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Which season of Doctor Who should get a Blu-ray set next? This poll is closed. |
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| One of the black-and-white seasons |
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16 | 29.63% |
| Season 7 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Season 11 |
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1 | 1.85% |
| Season 13 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 15 |
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2 | 3.70% |
| The Key to Time |
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21 | 38.89% |
| Season 21 |
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0 | 0% |
| Season 25 |
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7 | 12.96% |
| Total: | 54 votes | ||
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2house2fly posted:The Unquiet Dead I'm guessing Gatiss and Davies go way back; at any rate they had both written New Adventures and Gatiss wrote one or two Big Finish stories prior to the TV gig.
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Apr 10, 2024 08:18
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 08:58 |
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Random Stranger posted:I've also been rewatching Eccleston lately and I'm through World War III. It's interesting to see them feeling out what the show would be. I think the more goofy "kid's show" approach that you see a lot was a poor choice, it made the tone swing too widely. That's largely on Keith Boak, tbf
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Apr 10, 2024 10:44
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I’m re-reading The Writer’s Tale at the moment and just came across a bit where RTD briefly imagines ten years in the future when Joseph Lidster is in charge of the Thirteenth Doctor. Ten years’ time was 2019. lol.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:49
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Creature posted:I’m re-reading The Writer’s Tale at the moment and just came across a bit where RTD briefly imagines ten years in the future when Joseph Lidster is in charge of the Thirteenth Doctor. Ten years’ time was 2019. lol. Jesus, how disappointed he must be in that lads career.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:53
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Lidster? Huh, that honestly would be interesting to see. He can't do misery porn all the time, surely?
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Apr 10, 2024 14:54
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Narsham posted:It was a bad writing choice. In universe, I'm not sure claiming the Master is "a person of color" is especially accurate, and I think it's hard to take seriously "the Master will end up gassed to death in a concentration camp" as a potential outcome of that scene, but Chibnall really should have been thinking about the world he was living in at the time, too. This is where I am on it. A couple of Nazi mooks are nothing more than annoyance and a distraction to The Master, with a sprinkling of "his own petard," but the problem is in isolation that takes more explanation than the other reading.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:57
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The_Doctor posted:Lidster? Huh, that honestly would be interesting to see. He can't do misery porn all the time, surely? Thanks to this post I IMDBd him and learned that the beeb brought back The Demon Headmaster five years ago? And Lidster wrote an episode? And it's a continuation rather than a reboot? Huh? Narsham posted:It was a bad writing choice. In universe, I'm not sure claiming the Master is "a person of color" is especially accurate, and I think it's hard to take seriously "the Master will end up gassed to death in a concentration camp" as a potential outcome of that scene, but Chibnall really should have been thinking about the world he was living in at the time, too. Yeah on reflection I was a bit hyperbolic. Moffat definitely did the "clever" throwing a bad guy to the wolves thing. I don't think "wiping out both warring sides to prevent everyone else in the universe from being killed" falls into quite the same camp though. Fil5000 fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 15:04
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It's just a mistake to use Nazis that way in your story, even in a fictional universe in which there are worse space Nazis and in which we can contemplate that the Master would have seen them as a minor nuisance or a method of control (doesn't he use them in his grand plan for the end? I can't remember how that pans out, lol). Like, Let's Kill Hitler, for all its flaws, is probably more sensitive about the subject matter than the Chibnall years.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:25
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Let's Kill Hitler makes the important choice to ridicule Hitler and make him a joke.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:37
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Fil5000 posted:Let's Kill Hitler makes the important choice to ridicule Hitler and make him a joke. The tried and true Mel Brooks method.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:56
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Hitler gets punched out by Wifeguy and thrown into a broom closet, ending his relevance to the story. Frankly that's more dignity than he deserves.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:00
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I think I might be mixing up the Master using the Nazis with a similar Batman story in which Ra's Al Ghoul uses them to his own advantage, a Batman plot that is somehow even worse than the storyline in which a Nazi scientist woman kidnaps Batman with the intent of forcing him to breed with her so that she can have his ubermensch children.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:11
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It is physically impossible for me to not grin like a moron whenever Gatwa is on screen, he just absolutely rocks whatever scene he's in and whatever outfit he's wearing. He's got so much magnetism and energy I didn't even notice during my first watch of The Giggle that he didn't have any pants. 'My' doctor is still Matt Smith even though I have none that I actively dislike, but Gatwa is making serious moves to replace him
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Apr 10, 2024 23:53
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Fil5000 posted:She literally defeats the Master by loving up his perception filter so the Nazis recognise he's not white and, as far as she knows, will send him to a camp and gas him to death. This is presented as the Doctor being clever and finding a smart way to deal with the Master. It's not the case that the Doctor defeats the Master by doing that. He's already defeated, and *then* she does that just so the Nazis will treat him extra badly.
