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I, apparently, am a two-faced double-standards grammar wierdo. I can cope with the Official Site forum thread stating that “Dave deny’s new series” with a wry smile and a shrug. Who is Dave deny and what is his new series?

But the fact!! That Dave’s own site!! Broke up a single sentence!! With unneccessary punctuation!! Makes me think they were away on the day the brains were being handed out.

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I am in the category of Big Issue buyer that buys it out of guilt, never reads it, then lines the rabbit’s cage with it. Hence these sort of pointless interviews are absolutely perfect for my particular wedge of the Big Issue market.

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“Let’s not forget that these were the same guys that had the temerity to rip the shreds out of another fan’s film – a genuine and thoughtful submission to bbc’s ‘Points of View’ in which a fan(who in this case was deserving of the term ‘fan’)requested that the bbc not give up on red dwarf.”

A tantalising clue to the twat’s identity perhaps?

Also: no one can compete with Ed Wood. He rocked.

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Yay! Liberty Meadows! Frank Cho, we need closure! Even after all these years.

I picked up a rumour from a comic shop person that he was coming back to Liberty Meadows but in a different format. Not sure what that might mean though.

I’ve missed the gang. (Goes to dig out his collection.)

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I do like that the “throwaway comment” requires over half a dozen responses to defend.

You could have gone with “Meh, I know what I’m on about.” As it is, we’ve slipped onto a second page of drivel.

Whether or not Torchwood specifically represented those characters who lived at the (undisclosed) addresses featured on location, which may or may not have been standing in for completely different areas of Cardiff, it was still damn good TV.

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Hey Carl, are you actually saying it wasn’t general ENOUGH in order to accomodate your perception of the area you lived in? It might just be representative of, I don’t know, just that family?

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Chris?s last sentence ?(It really looks?)? doesn?t appear to need the brackets.

It’s an aside. (Which doesn’t really add to the sentence before but maybe demonstrates an opinion or an alternative, while standing separately.)

The grammatical equivalent of a stage-whisper?

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The main problem for me wasn?t the reason for the aliens? decisions. More the massive leap of logic on Jack and co?s part (death of Clem by signal somehow means the signal is damaging to the 456.), and somehow pulling ?child interface? technology out of nowhere. And all the things I listed in previous posts?

Yeah, it did feel like they’d run out of time so had to smash in an explanation as quickly as possible. But then if they’d actually set it all out we probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway! Besides, you never build a macguffin when you’ve got two-days to go till your deadline. They always happen in the last two mintues.

They needed to kill Clem because he posed a threat that no-one until now had even thought of. Then it turns out that killing Clem pointed Jack in the direction required to kill the 456. A little bit Deus Ex Machina, I suppose but it’s not as bad as the murder mystery where the final clue that unfolds everything is something the audience has neither seen or heard until the final scenes (Poirot, I’m looking at you now). I think, had this been a toned-down Doctor Who story, Clem would have deliberately chosen to stand on the dais. The Doctor would have yelled lots of things through the glass and Clem would die, nobly destroying the 456.

Taking the heroism out of the ending was one of the best ideas they ever had and, for me, was a really satisfyingly bleak ending that had some truth to it: you don’t really get heroes, and sometimes people get caught up in the gears of the world and squished. Everyone else gets on with their lives.

Edit: Oh yeah, I also totally agree with your assessment of the 456 as basically gangsters running protection rackets. Makes you wonder where the 456 are on the Shadow Proclamation’s lists?

More importantly: I still can’t decide if the government assassin lady is sexy or not.

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I used to really obssess over plot holes and continuity and all that “if it were real they wouldn’t do that…” nonsense. I had to drop it because it was affecting my enjoyment of TV shows. That’s not lowering standards, it’s just being realistic.

There are major problems like: if the aliens could do all they could with the children, why bother with a government middle-man, why not just round them up?

Why build a habitation cage for a creature that can’t survive our atmosphere and not include some sort of life-threatening safety device? Like an opening valve?

Why didn’t John Frobisher hide his children somewhere?

Why haven’t the 456 heard of Spacesuits? For the non-oxygen breathing alien who fancies getting out and about.

The thing is, these should be secondary considerations. It’s exactly the same problem Christopher H Bidmead has with writing fiction. So wrapped up in the how, he doesn’t write a decent story about “why”, which is, for me, the real positive side of these new Doctor Who and Torchwood stories. (See if you can find his DWM interview from a couple of months ago. Brilliantly demonstrative of why he shouldn’t write fiction.)

Everything had a theme, or a point that was being got across. Even the working-class stereotypes of Ianto’s family were there to address why it’s not a good thing to sacrifice even the “failing” parts of society. So what if they don’t “ring true”?

