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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% |
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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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armpit_enjoyer posted:this should be the mission statement for the entire franchise going forwards. Instead of having the Doctor be this all-important figure around whom the entire universe revolves we should bring them back to being just a traveller in a box. Yeah, there were streaks where they were way too into DoctorDemigod. Doctor is a person with 30 in charisma and luck stats, plus magic technology, which yeah is pretty demigoddy but when they lean into it and make new folks just be in awe sometimes it's a bit much. Other times they earn it more and it works. Martha Jones going around to get everyone to give the doctor a Tinkerbell moment globally was cool
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Aug 9, 2023 17:55
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armpit_enjoyer posted:this should be the mission statement for the entire franchise going forwards. Instead of having the Doctor be this all-important figure around whom the entire universe revolves we should bring them back to being just a traveller in a box. So he erased all the records of him and that should've undone all that. But then it didn't.
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Aug 10, 2023 02:35
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Eh, that arc does lead into that strange beat at the end of Asylum of the Daleks where he lets an armada of daleks get off scott free. I don't think it's particularly elegantly handled tbh.
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Aug 10, 2023 05:02
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Open Source Idiom posted:Eh, that arc does lead into that strange beat at the end of Asylum of the Daleks where he lets an armada of daleks get off scott free. I don't think it's particularly elegantly handled tbh. It always bugged me how Eleven never seemed to do anything about the Daleks for his entire regeneration, despite being the one to unleash the new Dalek empire on the universe. His cheerful carefree attitude at the end of Victory of the Daleks, followed by never mentioning or feeling guilty about the Daleks again and not really doing anything about the Daleks even when he did encounter them, never sat right with me. I know the meta-reason is that it was just meant to be a quick return from the RTD status quo of "the Daleks are wiped out after every encounter and will destroy the universe if they're ever allowed to survive" to the classic series status quo of "Yeah, there's Daleks out there doing Dalek things, maybe the Doctor will bump into them occasionally, don't worry about it."
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Aug 10, 2023 08:49
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Daleks are the hardest to swallow as universal threat. They're just too stupid and easily tricked, and it's often unclear how they really get anything done. They're a good villain and all, just that scale gets a bit absurd for a creature that's a walking gun, and not an invincible one. Cyberman are goobers too but I can at least imagine them opening a door.
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Aug 10, 2023 09:10
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Khanstant posted:Daleks are the hardest to swallow as universal threat. They're just too stupid and easily tricked, and it's often unclear how they really get anything done. They're a good villain and all, just that scale gets a bit absurd for a creature that's a walking gun, and not an invincible one. Why open a door when you can just bring down the entire building?
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Aug 10, 2023 09:51
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Can’t make them walk up the stairs if everything’s a nice crater in the ground. The Davros design school stays winning
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Aug 10, 2023 10:01
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Daleks should constantly be falling apart due to infighting over degrees of ideological purity. We've had that happen, what, twice? The civil war in the late 80s that spanned a few serials and in the awful Daleks in Manhattan.
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Aug 10, 2023 10:57
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Yeah, any Dalek Empire should basically be constantly falling apart, not least of all because they're genetically engineered to believe they are the superior lifeform but they can't help but feel this uneasy desperate sense that they know this isn't true and they can't reconcile the two concepts. That leads to either doubling down on "No True Dalek" and singling out other members of their own species as lacking the supposedly desired "purity", or their own internal worldview completely collapsing which makes them the victim of the former from other Daleks. I guess what makes the Time War work for me was that, as we've seen in real life, a big intrinsic threat to existence through war tends to at least temporarily bond a group together against the "other", so the Daleks were as unified as they can ever be facing so deadly a foe as the Time Lords. On a tangential note, I adore the idea of the "Dalek Parliament" from Asylum purely because I crack up thinking about how bored the Chief Whip must be. The Parliament is always entirely in lockstep agreeing with each other on any motion (which is always "All other lifeforms are inferior!") and the punishment for any disagreement is just immediate extermination. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 11:15
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Daleks work for me as a threat, but I guess part of that is because I've got Nick Briggs' Dalek Empire sitting in the back of my head. They're a fairly impressive threat in those stories.
