Russell Two Davies

[Nick R]

Apparently, today there was some news about a change to Doctor Who’s production staff, in some obscure behind-the-scenes role. I don’t know if anyone else heard about it?

Topic

[Renegade Rob]

I meant Matt Smith lol. Time of the Doctor has to wrap up a whole lot of shit because he decided to go make Terminator Genisys.

Ohhhhh whoops my bad. I knew Karen Gillian wanted to leave earlier than originally planned and negotiated out a compromise with Moffat, which is why she left mid-season in an otherwise normal non-arc episode. 

I didn’t realize Matt Smith left early. I’d always assumed the expectation was everyone gets 3 seasons, so Ncuti was early but Smith was right on time. It was good to see him again briefly in the finale though. I squeed a bit when Anita popped into the Live Chess match because I have a real soft spot for the first two thirds of The Wedding of River Song. Having the Series 6 callback and Whittaker and the Rani and Omega in one episode does create very welcome connective tissue in my brain to help cohese together a show with quite disparate eras and elements. 

[Technopeasant]

I will grant I did hear people talking about the animated nature of Lux, but of course FarScape did that 20 years ago. I had also heard Davies pushed it to be more fantasy based, but are you really saying it was as tropey as having actual goblins? I will fully admit that Doctor Who was never close to hard sci-fi, arguably less than Star Wars even let alone Star Trek, but I still find actual “gods” a bit too far for me.

I do find the praise for the contributions of new writers encouraging though, as frankly I felt the best step after Chibnall would have been to get someone who has not written for Who at all to run it for a change (you can imagine my frustration when they just got Davies back, and then Tennant, and now Piper, and you get the idea). I personally don’t think modern Doctor Who will ever be for me (I’ve given it several chances over the last twenty years), but as an institution I wish it well and hope it finds renewal somehow.

[Warbodog]

I’m not sure the Silence arc could have been improved with 3-4 additional episodes across a series 8 (surrounded by random adventures), especially after floundering and then stalling for ages, which already killed the momentum. Time of the Doctor is rushed, but it still works (apart from the too-random Pope woman who it seems we’re already supposed to know) and I like it a lot.

[Asclepius]

I think that’s occurred to a lot of people. Something needed to tie it all together and that kid would have made the most sense. 
The 7th son of a 7th son of a 7th son is actually a girl named ~~Bob~~ Ruby

Massive hole punctured straight through that theory. Ouch. You broke my dreams.

[Asclepius]

But the Silence arc was so seamlessly executed tho

Silence arc was also cut a season short by the lead actor suddenly deciding to leave a series early.

[Asclepius]

I squeed a bit when Anita popped into the Live Chess match because I have a real soft spot for the first two thirds of The Wedding of River Song. Having the Series 6 callback and Whittaker and the Rani and Omega in one episode does create very welcome connective tissue in my brain to help cohese together a show with quite disparate eras and elements. 

Same. I loved it how they picked two random Doctors to do it with, rather than feeling obliged to do them all. The Pertwee one was particularly good as it was fun to watch Ncuti ‘see’ a Dalek!

[Asclepius]

I’m not sure the Silence arc could have been improved with 3-4 additional episodes across a series 8 (surrounded by random adventures), especially after floundering and then stalling for ages, which already killed the momentum. Time of the Doctor is rushed, but it still works (apart from the too-random Pope woman who it seems we’re already supposed to know) and I like it a lot.

The pay-off of it all for me:

Cybermen transport down onto the planet’s surface and begin firing on the people.

TASHA: (v.o.)
And so, to the fields of Trenzalore came all the Time Lord’s enemies. For this was the winter of the Doctor.

The Silence and the Militants of the Church fire against the Cybermen.

TASHA: (v.o.)
In time, when all other races had retreated or burned, only the Church of the Mainframe remained in the path of the Daleks. And so those ancient enemies, the Doctor and the Silence, stood back-to-back on the fields of Trenzalore.

The DOCTOR walks down the street, twirling his cane, the Silence walking behind him.

====

That is spectacular, emotional voice-over dialogue. Sends a tingle down my arms reading it again.

