Doomitron

[Doomitron]

Clara’s up there for me if I ever bothered to try and compile a ranking of companions. To add to the hot takes on companions I’d similarly say the same about Yaz and Dan, although I don’t know whether that’s a popular opinion or not.

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I think it took me halfway through 12 to realize the bunkroom hadn’t changed since 10, I thought it’d been redesigned the entire time.

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I’m fine with every Doctor for the most part, some just aren’t for me but that’s okay, they just aren’t what I normally gravitate to. I do take personal umbrage with the existence of 14 even though Tennant is in my top 3, and the concept of bigeneration, which completely denied Gatwa the entrance he deserved, but I digress.

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[Doomitron]

I feel the same when it comes to S10, although with Simm I only liked him in it, when he was in RTD1 I thought he was horrid.

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Only issue is the set design consisted of one room and a lot of greenscreen.

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I will say I never cared for Danny Pink or what he brought to Clara or S8, between him and River Song I thought were some of Moffat’s worst writing.

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Well with Hartnell because of his character arc I don’t think that’s the model you can follow beyond him, he’s apathetic and it takes Ian or Steven to talk sense into him a lot of the time until The War Machines when you really see the character arc come together before your eyes and its finally apparent that he’s the hero not the father figure companions that tag along with him anymore, but that’s near the very end of his tenure so we don’t see that for long but with Colin Baker and Capaldi they’re already there so the dynamic to me is pretty different, they both have that main character energy its everything after that where they start diverging.

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I’m a terrible contrarian and prefer S8 Capaldi despite S8 having his weakest stories, they sanded off his hard edges too much as a course correction like Colin Baker in Big Finish where they make the Sixth too nice in some of his later stories. I like when the Doctor is a prick.

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[Doomitron]

I never had a big issue with the Red Dwarf Remastered edits when they’d change stuff like “Felicity Kendal’s bottom” to “Marilyn Monroe’s bottom” since a lot of these contemporary jokes it feels like you could just swap a name and the joke stayed the same so long as the name was more recognizable to whenever you were showing it. Alternatively I wonder how it’d play if you did the opposite, like you instead said “Bette Davis’s bottom” to be as deliberately archaic with it as possible, if the joke would benefit from it being intentionally difficult to imagine people in the farthest reaches of time and space knowing what you’re talking about or if the premise is strong enough you’d want it to be intelligible.

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Whenever I think of Castrovalva my mind immediately goes to poorly composited floating things.

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I liked S5 for the most part but S6 (excluding The Doctor’s Wife and The Girl Who Waited) and the first half of S7 up till Angels Take Manhattan was NuWho’s first lull period imo.

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I only started to warm to Eleven when Clara became his companion, never much cared for Amy and Rory and his dynamic with them.

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1. Seven

2. Eight

3. Ten

4. Six

5. Second

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I just assumed the science room they’re in for most of 11 and 12 is in a similar place to the officer’s quarters they inhabit beginning in 3, similarly white, glossy, and clean between them.

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Its a futurama style joke.

When you say it like that, do you mean it is a Futurama style joke (Fox – i.e. funny), a Futurama style joke (Comedy Central – i.e. not funny), or a Futurama style joke (Hulu – i.e. garbage)?

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Mechocracy isn’t a good episode of Red Dwarf. It doesn’t feel like an episode of Red Dwarf. It feels more like something you would get in an American sitcom. That kinda pointless petty conflict that they are doing to themselves that really doesn’t matter. Is it fun? Personally, I don’t think so. Its got that Doug Naylor logic that bothers me a lot where characters will do stuff that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t fit their character just in order to make the plot work. 

A lot of 12 feels like Doug Naylor being strapped for ideas that he’s scrapping the bottom of the barrel (Timewave, Mechocracy, Skipper) or having an idea and not knowing how to expand on it (Cured, M-Corp). Genuinely the only episode I like from 12 is Siliconia, that episode I have no complaints against, or if I do they’re just nitpicks. M-Corp could’ve been good but the half-assed ending totally ruins it for me, I can’t tell if Kryten saying “make me a virus that kills you” is supposed to be a joke because it certainly doesn’t play as one.

[Doomitron]

Red Dwarf: Just The Strips™

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I thought the floppy disc gag in The Promised Land was fine in concept but the amount of time they hang on it ruined it for me, its far too self-congratulatory.

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The Sontarans look at their best in Time Warrior, Two Doctors and War of the Sontarans. With the 2008 ones, I don’t like the blue armour and I find the prosthetics somewhat lacking. 

