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The End also has the “THE BEGINNING” caption persist into the credits.

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Is it just cos they’re both called “The Something”?

And the second word has the same number of syllables.

The main thing I think of when someone mentions The Awakening is that when it came to releasing it on DVD, they knew it wasn’t good enough to get a solo release, but the strongest connection they could think of between it and any other unreleased story for box set purposes was “set on Earth”.

That’s quite the contrast with The Visitation, which was deemed worthy of not just a solo release but a Special Edition re-release too.

I’ve still got Fang Rock and Dalek Invasion of Earth to watch, and I’ve ordered the first Leela story with her forest tribe as I think i have memories of seeing it as a kid.

The Face of Evil is really underrated in my opinion, and Horror of Fang Rock is just an all time banger. So hopefully you get on OK with those.

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And you did at least talk about Four to Doomsday a little bit.

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That clatter is possibly in the top 5 worst changes in my book.

And yet John Hoare only ranked it 8th. It’s a miracle there was never a G&T civil war.

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I think it’s still a minority view, to be fair! It’s just funny that someone would meme Legion for an unrelated reason and that would prompt you to offer a take on the Legion topic we were just discussing.

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I’m with Dave on “Yes, God?”. Though admittedly I can’t exactly be unbiased in my opinion because I’ve seen The End tons of times and I’ve seen The End Remastered maybe twice, so even if it worked in every other regard, it would still sound off to me.

Putting aside it breaking up the rhythm of Lister’s line and it always being jarring to swap to the older, worse delivery Holly, the emotion of the line just doesn’t fit.

This is a moment where Lister is suddenly hopeful and inspired to work towards a positive future in spite of the odds, to end the episode on a high note. Adding a moment in the middle of that where Holly facetiously calls him “God” to bring him down ruins it. Why not just go the whole hog and splice in another line from Holly at the end?

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Funny you would say “I’m probably alone on this hill”, when in the Mundane observation dome thread multiple other people have said they agree with you in the past 1 day.

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It may not have been broken from an audience perspective, but it absolutely was broken from a production perspective. Spending 9 months of the year in active production was not sustainable, and even under RTD they were burned out after 4 series. Then under Moffat they were barely able to manage doing that for even 2 series in a row.

Maybe they could make it work if they had the budget to hire enough people to cover the workload (e.g. so the showrunner doesn’t have to write 5-8 of the episodes as well as rewriting most of the others), but not just if they did it in the same way they did it before.

Personally I can see myself being fully satisfied with an 8-10 episode count if they’re all multi-parters (and they’re generally good).

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That’s quite a lot of the positives that are specific to Kryten.

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Maybe the real drive plate is the friends we did sloppy work on along the way.

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I have to assume there was no time for an Only The Good… style
evacuation in the first instance, although apparently time to call
Rimmer up to chew him out.

My take on it is that the drive plate being misrepaired didn’t directly cause the leak, it just took away the protection if a leak further in were to occur. Someone was probably fixing the drive plate again at the moment the accident occurred, and if it hadn’t happened so soon they would have all been fine. They just got extremely unlucky.

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Another question is, why doesn’t Legion go with them?

Sure, it’s not his ideal setup, but once he learns they prioritise freedom too highly to stay with him, shouldn’t he at least consider it in order to keep existing? He could have offered while he was just standing there doing nothing as they took turns rendering each other unconscious.

And an answer to both questions is: Legion is a prick. 

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The theory that I personally subscribe to is that fixing the drive plate was the responsibility of a superior officer, but this officer wanted to skive so he fobbed the task off onto Rimmer instead.

Rimmer still gets a bollocking from Hollister in spite of this, because fixing the drive plate is something that a lot of technicians of Rimmer’s rank would be able to do, and by accepting the job Rimmer also accepted the responsibility over the outcome (Rimmer could have just admitted he wasn’t able to do it and sought the help of other colleagues, but his ego is too fragile for that). But the superior officer who was originally meant to do it would have been told off too if everyone hadn’t immediately died first.

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Because they value their freedom on principle, not just in terms of how it directly impacts their wellbeing.

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Leonardo DiCatrio

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Timeslides in 1.

No link… I think I’ve been outplayed on this matter. Fair cop.

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Does anyone on this forum like any of Doctor Who at all?

Of course I don’t like any of Doctor Who. I’m a Doctor Who fan.