[Ben Saunders]

Well the Three scene was chosen because it has One and Two on the screen behind them as well as just having Daleks in it. It is funny when they use Classic Who stock footage in New Who because while it is fun fan service, the video quality difference is just insurmountable.

A lot of Classic Who just looks like utter dogshit because of the format they shot it on, and I don’t think it will ever look better. 

[Dave]

The Pertwee one was particularly good as it was fun to watch Ncuti ‘see’ a Dalek!

Did he? I thought it was just Anita looking through those doors.

[Flap Jack]

The 15th Doctor didn’t see a Dalek, but Ncuti did, when he watched the final cut of the episode.

[Renegade Rob]

As badass as that scene is with 11 walking through Trenzalore with his squad of Silents, without an eye drive he’s gotta be thinking, “Man, I should’ve brought backup with me.” I’m not even sure he knows they’re there, because if he wanted them there he’d just keep turning around to go get them. 

[Warbodog]

Maybe bringing back eye drives after two years was considered too much lore for a Christmas special that was already bloody pushing it.

[Renegade Rob]

Honestly, they should’ve pushed it more and really dug into showing the ins-and-outs of how exactly Kovarian’s sect blew up the TARDIS in Series 5. It makes sense enough as a factoid and the “I thought I’d left the bath running” is a genuine chuckle line, but that was the definition of telling and not showing. Kinda felt like Moffat had to make do with finite resources and storytelling capital to pay off all the loose threads, so it’s a miracle that episode is as good as it is, really. A Christmas miracle even. 

[Dave]

At least Moffat tried to pull all those threads together and offer some kind of resolution with what he had, when he could have just ended the siege of Trenzalore abruptly halfway through, had everyone in the show tell Matt Smith that they’re all his children, and then made him regenerate into Freema Agyeman.

[Renegade Rob]

Hey, Martha’s my favorite companion, that would rule actually. (Also, Matt Smith got the baby drama out of the way in Series 6, so that base was already covered.)

[Unrumble]

[Asclepius]

Season Sixteen Episode One: New Trailer Dropped.

[Ben Saunders]

I notice that because The Reality War had a couple very BIG things to talk about, nobody is really talking about the smaller moments. Like Ncuti pronouncing Omega differently throughout the episode, a symptom of rushed production/reshoots or did he just not know or care how to say it until somebody told him?

Everybody going “eugh, you’re disgusting” when The Rani outs herself as a eugenicist was a bit off to me because we’re talking about an actual, genuine alien race here with its own biological makeup and all that jazz, human eugenics is bad because the differences between our “races” are all made up, but the differences between Humans and Time Lords are real and far-reaching, of course she wants to bring back pure Time Lords rather than half-ass it.

Mel rides into UNIT HQ command room on her motorised scooter, the command room being on like the 60th floor. Did she take the elevator while on that thing?

The Doctor is an asshole with how he treats Ruby at the end, she’s clearly in distress and could very easily be telling the truth and the Doctor’s like shut it honey, you’re hallucinating. He winks at her as if to reassure her that he knows Poppy is real but then the rest of the scene plays as if he didn’t do that, it’s just really strange that he would dismiss her so completely. You could say he’s just doing it to protect Belinda’s feelings but the way the scene is staged just makes him come off like a huge asshole.

Not only is Omega being blasted away 15 minutes in pathetic, but so is the whole “vindicators are actually laser guns for some reason” reveal, it feels like it comes out of nowhere and they just say “this is happening now so that we can get on with the Poppy shite.”

The Doctor being suddenly saved from his death by a magic door is SHIT even if The Rani references how shit it is out loud, fuck you.

[Renegade Rob]

Mel rides into UNIT HQ command room on her motorised scooter, the command room being on like the 60th floor. Did she take the elevator while on that thing? 

Mel took the bike on the elevator but had to shoot a UNIT employee in the stairwell first to snag his ID.

