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Gameko posted:(Ok seriously I think a change in direction like that could really work and may be appealing to tighter budgets and weird production schedules during COVID. And no I'm not serious about the Dalek insurgency. I *am* serious about Boyega playing the Doctor playing Boyega.) I'm not sure you're getting Doctor Who? It's meant to be a bit cheesy, but with a strong focus on storytelling and imagination, a balance of fun and darker moments, and the Doctor being the character holding it all together. Ultra shiny prestige Doctor Who sounds like an awful idea. Whenever the issue of what BAME actor you'd like to see play the Doctor*, I'd always said David Harewood. Proper character actor with range, but not a big enough name that it'd overshadow the show itself. I've just realized that I've never watched a 7/Mel serial. I think I've got a copy of Red on CD, but I've never seen them onscreen together. *we're ignoring Ruth for this post
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Jan 21, 2021 21:55
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cargohills posted:I've still got my fingers crossed for Paterson Joseph. Funny, good at playing eccentric people. Everything you need for Doctor Who. I was going to say him too, but I couldn't remember how to spell his name. I never understood people who want a 'big name' to play The Doctor - it should be character actors, or lesser knows who have a history of turning in solid performances without being household names. Apparently Colin Baker got the part without an audition, which sounds like the most Colin Baker thing, frankly. That said, some of the actors considered for different incarnations were wild choices. I'm curious who was shortlisted against Whittaker - she's said there were others, but she doesn't know who.
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Jan 21, 2021 23:36
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Didn't Ace end up a philanthropist too? I guess that''s the ending they're going for with all of seven's companions. Lore quest: So reading from the wiki, Big Finish took the "Ace goes to Gallifrey and trains in becoming a Time Lord" idea that would have ended the character's run on TV. But then she gets her memory erased and sent back to Earth at the start of the Time War, but then says that in stories set later she remembers being mind wiped. So did the Time Lords wipe her memory of the specifics she learnt in Time Lord training, like the science secrets and she can remember being there generally? Also, did Big Finish or anyone ever do the story where Ace goes to Gallifrey, or does it happen 'off screen'? Also, if Ace was training to become a Time Lord, how would regeneration work? Was she going to be given a regeneration cycle after graduating, despite being human? I haven't listened to any of the Gallifrey audios, dunno if that comes up. cargohills posted:Agree completely with this. I feel like none of the Doctors, apart from John Hurt and maybe Christopher Eccleston, would have been cast if they'd routinely gone for celebs over unknowns. I'd say John Hurt was an exception because of the special occasion. That reveal cliffhanger was wonderful, one of the genuine wait WHAT moments of TV.
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Jan 22, 2021 00:41
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Just decided to start the War Doctor boxsets, and listened to ""The Innocent". At first I thought it was odd that they started the range with a quieter story, but got into the rhythm. I did like the thing with the Doctor being on the edge of snapping back into being 'the Doctor', but realizing that he couldn't because of the time war.
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Jan 28, 2021 01:13
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My favourite bit of Pertwee trivia is that the Doctor having a shower in Spearhead in Space wasn't in the script, the crew just REALLY liked the shower in the building they were filming, and insisted on using it for a scene. I got called a hipster yesterday for saying that the Eighth Doctor is becoming one of my favourite of the Doctors
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Jan 31, 2021 01:24
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It made sense that because Roberts does such a huge amount of acting in so many projects, he wouldn't remember (what was from his perspective) a failed pilot for a relaunch of a British TV show he did twenty odd years ago. It's nice to see that he not only remembers, but enjoys the plot - Roberts seemed a little miscast in the movie, but in hindsight, that seems more like the writing and directing instead. I've just finished Only the Monstrous, it started a little slow, but really picked up in parts 2 and 3.
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Feb 2, 2021 01:36
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Rhyno posted:I'd rather donate $10 to a charity than watch that cat flick so I'd guess his plan is working. Eric Roberts apparently recorded all of his dialogue down the phone, in one take, in fifteen minutes. David DeCoteau basically makes movies in his house with random actors he knows as quickly as possible. At least Big Finish got Roberts into an actual studio!