When Professor Flibble said they weren’t keen on most New Who finales, at first I misread it as them saying they weren’t keen on most episodes, period. I was a little disappointed to realise my mistake, because “emotionally devastated they’ll have to wait years for new Doctor Who, actively dislikes most of Doctor Who” is pretty much the perfect Whovian.

I think nerds like us fall into the trap of it being way easier to explain negatives than positives, and expressing anger feels better than expressing praise. Last Human vindicated???

For my money the Gatwa era was good overall (and so was the Whittaker era for that matter, I don’t care what you say), it was just dragged down by the series arcs/finales and the lack of believable episode-to-episode character growth. Boom is an all time great episode of Doctor Who as far as I’m concerned, but even that is slightly marred by Moffat having to include reminders of Ruby’s maternity mystery and her magical snow summoning powers.

Then again, Heaven Sent is also marred by being the prologue to Hell Bent, and people basically never mention or care about that when they bring up what an amazing episode it is, so maybe that sort of thing really doesn’t matter.

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Not enough to really care about them. Demons was nice enough. Diodati and War (and Time of the Angels) are overshadowed by arc stuff.

You know the arc is bad when it retroactively overshadows an episode from 8 series previous!

Actually now that I think about it, The Time of Angels kind of was overshadowed by arc stuff too, a little bit. Series 6 and 7 (and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood) had it way worse though.

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When I was first looking into expanding my interests from New Who to Classic Who, I didn’t want to commit to buying DVDs if I wasn’t going to like it, so I just checked out whatever ones were available at the library. I can’t remember all of them but I’m pretty sure they included The War Machines, Destiny of the Daleks and Four to Doomsday. There were also some more decent ones in there, but the average quality made me uncertain for a good while longer.

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I’d probably rank Ncuti above Jodie, but that’s mostly because I didn’t stop watching Ncuti whereas I did with Jodie

How far did you get? Because the Gatwa era isn’t even 2/3 as long as the Whittaker era, so it might have been close.

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I’m actually happy if that’s the case. They should have kept Shalka and just made Eccelston the Tenth Doctor. Half the casuals probably forgot there was an Eighth Doctor anyway.

Yes, and the Shalka Doctor fits perfectly into canon in between War and Nine. Thankfully Moffat never showed War regenerating into Nine, or it wouldn’t make any sense and would just come across as RTD trolling the fanbase.

I really like the idea the Cushing films are based on Ian and Barbara’s recollections after returning to Earth.

I guess you mean ‘based on’ in the sense of an in-universe adaptation that intentionally takes liberties, but I am still imagining that the Cushing movies were Ian and Barbara’s exact recollections.

“And that’s how my grandad Dr. Who dragged me, my baby sister and my boyfriend on all sorts of fantastic adventures across time and space!”

“Sister? I thought Susan was your pupil at Coal Hill?”

“What? I’ve never worked in a mine.”

“And how did you know about the Daleks invading Earth in the future?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you and Ian weren’t even in that one.”

“Obviously Dr. Who, my first cousin once removed Louise – who definitely exists – and Susan told me about it later! Susan always tells me everything. We are sisters after all! It’s not like my grandfather left her behind there.”

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Imagine there’s no Doctor Who

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Yes, in the same way that Fourteen saying “Donna, I’m a billion years old” was not exposition.

I mean, other than both including a number, I don’t see the similarity.

– Donna didn’t actually ask The Doctor how old he was.

– Donna already knows that The Doctor is extremely old, so is primed for him to be blunt and sarcastic to her about him not mentioning everyone he’s encountered in his life.

– Large round numbers are much more common in jokey exaggerations than smaller specific ones.

If Donna had actually asked the question and The Doctor had replied “1 billion, 361 million, 120 thousand, 994 years old” then I would have absolutely taken that as exposition. But in the SJA example, there’s no context for it to be understood as a joke or exaggeration, unless you just think lying is inherently funny.

And I’m saying this with such confidence because I watched Death of the Doctor when it came out in 2010 and I legitimately did take “507” as exposition, assuming that was RTD belatedly tidying up the troublesome regeneration limit issue on his way out. 3 years later when The Time of the Doctor happened, I really thought “huh, guess Moffat’s choosing to ignore Death of the Doctor then”.

So what I’m saying is, if it was a joke then it should have been written to be understood by me, as cretinous as I may be.