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Aug 10, 2023 12:33
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Khanstant posted:Daleks are the hardest to swallow as universal threat. They're just too stupid and easily tricked, and it's often unclear how they really get anything done. They're a good villain and all, just that scale gets a bit absurd for a creature that's a walking gun, and not an invincible one. Always found Daleks most menacing with Davros at the helm.
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Aug 10, 2023 13:11
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I loved it in Journey's End when Davros returns and has the Doctor captive and is lording it up over his ultimate upcoming triumph etc.... and the Doctor almost immediately figures out that the Daleks have ALREADY gotten sick of Davros and shoved him in the basement like an embarrassing family secret. Davros' awkward,"...we have.... an arrangement...." was perfect.
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Aug 10, 2023 13:14
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Jerusalem posted:I loved it in Journey's End when Davros returns and has the Doctor captive and is lording it up over his ultimate upcoming triumph etc.... and the Doctor almost immediately figures out that the Daleks have ALREADY gotten sick of Davros and shoved him in the basement like an embarrassing family secret. Davros' awkward,"...we have.... an arrangement...." was perfect. Julian Bleach does a very good job walking that fine line, keeping Davros teetering on the brink of about five different forms of insanity at once. I particularly liked his delivery of "The Reality Bomb" as though of COURSE he's created a device that will destroy reality itself.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:02
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Yeah, loved that line. He seems confused that the Doctor wouldn't be on that same line of thought, like it's the most natural thing in the universe.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:03
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To be fair, I'd be curious to see what happens when you destroy reality. So long as it means something more than just blowing the hell out of everywhere, like having an area or I guess non-area of reality that isn't there anymore -- fun, neat, let's see what happens.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:08
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Khanstant posted:To be fair, I'd be curious to see what happens when you destroy reality. So long as it means something more than just blowing the hell out of everywhere, like having an area or I guess non-area of reality that isn't there anymore -- fun, neat, let's see what happens. Unfortunately Chris Chibnall decided to do this with Flux and the "let's see what happens" was apparently.... nothing?
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Aug 10, 2023 15:17
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Yeah I can't blame him for trying, I just blame him for not thinking of the answer first since you know, he was the guy at the time. Up to me you could even go around and fill the reality gaps in with something, probably something abstract and emotional
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Aug 10, 2023 15:26
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Fil5000 posted:Daleks should constantly be falling apart due to infighting over degrees of ideological purity. We've had that happen, what, twice? The civil war in the late 80s that spanned a few serials and in the awful Daleks in Manhattan. Arguably there's a third if you count "your sewers are revolting" as another civil conflict and not as a plumbing disaster. Davros has been a real problem to developing the Daleks as characters. They should be at least as obsessed with schemes and backstabbing as the Time Lords are, and probably more so. More scenes of Dalek conspirators whispering at the top of their vocoders, please!
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Aug 10, 2023 17:02
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Fil5000 posted:Daleks should constantly be falling apart due to infighting over degrees of ideological purity. We've had that happen, what, twice? The civil war in the late 80s that spanned a few serials and in the awful Daleks in Manhattan. And before those, Evil of the Daleks.
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Aug 10, 2023 17:34
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Some stories state that all Daleks are unique individuals but in practice, they're almost always portrayed as drones in a hive mind and that always bugged me. Same as with the Cybermen. I presume there's Big Finish stories that actually do examine what it means to be an individual Dalek or Cyberman but lmao if I'm going to go through check notes 1010 goddamn stories just to find them. Any recs?
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Aug 10, 2023 18:17
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https://twitter.com/tvukzone/status/1689675653669429248?s=20 I almost forgot it was the 60th!