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Feb 2, 2021 19:19
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Nicholas Briggs always sounds so enthusiastic and excited in interviews, it's endearing.
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Feb 3, 2021 15:14
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Rhyno posted:He's a delight. I'll sit through terrible British morning show personalities just for him. The behind the scenes interviews on the audios are worth listening to, mainly because he's just so excited to tell the listener how the production came together.
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Feb 4, 2021 00:54
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I've been reading about the whole BBV video thing and its very confusing. Anyway, just about to start the second War Doctor boxset, knowing nothing about the rest of the series, should be fun. EDIT: Maybe "fun" is the wrong word. Just start and the bit with the Doctor remembering his pre-war days is bleak. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Feb 4, 2021 |
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Feb 4, 2021 23:28
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The Daleks work surprisingly well in audio form. I think its that whirrrrr that make while they move. Onto boxset 2, and why do the War Doctor stories seem to ignore regeneration for Time Lord soldiers? The plot seems to regard injuries to Time Lords who get killed as fatal, and they've only plot deviced away why a character won't regenerate once so far. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Feb 6, 2021 |
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Feb 6, 2021 00:22
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Oh yeah, I know regeneration is meant to be a traumatic process, and they're vulnerable before and after it. It's just like, in the War Doctor audios, there's a bit where a Time Lord gets shot by a Dalek, and they don't double tap him to prevent regeneration, which I thought stood out. Regeneration is a great story device - not only since it always recasting, but also because there's so many interesting things you can do with it storywise (that aren't the Timeless Child).
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Feb 6, 2021 19:18
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Davros1 posted:Oh, wait until you get to a certain ep in Vol 3, Agents of Chaos If its The Eternity Cage, I liked that one. It's interesting how so much of Big Finish's Time War lore is based on throwaway lines from the show.
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Feb 8, 2021 13:05
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Davros1 posted:Yup! I'm really enjoying the War Doctor/Ollistra dynamic. Although I'm trying to keep myself from binging, because when I finish the fourth set, there won't be any more  I've also been revisiting the wiki, and even though I've got nearly a complete set of the EDAs, I can't make heads or tails of the Faction Paradox stuff, its so high concept. The EDAs hit a wall when they give the Doctor amensia, keep piling on plot points that are never explained or resolved, then end with a non-ending, but I remember liking some of the more self contained ones. It's like they got bored of the Enemy arc, but instead of properly resolving it, fragments of it were flirted with for ages. It's odd how its still going on today, even though they can't use half the concepts for copyright reasons, and major story beats are in books which haven't been in print for over twenty years! Though they had a cameo in Time Lord Victorious, which was odd, and I'm confused how that legally worked out. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Feb 8, 2021 |
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Feb 8, 2021 16:17
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Eric Roberts is so much better there than he was in the movie, goes to show what a difference writing and directing can make. Nicholas Briggs telling the story of how he and the writer of the Eye of Harmony argued over how exactly the Eye works and how the story will reconcile plot differences between The Deadly Assassin and other episodes is hilarious. He really cares about trying to keep the franchise's mismash of story ideas, throwaway lines, and implications by dozens of different writers over decades into a logical continuity. I know people like to say that the show has no canon, but its impressive how much of it was kept straight and consistent over the years, especially before they could just check the Wiki. The "no canon" thing made no sense to me anyway, since we can filter out a lot of the stuff which is obviously not canon, either at the time, or retroactively.
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Feb 9, 2021 15:17
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Davros1 posted:In my headcanon, I always framed it as a "Pair of Eyes". One Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey, one Eye in a TARDIS. I think that was the de facto explanation that's been adopted after the TV Movie.