My read on the Doctor’s coldness to Ruby was sort of him being in denial, because if Ruby really was mistaken he would’ve still taken her more seriously but on some gut level he always knew she was right but didn’t want her to be. The implications of her being right would be so cataclysmic to him (and fatal as it turns out), it’s like if you tell someone you know that they just drove over a dog, even if deep down they know you’re probably right, they’d be like, no, you must be mistaken (thankfully this didn’t happen).

The Anita rescue works for me because it’s genuinely good to see her again and makes sense in-universe, with her new key letting her go anywhere like that, and then it’s relevant to the plot in bringing reality back (and it’s a cool idea that the future is still standing while the present is destroyed). That was fine. Pete Tyler knowing when/where to reappear to catch Rose in Doomsday is still some Empire of Death-level bullshit that I’m still surprised people don’t talk about more. 

[Flap Jack]

I notice that because The Reality War had a couple very BIG things to talk about, nobody is really talking about the smaller moments.

To be fair I did mention a few of those things in my post.

He winks at her as if to reassure her that he knows Poppy is real but then the rest of the scene plays as if he didn’t do that

I’ve seen a lot of discussion elsewhere about this wink, and I outright missed it first time, but after rewatching the scene I’m really confident it wasn’t intended as a “I know what you’re talking about but can’t say” wink. If that was the intention then I’m sure it would have been in a close up, after The Doctor said something related to the Poppy discussion, and probably not while he was giving a huge grin.

I can see why those who caught it were a bit confused, and it was an odd choice, but it read as a expression of cheer/reassurance to me, not solemn acknowledgement.

[Ben Saunders]

Is it me or did somebody (likely The Doctor) say something along these lines in the past like four episodes

[Renegade Rob]

There’s only one important wink in Doctor Who, and that’s in The Time of Angels when Amy closes one eye at a time when encountering a Weeping Angel. Fucking excellent. 

[Technopeasant]

Is it me or did somebody (likely The Doctor) say something along these lines in the past like four episodes

It was Ncuti’s cry for help.

[Renegade Rob]

Building off that previously introduced theory of Ruby originally being Desiderium and the Rani being the woman who dropped her off: 

Shortly before Saturday’s finale, scooper Daniel Richtman shared a small description of what should have happened in the season closer before reshoots changed the story. He wrote, “The original ending of [Doctor] Who S2 (before the reshoots) was The Doctor, Ruby, Belinda, etc. are all having a big party (think Amy [and] Rory’s wedding) everyone’s dancing [and] The Vlinx is a DJ. Susan is seen watching them from afar, which would’ve been the cliffhanger leading into a [season 3].”

Now he has further elaborated, to share more details on the way the season should have ended, and what forced showrunner Russell T. Davies to change the direction of the show at the last minute.

“Susan would have appeared in a Five Doctors-esque look (grey trenchcoat) overlooking the party that the Doctor [and company] are at. She [would] have been standing with Poppy to…Susan says, ‘Let’s go Mum,’ and then we cut to the credits. This was to be explored next season but was shelved once [season 3] was then not to go ahead as planned, and [Davies] wanted to give the Poppy storyline an ending instead of having to pick it up in a later season with a new Doctor.”

Could that be fake news? Probably, sure, but it tracks with the unresolved Susan stuff. I liked the Reality War more than most but it reeked of a finale that was cobbled together from the wreckage of another originally intended version that had to be rewritten/shot/cut. Not making excuses, but in a We’re Smegged kind of way it was probably a Herculean effort to push that finale across the finish line even partially intact versus the multiple setbacks. 

[Flap Jack]

From what I hear Daniel Richtman is a notorious bullshitter, so I’m taking everything he says with a fistful of salt. But yeah, regardless of what exactly the original ending would have been, it’s clear it wouldn’t have resolved the Susan thread.

I guess I can appreciate the effort it took to get a complete episode out of the door, but at least with Red Dwarf X Doug didn’t have the hubris to explicitly make the current series dependent on future series he didn’t have confirmed.

[Renegade Rob]

I agree with all of that. I don’t pay those “scoops” much mind usually, but this one tracked a little more with the specific seams and crumbs left behind. 

