Doctor Who and the Shoes that Fit Perfectly (Library No. 171)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Doctor Who and the Shoes that Fit Perfectly (Library No. 171)

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

To be honest, Doctor Who under Chibnall looks decent enough to me that I'd really only want for it to have more episodes and better scripts.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2021 17:09

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 18:07

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Open Source Idiom posted:

It's the Gallifreyian Presidential succession. So this is gonna get nerdy.

Romana is president for the first two seasons of Gallifrey, and after a period of civil war is succeeded by an original character, Livia. Livia, though she's never named, is the current President during Dark Eyes and Doom Coalition, and is explicitly in charge during the chronologically early War Master stories.

Thanks to a series of poor choices, Livia's time sees the role of President neutralised into a ceremonial position, and power is handed off to a group of generals and cardinals (the war council, whose most prominent members are Ollistra, Mantus and Rasmus). Romana and her inner circle are systematically taken off the board as the planet descends into a fascist war state. All civil resistance is crushed.

The problem is that this seems to happen over the course of two different time periods -- it seems to take place both before the Eighth Doctor has entered the Time War, and after John Hurt has become the War Doctor. And it's not just about a difference in perspective, either, since there's no way the Eighth Doctor would support a regime that was actively trying to kill two of his companions, and their friends -- in fact, he's said to have actively distanced himself from all of Time Lord society during the events of Gallifrey. But, in his own line, those things have apparently already happened, and he's actively supporting them and their presidency.

(Also the War Master has a similar problem -- we see him make the decision to actively abandon the war in Gallifrey, but he makes an appearance at a chronologically later date in Ravenous. But in Ravenous, we see Gallifrey accidentally summon up the Ravenous from the depths of Timelord mythology, meaning that it has to place before Gallifrey, since everyone recognises them as a common temporal threat.)

It's basically an ouroboros, which would be clever if it weren't a) unintentional and b) frustrating to make sense of.

Of course, poo poo like this was always gonna happen when they decided to tell one story from five different interweaving, non-concurrent, non-consecutive perspectives

To be fair, it *is* a Time War.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 19:36

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Didn't Russel T. Davies argue that Joseph Lidster would be a good writer if he applied or something like that? I've never really read/listened to one of his Who stories (or any other material for that matter), but I was pretty surprised by the disconnect between opinions like that and how he's talked about in this thread.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2021 10:25

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Important Peri question: did Big Finish ever come up with an excuse to let Nicola Bryant drop the awful American accent? Or is she gonna be saddled with that until the end of time?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2021 10:03

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

That sucks. Hope his victims get justice.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2021 20:12

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Payndz posted:

There was too much ery about Davros in that story for me to enjoy it. "Oh, my eyes weren't burnt out by a nuke requiring the implantation of a cybernetic one in my forehead at all, I just couldn't be bothered to open them. And I know I said that I need my life-support chair to survive for more than 30 seconds, but guys - I'm a mad scientist, c'mon!"

Maybe he got a few surgeries in preparation for meeting the Doctor.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2021 08:50

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Davros1 posted:

The best bit of The Light at the End is that BF wasn't planning to do a multi-Doctor story for the fiftieth, on the basis "Well, Tom turned down the twentieth, there's no way he's going to want to do a multi-Doctor for the fiftieth."

And then after recording a Fourth Doctor story, Tom said, "So when are me and the others doing our anniversary story?" And then BF realized "Oh poo poo, he actually wants to do one." So they had to kind of hurry one into production.

The lesson here is to never presume anything about Tom Baker except that he'll drink you under the table.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2021 06:54

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Sydney Bottocks posted:

Chibnall went on British TV during the C. Baker era and basically slagged it off, so I don't feel a bit sorry for him that people are now saying his own run on the show has been largely terrible

Of all the things that Chibnall has done, this is really not a huge deal. Besides, wasn't he a teenager at the time? They aren't exactly known for the nuance in their takes.

That said, "Chibnall's run is terrible" is just... an opinion on the internet. Probably not nice to read for Chibnall, but it doesn't feel toxic or personal in the way a lot of writing discourse on the internet can be.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2021 10:58

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

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.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2021 11:25

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Blaming Joss Whedon's abusive tendencies on the fact that he was a writer with too much power is a take. One that I'm pretty sure I've actually seen already in this thread, lmao. What the gently caress, Doctor Who thread? What the gently caress.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2021 14:12

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

A.o.D. posted:

Why does that photo look 40 years older than what it really is?

Set design plus the colors being warped significantly by print, I feel.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 11:08

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Lmao, that's a power armor and a super sledgehammer from Fallout 3. Bethesda's pretty litigious too, what... what are they thinking?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2021 18:50

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Honestly, while it starts with a bang and has a few great episodes likce Vincent and the Doctor, I have a far lower opinion of season 5 than most of this thread. It just... feels mediocre? I guess you could say it feels... Chibnall. And the ending is just not very good.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2021 09:42

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

The_Doctor posted:

That reads like they want a Name running it?

The return of Steven Moffat.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2021 19:25

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

I DIDN'T REALIZE HOW CLOSE I WAS WHEN I SAID MOFFAT WOULD BE RETURNING AS SHOWRUNNER LMAO: https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1441405833997217798

# ¿ Sep 24, 2021 15:19

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Doctor Who is already a franchise and has had some manner of spin-offs under every showrunner tenure so far as far as I'm aware (Chibnall admittedly doesn't fit super-well, but they did the whole Time Lord Victorious under him).

Basically, I don't think RTD said something particularly weird and heck, he's basically already done the same thing under his first tenure.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2021 19:25

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

OldMemes posted:

I do find it interesting that the Master's 2nd to 12th incarnations are basically still a mystery, and the Master regenerated into a decayed 14th incarnation out of pure spite.

To be fair, once you've already done the story where the Master finds a way to cheat the regeneration limit and Big Finish's already done the first master stories (with a terrible person as their pick, btw), where do you go from there?

Say that Chibnall revealed that Sacha Dwhan's version of the Master was the... Fourth in a future episode. What would that change about what we saw on screen?

# ¿ Oct 1, 2021 19:56

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

LividLiquid posted:

The politics of Ker-blam are loving horrifying.

It's easy to get confused, but his name is actually Keir, not Ker-blam.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2021 08:55

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Sydney Bottocks posted:

It's also weird how two different showrunners handled the whole "The Doctor has to stop the Master even though they are the last two remaining Time Lords in existence" thing.

Ten: *sobbing and weeping as the Master, refusing to regenerate out of spite, dies in his arms*

Thirteen: "I'll just let the Nazis deal with you lol"

It really doesn't feel like Chibnall thought about Gallifrey being lost again in terms of how the characters would react to it and what it would mean to them. It serves merely the purpose of letting the Doctor know that the Master is really pissed and later making dead Gallifrey a backdrop for the Timeless Child stuff.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2021 19:59

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

Tomtrek posted:

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine has a feature about the upcoming series which has revealed some designs for the monsters. It's from an official source but spoilered just in case:

https://twitter.com/gbsheard/status/1448579934964834311

The Sontarans are back and have been redesigned, and they look... really good???? Much closer to the original Time Warrior design, it looks like.

The production choices under Chibnall have been rather inspired. I hope they can keep some of those people under RTD's watch.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2021 18:01

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 18:07

Fair Bear Maiden: Jun 17, 2013

So, apparently, Flux was written almost entirely solo by Chibnall.

:bighow:

# ¿ Oct 20, 2021 12:37

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > Doctor Who and the Shoes that Fit Perfectly (Library No. 171)