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Feb 9, 2021 15:26
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Open Source Idiom posted:Yeah that's really gone out the window over the last few years. Trying to reconcile the continuity of the last few seasons of Gallifrey and The War Master with the two different Eighth Doctor ranges has become basically impossible. I'm curious now, what are the big differences?
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Feb 9, 2021 16:20
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For me it goes: Canon - TV episodes, Big Finish Semi-Canon - Virgin New Adventures, Doctor Who Magazine Comics. Canon but doesn't matter too much - Past Doctor Adventures novels, pre-Big Finish audios, current series novels. Was once Canon, but diverged - Faction Paradox Not Canon - Eighth Doctor Adventures books, semi-licensed productions, non-DWM comics, Shalka, the Cushing films, Target novelizations, Video Games, Dimensions in Time, sketches where the actors are in character, but break the fourth wall etc, crossovers that can't fit in the standard canon. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Feb 10, 2021 |
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Feb 9, 2021 18:43
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It's a 60s thing, it gets better in the 70s and 80s. As for the Virgin Missing Adventures, those are on the same canon level as the Past Doctor Adventure books. The only PDAs which I regard as non-canon are the ones which tie-in into the butterfly crystal skeleton Doctors storyline in the EDAs, or have been replaced by Big Finish.
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Feb 10, 2021 00:37
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Ace absolutely WRECKING a Dalek with a bat is one of the best Doctor Who moments, and why Ace is one of the best companions. Plus Sophie Aldred is one of those actors who is always entertaining when she pops up in things - she's the voice of Peter Rabbit's mother in the recent CGI cartoon, so whenever I watch it with a younger family member, its really hard to not hear the character as "posh middle class Ace". Susan is quite an enigma as a character: they play up her alien-ness early on, then never really do anything with it. The Doctor booting her out of the TARDIS is an important character development, and one of Hartnell's best bits of acting on the show, but revisiting Susan is kind of a tightrope walk. She's a very important character to the show's mythos, but the audience has never really been told much about her, and that's for the best. She's an interesting idea, and a cornerstone of the franchise, but one that shouldn't be explored in too much depth.
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Feb 10, 2021 02:05
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usenet celeb 1992 posted:I'm trying to make sense of this but my brain won't let me Oh boy, if you're not familiar with the sheer batshit insanity of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, here's a tl;dr version. So the Eighth Doctor finds out that in the future, the Time Lords will have a universe destroying conflict with a group known as "The Enemy". There's a cult called Faction Paradox who want to speed up the start of the war (referred to as The War in Heaven) because they get a kick out of making paradoxes and chaos in time. The Faction start manipulating the Doctor into becoming one of their agents, and infect him with a virus that will mutate him into "Grandfather Paradox". Romana regenerates and tries to figure out who the enemy is to prepare. The TARDIS explodes, but luckily the Doctor makes friends with Compassion, a lady who is a TARDIS, and the Doctor flies around in her head. However, editorial got bored of the War in Heaven story, and decided to scrap novels that would identify the Enemy and properly wrap the story, so Faction Paradox and the Enemy were dropped from the novels and never mentioned again, but spun-off into non-BBC books. The Doctor blows up Gallifrey, and spends 100 years on Earth with amnesia waiting for the TARDIS to regrow, and fosters a daughter from the distant future. When he can travel again, the Doctor gets bored of trying to cure his amnesia and that plot point is dropped. Then his second heart dies because Gallifrey has been erased from the timelines, so he cuts it out, but another guy puts it in his chest for time travel reasons. A new group is trying to take the Time Lord's place in a chaotic, unordered timeline, clearing out the time vortex of life, and killing old companions so that they can trim alternative universes and eat the lack of choices. It turns out they're crystal skeletons who look like the Doctor, and one travels to 1963 and becomes the First Doctor or something. This is never explained. Then it turns out K-9 was plastered behind a wall in the TARDIS all along by Romana, and reveals that the Doctor has the contents of the matrix in his head, and can restore Gallifrey and then something to do with the Doctor's father or something, then the novels end on an unresolved cliffhanger. Big Finish declared in Zagreus that all of this was an alternative to theirs and not canon to their 8th Doctor, and promptly retconned an early mention of a novel companion away. Night of the Doctor confirmed that the Big Finish version is the TV canon version of the 8th's Doctor's adventures. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Feb 10, 2021 |
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Feb 10, 2021 19:47
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Somewhere in all of this too, the Third Doctor gets shot and killed, despite all the subsequent regenerations still existing. From what can be pieced together, it seems that there wasn't massive amounts of communication between the editors and writers, and the odd narrative structure of the EDAs, where some are massively important to the story, some are just standalone standard Doctor Who adventures, and some are standard adventures, but with some foreshadowing or plot threads that will become relevant later, and it gets more complex when the crystal Doctors start having an effect on the Past Doctor Adventures. That, and so many things are left half explained or outright unresolved. There's some pretty good work there, but its less confusing to consider Big Finish the canon 8th Doctor adventures. Plus, better companions: Charley, Molly and Liv are all top tier companion characters.