The Sontarans in Flux looked marvelous. The RTD1 Sontarans always repelled me, maybe that adds something though in a way. The artificial fake muscles they added to the suit just make me think of the Sontarans themselves with them and that’s quite the sickening thought, I did love Christopher Ryan in the role though that was inspired casting.

I enjoy the commentaries, and I do find Peter and Janet funny but sometimes I do think “Oh come on now, you’re just being mean”

They’re always my favorite to listen to, I love their snark.

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I…*think* Twin Dilemma’s film elements survived? I know there were mute film trims included as a special feature on the 2009 DVD (and the box set). Still, the AI remastering is absolutely abhorrent. It’s not enough to put me off buying the releases personally, because there’s so much else that’s great about them, but they’re a major flaw.

It was a shame with S22 that they couldn’t get any film elements at all to rescan as far as I’m aware considering its the second to last time Doctor Who had their exterior shots shot on film (think the TV movie was the last time), The Two Doctors apparently had surviving elements and whoever owned them wouldn’t loan them out frustratingly, which is maddening especially when the exterior shots even without that look really good presumably due to the lighting in Spain making everything pop so well.

If I do purchase the S21 Collection it’ll probably be for the extras that I’ll rip to my Plex, although a big pet peeve I’ve had with them is the Behind the Sofas and the editing that’s made it so there aren’t real discussions being had just quick highlighted quips. Compare something like S19’s where I come away knowing exactly what Peter Davison and co. thought about an episode to S20 where I’m playing a guessing game because they kept cutting away before they’d expand on a point they just made.

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Also as an offside for anyone who bought the S21 Collection did The Twin Dilemma get its film elements remastered or was it a similar situation to S22 where they couldn’t find any of it and just tried tidying the DVDs up? I haven’t seen any clips of it online so I’m curious although I won’t be bothering to pick it up anyway since they mutilated everything else with their upscaling.

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Even in Backwards where she is seen to get lost with Rimmer and Kryten, it makes no sense for her to always be around so isn’t written into scenes

Always thought it strange that the implication seemed to be Holly was stuck on Backwards world alongside Rimmer and Kryten, otherwise you’d figure she’d be on the screen behind Lister and Cat on Starbug when it time skips and they start to head their way. Ideally you’d figure Holly’s reception would’ve just cut and she’d remain on Red Dwarf, you could’ve had her guide Lister and Cat to where they last were.

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Oh, Revelation of the Daleks’ updated effects were from the 2005 DVD and ported over to the box set. Tbf I can absolutely see why they picked Timelash for the Season 22 set, but one thing I’ve always wanted watching Vengeance on Varos is to actually have some visual indication of where Arak and Etta live, because I always thought they just looked like they were in the punishment dome, not enough contrast in the set design.

Yeah don’t get me wrong, Timelash definitely needed it and it’s certainly an improvement, I was just baffled it was the only episode to get the treatment at all. I never had that issue with the Greek chorus part of the story I felt it fit the dystopian setting that their home looked as awful as the torture domes did.

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That’s another thing entirely, the team behind the updated effects on the Collection sets put a lot of love and effort into them and I hate when people slag them off. With the colour edits, the colourisations themselves are fantastic, but anything else is Benjamin Cook’s abysmal editing or Russell’s indulgence. 

The ones on the DVDs and blu-rays are optional and they’ve always been listed as special features on the discs, they’re not replacing the original and they were never intended to. I adore a lot of the original effects, because they were very ambitious, and equally I love a lot of the new effects, because they genuinely do improve on the original production while still honouring the original intent. For example, I think the Myrka had a great design with a poorly constructed costume that moved like a pantomime horse. In the special edition, the Myrka looks like the same creature, but actually moves more like a real creature yet still retaining just enough of the goofiness and the practical look of it. And they even manage to retain the campness of Dr Solow’s death scene while simultaneously making it far more gruesome.

The episodes they choose to enhance with new CGI are questionable to me at times, I don’t know the process they use to decide what episodes get it. I was figuring Vengeance on Varos would get the treatment so the mirages in the corridors would be spruced up, but iirc for S22 only Timelash got it and Revelation I think? I can hardly remember what special effects even happen in that story beyond the human Dalek hybrid and some explosions.

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Out of an absence of conscious or good sense I bought this, I’ll report back my findings if anyone’s interested. I’ll be disappointed if all the contemporary advertising is missing since that’d be pretty neat, knowing this is a shitty bootleg I’m a bit hopeful they’ve been kept in. 50 dollars is highway robbery especially for an omnibus that’s cutting cost to avoid blowing up the full panels.

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