Doctor Who II

Arlene : it is true that Rose’s supporting cast are annoying as hell in series one. It’s also true, however, that they improve immeasurably as series two goes on. Jackie is brilliant in “Love & Monsters”, and Mickey quite remarkably stops being irritating and starts to become a likeable hero both in the Cyberman two-parter (which finally gives him a bit of backstory) and in… well, I won’t spoil it for you, you’ve got all that to come. Suffice to say, by the end of the series, I actually began to feel sorry that it was the last we were going to see of them all.

“Fathers Day” is bloody excellent, though. First ep of the new series to make me cry, I think. And by no means the last. I’m so bloody psyched about the rest of the series, though – Cornell has raised the bar with “Human Nature”, but we’ve got a Moffat to enjoy, followed by the return of Captain Jack (another note to Arlene : wait until you meet Captain Jack. Just wait.), followed by what looks to be the awesomest and darkest finale yet, complete with JOHN FUCKING SIMM. Bring it on!

Arlene, you must be due to have The Empty Child next – when’s that on? I’ll really look forward to hearing what you think about it…

Just read the Fear Factor thingy. Out of 5 teh kidz gave it 5.5

(27) “This is getting seriously weird,” decides Harry. Adam’s sad. “It’s coming,” says Samuel ominously…
(28) The kids fall silent.
(29) The kids grin at the Doctor’s cleverness.
(33) The kids all jump out of their seats! Harry covers his face with his hands. Samuel clutches dad.

Heck I’m looking forward to this.

Cheers John.

Btw look what I found…

http://www.powerplaymagazine.co.uk/contacts.html

DoN’t BliNk.

I’m rather pished, but have to rave about how bloody awesome Blink was. Simply stunning and the best piece of TV Sci-fi I’ve seen in years. A solid story (which made sense!), very little running around, the creepiest badguys I’ve seen in the show and a great cast (make Sally a companion NOW).

Yes, it was obviously one of those shows they roll out to give the regular cast a break, but it was far better than anything they’ve ever done. Yes, that includes TGITFP and the recent WW1 two parter.

Okay, now that I can get three public television stations, all of which air Doctor Who, I’ll now be watching (and blathering to you lot about) two episodes weekly, on a normal week. Tomorrow (unless there’s some more pledge-drive crap) I’ll be covering part one of the two-parter with Captain Jack in it, but now I’ll try to piece together my thoughts on “The Long Game”.

Erm. Is it just me or did the Doctor etc. not actually do much? The entire second half, it seems, particularly the resolution, rested on a series of coincidences. After all, if Ms. Idunno (the “journalist”) hadn’t just happened to follow the Doctor and Rose up to where the Monster of the Week was lurking (which flies in the face of all that “They’ve been bred to not ask questions! They’re like cattle!” crap which, and I’m just guessing here, just by piecing together a few extremely subtle clues hidden deeply in the episode, is some kind of Satire or Comment on Modern TV and The News), they’d have been well fucked, I daresay. And if the Doctor hadn’t trusted Plot Element–sorry, Adam–with unlimited funds so he could install HeadDoor9.0Advanced despite how disgusted he was by it initially and how it wouldn’t actually help him retain any of this wondrous future knowledge (or would it? Did Davies ever make up his mind on that? Early on we’re told that the brain can’t hold all that information, but later it’s implied that the main reason to get HeadDoored is that you can download stuff to your brain faster or better or something), then Irritating Git (“Editor”, sorry) would never have found out who the Doctor was, so he could suddenly want the Doctor’s “knowledge” for no good reason. And we couldn’t have that, could we?