Also, fun fact: Davies mentions in The Writer’s Tale that he wanted to include an equally flippant line at some point where The Doctor mentions that he was half-human in one of his previous incarnations, to tidy up that point from The TV Movie, but he couldn’t find a way to fit it in organically (or organically enough for his own standards at least). So this is genuinely what earnest exposition by RTD sounds like sometimes. “This lore is annoying, handwave it away quickly so I don’t have to worry about it but I can still honestly say I addressed it.”

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Obvious joke

Was it though?

It may be a joke in a meta sense, that RTD took this bit of lore that fans take seriously and contradicted it in such an offhand and pointless manner, but serious worldbuilding and joke worldbuilding all count for the same in the end.

Unless 507 is a designated Funny Number that I just haven’t heard of, then it’s clearly not a joke within the episode itself, because it doesn’t have a punchline. The Sarah Jane kids don’t have a clue, so 12 is no less funny an answer than 507.

Like if he had said “420! Because I always go up in smoke yeaaaaahhhhh boiiiiiiiiiiiiii” then that would have technically been a joke. 507 is either what he believed to be the correct answer or a lie told for no reason.

I actually don’t think Gatwa was overshadowed by the Bigeneration, because he came right out of there like an arse on fire and stole the show in my eyes. Tennant got his soppy farewell but Gatwa was firmly the Doctor from the second he shimmied away from him.

He definitely still made a big first impression, but it’s just so off-kilter for the new guy to show up when half the focus is still on the old guy, and the audience never even have to properly say goodbye to the old guy. If the characters have to have a conversation just to stress to the audience that yes, the new guy is the “main” Doctor and the old guy isn’t, something has gone wrong.

Plus the choice sort of inadvertently appeals to the racist fans by making it so the first Black Doctor (after Jo Martin) is also the first one not to actually replace their predecessor. “Don’t worry guys, the proper, white Doctor is still around! He has his own TARDIS and everything! They will not replace us, am I right? God, I’m so progressive.”

And then you throw in the objectification aspect of Fifteen being the one who has to run around in his pants. I guess that’s fine, but David wearing Jodie’s outfit would have been too much, obviously.

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You don’t need to imagine what bullshit RTD would have come up with. He wrote a Sarah Jane Adventures story called “Death of the Doctor” in which The Eleventh Doctor appears, and one of the kids asks him how many times he can regenerate, and he says 507 (without explaining why the answer isn’t 12 or elaborating in any way).

So there’s your answer – RTD would kick the can so far down the road that nobody currently alive would have to deal with it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said in the past that Fourteen should never have been – and still isn’t, in my mind – a main incarnation. A main incarnation should be the lead of the show for the foreseeable future, not someone whose successor has already been picked long before their first episode has gone out. And having David Tennant appear twice in lineups just looks stupid. I feel like the choice was only made because Davies enjoys breaking conventions for the sake of it, and knew that not being able to cleanly divide eras of the show by Doctor would annoy nerds.

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I can’t exactly be mad when a better performer with bettter writing turns up. 

What do you mean, you can’t? Are you sure you’re a Doctor Who fan?

From my perspective, it’s been well reinforced that Doctor Who is always changing and moving forward (especially when it comes to who the lead actors are), so if they decide to move backwards instead in the hope that gratuitous fanwank is what will keep the audience on board, I’m liable to be cynical about that. Like I can see the hands, those keys aren’t just jingling on their own.

I was more or less OK with David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor on the understanding that gratuitous fanwank is accepted during anniversary celebrations. It’s like The Purge. But beyond his general appearance, the bi-generation ultimately did just rob Gatwa of his proper introduction. And if they do smash the “regenerate into old Doctor/companion” button every time they’re in a jam, that’s bad. It’s bad no matter how good the performances or the other aspects of the writing are.

Of course it doesn’t help that I personally just don’t rate Tennant that highly when it comes to modern Doctors. He’s great, no doubt, but Eccleston, Smith and Capaldi are better, and Whittaker and Gatwa are at least level. It’s more a point of personality than performance, but it’s also a factor that Tennant already had more episodes in his original run than any other revival Doctor. Yet he’s the one who gets to continue living in parallel with his future selves, in multiple universes no less. Hardly seems fair.

