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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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I do like his hoodie jacket, which iiirc has the red inner lining like his smarter one from series 8. Sonic sunglasses are cool also
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Apr 5, 2024 23:00
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| # ? May 24, 2024 01:00 |
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I don't even particularly dislike Jodie's outfit - It's far more forgiveable than Colin's - but it has an air of 'Eh, good enough, that's the minimum level of Doctorish attire we need'
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Apr 5, 2024 23:48
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Wolfechu posted:I don't even particularly dislike Jodie's outfit - It's far more forgiveable than Colin's - but it has an air of 'Eh, good enough, that's the minimum level of Doctorish attire we need' Much like everything in her run, it suffers particularly heavily from coming directly after Capaldi.
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Apr 5, 2024 23:54
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13's regular outfit was fine, it's just that whenever she was in a suit, drat.
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Apr 6, 2024 00:18
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I feel that an opportunity was missed when she never wore a skirt or a dress. It's not that I think "woman = must wear dress"... but the lack of variety in her wardrobe did kind of play into "Doctor = must NOT wear dress", and if you aren't going to use the first woman in the role to make the point that you can wear a frock and still be a badass hero/trickster authority figure that's kind of a wasted opportunity. She looked grand in a suit too, whenever that happened. Her default costume was unfortunately her worst one, and it's the same problem as Colin Baker: it's just a bit too infsntolising. 6's costume is "off-duty clown", 13's is "1980s kids' educational TV show presenter", neither hit the mark.
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Apr 6, 2024 03:18
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Gatwa absolutely rocked the kilt in The Chuch on Ruby Road, but that's like saying water is wet, Gatwa has rocked every single outfit we've seen him in so far.
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Apr 6, 2024 03:35
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Warthur posted:13's is "1980s kids' educational TV show presenter", neither hit the mark. I dunno, I feel like that hits the mark perfectly for what Chibnall wanted from her.
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Apr 6, 2024 04:56
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Bout time we get a puppet or muppet companion. An episode trying to get Oscar to see there's anything else worth seeing in the universe outside the trash can.
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Apr 6, 2024 06:44
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Lottery of Babylon posted:I dunno, I feel like that hits the mark perfectly for what Chibnall wanted from her. Yeah, I dunno who said it -- maybe Elizabeth Sandifer when she was talking about Broadchurch season two -- but Whittaker and Chibnall have always seemed to be on the same page in terms of what he's asking and what she's trying to to deliver. It's just often not very good, either here or in Broadchurch
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Apr 6, 2024 09:45
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Big Mean Jerk posted:No way, Capaldi’s casual outfits loving ruled. There’s something inmensely cool about CapaldiDoc in particular going full casual instead of just wearing the typical stuffy or posh poo poo all the time. I loved loved loved the hoodie and crombie combo, but I really did hate the holey jumper lol Also that one shirt he wore in Kill The Moon. Barf
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Apr 6, 2024 10:41
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Lottery of Babylon posted:I dunno, I feel like that hits the mark perfectly for what Chibnall wanted from her. This is true but also not really a refutation of my point because what Chibnall wanted was almost always bad for the show, and in the brief instances when it wasn't (the educational aspects of, say, Rosa, or Demons or the Punjab) it would sooner or later get totally undermined by something else Chibnall wanted. The costume works somewhat for "here, let's have Doctor Who teach you some stuff", but that's a handful of moments from series 11. From series 12 onwards that aspect of Chibnall's vision is dead. Putting her in the James Bond By Way Of Troughton outfit in Spyfall should really have been an opportunity to do a complete costume redesign, especially since between S11 and S12 Chibnall seemed to do a total rethink of what he wanted to do anyway.
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Apr 6, 2024 14:47
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Jerusalem posted:Gatwa absolutely rocked the kilt in The Chuch on Ruby Road, but that's like saying water is wet, Gatwa has rocked every single outfit we've seen him in so far. Pretty sure the folks working in wardrobe broke out the champagne when he was cast. He also seems really into trying different looks, so it's one of those situations where everyone is having fun.