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Apr 11, 2024 00:07
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Aliens Of London/World War Three Some dark comedy in Mickey being falsely suspected of a crime... The Slitheen are a great kids' villain, I enjoy how much fun they're having. There's a lot of tragic villains out there, and world-conquering tyrannical megalomaniacs, it's refreshing every now and then to get some villains who are just loving scumbags. Their scheme of convincing people that "massive weapons of destruction" are pointed at them in order to provoke military action that'll result in them getting fuel is... less elegant than the Nestene Consciousness as social commentary. But it's for kids! When the Doctor is trying to narrow down where the aliens are from, the fact that they smell like bad breath is a major factor, but a good gag is the clincher being their hyphenated surnames. The Doctor is such a dick to Mickey. Even when he's begging him to save the world he can't stop himself mentioning how much it sticks in his craw. That plus his antisocial attitude to Rose's family makes me feel like Moffat definitely looked back here when he was writing for Peter Capaldi. Eccleston even has a little speech about how if this is really first contact with aliens then he's not going to interfere because humans need to figure it out on their own... That said, the end where he's warmed up to Mickey but pretends to be a dick as a favour to him was a nice touch. Dalek The pacing is a bit misplaced early on in this one. The Dalek was in the previous episode's preview, and it's the title of this episode, so why nearly 10 minutes of buildup before it's revealed? Going for dramatic irony maybe? What a scene though when it does get revealed! Genuinely feels like Eccleston's performance for the whole series has been building up to him gloating about the Daleks burning. "I watched it happen. I MADE it happen!" This episode takes place in 2012, elsewhere in the US Amy and Rory are getting zapped back in time by angels about now. Also thanks to continuity this takes place less than a decade after two separate extremely public Dalek invasions. Van Statten doesn't get out much, does he? One funny thing is that the continuity isn't incompatible with the Dalek hijacking Earth's technology and finding no trace of its race, because both of those previous invasions ended with the Doctor killing them all. A lot of the dialogue is a bit... I don't know, rudimentary? They repeat over and over that the Dalek is a soldier without orders, and the Dalek keeps asking what it should do if nobody's going to give it any orders. Towards the end when it realises Rose has contaminated it and it starts freaking out, that's great though. Looking up Rob Spearman to see what else he's done, and apparently he's currently working on PETER HARNESS'S APPLE PLUS PRESTIGE TV SHOW STARRING NOOMI RAPACE AND JONATHAN BANKS??!?!?!!
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Apr 11, 2024 04:48
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2house2fly posted:Looking up Rob Spearman to see what else he's done, and apparently he's currently working on PETER HARNESS'S APPLE PLUS PRESTIGE TV SHOW STARRING NOOMI RAPACE AND JONATHAN BANKS??!?!?!! He didn't write anything, he helped read through scripts and gave some notes. The show also uhhh kinda sucks tbh. I was excited too. le sigh
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Apr 11, 2024 05:56
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I thought first few episodes were quite good/intriguing but it fizzled out fast. A real chore to get through the last few, unfortunately.
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Apr 11, 2024 08:16
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2house2fly posted:Aliens Of London/World War Three This story is one of the greatest (ideas wise) in the revival and if the implementation was 10% better it would be regarded as a stone cold classic
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Apr 11, 2024 10:08
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If they dropped the fart humour and made them a bit scarier, they could have been recurring villains
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Apr 11, 2024 10:56
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I hope the Slitheen come back. Imagine how powerful their Farts would be with Disney money behind them.
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Apr 11, 2024 11:04
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Wasn't one of the first ever leaks for nu-Who an audio recording of Eccleston delivering the line about not farting whilst he was speaking?!
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Apr 11, 2024 11:06
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MrL_JaKiri posted:This story is one of the greatest (ideas wise) in the revival and if the implementation was 10% better it would be regarded as a stone cold classic I'd say 25% better. Beyond the farts and the fact that the director was clearly directing the Slitheen actors poorly (or at least, to act in a totally different show than Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper and Camille Coduri were acting in), the CG effects for the Slitheen specifically are really bad, even by Doctor Who standards. I know they were on a shoestring budget but the pig-hybrid that's in that same two-parter is perfect at looking exactly what it's supposed to look like (freaky, sad, scared, etc.), and then the actual threat turns out to be something that crawled out of a 1990s FPS computer game. The only big failure in the execution is the Slitheen themselves but it's a pretty big failing. Like Harriet Jones is in the same cartoon-land as the Slitheen, but she just kind of works that way as comic relief (as opposed to the farting, which doesn't!).
