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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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DoctorWhat posted:And yes, I'm familiar with the Army Corps of Engineers and other military funding of public works. But we can all recognize that operations like engineering and coast guard work are entirely out scaled by imperially-motivated police action and regime change operations that alchemize chaos and death in the global south into economic benefits for the MIC. I'm not sure why you keep giving American examples (like the Army Corps of Engineers). I'm by no means saying that the British armed forces are clear of all wrongs, but you seem to be continually conflating the practices and institutions in quite different countries. I suppose you would say that they're all part of the imperial core or whatnot, but that appears to be particular to the ideological standpoint you're operating from. Do we actually know where Danny served? I assume it was meant to be Afghanistan or Iraq given that those are the two conflicts that Britain has had soldiers deployed in most recently (if he was going to kill a civilian it would probably be one of those two, though a generation earlier it would be much more likely to be Northern Ireland).
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Jan 1, 2024 19:03
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DoctorWhat posted:UK involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were direct extensions of imperial foreign policy. The lives and life experiences of Iraqis and Afghans were judged to be valueless in the face of the oil-lust of the global north. Blair and Bush and the rest were architects of mass death for profit, and the fiction of the victimized, bamboozled soldier is one finger of a larger cultural project to make war permanently ambiguous - complicated and sad and tragic but never a crime, never evil, never a choice made on the premise that some people count LESS, or not at all. I am obviously not defending the killing of civilians. The whole point of Danny's character, I thought, was to present someone who had done something for which they felt *personal* guilt. So I think you're being somewhat trite in your summary of it - I don't think he is redeemed by the narrative. I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores and the justification or condemnation of those conflicts, because this isn't the thread for it. I was just asking if we knew specifically where he had served - because Afghanistan and Iraq were quite different conflicts taking place under different conditions, and I don't want to conflate them: but I have a notion that the show might have left it ambiguously "somewhere foreign", which I think is deserving of criticism. Edit: ah no, I see from a follow-up post that they were specific. Fair enough!
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Jan 1, 2024 19:16
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Matthew Modine said that originally, his character was supposed to die at the end of Full Metal Jacket; but he managed to convince Kubrick to let him live, because to Modine that was the true horror of war. Surviving a war, and having to live with the knowledge of the things you did to survive. And neither did it try to say it was only the fault of his commanders - because actually soldiers do have moral responsibility and if they kill a civilian then that's not alright, that they were following orders isn't a defense, and indeed I think soldiers are trained to question orders that might be illegal. (In this case it seems it was some kind of accident or misjudgement, but while that might change the legal situation I would assume it doesn't change the guilt).
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Jan 1, 2024 19:29
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Khanstant posted:Reckon the UKians would struggle just as much if we decided to make up a new dialect for every single neighborhood too. In this case he has a pretty easy to understand accent though!
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Jan 5, 2024 01:05
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PriorMarcus posted:Isn't that just the opening of the Davros episode he wrote? Moffat doesn't seem the type to reuse an idea. *looks directly to camera* uh-huh
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Jan 5, 2024 12:36
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Covok posted:Listen, yesterday, I watched the first episode of Primeval because it looked cool and some of y'all accents are like listening to someone talk with their head in jello. I'm kinda interested actually which ones really stand out (I have not seen the crap 00s dinosaur show). Like the West Country accent is notoriously funny-sounding to British ears but actually given that (I think?) that is quite similar to some historical American accents maybe that one actually sounds more normal than, I don't know, Geordie or whatever.
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Jan 5, 2024 18:35
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Yes, I would say acclimatise. That's an interesting variation. He really does just sound like an average Scottish person to me! Fascinating really - I think of American accents as being much more varied than that. Like yon folk up in Minnesota - now that's a lovely accent, very interesting. Could see an interesting Who filmed/set up in that part of the US actually - Who does Fargo or something.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:21
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To be fair they have a point. I'm from England and even I think Edinburgh people sound a bit posh.
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Jan 6, 2024 12:14
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Yeah a large part of it for me is that I rate Capaldi as an actor whereas I... very much do not think Matt Smith has the same depth of skill. And I liked a lot of his Who!