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Apr 6, 2024 16:54
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Warthur posted:The costume works somewhat for "here, let's have Doctor Who teach you some stuff", but that's a handful of moments from series 11. From series 12 onwards that aspect of Chibnall's vision is dead. I think he's still trying to do it in series 12. It seems like he's going for that same thing when he tries to have her teach about Ada Lovelace, or global warming, or Tesla, or plastic pollution. He's just... somehow even worse at it than in series 11. The most notable example is Can You Hear Me, where she tries to be kindergarten tour guide about old Syrian mental health only to realize there's no one to be a kindergarten tour guide to and she doesn't know what to do when she's not being a kindergarten tour guide. (Even though she's supposed to simultaneously be going off on her own all the time to brood.) e: lmao she even needed to teach the man-who-was-both-a-cancer-patient-and-married-to-a-nurse-for-years what "pathogen" means
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Apr 7, 2024 05:19
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Season 12 New Year's Special: Revolution of the Daleks Written by Chris Chibnall, Directed by Lee Haven Jones Graham O'Brien posted:A few more tries and we'll go and save the world, eh? Boy, this story did not age well. There's a scene early in the episode where the Doctor, depressed and weary, lies down to sleep for the night in her cell and decides to tell herself a bedtime story. The story she chooses is the opening paragraph of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which makes sense in isolation as a callback to the 10th Doctor's gushing over J.K Rowling in The Shakespeare Code from 2007. In 2021 it was a very different story, given J.K Rowling had started and would continue a descent into full-blown TERFdom. But even that pales in comparison to the very, very, very unfortunate presence of two very prominent characters in the story played by Chris Noth and John Barrowman. Barrowman returns as Captain Jack Harkness, once a beloved fan-favorite character whose return was highly anticipated, until his career was effectively ended in the wake of fellow former Who actor Noel Clarke's own scandal, which brought to light Barrowman's well-known proclivity for flashing his genitals, placing them onto his co-workers and other "jokes" involving sexual innuendo and exhibitionism. Chris Noth makes his second appearance on the show, part of what appears was intended to be a recurring character until Noth's career was also ended in the wake of sexual assault allegations that saw him killed off as a character in Sex and the City follow-up And Just Like That... as well as a recurring role in The Equalizer. Thus, it's near impossible to consider this show in a vacuum. It was the ONLY episode of Doctor Who to air over 17 months between 2020 and 2021, a New Years Special that acted as a quasi-sequel to Resolution, which itself aired exactly two years earlier. People had been left percolating for 7 months over the utter nonsense that The Timeless Children poo poo on the floor before walking out the door, and for the very next episode to end up having almost zero follow-up to that was infuriating. But even then, the episode purely on its own merits is full of a ton of problems. It tries to follow up on the very good Resolution which ends up feeling like it is largely repeating itself, and the Doctor's ultimate solution to the Dalek problem is replete with a number of little problems that are made worse when considered in the context of even one episode earlier, and overall it does the same thing that the overall Chibnall era did: it ends up being a massive waste of potential. https://i.imgur.com/r165YFK.mp4 When The Timeless Children ended, the Doctor had been unceremoniously scooped up by a Judoon and dumped into a prison as a result of registering that she was the same person as The Fugitive Doctor. For the next 7 months, viewers were left to speculate on how the Doctor would get out of this mess, or what a Doctor in prison might look like. For my part, I was enthusiastic about the notion of the Doctor being a kinder, less smug but still infuriating version of River Song. I imagined her being in prison purely because she'd decided to stay for a bit to sort through some stuff in the wake of the Master's blatant lies about her origin. I thought of her coming and going as she felt, easily "escaping" her cell whenever she felt like it. I thought of her befriending the jailers who just gave up on trying to make her do what they told her. I saw her hanging out with, playing card games and acting like she owned the place. I saw her helping fellow prisoners, improving the prison, turning it into a proper rehabilitation center where people actually worked through their issues and ended their sentences as better (for want of a better term) human beings. Chibnall went with a slightly different direction, which was loving nothing. Instead of doing any of that, the Doctor did... nothing. She just sat in her cell for what appears to have been multiple decades. Every day she would get up and eat her breakfast, go for a walk for her mandated "exercise", standing in a little electrified cell surrounded by various alien prisoners, then go back to her cell and... go to sleep. Every day. For decades. Unchanging. About the only nod to the Doctor's personality was that she took to calling various other prisoners - a Weeping Angel, a Pting, A Sycorax and an Ood partnership (that should be a story in and of itself) and in one clever little nod, a Silence who the Doctor mutters she keeps forgetting is there - by different nicknames. Which would maybe if okay