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Which season of Doctor Who should get a Blu-ray set next? This poll is closed. |
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| One of the black-and-white seasons |
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16 | 29.63% |
| Season 7 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Season 11 |
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1 | 1.85% |
| Season 13 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 15 |
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2 | 3.70% |
| The Key to Time |
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21 | 38.89% |
| Season 21 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 25 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Total: | 54 votes | ||
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Fil5000 posted:Ah man, Michael Jayston has died. He's been many things but he'll always be the Valeyard to me. Well, and Colonel Mustard in Cluedo. He's in one episode of Only Fools and Horses and for some reason all the obits describe him as "Only Fools and Horses actor Michael Jayston"
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Feb 5, 2024 15:26
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Warthur posted:I honestly don't mind Pip and Jane and I think people overhype how much of a bad thing they were for the show. Yeah, there's a palpable lack of ambition in Pip and Jane scripts, but they're also very obviously people who write a lot and are consequently very good at structuring stories on a technical level (also they probably turned in all their scripts on time). Should a TV show aspire to more than a C average? Sure, but that's the show's problem, not theirs.
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Feb 5, 2024 15:54
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MrL_JaKiri posted:He's in one episode of Only Fools and Horses and for some reason all the obits describe him as "Only Fools and Horses actor Michael Jayston" It’s like when Meghan Markle was described as ‘Suits, Fringe Actor’, and as a Fringe fan, I struggled to remember her at all. She’s in 2 episodes.
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Feb 5, 2024 15:55
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Random Stranger posted:For a show about traveling in time, classic Who wasn't very concerned with exploring the possibilities of that. I can only think of a half dozen or so classic stories that actually took advantage of the main character having a time machine. It was fandom that picked up on it, which is probably why it started showing up in various stories a lot more once fans took over the franchise. The new series certainly does it more, but most of the time the TARDIS is still just a device to get them to the plot, rather than a tool that gets actively used within the story. One of the few things I liked about Legend of the Sea Devils was The Doctor going back in time to try and get the MacGuffin before it was lost. You don’t see them do that sort of thing very often.
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Feb 5, 2024 16:01
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The_Doctor posted:It’s like when Meghan Markle was described as ‘Suits, Fringe Actor’, and as a Fringe fan, I struggled to remember her at all. She’s in 2 episodes. Also, much as I love it, how the hell is Fringe on the same level of public consciousness as Suits? Like 80% of people surveyed would go "oh yeah that thing with Pacey from Dawsons Creek"
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Feb 5, 2024 16:03
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Fil5000 posted:Also, much as I love it, how the hell is Fringe on the same level of public consciousness as Suits? Like 80% of people surveyed would go "oh yeah that thing with Pacey from Dawsons Creek" I know Suits has gotten a huge surge in popularity recently on streaming services, but Fringe had way more viewers when it was actually on.
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Feb 5, 2024 16:11
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Sydney Bottocks posted:That's one other good thing about TMotR: Nicola Bryant was actually able to wear something while on location that didn't cause her to suffer hypothermia, pneumonia, etc. Between what they made her wear, making her do an accent she clearly cannot do, and the writing somehow leering at her more than it did at Leela, it's surprising Nicola Bryant is as positive about the show as she is.
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Feb 5, 2024 16:48
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Bicyclops posted:Between what they made her wear, making her do an accent she clearly cannot do, and the writing somehow leering at her more than it did at Leela, it's surprising Nicola Bryant is as positive about the show as she is. I feel like she probably bonded with Colin over just how badly they and their characters were served during their time on the show, and that plus being a popular guest at conventions probably helped ease any ill feelings she might have had.
