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Lampsacus posted:Does anybody have recommendations as to more of these? I guess I'm talking the odder the better. There is that old DW book where he, the fourth doctor?, and Romana are traveling backwards in time in a way. So they get to the place and everybody is like, thank you for saving us! I forgot it's title. Paradise or Carnival or something like that. Enlightenment is kind of like that. It's more conventional than something like The Mind Robber (what isn't), but immortals having a space race on 18th century schooners is more out there than most.
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Jan 14, 2021 11:36
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It's nothing more than speculation, but I would bet that the actors in the Pertwee era on were paid better than in the black and white days. Shooting episodes almost every week is not a production that's taking care of its crew, so I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't getting less than in Season 7. Pertwee was also probably better known than Hartnell or Troughton, and therefore more expensive.
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Jan 31, 2021 00:03
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The_Doctor posted:People are getting more creative in recreating the missing episodes. Refilming and deep faking and using the existing telesnaps and audio. It’s all very clever. This is a neat project and it's just some person doing it in their spare time, so I don't want to poo poo on them too hard, but... watching this really hammers home the limitations of recreations and the like. You've got a normally expressive actor like Troughton looking like they're sitting through a time share presentation or something. It's just such an un-Troughton expression that it almost feels more out of place than the Archer-style animations, and that's before you even get into the slightly melty quality of deepfakes.
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Feb 13, 2021 22:39
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jivjov posted:Remember Adam? No, but man, looking back at it, those first two series of Torchwood were ripping off Buffy even more than I remember. The overall tone, Adam, just going "gently caress it" and casting James Marsters with a British accent... At least Torchwood wasn't written by a sex pest.
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Mar 24, 2021 02:04
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It's even worse than that, because it's plainly obvious from the way that RTD writes him in that first episode that he doesn't consider that act rape. As sickening as it would be, Torchwood isn't a redemption arc for Burn Gorman, Occasional Rapist. The way you're supposed to read it is "this guy fucks." I don't remember when I first (and last) watched Torchwood--maybe 2011 or 2012? But it was plainly obvious then that it was wrong. I can only imagine it's even worse now. Anyways as an RTD palate cleanser, please watch It's a Sin. Achingly sad and liminal and funny and infuriating.
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Mar 24, 2021 13:15
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Disclaimer: I listened to basically the whole line circa 2015 or so and majorly burnt out, so I've listened to nothing since then. Big Finish is very good at producing technically sound audio dramas. Which is unsurprising since they've been doing it for two decades, but I've heard an awful lot of bad audio plays so it's important to point out. Now... RTD wrote 39 Doctor Who scripts of 45 minutes. Moffat wrote 55 Doctor Who scripts of 45 minutes. Terrance Dicks wrote, charitably, seven serials and Robert Holmes is at 17, maybe. Nicholas Briggs, as far as I can count, has written well over 100 Doctor Who scripts of 90 to 140 minutes, and has managed to do so without (again, as of 2015) noticeably improving as a writer. Some of the other early guys are around RTD/Moffat level of influence based on number of stories, and far over that level if you use minutes as your criterion. And none of them were particularly good writers to begin with. When that's the core of your operation, I don't know how you can produce anything more than technically sound mediocrity, and boy, do they do a lot of that. Are there some great stories from the post-2005 era? Sure, but I think that's more because when you release 26 stories a year some of them, on average, are going to be great. I think BF gets lent an air of authenticity because they have access to the original actors. Nobody would be talking about, I dunno, that time Winston Churchill fought the Cybermen with the Sixth Doctor or whatever if you didn't have Colin Baker and whoever played Churchill in that one episode doing the lines.
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Apr 3, 2021 23:10
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Payndz posted:Have to admit that the animated reconstructions, while good to have, feel as if they're being constrained by what was shown in the telesnaps (and the recon's budget, of course) so often have a very slow, static air - probably more so than the live-action would have simply because the latter has real people to look at. I've got into the habit of watching them at 1.5x speed. The animations are in this weird place where they're adapting very stagey, theatrical productions into a format where the characters mostly stand still and don't emote. I think you could make successful animations still using the original audio tracks, but like you said, it would be way out of the BBC's budget. I think the best bet for the missing stories would be adapting them to another medium altogether like comics (the novelizations are of course good too). Alternatively, adapt them for another Doctor. This is something Big Finish would actually be good at, provided you have a good enough writer. It's neat that we have the original audio tracks, but honestly I think they're stifling creativity when it comes to missing episodes. Troughton's voice is only like 50% of Troughton's acting anyway, we shouldn't obsess over preserving 50%. It's fine when you have a story with only 1 missing episode, but redoing serials that are entirely missing is a bit much.
