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What do you think of the new international distribution deal? This poll is closed. |
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| Hate it |
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12 | 16.90% |
| REALLY hate it |
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16 | 22.54% |
| Hello, my name is Bob Chapek |
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43 | 60.56% |
| Total: | 71 votes | ||
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Rewatched The Woman Who Fell To Earth. Legitimately what a great intro to 13. Had some great dark scary monsters in a dark scary ep, and I really wish they had stuck with the 'scrappy steampunk madcap crafter' vibe she had going on in the ep. https://i.imgur.com/uCEaNwQ.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/Il1q1nM.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/WlUHnn8.mp4 Always did love the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog shot https://i.imgur.com/LrFUESq.mp4 Honestly if they went with Gang, instead of Fam, that'd probably helped things along as well. Infinitum fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 14:00
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It did look absolutely stunning. Unrelated but if you watch 7 episodes a day from the beginning, you would be done by the day of the 60th anniversary.
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Jul 20, 2023 14:48
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Confusedslight posted:I'm deep down expecting to be emotionally devastated by how the arc ends. I hope Donna gets a positive ending but I don't think that will be the case. 10 gets another chance at life but ends up in another Wilf situation with Donna. Doesn't whine about it this time, happy ending.
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Jul 20, 2023 18:17
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Donna moving to Scranton was the saddest turn for her character
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Jul 20, 2023 18:48
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Yeah, The Woman Who Fell to Earth was a great intro to 13, a really great intro to the show, suggested a ton of promise for the future and even after that promise wasn't realized it still stands up really strongly. Moffat had season 5 of Doctor Who waiting to just burst out of him after decades of planning, I guess all Chibnall really had was The Woman Who Fell to Earth (well, and Broadchurch season 1!). Edit: Even T'zim-Sha works in isolation as a pathetic rear end in a top hat who is using cheats to pretend to be a huge badass. It's his second appearance in the finale as well as the lame and quickly discarded effort in The Ghost Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 22:14
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Monument, not Machine. Although, that would probably be a more interesting story based on the name alone.
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Jul 20, 2023 22:55
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That episode made so many promises that averything after failed to keep that I can't help but be sad when I watch it. It's a window into what could have been. "Madcap steampunk crafter," indeed. I was really looking forward to that. Plus they played her theme tune when she did something clever and evidently I think that's incredibly important for some reason.
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Jul 20, 2023 22:55
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They briefly played 11 as the tinkerer Doctor, because it's always a good concept for the character, but it's a bad concept for the show. Why make 10-13 more props each season when you've already designed and merchandised the sonic that will be in those episodes anyway?
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Jul 20, 2023 23:00
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Edward Mass posted:Monument, not Machine. Although, that would probably be a more interesting story based on the name alone. I kept telling myself to double-check that name before I hit post 
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Jul 20, 2023 23:08
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I get the feeling this is exactly why Rusty brought her back. Genuinely, I know that this is an attempt to get a lot of eyes back to Who, but also, it does feel like him basically being in a different place in his life and getting to redo Donna's series 4 arc. Might be completely off-base with this, but that's the feeling I get. It's like how Hideaki Anno made four Evangelion films to tell a different story from the one he did when he was broke and going through a mid-life crisis, or how the Futurama writers retconned the end of "Jurassic Bark" because it made them cry too much.
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Jul 21, 2023 01:13
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Donna will get her memories back because it will make everyone rediscovering the show cry their eyes out - they will also get their memories (of the show being good) back. It's the obvious thing to do for a soft reboot.
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Jul 21, 2023 03:03
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TinTower posted:It's like how Hideaki Anno made four Evangelion films to tell a different story from the one he did when he was broke and going through a mid-life crisis, or how the Futurama writers retconned the end of "Jurassic Bark" because it made them cry too much. I really liked the newest Eva's. In general I like the idea of original creators revisiting a property with a different perspective later in life than your average reboot just trying to do whatever they think contemporary audiences want.
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Jul 21, 2023 03:32
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Saw Barbie today and, even though his part is fairly small, Gatwa really makes the most of it.
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Jul 21, 2023 07:34
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Saw on Amazon that there's a new novelization of "The Evil of the Daleks" coming out ... and it's written by Frazier Hines!?!