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Feb 11, 2021 01:31
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Remember that a big chunk of Big Finish's earlier stuff is on Spotify!
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Feb 11, 2021 13:01
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Barry Foster posted:Man reading all this really hammers home how good early to mid period BF really was, because y'all are listing absolute bangers right now I'm making my way through the last War Doctor set now, and I've got the Two Masters Trilogy, The Girl Who Never Was, and two 6/Dalek stories on my backlog. Big Finish are fairly good with the sales if you're willing to wait a bit, but it is basically luck if something you want is on sale.
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Feb 11, 2021 14:33
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Even the BBC Books add in the detail that Dodo blundered into the TARDIS because she was looking for a police officer after escaping a sexual assault attempt, so yeah, spin-off media hates Dodo for some reason. I've finished the War Doctor boxsets, and the Enigma Dimension was a nice ending - it's fun when they take advantage of the audio format to go a little out there, and Leela was an interesting element to add in. Has any companion had such a big character arc as Leela? She went from savage to inter-dimensional diplomat. The behind the scenes bit with Briggs saying how he's hoping to work with John Hurt again though
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Feb 13, 2021 14:35
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Doesn't the novel Engines of War take place right before The Day of The Doctor? I haven't read it. The reoccurring theme of the War Doctor really, really wanting to just be 'The Doctor'' again and go back to his old life is really well handled. In 'Only the Monstrous', you can tell he wants to just go off and have adventures in time and space with Rejoice, but he can't because of the war. Pretty Lies ends with a pretty classic Doctor Who ending, with the Doctor outsmarting the bad guys with clever trickery and reworking the odds to help a base under siege, then as soon as he goes they simply return and blow up the planet out of spite. There's a sense of tragedy throughout the series - Leela having her mind fried and not knowing which of her possible timelines are her actual memories was pretty grim, especially when she's told that her memories of having children aren't from her timeline, and Romana is (probably) gone. Hurt and Jameson hit it hard in that one. I do wish they'd leaned into horror a bit more - the second boxset showed off the rather horrifying existential dangers of fighting a time war, where normal rules are collapsing, really effectively.