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To play devil’s advocate: It’s possible someone wanted it to be made clear that Ncuti had left the show and a more ambiguous ending didn’t suffice for that.

Annoying if so, because a press release could have done that job. But I guess it wouldn’t have done the extra job of creating a false impression that Ncuti’s departure was planned in advance and that Davies knew what was going to come next.

In fairness though, Gatwa changing outfit every story made it difficult to do the unplanned exit the traditional way – putting the new Doctor in the old Doctor’s outfit and filming them falling off an exercise bike.

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The lying about the scripts is absolutely horrendous. Honestly,
that group of people have done amazing things for the show in the past,
but Who fans are better off rid at this point. 

If you’ve read The Writer’s Tale, then you know this is kind of just how Russell The Davies is. In public he bigs up what a wonderful new railway he’s built, then it gets to opening day 6 months later and he’s like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmZIgVoQw4&t=90s

I’m sure at the time he had every intention of writing a Christmas special that included those words, and I guess he didn’t consider the dubious present tense of “contains” a lie because they were contained in whatever vague outline or pitch he did have written, but his marketing strategy does depend on things not going totally tits up like this.

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I’m sure that once they knew Susan wasn’t making it into the finale, they could have just edited The Interstellar Song Contest so that The Doctor saw flashes of a different character. But I’m betting the reason they didn’t was something along the lines “oh fuck we can’t finally bring Carole Ann Ford back as Susan and then use literally none of the footage oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck”.

To which I say – do an actual story about Susan and not just 2 scenes that exist purely to tease something in the future you haven’t decided on yet. 

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I love how even with today’s news, the Classic Doctor Who thread is still mostly focused on RTD2 Doctor Who, while this thread has pivoted to being about Star Wars and Lost.

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One detail is that this makes the decision to pretend that the 60th Anniversary Specials were the start of a whole new version of the show even more ridiculous. The gap between The Reality War and whatever comes next is now guaranteed to be much longer than the gap between The Power of The Doctor and The Star Beast (and almost definitely it’ll be the first gap since The TV Movie/Rose to span multiple full years, making the hiatus longer than the whole Disney era itself), and it has a good chance of having less direct continuity too, yet the latter transition was the one they tried to sell as a full reboot??

Can’t wait to open iPlayer and see “Doctor Who (1963-1996)”, “Doctor Who (2005-2022)”, “Doctor Who (2023-2025)” and “Doctor Who”.

I mean, legitimately too, because that’ll mean new episodes have happened.

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The thing is, I’ve heard “Lindsay Salt says Doctor Who is going nowhere” too many times now. I can’t get my hopes up when even if they strike a deal, it could be, and in fact almost certainly will be years until they get production started again. It’s been over an entire year already without any Doctor Who.

Lindsay WHAT.

Anyway, the promises of new Doctor Who aren’t a lie unless it actually does go away for good. Even if you’re pessimistic, we’re not quite at that stage yet.

But yeah, we’ll need to brace ourselves for a long wait.

I have personally prepared for this moment by being really bad at filling in my Classic Who gaps, and only having a human amount of time and money for Big Finish.

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One thing that shines through all of this is that I genuinely believe the BBC are committed to keeping the show going. This is not like the 1980s where they were just embarrassed by it and actively trying to kill it – the landscape has totally changed. The industry is extremely risk averse now (which is bad, to be clear) and so BBC absolutely want to keep supporting an IP like Doctor Who which has a strong and international core fanbase.

What kind of Doctor Who we’ll get, how many episodes, how high a budget etc., who the fuck knows, but we will get it.

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I understand the desire for something new and fresh, but I don’t agree with the implication that the show has been conscious in its picking white writers/producers only.

There is no implication to disagree with – I literally used the word “unconscious” .

Talent, talent, talent is what’s important. Whoever comes around and has the magic should get the chance. Fan, non-fan, white, black, it doesn’t matter. Nothing should come before talent. 

And nothing would come before talent. The fact is that for a role like this there’s always a person of colour or woman (or both at once) who is equally as talented as the best white man option. The reason why the white man still gets picked most or all of the time is because of the unconscious racism and sexism. (Incidentally, seeing a talent selection system that selects a white person every single time and concluding “I assume this was done fairly and without bias”? Kind of racist! Whether unconsciously or consciously.) That’s why it requires a conscious effort to counteract the unconscious bias.