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Jul 21, 2023 10:54
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Season 11, Episode 7: Kerblam! Written by Pete McTighe, Directed by Jennifer Perrott Charlie posted:Not like anyone pays attention to this stuff. Kerblam! is an episode full of energy, plenty of nice individual character moments, well-structured with well placed and nicely managed hints and guides towards final reveals that, when they finally come, make perfect sense and add next context to prior scenes. It takes a futuristic look at a very real concern of the time (continuing into the present day, and a familiar concern going back multiple decades now) around corporate automation and the wholesale abandonment of labor in favor of an endless hunger for constant commercial growth. How did I feel about it when I first saw it? Well I loved it of course! Jerusalem posted:That was a really loving good episode This is one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who for this season, and stands among an uncomfortable number of Who episodes who have - whether intentionally or not - pressed exactly the worst kind of message for a show like this.  Now that's not just the benefit of hindsight, because within an hour of posting the above my enthusiasm had waned. Within 3 hours the whole thing was kind of falling apart and I was kind of desperately trying to hold onto those good feelings while acknowledging problems and within 5 hours I was finally admitting what I hadn't wanted to: that the episode had been carried entirely by the charm of the cast and was actually really pretty hosed up. Chris Chibnall didn't write this episode, it was Pete McTighe, but it reminded me of a frequent criticism I'd had of Chibnall trying his best to ape the likes of RTD and later Moffat without really capturing what made their peculiar writing habits work for them. RTD in particular had a tendency to write stories that got you so carried away it took sometimes took hours if not days (or weeks!) to go,"Hang on a second.... that makes no sense, and is bad! Or even actively terrible!" Where Demons of the Punjab was able to be more than the sum of its parts, Kerblam! manages to make a whole that actively detracts from all its good parts. I really did enjoy that brief heady period of optimism I had directly after it aired though, before it all came crashing home how unbelievably hosed up what I'd just seen was. https://i.imgur.com/p2yKcwQ.mp4 Chased through the vortex by a pursuer she can't seem to shake, the Doctor is surprised but delighted when what shows up inside the TARDIS is the Kerblam! ManTM. This raises some questions that the audience is left to fill in, presumably this automated delivery man does NOT have time travel technology and just happened to lock onto the TARDIS when it happened to cross into roughly the same time/space coordinates as itself, and the Doctor's attempts to shake the pursuer only traveled through space rather than time? It's hardly the first time a corporate device has managed to penetrate the TARDIS though, an advertising bot for the Space Circus managed to slip in during The Greatest Show in the Galaxy after all. It's another example of the Doctor being a citizen of all times and spaces, familiar with a wide range of different eras and their cultures and idiosyncrasies, as none of the companions have any idea what the Kerblam! Man is but quickly figure out that it's essentially Space Amazon. Kerblam! sells and delivers EVERYTHING via teleportation, given an anthropomorphized face by the rather extraneous addition of a "Kerblam! Man" robot who "does" the delivery, even though direct teleportation would be far more efficient. In a neat nod to the Eleventh Doctor, it's revealed that 13's order was made roughly 800 years earlier for a new fez to presumably replace the one River Song blew up.... 11 seemingly promptly forgetting they made the order, and the delivery only made successfully because 13 stumbled back across the same section of time as when the order was made. The delivery itself is simply a delivery mechanism! Inside the box is a packing slip with a message included: HELP ME. Thus the Doctor's interest (and concern) is piqued, and she decides to take the companions undercover with her to investigate the main Kerblam! Distribution Center/Warehouse, a literal moon of the planet Kandoka. This allows a splitting up of the characters after the Doctor fakes their credentials, helped in part by the overwhelming automation (10% of the workforce are "organic", everything else is a semi-autonomous robot managed by "The System"). They're assigned to different sections to work, and it's a rare instance of an episode so far this season where all the characters get a little bit of spotlight and a chance to showcase some of their own background and how it is relevant to the story. Ryan joins the Doctor in the Product Incoming section where they scan and package new orders, the Doctor having switched places with Graham's assigned role because she figured this gave her closer access to the packing slips which the call for help was printed on. Ryan does well in the role, much to his chagrin as he points out that part of the reason he travels with the Doctor is because he wanted to escape a life of warehouse drudgery. The Doctor of course can't help chatting and making friends, including with a sweet young worker called Kira who offers a depressing view of a rather sad and lonely life she is trying her best to make the most of. This leads to a clash with their supervisor, Mr. Slade, which is in character for the Doctor as a character who doesn't like bullies but creates a weird situation where an apparent bullying little Napoleon of a supervisor just stands and takes insults and demands from a brand new employee in a role where employment is rare and highly competitive. Yaz works in "Fulfilment" with Dan (played by Lee Mack! and Julie Hesmondhalgh plays the "Head of People"!) where they locate and scan the products ordered by shoppers and send them down to the packing station. While Yaz once