I guess it was a ballsy gambit to rely on an unconfirmed Season 3, and even considering that sometimes you have to gamble with the best info you have and sometimes you still lose, but I can’t believe the best solution to not being renewed was to table Carole Ann Ford showing up at all. I think that’s the one thing really sticking in my craw. The Belinda/Poppy stuff is whatever, I can live with all of it, if they had paid off Susan in some way at all… whatsoever… after all that teasing and buildup. 

[Dave]

I think it might all have been very different if Disney had been confident enough after that first season to renew the partnership deal straight away. Had that happened, they could have moved ahead with making season 3 and Gatwa would probably have stayed with the show for a third year as originally intended.

It seems to be the lateness of that decision that left the show in limbo and encouraged him to leave (and I don’t blame him If the alternative was to have to turn down other work without knowing whether his work on Doctor Who would actually be going ahead).

[Flap Jack]

I guess it was a ballsy gambit to rely on an unconfirmed Season 3, and
even considering that sometimes you have to gamble with the best info
you have and sometimes you still lose, but I can’t believe the best
solution to not being renewed was to table Carole Ann Ford showing up at
all. I think that’s the one thing really sticking in my craw. The
Belinda/Poppy stuff is whatever, I can live with all of it, if they had
paid off Susan in some way at all… whatsoever… after all that teasing
and buildup.

Yeah, exactly. I can respect a ballsy gambit, but only if it’s done for good, like “if this gambit pays off, it will make for a great story”. Instead we get the evil variant – “if this gambit pays off, we will have successfully made the current series worse in order to lure people back for the next one”.

A multi-series arc should be for when you have a detailed/complex story which genuinely takes dozens of episodes to tell, like Breaking Bad or something, not for when you have a regular 2 parter that you’ve decided to delay and leave breadcrumbs for instead of just making. There was no creative justification for any of this crap, only a commercial one.

This era of the show feels like a case study into why TV dramas were better when the lead producer and lead creative (Script Editor) were separate roles. RTD should not be focused on marketing the show and weighing down the scripts with mystery boxes and moments that he thinks will play well on TikTok – that should be the job of some other fucker whom Davies is motivated to push back on and, if necessary, bare knuckle brawl with in the BBC canteen.

[Technopeasant]

This era of the show feels like a case study into why TV dramas were better when the lead producer and lead creative (Script Editor) were separate roles. RTD should not be focused on marketing the show and weighing down the scripts with mystery boxes and moments that he thinks will play well on TikTok – that should be the job of some other fucker whom Davies is motivated to push back on and, if necessary, bare knuckle brawl with in the BBC canteen.

Yeah, I’ve always felt the showrunner position was bollocks. Say what you will about JNT as producer but there is still a clear difference between when Saward was script editor versus Cartmel in tone and style.

[Ben Saunders]

I’m watching Season Twelve (Ark in Space, Sontaran Experiement, Genesis of the Daleks), and I forgot just how horrible a lot of this stuff is. These characters are NOT having a good time. Sarah Jane would need some serious therapy after all this shit. Surviving WW1-era artillery fire, diving into a trench and having to rip the gas masks off of dead soldiers to survive is horrible. But it’s so underplayed on the screen.

Another memorably horrible moment is Seeds of Death when that one guy gets mulched. Yikes!

[Rushy]

but at least with Red Dwarf X Doug didn’t have the hubris to explicitly make the current series dependent on future series he didn’t have confirmed.

Also, Red Dwarf is bizarrely the more self-serious show now, with stronger internal logic and continuity.

[Asclepius]

I think it might all have been very different if Disney had been confident enough after that first season to renew the partnership deal straight away. Had that happened, they could have moved ahead with making season 3 and Gatwa would probably have stayed with the show for a third year as originally intended.
It seems to be the lateness of that decision that left the show in limbo and encouraged him to leave (and I don’t blame him If the alternative was to have to turn down other work without knowing whether his work on Doctor Who would actually be going ahead).

I’m intrigued to know what Disney wanted to see from the show that they would renew it. The ratings were generally UK Top 10 and, I believe, Top 10 for Disney in a lot of its worldwide territories. They knew that, by delaying renewal, they risked losing the lead actor. And so they did. Really, really odd way to run something.