Thankfully you don’t need to believe me that unconscious racism and sexism are real or agree with me that positive discrimination is good. I just hope the BBC higher ups are forward thinking on this.

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There’s no logic behind this. A hardcore fan isn’t necessarily going to behave as such. Professionalism does exist.

There absolutely is logic behind it. It’s not that hardcore fans are guaranteed to be bad, it’s that someone who isn’t a hardcore fan is more likely to bring a fresh perspective. And all 4 of the modern era showrunners have been hardcore fans, so regardless of how good they were, it’s past time to change things up.

And this display of racism is very distasteful, to be polite. By all
means, give everyone an equal chance to write for the programme and pick
the best one regardless of age, gender or race. But excluding someone
based on their skin colour? I’d like to think we’re above discrimination
even towards those who aren’t historically discriminated against. 

No, the racism is in appointing a white person as the showrunner – or producer and script editor – every single time since the show began in 1963 (and a man every time except for the first). The racism is in saying that you’re giving all types of people equal opportunity but then only ever hiring white men anyway, as if it’s an unspoken truth that white men are simply better. Positive discrimination is a thing for a reason, and it’s to counterbalance the unconscious racist bias that occurs if you don’t do it. Intentionally excluding white men from taking this one position one time is not racist, because racism is structural and is set up to benefit white people. White people in top TV positions will be fine.

Plus it’s not just arbitrary. Picking a different kind of showrunner means you get a fresh perspective on the show, similar to picking a non-fan.

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Yeah, if they just want to be pragmatic, doing it Series 1 style and then just acknowledging the cliffhanger when regeneration comes up (“my last one was chaotic, I took a few different forms before it settled… “) would work fine.

The positive is that this is a genuine chance to take things in a different direction. With that in mind, here are a few easy points for the BBC to check off when they’re looking for a new showrunner:

– Not a writer for the RTD1 era (stretch goal: not a credited Doctor Who writer at all).

– Not a fan of the show (casual fan is acceptable, hardcore fan is not).

– Not a white man.

I’d also say “split the role of showrunner into 2 roles again, for the love of god”, but I know that’s not going to happen.

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Oh my fucking god.

So, the BBC finally listened to the wisdom of the revival’s best Doctor?

The fact that they announced the Christmas special but it was only ever a placeholder and they never did substantial work on it seems appalling to me. The idea that merely pretending a new episode will exist secures the show’s future makes no sense, but maybe if you work at the BBC or Bad Wolf it does, somehow.

And the Billie Piper choice is now revealed to be more foolish than it even was to begin with, because whoever picks up the show – if it does indeed continue – will have to be the one who deals with that mess at the same time as starting afresh. Jeez.

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Obviously if he were sued Doug could just defiantly insist in court that “the BBC” does not refer to the real life broadcaster, but is in fact “the Backside Bothering Club”, a fictional organisation that existed only in the Red Dwarf universe.

Realistically though he would have been fine. Many of the sexual crimes committed at the BBC are a matter of record now, and the line is just an exaggeration for humour, and it’s still an exaggeration even if you limit the scope to a particular decade. It is not libel.

I think sometimes people are just paranoid about legal action even when it’s actually fine. (See: “Chicken McNugget”.) But in this case maybe Doug just didn’t think the joke would land if he didn’t get specific.

It is Timewave though. If the joke were good it would have been out of place.

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I find it really hard to compare classic and modern-era Doctors as they feel like such different shows, but if your favourite nu-Who Doctor isn’t Eleven then I’m not sure we can be friends.

Oh.

That’s OK… I didn’t want to be friends anyway.

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FAN THEORY: 

He’s Rimmer.

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Tom Baker was truly something else as the Doctor. Quite simply a league above anybody else to ever do it. To ever do anything. With time and with further viewings my appreciation of him only grows.

Absolutely. As far as I’m concerned any Best Doctor ranking should leave #2 blank just to acknowledge how perfect Tom Baker is in the role.

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I remember when the UNIT Files DVD set came out, folks were baffled that the dinosaur from Invasion of the Dinosaurs – one of the most infamously bad special effects in all of Classic Who – was not given the “updated special effects” treatment. Presumably it’s just because box sets had a worse budget per story than individual releases, and they’d already spent so much money trying to restore the colour to Episode 1, but maybe they’ll do it for the Season 11 Collection.