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Aug 10, 2023 18:25
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armpit_enjoyer posted:Some stories state that all Daleks are unique individuals but in practice, they're almost always portrayed as drones in a hive mind and that always bugged me. Same as with the Cybermen. Good Dalek Stories Jubilee Terror Firma (not standalone) The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Volume 1 Dalek Empire 1 - 3 The Elite Good Cybermen Stories Spare Parts Legend of the Cybermen (not a standalone story, it's the final part of a four story arc) The Crystal of Cantus (not standalone) The Silver Turk The Tyrants of Logic Warzone/Conversion Blood and Silver
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Aug 10, 2023 18:36
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Open Source Idiom posted:Good Dalek Stories I have to take issue with Terror Firma being a good Dalek story. Quite apart from it being a Joe Lidster Miseryporn Extravaganza (complete with utterly needless retconning just to make things a bit more miserable) I don't think it does much interesting with the Daleks, does it? Edit: I'd add The Harvest to the Cyberman list, it does a few fun things with the Cyberman concept and also is just a fun action romp (and I always liked Hex and this is his first outing). Fil5000 fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 20:56
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armpit_enjoyer posted:Some stories state that all Daleks are unique individuals but in practice, they're almost always portrayed as drones in a hive mind and that always bugged me. Same as with the Cybermen. I've made this analogy before, but I think the best way to approach writing the Daleks and Cybermen is to remember that the Daleks are the Nazis, while the Cybermen are USSR-era Communists (or at least, the exaggerated pop culture versions of those particular groups). The Daleks are irrational, filled with hatred and xenophobia, fearful of anything that is superior to themselves, and while led by one single being they're also filled with feuding subfactions that want to take over for whatever reason, often because they think the others aren't xenophobic enough. While the Cybermen have the "hive mind" mentality that drives them to conquer and assimilate, with everyone being forcibly indoctrinated into their way of life, or disposed of. The Daleks aren't emotionless because, as mentioned, they are irrational and filled with hatred and fear. Whereas the Cybermen have eliminated emotion in favor of ruthless pragmatism. The Daleks get defeated because their xenophobia eventually leads them to make mistakes or act irrationally out of pure hatred, whereas the Cybermen fail because they're inflexible and unable to consider irrational human responses to their plans. At least, that's how I'd write 'em.  E: although, if you did want a story featuring a Cyberman who overcomes its conditioning and begins to develop emotions and independent thought (without also going horrifically insane when they realize what's been done to them), you could check out the "Kroton the Cyberman" comics from the 1970s.
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Aug 10, 2023 22:02
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Has there ever been a story about the patent on Cybermen, and how Mondas should sue all the other Cyber-converters? I’ve always wanted to see Doctor Who meets Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
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Aug 10, 2023 22:29
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I think the idea with the Flux was that the Ood fixed it....I think? Flux was a confusing mess at times - apparently the mythical Division was just some lady, an Ood and a tree. Kind of underwhelming. One idea I liked (that was made canon in Moffat's run) is that the cybermen are so spread out, that different groups develop differently, they often when two factions meet, they end up merging and cannibalizing each other's tech. So the Mondas cybermen are the common ancestor, but different groups develop differently, but all consider themselves cybermen. Which is a bit ironic, considering their hold 'making everyone the same' thing. It's even been suggested in some stories that the Voord end up being assimilated because their experiments with trans-humanism caught the cybermen's attention. Harvest deals with a Cyber-leader who thinks they've become too reliant on tech, and wants to add more flesh to himself to give the cybermen a new edge. It doesn't go well. With Daleks, they need Davros, but the level of loyalty to him varies massively. Some see him as a leader, others just as a useful advisor, others someone to stuff in a hole until you need him.
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Aug 10, 2023 23:30
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In addition to Cold War fears the Cybermen reflect a lot of fears of mechanization and computerization taking over people’s lives, which was a thing across the political spectrum (Godard makes it a focus of Alphaville.) Kit Pedler in particular was a big ecology guy who was worried about us paving over the world. Every early-70s sci fi dystopia has this subtext of “we’re killing all the trees and putting up skyscrapers” and on the ground you have the increased presence of automation in industry and business, so everyone’s worried they’ll be replaced by a machine.