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Jan 6, 2024 14:32
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Bicyclops posted:I know there are some parents in the thread: how early did you start show them Doctor Who? My oldest is five, which still feels young to me, but he wants to watch it because he got a few Doctor Who books from relatives. My little sister (who is now nearly 18) watched David Tennant's werewolf episode when it came out, and she was 1 year old at the time. She's been watching it since.
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Jan 6, 2024 15:38
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Yeah James Goss lives in a very not metaphorical cave now. Seems nice!
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Jan 12, 2024 17:31
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Open Source Idiom posted:Speaking of dumb plans. It's working so far so why change perfection?
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Jan 17, 2024 14:27
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Jerusalem posted:Oh I'm the wrong person to ask then, I'd just give you the entire list of complete Doctor Who episodes except for Delta and the Bannermen, Timelash and Time and the Rani My worst Doctor Who opinion is that I genuinely enjoyed Timelash more than Genesis of the Daleks.
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Jan 20, 2024 11:55
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You really shouldn't skip Timelash, even if it's just for Paul Darrow.
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Jan 21, 2024 00:20
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Everyone should watch Timelash to see Paul Darrow as he clearly realized the script was a steaming load; and so decided that rather than merely phone in his role, he was going to have some fun, and do his best "Olivier as Richard III" with it instead. He truly does some Acting.
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Jan 21, 2024 00:58
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McGann posted:Just a brief aside, vaguely related to Who: What sort of view?
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Jan 21, 2024 16:14
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McGann posted:It's just pre-tipping point social/culture stuff. Regular use of "Transvestite", some minor misogynistic tones when describing women (She was ugly as poo poo, she HAD to be smart sorta line). As I noted, nothing glaring or anything appearing malicious - more a sense of "If this was written ten years later, this would be problematic, and if they author didn't agree it was problematic in retrospect, they probably did it intentionally". These could also easily be "This is the character's headspace, not the author's" but I find it takes a *very* skilled author to not let any of their own views bleed through. Yeah, that makes sense. Though I would say in 2011 "transvestite" was a reasonably normal word to use (though people would probably use it in a way that distinguished from transsexuals). Like, as in, I am saying this as a British trans person - it's not a term I've ever identified with but I'm fairly sure I know some people who at the very least did in the recent past, and I wouldn't necessarily consider use of it problematic now - though it depends how he was using it for sure. The misogyny sounds pretty unambiguous though! (As you say, could very much be a character view thing, but yes I agree at best that is definitely a misogynistic character.)
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Jan 21, 2024 17:33
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McGann posted:Makes sense - I should have specified, the character thinking the misogynistic bit was PC grant, the protagonist, which is why it stood out to me. However, thinking along the lines below.. Like to be clear there's very much a transphobic way of using it! And I might be wrong about how it would have come across in 2011. But it doesn't to me feel jarringly bad. Having googled it many people seem to regard "crossdresser" as better? But I just don't know that that's as true in the same way in the UK? Think getting into it properly would be way too much of a derail for this thread though. The character being ex-Met certainly feels to me like a sufficient explanation for them being shite at various social stuff. The Met is an awful institution (obviously you might have general criticisms of police forces, and certainly there are few forces in the UK who don't have either a bad reputation for one thing or another or are literally in the middle of nowhere policing cows mainly and so don't really have much chance to accumulate one: but I would say that the Met have a particular reputation for being especially regressive).
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Jan 21, 2024 21:42
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Edward Mass posted:I'm assuming you're watching the Talons of Weng-Chiang, which is probably the most unfortunately racism-adjacent serial. If not for the yellowface, you'd bet your rear end it would be the #1 story of all time. Yeah I haven't watched this yet (because of the racism) but people do seem to uniformly say this, that it would be the best story were it not for that. I understand the fandom of two/three decades ago was worse and just said it was the best with less qualifiers?
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Jan 22, 2024 00:20
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Sydney Bottocks posted:It wasn't just the fandom, there was a lot of casual racism on British TV throughout the 60s and 70s. Remember, The Black & White Minstrel show was only canceled about a year after Talons of Weng-Chiang aired. Sure, but I feel like in the 90s or early 00s there was less of it and we could recognise it for what it was? I was a small child at the time so maybe I'm wrong about this.