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Feb 5, 2024 17:06
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Rochallor posted:Yeah, there's a palpable lack of ambition in Pip and Jane scripts, but they're also very obviously people who write a lot and are consequently very good at structuring stories on a technical level (also they probably turned in all their scripts on time). Should a TV show aspire to more than a C average? Sure, but that's the show's problem, not theirs. I think they’re above average for the era of the show they contributed to, and (Ultimate Foe aside) are let down by direction, acting, and production. Vervoids may be somewhat inambitious, but both Rani episodes are full of stuff someone should have warned them the production crew wasn’t able to handle, like the infamous tree, or the rapid-growth T-Rex scene, or “giant brain” or “deadly insects.” And some of the effects get pulled off: the Rani’s TARDIS set is amazing, and the mines in Time and the Rani are an amazing effect. Nor do I much mind the “look this word up, kids” part of their writing—having Six or the Master show off their vocabularies in a pompous manner is 100% appropriate—though they do vacillate between great dialogue and wooden dialogue. I’m not sure they ever make Peri sound like a human being, though they do a better job with Mel (unsurprisingly, as they write her first episode). I’ll take a lot of unconvincing dialogue carried out by disinterested performers getting no help from a director to get the Rani’s description of the Master as “he’d get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.” I think they get lousy direction, fair to middling acting, and a range between brilliant and awful effects work on their episodes. Their dialogue tends towards “the stage” and needs a director to help guide actors through it, but they actually have a lot of ambition, just no script editor partner to keep it in bounds. I mean, Mark of the Rani introduces an amoral Time Lord renegade who gets caught in the Master-Doctor rivalry, with the premise that she’s trying to keep a low profile and that gets spoiled. Time… has “create a giant brain and use strange matter to turn it into a massive time controlling device” as its premise, which is nearing “the Moon is an egg” levels of ambition. In execution, they do tend towards episodic story design without a lot of follow-through or good motivation: why does the Rani have mines scattered about in both her episodes, and why do they appear as a set-piece and then never come up outside of that? And because of that, they aren’t developing much in the way of character arcs especially for episode-only characters (though Time is better about that, a little). But unlike Saward, they seem interested in the Doctor as a character and give him things to do. Their bad rep rests on things like dodgy implementations (the Tetraps are the most glaring example of that, badly executed in all respects) and bad circumstances (The Ultimate Foe, losing Six for Time and the Rani). Even the worse bits of Vervoids can be laid squarely at the feet of other people in the production team. “This trial for the Doctor’s life is now a trail for the Doctor’s life!” They get full blame for “a megabyte modem,” though at least they remember Mel is supposed to have a computing background.
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Feb 5, 2024 17:14
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It is notable that their best stories are a) the one which was shot after Ian Levine and Eric Saward stormed off (aiui Vervoids it was shot after The Ultimate Foe) and b) the one where Andrew Cartmel was getting up to speed as script editor. Makes you wonder what they could have done with a script editor who worked with them instead of against them.
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Feb 5, 2024 18:16
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IIRC it was said they were chosen for Time and the Rani because they could write a serviceable script on very short notice, and when Cartmel started as script editor he realized they had nothing to film, and needed to start filming very soon.
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Feb 5, 2024 18:20
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Zaroff posted:IIRC it was said they were chosen for Time and the Rani because they could write a serviceable script on very short notice, and when Cartmel started as script editor he realized they had nothing to film, and needed to start filming very soon. Version I heard is that Saward swiped all the scripts from the hopper when he left, so there were no fallback scripts to use (compare to season 18, where they got caught short but could fall back on a mothballed season 15 script and that's how we got State of Decay).
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Feb 5, 2024 18:32
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Warthur posted:Version I heard is that Saward swiped all the scripts from the hopper when he left, so there were no fallback scripts to use (compare to season 18, where they got caught short but could fall back on a mothballed season 15 script and that's how we got State of Decay). God he was a grumpy little man.
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Feb 5, 2024 18:38
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Fil5000 posted:God he was a grumpy little man.
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Feb 5, 2024 22:45
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Warthur posted:Version I heard is that Saward swiped all the scripts from the hopper when he left, so there were no fallback scripts to use (compare to season 18, where they got caught short but could fall back on a mothballed season 15 script and that's how we got State of Decay). Is there anything to read about these past eras of the production side of the show? I’ve read Cartmel’s Script Doctor, and that’s a fascinating insight about the making of the McCoy era with all the behind-the-scenes drama, but I’d love to go further back.
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Feb 5, 2024 22:48
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The_Doctor posted:Is there anything to read about these past eras of the production side of the show? I’ve read Cartmel’s Script Doctor, and that’s a fascinating insight about the making of the McCoy era with all the behind-the-scenes drama, but I’d love to go further back. Off the top of my head there's Who and Me by Barry Letts, and the About Time series have a lot of production details in.