if we considered this was a self-imposed exile/isolation along the lines of the one 6 tried to undertake with a horrified Peri back in the 1980s, only for something to finally break her out of her funk and lead to her finally taking action and making her escape. Except we don't get that. Instead, much like the end of the previous episode, the Doctor only achieves something when a middle-aged (eons-aged) male shows up and does things for her. Captain Jack returns, getting himself arrested and slowly shifted throughout the cells over the course of years (decades?) until he ended up next to her in the "exercise yard". She rushes up to greet him, grabbing hold of the electrified fence we saw earlier zap the Pting to remind us it was a deadly electrical deterrant... except it does nothing to her at all, perhaps because her own passivity is contagious? Jack is the one who has come with a plan, who has brought tech with him, who leads her on an escape, gets her to a stashed vortex manipulator, returns her to her TARDIS, who is the only one with any actual agency while the Doctor - the titular character and hero of the series - who is just dragged along in his wake. https://i.imgur.com/2vlwxkr.mp4 While all that is happening (over nearly half the length of the episode), on Earth the three companions have had different approaches to life without the Doctor. Ryan has taken the chance to be more involved in his own life again, getting to keep up with his friends, catching up with his father, being present in the... well, the present. Graham, retired, has taken an interest in looking out for potential issues and problems in the current day akin to the problems they helped the Doctor with while they traveled with her, a mindset that Ryan appreciates and helps with. Yaz, meanwhile, is living in a state of obsession: shacked up in the TARDIS from Gallifrey that the Doctor sent them back to Earth with, she has been hunting up whatever information she find linked to the Doctor, convinced she can find her again, lamenting that she can't figure out how to operate the TARDIS itself so she can actually go looking. It's the closest thing we've seen to a personality for Yaz, and it's not exactly a GOOD thing that she's become obsessive about the Doctor, but at least it's something. Ryan and Graham are concerned that she's losing herself in it though (has she completely given up on her police career?) and tentatively try to suggest she accept that the Doctor could very well be dead, given the situation she was in when they last saw her. Yaz refuses to accept that, but does at least get shaken out of her tunnel vision when they reveal leaked cellphone footage to her of what is clearly a Dalek at a security drone "test", one that included footage of Jack "Spider-Guy" Robertson present. That was showcased to us at the start of the episode, in a somewhat overcomplicated scheme where the Minister of Technology leaks information about the transport of the Recon Dalek's melted shell from GCHQ after the end of Resolution. This leads to the straight up murder of the driver (so, Robertson ordered the murder? This seems an active step up from his otherwise immoral but technically legal normal practices) and the reverse-engineering of the scrap-Dalek into AI-controlled security drones by an excited tech specialist who is ignorant of the collusion between his employer Robertson and the politician who is aiming to use the "drones" as a PR tool to aid her efforts to become the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - Robertson's own political ambitions are explained away as abandoned in a throwaway line about the fallout from the "toxic waste" incident in Sheffield. Graham, Ryan and Yaz try to confront Robertson but discover that without the Doctor, her psychic paper, TARDIS and general technical know-how it's not so easy to just get answers from the people you're accusing of working with an alien race of genocidal pepper-pots, especially when they genuinely seem to have no idea what the hell a "Dalek" is. They return to Graham's, trying to figure out what to do next, when probably one of the best moments of the episode happens: https://i.imgur.com/jE1kVyG.mp4 "I was in Space Jail!" the Doctor declares, trying to be breezy, only for a joyful Yaz to suddenly give her an angry shove that catches everybody - including Yaz! - by surprise. Because of course it's been over a year and for as much as Yaz insisted she couldn't accept the Doctor was dead... she had. On some level she thought the Doctor had died, and for her to return like this as if nothing had happened is infuriating. The Doctor is stunned, belatedly realizing that she screwed up when she set the coordinates for her return, intending to show back up a few hours after sending the companions back, much like how she once brought Rose back to her mother's house only to discover Rose was missing and considered dead. Captain Jack tries to break the obvious tension as the Doctor realizes from their responses to her that there is friction between them now, and they quickly catch them up on the enormity of the problem with a single word: Dalek. Robertson is soon confronted again, but this time in his office and without the ability to call in security, as the Doctor uses the TARDIS to get them in and prevents him from being able to put out calls or trigger alarms. The companions were right that the Doctor was the missing ingredient needed to get them the results they wanted, and it works to a degree, this time Robertson does happily agree to show them what he is "up to", though he still insists he has no idea what a "Dalek" is. He brings them out openly onto the factory floor, where they stare stunned at a massive assembly line mass 3D printing Dalek shells. But there is nothing