[Ben Saunders]

Really, really odd way to run something.

This is from the company who managed to bungle Star Wars, one of the most profitable media franchises ever to exist, to the point that they stopped making movies after a whopping five entries. Regardless of your opinions on the output, their management does seem truly bizarre at times. But then I’m not a multi-billion dollar shareholder and maybe if I was I’d be worse at it.

[Asclepius]

Really, really odd way to run something.

This is from the company who managed to bungle Star Wars, one of the most profitable media franchises ever to exist, to the point that they stopped making movies after a whopping five entries. Regardless of your opinions on the output, their management does seem truly bizarre at times. But then I’m not a multi-billion dollar shareholder and maybe if I was I’d be worse at it.

Not trying to be obtuse, but I don’t know what the Star Wars stuff relates to. What happened? I’ve seen the original three and one of the prequels. I’m aware there’s another two prequels, and then three “Ooh, aren’t they old!” films – the last being made after Carrie Fisher’s death. What happened to break it?

[Flap Jack]

This is from the company who managed to bungle Star Wars, one of the
most profitable media franchises ever to exist, to the point that they
stopped making movies after a whopping five entries.

It’s an interesting comparison, because the way I see it their issue with Star Wars was the opposite – they rushed out too much Star Wars too quickly, diluting the brand and undermining the cohesion between projects. So really them taking longer to do more movies afterwards is a positive sign. They’ve seemingly learned that just churning out movies will quickly cause diminishing returns. A hiatus isn’t inherently bad – James Cameron made the highest grossing film of all time and still took 13 years to come out with a sequel, which then still became the 3rd highest grossing film of all time.

Of course when I say “issue” I’m just talking in relative terms, just that it could have been better, because in absolute terms Disney Star Wars has been obscenely successful. 3 out of 5 movies cracked $1bn, 1 of them cracked $2bn, and even the one that flopped still turned a profit – and then you add in how much they must be making from merchandise and theme park sales and such.

Disney Star Wars’ biggest folly is arguably how much money they put into streaming series, which have a notoriously high bar to be considered a success. So in that context Disney’s treatment of Doctor Who makes more sense – they went all out on commissioning new streaming shows in the Bob Chapek era (just in general), and now in the Bob Iger2 era they’re course correcting, and only re-committing to Doctor Who if it meets the bar, wherever that is.

[Ben Saunders]

The main thing is they planned to make like a billion movies all interconnected like the MCU but after a divisive response to Episode 8 and a largely disinterested response to Solo they abandoned movies almost entirely in favour of ludicrously expensive streaming shows. Half the audience hated 8, nobody cared about Solo and Episode 9 was a shocking mess of trying to please everybody and in the end pleasing nobody. Episode 9 is one of those rare moments like the final season of Game of Thrones where it seems like basically everybody thinks it’s shit. Usually it’s 50/50 or there’s a very vocal group of fans who defend it to the death, and obviously there are still a small number of those who do, but the overwhelming response just seemed to be “what the fuck?”

Most people seem to dislike the Obi Wan show which feels poorly made especially for the amount of money dumped into it, and they managed to fuck up The Mandalorian by turning it into something it never was. Season 3 of The Mandalorian and that Book of Boba Fett show all got pretty negative responses. It seems like people didn’t like the Ashoka show either, but I did, you bastards. And I never even watched Rebels.

Sure on the surface SW content still makes a lot of money, but it was clear to everybody with a brain that there was no direction behind the sequel trilogy, and them completely bowing out of movies so quickly is a clear sign it didn’t go as well as they planned. 

Andor is a big success, which is annoying because by the time they started making it I couldn’t give two fucks about a spin-off show about a secondary character from a just-OK movie I barely remember anything about. The Obi-Wan show eviscerated any faith I had left in the Star Wars IP, completely bungling the return of Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to give us some of the most bland, uninteresting storylines, embarrassing action and like a couple good moments. It was supposed to be a movie but they changed it to a streaming show at one point and then they filmed it all on that big screen but did it so badly. 

