Doctor Who

Eh, maybe later. I'm tired.

You can. If you want.

edited 1st Sep '14 12:26:41 PM by Wackd

I think I might be. Not that wrong, anyway.

I do like that Doomsday got rid of Rose. Technically, the way the Doctor and the show kept moping about her being gone wasn't actually the episode's fault.

I do like Bad Wolf/Parting Of The Ways.

I mean, it's your interpretation thingy.

edited 1st Sep '14 12:28:29 PM by unnoun

Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways is probably the Davies finale I could complain about least.

So the Ice Warriors are pretty good.

I like how they turned out to not be Always Evil.

Surprising no one!

Also, nice to see he likes "Cold War", because I'm assuming the terrible one is the Peladon sequel. (Also "Seeds of Doom" is so good you guys)

Seeds of Death or Seeds of Doom?

"Death", sorry.

Stupid Who serial titles.

...Come to think of it, The Invasion isn't that bad.

It's got the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe hanging out with the Brigadier, so that's kind of a given.

The Troughton Cybermen stories really are pretty good. Wheel in Space is tricky, but I love it for all its rough edges. Tomb is racist and xenophobic, but has some of Troughton's best acting and one of the all-time best visual set pieces of the 1960s. The Moonbase and The Invasion are both quite good, as, obviously, is the Tenth Planet. And with that as your largest single block of Cybermen stories, the relative mediocrity of every single other era of Cybermen stories smooths itself out a bit, not least because every era manages at least one decent Cybermen story.

I think the median quality Cybermen story is probably Rise/Age of Steel, which, as median stories go, is actually a pretty decent one.

Hmm.

...That's a pretty good point actually.

But, I mean. It's also just talking about the stories, and not the "monsters" themselves and how they do or do not work.

I guess we've had a lot of really really good stories about slightly dull stompy, shooty robots.

...Why do we like this show again?

Doctor Who is that rare program where no one can fault you for thinking the good guys are the most interesting characters.

Because it can do "lizard creatures from Mars" and make it work 80% of the time.

Until Adric happened at least.

...Also that.

edited 1st Sep '14 1:00:51 PM by unnoun

"Cold War" could've been resolved pretty easily if the Doctor had said "in a little over half a century your water source is gonna turn you all into zombies, here's some evidence, how about you don't kill us as thanks?"

Am I wrong in assuming the rotten egg is the Peladon sequel?

Adric's interesting! It's just that even his hidden depths make you want to punch him.

edited 1st Sep '14 1:02:44 PM by Wackd

I guess the thing about Cybermen is that their successes are always a bit conditional- if you take the average based solely on a kind of pass/fail per story, they get a passing grade, but I bet they'd do somewhat worse if you took into account just how bad their failures are.

I'd describe Adric as being fascinatingly punchable. Like, he's a very special kind of awful.

edited 1st Sep '14 1:05:35 PM by Gilphon

Yeah, Monster of Peladon is the only really crap Ice Warriors story. (I like Cold War. It's not spectacular, but it's fun. And it did finally crack how to do a straight up homage to the classic series and have it feel fresh.)

edited 1st Sep '14 1:05:18 PM by TheEruditorumGuy

I mean, the Cybermen got Attack, and the Master got the TV Movie. And Time-Flight.

"Cold War", for all its faults, is that rare Who story that makes me feel like the show is actually using the history it has at its disposal, even if it's only really as far as the fairly obvious "mutually assured distraction is a bit shit, isn't it?" It's a story you could've only superficially done when the Ice Warriors were still relevant. Partially because the Klingons weren't really a thing yet.

edited 1st Sep '14 1:08:50 PM by Wackd

The weirdest thing about Cold War to me is that the episode doesn't even attempt to acknowledge that the Doctor hasn't seen or heard of the Ice Warriors in four decades of show.

I'm not sure if that should even be strange, but I was expecting the episode to hinge on the fact that these creatures have been absent from the mythology for such a length of time.

They apparently pop up in the Wilderness Years quite a bit.

Didn't they turn out to be evil again a lot?

My expanded but surely equally viable material exposure to them was from the comics where they team up with the Meddling Monk for some reason to be dastardly.

Granted, that's not Wilderness because I think it was running alongside the Fifth Doctor era.

edited 1st Sep '14 1:41:41 PM by Bocaj

Yeah.

Yeah, I just decline to count the novels and Big Finish when evaluating the quality of a character or concept. For every Jubilee, there are a dozen War of the Daleks, and that's basically true of anything in the spin-off material.