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And Ben comes out swinging against the very concept of director’s cuts and fan edits! The main thing I’ll say in opposition to that is just that I do in fact watch Doctor Who for fun, not purely as a solemn act of historical observance. If my goal was to recreate the experience of watching Classic Who on its initial broadcast as closely as possible, no way would I be watching it via a restored DVD/Blu-ray on a 4K widescreen TV hooked up to a sound bar. Era authentic CRTs and VHS tapes all the way!

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Having literally just watched it, there is a reason. Rimmer hid all the other discs, missing Lister’s as it was still filed under living crew. He asked for Kochanski first. Also would still fit with the discs being absent later in the series.

Ah, fair enough! Clearly it’s overdue for a rewatch on my part too.

Though I would still think that if Lister were able to unilaterally switch Rimmer off and become the highest ranking member of the crew, he should have been able to just demand Holly tell him where Rimmer hid the disks. Even if Rimmer somehow did it while evading Holly’s monitoring, he would have needed either the skutters or The Cat to actually do the physical work, and so they could surely be persuaded to share the info.

Probably for the best that they left this plot hole in instead of making it so Rimmer had the other hologram disks destroyed though. That would be too much, and his behaviour in Bodysnatcher is already too much.

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Even the ‘in Colour’ home releases include the full length black and white versions of the stories too. Never go full George Lucas.

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THE TWO KRYTENS

Mech²

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Does Me² make sense as an episode title? I mean, 1² = 1, so does that mean just one Rimmer? Important questions.

Me² = 2Me

Me² / Me = 2

Me = 2

The solution is just a number that could correspond to anything. Me = 2, but that doesn’t mean 2 people. Could be arms. Or swimming qualifications.

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That’s deliberately an outlier, though, and the degradation of Lister’s
personality into something resembling Rimmer is directly commented on in
the script. He quite literally paints an H mark on his head. 

I don’t think you can call it an “outlier” when the sample size for “times Lister tries to take control of deactivating holograms” is a whopping 3. Confidence & Paranoia definitely contradicts Balance of Power by suggesting that as long as Lister had access to the physical hologram disks, he could overrule Rimmer, but that doesn’t mean Balance of Power is the outlier (especially not a “deliberate” one) and Confidence & Paranoia is normal. It just means you have a personal preference.

Plus it never actually gets to the point where Lister’s authority is directly tested – in C&P he just activates “Kochanski” as a second hologram and doesn’t deactivate Rimmer (and Rimmer secretly approves because he knows what will happen), and in Me² he has like 3 loophole options (he can deactivate 1 Rimmer as long as he doesn’t deactivate both / the Rimmers both agreed that one of them should be switched off so that’s some level of consent / Holly may have overruled Rimmer’s authority to stop the madness).

As for whether Lister could have deactivated Rimmer but chose not to because he respects him as a lifeform, even outside of Balance of Power, the evidence suggests this is not the case. In Confidence & Paranoia, before they discover a way to run 2 holograms at once, Lister explains that the reason he hasn’t activated Kochanski’s hologram is that Rimmer has hidden her disk. No mention of “I’d have to switch off Rimmer, and that would be murder” or any other reason. Just “I don’t have the disk”. The 2-hologram solution was clearly an attempt to convince Rimmer to hand over the disk willingly, but if Lister had found (what he thought was) Kockanski’s disk before coming up with that idea, I’m pretty sure he would have just switched off Rimmer.

And in Me², Lister is pretty darn untroubled about switching off Rimmer2, who is just as valid a lifeform as Rimmer1. That’s not very respectful of him! I wouldn’t trust Series 1 Lister to save Tuvix, I’ll tell you that much.

Also… Lister’s personality degrades to resemble Rimmer’s in Balance of Power???

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He doesn’t?

I always just assumed Lister didn’t disable Rimmer without his consent because he respects Rimmer as a lifeform. 

He doesn’t! That’s the whole impetus of Balance of Power. Lister wasn’t trying to qualify as a chef just so Rimmer couldn’t generally boss him around. The fact that Rimmer wouldn’t consent to be switched off in favour of Kochanski was the key thing that pushed him into doing it. If he had succeeded, he was absolutely not going to turn around and say “actually I won’t switch you off after all because I respect your autonomy too much”, he was just going to do it, and count the promise that he would switch him back on as the respect.

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