Doctor Who

I didn't want to say it because if it wasn't that one you'd have to start criticizing it.

Fresh-eyed movie blog

I still think Series 1 is a damn good series, possibly second only to Series 5 in Nu Who.

series 1 was a good series with a nice structure in my opinion, but it was quite clear that the new series was just findig its feet and production-wise it was apparently rather troubled. There were some good episodes and some not so good episodes but I'm not sure how many of the good episodes are just Nostalgia Filter.

The internet is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it-William Gibson

It didn't get its rhythm until somewhere around The Empty Child.

Fresh-eyed movie blog

We could potentially have an interesting conversation about that if you explained what you meant.

He's the Doctor. He could be anywhere in time and space.

I did like "Dalek" even with having previously experienced "Jubilee". I think the two stories ultimately work in different ways.

I also liked most of Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways, until the last couple minutes of the latter at least.

I liked "Rose". And "Father's Day". And "The End Of The World".

And, I mean. Aliens Of London/World War III was very silly and camp, but I'm not sure I'd say it was actually bad per se.

And, I mean, obviously The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances was brilliant. Goes without saying really.

But pretty much all the crap I didn't like in "Dalek" was done a million times better in Jubilee, so a lot of the time I'm just sitting there thinking "YOU HAD THE PERFECT TEMPLATE! AND THE SAME WRITER! THE HELL WENT WRONG?"

I mean, Jubilee had Evelyn actually understanding what the Dalek was and growing to trust it anyway, forcing it to see the error of its ways without being physically altered. Rose meanwhile was a complete dipshit and the only way the Dalek could change was because Rose herself touched it and she's super-special-empathy-person or whatever.

And the insane guy running the place actually had good reason to be insane! Van Statten was just a dickweed for no reason!

I'll admit, "Bad Wolf", is...okay. There are bits that work but the conceit doesn't have much life in it. I question the need to split the party three ways, since you could probably get more mileage out of sending up one show than just kinda needling three. And the story pretty much loses my interest the second the Daleks show up.

At the time I may have thought it was decent, and the conspiracy theorist is a decidedly good concept, but there's too much in it that'll become symptomatic of the worst problems of the Davies era, specifically the "Doctor as escape from banal reality" angle and the insistence on Mood Whiplash to the point where both drama and comedy lose their impact.

Suffers from coming on the heals of the Adam episode and making it obvious that Adam's real crime was not being a series regular. The Reapers are a really damn dull way to sell time being broken, too, being as they are just giant bats. To say nothing of the fact that Billie Piper doesn't quite sell Rose as desperate enough to ignore the fact that she's breaking reality, and her dad doesn't quite function as a character.

...I can barely remember anything, good or bad, about this episode, which in my mind is the worst sin Who can commit. It's allowed to be awful but I can't tolerate forgettable.

Eh...debatable? A lot of this story comes down on whether you find it funny, and I just didn't.

Indeed.

edited 18th Apr '14 5:15:05 AM by Wackd

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

Mark Gatiss can go fuck himself.

I disagree entirely. I like the story and drama and character stuff. I mean, it's Paul Cornell.

I can remember it. I liked it. The scene with Rose and the worker. Cassandra.

Biodata~

But more seriously, Jubilee was intended for the Big Finish market, Dalek was intended for everyone that paid their license fees.

And I seriously like this scene. As written, it's just the Doctor chinwagging, but Eccleston's performance is a masterpiece.

Eh. I mean, hating it for what gets done based on it later seems kinda dumb.

edited 18th Apr '14 5:48:33 AM by unnoun

Even the best writers have bad days.

Oh, right! Cassandra! "Moisturize me". Yeah. Meh.

"I'm sorry, your taxes don't cover good storytelling. You'll have to look to the private sector for that."

Well, I mean, it's also brought down by the score, the cinematography, the blocking, and the other forty-someodd minutes of episode. But yeah, it's a good performance.

I disagree. The episode's pretty much all set-up, so if I don't like what it's setting up it stands to reason I won't be overly fond of the episode itself.

edited 18th Apr '14 5:56:00 AM by Wackd

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

...I thought that Father's Day was a pretty damned good day.

I mean, it wasn't Love And War, or the book of Human Nature, and I'm afraid I mostly know Cornell by his Doctor Who work, but I thought it was a fantastic episode.

Father's Day.

It was good storytelling. What it wasn't was something designed to appeal to Doctor Who fans. It was designed to reintroduce the Daleks for those segments of the population that didn't remember them, and for those that did remember them, which was, in fact, most everyone, to address a lot of the popular consensus surrounding them.

Dalek.

It set up a lot of the conventions of the Davies era. But for the most part those conventions worked. It set up Rose, Mickey, and Jackie, who, for that first season at least, weren't so bad. And, I mean, I liked Jackie.

The End Of The World.

edited 18th Apr '14 6:06:43 AM by unnoun

Well then they couldn't have cannibalized a story less suited to the task than Jubilee. Most of the elements of it they left in could pretty easily have been excised, but they weren't, and those elements are what make this story such a mess especially when we have them done right as points of comparison.

Gonna have to agree to disagree on this one, honestly.

I would totally click those links but I actually set aside this time to write a paper and I'm managing it pretty poorly at the moment.

edited 18th Apr '14 6:07:13 AM by Wackd

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

Well. The conventions worked in Rose itself, at least. It took until Series 2 for them to get as toxic as they did. Mostly because of Ten. Nine was fine.

Write your paper.

No preference.