By the way, why did the Big Gob of Bubblegum With Teeth that Sounded Like Cthulhu with Strep Throat need the Doctor’s “knowledge”, anyway? Besides that It’s In The Script. Maybe Editor might’ve wanted it himself ‘cos knowing stuff makes him horny or something, but he answers to the Elder God With Laryngitis, who would presumably know that, if anything, new knowledge would be a monkey wrench in the system it’s already gotten to work quite smoothly–the entire human race is already under its proverbial thumb, somehow. Emphasis on “somehow”. I get that it appeared to have put itself in a position such that it needs the Satellite–and, I guess, tho’ it isn’t made very clear, the humans it’s allegedly controlling–to live (altho’ if a creature can’t live without technological support, isn’t that a bit contrary to evolution or something?). But how did that happen in the first place? The Doctor and Irritating Git both kept saying “They’re like cattle! They don’t ask questions!”, and we get one token but not unusual series of “I dunno, I don’t ask questions” from Ms. Idunno (would you connect heating problems and a lack of aliens hanging around to a big nasty ceiling monster controlling human development? If so, either you’re the Doctor or you need to crush some tinfoil on your hat), but I saw no real indications that they were any different from people now–in fact, isn’t there that little piece with the freedom fighter in the first half? And, again, one of those “cattle” got independent enough to save the Doctor’s life. (I guess it’s just the Doctor’s inimitable mojo that allowed her to throw off the shackles of her unwitting slavery, huh?) It’s also worth noting how very convenient it was that Ms. Idunno’s brain could suddenly handle controlling the whole Satellite even though the console thingy was made for downloading (or “processing”, ‘cos the brain may or may not be able to handle all that info, depending on the needs of the script), which is generally one-way, and that she knew she’d be able to control stuff given all this. I guess she knew all along that she could, but had never ever done so until now even accidentally (‘cos otherwise she’d prolly have been monster fodder). ‘Cos They Don’t Ask Questions; They’re Like Cattle!

How does the entire archives of this Satellite thing fit onto an answering machine, anyway? And if all that info is too much for a brain to take without immediately forgetting it, what did Plot Element plan on doing with it anyway? It would’ve been useless to him. I think. Again, I don’t think anyone actually decided whether or not this was so. (I’m not even going to touch how silly the Magic Forehead Door is. Can you get a moonroof too, and a six-disc CD player installed in your ass while they’re at it?)

On the bright side, I now know why the Doctor had that gigantic stick up his backside throughout “Father’s Day”. The Stupid Ape used him, see, and that’s very tragic. Look, the knowledge was useless to him as it was anyway. Surely a more fitting vengeance would have been letting him find that out on his own? Oh, and maybe not dooming him to dissection. After all, with a HeadDoor that can be opened so easily as his can–remember the “comedy” moment when his mother saw it?–either he’s going to be found out very, very soon and taken apart by scientists, or he’ll have to be much more than “average” and “low-key”: He’ll have to more or less cut himself off from all human contact until the day he dies, which seems a slightly disproportionate punishment for taking information in relative innocence that would have been of no use to him anyway.

Still, Adam ain’t likely to piss off the Doctor twice. He probably won’t live that long.

I loved Blink, espcially the fact that the villain wasn’t some big scary monster, but rather something as everyday as a statue. It’s an Alfred Hitchcock sort of thing, he evoked fear of ordinary things (like Birds) because what is the point of making you scared of something you’ll never see (like a Dalek).

I know people are raving about the episode but, despite it being good, I don’t think it beat Moffat’s previous efforts. Saying that, it proves that a ‘Doctor-lite’ episode can be as brilliant as they come rather than just a filler (I liked Love & Monsters but this was much better).

Sally Sparrow…yet another in a long line of, let’s face it, AMAZING girls to grace new Who episodes and who you wished were permanent fixtures.

Holy mother of shitting Christ.

…………wow……..

I don’t like to interrupt while you all are busy digesting a huge plot twist in New Who, but I’ve just had the most extraordinary good luck and I don’t really know anyplace else online where people would both know and particularly care what I’m talking about. My mother’s a member of the local Freecycle group (people who give stuff away online to people who live near them), and one of the offers she ran across yesterday included a bunch of VHS tapes. So now (because it’s my birthday on Thursday) I’m the extremely happy owner of thirty-nine VHS tapes of classic Doctor Who, each of which has three or four episodes on it. It’s five different Doctors’ worth of episodes and the Doctor Who movie (basically Pertwee through McGann). It also came with a copy of the Doctor Who Programme Guide, and twenty-three episodes of The Avengers.

I’m sorry to butt in, but I just had to share!

Sonic Edit: I checked the titles on each tape (they’re very well-labeled) against the Programme Guide, and it appears I have every story arc from Pertwee’s “Spearhead from Space” to McCoy’s “Survival”–with the notable exception of “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”. Tell me, is missing that one a good thing or a bad thing? I also started watching my first Pertwee tape–I like him! Between this and The Avengers, I may well overdose on cheap and ingenious special effects of decades past =P .

(Oh, and “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”: Pretty damned good. Steven Moffat deserves riches heaped at his feet for writing like this. It’s just complex enough, and it comes together at the end without a merry parade of loose ends flapping about. I know it’s unfair to be unable to write a wall of text for the good episodes; but then, when it’s this good, what can I say? And I promise that next time I see it, which I think is next week because local PBS programming schedules are drawn up by concussed orangutans, I’ll give “Father’s Day” a second chance.)