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Feb 13, 2021 15:24
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Gameko posted:Here's a discussion topic. Here in the USA, conventional wisdom states that the 6th doctor really killed the series and the 7th doctor saved it. (Of course the show was canceled after the 7th Doctor's run.) Any thoughts on that assertion? Colin Baker played the Doctor as more assertive and aggressive (the idea was that the sixth Doctor would mellow out over time), so he was less instantly likable than the grandfatherly charm of some Doctors, or the boyish friendly nature of others. Ratings were still respectable, but dipped from the 70s peak, mainly because they scheduled it against ITV's popular Coronation Street on the other channel, so the BBC put the show on hiatus for a year, and the original planned season was scrapped. The Doctor Who people had a lot of faith in Baker - he was offered the role without an audition, but the BBC didn't. Some of the higher ups at the BBC turned on the show, and Trial of a Time Lord had production issues. In the end, the BBC fired Baker, scapegoating him for the whole ordeal. The Doctor Who production office asked Baker to film a regeneration story, but he refused, so they had McCoy in a blonde wig and Baker's coat just....fall over and die unceremoniously. Luckily, Big Finish gave him a chance to do the character how he wanted to in the end. McCoy got stronger stories, especially towards the end of his run, but office politics at the BBC were still against the show. IIRC, it was never officially cancelled, the Doctor Who Production Office was planning the 1990 season, which was going to be McCoy and Aldred's last, and introduce a new companion, and the 8th Doctor, with Richard Griffiths being courted to play the part. They were worried about where the wind was blowing, so the Doctor's little monologue was added at the end of Survival. In the end, the BBC just....didn't commission the 1990 season, rather than outright cancelling the show. It took a while, and it was rough for some, but in the end, maybe it all turned out for the best. tl;dr Basically Michael Grade didn't like Colin Baker. OldMemes fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 20:25
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In hindsight, giving Baker that coat was a bad idea, since it just distracted from the character.
OldMemes fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 21:01
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The Doctor didn't push them in the acid bath, they weren't following standard acid bath health and safety procedures. 
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Feb 16, 2021 23:18
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Maybe Michael Grade saw the infamous shirtless 70s Colin Baker photos, and that's what set him off? Jodie Whittaker is really charming and gets the character, but Chibnall writing most of the episodes is really hurting the show. Ryan and Yas were barely characters, and there's just a lack of imagination overall. The 13th Doctor feels a little flat after how much range 12 got to cover - I'd like to see her angrier, or a bit darker at times. Maybe play her as a little more alien and ancient too - with 12 you could get the sense that yeah, this was the same character who went through all the good and bad the character has gone through with all these different faces. Or maybe have more moments of sadness or reflection. I like those bits where the Doctor reflects on being basically alone, with no constant but their TARDIS. 13 is basically the modern 6 - the actor is wonderfully cast, but being let down by the writing. More episodes like "It Takes You Away" or the first half of "Kerblam" would be good. The 13th Doctor should be louder, angrier, and Basically it needs someone with the same kind of energy and willingness to delegate as Briggs does for Big Finish in charge. Chibnall has done some excellent stuff, but he's trying to do too much on Doctor Who.
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Feb 18, 2021 01:46
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In technical terms, Capaldi was probably the best actor to play the character, and with Moffat having much better story arcs for 12 than the clunky ones 11 had, it worked better. Bill Potts was a great companion too, and Pearl Mackie knocked it out off the park. Whittaker is hampered by having her Doctor be far too passive. Let her get angry! Or more assertive! Maybe having Graham as the only companion would have helped with the focus too - three companions feels spread too thin. I'm not saying she should "accidentally" be pushing people into acid baths every episode, but more reminders that this is still meant to be the same character who tricked Davros into blowing up his own planet would be nice.
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Feb 18, 2021 13:38
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ikanreed posted:People keep referring to that. Did Doctor Who make the joker? "Forgive me if I don't join you!" 
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Feb 18, 2021 15:31
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I still say Torchwood was a bad show. It wasn't a bad concept, but it was trying way too hard to be "edgy" and just came across as tryhard. The immature approach to sexual politics, the main characters either being boring or downright unlikable, the nihilistic obsession with atheism, the tacked on violence - it just didn't work, and just felt like a generic 2000s genre show, with a few nods to the main show bolted on, and some edginess sprinkled in. There were some decent episodes, and the cast were trying, but it just didn't work as part of the Doctor Who universe, because it didn't share any of the philosophy of the main show. The they wrote most of the cast out? There are much better "grounded" and "mature" stories set in the Doctor Who universe, like Bernice Summerfield's stories. Torchwood has not aged well, I'm guessing. I've heard decent things about the audios, but I have no interest in them myself.
