Doctor Who

Honestly, just make sure you've watched some of torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures between the Doctor Who series 2 Final (Doomsday) but before you watch the series 4 Finale two Parter (Stolen Earth) and you'll be fine. Other than that, you can watch them in any order without any continuity issues.

Doomsday introduced the scenario Torchwood spins off from, and series 2 episode "School Reunion" introduced the scenario Sarah Jane Adventures spins off of.

Skip Children of Earth too. I've gone on at length saying why earlier on in the thread, but suffice to say that the very thought of it makes me want to take a shower.

Children of Earth is very painful and unpleasant to watch, but in a good way, I always thought.

I recommend watching it with a friend.

Good. Because when the ending pisses you off beyond bearing, as it will, you've got someone to punch.

...

Oh wait. That's a bad thing.

Well, now I don't know if I shouldn't watch it or if I have to watch it now. And I watch the series with twin brother BTW.

edited 4th Aug '16 6:23:23 AM by Sunchet

Children of Earth is incredibly bleak, and if tonal inconsistancies within a shared universe put you off, it might not be for you. But it's very good.

and if tonal inconsistancies within a shared universe put you off,

Ding ding ding... main reason I don't care much for Torchwood is that fact.

If tonal inconsistencies within a shared universe put you off, than I have to congratulate you for sticking with the show this long.

It is just how completely different Torchwood felt.. especially later on. Or just how plain cynical and dark. The whole "I think sometimes the Doctor just looks at us, hangs his head and sighs" bit about why The Doctor didn't show up was just the final nail.

In fairness, there are many similar points in human history - hell, in the present day, for that matter - where the Doctor has spectacularly failed to show up.

Give it time.. eventually it'll turn out he was involved somehow.

Children of Earth is a work of art.

It's deeply uncomfortable and disturbing to watch, in all the right ways.

It's better made than Miracle Day. Children of Earth is actually. Y'know. Good.

By which I mean "competent."

You have to give them that they knew what they were doing. Even if you don't find what they were doing to your taste. You have to at least grant them that.

The same cannot be said for Miracle Day.

edited 4th Aug '16 5:33:11 PM by unnoun

Not denying it wasn't well done... more or less. Just... ehhhhhhh no, just no on the premise, ideas, the whole feel and tone.. not a story I'd ever call 'good' since that implies I like it. Well made, almost certainly.

Isn't Miracle Day considered non-canon by a lot of people?

It certainly happened, but I'm not sure if it currently had happened. Timelines are weird.

It kind of de-canonized itself what with apparently not taking place in the same 'verse as actual Doctor Who given that it had been established.. Captain jack's Immortality DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

The most we can say about Miracle Day and canonicity is that it appears to have happened the same summer the Doctor had River leave the Ponds in while he was looking for baby Melody, but they had nothing to say about the little matter of months going by with the human race no longer capable of dying.

Here's how I understood all that: the effect that did it saw Jack's blood and said "that's what humans are like these days? I'll do my best." (Wait... why did they give it Jack's blood? To see what would happen? To make bank on painkillers?) and it just decreed that no matter the damage, people would keep living.

Meanwhile, Jack's personal immortality was never actually proven to have been turned off. With the Miracle happening, no injury would kill him anyway, so his curse was satisfied.

edited 4th Aug '16 6:37:53 PM by TParadox

It's not like Doctor Who hasn't done the same thing with it's own fantastic elements.

There is just so much that series made up, changed, just did not care about, and just outright screwed up.

Like the numbers for how fast the population was going to grow, wow did they fuck that up. And you can see them doing it. They take average number of deaths per day, and then ADD THAT, to the average births per day to get the population growth number. Rather then just take births per day, and then simply NOT subtract deaths per day. I know Writers Can Not Do Math but still.....

None of the compares to a child murder/rapist being let out of jail, just because the lethal injection didn't kill him. Guess what, there have been many many actual case of someone surviving a lethal injection.... they just go ahead and do it again. The sentence is "Death" not "Get these chemicals pumped into you." In a story about magical cave vaginas that make the whole world immortal... that is still too big of a stretch.

Magical cave whats

Lot of jokes about how "The Blessing" kind of looked..... like something HR Geiger would create that couldn't jut outwards...

This isn't ranting/bitching, this is laughing at just how idiotic so much of that series was that it reaches hilarious absurdity levels.

edited 4th Aug '16 7:17:09 PM by Seraphem

And it's such a meandering story. Like, was the what, ten? eleven? episodes just in the realm where the British writers in the writers' room didn't know how to tell a single serialized story that long? The first several episodes seem to stretch to fill time and then suddenly two thirds into the series it says, "hey, waitaminute! There are some very important things to know!" and does an entire episode in flashback to the 30s that completely breaks the flow of the narrative and may well have been better served as a series of more limited flashbacks spread throughout the previous episodes. Except half the things it introduced were wrapped up in the next episode.

giant cave vagina at the center of the earth which decides who lives and who dies

what.