I don’t pay attention to MCU stuff but they do seem to currently be in the desperately bringing back a beloved old face to convince people to bother with their new installment phase just like Who.

[Warbodog]

I only watched Star Wars VII & VIII, found them bland, but the hysterical overreaction to VIII all over the place put me off wanting to see or think about Star Wars, give it a few more years.

Same thing happened with the prequels, really. Only saw all of those because people kept taking me, for some reason not remembering that none of us gave a shit or convinced this was definitely going to be a good one this time.

[Asclepius]

The main thing is they planned to make like a billion movies all interconnected like the MCU but after a divisive response to Episode 8 and a largely disinterested response to Solo they abandoned movies almost entirely in favour of ludicrously expensive streaming shows. Half the audience hated 8, nobody cared about Solo and Episode 9 was a shocking mess of trying to please everybody and in the end pleasing nobody. Episode 9 is one of those rare moments like the final season of Game of Thrones where it seems like basically everybody thinks it’s shit. Usually it’s 50/50 or there’s a very vocal group of fans who defend it to the death, and obviously there are still a small number of those who do, but the overwhelming response just seemed to be “what the fuck?”

Most people seem to dislike the Obi Wan show which feels poorly made especially for the amount of money dumped into it, and they managed to fuck up The Mandalorian by turning it into something it never was. Season 3 of The Mandalorian and that Book of Boba Fett show all got pretty negative responses. It seems like people didn’t like the Ashoka show either, but I did, you bastards. And I never even watched Rebels.

Sure on the surface SW content still makes a lot of money, but it was clear to everybody with a brain that there was no direction behind the sequel trilogy, and them completely bowing out of movies so quickly is a clear sign it didn’t go as well as they planned. 

Andor is a big success, which is annoying because by the time they started making it I couldn’t give two fucks about a spin-off show about a secondary character from a just-OK movie I barely remember anything about. The Obi-Wan show eviscerated any faith I had left in the Star Wars IP, completely bungling the return of Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to give us some of the most bland, uninteresting storylines, embarrassing action and like a couple good moments. It was supposed to be a movie but they changed it to a streaming show at one point and then they filmed it all on that big screen but did it so badly. 

I don’t pay attention to MCU stuff but they do seem to currently be in the desperately bringing back a beloved old face to convince people to bother with their new installment phase just like Who.

Thanks for the precis. I’ve always been curious, but never enough to dig deeper! You say that ‘Solo’ was a series that failed? Was that a recasting of Harrison Ford, I presume? Does that partly mean that, like Red Dwarf, Star Wars fans have a love for the actors playing the characters, as opposed to just the characters existing? 

[Flap Jack]

It was just an individual film. It didn’t do very well, but I doubt it was due to Han Solo being recast. Fans surely weren’t expecting Ford at age 75 to play a 22 year old, and they love other recasts such as Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan.

[Dave]

Yeah the recast wasn’t a big problem and the cast of the movie were good in general. I think the main problem is that it was released just five or six months after the last mainline movie, leaving not much time to market the new film afterwards. Plus that previous movie was very divisive and caused a bit of bad feeling among some sectors of the fanbase.

Really, the most baffling thing of all about the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy is that it went into production without a coherent overarching story plan for the three films, so you ended up with a series of films which actively contradicted each other and felt very jarring as a whole.

[Unrumble]

Yeah the recast wasn’t a big problem and the cast of the movie were good in general. 

I haven’t rewatched it since original cinema viewing, but although I remember thinking it was fine, Emilia Clarke really let the side down in the acting stakes for me. Something about her felt flat, and I had found her a perfectly competent performer in Game of Thrones.

[Nick R]

I think the main problem is that it was released just five or six months after the last mainline movie, leaving not much time to market the new film afterwards.

Yes, they had already established the pattern of Disney Star Wars films being annual December releases, so I’m not sure why they broke that with Solo. And it looks like that May 2018 release date was set from the very start, so it’s not as if the release date was a change made in response to the behind-the-scenes issues switching directors from Lord & Miller to Ron Howard. (Disney’s big December 2018 release was Mary Poppins Returns; the other big films released that month were Mortal Engines, Into the Spider-Verse (which was also Lord & Miller, but I don’t think that had anything to do with Solo not being released then), Aquaman, and Bumblebee.)