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Aug 10, 2023 23:37
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Edward Mass posted:Has there ever been a story about the patent on Cybermen, and how Mondas should sue all the other Cyber-converters? I’ve always wanted to see Doctor Who meets Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Sadly I think Spare Parts establishes that the cyber conversion effort was a government project and no one claimed a patent before the whole "convert the entire populace and attempt to take over the universe" thing happened. I assume Lumic got himself a bunch of patents over in Pete's World so presumably he could have decided to sue the prime universe Cybermen
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Aug 11, 2023 09:40
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Wouldn't they be able to get his patent invalidated by demonstrating prior art
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Aug 11, 2023 09:44
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All of you just want to see a cyberman in court don’t you
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Aug 11, 2023 12:05
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Here we are - the peak of Doctor Who finally animated. Nothing else matters now! https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/missing-adventure-the-underwater-menace-to-be-animated-in-2023
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Aug 11, 2023 12:14
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OldMemes posted:I think the idea with the Flux was that the Ood fixed it....I think? Flux was a confusing mess at times - apparently the mythical Division was just some lady, an Ood and a tree. Kind of underwhelming. From what I remember, the Doctor and the Ood are left alone for a moment and she tells it that the Flux can be reversed, and it tells her that it can't allow her to do that. She points out that there are other Ood that are going to suffer in the Flux and it says something along the lines of,"I understand, but I cannot go against my orders." Then The Sugar Skull Gang show up, kill what's-her-face and abduct the Doctor and leave the Ood all alone in the void between universes. So it COULD have reversed the Flux, even though it had said it wouldn't be allowed. But we don't see that happen, the Doctor never mentions anything about the Flux being reversed at any point, and in the specials that follow the Daleks are pissed off at her for being part of the trap they fell into with the Cybermen and the Sontarans so the Flux is definitely still an event that happened. We basically are left to assume that the Flux MUST have been reversed because anything else would be incredibly stupid, but it's never mentioned or referenced in any way that I can remember.
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Aug 11, 2023 12:19
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Jerusalem posted:We basically are left to assume that the Flux MUST have been reversed because anything else would be incredibly stupid ...or that it tragically wasn't? Since the Daleks remember what happened, I assume it wasn't undone, and that a lot of the universe was turned into cake mix. I don't get why it's stupid tbh. Sometimes things just suck and the Doctor fucks up really badly. Doesn't Logopolis also end fairly badly?
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Aug 11, 2023 12:32
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Open Source Idiom posted:...or that it tragically wasn't? Since the Daleks remember what happened, I assume it wasn't undone, and that a lot of the universe was turned into cake mix. The story of Logopolis, if I remember correctly (it's been awhile!) was that the planet Logopolis had been set up to run a mixture of math/psionics that were funneling excess entropy outside of the universe in order to avoid the heat death of the universe. After the Master fucks things up, Logopolis (and Traken?) are destroyed while the Master and the Doctor work together to get the program up and running again on Earth. The Master tries to blackmail the entire universe (of course he does) by withholding the solution, but the Doctor fixes things but falls to his death in the process, regenerating into 5. While the destruction was pretty massive, it wasn't on the universal scale like Flux was, it was just going to get to that point if the Doctor hadn't stopped it. The Universe itself continued on pretty much without more than a momentary bump, and it added an (unnecessary) extra reason for Nyssa to despise The Master since he wasn't just piloting around her father's corpse, he wiped out her planet as well. Edit: The Flux, by comparison was "the entire universe except for Earth got blasted all at once and like 80% of it was destroyed and the remaining parts are falling apart into utter chaos with another final wave coming to wipe everything out <something something, also time is a living entity and hates the Doctor?> and having saved the earth, the Doctor goes on some more adventures with Yaz and Dan. I far prefer Doctor Who as an optimistic show where solutions are found, but that doesn't mean you can't have the odd setback/hard moment where something rough happens... but the scale and scope of Flux was so ridiculous and has either left the universe beyond hosed even worse than the Time War left it, or had zero impact on it at all and thus had no stakes to it after all. The Doctor certainly didn't seem to care, she just kind of moved on like any other day. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Aug 11, 2023 |
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Aug 11, 2023 13:26
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Been a while since I've seen Logopolis too but I do recall they even may have put a percentage on the proportion of the universe that was lost, somewhere around 30%. It all basically happens in dialog, gazing into the little TARDIS viewscreen, so easy to miss.
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Aug 11, 2023 14:05
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Yeah, I think Logopolis sees 25% of the universe unbond 1on a molecular level or something. Which is less than Flux's 80%, but the Doctor just walks it off there too. I'm not too keen on randomly walking that stuff back off screen it only because that's dramatically less interesting. Yes, the Doctor's reaction sucks, but the reset button sucks more (e.g. the Superman bit from The Enemy Within). I'd rather the series grapple with the fallout of Flux rather than just brush the entire thing under the carpet, since actions having consequences fundamentally makes for better storytelling. And, like I said above, it doesn't actually seem like it was undone, so the point seems moot.