inside, the "drones" are operated by an AI pilot system, there is no organic component whatsoever. The production itself has recently shot up, as part of a shakedown by the Technology Minister who has finally gotten the numbers she needed to become the new Prime Minister, immediately announcing the (extremely quick!) deployment of thousands of drones around airports, museums, national monuments etc as a symbol of Britain being on the forefront of technological advancement. The Doctor can't understand it, on the face of it - not knowing HOW he got hold of the original Dalek shell - Robertson has actually done nothing wrong. He's just produced a large number of completely safe and controlled robotic drones as part of a legitimate operation with the British Government. It is not even Dalek technology, just a crude (by Dalek standards) reverse engineering of it to the best capabilities of 21st Century human technology. It's the kind of thing that might lead to a 3rd Doctor style story where he knows eventually things will backfire, but as to the actual Daleks themselves? They're nowhere to be seen, and the Doctor herself knows that Dalek that operated the original shell is dead, dumped into a supernova at the end of Resolution. https://i.imgur.com/ZTMEhpX.mp4 Except of course, it doesn't all add up. Robertson isn't telling them everything, such as his connection with the Prime Minister, but most importantly about the disturbing news he received from his tech specialist Leo about how he'd grown a living sample from some burned organic cells he found on the inside of the original melted shell. Robertson actually did the right thing in that case in that he immediately ordered the growth incinerated, but that was to cover his rear end, and he doesn't mention that it happened at all to the Doctor. He's also not fully aware of everything too, the Doctor frequently demanding to know about the strange energy readings she is picking up at his Osaka Facility. Robertson is agitated, reminding her constantly he doesn't have an Osaka Facility... except he does, because OF COURSE the lab-grown Dalek escaped incineration, and even before then Leo's experiments gave it access momentarily to Robert's company "neural network", and that was enough to set into motion a series of events that allowed it to set up and run an entire facility in Japan with nobody else in Robertson's company INCLUDING Robertson being any the wiser. It's an attempt to recapture the magic from Resolution where Lin was puppeteered by a Dalek, the horror of its invasion of her body and mind to force her to perform monstrous acts one of the most effective new variations on the old Dalek stories I'd seen in some time. But the repeat here doesn't work anywhere near as strongly. Partly because, to be perfectly honest, Leo's actions are deeply irresponsible and reckless even accounting for him being in the dark of the origins of the melted shell and how it was acquired. An attempt to tug on the heartstrings by having Leo make a call to his wife and speak about his children falls flat, and when Leo is finally killed in spite of the Doctor's attempts to save him, what is meant to feel like a deeply sad moment just left me cold. He was the one who chose to recreate an alien organic sample, who gave it access to a secured and experimental neural network, who didn't raise any alarm bells (official or internally in his own mind) when it showed an immediate ability to operate within that neural network etc. I don't wish him death or harm, but I also can't help but feel that his naivety and lack of common sense largely put him into this position even if he of course couldn't have predicted the result. One of the more hosed up aspects of his character is that technically speaking he is more actively responsible for the return of the Daleks than Robertson, who really did simply plan to just reverse engineer the (ill-gotten) tech to make a purely machine-based asset he could sell for a profit. That's simplistic and ignores Robertson's policy of secrecy, closed communication and shortcuts (i.e, crimes) creating a situation where Leo could do this, but Robertson's immediate order to destroy the organic growth when informed of it was the "right" call. https://i.imgur.com/gsvEkv3.mp4 The Dalek, cloned from existing cells and retaining memory of its prior life, has set up an entire facility in Osaka, cloned multiple versions of itself and then feed them with the processed remains of the human workers (exactly HOW it pulled that off before Leo brought it physically to Osaka I have no idea). Bathing the clones in ultra-violet light like that one that reanimated its original body, the Dalek teleports them into the "empty" shells of the drones that have now been spread out across multiple strategic positions around the UK (not by the Dalek, by the Government!). The new Prime Minister (played by Harriet Walter, perhaps best recently known for Succession and Ted Lasso) is in the middle of a Press Conference announcing their deployment (but they're... already deployed and so in use that everybody treats them like normal) when the now activated Daleks declare they are conquering the Earth and exterminate her as she tries to escape back into #10. 21st Century Person in the Doctor Who Universe: If I had a penny for every time I've seen a World Leader murdered by futuristic technology on live television, I'd have two pennies. