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Does anybody get really invested in the "mysterious words" story arcs like hybrids or whatever the dancing rags said to Thirteen in the second episode of the last season? I don't feel like I see much fan theorycrafting for Doctor Who in that regard, but then again, I've never gone looking for it. One thing I think is okay about Doctor Who fandom (compared to, say, Star Wars and some Star Trek fans) is that they seem not to be preoccupied with "canon" because it's a bit of a dead letter in this franchise across all its permutations. I'm sure there are some people who gnash their teeth at their inability to neatly reconcile the Doctor having at least three ninth incarnations or what have you but it hardly seems commonplace to me.
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Jan 8, 2019 12:06
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Bad Wolf worked well as a neat recurring thing people could spot in the first season of the revival. Season 5 did a pretty solid job with the “Silence will Fall/Pandorica/Cracks” seeding. They also largely weren’t intrusive and tended not to call attention to themselves. Most of the other seasons felt like they were chasing after the same impact, but they were either poorly handled or got in the way of what viewers actually wanted, which was an eccentric alien traveling through time and space having adventures with at least one human(looking at least) companion. For any other flaws season 11 might have had, I was certainly thrilled to not have to hear shoehorned in stuff like,”....no, not the Though I did have a moment of panic with that dumb,”Timeless Child” line in The Ghost Monument, which thankfully went nowhere.
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Jan 8, 2019 13:13
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The thing that made the good 'arc content' work, to me, was that it at best facilitated interesting plots and at worst acts as fun window dressing. It never distracts. Bad Wolf was great because, yeah, it never called attention to itself except for when you were supposed to notice it. The Torchwood namedrops in season 2 could be a little distracting sometimes, but they never really hijacked a scene or anything. My favorite of RTD's years was 'Mr. Saxon', because it means nothing until you hit The Sound of Drums, and at that point it means everything. The Cracks stood above and beyond anything else Moffat did for a big arc because they didn't just stand out of the way, they helped facilitate plots. They could act as nice 'explanatory glue' to make a story happen like in Vampires of Venice, they could play into the plot without distracting completely from the main focus like in Flesh and Stone/The Time of Angels. They were always at least neutral and at best positive for the story, and they did different enough things that they didn't get boring.
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Jan 8, 2019 13:28
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At this point, I think we can say that "timeless child" referred to the Doctor's own fears in general, as opposed to being abandoned Arc Words.
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Jan 8, 2019 14:05
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I think the best thing about the Aztecs is Ian’s outfit.
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Jan 8, 2019 14:15
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Decent article by long term fan Jonn Elledge (who I remember from the Fitzroy Tavern Wilderness Years) Why isn’t Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who the lead character in her own drat show?
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Jan 8, 2019 18:06
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Cojawfee posted:The new episode was ok, but it's a shame that British police don't have radios, and the military only has one tank. The scene where the police person doesn't bother to even radio in that a weird thing is happening took me out so much that I didn't really even pay attention when Ryan was talking to his dad in the cafe. How many tanks do you imagine are stationed in Sheffield? Most modern tanks can't go more than 40-50 mph and would take hours to redeploy even assuming you cleared traffic. Of course, Micromachine tanks can be instantly deployed by just taking them out of your pocket, but they haven't proven very effective in past episodes. It was a huge waste to have the Doctor find the Dalek via tech instead of having Yaz call in to the station, though.
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Jan 8, 2019 20:35
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That was more of an APC wasn't it? Or at least a IFV.
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Jan 9, 2019 05:09
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quote:Back in the last thread, Pastamania said.... I think a really missed opportunity was not having the Dalek tech stored in something the archeologist vaguely remembered as "torch-something". Otherwise I quite agree with the above quote, including the things that could / should have been done differently. I just get this feeling that EVERYTHING Chibnal does is a draft of a draft of a draft, and the copies keep getting lost so they end up just "going with the one we found today".
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Jan 9, 2019 07:21
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Narsham posted:
Yaz is the most disappointing character this series because they repeatedly refuse to use her police knowledge and training. They even explicitly called out at in the first episode that she wanted to have more responsibility, then never showed why she deserves it.