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Aug 11, 2023 14:27
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Later the flux was reversed by, oh, lets say Moe.
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Aug 11, 2023 14:34
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Open Source Idiom posted:Yeah, I think Logopolis sees 25% of the universe unbond 1on a molecular level or something. Which is less than Flux's 80%, but the Doctor just walks it off there too. I guess it comes down to whether the story was any good, and (in my opinion) Chibnall's stuff just wasn't. So the stakes of it all fell very flat and the lack of any resolution to the problem he introduced was annoying: it would be one thing if the universe was having to deal with the aftermath of the Flux but... it doesn't appear like it is? Everything just seems to be back to normal, so either it did get undone off-screen without being mentioned or 80% of the universe being wiped out just... didn't mean anything? Neither of those are particularly satisfying in my mind. The series was basically carried by the charm of Whittaker in the lead role, and to a lesser extent Mandip Gill and John Bishop, but was very let down by the writing. Same deal with The Timeless Child crap, the notion of Time as a living entity that doesn't like the Doctor, and perhaps most sadly there's a good chance The Fugitive Doctor just disappears until a showrunner (or Big Finish) get it into their head to have a stab at her. Chibnall seemed to want to stamp himself down on the history of the show with major reveals and events but none of them felt particularly earned or engaging, and he seemed to lose interest in developing them any further himself as he went along.
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Aug 11, 2023 14:48
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Jerusalem posted:I guess it comes down to whether the story was any good, and (in my opinion) Chibnall's stuff just wasn't. So the stakes of it all fell very flat and the lack of any resolution to the problem he introduced was annoying: it would be one thing if the universe was having to deal with the aftermath of the Flux but... it doesn't appear like it is? Everything just seems to be back to normal, so either it did get undone off-screen without being mentioned or 80% of the universe being wiped out just... didn't mean anything? Neither of those are particularly satisfying in my mind. The series was basically carried by the charm of Whittaker in the lead role, and to a lesser extent Mandip Gill and John Bishop, but was very let down by the writing. Same deal with The Timeless Child crap, the notion of Time as a living entity that doesn't like the Doctor, and perhaps most sadly there's a good chance The Fugitive Doctor just disappears until a showrunner (or Big Finish) get it into their head to have a stab at her. Chibnall seemed to want to stamp himself down on the history of the show with major reveals and events but none of them felt particularly earned or engaging, and he seemed to lose interest in developing them any further himself as he went along. I mean, yeah, I agree with you that Chibnall wasn't great, but I don't think his fault (or, you know, one of his faults) is his ambition so much as his lack of it. You're right, in that he doesn't really seem to follow through on a lot of his choices, and they mostly just hang there over the scripts, unanswered. But it's the job of the person who's running Who to make dramatic choices and make major reveals, and the eras that had the most bold identities are usually the ones that are remembered the best. Moffat, Hinchcliffe, Levene, Letts, Davies, they all made big loving choices and stuck to them. Meanwhile no-one really gives much of a poo poo about the Graeme Williams era, or, let's be honest, quite a lot of the Second Doctor's tenure. The only interesting, latter day stories to come out of that period are the ones that riff on The War Games, or that just aggressively blow that period up like Combat Rock or The Indestructible Man. No one's found a sustained approach. Hell, look at Saward/JNT. A lot of those stories are bad, particularly the Sixth Doctor's run, but they're strident. And people have run with that material, teased out material that's worked, and people now think about those characters and situations more fondly. Tegan and the Sixth doctor are both looked back at more fondly now. I don't see the Chibnall era being any different; hell, the big swings and incomplete elements are the parts that people are going to latch on to when they're re-examining the era. If you undo the Timeless Child or Flux or whatever, you're basically robbing the era of the only things that are remotely interesting about it.
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Aug 11, 2023 15:48
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Open Source Idiom posted:Yeah, I think Logopolis sees 25% of the universe unbond 1on a molecular level or something. And then right after in Castrovalva they have to destroy a quarter? of the TARDIS's interior.
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Aug 11, 2023 15:49
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