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Feb 5, 2024 23:04
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The_Doctor posted:Is there anything to read about these past eras of the production side of the show? I’ve read Cartmel’s Script Doctor, and that’s a fascinating insight about the making of the McCoy era with all the behind-the-scenes drama, but I’d love to go further back. Barry Letts autobiography "Who and Me" covers the first couple of Pertwee seasons and while you have to take it with a pinch or two of salt it's a pretty good read.
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Feb 5, 2024 23:07
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MrL_JaKiri posted:He's in one episode of Only Fools and Horses and for some reason all the obits describe him as "Only Fools and Horses actor Michael Jayston" To play devil's advocate, it was a VERY memorable episode, it was (I believe) supposed to be the final ever episode and he played a pivotal role in Del Boy and Rodney finally becoming millionaires (and this time next year... billionaires!). Still silly to pretend like it was what he was best known for, but if I remember right it had a HUGE rating and was a big television event, so maybe they felt this would be a show most of their readers would be familiar with?
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Feb 6, 2024 02:48
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Jerusalem posted:To play devil's advocate, it was a VERY memorable episode, it was (I believe) supposed to be the final ever episode and he played a pivotal role in Del Boy and Rodney finally becoming millionaires (and this time next year... billionaires!). What a colossal mistake it was ever revisiting that story.
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Feb 6, 2024 16:57
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I can't understand why they did, the ending was perfect as it was and it's not like David Jason or Nicholas Lyndhurst were hard up for work.
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Feb 6, 2024 17:07
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Jerusalem posted:I can't understand why they did, the ending was perfect as it was and it's not like David Jason or Nicholas Lyndhurst were hard up for work. Maybe John Sullivan needed a few quid and everyone felt like they owed him
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Feb 6, 2024 17:17
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Heaven Sent somehow lives up to every bit of the hype
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Feb 6, 2024 20:36
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I'm on the 2nd Serial of Davison the fifth Doctor run and I have to say I like him! He's kind of mischievous but serious as well. I mean this is only 2nd serial so we will see how he turns out but I like him.
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Feb 7, 2024 03:36
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SirSamVimes posted:Heaven Sent somehow lives up to every bit of the hype And it has such a great ending with the kid running off and the reveal of where they are. Definitely the end of that episode and a real shame it was the end of that series and the cliffhanger never got resolved. Hollismason posted:I'm on the 2nd Serial of Davison the fifth Doctor run and I have to say I like him! He's kind of mischievous but serious as well. I mean this is only 2nd serial so we will see how he turns out but I like him. It's to a lesser extent than C Baker, McGann and Whitaker, but I do feel it's another case of a good person in the role of Doctor not getting the best scripts for them. But unlike the others, Davison's final story is incredibly good. Coward fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 03:41
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SirSamVimes posted:Heaven Sent somehow lives up to every bit of the hype
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Feb 7, 2024 03:48
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A little thing I love about Heaven Sent (among the other billion things I love about it) that's never really fully, explicitly laid out in the episode itself that I recall, is that the Time Lords put "home" on the unbreakable wall and they clearly thought that would mean Gallifrey to the Doctor. The Doctor looks at "home" and immediately thinks of the TARDIS 
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Feb 7, 2024 04:10
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I find a new fav thing about it every time I rewatch, most recently the Doctor's voice cracking as he says "all you need for energy is something to burn". Also as a follow-up to Missy saying she put them together because "you'd go to Hell if she asked, and she would". In Heaven Sent, at (dream)Clara's urging, the Doctor almost literally breaks out of Hell A perennial fav thing about it is the way it's followed up in the next episode: recontextualised as a hosed up idiotic stunt when Clara finds out about it and bursts into tears and demands "why would you do that?!"