Honestly, now, or in a leg-pulling sense? Not that it matters much; I don’t really care if the humor in my Doctor Who is intentional or not.

Also, is it just me, the sound on my VHS tapes, or does Jon Pertwee have jeeyust a hint of a lisp? Not, I hasten to add, a “prefers the sexual attentions of the same gender” lisp, simply a minor speech impediment.

>He has a LOT of a lisp.

I thought I’d noticed one.

>By the way, you?re incredibly lucky.

And don’t I know it! And me with my birthday on Thursday. My mother said she was this close to just deleting the email about this load of tapes. When I heard about this offer, you probably heard my yelp of delight across the Atlantic. (I’m only on the second tape yet. That’s up to “Inferno”. God bless obsessive PBS watchers who tape everything.)

>But brace yourself for some utter, utter crap among the brilliance ;-)

Well, that goes without saying. Good thing I don’t mind a certain amount of crap =) .

Also: I like the New Who theme (or is it more correctly a sort of remix?) a lot; I adore the Classic Who theme even more by a factor of at least ten.

‘Talons’ is bloody brilliant, definitely in the top five classics I’ve seen. It’s the ultimate period Who story IMO.

Not long ago I was able to give “Father’s Day” a second chance. And I will admit that, despite my difficulties in identifying with Rose as a main character and her plight, it does hit all its emotional beats quite well (except for the bits regarding Rose’s mother, who, as I’ve mentioned, is dense as a black hole in this Whovian outing). Its sci-fi aspects, however, are still rather crap.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…

And I LOVE Jack’s hidden weapon. So ner.

Fun Fact: nobody who uses the phrase ‘deus ex machina’ as a criticism of something on the internet actually knows what the phrase ‘deus ex machina’ means.

And I LOVE Jack?s hidden weapon

Ooh, pardon.

Under what circumstances do you travel through time and space in a police box?

Jack’s just ‘that kinda guy’. Always armed, and always shoving stuff up his omnisexual arse. (Also, he’s not necessarily human, is he?)

I think you have anal issues… (Insert standard poor-taste G&T joke here.)

> (pity Russell couldn?t think of anything for Jack to do in his series 3 episodes, apart from bringing about the Deus Ex Machina time reverse ending that is (and the stupid FUCKING reveal of who/what he becomes?).

I take it you missed the bit about The Paradox Machine not only being set up in the first episode but becoming absolutely and utterly integral to the logic of the entire invasion, then? You may not have liked the ending or the way it reset too much stuff, but it’s not a deus ex machina, for fucking fuck’s sake. You sure you’ve not been spending too much time on OG?

>Soneone should keep RTD away from writing utensils, computers and anything else he might use to create more half-digested plot tangles like this except under the strict supervision of a cowriter.

Lest we forget, RTD wrote :

– Rose
– The Parting Of The Ways
– Doomsday
– Smith and Jones
– Gridlock
– Utopia

Not to mention The Second Coming, which is one of the best one-off television dramas of the last decade. He has his missteps, but he’s writing approximately three times as many episodes as any other writer, and plotting the series, and producing it. He may be no Moffat, but without him, Moffat wouldn’t even be writing Who. So I’m prepared to forgive him the odd New Earth or Aliens of London.

>It made perfect bloody sense and it was perfectly bloody obvious. Do you really think they were going to continue with an Earth that wasn?t just post invasion but post-largely destroyed?

Yeah, I think that was my problem with it. It was perfectly bloody obvious that RTD has seen one too many Voyager episodes and thought that it would be dramatic to stage armageddon if you have an escape clause already worked out. It may not be an example of deus ex machina, but it was bloody lazy.

As for the episodes above, only Utopia really springs to mind as a solid episode…and that’s just on the strength of the last ten minutes.

I HATE CATHERINE FUCKING TATE. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE. HER NAME RHYMES WITH HATE, AND THAT IS WHAT I DO TO HER.

HATE.

They really have lost the plot with Tate. She shouted her way through the Christmas Special and the saving grace of that was her buggering off at the end. They drop Martha (and ignore the awesome potential of Sally Sparrow) and pick an awful comedian who relies on canned laughter to convince deadbeats that her show isn’t the biggest pile of shite on TV.