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Apr 11, 2024 12:59
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Aliens of London annoyed me so much that I stopped watching new-Who after it transmitted and didn't come back regularly until the Matt Smith era began.
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Apr 11, 2024 13:04
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The rubber suit slitheen (presumably they only had one suit) looked pretty good, I thought. Not amazing, but they had a decent presence when they were physically there. It was the transition and crowd scenes that were a but of a mess. I thought the fake pilot pig was pretty good for their budget at the time and something that worked pretty well. Vinegar making them explode was a bit pat, but the Doctor trying to figure out what they were was one of Eccleston's better scenes as the Doctor. I think as a two parter, the second half was pretty light. But there was definitely too much for one episode when RTD really wanted to hit the beats of Rose being gone for a year. It's maybe enough for 1.5 episodes. As for Dalek's continuity issues, beside "who cares?" you can just say
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Apr 11, 2024 15:37
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Random Stranger posted:The rubber suit slitheen (presumably they only had one suit) looked pretty good, I thought. Not amazing, but they had a decent presence when they were physically there. They had at least two, but they looked very top heavy. They did a CGI shot of them at a few points, and the legs were much more in proportion. 
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Apr 11, 2024 15:43
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The second half of Aliens Of London had a bunch of scenes and stunts cut from it, including an infamous burning couch stunt*, resulting in a lot of new scenes being filmed and inserted into the episode. *probably the real reason Keith Boak never came back
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Apr 11, 2024 16:13
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Open Source Idiom posted:The second half of Aliens Of London had a bunch of scenes and stunts cut from it, including an infamous burning couch stunt*, resulting in a lot of new scenes being filmed and inserted into the episode. The burning couch stunt I thought was from Rose, when the department store explodes.
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Apr 11, 2024 16:48
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DoctorWhat posted:The burning couch stunt I thought was from Rose, when the department store explodes. Ah, perhaps I'm getting my deleted scenes mixed up. There was definitely new material filmed for Aliens Of London though.
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Apr 11, 2024 17:01
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All four boxsets of Ravenous were finally discounted at once, so I picked it up. Their Finiest Hour So the last boxset ended with Helen being lost in time and space, loaded down with some unwanted psyhic powers, trapped with the Eleven. In this one, The Doctor and Liv decide to....ignore the cliff hanger and faff around with Winston Churchill instead. This feels like it should be a breather episode in the third boxset, rather than the opener - it's a decent little story, but Helen's absence doesn't really add any emotional stakes. How to Make a Killing in Time Travel The Doctor and Liv decide they should probably look for Helen, but instead get sidetracked and faff around on a space station. This starts out promising - and seems like it'll be a great John Dorney one, as a scientist tries to create a time machine for her hilariously sleazy boss, only to kill him and have to awakardly hide the evidence from the Doctor. The pieces are all there for this one, but it...doesn't work. It feels increasingly rambling as it goes on, to the point where I could hardly tell you how it ends without double checking. World of Damnation The story finally remembers that oh yeah, Helen is meant to be a focus, and we catch up with her and the Eleven stuck on a prison planet. A prison planet is always an interesting setting, and the relationship between Helen and the Eleven is really well done here. For some reason, they've decided to bring back the Kandyman, with a new, less copyright infringing body, but he loses a lot of his identity from The Happiness Patrol. Sweet Salvation The boxset perks up with the Eleven and the Kandyman having a rather bonkers plan, and with The Doctor, Liv and Helen back together, the chemistry once again feels right. Overall, an uneven set, but it gets stronger as it goes on. I've heard the other sets are better.
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Apr 11, 2024 23:59
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Ravenous is pretty bad. You can tell they changed their plans for the arc multiple times -- even this first boxset is them throwing out one of the plot points they just set up -- and the overall threat is very bad. There's a lot of awkward trend chasing going on too e.g. the Westworld gimmick in World Of Damnation, so the villain is modeled after another popular-ish(-ish) pop culture phenom from that time: making this spoiler box bigger to hide the spoiler: IT The two opening standalones are, in the end, some of the strongest stories, as is the double feature from the centre of the next boxset. But the arc, overall, was being tuned to be more standalone, not less, so the actual story is very slight even by the standards of these things. Ravenous bad.