again gets short shift and plays second banana to Dan getting to have a tugging at the heart-strings backstory, it also provides some important plot points around missing workers, areas of Fulfillment that are not safe, and showcases one of the more subtle (and strong) elements of Yaz's character: as a police officer, she doesn't just arrest people (though late in the episode she puts the villain in a good armhold!) but does a lot of the community/caretaking aspects of police work (in an ideal world): she talks to people, she gets them to open up, she shows empathy and makes people feel comfortable talking. At the end of the episode, she takes on the terrible responsibility of going to inform Dan's daughter of his death, something she feels is her duty. Graham meanwhile is relegated to the Doctor's originally assigned role, a maintenance man joining a friendly but seemingly not-too-bright young man called Charlie whose major storyline beat seem to be that he has a crush on Kira. Graham is warm and conivival of course despite not being pleased about his role, and his discussions with Charlie might not reveal any particular suspects but do at least showcase just how tightly controlled the Kerblam! warehouse supposedly is. Everything indicates that whoever might be the source of danger must have some high level of authority/access to get away with it, or that more like the system itself is at fault, with plenty of dark moody lights, intrusive and abrupt arrivals of the robotic "teammates" and shots of them apparently menacing victims shortly before they disappear. https://i.imgur.com/00Xx9ON.mp4 https://imgur.com/O8wY8Rh.mp4 One of the strengths of the episode, which DOES do a good job of world-building, demonstrating an underlying sense of desperation and a real sense of horror around the soullessness of the place, is the development of key ideas and plot points being introduced well: power drains, presents, Kira’s sadness, missing people, Judy mentioning that Charlie got a “second chance”, how ubiquitous bubble wrap is etc. All those things are minor, don't have attention called to them, but help build brick by brick the overall story in a way that mostly holds together... until it doesn't, but more on that later. A good example is in Charlie. Presented as a kind of dorky, love-struck kid enamored with an equally dorky, optimistic and sweet young woman, he's so unremarkable that nobody notices what is going on with him even AFTER Graham happily declares that he can get them extensive maps and charts of the facility thanks to the completely open access maintenance men like he and Charlie have. The Doctor doesn't grasp why she would be assigned to maintenance by default and how she screwed up her own chance to get direct access to the problem right from the get-go, just as guilty of overlooking the maintenance man as anybody else even if she was the one who actually acknowledged and greeted Charlie when she first saw him while Judy and the TeamMates didn't appear to notice he was even there. Even when one of the TeamMates literally just storms in during a blackout and tries to straight up murder Charlie in front of everybody, nobody figures that Charlie is being specifically targeted (and fair enough to just assume he was a target of opportunity like they've assumed the other missing workers were) or makes much of the fact that Charlie appears extremely confident about his ability to simply shut them off. When Kira is taken by the TeamMates, Charlie's (genuine) concern just strikes them as a reasonable reaction to finding out his crush might be in trouble and Yaz and Ryan are sent with him to rescue her, leading to the big "action" scene of the episode which pays lip-service to Ryan's dyspraxia. Because the Doctor is a bit too busy being clever, openly confronting Judy and Slade with the fact that Dan is missing, completely abandoning any pretense of being an employee (she has Graham keep it up, even then not quite grasping the significance even as she exploits maintenance's extensive access) and seemingly being allowed to wander the facility at will without Judy or Slade raising any kind of alarm or insisting that they remain under the eye of security. Less strong is an attempt to subvert expectations by revealing that Slade was actually concerned and actively investigating the missing workers via analog means because he couldn't trust the System. The message I guess is that even rear end in a top hat little power-tripping pricks like Slade have their good sides, but nothing about his undercover investigation dictated he should openly insult or demean his workers! gently caress that guy! It seems clear now though that it isn't any Judy or Slade behind the disappearances, making the System itself seem like it is the culprit, that this is another story of machinery/computers/artificial intelligence going rogue. That just appears more likely to be the case after Kira is called in to be awarded the Employee of the Day (an award she happily admits she has never heard of) is given a present like she always dreamed of getting only to find it is empty except for the presence of bubble wrap, and then appears to be reduced to dust right in front of a horrified Charlie, Ryan and Yaz. https://imgur.com/iGOzOXs.mp4 https://imgur.com/PcqK968.mp4 The Doctor's efforts to figure out the complex mess of The System's code involves her reenacting a comedy skit from Red Dwarf when she activates an old original model Kerblam! sales bot that was designed to onsell products and uses it to find the original source code and figure out what has been changed from the System's original programming. Every story element comes together as they track down the missing workers and find the access/tracking devices Kerblam! uses still present in a goopy mess of leftover organic remains. Thousands of "Kerblam! Men" have been set aside in the foundation level of the warehouse (which is the size of a moon remember, but all seems to take place in one building outside of the conveyer belt shots with Ryan, Yaz and Charlie), each still holding the package they