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Jan 9, 2019 08:26
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Senor Tron posted:Yaz is the most disappointing character this series because they repeatedly refuse to use her police knowledge and training. They even explicitly called out at in the first episode that she wanted to have more responsibility, then never showed why she deserves it. The back half of the season has some great moments of it, though. It's just that it's not what you think police knowledge and training is. She works to calm people, to collect information, to make things safe. The stuff that isn't usually spotlighted in media, fiction or non-fiction, but are really important police skills. I saw some of it in what little I saw of Broadchurch, too. I love that, and I hope it becomes more prevalent in the next season. It's a nice character to have, not just in the show but in media in general.
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Jan 9, 2019 10:28
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Wheat Loaf posted:One thing I think is okay about Doctor Who fandom (compared to, say, Star Wars and some Star Trek fans) is that they seem not to be preoccupied with "canon" because it's a bit of a dead letter in this franchise across all its permutations. I'm sure there are some people who gnash their teeth at their inability to neatly reconcile the Doctor having at least three ninth incarnations or what have you but it hardly seems commonplace to me. Yeah Star Trek fans are awful for this. The people getting bent out of shape about visual continuity in Discovery (sets and uniforms don’t match 50 year old episodes, oh no!) would not enjoy having several different equally canon versions of the fate of Atlantis.
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Jan 9, 2019 13:24
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marktheando posted:Yeah Star Trek fans are awful for this. The people getting bent out of shape about visual continuity in Discovery (sets and uniforms don’t match 50 year old episodes, oh no!) would not enjoy having several different equally canon versions of the fate of Atlantis. Hopefully we won't have to bother with another two-part episode in the next tv series to explain why the Klingons in Discovery look different (again).
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Jan 9, 2019 13:28
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Star Trek gets a Stardate for each episode, Doctor Who has entire eras where it isn't clear what decade they were set in
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Jan 9, 2019 13:42
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Cleretic posted:The back half of the season has some great moments of it, though. It's just that it's not what you think police knowledge and training is. She works to calm people, to collect information, to make things safe. The stuff that isn't usually spotlighted in media, fiction or non-fiction, but are really important police skills. I saw some of it in what little I saw of Broadchurch, too. Even without all that Yaz is kinda just.. there. They seem to want her as the Doctor's BFF but she's not really given much to do. She's like a member of the silence but as a companion.
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Jan 9, 2019 14:04
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Muppetjedi posted:Even without all that Yaz is kinda just.. there. They seem to want her as the Doctor's BFF but she's not really given much to do. ...the what? 
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Jan 9, 2019 18:47
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Chokes McGee posted:...the what? Okay seriously whoever is drawing on my arms needs to stop it.
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Jan 9, 2019 18:51
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Cleretic posted:The back half of the season has some great moments of it, though. It's just that it's not what you think police knowledge and training is. She works to calm people, to collect information, to make things safe. The stuff that isn't usually spotlighted in media, fiction or non-fiction, but are really important police skills. I saw some of it in what little I saw of Broadchurch, too. Piggybacking on this to recommend people reading the Rivers of London series by Who writer Ben Aaronovitch. Aside from being really good, interesting stories about dealing with the demi-monde of London, there’s a lot of the more ‘quiet’ side of policing, written in surprising detail.
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Jan 9, 2019 19:41
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2house2fly posted:Star Trek gets a Stardate for each episode, Doctor Who has entire eras where it isn't clear what decade they were set in  : I’m....from....the 21st century!
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Jan 9, 2019 22:00
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Cleretic posted:The back half of the season has some great moments of it, though. It's just that it's not what you think police knowledge and training is. She works to calm people, to collect information, to make things safe. The stuff that isn't usually spotlighted in media, fiction or non-fiction, but are really important police skills. I saw some of it in what little I saw of Broadchurch, too. Yeah it's a really nice addition to the show and I actually like how subtly it is is (for the most part) handled - especially the way the Doctor immediately looks to her to use those skills because she recognizes she is the best person to do it. But as others mentioned, while that is a really nice thing to have, Yaz herself still feels painfully underdeveloped, especially in contrast to Ryan and Graham who get so much stuff to work with (and do a great job with it too).
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Jan 9, 2019 22:28
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Is Yas really less developed than most of the one season revival companions, though? Like, we got to see her family in two episodes, she's talked about her experiences with racism and her frustration in her career. She doesn't have as much screen time because she's sharing with two other people, but I feel like they did fine.