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Feb 7, 2024 04:26
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Season 12 Episode 6: Praxeus Written by Pete McTighe & Chris Chibnall, Directed by Jamie Magnus Stone Yaz posted:...thought I'd discovered an alien planet on my own... Praxeus is... alright. It's an entirely fine, mostly forgettable, decently solid episode of Doctor Who. There are plenty of gaps in the story that even a cursory glance-over can't help but notice, but in the moment as it airs it achieves what it sets out to do well enough: "just" be an entirely watchable episode of Doctor Who. It's the type to mostly be relegated to,"Oh right... that one!" responses from people who forget it exists unless prompted to remember, lacking even the gimmick of Nikola Tesla to help make it stand out like a similarly "fine" episode earlier this season managed. But the basic plot is reasonable, there are stakes, a resolution, a happy ending (of sorts), an important ecological message, and it serves as what the Doctor correctly guessed the TARDIS was attempting to do at the end of the last episode: be a distraction.  The basic rundown of the episode is that, responding to the multiple distress signals from the end of the prior episode, the Doctor has separated the "fam" into units to investigate multiple places simultaneously. This all makes surface level sense, though the inclusion of the little neck communicators and the later demonstration of the Doctor's pinpoint operational control of the TARDIS can't help but raise questions about why these don't feature in other episodes or why she didn't use that control to investigate simultaneous spots. But that's always been an issue with Doctor Who that different writers have handled to better or worse degrees: when you have a machine capable of traveling anywhere in space AND time it could effectively be used to undermine the stakes in any story. So Ryan goes to Peru, Yaz and Graham go to Hong Kong, and the Doctor goes to Madagascar. At the same time, a British ex-cop (who insists he is just on a break) receives a text from a missing astronaut, a travel blogger awakens to find her travel partner missing, and a Marine Filtration Scientist and her assistant join in on hauling a near-drowned US Navy soldier onto the beach in front of their lab. This will eventually bring them all together from three different countries along with the Doctor and her companions, all in an effort to halt the progress of and discover a cure for an infection that rapidly overcomes the body of human hosts while also appearing to infect but not kill birds, which are instead being used to spread the infection further.  The effects for the Praxeus infection are very well done. The CGI aspects are a little ropey at points, but the (I assume) practical make-up effects on infections that aren't actively spreading have an appropriately "off" look to them that trigger something in my head warning me that this thing is bad bad double plus ungood no no stay away bad bad bad. The episode also wisely doesn't give us too great a detail on the origins of the infection, or the aliens it had initially infected, leaving the viewer to fill in most of the blanks themselves. Praxeus appears to be non-sentient, a simple organism attempting to propagate itself without malice or any hostile intention. This in many ways make it scarier, and makes the revealed actions of the alien scientists attempting to understand it themselves far more an antagonistic, malicious act as they willingly and knowingly planned to use humanity as a "petri dish" to help them develop treatment for their own race, albeit the experiment was intended to be a far more tightly controlled one. What isn't so clear is why those alien survivors are set up in Madagascar AND Hong Kong (or how Peru got into the mix), and the episode is full of nagging little questions like this once you take more than a cursory look at the surface. Perhaps the most nagging to me is how the missing astronaut, Adam, was able to contact Jake by phone, and why he didn't also contact the European Space Agency or his family (or why the ESA didn't contact him as Adam's husband, even if they are estranged, especially as the news reports his family had been contacted) since he had the phone. It also raises questions as to why Jamila was able to make an emergency call to an ambulance but not in any way contact Gabriela only a dozen or so feet away, or how Gabriela missed the sound of the ambulance arriving or why the ambulance crew didn't think to check in on her too. For that matter, why is the hospital Jamila was taken too abandoned? Did they realize the infection? If so then why isn't the place guarded? Did the aliens chase them off? Did the aliens fake being an ambulance crew to pick up her body and then just... leave it in an abandoned hospital they had commandeered? None of these questions overly detract from the story for me, but taken as a whole they do add up, and it would have been nice if another pass had at least made some attempt to address or paper over them more than we got. It also makes the timeline of the whole thing feel a little hard to piece together. Adam goes missing, it gets reported as news, Jake finds out, books a flight to Hong Kong, arrives in Hong Kong, tracks down the location of the call and attempts to break in before meeting Yaz and Graham... but at the same time Ryan is investigating birds in Peru the morning after Jamila disappears and the Doctor arrives on the beach right as the sailor is washing up half-drowned in Madagascar. Plus Suki has apparently been running that lab long enough that Aramu isn't just her "new" assistant