were SUPPOSED to deliver. Did nobody complain about not getting their packages? Presumably Kerblam! has an "acceptable" number of undelivered/missing packages that was used to account for the missing Kerblam! Men? The Doctor and Companions have at last put the pieces together after Ryan and Yaz reveal the method of Kira's death (the bubble wrap, which almost feels like a nod to Classic Who!) and that Charlie was aware BEFORE it killed her that it was deadly. Charlie can't help but gloat, how he hid his true intelligence, his intense studying and hatred to successfully fool Judy with a sob story about his past that got him into the invisible role of maintenance: access to EVERYTHING without his presence ever being noticed. He's the one who killed the missing workers, testing out his deadly bubble wrap on them as test cases ahead of a mass murder using the Kerblam! Men in order to destroy Kerblam!'s reputation and force the dismantling of its majority automated workforce. He used his knowledge and access to co-opt TeamMates and use them to be his muscle. He is the one who screwed with the System's Code to allow him to bypass safety regulations. The massive blackouts were the System filtering as much of its system into single a TeamMate as it could in attempts to get hold of Charlie after he successfully blocked its ability to report him. His methods are insane, of course, but his argument is that the 10% human workforce of which Judy is so proud is insane and that the corporation will only continue to chip away at it as they are forced to accept less and less. Along with reveals from the likes of Dan earlier that he has to squirrel away everything he's got just in the hopes his daughter will have enough, Kira putting a brave face on the utterly lonely existence she was living... well, it seems like he has a point? Not that it excuses murder, of course, but his deranged actions were designed to give humanity a chance to restore some dignity. It's difficult not to immediately compare this episode to the likes of the utterly brilliant Oxygen, which made no bones about pointing out that Capitalism absolutely loving sucks and that it will only hold back the further development of human beings. Not that everything will be perfect when it is gone, 12 makes the point that humanity will move on to the "next" mistake, but things simply could not continue as they were. The question for an episode like Kerblam! is... why do humans still HAVE to work to survive? Where is the Galactic Basic Income? If Kerblam!'s automation can only survive if people can buy things, and people can't buy things because there are no jobs because they're all automated... then at best we're looking at an ever degrading circle of a tiny percentage of people being rich and getting richer, which is depressingly topical but I'm not sure the absurdity of late-stage Capitalism was the point? In any case, reactions like those of Charlie's - while not something to be endorsed - are entirely understandable as a lashing out of the powerless against the powerful where it really hurts them: their reputation (and financial damages!). The Doctor of course is revolted, and makes a passionate speech about the importance of a conscience, and makes the point that in his attempts to "save" humanity Charlie has lost all of his. She points out that System, despite being a computer system, demonstrates more of a conscience that was trying to stop murder and violence and reached out to her in its desperation by using the one system even Charlie didn't have access to, to slip out an undercover message to a customer with an outstanding order who also had the reputation/nous to save it: the Doctor. They try to reach Charlie, to appeal to his humanity, but after escaping Yaz's armlock he disappears among the Kerblam! Men to set off his trap. The Doctor uses the most basic method available to her and simply redirects the Delivery Men to change their delivery addresses to themselves and to emulate the traditional package opening/bubble wrap popping of a customer. The latter part probably wasn't necessary but ran the risk of Charlie being able to reprogram them if she didn't, and she and the others beg him to return to them to escape death, but even as he panics over realizing what is happening, he refuses to leave. The Doctor has no choice but to teleport the rest of them out (remember that) and Charlie's plot is foiled. https://imgur.com/3dJ7ARx.mp4 https://imgur.com/XvlfJYb.mp4 Except... it wasn't! He didn't succeed in his planned mass murder of course, but in the aftermath of the whole mess, Judy and Slade happily declare that.... they're going to be pushing for Kerblam! to be at least 50% human employment. So... what Charlie wanted! Judy proudly insisted earlier in the episode that through enormous efforts she had managed to get this facility to a whopping 10% human employment after a series of peaceful protests. So peaceful protests against the automated sales juggernaut got them 10% employment, and multiple murders and terrorism got them 50%! Even that high minded suggestion from Slade and Judy rings empty, given that they mention it will be at least a month before the facility is up and running again and so all the human employees have gotten.... two weeks paid vacation. Two weeks is... less than a month! What's more likely is that maintenance gets replaced by automated units and human employment drops to 8%, and Slade and Judy get quietly shuffled out with a payout and extensive NDAs. Because the System won here, and the System sucks. That's one of the worst things about this episode, among its many mixed messages is the one the Doctor passionately gives about the System having a conscience. The message is already mixed enough given the System is called.... the System! It's effectively the Doctor arguing FOR capitalism, even if that wasn't the intended message, as she makes the technically correct point that a System itself isn't flawed, just how it is used. Rather than extending that out to a call for the top people at Kerblam! to be called to account, she focuses on Charlie