|
Jerusalem posted:In the moment I thought Kerblam! was tremendous fun and was really happy at the end of the episode. Within a few minutes it was really sinking in just how hosed up a lot of what I'd just seen was, which has really colored my perception of it as a whole. The darkly hilarious thing about Kerblam! is that even with its atrocious politics, it's still one of the better episodes of the season. That's how low of an average this season has.
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2019 10:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 03:42 |
|
|
SimplyCosmic posted:While I like Heaven Sent, I also kind of hate it for being the penultimate Moffat having to leave his mark with dumb changes to lore episode. I can't imagine how the exact and only extant copy of the same character with the same memories is any more killing the Doctor than having him choke out his companion, encourage a child to return to his abusive father, or say how cool and good Amazon is.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2019 12:13
|
|
|
In no way is it a perfect episode, and Hell Bent is plenty messy, but it's one of my favorite episodes of the whole series. There's so much to love there; others have already mentioned that it brilliantly uses Heaven Sent by having Clara horrified when she learns what the Doctor did to get to her, but he also deposes Rassilon in the first fifteen minutes to do so. Which could be too much, but the staging of it as a Western and the scene of the Time War veterans throwing down their guns to join the Doctor is just brilliant. The hybrid stuff is the weirdest thing, because I can't figure out if it's supposed to be a send-up of a series arc, an aborted series arc, a poorly implemented series arc, or a poorly implemented send-up of a series arc. In the end it doesn't matter because it's not much of a factor, but it's just bizarre.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2019 07:26
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted: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. I'm not opposed to having a backstory for the Master, but I hate this scene specifically because RTD has Martha lampshade the idea of dumb origin stories by asking "Is he your secret brother or something?" and the Doctor answering, "No, it's nothing so cliche as that, it's something equally cliche!"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2019 09:30
|
|
|
Davros1 posted:Dumbest take ever? Ironically this latest series felt about a competent as a current-day Big Finish so they'd probably like it if they gave it a try.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2019 06:38
|
|
|
LividLiquid posted:The Tim Shaw thing bugged me and I couldn't put my finger on why, and today it dawned on me that calling somebody by the wrong name is what extremely lovely people do to trans people and maybe teaching children it's okay to do if it's somebody you hate isn't the best. Nobody's made a big thing about it, and there a more than a few trans DW fans I know who weren't bothered by it so I didn't say anything, but it did kind of rub me the wrong way, too. It's more akin to mispronouncing a difficult name, but the characters seemed to take quite a lot of glee from it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2019 03:55
|
|
|
LividLiquid posted:You're joking, probably, but uh... yeah? Yeah, Davros is a great villain, but he does belong to the tradition of physical abnormality being treated as monsterous.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2019 04:58
|
|
|
Android Blues posted:Finally catching up on this show. His regeneration is basically him committing suicide, and he would have probably succeeded if Chibnall hadn't asked Moffat to start him off on a full season instead of a Christmas special. As unnecessary as Series 10 was, I really like how willing to sacrifice himself Capaldi is post losing Clara. It's absolutely him dealing with depression in an unhealthy way, but it feels really true to the character being completely reckless in helping people.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2019 10:50
|
|
|
TheBigBudgetSequel posted:I think the most effective Davros has been since Genesis is actually his tricking the Doctor into giving up some regeneration energy at the end of Witch's Familiar. It's a drat good "Haha, tricked you, Doctor, you idiot." moment, and the Doctor seems genuinely taken aback by this inevitable trickery. There's also the utterly chilling line where Davros sympathizes with the Doctor telling him that Gallifrey might be back. It's so twisted because while it is totally borne out of Davros' xenophobia, it's also totally sincere. "A man should have a people..." is both of those things. And there's the scene where Missy puts Clara into the Dalek, and the mental controls interpret things like "You are different from me" as "EXTERMINATE." That raises so many interesting and horrifying questions. What makes a Dalek into a Dalek? How long do you have to be restricted by this simple and xenophobic language before your language is all simplistic and xenophobic? That's not even a particularly good episode! What is the takeaway from something like Resolution? It was cool when the Dalek piloted a lady like she was a Dalek suit? You should always forgive your family members (a message Doctor Who could loving stand to get away from)?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2019 06:12