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Feb 18, 2021 16:51
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People liked Captain Jack because he was a roguish, flamboyant adventurer, so in Torchwood they decided to just have John Barrowman brood and be moody endlessly. The other characters were one dimensional at best, deeply selfish and unlikable at worst. The constant "the characters have SEX and everything is SEX and VIOLENCE because unlike Doctor Who is this DARK and EDGY and SEX and NIHILISM because morals and meaning and fun are for losers" was tiring. The show had an almost obsessive fixation on sex, and felt immature. Then in the second season they decided to do a lighter edit of each episode, but it robbed the show of what little identity it had because it had to be worked around what could be cut. Children of Earth was better because it had some focus. Miracle Day was ok, but too long, and it didn't even need the Torchwood characters. Aside from a reference to the Sarah Jane Smith Adventures of all things, there was no reason for it to be set in the Doctor Who universe. It could have been its own standalone thing, aside from having John Barrowman and Eve Myles there. Being mature with story telling isn't about sex, gore or swearing, its about how you approach subjects.
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Feb 19, 2021 01:39
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Are there many other Big Finish stories that are ethically dodgy like that? I know everyone mentions that Nekromanteia almost caused Peter Davison to quit, but are there any more 'yikes' level ones?
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Feb 24, 2021 00:07
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Barry Foster posted:(tbf everyone seems to, because he rules). Except Michael Grade, for some reason. But yeah, I already really dislike C'rizz as a character, so I'll be avoiding that one. Doctor Who does body horror well, but sexualised body is er, nope.
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Feb 24, 2021 22:22
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I've heard people come down harshly on 7 having Dr. Klein as a companion for the same reason - the Doctor trying to rehabilitate a Nazi by showing her the error of her ways and giving her more life experience is a fundamentally flawed concept. Last night I listened to And You Will Obey Me. I found it a bit flat, mostly because I find the Fifth Doctor a little dull, but it perked up with the Master was around, and it captured that 80s family friendly BBC adventure horror vibe with the flashbacks. Next is a story with the return of the Alexander McQueen Master, who really grew on me over the course of Dark Eyes, so that should be fun.
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Feb 25, 2021 17:01
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Open Source Idiom posted:Spoiler: the story you are about to hear sucks. I find it interesting that bar a few universally despised stories, fans differ wildly in their opinion on Doctor Who stories, even more than a lot of other franchises. Aside from a handful, you ask for the consensus on an audio, and you'll get so many different takes. I remember really liking Zagreus, but people seem down on that one, for example, or I really liked Dark Eyes, but some people hate it. It's interesting. Except C'rizz. No-one likes C'rizz. I picked up all three for a tenner in last month's Big Finish book club page, so it's not so bad. McQueen vs Baker sounds like it'll be fun, even if the story is bad. I find it a little ironic that Beevers became the default Big Finish Master for years, despite only doing one story on television. Even though they'd have to retcon it away or do some in-story twisting at the end to preserve the reveal of the TV show, it's a shame that there wasn't a War Master and War Doctor team-up audio story.
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Feb 25, 2021 19:20
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Oh 7, with his crazy plans that sometimes horribly backfire..... There are some good stories out of "the Doctor screws up badly" or "makes a huge moral mistake", but taking Klein as a companion still seems like a bad idea. UNIT Dominion is on spotify - can you follow that standalone, or are there other UNIT audios you have to listen to? OldMemes fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Feb 25, 2021 |
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Feb 25, 2021 20:24
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Open Source Idiom posted:Spoiler: the story you are about to hear sucks. I enjoyed Vampire of the Mind. Baker and McQueen were fun, it was a solid enough story, and I laughed at the gag of the Master's fake answering machine. Honestly I liked it more than the previous one. Though when I'm listening to a story featuring an 80s Doctor, I can never decide to imagine it with 80s or modern Who production values.
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Feb 26, 2021 01:55
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