but they have an established relationship and routine. The Doctor must have dropped off Graham and Yaz first, then Ryan, then gone to Madagascar herself, but given Jake's timeline it again raises the point they could have apparently done it all as a group using the TARDIS within the same timeframe. Anyway, I'm being pedantic! The fact is the story called for them to be all over the world to showcase the global stakes of the infection (filming happened around lockdowns and COVID protocols, I wonder how much that impacted on the writing and production of a story about a deadly infection that has the potential to spread worldwide?) and it does that well enough on the surface. Graham and Yaz decide to help Jake investigate the warehouse where Adam's signal came from, Ryan meets Gabriela and collects a dead bird specimen that will have enormous impact, and the Doctor has Suki and Aramu help her pull the sailor onto the shore before the infection overtakes him.   Everybody comes together in Hong Kong when Ryan reports he has a bird specimen and the Doctor collects him and Gabriela before joining the others. They find and rescue Adam from the futuristic tech holding him, while mysterious gas-masked people with laser guns shoot at them before Jake manages to get a gun of one and shoot the other two. It would seem silly that they were so bad at shooting and he - who has presumably never touched a laser rifle before - could use one so effectively, but a later reveal that they're aliens slowly dying of their own Praxeus infection goes a long way towards explaining that. What it doesn't explain is how the Doctor claims it is too difficult to remove their masks when she makes an attempt, but a little later Yaz is able to easily remove one... except of course the answer to that is that the writer wanted the reveal to come later! Yaz decides to stick around for another go at collecting the alien tech she spotted inside the warehouse, leaving it bizarrely late to make the request and even more confusingly being left to do so alone. Gabriela volunteers to go along and does, but you'd think with Ryan and Graham both there, that she'd send one of them (Graham was even teamed with her before!) to help out. But maybe this was a belated attempt to finally give Yaz some character and agency of her own, though handled very clumsily, and it does eventually lead to my favorite line of the episode (seen at the top of this post) when Yaz realizes that what she took for an alien planet was actually a big pile of garbage sitting at the bottom of the ocean  To highlight where I think the writing does well in this episode, I love that what appears to be a plot contrivance of Suki's lab happening to have everything the Doctor needs for a proper examination of the infection and development of a cuture... is very deliberate! The Doctor has constantly remarked on how Suki and her lab seem too good to be true, but she's done so in a laughing,"What a neat coincidence!" way. But her brain has been ahead of her on this, a frequent trait I love in revival Doctors, where they have to gallop to catch up to wat their brain - or brains as the Doctor puts it here - has already figured out on a subconscious level. The reason Suki has all this tech is because she was already working on Praxeus, she's an alien and the current human infections are fault. Though it wasn't intended to be an out of control experiment like this, she and her people came to Earth to deliberately test the infection on humans and other Earth animals to follow its infection cycle and work on potential cures or treatments on these "lab animals". The reason for this is that Praxeus feeds on plastic in particular (the Doctor briefly considers then dismisses that Autons might be involved), which is how it is impacting on birds and humans (and presumably a shitload of fish) since the former eat plastic mistaking it for food, and the latter are full of microplastics due to how much plastic humans have pumped into the environment. This has made the planet the perfect breeding ground for Praxeus, and thus for Suki's experiments. The Doctor is of course revolted, but also alarmed at Suki taking the results of the Doctor's own research with her when she teleports out. Ryan bringing the dead bird from Peru made them notice it was decomposing faster than it should be, leading the Doctor to grasp that the bacteria inside the bird was reacting to the two slightly different strains of Praxeus it had now been exposed to. Given she has samples from Andy (and the dead sailor?), she now has bacteria from different geographic locations of earth, each of them bringing their own individual strengths to bear on Praxeus, each of them combining in ways Suki's experiments wouldn't have picked up on (presumably Adam was kept in Hong Kong to isolate his sample?). She's able to develop a potential cure in the TARDIS (after escaping a bird attack that kills poor Aramu, who barely rates a mention after running directly towards the initial swarming attack) while tracking down Yaz on the "alien planet" that turns out to be the bottom of a huge gyre of plastic pollution in the ocean. It's there she discovers that Suki, exhilerated by the first sign of a positive direction in fighting Praxeus she has likely ever seen, has already transmitted the "cure" to her people and taken it herself. That was incredibly short-sighted and unscientific of course, given the cure is designed for earth-based organisms, and Suki - who never apologizes or shows the slightest care for the horrible acts she has perpetrated - dies a horrible death being quickly overtaken by the Praxeus.   