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:I just rewatched I AM THE MASTER and that is still so loving good. That specific scene, from the watch to the end, is probably the best thing from the RTD era, and they set it up so well throughout the season. Dark Water gets really close to this just by front-loading the episode with so much stuff that even the Doctor is like, "I'm missing something." Then the doors with the Cyberman eye-drops shut. It works on two levels, too: people who don't know anything go "wait, the loving CYBERMEN are in this, too?" and people who have been spoiled go, "poo poo, I forgot the CYBERMEN are in this, too!"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2019 11:32
|
|
|
Box of Bunnies posted:Yeah. After the Rosa Parks and Partition episodes last year I'm less apprehensive about the show touching on this subject Demons of the Punjab bodes well for this, the Rosa Parks episode definitely does not. If it's more along the lines of the latter, expect to have a great scene where the Doctor explains to an angry companion why they must not change anything or help anyone because it would damage The Web of Time (tm), but later mollifies them by taking them to a star named after Anne Frank. The Holocaust specifically is a difficult theme to work with in time travel because, of course, the moral choice is to do whatever you can to prevent it. But since even DW at its most revolutionary isn't going to undo the Holocaust (and that would be a terrible move for many reasons, though I'd love to see it explored in a non-serial story), you're going to have to broach the subject of why the Doctor isn't doing anything, and there isn't a satisfactory answer to that question. Like, this is a theme that would make me nervous in the hands of the best DW writer. But when done by the writer of The Battle of After last season I figured I was done with Chibnall's Doctor Who, but this seems like it'll be too horrible to look away.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2019 22:42
|
|
|
Box of Bunnies posted:I mean, the Rosa Parks episode is absolutely heavy handed in how it depicts American racism of the time and then tells the audience "things aren't as overtly bad as that anymore, but people like our companions still experience racism in modern Britain in this and that way which they discuss" (which, looking at the reaction to the episode by certain segments of the audience, was a necessary way to do things) The episode does do a good job of portraying American racism, and there is a tiny bit about how everything still isn't hunky-dory today, but that just begs the question of why there isn't an episode about modern-day bigotry. Regardless, the bigger problem with the episode is that is has the same structure that the latter half of the episode is under the impression that the most interesting story to tell about Rosa Parks is managing the number of people who are going to get on a bus. I can't even articulate how bizarre of a decision this is. Not only does it cut completely against the story of Rosa Parks, even if she was just a woman who got fed up with standing on a bus, that's still not a good story to tell! Box of Bunnies posted:, but I don't really think "the Doctor insists that her companions observe and preserve human history rather than completely upend it then demonstrates that, while things aren't where we need them to be yet, progress has been made in the time since by taking them to see an asteroid that was named after the historical figure of the episode that actually exists in real life" is really a bad way for a pop sci-fi show with a vague "teach kids about history sometimes" remit to handle such material. This I totally disagree with. "Rosa Parks got an asteroid named after her" is such a baffling ending to an episode it's almost funny. The only worse thing in the episode is "but America had a black President," which, given that Obama made half the country so mad that they elected Donald Trump, is not quite the clincher to an argument it should be. I don't dislike Rosa. It's about as good as a Rosa Parks episode you could make in the Chibnall era, which is an indictment of the Chibnall era. Box of Bunnies posted:And like, "the Doctor explains to an angry companion why they must not change anything or help anyone because it would damage The Web of Time (tm), but later mollifies them by taking them to [see that things slowly get better]" has been part of the show since 1966 with The Massacre, so I understand doubting it being handled well with events that occured within living memory, but that's part of what the show has been for fifty years This I get, it's just the specific circumstances of the Holocaust that would make a scene like this totally unpalatable. Voting Floater pointed out above that if the episode is about Khan it would be set in a concentration camp, not a death camp, which would probably work by the Chibnall era's definition of "work." It's not that you can't do Nazi stories; there have been several good DW stories set in Nazi Germany. It's the Holocaust itself that is too difficult for most writers to navigate, and Chibnall wrote The Ghost Monument.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2019 06:20