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird it's happened twice. The Doctor's plan to deal with this sudden invasion (of Britain) is something that on paper could have worked incredibly well, and there's a moment where the initial reveal is made (though the audience has probably worked it out well before then) of her secret weapon that under a better showrunner would probably standout as one of the top moments in the Chibnall era, but instead is probably largely forgotten. https://i.imgur.com/dzsp8ZZ.mp4 For the first time since Chris Chibnall took over Doctor Who, we get to see ACTUAL Daleks. Not the Kaled mutant piggybacking a human hostage. Not a scrapyard version of the Dalek shell. Actual Daleks. The Doctor sends the Recon Dalek's original intended signal that she had blocked at GCHQ, calling in the Daleks with the full knowledge of exactly what will happen: they will see the "Daleks" on that planet and immediately hate them for being impure, and the end result of that conflict will be inevitable. After that, like she did with Ashad, she will have to clean up that mess, but unlike with Ashad, this time she actually does have a plan for step 2. As expected, the Daleks immediately detest the cloned Daleks in their improper shells, ignoring their insistence that they too are Daleks, having all of the belief in Dalek purity without the EXACT DNA sequences and shell construction to fit within the Daleks' impossible standards for said purity. They wipe out the clones, the Recon Dalek accepting that this was inevitable but uncaring, reporting to the Daleks expecting that things will be different for it. They are not, of course, when it insists that it can be made pure, when it reminds them of the thousands of years of tribulations it has undergone in order to bring them to Earth, the Daleks response is simple: there is only one way to purify the impure. Extermination. In the midst of all this, Robertson has made another of his decision based on a baffling writing tic that seems determined to make him a recurring character. He ignores the Doctor ordering him about and insists he is going to go and negotiate with the "superior" Daleks. When he does, they don't just immediately exterminate him as they would 999,999 times out of a million, but take his claims that he can negotiate surrender on humanity's behalf at face value. When the battle starts he hides on the Dalek ship and is rescued by the companions as they set up explosives to destroy the ship. Bizarrely, in the aftermath of everything he is treated like a hero by the media who declare he was the man who stood up to the Daleks... based on what? At no point do we see him being seen with the Daleks, at no point does he do anything that could be even misinterpreted as heroic, or even villainous, because he isn't seen at all! Did he... did he just call up the media and say,"By the way I challenged the aliens face to face on behalf of the human race" and they just went,"Oh awesome!" and didn't look into it any further than that? They even talk about how his political aspirations have been renewed, and I can only assume he would have returned at least one more time during Flux or possibly the Specials if Noth hadn't torpedoed his entire career. The Doctor's plan to defeat the Daleks is clever and based on prior information and things that happened in this and other episodes, so it deserves credit in that regard.. except it also seems entirely wrong. The Doctor gets the Daleks attention and goads them into chasing her into the TARDIS where she has parked it on top of a bridge. Once inside, the Daleks find themselves in a familiar looking Console Room, but not the Doctor's. It turns out she was a hologram (surely they'd have noticed? Maybe she was real and was teleported out/grabbed by the Vortex Manipulator?) and this the TARDIS from Gallifrey that Yaz has been living in. The Doctor has this TARDIS collapse in on itself, crushing the Daleks into an infinitely dense material before sending itself into the heart of the void, wiping them out beyond any shadow of a doubt, there won't be any organic material left after THIS incident. Which all works, except even if the Doctor's own TARDIS is unique by dint of its thousands of years of travel with her, it still seems very off that the Doctor would order another TARDIS to kill itself. A TARDIS after all is alive, if not in the sense of life as we know it, but capable of growth given a chance like her own TARDIS managed to achieve through its travels with her. It's not like we haven't other TARDIS' used as simply machines and sacrificed or replaced as necessary, but that feels like the type of thing that other Time Lords do, not the Doctor. After all, the resolution of the previous episode was the Doctor explicitly making the choice NOT to wipe out lifeforms even knowing it would cause untold death not to do so. A petty thing to complain about perhaps, and at least the Doctor was being active and energized for a change, but it does seem somewhat off to me all the same. https://i.imgur.com/mpXPWJL.mp4 With the earth saved, Robertson doing his thing and Jack reduced to a voiceover goodbye, the Doctor is all set to get things back to normal. She hasn't remotely addressed The Timeless Child nonsense and seems more than willing to just ignore it forever, which is meant to be the Doctor avoiding confronting the enormity of this new reality but which is more of a relief for the viewer who has zero interest in it. But things aren't going to be the same, Ryan informs the Doctor that he intends to stay on Earth, it's time to actually live his life. He gives Graham his blessing to go, but Graham - much as he clearly wants to - wants to remain a family more. He too chooses to stay on Earth, Ryan cracking a joke that he was looking forward to having the house to himself. What about Yaz then? Almost before the question is asked she blurts out that yes of course she plans to go with the Doctor, belatedly realizing how thoughtless that was and asking Ryan if this is alright. He grunts that it's too late to take it back now, but then smiles, having known all along that she would. Yaz's obsession