Throughout the entire episode has run the subplot of the relationship between Adam and Jake. Adam is a prominent public figure, an astronaut, outgoing and charming, easy to like, affectionate and open. His husband, Jake, is more private, quiet and insular. He's been on a lengthy "break" from his role as a police officer, and their marriage has been strained by his refusal to attend the launch of Adam's most recent outer space mission. With Adam nearly dead, Jake has no choice but to be open about his feelings (helped a bit by Graham pointing out that when Adam needed somebody, it was Jake he called), and this should be the cathartic moment they both need to realize their love for each other is still strong and they can push past the difficulties. Instead, in a rather bizarre angle that feels more akin to Owen from Torchwood shoving a nuclear scientist out of the way so he could disarm a nuclear bomb instead (with the power of his leather jacket?), Jake sticks around in the ship which has suffered some navigation damage so he can manually pilot the ship to where it needs to be to release the cure into the same ocean currents and air-ways that the infection was initially going to spread by. Note that this is Jake, the ex-cop with zero flight training beyond playing video games, and now his husband Adam the literal astronaut/pilot with years of training to do exactly this very thing. Jake cracks a joke that Adam's job is actually pretty easy, except... it loving isn't! There's a reason astronauts need to be experts in a shitload of mathematics in addition to their flight skills! The whole thing seems to be about Jake having an inferiority complex to Adam having a far more "important" job than him, and the solution to this should be Jake realizing that what actually matters is how the two feel about each other. Instead, the episode gives Jake the "win" of doing the same job Adam does to "prove" he's as worthy as Jake, which was never a thing that was at stake for anybody BUT Jake! His big heroic sacrifice doesn't come off though, because the Doctor - while the ghost of Adric watches on furiously - is able to pilot the TARDIS to materialize around him in the nano-second before the ship tears itself apart and kills him. Thus, Jake is saved and NOW he and Adam are able to continue their lives together because Jake got an ego-stroke? Not exactly the best message! Adam also seems rather blase about the fact he's a missing British astronaut in Madagascar with no passport, and seemingly no intention to contact the European Space Agency or his family to let them know he's alive. The whole thing is played for laughs, with the two saying they'll go on vacation and Gabriela - whose best friend who she traveled with extensively and had a blog with died horribly and her corpse exploded in front of her only half a day ago! - inviting herself along despite the two showing no inclination or welcome to her to do so. If it sounds like I'm being harsh on the episode, it's just because these things crop up more readily when you spend any amount of time working through them. On the surface though, the episode moves along at a good pace and has a lot going for it. Gabriela's frequent boastful claims that people will recognize her from her blog constantly being proven wrong is a fun running joke (ignoring her partner's horrible death!), and though Yaz goes about it in a bizarre way we are starting to get the first glimpse of a too-long-to-develop and never FULLY realized character arc/trait for her of becoming enamored with the Doctor's way of life (and soon, the Doctor too) which is.... well, both have been done before with Clara and Rose respectively, but at least it's something!   It's a perfectly fine episode. It's nice to see a gay marriage presented on screen with absolutely nobody bringing any attention to it as being anything other than completely normal, the make-up effects are suitably creepy, every member of the cast AND the large supporting cast all get something to do - even poor Aramu at least has a task and a death scene, even if he's the most underwritten and under-served character - and the Doctor figures poo poo out and even gets a little bit of that engineering/tinkering characterization that it felt like we were promised when she works on Suki's ship and gets everybody working on handling different parts of everything. I'll probably forget Praxeus exists until the next time somebody brings it up or I spot it in an episode list. Forgettable doesn't necessarily mean bad though, just not that it did anything memorable enough to really stand out. Unfortunately, when it came to the Chibnall era as a whole, a largely fine episode that mostly stands up okay to a casual scrutiny in some ways IS a stand-out. Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories.
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Feb 7, 2024 07:40
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Jerusalem posted:None of these questions overly detract from the story for me Praxeus is where the whole "they filmed the first draft" feeling of the era really crystallised for me (though the Battle of I'm Not Looking Up the Name provided a lot of supporting evidence).
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Feb 7, 2024 07:48
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If Pete McTigh is to write another episode for Doctor Who, someone else needs to be in charge of naming them. He's 0-2.
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Feb 7, 2024 07:49
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The praxeus infection looked like the tooth monster from Channel Zero, and that produced the same sort of visceral ‘nonono’ reaction in me.