|
|
|
Box of Bunnies posted:I guess where we're just fundamentally disagreeing is that I feel like as long as Doctor Who can properly demonstrate the horrors of the period it's visiting, and ideally tie that into modern issues in some way, while allowing the actual historical events to play out mostly as-was with any sci-fi elements being tangential to the true history rather than directly "causing" or interacting with it in any way, then that's the best you could hope for from Dr. Who...We're beyond the point where punching Hitler and shoving him in the cupboard to make a mockery of him and his ideology works. No, I'm with you there. That's exactly what Doctor Who should be doing (and I would to see the show become more historical, too). It's just that I have a hard time imagining a Holocaust episode doing more good than harm. Sydney Bottocks posted:I realize that I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but: This is basically my problem with the idea. I try and imagine "The Holocaust episode, written by..." and no name after that inspires me with confidence. Davies? Nope. Moffat? Nope. Gatiss? Chibnall? Nooope and NOOOOOOPE. Paul Cornell? Mayyybe? But the conventional way he treats the First World War in Human Nature worries me. If you put a gun to my head and told me to pick a writer for the episode, I guess I'd say Vinay Patel off the strength of Demons of the Punjab, though that's all I've ever seen of his work. That's kind of a weird pigeonhole for a writer, though. York_M_Chan posted:I keep thinking about J.R.R. Tolkin and C.S. Lewis. J.R.R. claimed that LotR wasn't a direct parallel to the political climate of his times but obviously it seeped its way into his work. C.S. Lewis' work, however, was much more on the nose, obviously, with its heavy-handed metaphors. I feel like last season was much more Lewis-y. Pedantic point here, but the Narnia stuff isn't technically a metaphor. Aslan is literally Jesus, just an alternate reality version.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2019 22:42
|
|
|
Barry Foster posted:Big Finish is made up entirely of upper middle class white people, though, so it's disappointing but surprising behaviour on their part As much as I dislike Big Finish I'm mildly impressed that they're not even worse on social issues. The fact that a cadre of mediocre white men are at least embarrassed about employing a transphobe is a bit more than I was expecting. Although looking at their wikipedia page it appears they've finally expanded slightly beyond the same crew of four white guys writing eight stories a month. Have they... gotten any better recently?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2019 13:03
|
|
|
Barry Foster posted:The stories? I don't know about writers, but as it stands the monthly ones are still pretty good, and all the 'event' ones - Time War, 8th Doctor, etc, etc - are trash. And actually now that I think about it those latter ones are definitely written by said cadre of white guys. Hmm, these recent events make me not want to give them any money, but it's good to know that something they're doing is working. About 5 years ago I had a job where I had headphones in pretty much constantly and got really burned out on the main line and basically swore of BF, but it's possible they just had an unusually bad stretch. Android Blues posted:A large portion of Big Finish's audience is specifically older Who fans who were around for the classic series in its first airing, and want to see stories about "their" Doctors. I know this is the target audience for BF and while it may be slightly unreasonable to judge them for putting cliffhangers into stories at 30 minute intervals in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Nineteen, early BF was much more willing to be experimental and try new things, and I wish they were still invested in that! They're an ancillary publishing arm with more freedom to be weird and out there than the main product that produces somewhere between 8 and 12 episodes every two years. They could offer brilliant young writers an opportunity to get their scripts read by Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, and instead they are making *peeks at the monthly range* stories about Kamelion, a character perfectly suited for the audio medium.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2019 13:25
|
|
|
Zagreus is special because it's one of the very few examples of a Type C Reunion Special. Type A is the obligatory and basically competent special; The Five Doctors is the perfect example of this. It's nice to get everybody back together, but also it's kind of dumb and actually only 3 of them are there. Type B is the kind that's transcendent and far better than it ought to be (cf. The Three Doctors and The Day of the Doctor). And then you have Zagreus, which along with the Star Wars Holiday Special just boggles the mind as to what they're even trying. Bringing back basically every actor who's still alive to play totally different characters is next-level trolling, and I wholeheartedly approve of it. The story is borderline incomprehensible. It's an utter trainwreck and it's terrible and it's delightful.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2019 08:32