himself, on the way he exploited loopholes in the System's programming to use it as a weapon. All of that could be overlooked, perhaps, or not be enough to derail the high energy and enthusiasm of the cast that made this story so initially enjoyable. Except... well.... Kira. The System can teleport its Kerblam! Men. Those Kerblam! Men can teleport those in proximity to them. Kira is taken to a secured room and Charlie is forced to watch as she pops his deadly bubble wrap and then disappears in a flash of light. When the Doctor tells Charlie that the System wanted Charlie to feel the grief he was about to expose all the families of his intended victims to, to make him realize the error of his ways, then the seemingly obvious "twist" is that the System DOES have a conscience, and that it faked Kira's death using lights and teleportation. That she would step out and confront Charlie, confused by what had happened but horrified to learn what he was planning. No. The System MURDERED a completely innocent human being. And the Doctor CELEBRATED that. She spoke it up as an example of the System's ability to empathise and show a conscience. By not only killing an innocent woman, but doing so in a way that exploited her desperate loneliness and poverty-stricken and friendless background. Her last moments were her soaking in the disappointment of being offered a present and finding it empty. Then she died, horribly, her own status as a person completely relegated to the background in favor of how it would impact on somebody else, somebody whose relationship with her was merely a fantasy in the first place. It's.... despicable. It makes the fact I initially felt so positive about the episode stick all the more in my throat. Kerblam! is a fun, energetic and well-paced story whose overall message entirely falls apart after even the most minor scrutiny, and which offers a really screwed up perspective on morality made all the worse by the fact it is filtered through the Doctor. Her speech lauding the System and Space Amazon (which Kerblam! is unapologetic in being VERY obvious about) will stand alongside 12's speech telling immigrants to just suck it up and forgive exploitative Governments or that people shouldn't take their prescribed mental health medication. None of those were the intended message, I'm sure, but they're how it all came across, and the end result just leaves me feeling much like Graham at the end of the episode: having second thoughts and feeling slightly betrayed by the thing I enjoyed actually being really, really bad. https://i.imgur.com/grJVKtu.mp4 Bah, writing all that made me grouchy, which always makes me hungry. You know what I could go for right about now? AN ENORMOUS HAM! Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories.
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Jul 21, 2023 11:54
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Davros1 posted:Saw on Amazon that there's a new novelization of "The Evil of the Daleks" coming out ... and it's written by Frazier Hines!?! As i understand it, it’s more a novelisation of the repeat of Evil, where the Doctor is showing it to Zoe at the end of The Wheel in Space. Rather than an actual novelisation, it’s more a retelling from Jamie’s perspective and it has some additional story around it.
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Jul 21, 2023 13:51
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Infinitum posted:Donna Gets Her Memories Back And Keeps Them good ending or we riot gently caress you I want to be depressed after watching a children's television show
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Jul 21, 2023 14:16
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The amazing thing about Kerblam! is that almost any other permutation of the story would improve it, but McTighe and Chibnall went for this one because it’d be an unexpected twist while apparently disregarding any kind of message it would communicate. Even a story about how the System went mad because it is supposed to maximize automated efficiency as well as sales, and the absence of work for humans depresses sales, so the System has realized that the part of it that replaces human labor (and makes remaining human labor cheap) is working at cross-purposes to the part of it that wants to sell to customers, would accomplish aspects of the “twist ending” where the System is “good” while being more intelligible and interesting. More interesting would be to actually explore the implications of the System developing empathy for humanity as well as a conscience and thus desperately trying to escape the limitations of its own existence harming humanity in the name of corporate profit, where the plea for help translates into asking the Doctor to somehow reform the whole company, but I can see why nobody might think they could pull off a satisfying ending. Then again, this story doesn’t either and it has just enough gestures toward the possible “the System became sentient and considers itself a monster” thread to make what actually happens a terrible disappointment. Chibnall has this strange fixation on story being about things that happen without any particular attentiveness to the underlying meanings of those happening things. You can see it in Torchwood interwoven into individual “message” stories (what is the meaning of the overall character arcs? There really isn’t any) and it gets far worse during his run on Doctor Who. It’s sad that his tenure can largely be summed up as “first showrunner to cast a woman as the Doctor, but didn’t really have any ideas about what to do with her after that.” I mean, what writer, when confronted with the opportunities inherent in eventually casting not just one, but TWO female Doctors, decides “the thing to do with this opportunity is to explain the extra faces in The Brain of Morbius!”
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Jul 21, 2023 15:22
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Are there any recommended 9 and/or 10 Big Finish audio dramas for someone who's only watched those two?