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Apr 7, 2021 13:15
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Open Source Idiom posted:The Master lore it introduces is a bit of a plot hole This is far from the first time I've complained about this, but who really cares about where in the Master's personal timeline a story takes place? (Yes, I know this answer is approximately the number of people who bought Dust Breeding on release.) The Master is played by Geoffrey Beevers because Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley are dead, and anybody who's listening to a 2 hour long audio drama knows this. You don't have to explain it. Just let Beevers have fun in the role. And hey, what if Jo Grant were there, too? That'd be fun! Nah, it would be more difficult to fit into the continuity of a show with like four different Atlantises.
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Apr 15, 2021 04:42
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Jerusalem posted:Philip Martin So that's quite a few of his contributions to Doctor Who. Why don't we look at all of them? Vengeance on Varos: "...Peri and Areta are to be subjected to undergo horrific scientific experiments at the hands of Quillam and his cell mutator." Mindwarp: "...Kiv's mind was successfully transplanted into Peri; when Yrcanos is freed of the bubble, he is distraught at the results of the operation, and fires wildly, killing Peri." The Creed of the Kromon: "Charley is forced into becoming a hybrid-insect Queen..." Antidote to Oblivion: Can't find a full summary, but in the copy the phrase "...a young biochemist in Sil's employ is working on a permanent solution to the nation's terminal unprofitability" doesn't bode well. I actually really like the design of Monster Peri in Vengeance on Varos; it'd make a neat design if it hadn't already be used. Presumably the FX crew informed Martin that "feathers" were a lot easier to do than "Slurm Queen."
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Apr 18, 2021 08:35
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Khanstant posted:Rather missed opportunity for her sexuality given the name. The Seventh Doctor stuff is by far the easiest stretch of classic Who to get into; it's fully just TV instead of partially being a televised stageplay (I'd argue that tradition persists at least until Davison), it's got ambitions of character arcs, and the majority of it is among the best the show of any era has to offer. You could run The Curse of Fenric on TV today and it would basically work. I'd really recommend sitting down and watching at least some of the era before diving into the audios.
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Apr 27, 2021 10:02
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MrL_JaKiri posted:The Curse of Fenric - and all of that series - are super weird in that it's entirely about the themes in a way that 99% (or more, even) of television isn't. There is so much going on in Fenric that it takes several watches to soak it all in. There's stuff like the commander's office being done up in swastika regalia to help him get into the mindset of the Nazis--it's relevant to the story's point on communication and cyclicism and war, but with everything else going on you can almost throw it out entirely. And it did get nicked (poorly )for that one 12th Doctor two-parter where they're running around in a fake village. The scene where the Doctor has to break Ace's faith in him also got recycled in a far less effective manner in the not-Nimon episode, come to think of it.
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Apr 27, 2021 11:11
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Christ. It's no wonder that Eccleston didn't want to stick around if this is the sort of environment the show is promoting. The actor who played Jackie looks so god drat uncomfortable. Going back to an earlier discussion, this REALLY reflects badly on RTD.
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May 3, 2021 05:42
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It's gonna be weird when in 30 years people are asking for 13's best stories, and getting replies like, "Well, It Takes You Away is pretty well-regarded, then the next-best story is probably Doctor Who and the Covid PSA, after that it's pretty slim pickings..."
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May 11, 2021 08:51
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Forktoss posted:I haven't rewatched any of 13's run but Demons of the Punjab and It Takes You Away are the ones I remember being really solid. Other than those, I think I enjoyed at least The Witchfinders, Resolution, Fugitive of the Judoon, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati, but I can't vouch for how well they'd stand up on revisit. All in all the total number episodes I would rewatch/recommend isn't that much lower than it would be for the first two Capaldi seasons, for example (where I'd also pick maybe half a dozen episodes), but the highs definitely aren't as high and the overall baseline quality is much more dire than under Moffat/RTD. I did forget Demons of the Punjab, that's a really good one. I know I'm a lot higher on Capaldi's first season (and in general) than most people, but those statistics are way different for me. Honestly if I was going to go back through Whitaker's run it's probably just Demons and It Takes You Away I'd bother to rewatch. Which is not to say that there's not some enjoyable moments in other episodes, it's just that they tend to go nowhere. 13's first episode isn't bad, but once you know that the character development in that episode is basically all that the characters are going to get, it feels so much like wasted potential. Likewise with Witchfinders, where the show demonstrates that it can pull the classic trick of putting two really good actors together and having them argue, it just chooses not to. The new series I'd skip the most of is probably Series 2, and I can still think of at least four episodes I'd definitely make sure to watch, and several more that are borderline.