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Jan 22, 2024 02:05
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DavidCameronsPig posted:A lot of it is that a big percentage of the British Black and Asian community was just a lot newer than, say, Afro-Americans are to the US. A lot of immigration to the UK, particularly the big cities, happened in the immediate post war period with families like the Windrush generation coming over. In the 1960s, this was still all fairly new and a lot of empire-era stereotypes were still kicking around in common culture, but by the 1980s you had a second generation of Black and Brown Brits who'd grown up in the UK, and who were a lot less willing to put up with that poo poo than their parents were. And also, white kids who had grown up with them and could see those supposed traits didn't remotely match reality in any way. We still think we're a global power, it's unfortunate (also we have nukes and a seat on the Security Council which doesn't help with the general delusion). I seem to recall the alternative comedy scene in the 80s pushed back a lot of the fairly racist comedy scene of previous decades, your Bernard Mannings and the like. People (I assume) still go to Roy "Chubby" Brown shows but mercifully I don't really think it's many of them nowadays. And it's not on TV. This all being said, I feel like in the 00s there was a bit of a resurgence in comedy in particular? See: Little Britain, or the inexplicable popularity of Jimmy Carr.
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Jan 22, 2024 09:36
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Fil5000 posted:Yeah, Little Britain has a bunch of "oof" moments now, as does most of The League of Gentlemen. Jimmy Carr is in a slightly different camp where the entire purpose is to shock rather than "aren't these foreigners funny", but he's so loving lazy with it that there's times that it might as well be Bernard Manning material. The League of Gentleman was the foundation of a lot of good stuff but it doesn't really hold up, yeah. Inside No 9 is great though (and there is one episode which tackles the rather hackneyed nature of a lot of comedy of that earlier era, the heartbreaking Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room). Regarding the awfulness of the 00s: yeah it was terrible. Thinking of things like Trinny and Suzannah too. We're quite lucky really that the 05-10 Doctor Who broadly doesn't feel like it has most of those foibles, and indeed while it's by *no means* perfect I think the unambiguous queerness, at least, was a push back against some of that (still doesn't treat women particularly well though).
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Jan 22, 2024 11:24
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Lest we forget, if DW hadn't been put on hiatus between Colin Baker's first season and Trial of a Time Lord, the next script Holmes was working in for the show was to be set in Singapore, with the working title of "Yellow Fever and How to Cure It". Youngest commissioned officer in the British Army during WW2? That's a weirdly specific thing to be. I suppose someone has to be!
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Jan 22, 2024 17:18
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Warthur posted:I feel much less conflicted about liking Nardole now I know Lucas has distanced himself from that and apologised for it. It's because Matt Lucas isn't a total rear end in a top hat with an absolutely terrible reputation in the business.
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Jan 22, 2024 21:24
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Yeah, I mean, this is all very nice but literally the last episode hit the beat of going back to the Timeless Child stuff and reiterating that the Doctor was adopted. RTD has been pretty clear he doesn't want to retcon and it seems he isn't going to entirely leave it alone either.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:27
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PriorMarcus posted:I think using it as an emotional hook for the Doctor is fine, but further explanation of it would suck. This is definitely how I feel - but in a sense trying to explain it away is also trying to explain it more! Just let your hearts heal!
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Jan 23, 2024 17:55
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Hollismason posted:Jelly Babies are loving weird they're covered in what I am assuming is cornstarch which gives them a strange taste. Skill issue.
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Jan 27, 2024 23:08
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Dabir posted:It's not so much the taste, it's a bit of a squeaky feeling on your teeth. Easily dealt with though, just suck them a bit before you chew. Works with so many things!
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Jan 28, 2024 00:06
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MrL_JaKiri posted:...The Abominable Snowmen, The Curse of Fenric, The Sea Devils, The Stones of Blood, Ghost Light... ...The Satan Pit...
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Feb 4, 2024 01:21
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I believe the guy when he says Kill The Moon wasn't intended as an abortion metaphor. To be clear I think he's a loving idiot but I can see how it happened.