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Jan 9, 2019 22:31
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In my opinion, she's a step above Martha in the development stakes but not really over anybody else. Rose had the running storyline of her growing dependence/misplaced romantic desire for the Doctor (10, anyway); Donna got to realize her true potential and deal with the inferiority complex that she masked with brash over-confidence; Amy learned to grow up and move on as a person with abandonment issues who wanted desperately to belong to something, learning how to make her own family and find a way to mesh her fantasy life with the real life; Rory realized that he wasn't the second-choice he thought he'd been his entire life, and grew and grew in confidence; Clara was a cipher who seemed to fit any role until a very specific reason for why she was like that was shown, and after 12 came along they developed a really fascinating quasi-toxic co-dependence on each other; then Bill was just this wonderfully self-confident person who knew exactly who and what she was, seeking self-improvement but knowing that in spite of wanting to better herself, that didn't make who she currently was in any way inferior or less than anybody else. Martha was "Not-Rose" and right now Yaz is "Nice lady whose family want her to date, who is also skilled in the police skills that tend not to be focused on in the media."
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Jan 9, 2019 22:53
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Jerusalem posted:In my opinion, she's a step above Martha in the development stakes but not really over anybody else. Rose had the running storyline of her growing dependence/misplaced romantic desire for the Doctor (10, anyway); Donna got to realize her true potential and deal with the inferiority complex that she masked with brash over-confidence; Amy learned to grow up and move on as a person with abandonment issues who wanted desperately to belong to something, learning how to make her own family and find a way to mesh her fantasy life with the real life; Rory realized that he wasn't the second-choice he thought he'd been his entire life, and grew and grew in confidence; Clara was a cipher who seemed to fit any role until a very specific reason for why she was like that was shown, and after 12 came along they developed a really fascinating quasi-toxic co-dependence on each other; then Bill was just this wonderfully self-confident person who knew exactly who and what she was, seeking self-improvement but knowing that in spite of wanting to better herself, that didn't make who she currently was in any way inferior or less than anybody else. Fair enough. I guess, actually, now that I think about it, Martha and Bill are the only two who only got one season. Donna, sort of, but that one episode and all the space between them matters. I think Yas will come into her own if she gets another season of airtime, when the show comes back around 2050.
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Jan 9, 2019 22:57
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I'm hoping that now that Graham and Ryan's have established their family ties remain strong, and Ryan has accepted Graham as his grandfather AND dealt with his father, that the next season is gonna give more focus to Yaz. In 2020. When the next season airs. 
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Jan 9, 2019 23:03
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https://twitter.com/JDenchen/status/1083037700578574336
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Jan 10, 2019 00:00
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Looking at those pictures is like being bitten on the stomach by a horse.
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Jan 10, 2019 00:08
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Catching up on the Twitch marathon and Troughton was pretty dang good.
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Jan 10, 2019 01:36
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marktheando posted:Yeah Star Trek fans are awful for this. The people getting bent out of shape about visual continuity in Discovery (sets and uniforms don’t match 50 year old episodes, oh no!) would not enjoy having several different equally canon versions of the fate of Atlantis. Yeah, except I'm one of those Star Trek fans and I have no issue with DW doing that kinda stuff because it's been established in the show that history and the timelines constantly change. Also Doctor Who has busted out stuff like Mondasian Cybermen whose designs were derided for years as clunky--and showed how awesome and scary they were. And the Hartnell console room for Clara and Me. DW does a far better job of honoring it's history and canon, because it's run by hardcore nerd fanboys. 
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Jan 10, 2019 02:04
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* Offer does not extend to Ian Levine
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Jan 10, 2019 02:07
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There are some pretty dumb canon debates in Who as well. They were more prevalent in the 90's though, or back when the show first came on air. Then people either got comfortable with the new show or stopped wanting to make those arguments, or were drowned out by the proportionally greater number of viewers I figure that Star Trek will go through the same thing -- a few years of canon griping before everything settles down with an influx of new viewers who don't care so much about that kind of thing. I did get a pretty good laugh out of some reviewer talking about how this year's Rosa doesn't fit with "some of Doctor Who's deepest lore" re: Fires of Pompeii and fixed moments in time. So it does happen.
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Jan 10, 2019 02:45
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Harlock posted:Catching up on the Twitch marathon and Troughton was pretty dang good. Oh my goodness! Jamie! Zoe! Oh my giddy aunt!