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May 11, 2021 09:23
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Davros1 posted:https://twitter.com/bigfinish/status/1394336918586937344?s=20 Way to bury the lead that James Joyce is working at Big Finish now. Maybe if he keeps the fart stuff in check they'll let him write something.
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May 22, 2021 22:14
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Jerusalem posted:I mean to be fair, a big part of the issue is that there is so long between seasons and less episodes when we do get them, so there is a lot of downtime for problems and issues to percolate when in the past new episodes might undercut or dampen that. An undeniably giant part of that is the pandemic of course, but even before that we were seeing long stretches between seasons and less episodes. Let the record state that I hated the Chibnall era by the fourth episode. I found it funny, actually, how quickly things took a turn; the general vibe of the thread after Series 11 seemed to be that it was so-so with a few standouts, and that generally persisted until the end of Series 12 when things just dropped off a cliff. Jerusalem posted:It seems likely that scheduling issues over the last few years before Chibnall weren't as much the fault of Moffat not being a good showrunner as some people had claimed and more a BBC issue. Though I'm sure some of Moffat's weird attitudes played a part too. There's a couple factors to this I'd wager. The first is that RTD is a workaholic who forced four consecutive series out through sheer force of will. The second are jumps in production quality (and consequently expense). Everybody knows that Chibnall Who looks, on the surface, a lot better than previous series, it's aping the look of prestige television. But there was a similar leap at the beginning of the Moffat era (and I'd argue a smaller one for Series 10). Go back to a Tennant episode, even one of the couple they shot in HD, and it looks totally different than something fro Series 5 or 6, which looks totally different from Series 10.
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Jun 5, 2021 10:54
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Five hours is a bit much, yeah. Current Doctor Who isn't really one of those things people have a hard time putting a finger on why they dislike it. This thread has expressed in pretty concrete terms how it's bad and disappointing!
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Jun 6, 2021 23:19
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fractalairduct posted:The bit about her deliberately getting his name wrong really sours that whole thing for me. It just feels malicious and disrespectful in a particularly non-Doctorish way. Like, obviously Tzim doesn't deserve any respect, but a name is an important part of a person's identity and it just seems... insensitive not to care about that. It sure does have some uncomfortable undertones, doesn't it? Like the time Thirteen handed a person of color over to the Nazis, or the time Eleven encountered a greedy villain named Solomon...
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Jun 7, 2021 06:37
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As nice as it is that we have the original audio tracks, I almost wonder if they're holding reconstructions back. You'd probably end up with a better final project if you ditched them altogether and gave a theatre troupe a budget of a thousand pounds and a maximum of three takes per shot. Especially with actors like Hartnell and Troughton who are so physical. Audio performances can be solid, but the audio tracks were never meant to be listened to by themselves or puppeted by a 29 polygon avatar.
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Jun 15, 2021 07:45
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Chibnall advising Whitaker that she didn't need to watch any of Doctor Who beforehand is like the first good idea he's had. So what if she'd gone back and seen Terror of the Vervoids or whatever? She's doing the best with the material she's got, the issue is that the material is crap.
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Jun 17, 2021 04:45
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I think a lot of us are also very conscious of a certain type of fan who likes to attack the show for the sin of having A Woman in the lead role, and have accordingly focused criticism on the showrunner rather than the name of the show in general. "Chibnall sucks" is a lot quicker to type than "Doctor Who sucks but not the character Doctor Who, whom I of course know is actually called the Doctor, although she does actually suck but not because she's a woman, because the writing of her character has been very poor."
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Jul 26, 2021 09:28
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I'm gonna be pretty disappointed if they go with another white guy, even though they've had a lot of excellent white (or white-passing in the case of Davison) guys. It wouldn't surprise me if the higher-ups may push for that, citing declining ratings. (Never mind that ratings have fallen consistently for the past decade.) I'm very glad that Chibnall is out, but also ambivalent about the future of the series. There's nothing close to an heir apparent among the stable of writers thus far; the only one of them that has any production experience is Pete "I Heart Amazon" McTighe. In fairness, Kerblam! was one of the more competent Whitaker episodes, so maybe we could trade outright evil for a bit of competency. Beyond that it's going back to the Moffat crew, a complete outsider, or just soft-canceling the show again. And if it's between somebody like McTighe, a person tasked with "just do what Chibnall was doing," and cancellation, I think I'd prefer the latter.
