this way. Literally only his first season was an actual puzzle box. Every season afterwards (except sort of his last), regardless of quality, was about setting up a puzzle box and then revealing what that mystery said about the characters and their relationships. Sometimes this stunk on ice (s6) and sometimes it gave us peak television (heaven sent/hell bent). But he never sincerely tried the S5 trick again, which was much more similar to an RTD season anyway. My read is that they were all attempts at clever puzzle boxes up to S8. They all had the slightly weird and gross 'Women are the real mystery' subtext as well that Moffatt keeps falling into. S5 was different because 'Amy doesn't make sense', although called out a few times, was a distant second to the mystery about the cracks and the Pandorica. But it was still there. S8 seemed to be explicitly about him recognising and exploring that trope though, and S9 went to great lengths to avoid any sort of puzzle box and was an explicit soft reboot of Capaldi's run. So I'm guessing Moffatt recognised it and explored it, good for him, but man....Who is Amy? Who is River? Who is Clara? Who is Missy? There was a definite pattern there, and it wasn't...great.
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Oct 25, 2022 22:59
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RTD (with Martha excepted to a degree) wrote the companions to have a bit more depth to them. Rose was a working class girl who wanted to leave her circumstances behind, Matha was a doctor who is naturally intelligent and empathetic, Donna (once she becomes more curious) is headstrong and will not take your poo poo. Moffat by contrast: Amy likes the doctor, Rory likes Amy, Clara likes the Doctor, Potts and Nardole are the only ones whose main chrematistics are curious and not enamored with the doctor.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:04
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Clara doesn't just "like" the Doctor. Clara wants to be Doctor Who. She suffers tremendously trying and failing and still wants to be Doctor Who. That's why her ending is becoming immortal-ish and stealing a Tardis., never to see the Doctor again.Pastamania posted:
I think your season numbers are off by one. 8 was Capaldi's first season, with Missy as the reveal, but she isn't a "puzzle box" really. 9 is Heaven Sent/Hell Bent, where Clara isn't remotely a mystery anymore. 10 is with Bill.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:11
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My point was more that Moff is a plot guy, he absolutely cares about character and theme, but he illustrates that through plots that fit together neatly for the most part, while Rusty is less concerned if A + B = C than if the beat hits you in the feels. Basically, Moffat wants you to wonder who Clara is, RTD wants you to wonder how Martha feels. And yes, the Dalek that's still ultimately a DALEK, because it's still a rampant xenophobic fascist, but is rebelling because the OTHER Daleks have lost their way from good old fashioned Kaled supremacy is pretty great and could have carried a full episode.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:38
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God I wish we'd gotten more Bill, she was so great.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:45
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The perfect balance was achieved in Series 1 and 4, with RTD showrunning and Moffat writing a two-parter. More of that please.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:58
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Jerusalem posted:God I wish we'd gotten more Bill, she was so great. RTD will never be able to get the performers back to do it, but I would love a series focusing on the travels through Time and Space of Clara/Me or Bill/Heather, or maybe one pair running into the other pair at some point. A literal spin-off of Doctor Who.
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Oct 26, 2022 00:31
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I've got to say, the cameo section kind of highlighted something I've never considered before. So for One, we've got Bradley, who does a pretty decent Hartnell. Four and up, we've still got, as long as we can come up with some kind of lampshade for why they look so much older (or just make it manic enough like the Time Crash thing so we don't have to explain). But now I'm wondering if they'll ever recast Two and Three. I mean, they haven't done a ton of past-Doctor stuff in the revival, but in a scene like this one the missing incarnations are kind of noticeable. (As great as it was to see Sylvester in the role again, and holy poo poo that scene with Ace, I think I fanboyed the most over Colin Baker. He got such short shrift during his tenure I was just so stoked to see him.)
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Oct 26, 2022 00:52
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Apparently, Doctor Who going to Disney+ means that it will no longer be airing on the ABC in Australia. So, uhm... I guess I'll be learning second-hand if RTD2 is any good.