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Jul 21, 2023 15:45
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I only have the first Ten and Donna set, but it's great.
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Jul 21, 2023 16:02
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Seconding that the first 10/Donna set is a really nice shift into the audio side of things, their chemistry from the show carries through really well.Narsham posted:The amazing thing about Kerblam! is that almost any other permutation of the story would improve it, but McTighe and Chibnall went for this one because it’d be an unexpected twist while apparently disregarding any kind of message it would communicate. Yeah, my own irritation at myself for getting carried with it initially aside, it bugs me that there is definitely the germs of a really drat good story there and they went for the most bizarrely weird and inappropriate version instead. But maybe I came to expect to much after Oxygen didn't wimp out and straight up ran with,"Capitalism is monstrous and it will only get worse until it dies." Narsham posted:Chibnall has this strange fixation on story being about things that happen without any particular attentiveness to the underlying meanings of those happening things. You can see it in Torchwood interwoven into individual “message” stories (what is the meaning of the overall character arcs? There really isn’t any) and it gets far worse during his run on Doctor Who. It’s sad that his tenure can largely be summed up as “first showrunner to cast a woman as the Doctor, but didn’t really have any ideas about what to do with her after that.” I mean, what writer, when confronted with the opportunities inherent in eventually casting not just one, but TWO female Doctors, decides “the thing to do with this opportunity is to explain the extra faces in The Brain of Morbius!” It really is annoying since he clearly had good intentions and as it was in Broadchurch his casting was absolutely top notch... but then he decides to "fix" the "problem" of Brain of Morbius and just ended up annoying, alienating or confusing a large chunk of the audience for no clear or measurable gain.
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Jul 21, 2023 16:28
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I get the overwhelming sense from Chibnall that stories for him aren't about sensible arcs and satisfying conclusions but surprises and reveals. Didn't he have an alternate solution for the murder mystery in Broadchurch fully ready to go just in case the killer's identity got leaked prematurely, even though it would not have made a lick of sense because everything else had been planned according to the original plan?
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Jul 21, 2023 16:40
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Narsham posted:Chibnall has this strange fixation on story being about things that happen without any particular attentiveness to the underlying meanings of those happening things. You can see it in Torchwood interwoven into individual “message” stories (what is the meaning of the overall character arcs? There really isn’t any) Nah, I disagree tbh. I think Gwen has a very clear arc over the course of Chibnall's seasons, as does Owen. e.g. Gwen's arc is about losing herself, starting with her insisting that she's the tether the group has with their compassion and humanity, but slowly losing hers over the course of the first season. The second sees her bounce back, and eventually she finds a decent work/life balance by letting Rhys in. I'm not saying he handles either arc perfectly, or even particularly well, but I think there's definitely material there. In terms of Kerblam!... I think the problems go deeper than just the twist ending, but it's been a while since I've seen it. It's very nonsensical even before then.
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Jul 21, 2023 16:43
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"The Doctor always travelled in a police box, but Chibnall made her a cop" -- someone writing about series 11 and 12 a while back
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Jul 21, 2023 17:21
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armpit_enjoyer posted:"The Doctor always travelled in a police box, but Chibnall made her a cop" -- someone writing about series 11 and 12 a while back The Pertwee era is right there tbh And BF's War Doctor stories have him working for fascists, so there are depths yet to be plumbed. "Am I bad a man?" he worries, while building super weapons for the Space Apartheid.
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Jul 21, 2023 17:36
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The War Doctor is more of a paramilitary type, not a cop.
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Jul 21, 2023 17:58
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Watched: - Ghost Monument - Honestly not a bad second ep on rewatch. Bit preachy about shooting automatons with guns, and the "No Guns" philosophy probably should have been introduced in a later ep (Probably Demons). Doc gives up right at the end when they're left for dead, when she knows the Tardis is phasing randomly? Somehow I completely forgot the TARDIS gets a bloody biscuit dispenser and then I don't think it's ever seen again??????? - The Tsuranga Conundrum - A pretty standard Gremlins/Nightmare at 20,000 Feet ep. Doc is a complete rear end and weirdly mean at the beginning for... reasons? Otherwise not bad. The pregnant man subplot is.. weird, and while a bit of Who Weird is good sometimes, it just felt.. weird. - Demons of the Punjab - Where Rosa fails, Demons succeeds. Probably cause Chibnall didn't write it. It handles a difficult subject like the Partition respectfully. One of 13's better episodes. Skipped through these eps: - Rosa - I don't think this is a bad episode of TV, I just think it's a bad episode of Doctor Who. And it really sucks to have "The Doctor stands by, watches, and aids in a historical racist act unfold, because the timeline says so". It's also the start of what I saw as Chibnall's poorly written tone shift in Doctor Who having these blunt force Teachable Moments: Did you know Racism is bad? Did you know Climate Change is bad? Those in and of themselves are totally cool and good messages to include for kids, but he just loving sucks at writing about them. - Arachnids in the UK - lol no - Kerblam - Did you know soulless megacorps are actually good???????? Stupid loving episode. - The Witchfinders - I tried to start watching it until I remembered why I didn't like it. The acting is shocking. Up next: - It Takes You Away - Looking forward to this One thing I'm noticing on a rewatch is the total lack of chemistry from the companions and the Doctor. They don't really stand out much, and they're kinda just talking heads for the Doctor to soundboard off a lot of the time. It Takes You Away from memory does a lot of course correcting from memory, but man are these early eps just not great from a companion point of view.