with the Doctor is obvious to everyone but the Doctor, even Jack picked up on it right away when he and Yaz were in Osaka together, despite trying to flirt with her and wanting to talk about himself. Ryan admits that part of him wants a normal life again but also part of him wants to be the guy looking out for Earth while she isn't here (thank God Jack wasn't there to offer him a job in Torchwood), and so she gifts him and Graham psychic paper to help them get into places they shouldn't (but nothing else to keep their fleshy, mortal bodies alive!). And with that, two seasons into the Chibnall era, Ryan and Graham are gone as companions. Ryan never really developed much, though he got more to work with than Yaz, while Graham probably got the most development time of all the companions. Part of the real life reason for them leaving was Tosin Cole getting an opportunity to work in America and Bradley Walsh being one of the busiest men in British show business. Their final scene, and of the episode, is fitting enough them repeating Grace's prior efforts to help Ryan overcome his dyspraxia and ride a bike. He continues to fail, because you don't just "get over it", but the important thing is he keeps trying. Graham is there to support him, both of them having a moment where they see Grace smiling at them through the sunlight pouring into their eyes (the sun is also overhead and slightly behind them in the next shot!) before they try again, and Ryan fails again, but they keep at it, knowing that you never give up. The Doctor taught them that, even if the start of this episode seemed to indicate she had given up herself, and as far as companion exits go, it's not the best but it is far from the worst. https://i.imgur.com/ITSfcIl.mp4 So ends the only episode of Doctor Who we got for 17 months. There was a new status quo, with the Doctor now traveling with only one companion, and there were hopes this would mean there would be no choice but character development for her. Of course, it was IMMEDIATELY announced that John Bishop would be joining the cast as a new companion as well, and not long after that Season 13 would only be six episodes, as part of a season long storyline called Flux. We're nearing the end of the Whittaker/Chibnall era now, with only 9 episodes left, and it's sad to say with the benefit of hindsight that I'm glad it is only that few. Whittaker could have been so much more, but history seems to show that as long as she was tied to Chibnall, she was never going to get to be. Index of Doctor Who Write-ups for Television Episodes/Big Finish Audio Stories. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 7, 2024 10:55
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Reading these reviews is really a trip because I mostly stopped watching after the start of Series 12, and I am 95% certain I watched this episode... but the plot synopsis is just as familiar to me as the one where the Doctor is an Irish cop (?). It's like trying to recall a dream ten minutes after waking.
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Apr 7, 2024 11:10
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Rewatching the episodes I keep bumping into scenes/events that are on the face of it pretty drat important/pivotal and yet until I saw them again I had completely forgotten they existed. Do you remember that a living personification of Time is introduced in the very last episode of the Flux season like halfway through as the ACTUAL true villain of the season and is all,"I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME(me?) DOCTOR!" and then just... never shows up ever again?
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Apr 7, 2024 11:17
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Lottery of Babylon posted:I think he's still trying to do it in series 12. It seems like he's going for that same thing when he tries to have her teach about Ada Lovelace, or global warming, or Tesla, or plastic pollution. He's just... somehow even worse at it than in series 11. Yeah, I can buy that, but I think I'd still say that it flipped from something which was an interesting glimmer of something better in series 11 into just one more thing that was hurting the show in series 12. And unfortunately that means that the presentation of the Doctor as a kindergarten tour guide just hurts the show from series 12 onwards. And I don't think anyone can argue that the educational impulse is a factor from, say, Last of the Cybermen onwards. Sure, there's Mary Seacole and Chinese piracy, but what of note would anyone learn from their appearances?
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Apr 7, 2024 12:52
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Jerusalem posted:RTD: I'm only hiring people with experience making Doctor Who. I mean, Loki S1 is basically "What if Doctor Who was actually about The Master" S2 is an entirely different beast though.
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Apr 7, 2024 14:35
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S2 is Flux done much, much better.
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Apr 7, 2024 14:54
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God I forgot how bad Revolutions was Jerusalem posted:Season 12 New Year's Special: Revolution of the Daleks  Always thought End of Time was a good send off for Capt Jack, with 10 setting him up with Alonso I'm probably misremembering things, but I thought it was known Barrowman was a sexpest by the time the episode was being filmed? I do recall it wasn't a positive reaction seeing him back on air either way. Really really really hope RTD doesn't gently caress it up and bring him back The_Doctor posted:S2 is Flux done much, much better. ...huh. It is. It really really is.