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Oct 26, 2022 01:03
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Gaz-L posted:My point was more that Moff is a plot guy, he absolutely cares about character and theme, but he illustrates that through plots that fit together neatly for the most part, while Rusty is less concerned if A + B = C than if the beat hits you in the feels. Basically, Moffat wants you to wonder who Clara is, RTD wants you to wonder how Martha feels. You're right. I've said it before that the most iconic episodes of the Doctor Who revival were "The Empty Child/Doctor Dances", "Girl in the Fireplace", and "Blink". All episodes with Davies' emotional direction combined with Moffat's writing.
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Oct 26, 2022 01:05
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The start of the episode took some time to hook me and Dan's departure was kinda weird? But by the Rasputin scene and the holo-Docs I was pretty hooked, I don't care that the episode probably doesn't hold up if you squint at it properly. Ah who cares, this episode of Doctor Who was stupid fun, that's all I want!
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Oct 26, 2022 01:22
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Cleretic posted:So, uhm... I guess I'll be learning second-hand if RTD2 is any good. Nah gently caress that noise mate,  You can PM me if you want
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Oct 26, 2022 01:24
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kazmeyer posted:I've got to say, the cameo section kind of highlighted something I've never considered before. So for One, we've got Bradley, who does a pretty decent Hartnell. Four and up, we've still got, as long as we can come up with some kind of lampshade for why they look so much older (or just make it manic enough like the Time Crash thing so we don't have to explain). But now I'm wondering if they'll ever recast Two and Three. I mean, they haven't done a ton of past-Doctor stuff in the revival, but in a scene like this one the missing incarnations are kind of noticeable. I think the One recasting is a combination of a couple factors: 1) they'd already done it before 2) there was the backdoor where David Bradley originally played William Hartnell, not the Doctor, and 3) David Bradley has gotta be close to national treasure status at this point. I'd bet it would be more difficult to recast Two and Three. Troughton was such a physical actor that it would be hard to ape his perfomance, and Three is pretty close to Pertwee just playing himself. I know Big Finish has got their relatives playing the characters, and that''s fine for voice acting I suppose, but on-screen is a whole different thing. Cleretic posted:Apparently, Doctor Who going to Disney+ means that it will no longer be airing on the ABC in Australia. Fortunately, stealing from Disney is morally good!
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Oct 26, 2022 01:26
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Random Stranger posted:I'm looking forward to 2025 when we're all mad at RTD again and talk about how we always hated him. And then we'll be on to Moffat 2: Still Not Ginger Payndz posted:It'll turn out that every single human in history was actually a chameleon-arched Doctor. Rose? The Doctor. Sarah Jane? The Doctor. Professor Marius? The Doctor. Shakespeare, Leonardo, Nero? All the Doctor. So basically when we saw The Master Race, he had already become The Doctor without a forced regeneration?  Mooseontheloose posted:RTD (with Martha excepted to a degree) wrote the companions to have a bit more depth to them. Rose was a working class girl who wanted to leave her circumstances behind, Matha was a doctor who is naturally intelligent and empathetic, Donna (once she becomes more curious) is headstrong and will not take your poo poo. Ok, let's be fair, quite a bit of Martha was "Martha likes the Doctor." And Rose was that for 9, but when he became 10 it was "Rose likes the Doctor (and the Doctor likes her)".
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Oct 26, 2022 01:35
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Gaz-L posted:You can pretty easily handwave that it is a new incarnation, but because of the physical similarity to Ten, they act fairly similar. Or even make it a plot point that the Doctor wants to be Ten, but it's not quite clicking, which leads into the regen into Ncuti, where he's able to be comfortable being someone new again. Plus he's actually the 16th if we're going by regenerations, so why does this regen into Tennant count when the last one didn't, to say nothing of War Doc. OldMemes posted:Yeah, I think the "I don't want to go" line was a bad final line for Ten, and I think it didn't help a lot of the casual fans with the transition to Smith. He should have followed that with another line instead. Astroman posted:Would The Timeless Child plot make more or less sense Even Moffat would tell you that you were foolish to care about the things he told you to care about before rug-pulling you. To do nothing and to instead introduce every classic Doctor and Companion you can rear end-pull into your finale is just sad, as great as it was to watch.