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Jul 21, 2023 19:00
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But seriously do we ever see the biscuit dispenser again? Cause man I feel like that shoulda been used all the time.
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Jul 21, 2023 19:01
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Dabir posted:I only have the first Ten and Donna set, but it's great. The third 10 set which also has Donna is also really good. Not as good as the first but it has a really fun story told as a ghost hunting show which happens to have the Doctor plus the entire Noble family including Wilf trying to manipulate things. Open Source Idiom posted:The Pertwee era is right there tbh A real problem with Big Finish's Time War material is the Time Lords need to be just as bad as the Daleks and they're not. The Doctor needed something beyond "fighting bad" to justify being willing to genocide his people and Big Finish always makes the Time Lords out to be nit so bad. They might be building atomic bombs, but they're fighting an enemy that wants to wipe out all life in the universe and they gives them some moral justification. There needed to be some outright Time Lord villainy and they were never willing to go further than belligerent antagonists. Random Stranger fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 19:06
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Open Source Idiom posted:Nah, I disagree tbh. I think Gwen has a very clear arc over the course of Chibnall's seasons, as does Owen. I still think that's an intelligible arc that pertains to the character relationships in the show, but has nothing really to say outside of that. Compare to some of the strands running through Doctor Who, whether they be an innate suspicion of authority (whether that's the revolutionary aspects of Two or Seven or Eleven, or the subversiveness sometimes displayed by Three and Five), or to some of the new series Doctor arcs: 1. Eleven's arc going from "everyone knows who I am" to "nobody knows who I am" (not that it stuck) is intertwined with the idea Moffat explores further with Clara, where the Doctor inspires other people to be like the Doctor. That's why the obsessive focus on the Doctor himself was a problem, and why the series later interrogates whether anyone else can actually be like the Doctor safely. (I'm not sure the eventual message makes a lot of sense, but it's clearly present.) 2. Nine's "coward, every time" arc was underlining a message against the choice he thought he made in the Time War, though Moffat eventually patched that. But the larger message was to the audience, that the ends do not justify the means, and it was delivered during a moment in history where that very argument had led to the invasion of Iraq. 3. Classic series development isn't very coherent, for obvious reasons. But we do see the Doctor espouse and defend principles which apply outside the immediacy of the fiction. Don't get me wrong, I think it's possible to write good TV that doesn't do that sort of thing, especially in comedy, I'm just saying that Chibnall doesn't seem very interested in that kind of engagement. "I want the Doctor to be played by a woman" is a very different statement from "I want the Doctor who is played by a woman to be known for her mad engineering skillz so actual girls and women aspire to become engineers." armpit_enjoyer posted:"The Doctor always travelled in a police box, but Chibnall made her a cop" -- someone writing about series 11 and 12 a while back I'm not sure she's an establishment figure--certainly less so than Three often was--but she's not clearly an anti-establishment figure either. It's like her stories just don't engage with reality in the same ways as the rest of the new series, despite episodes like Rosa and Demons of the Punjab which seem very much to be doing so. There's a fundamental engagement with the broader concepts, even in classic Who (Genesis of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks) depicting racism and fascism, which is just not operating the same way in Chibnall's run. Remembrance underlines racism and links it to fascism, with the Doctor and Ace clearly lining up in opposition; Rosa depicts racism but without much of a sense of how it connects to anything else (time-traveling racist is nearly a cipher) and despite landing several good conversations aided by the fact the show actually has non-white companions, has the bizarre ending on the bus where Graham, in particular, acts sickened as if he's doing something wrong by denying Rosa his seat instead of doing exactly what she would have wanted him to do. Demons of the Punjab has better characterization, but the Doctor gets weirdly sidelined IIRC and ends up dealing with that baffling side-plot with the aliens while the rest of the story proceeds without her. Even one of the best Chibnall stories, It Takes You Away, is focused on grief and mourning, which is intensely, even selfishly, personal instead of being hooked into larger issues of politics or society. There's a sort of disconnectedness or abstraction in Chibnall's work, and it leaves the Doctor unmoored in a way that can't even make her a cop. Even the police are attached to something. The best Chibnall can manage is suggesting she used to be a cop. But even then, what does that mean? Flux (which I thought was pretty good in a general sense) doesn't manage to provide any sense of why the Doctor was involved in whatever originally happened, on whose behalf: the Time Lords wanted her to take Space's side in a fight between Time and Space? Or just didn't like the candy-skulls? Or wanted Time kept in her place so they could remain Lords? We know why the Doctor needs to stop the Flux, but her motives the first time around remain muddled at best.