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Feb 7, 2024 08:42
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My favorite part of Praxeus is when that one tertiary character dies on the beach (I'm not sure what he thought he was going to do against the swarm of birds) and no one notices or reacts or mentions him again or even seems to remember he ever existed.
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Feb 7, 2024 09:30
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Lottery of Babylon posted:My favorite part of Praxeus is when that one tertiary character dies on the beach (I'm not sure what he thought he was going to do against the swarm of birds) and no one notices or reacts or mentions him again or even seems to remember he ever existed. One of the big questions for me is just how long he had been working for Suki, why Suki had taken on a human assistant, what he thought she was doing etc. They have an established, familiar and clearly very convivial relationship in their first scene together but there is zero indication he had any idea of what she was really up to and it seems kind of bizarre to me she'd keep a human around who must have had some technical know-how skills. But yeah, his death is bizarre and goes completely unnoticed/cared about.
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Feb 7, 2024 09:58
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Doctor Spaceman posted:They sure did for me!
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Feb 7, 2024 10:36
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Coward posted:And it has such a great ending with the kid running off and the reveal of where they are. Definitely the end of that episode and a real shame it was the end of that series and the cliffhanger never got resolved. Hell Bent is also good, actually. The entire run of Raven to Husbands is one of the best streaks of quality I've seen from this show. Season 9: Starts well, ends phenomenally, let's not talk about everything in between.
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Feb 7, 2024 10:44
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The rumour mill (which has been pretty reliable tbh) says that Praxeus originally started as a Sea Devil script but that was abandoned. It would make sense of how ramshackle the script is.
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Feb 7, 2024 10:50
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Don't worry, they eventually made a Sea Devils' episode and I'm sure the extra time meant they got to give it the quality and polish it nee.... https://i.imgur.com/tNzYjzD.mp4  Still can't believe they could write a story with Madame Ching as a major character and have it be so bad (and Madame Ching so completely inconsequential to the story!)
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Feb 7, 2024 11:00
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Jerusalem posted:Don't worry, they eventually made a Sea Devils' episode and I'm sure the extra time meant they got to give it the quality and polish it nee.... I don't know how much they spent on this costume but it was too much. I'm fine with Doctor Who having shoddy effects but there's something about this that looks so cheap and off putting. This and the redesigned Ice Warrior are probably the worst designs of NuWho (RIP)
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Feb 7, 2024 11:02
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2house2fly posted:I find a new fav thing about it every time I rewatch, most recently the Doctor's voice cracking as he says "all you need for energy is something to burn". The line "It’s funny. The day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead." didn't do a lot for me at the time I watched it, but last year when taking my wife on a highlights tour of New Who I got to that and just burst into tears. In 2021 I lost both my parents within six months of each other, my dad died on the day I was moving in with my then-girlfriend, now wife and for the next couple of days I really DID have too much stuff to do. A couple of days later it properly landed, and then every so often since my brain will respond to something innocuous with "wonder what Dad would have thought of that". Heaven Sent is, for me, an absolute masterpiece in talking about grief. Hard relate, as the kids say. poo poo, it's got dusty in here all of a sudden.
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Feb 7, 2024 11:14
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Fil5000 posted:The line "It’s funny. The day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead." didn't do a lot for me at the time I watched it, but last year when taking my wife on a highlights tour of New Who I got to that and just burst into tears. In 2021 I lost both my parents within six months of each other, my dad died on the day I was moving in with my then-girlfriend, now wife and for the next couple of days I really DID have too much stuff to do. A couple of days later it properly landed, and then every so often since my brain will respond to something innocuous with "wonder what Dad would have thought of that". Sorry for your losses. But yeah, it's a good line and for all Moffat leans on endings in which everybody that dies also lives happily ever after for eternity, he's actually very good at writing grief. The concept of the Doctor keeping this piece of Clara so alive in his mind's eye, that we're all little pieces of the people we've lost and carry their ghosts with us, hit me hard the last time I watched it. I had an ex I was close to that passed away about five years ago . We'd talk all the time, and when I get really stressed, I can still picture them in the second-run movie theater we'd go to, telling me the right thing to do. We all have a TARDIS with some ghost writing on a chalkboard rattling away somewhere in our neurons, probably.
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Feb 7, 2024 14:09
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