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Oct 26, 2022 01:40
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Rochallor posted:Troughton was such a physical actor that it would be hard to ape his perfomance This is why I just couldn't watch the animations. I really love the Second Doctor and Troughton's performance, and a lot of it comes from the interaction of his line delivery, physicality, facial expression and reaction to the other actors. None of that is successfully captured with the animations, and just leaves me cold when I should be delighted. And are you loving serious? The ABC can no longer air Doctor Who? I am struggling to find words to express how... offended? I am.
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Oct 26, 2022 01:58
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They can just have Matt Smith play Two. edit: HA TWO as in the second Doctor and TWO as in two roles!
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Oct 26, 2022 02:00
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Coward posted:This is why I just couldn't watch the animations. I really love the Second Doctor and Troughton's performance, and a lot of it comes from the interaction of his line delivery, physicality, facial expression and reaction to the other actors. None of that is successfully captured with the animations, and just leaves me cold when I should be delighted. This is your first warning from King Charles of what you can expect if you try to leave the Commonwealth...
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Oct 26, 2022 02:00
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Doctor Who and the ABC have been a pairing for like 50 years, bonkers I've got Disney+ but still, bullshit
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Oct 26, 2022 03:49
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They wouldn’t have needed to partner with Disney if the BBC was actually supported and funded properly. It’s a shame that the ABC has to suffer because of England’s hosed up government.
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Oct 26, 2022 05:04
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How?! How could they have learned nothing from America privatizing loving everything?! Oh, right. They did learn from that. "They" are just fascists.
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Oct 26, 2022 05:22
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https://twitter.com/chaser/status/1585125849652547584?t=cgiLz6fNdQeXDBE7wDy8wA&s=19 Australia, at least, is responding appropriately.
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Oct 26, 2022 05:34
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Cleretic posted:https://twitter.com/chaser/status/1585125849652547584?t=cgiLz6fNdQeXDBE7wDy8wA&s=19 https://twitter.com/CyberneticDaisy/status/1585128710453481472 ...Have aliens ever actually tried to invade Australia? Or do the memes scare them away?
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Oct 26, 2022 05:49
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So did they ever explain why the master was a Cat?
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Oct 26, 2022 06:08
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Ups_rail posted:So did they ever explain why the master was a Cat? It's just your standard Cheetah Planet stuff. (That story is probably Ainley's best outing as the Master and a shame he didn't get any more stories with that characterisation)
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Oct 26, 2022 06:22
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Late, but I watched the finale. Random thoughts: - I know it’s just fanservice, but it loving worked for me without question; I grinned ear to ear every single time Syl and Davison showed up. Legit choked up when they had their moments with Tegan and Ace. - Speaking of Ace, holy poo poo Sophie Aldred must have been having an absolute ball filming this. I need the further adventures of Ace to happen, make her a recurring UNIT character or something. - I’m assuming the falling out Ace had with 7 is a Big Finish/novel thing? Unless I’m forgetting some part of Survival. - Janet Fielding was great too, I loved how instantly the old Tegan personality clicked in once the Doctor showed up. - I’ve never really warmed to his Doctor or even explored his run all that much, but I’m immensely happy for Colin Baker to have another chance to be on the show in such a high profile episode. He seems like the nicest guy. - 5,6, & 7 are sadly probably past the point of running down corridors in a real Multi-Doc special, but goddamnit give me a full episode of 8 and 14/15/? already. - Sacha Dwahan can play The Master for the rest of the entire show for all I care. He’s so drat good at being genuinely menacing and intense. - After blasting through all of Flux and these last few specials I’m genuinely going to miss 13. Even if the writing still wasn’t quite there, it felt like Whitaker had really settled into a nice groove for the character. I know there’s an unwritten tradition of recent Doctors keeping their distance from the show but I really hope she comes back in a substantial way for the 60th. - I’ve mellowed on Tennant over the years and it’s always fun seeing a former Doc revisit the role, but man just give me Ncuti Gatwa already. I don’t need an entire year of specials stalling for time.