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Jan 10, 2019 03:46
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Open Source Idiom posted:There are some pretty dumb canon debates in Who as well. They were more prevalent in the 90's though, or back when the show first came on air. Then people either got comfortable with the new show or stopped wanting to make those arguments, or were drowned out by the proportionally greater number of viewers Star Trek's also had a clear delineation between the movies/shows (which were watched by more casual fans) and the licensed stuff, whereas for Doctor Who for 15 years there wasn't anything outside of the hardcore fan stuff. When the only people reading or listening are the ones who are heavily invested in the show you're more likely to get that kind of argument.
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Jan 10, 2019 04:11
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Any extremely long-running franchise in speculative fiction is going to have a lot of issues with "canon" timelines and stories, and the secret is that it's easy to accept stuff that doesn't fit into your favorite version of the show as a one-off what-if story, and that anyone is going to be angry if it feels like changing the history of the soul is changing the soul of what's important about it to them. If DC suddenly decides that it is official Batman lore that Bruce Wayne grew up poor, learned to hate the police, and decided to change the face of corruption in Gotham by becoming a criminal mastermind, there are going to be huge hordes of people that stop engaging with it for awhile and a new grew of people who are suddenly interested. I think Doctor Who is best when it conveniently forgets about a lot of its lore, but I don't necessarily think people who are more invested in continuing world-building on the show are wrong to feel that way, we just want to watch different shows.
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Jan 10, 2019 07:19
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Every so often I stop and think about how wonderful Tom Baker's cameo in Day of the Doctor is, and how people will probably try to figure out a way to "fit it in" somewhere but you really don't need to because gently caress it, it was the 50th so they got in Tom and God bless 'em for it  "If I were you.... oooooh if I were you... or perhaps I am. Or perhaps YOU are me?  "
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Jan 10, 2019 09:15
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Jerusalem posted:"If I were you.... oooooh if I were you... or perhaps I am. Or perhaps YOU are me? There's something just incredible about the way Tom delivers this line.
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Jan 10, 2019 12:50
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Astroman posted:Yeah, except I'm one of those Star Trek fans and I have no issue with DW doing that kinda stuff because it's been established in the show that history and the timelines constantly change. Why don’t you use the same excuse for Star Trek then? There’s enough time travel in Star Trek for the timelines to be constantly changing. I dunno we’ve argued about this before and I don’t think much of your argument that redesigning the uniforms in Star Trek is like redesigning the uniforms in a World War Two movie.
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Jan 10, 2019 14:23
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Coming with an explanation for the different-looking Klingons is the most "Why did this need to be explained?" one from Star Trek to me, because the explanation they had ("We do not discuss it with outsiders!") was good enough for me. I suppose the closest equivalent in Doctor Who would be the accusation levelled against Moffat in his last couple of years that he wanted to be the one who got the last word in on the regeneration limit and that sort of thing, but that feels different to me in a way that I'm unsure how to articulate. I'll never get the obsession with "canon" in any fandom. It has its uses but some people get entirely too fixated upon it and a lot of the time it ends up becoming another fandom thing that shuts other people out.
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Jan 10, 2019 14:48
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marktheando posted:Why don’t you use the same excuse for Star Trek then? There’s enough time travel in Star Trek for the timelines to be constantly changing. Well I still believe in that argument so... They have used that excuse for ST before, in the JJ films, and I did buy it there because it was pretty clear the timeline changed. But when the producers iof DISCO are saying "no it is the EXACT same timeline as TOS" then there's no reason for Anson Mount not to be rocking velour. 
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Jan 10, 2019 14:50
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Wheat Loaf posted:
A lot of people feel like we should never see the Doctor's childhood or anything from their history before traveling, but I like the scene in Listen, and the little hints it gives about who the Doctor is without overdoing it. I wouldn't mind knowing what the Doctor was like as a father in an episode about fatherhood. They could always conveniently forget about it later, like the Doctor being half-human on his mother's side. I think we already know plenty from the way it usually comes up, which is a brief "I had a family once," with no reply and an immediate distraction when his companion says "What?" but I'm not in the "Investigating it any further would be a mistake" camp.
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Jan 10, 2019 15:24
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I remember people (not here - I wasn't on SA at the time) going ballistic a full decade-plus ago at one scene of the Master as a child in season three finale. Why does the Master become evil? It could be because he was driven mad by the vortex. Then again, it could be because the Doctor accidentally killed their bully, Torvik, and made a deal with Virgin New Adventures Death to shift the cosmic blame for it onto the Master.
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Jan 10, 2019 15:38
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