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Apr 7, 2024 15:00
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To this day a friend of mine will never let it go that Chibnall made Doctor Who destroy a TARDIS, a magical machine which has been proven at multiple times to be sentient.
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Apr 7, 2024 15:06
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It's OK, it was an evil TARDIS
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Apr 7, 2024 15:08
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In the previous episode, she'd even left the other TARDIS she took from Gallifrey on that planet where she tried to fight the Cybermen, letting it sit for eternity disguised as a tree, noting warmly that it was a nice form of retirement for it!
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Apr 7, 2024 15:27
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Jerusalem posted:In the previous episode, she'd even left the other TARDIS she took from Gallifrey on that planet where she tried to fight the Cybermen, letting it sit for eternity disguised as a tree, noting warmly that it was a nice form of retirement for it! Given that the Doctor’s TARDIS wanted to see the universe, I’d imagine that’s not a unique mindset amongst TT capsules. In which case, that poor TARDIS. 
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Apr 7, 2024 15:33
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Well the rest of them all got blown up by the Death Particle, so it made out okay! Next showrunner will be Joseph Lidster who reveals in an unrelated scene in his first episode that the Master actually kept all the children alive and packed into the TARDIS next to the one the Doctor took, and they all died horribly as a result. The Doctor never learns about this, it has zero impact on anything nor does it ever come up again at any point.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:22
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Lidster would have all the children being used as parts of the Master’s TARDIS, Snowpiercer-style.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:35
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Every time you time travel it burns up a child like the machine in heaven sent. How does that make you feel doctor??
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Apr 7, 2024 16:50
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Tardis
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Apr 7, 2024 17:10
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Infinitum posted:It's OK, it was an evil TARDIS "TARDIS Commits Tax Evasion", coming to EGS, Gamepass, Switch, and Steam Fall 2024
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Apr 7, 2024 17:44
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I think a much better writer could have been able to frame it so that the Doctor's TARDIS is unique due to centuries of use by a single pilot, rather than a team as it is meant to be used, and that is how it has gained sentience over the centuries. The Doctor loves his TARDIS, and the TARDIS loves them back. You'd then be able to put an emphasis on the other TARDIS being effectively 'just a machine/tool' at that point, or even having the TARDIS itself make the heroic sacrifice willingly. I wonder if Chibnall had a disdain for the decades of lore and canon, because I truly don't know how a showrunner could be so incompetent. Boxturret posted:Every time you time travel it burns up a child like the machine in heaven sent. How does that make you feel doctor?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rek1TzX2vw
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Apr 7, 2024 18:08
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Infinitum posted:I'm probably misremembering things, but I thought it was known Barrowman was a sexpest by the time the episode was being filmed? I do recall it wasn't a positive reaction seeing him back on air either way. It’s been common knowledge for over 15 years now - to the extent that it was a joke in the video the production team made when RTD left. It doesn’t help that exposing yourself isn’t uncommon in acting circles, however Barrowman overdid it. The main difference is that society has thankfully changed, and now what was acceptable no longer is. Had it not been for Noel Clarke’s outing as a sex pest and subsequent outing of what Barrowman did, then it would have been quietly ignored as it has been and I doubt anything would have happened. Although I do wonder whether Fraser Hines still gleefully talks about how he and Troughton used to play pranks on Debbie Watling and Wendy Padbury which typically led to their clothes coming off…
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Apr 7, 2024 18:37
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Infinitum posted:I think a much better writer could have been able to frame it so that the Doctor's TARDIS is unique due to centuries of use by a single pilot, rather than a team as it is meant to be used, and that is how it has gained sentience over the centuries. Go with this, and then a season later have the season villain be the Master's TARDIS, acting on its own after the Master's very real definitely final death (they'll turn up alive a series later) bringing various villains around time to cause mayhem.
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Apr 7, 2024 18:45
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The_Doctor posted:S2 is Flux done much, much better. True, though the ending would be a bit trickier to pull off in Flux. I still have the document from 2021 I wrote up immediately after seeing Revolution of the Daleks explaining how to fix the story with 19 changes, ranging from concealing what's going on with Robertson's "Daleks" in the early part of the episode to having the Doctor deliberately processing the Timeless Child thing to having her prompted to escape by both Yaz and Jack showing up. Robertson is more clearly sleazy and cheap, there's only the one Dalek who takes control of the whole neural network to remotely pilot the shells, and the Doctor beats it herself by exploiting the fact that while the Dalek is perfectly capable of controlling all those shells using the network, it can't do anything about the fact that Robertson's network equipment is all "lowest bidder" quality. A 30-minute rewrite would have been enough to take this from a poorly-thought-out idea that mostly rehashes old material (two Dalek factions? There's a fresh idea!) and makes poor use of almost every character in the story into something decent or better. Another huge waste.