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Oct 26, 2022 08:00
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Big Mean Jerk posted:- I’m assuming the falling out Ace had with 7 is a Big Finish/novel thing? It is and it's not. There's a whole drama involving the comics and the NAs, and then Big Finish decided to add to the problem about a decade later (while also refusing to provide their own definitive take on the situation). Then The comics can't fit with anything else, because they kill Ace off, so I generally go with the NA version (which is occasionally referenced by BF so I guess that's one of the several competing versions they allow themselves to suggest).
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Oct 26, 2022 08:17
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Vinylshadow posted:https://twitter.com/CyberneticDaisy/status/1585128710453481472 quote:The Fleet's descending. They're bombing whole continents. Europa, Pacifica, the New American Alliance. Australasia's just gone. 
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Oct 26, 2022 12:36
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Big Finish's version of Ace's post-TV story is really the only one that gives her a complete narrative arc. It's: further solo adventures with the Doctor, adventures with Hex, adventures with Raine (somewhere?), leaves the Doctor and goes to Gallifrey, gets evacuated and memory redacted form Gallifrey to protect her from the Time War, founds a charity, additional middle aged adventures with 7, 10 and 13. Ace first leaves in Love and War, but VNA canon is...tricky with post VNA canon - they go into discussion about this on the behind the scenes of the audio adaptation.
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Oct 26, 2022 13:34
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We've had this convo before, but BF regularly references the NAs. Somehow they happen both before and after Hex's travels in the TARDIS though.
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Oct 26, 2022 14:16
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Here's something that bothered me a little bit about the past Doctors' cameos but that I couldn't really verbalise right away. First off, I will naturally accept any excuse for seeing old Doctors on screen, and it's really great that they're there in person and as they are now - we're not playing around with CGI de-aging or archival footage or recasting, or even trying to explain why they look different than they used to beyond a joke or two, and in principle that's exactly how I think it should be done. And in one way having a Doctor hologram that can take different forms depending on who's seeing it is a really clever idea for doing just that. But in another way, it's a little unsatisfying, and emblematic of a bigger problem with the Chibnall era. Yes, it's wonderful that we get to see Tegan with Five and Ace with Seven, and they get to have a little back-and-forth and get some closure on their relationships. But the Doctor they interact with in those moments is actually not the Doctor at all, it's an AI and a hologram, and they know it. So Tegan and Ace are basically having an emotional reunion with a chatbot. The Doctor says that she's trained the AI to respond exactly as she would, sure, so maybe the conversation that Tegan and Ace have with the AI is the same they would have had with the actual Doctor, but it is not actually the Doctor they knew or the Doctor we know. The Doctor we know is functionally dead at that point, and so she doesn't get to have her part in that meeting either - she's left with even less than they are. It's emotional resolution for characters we've known for 40 years played out as a Turing Test for a Gallifreyan ELIZA. Because the thing is, it's not for the characters, it's for us. We see Janet Fielding with Peter Davison, and we see Sophie Aldred with Sylvester McCoy, and they really are there and it's great, so the emotional throughline is there for us. But for the characters of Tegan and Ace and the Doctor it's not, because the gimmick that Chibnall has used to make it so we as viewers can get that experience of seeing the old Doctors really there has simultaneously made it so that they really aren't there in the actual world of the story. And if it was just this one thing I maybe wouldn't have noticed, but Chibnall has shown it over and over again that he can't handle characters' emotional arcs very well. Yaz is of course the most egregious example of this - apparently the Sea Devils episode was seriously supposed to be the resolution to her falling in love with the Doctor, which was itself never developed or explored in any real way, and then the Doctor leaves her without so much as a handshake?? This, I think, is part of the reason why he struggles with them: he isn't thinking in terms of what the characters feel as real people inhabiting the world of Doctor Who, he's thinking solely in terms of what the audience sees, what the Doctor Who fan watching Doctor Who wants to get from watching Doctor Who. And what the fans want is to see Sophie and Sylvester together in their old costumes (and that's right, we do), and here's this AI hologram trick we can do to make that happen, and who cares if that's actual emotional resolution as long as it walks and talks like emotional resolution. It's a hollow replica of an actual, emotional, dramatic character arc that just superficially involves the sorts of things a character arc would have - it's like an AI hologram itself. So the overwhelming impression I get from his era is that Chibnall doesn't write drama about characters, he writes Doctor Who involving the sort of things that happen in Doctor Who. It's a fundamentally superficial approach, and though there are sometimes things to enjoy about it (many of them in this episode, which I did overall like a good bit), at the end of the day it leaves me unsatisfied because I don't feel like there is any actual substance to engage with.