Solo was OK, but my main memory of it was that the cinematography was just so dark – so dark that I couldn’t make out facial expressions in some scenes (like the first battlefield scene where Woody Harrelson’s character is introduced). I know the film’s cinematographer likes a very underlit style, but I suspect my local cinema projected it incorrectly.

Anyway, even if I hadn’t liked the Star Wars sequels, I’d say Disney Star Wars was all worth it because it led to the Cartoon Saloon and Aardman shorts in Star Wars Visions, which are by some distance the two best Star Wars things that have been made since 1980.

[Dave]

Yes, they had already established the pattern of Disney Star Wars films being annual December releases, so I’m not sure why they broke that with Solo. And it looks like that May 2018 release date was set from the very start, so it’s not as if the release date was a change made in response to the behind-the-scenes issues switching directors from Lord & Miller to Ron Howard.

The original plan had been to release The Force Awakens in summer 2015 and subsequent films to follow that pattern. When TFA got delayed to December, they did the same for Rogue One and Last Jedi but kept Solo as a summer release for some reason.

[Dave]

As for good Disney Star Wars stuff, Andor has been excellent but very much for adults.

[Dave]

(Anyone clicking on this thread casually is going to think that RTD has now got the next Star Wars movie or something.)

[Ben Saunders]

but very much for adults.

[Dave]

[Flap Jack]

Probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, a TLJ-liker, but I hope you do eventually give Andor a shot, Ben. Prior investment in the character or in Rogue One isn’t at all necessary, and despite the title it’s an ensemble show, so it isn’t even much of a problem if you’re lukewarm on Andor himself. (Plus he’s better in the show than in the movie anyway.)

Best Star Wars thing since TESB, possibly even better than it.

[Ben Saunders]

Does that partly mean that, like Red Dwarf, Star Wars fans have a love for the actors playing the characters, as opposed to just the characters existing? 

We’ll see the answer to this soon I guess, since Mark Hamill has stepped down as Luke Skywalker permanently now (if we believe what he says). When Luke showed up on the streaming shows Hamill would perform the scene, then some young actor, then they’d edit together some Frankenstein of the two performances with a healthy dose of CGI to make him look like Mark Hamill in 1983 or whatever. It… looked good as far as de-ageing goes, and it was nice to see such a spot-on ROTJ-Luke in that Mandalorian finale, honestly. It pulled at my nostalgia exactly the way they wanted it to. But then they did the same technique again for season three and I gather the response to that was sort of, well you’ve already done your nostalgia bait and should probably just recast the character at this point.

Solo was… just fine. A bit redundant, like a checklist of shit we already sort of knew about from dialogue in the movies or extended universe material, it really methodically paints his backstory in a way that’s hard to care about. Especially when they feel the need to give even his damn NAME a backstory. We see him meeting Chewie, winning the Falcon in a game of cards from Lando and doing the famed Kessel Run, which yes is now OFFICIALLY able to be done in “less than twelve parsecs” because you can fly closer to the black holes to reduce the distance. This was previously a fan theory and sort-of Word of God from the DVD commentary, but George Lucas loves to just say shit and it seems the real intention of the original script was that Han was simply bluffing and didn’t know what he was talking about. Obi-Wan even rolls his eyes.

As for the performance of Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, he wasn’t distractingly bad. There are reports that he had to get an acting coach in midway through production and there are people who criticise him, but for me he did just fine.

That movie also has its own behind the scenes drama, the original directors were “let go” or “left” (they were fired) at some point and the whole thing had to be retooled from a comedy into something quite serious.

Solo was OK, but my main memory of it was that the cinematography was just so dark – so dark that I couldn’t make out facial expressions in some scenes

It was bizarrely dark. Distractingly dark. I’ve never seen something so damn dark. And so few people seemed to talk about it. It’s like they forgot to light it.

[Ben Saunders]

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