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Apr 7, 2024 19:07
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If it was me I'd have said "self cleaning mode" instead of "self destruct". Just say that like an oven cleans itself by making itself super hot and burning dirt away, a Tardis can do the same with I dunno, Eye Of Harmony Energy. Or just have the Tardis take the door away so the Daleks are trapped inside it for all eternity, that could be a nice dark joke to end on. But I like the idea of self cleaning mode because it would kind of call back to how they defeated the Dalek the previous year with a microwave
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Apr 7, 2024 19:23
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My favourite bonkers TARDIS retcon is the one where it turns out The First Doctor used a Type 50 for business in his early life. When he left Gallifrey in his Type 40, the Type 50 was so mad at being abandoned that it hired a private detective to track the Doctor down, then sent up an elaborate trap for him.
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Apr 7, 2024 21:44
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Infinitum posted:I think a much better writer could have been able to frame it so that the Doctor's TARDIS is unique due to centuries of use by a single pilot, rather than a team as it is meant to be used, and that is how it has gained sentience over the centuries. The Doctor loves his TARDIS, and the TARDIS loves them back. I've always felt this is what made the Doctor's TARDIS unique, yeah, and that it is a point of difference with the Master who probably feels no sense of union with theirs and probably switches them out casually, thus never developing that strength of relation. Eve of Destruction is an early story, but it establishes right there that the 1st Doctor realizes their initial belief that the TARDIS is just a machine was wrong. It'd part of why having this TARDIS self destruct sits wrong with me, because even if it is still at the "just a machine" phase, she should understand the potential she is wiping out. But then, it raises disturbing connotations for all those TARDISes on Gallifrey (before it was destroyed (again (again))) that she knows could be so much more if the Time Lords let them develop, so maybe it is just an idea the show doesn't want to engage with. Something I dug in The Doctor's Wife (which makes it clear the Doctor's TARDIS is unique) is that Idris initially seems offended when the Doctor suggests they cobble together a working console from the husks of her dead "sisters", but she's actually pleased because it is giving them a chance to be useful one last time and have some part/revenge in stopping House. That at least was thinking about them as more than just tools, but as entities deserving of some consideration
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Apr 7, 2024 22:17
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I'm not sure why everyone is trying to rationalise the Doctor blowing up a TARDIS when just the basic idea of "persuade EVERY SINGLE dalek to walk into one space" is so poor a solution to the problem. And Jerusalem's recap again shows that feeling of Chibnall identifying elements and plot beats that are perfectly solid Doctor Who (or general SF) but him having no real idea how to put them together as a satisfying narrative. (someone please find me a better term than "cargo culting")
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Apr 7, 2024 23:25
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OldMemes posted:My favourite bonkers TARDIS retcon is the one where it turns out The First Doctor used a Type 50 for business in his early life. When he left Gallifrey in his Type 40, the Type 50 was so mad at being abandoned that it hired a private detective to track the Doctor down, then sent up an elaborate trap for him. I haven't seen whatever episode that is, but that sounds like a fun idea.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:27
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Coward posted:I'm not sure why everyone is trying to rationalise the Doctor blowing up a TARDIS when just the basic idea of "persuade EVERY SINGLE dalek to walk into one space" is so poor a solution to the problem. I'm willing to roll with getting all the Daleks to go to one place. It doesn't seem likely, but I've loved episodes with sillier resolutions. Same thing with Eve Of The Daleks later on- it doesn't seem likely that a mobile tank that's designed for interstellar warfare and can take volleys of machine gun fire without noticing would be completely destroyed by a building collapsing on it, but I'll roll with it, fair enough. Hey, it's better than a death particle
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Apr 7, 2024 23:53
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Coward posted:I'm not sure why everyone is trying to rationalise the Doctor blowing up a TARDIS when just the basic idea of "persuade EVERY SINGLE dalek to walk into one space" is so poor a solution to the problem. It's also drat close to how the Flux was "resolved", basically, except it made even less sense that time. The man is simply constitutionally incapable of coming up with any sort of rational ending to any of his "big" plots.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:54
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