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Jul 21, 2023 19:16
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If y'all haven't seen Jay Exci's five hour video essay about the problems with Chibnall's Whi, check it out. It only covers up to the end of the second season but I think it's a pretty thorough examination of Chibnall's issues
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Jul 21, 2023 19:39
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There is no way you will convince me to watch it given the length, sorry.
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Jul 21, 2023 19:49
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"Chibnall is bad at SciFi and doesn't respect the established lore" Saved you a watch
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Jul 21, 2023 19:52
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You do understand that you don't have to watch the whole thing at once
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Jul 21, 2023 20:04
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I watched it and it felt very rambly and made the same points several times.
Boxturret fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 20:16
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Your video essay on Chibnall's run as showrunner shouldn't have a length comparable to Flux. That's just a blanket rule.
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Jul 21, 2023 20:25
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Dabir posted:You do understand that you don't have to watch the whole thing at once I've watched (twice actually!) a 7-hour video essay on the entire Resident Evil video series, but that covered like... 13 videogames plus a number of movies and included excursions into various genres of schlocky horror. I simply am not fascinated enough by Chibnall's writing problems to want to watch 5 hours of analysis of them, that's all.
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Jul 21, 2023 21:15
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I actually enjoyed the essay, and then it led me to Jay's series with Stubagful where they take apart all of Thirteen's episodes as they air, only to get hit with the two year gap between series; eventually, they start laying down their own Doctor Who series (staring Alan Rickman who somehow didn't die in 2016) and it's actually kinda cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JjkZBb__x8 She's also working on another five hour essay summing up the entirety of Chibnall Who but who knows when that'll come out armpit_enjoyer fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 21:47
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Kerblam shows Space Amazon as a dystopian hellhole where workers in pointless makework jobs are constantly monitored, threatened for talking on the job, kept on constant timers to perform every task at perfect efficiency, paid too little to afford anything nice, and even the more seemingly-senior workers can barely afford to see their families twice a year. The company is its own legal jurisdiction that answers to no laws, the boss is keeping secret a string of murders, and the system straight up murders an innocent girl just to make someone else sad. And the happy ending to all this is... "the systems aren't the problem," subjecting more workers to this, and mandatory unpaid leave? What the hell. The Doctor's "I love this corporate mascot!" line at the start felt very out of character, but with the way Space Amazon was portrayed afterward, I assumed they were trying to set up something more like Planet of the Ood where the Doctor realizes the thing they thought was okay was actually bad. But then the last ten minutes abruptly swerve into the most bizarre the-company-really-does-love-its-workers-who-should-be-grateful feelgood ending. I stopped watching during the gap after series 9 and Husbands. Recently I decided to get back into the show, and I loved series 10 (monks and the "woman, make me a sandwich" hartnell aside). Then I watched series 11 and forced myself through series 12 and god they're awful. I'd heard they weren't good, but I was expecting something like the worse parts of the first ten revival series, not this dreck.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:29
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Zaphiel posted:Are there any recommended 9 and/or 10 Big Finish audio dramas for someone who's only watched those two? Great 9th Doctor stories: "Girl, Deconstructed" from the "Respond to All Calls" boxset "The Hunting Season" and "Monsters in Metropolis" from the "Lost Warriors" boxset "Way of the Burrymen/The Forth Generation" from the "Old Friends" boxset "Station to Station" and "Auld Lang Syne" from the "Back to Earth" "Salvation Nine" from the "Into the Stars" boxset "Lay Down Your Arms" and "Flatpack" from the "Hidden Depths" boxset "The Color of Terror" and "The Blooming Menace" from the "Shades of Fears" boxset Great 10th Doctor stories: "Death and the Queen" "Infamy of the Zaross" "No Place" "The Creeping Death" "Out of Time" "Out of Time 2: The Gates of Hell" "Out of Time 3: Wink" "The Wrong Women" from the "Dalek Universe 1" boxset "The Dalek Defense/The Triumph of Davros" from the "Dalek Universe 3" boxset
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Jul 21, 2023 23:30
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