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Feb 11, 2024 10:41
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DoctorWhat posted:Watched The Happiness Patrol for the first time yesterday as part of a season 25 + 26 watch through. drat they figured out how to make Doctor Who good huh. They got seven or eight really good stories in basically in a row right before they got taken out behind the barn. drat. The Happiness Patrol is far better than it has any right to be. The scene where he unsticks and resticks the Kandyman's legs objectively shouldn't work but it somehow does. You really see this side of Seven who is just a scheming chaos agent.
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Feb 12, 2024 09:48
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Random Stranger posted:That might be what they thought the plot was but the message winds up muddled; there's no real pro-space dragon arguments beyond "it's a baby!", for example. And there was no "mother" involved in the decision, metaphorical or otherwise which meant no emotional connection. There was no ethical delema unless you're anti-abortion; it's a shame to have to kill baby space dragon but sometimes you have to put down wild animals who are dangers to people and you won't find many people arguing otherwise. As people have said, they didn't think it was the plot. I'm not sure they thought at all.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:01
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Yeah I would say that Jodie struggled to really impress herself on the role but I'm pretty sure that's down to the inconsistent writing - it must have been very frustrating as an actor to work with. I think the socially awkward stuff works well and I think she's faced more criticism for it than a male doctor would have because, well, with my feminism hat on, it is expected that women are more socially agreeable. It's just a shame that I think Chibnall doesn't land it on the whole.
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Feb 13, 2024 12:15
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No doubt in my mind Chibbers is a Loom Truther.
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Feb 16, 2024 18:10
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Khanstant posted:Arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. gently caress, awful. Have always enjoyed him as a character actor but I guess that's over now.
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Feb 19, 2024 08:51
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Rochallor posted:I don't think it's been brought up yet, but Elizabeth Sandifer of Eruditorum Press has started covering the Chibnall era. I'm only up to the Rosa entry so far, but... it is brutal, unsurprisingly. My days of thinking that she is an overly pretentious critic in love with her own cleverness are certainly reaching a middle.
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Feb 27, 2024 08:18
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I think the fact that she wasn't previously a fan is fine but the fact that I believe she wasn't encouraged to watch some of the deeper history of the show is bonkers to me. I don't really understand how she approached the role at all. I like her as an actor but over time I think I'm more willing to admit that she isn't an amazing Doctor, and that loving sucks because I don't think it's a gender thing but it lumps me in with a bunch of chuds who do think that.
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Feb 27, 2024 12:01
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2house2fly posted:This is a bizarre one. I don't think you have to be a fan of something to act in it, but you'd research the part surely. As I recall, Matt Smith wasn't a fan of the show either but Steven Moffat got him to watch some old serials to inform his performance. And of course Peter Capaldi is a lifelong fan which allowed him to add things like offering people jelly babies out of a cigar case I don't think I've ever really seen her talk much about the show and I would be quite interested in her take on it all.
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Feb 27, 2024 14:24
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I think the bit with the Grand Serpent is somewhat lost if you aren't aware that he played properly the best single villain on long-running UK cop conspiracy corruption thriller Line of Duty. I want to be clear this doesn't make anything make more sense. But I do think it's an essential part of understanding the metatext of "why the gently caress do I care about this guy". You care about him because he's Dot Cotton!! (Boo!) It's very hard to explain Line of Duty though because it makes very little sense. It's sort of like: "what if everyone in the British state who wasn't a Good Cop was a corrupt paedo criminal except, twist, possibly there are no good cops, unless there are". Somehow that doesn't really get to the heart of it. It makes about as much sense as Flux but there's no dog aliens so it coheres a little more.
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Feb 28, 2024 07:10
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Barry Foster posted:I've not seen Line of Duty but that makes perfect sense to me (except for the question of there being a Good Cop at all, I mean) Yes it's very ambivalent about whether Good Cops exist, the protagonists being internal affairs who mostly try and catch corrupt cops (this is how you can tell it's a fiction). But to a degree the final season was about how actually a) it's hopeless, b) either you corrupt yourself or resign because the system is broken, c) you can never truly Catch The Head Of Corruption because it's all rotten, d) sometimes there isn't an evil mastermind, sometimes stupid greedy people do things for short-term gain under your noses. People thought the message was pretty confusing but it seems clear enough to me.
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Feb 28, 2024 10:59
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