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Apr 12, 2024 06:43
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Open Source Idiom posted:Ravenous is pretty bad. You can tell they changed their plans for the arc multiple times -- even this first boxset is them throwing out one of the plot points they just set up -- and the overall threat is very bad. There's a lot of awkward trend chasing going on too e.g. the Westworld gimmick in World Of Damnation, so the villain is modeled after another popular-ish(-ish) pop culture phenom from that time: making this spoiler box bigger to hide the spoiler: IT I don't remember any of these stories, except for the Kandyman returning. So yea, I'd say this was a loser of a set and the Ravenous were really ...meh. Which sucks because 8th Doctor is my boooiiii
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Apr 12, 2024 17:22
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Oh god, I just remembered that one of those episodes is them trying to do A Quite Place on audio. Dumb. So dumb.
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Apr 12, 2024 17:28
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Honestly post-Lucie (bleedin) Miller, 8 gets done dirty The first Dark Eyes set is ok but it goes downhill rapidly, and after that it really does get dogshit
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Apr 12, 2024 17:45
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I think stranded is pretty good.
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Apr 12, 2024 18:23
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Barry Foster posted:Honestly post-Lucie (bleedin) Miller, 8 gets done dirty Yeah, I think McGann's line in Big Finish is the weakest of the classic Doctors once they hit the box set era. Okay, Big Finish in general is slumping at that point, probably due to being stretched thin, but his box sets seem to have the lesst interesting stories.
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Apr 12, 2024 18:56
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What McGann has going for him is that he gets to work with some TV actors he really respects and he always seems to be putting in at least a little effort and understands the material. I couldn't say the same for Sylvester McCoy at this stage.
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Apr 12, 2024 19:00
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Random Stranger posted:Yeah, I think McGann's line in Big Finish is the weakest of the classic Doctors once they hit the box set era. Okay, Big Finish in general is slumping at that point, probably due to being stretched thin, but his box sets seem to have the lesst interesting stories. It's the David Richardson / Ken Bentley period. They're not great and they brought on a lot of writers that also weren't great. Once they stop dominating things improved. There's some good stuff sprinkled throughout though, and I like Doom Coalition and Stranded overall (not the covid story though, god). And the reliable writers are generally reliable.
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Apr 12, 2024 19:10
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Happy birthday Peter Davison. Also happy deathday Richard Hurndall, who died 40 years ago today (yes, less than six months after The Five Doctors aired).
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Apr 13, 2024 17:15
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Random Stranger posted:As for Dalek's continuity issues, beside "who cares?" you can just say One of the Matt Smith shorts indirectly addressed the continuity by saying memory isn't as unreliable as people think, the past is just changing all the time. Also I guess the cracks in time kind of account for that sort of thing. More recently the Toymaker made a jigsaw of the past. Take your pick basically. The Long Game Simon Pegg rocks, first time I've been excited by a guest actor in this. The misdirect at the start is a treat, where it looks like he's onto the Doctor right away but he's actually rumbled a freedom fighter. One interesting thing is, he's excited at the possibilities of time travel when he learns about the Tardis, meaning as far as he (and the jagrafess) knows, they haven't used any time travel to stunt the human empire. Yet the Doctor says the earth is 90+ years behind where it should be. Wonder if the Daleks were involved with the "consortium of banks" Apparently in 2019 the microprocessor was phased out in favour of "single molecule transcription". All I know is, my computer still bluescreens if I play Cyberpunk for too long. Father's Day The start here is so embarrassing where they're getting married and Pete forgets Jackie's name. The first Rose ever sees of her father is him loving up. There's a lot of that throughout the episode but this first instance of it for some reason really makes me want to jump down a hole. The first of several moments which will be later rendered pleasantly ironic as the Doctor brings up the idea (and specifically the impossibility) of going back and saving his people from the Time War. This time it's specifically his family, but I mean I'm sure at least some of them made it out ok. Don't mention Chibnall killing all the time lords again because I'm not going to. I don't like the the evil killer demons, but I like the premise that changing the past creates a little pocket universe that has to either be destroyed or folded back into the real universe. Some later episodes have done the second thing while omitting the first, which works for me. I dunno, there's something poetic about the car endlessly circling trying to find the right person to run over, there's not anything poetic about the evil demons. It's funny how Pete not only is able to accept that Rose is his daughter from the future but is actually the one who works it out, and what has to be done to fix things. He may be a fuckup but that points to him actually having some intelligence and imagination. As the next series will show, he really could have made something of himself. For some reason this episode resonates much more strongly with me now than it did when it was first on TV an entire half of my life ago. Probably nothing.
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Apr 15, 2024 05:25
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 08:58 |
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Calling them 'evil demons' is weird, because the episode explains what they are. Essentially they're Stephen King's Langoliers.
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Apr 15, 2024 15:46
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