Father Time.

edited 18th Apr '14 6:39:45 AM by unnoun

I will never not have animosity towards World War III for its stupid, audience insulting snapback.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Totally the Doctor.

Take out all the fucking and its even something that could happen on the show.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Jamie for series 8 companion.

The last hurrah? Nah, I'd do it again.

Amusing out-of-context statement, yep.

Heart of Stone

so does anyone have the horror channel on sky? anyone know how they're running the episodes? I assume it would be with a single advert break in the middle of each episode, but I don't watch a lot of sky channels so I have no idea.

The internet is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it-William Gibson

Father Time by Lance Parkin.

Storm Warning from Big Finish.

This Is Gallifrey~

This is Paradox~ Faction Paradox!

The Enemy.

Ten things Lawrence Miles may have a right to be upset about.

The Nature of The Enemy. A War between Sterility and Creativity.

edited 18th Apr '14 6:11:12 PM by unnoun

Series One showcases some of the things which made RTD a good writer. It also introduced the things which made him a bad writer, but I get the impression for Series One he actually made second drafts of the scripts this time.

RTD loves mood whiplash, and yes, he isn't quite the master of the surreality going from the dark to the jovial, but that kind of punk juxtaposition is what made old who iconic so I persuade him for at least trying.

No, what RTD does well is the opposite direction; he takes a perfectly benign scene and then tells us inexplicably that something is wrong. (The Moff does this as well, but in a different way, Moff will hint to you something is wrong; he'll put in audio cues or visual cues to clue you in so it's slow and daunting, what's that sound? It's the end of the tape, it stopped playing eighty seconds ago) The best example of this is in Bad Wolf, where it's a Bathos episode of already outdated pop culture jokes, but also murder, but then that solar flare that's been ratted on about all episode happens and the entire plot stops and the set goes dark. And a character cries out the Doctor's name and she says she knows of him because her masters, hiding out in the darkness scream his name. And then the lights come back on and we know nothing other than something is wrong.

Other examples of this. "Information: You Are All Going To Die." Which is the bluntest version of this employable, but brilliant for it. Rose had some of this; a man's face plastered across history. We're shown an impossible thing, as an audience we know exactly why it's true, but it's engrossing.

RTD tried to make us believe that there was more to this universe than we currently know, and we couldn't be safe in our knowledge. Trouble is, he didn't know how to tell us this in new ways. The impossible coincides of words being repeated got used more than the one time it should have. Things got really heavy handed towards the end of the run where we are simply told 'It is returning, they are returning, and he is retuning.'

Moff's approach is different. He doesn't want to install an abstract sense of not knowing everything; he wants it to be explicit what the mysteries are. He loves cluing you in that things are not as they seem, but he does this in an intense small level; why do the statues only have one head each? Why are there tally marks? Why is that person repeating them self? We already know the answers, but being able to realise it as an audience member is the engrossing things in his suspense.

Moffat is much more about answers than questions. Nobody could answer the question 'What is wrong with the universe?' that RTD asks, but asking 'Who is River Song?' is such an exact question we can hazard guesses and be assured that such a question exists to be answered.

I don't believe either method id better, but I appreciate both.

So are we doing the thing closer to noonish or closer to three? I've got the same shift I had on Wednesday, so I can be in and out. It's busier on Saturdays, so I'd be more out than I was.

Or maybe we're skipping this Saturday? Are you recovered, Wack'd?

Fresh-eyed movie blog

I don't know what my opinion on Rose is. I think I like Rose in it. She does a lot.

I love The End of the World because it's gorgeous and alien.

The Unquiet Dead is pretty good. And pretty. And ~Gwyneth~.

When it comes to WW 3 I don't even think of the Slitheen. For me it's all about the Harriet/Rose/Doctor team and the pain for Mickey and Jackie and just how active everyone is. There's no one who just sits there. They all get to be heroes.

I haven't seen Dalek in ages and I don't think I care much about it.

The Long Game has the advantage of being set in the year 200k, and having Caprica. Disadvantage of, ooh, quite a bit. A small thing: it should be Adam who first complains about the heat, while Rose notices the absence of aliens. (And then starts worrying about the heat later)

Father's Day? Eh. It's hard to overlook that after saving Pete Rose doesn't really do anything. The emotion falls flat for me. Not sure why.

At least when she ends up hanging from a barrage balloon in TEC/TDD it's because she deliberately went to help a kid who looked lost. Climbing that rope is the single sole possible other instance of her gymnastics ability. She does save the three of them... that's not my point. This is gorgeous. I love the music, I love the gold light and the optimism and Nancy's strength and despair. Everyone here gets to be heroes. It's funny. There's dancing. I love it.

I also love Boomtown but should point out that if Rose had stayed with Mickey instead of running to the Doctor she wouldn't have been held hostage by Blon. But the talking.

Haven't seen the finale in ages. Remember loving it, despite Rose not doing anything until she gets sent home. "I wish I'd never met you, Doctor. I was much better off as a coward."

edited 19th Apr '14 2:25:15 AM by Laura

He's the Doctor. He could be anywhere in time and space.

In hospital. Distinct possibility of no game today.

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

We care more about you than about some silly game. It's fine.

Spare Parts.

The Tenth Planet.

Jubilee.

Storm Warning.

edited 19th Apr '14 2:54:27 PM by unnoun

Bit of a relief, actually. Splitting my attention between work and RP is stressful.

If we are doing something, a Tumblr message is most likely to get my attention, because that sends me an email and I have email notifications on my phone. A TV Tropes PM gets me nothing but the likelihood that it's just somebody replying to the Herald message.

Fresh-eyed movie blog