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Jul 30, 2021 12:13
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Well Manicured Man posted:Despite being the first to invent silly new rules about them, the Angels two-parter still owns hard. Not sure whether or not this is a hot take, but I think the new rules in the two-parter are the better rules of the set. "Ideas that can think for themselves" seems like the natural trait of creatures that don't exist when you're looking at them. Sending someone back in time and feeding off the potential energy of the life they didn't live is also a neat trait, and Blink is a structural masterpiece, but "the idea of an Angel becomes an Angel" is so much better thematically.
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Aug 30, 2021 02:04
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The most damning thing about the Chibnall era is that Kerblam! is, despite everything, still maybe a top 5 episode.
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Sep 20, 2021 02:29
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CobiWann posted:I put the blame on Chibnall more than anyone else. But what do I know? I didn't think Orphan 55 was a bad episode.  Spyfall was so bad I was going to give up on the series entirely, but when people started saying how bad Orphan 55 was I was like, man do I wanna know what could be worse than Spyfall. And it was a perfectly mediocre episode, bland but not offensive.
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Sep 20, 2021 23:34
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I have the sinking feeling that at some point, we're going to see RTD try to rehabilitate his pal Barrowman's image. I suspect that RTD would recognize that that ship has sailed, but even so, it speaks very poorly of his hiring decisions. I'm really mixed on this news. There's the whole air of desperation about it, which doesn't bode well, like they had RTD sitting behind a panel in case a future showrunner drove the show into the ground. And yet, this is RTD coming off of It's a Sin, one of the best pieces of television ever made. It's entirely plausible he might have something new to say after more than a decade. But... Barrowman. Clarke. A production so toxic it drove off Eccleston. None of these are good signs.
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Sep 24, 2021 22:53
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I can't see the BBC being able to tell the government "we don't have anyone else in Britain that can do the job" in order to get around laws about giving non-citizens actual jobs. Speaking of which, didn't the Tories pass some crummy law recently forcing the BBC to shop jobs around to private companies before looking for somebody in-house? This is presumably why Bad Wolf Studies is co-producing the next series. I guess the no hiring foreigners things would cancel out that re: hiring someone like Stracynzski, though who knows if he made an actual pitch or just a tweet.
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Sep 25, 2021 17:06
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Crosspeice posted:Now RTD will have more than Chibnall ever will, but aside from watching Jodie being amazing in the role, I will have a hard time convincing myself to rewatch these past couple series, it has been the blandest the revival has ever been. It's been perfectly fine here and there, but I don't think he really gets this show, and it's a shame cause Jodie's tenure has really suffered because of it. I think the biggest problem is that Chibnall lacks an underlying vision for what the show is. His scripts under other showrunners were never great, but by Series 7 they had at least grown to the level of pretty good. But faced with heading the show himself, his first series defaulted to "I dunno, Supernatural?" and his second series to I don't even know what the gently caress. Sydney Bottocks posted:I personally think that RTD coming back to the show is bad for several reasons: RTD is in my opinion one of the best writers to ever work on the show, but points 1 and 4 still leave me feeling really ambivalent. I've been asking myself if the choice was between the return of RTD and cancelling the show outright (and I suspect that's pretty likely) which one I'd prefer, and I'm just barely pulling for RTD. There is some value in letting the show lie fallow for awhile until a new generation comes up with something interesting to say about it, but right now the show has been left in the worst possible place. Doctor Who persisted for decades after cancellation precisely because it was in the middle of a creative renaissance. If the last serial broadcast had been The Twin Dilemma, that's just the end, period. Nobody in 20 years is going to watch The Battle of I Can't Even Think of a Funny Name or the Doctor tossing a guy into a concentration camp and be like, "I wanna make more of that!"
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Sep 28, 2021 00:50
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oh no not sontarans Until the date popped up at the end I thought this was a plug for a mobile game or something. DOCTOR WHO SERIES 13: LET'S GET IT OVER WITH
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Oct 9, 2021 22:20
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The recent series have never looked bad, it's when people start talking that the problems start
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Oct 15, 2021 23:37
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