|
|
|
Your Boy Fancy posted:People always seem to be high on The Curse of Fenric, and I don’t know why. We caught the end of it tonight on Pluto, and dear lord. The acting, the effects, the writing? It’s all MST3K insanity. Even having the arc for Ace that it did, it all just seems utterly insane. Going in without context, my wife (who’s seen a fair bit at this point) piped up, “so this is the season they got canceled, right?” I can see jumping straight into TV from 1989 and finding it shallow, but if you're looking at Fenric compared to anything that came before it, Fenric is light-years beyond what the show had been doing previously. It bothers to have character-based storytelling and arcs (remember when the show forgot that every time Nyssa encountered the Master she was coming face-to-face with her father's body?), it's shot much more dynamically and competently than anything in the past, and it's got several moments that, dated production aside, are still stunning today: the Allies' plan to use the Enigma machine to kill the Soviets after the war, the priest horrified by the thought of British bombs killing German children, the Doctor destroying Ace's faith in him... In the age of Prestige Television it's not going to hold up as well, and television is a medium that ages particularly poorly. But even with those disclaimers I still think it's one of the best stories the series has ever produced. It's so good that Toby Whithouse ripped it off in like every story he ever wrote, and even with the advantages of time, technology, and a budget larger than 25 pounds he still never made a better episode. What I'm trying to say is, Fenric is a good episode.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2019 14:46
|
|
|
Payndz posted:There's no reason why the TARDIS couldn't float on a cloud over Victorian London and drop a ladder down so people can climb up to it - it just felt like it shouldn't. Clarke's Law or no, the Doctor isn't a wizard. Once it got to poo poo like magic trees sprouting over the whole Earth and the Moon being a space dragon egg, I Seinfeld-giffed out of there. Counterpoint: all of those things are great, actually. Even the magic trees--it's just that the story they're in is bad.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2019 00:12
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:I don't think we have a full grasp on Chibnall's in the same way, because I could see his inevitable 'completely insane' moment going either way. So far his run's felt extremely grounded and realistic, if occasionally overly simple, so something harming that is gonna hurt. But at the same time, I can also see Whittaker absolutely selling the most wildly melodramatic and farfetched climax possible and make it a loving joy. My takeaway so far is inverting the usual standard of quality scripts and acting produced on a budget of $16.50 so it's now in the business of lavishly bringing to life the most dire of farts, a status quo made even more agonizing by the actual good stories, Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2019 12:51
|
|
|
Scorching hot take: I'd rather rewatch Class than the most recent series of Doctor Who.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2019 10:15
|
|
|
Rhyno posted:Have you actually watched Class? I watched between 4 and 6 episodes, maybe? I was more interested in those kids than in Graham and the other characters whose names escape my memory.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2019 10:27
|
|
|
Graham was fine and charming and from an objective viewpoint, he's a great character. But I could not help but sulk at the fact that in a show that, with its casting of main characters is clearly interested in at least surface-level diversity that the best character was an old white man, while reducing the first East Asian companion's role to "I am here, too." It's not Graham's fault I don't like him. I also did not like Class, but I HATED this last series of Who.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2019 13:40
|
|
|
While the character commits what is, by any reasonable definition, rape in the first episode, RTD clearly didn't intend for it to be taken as such (and this is to his detriment; it's really really loving bad). So it's kind of unfair to hold that against the character. It's like how, yes, it's incredibly inappropriate for Professor X to be perving over Jean Grey in Silver Age X-Men, but you're not supposed to read the character as pervy (unless you're Mark Waid); it speaks more of Stan Lee's failings than Professor X. I don't know why I'm going to the mat for Torchwood of all things. EimiYoshikawa posted:Oh yeah, he's long gone by that point. Children of Earth is probably the only Torchwood really worth watching. ...I need to watch Children of Earth again... Children of Earth held up pretty decently when I watched it a year or so ago. The biggest flaw is it can't really support 5 hour-long episodes; losing an episode or maybe shortening the length a bit would have helped a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2019 00:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 03:42 |
|
|
Doctor Who and the TV Movie
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2019 23:29
|
|