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Oct 26, 2022 15:00
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If you want to recast Three, Sean Pertwee is right there. Two is probably a forlorn hope, though. Not that it wouldn’t be in character for Two to stay in the background.
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Oct 26, 2022 15:30
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Rochallor posted:I think the One recasting is a combination of a couple factors: 1) they'd already done it before 2) there was the backdoor where David Bradley originally played William Hartnell, not the Doctor, and 3) David Bradley has gotta be close to national treasure status at this point. I'd bet it would be more difficult to recast Two and Three. Troughton was such a physical actor that it would be hard to ape his perfomance, and Three is pretty close to Pertwee just playing himself. I know Big Finish has got their relatives playing the characters, and that''s fine for voice acting I suppose, but on-screen is a whole different thing. Yeah, it's kind of a perfect-storm situation for David Bradley, I guess I just think he's doing such a great job I wish they could stumble into another perfect casting for our missing Doctors. But I'd rather them not try it than try it and gently caress it up.
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Oct 26, 2022 17:05
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Finally got to watch, and wow, what an absolute mess. Things just happen one after another with very little lead through or inciting incident. It makes Broadchurch’s plotting look like a fluke. That said, some of the character moments are lovely, and I definitely teared up at seeing Seven and Ace together on screen. The scene with the previous Doctors guarding the precipice over which each Doctor falls (but they’re also there at the same time?) felt like something from one of the NAs/EDAs, and it’s always good to see the old faces. Also giving out praise to Sacha Dhawan’s Master. I really hope he gets to stay on, as he’s so good in the role. The quiet menace is genuinely chilling, and works really well. Overall there’s lots of decent, even good bits, but what’s holding it all together is threadbare at best, and often just non-existent. It felt like cargo culted RTD excess. Daleks! Cybermen! The Master! But no real understanding of how plot works or what makes it good. There’s a creature powering everything, but it’s disguised as a child, but it was being held in a box on a space train, it’s just… why? Everything falls apart the moment you apply any thought process to it. Jodie deserved so much better, but that’s been true since day one.
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Oct 26, 2022 17:16
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Oh is that what the cargo was
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Oct 26, 2022 18:00
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Does anyone make a CyberMaster figure? Or even just a statue/figurine? I really love that design, stupid as it may be.
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Oct 26, 2022 18:19
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Shiftypenguin posted:I'm hoping this means we'll get the new episodes sooner and not like it is on HBO Max now where it's months before they show up. It's worth it.
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Oct 26, 2022 18:28
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Big Mean Jerk posted:I’ve mellowed on Tennant over the years and it’s always fun seeing a former Doc revisit the role, but man just give me Ncuti Gatwa already. I don’t need an entire year of specials stalling for time.  but in my case I'm totally over him. Let him go already, everybody. I'm sure he loves returning to the role every decade but let's get this Ncuti ball rolling.thrawn527 posted:Seriously, I've obviously heard the song before, but because of this episode I've had that Rasputin song going through my head for days. I loved that scene. another
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Oct 26, 2022 18:38
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 14:17 |
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Seriously, I've obviously heard the song before, but because of this episode I've had that Rasputin song going through my head for days. I loved that scene.
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Oct 26, 2022 18:39
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