It’s all about the theme, the emotion. The Macguffin ending was very much: “mumble-mumble-technobabble, but will it work? It might!” But it wasn’t there to be a clever bit of science, it was to ask: could Jack kill his grandson? Could he make himself as bad as the people he’s been fighting?

Sure they tacked the technical explanation on in the last five minutes, but the theme, the layering of the ideas, building up to that solution wasn’t rushed or tacked on and was executed very well.

I think it’s awesome that Jack is now definitely a flawed hero. It makes him a lot more human and more believable. Running away is a perfectly understandable, if cowardly, response to what he did.

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>>pronouncing the feminine movement

>Whatting the what?

You’re right, that’s awful use of English. You my my sincerest apologies. What’s the short phrase that would sum up:

“She’s wearing a low-slung hip holster and belt arrangement so that every time she stalks around in her army boots, looking like a moody, homicidal Lara Croft, her natural hip motion is accentuated making her body language both scary and feminine.”

?

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>Sally Slater is probably the worst thing about this, actually. She just wanders around scowling.

But that’s like… her job. She’s good at it. Her job is to stalk around the locations, slinking her hips with the gun holster pronouncing the feminine movement and scowl at the people she seems incapable of actually killing.

The joke was good. Andy’s a great character and was very enjoyable in “Asylum”, the Radio 4 play.

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I love that RTD deliberately sets these things to be: “Huh? What did he say? OMG! Let’s talk about this on the internet!”

Half the things he writes like that (the fall of Arcadia, “I’ve been a Dad once”, taking the last room at the first Christmas) are the script equivalent of chucking a firecracker from a passing car. Loud bang and everyone saying: what was that?

Re: The Little Girl, I imagine she’s something very non-human, maybe even extra-dimensional. What about Luke Smith, Sarah Jane’s son? I am genuinely curious as to whether he was affected and given it happened to kids, I’d be full of fanboy glee if they mention it in the next series of Sarah Jane Adventures.

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“Meanwhile Ellard’s writing career continues to do a convincing impression of a long dead corpse.”

Putting that at the end of your first LiveJournal post in six years… that’s kind of funny.

Did Andrew used to bully Shane? Did you steal his girlfriend? Did you date his Mum once?

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Yeah, sorry but Watchmen was superior to Terminator AND Transformers.

But then I saw The Hangover and that was brilliant too. Not an “of the year” brilliant, but still pretty damn good.

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>So with Jack, they only found 2-3 bits right? I guess they fused together and the rest regenerated? Stretching the healing stuff, but I really don?t mind.

Jack doesn’t “heal”. He’s a fixed point in time so he kind of “reverts” to that fixed point. Although that doesn’t make a lot of sense since he also says he noticed that he IS getting older, only very, very slowly.

I think that Jack may now have some serious mental issues. Perhaps claustrophobia? Or even agoraphobia?

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Woah, S.O.,
I’m sorry for your loss.

J

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I can’t see how the incident had any impact on the show. Where are you going with this?

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Absolutely awesome start! This is how Torchwood should have been from the beginning. Excellent.

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And that’s another bad miss…

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>?and God spake ?Let there be colour? and there was colour, and snooker became a much better game?

No it didn’t. It would take a lot more than colour to do that.

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Same haircut. Plus they both have eyes and a mouth. No wait, I’ve done that one…

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>to andrews comment: Doesn?t make Danny right.
>never said he was just qouted what he said

To be fair, and I’m not bashing, just putting how I saw it: your comment seemed to be in support of the earlier thread opinion that the Cassandra in Doctor Who was somehow a rip-off or copy of the one from Red Dwarf. That’s the conclusion I drew and the conclusion Andrew came to. (I assume.)

If you weren’t posting it to say that you thought Danny was right, then it wasn’t very clear that was the case.

Back to Torchwood: seriously excited at this epic prospect, although knowing my luck I’ll be watching it all on iPlayer a week after everyone in the office has seen it.

Trailer looks brilliant and the article in Doctor Who Magazine was absolutely tantalising.

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>Traffic here in LA the day he died was absolutely terrible. Everybody was driving towards Jackson?s house.

>I don?t know what they were expecting to find when they got there.

Lurleen, git yur lootin’ bags and high-security crowbar. We’re goin’ shoppin’.

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>Danny was just joking in the commentary, I still stand by that they look like each other though.

Yes, they both have eyes and a mouth.

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I thought this episode was particularly good and very funny. I think my favourite was Mr. Suave and the casino.

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Yep, except that he’d /heard/ they had a Cassandra and he’d misheard “Gelth”. I think the commentaries were either at the time or just before those episodes aired.

It is the boy’s running gag that everyone copied Red Dwarf, up to, I think, Jane Austen time-travelling in order to steal Red Dwarf’s ideas from “Beyond a Joke”.

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>According to Ken Levine: ?Fans flocked to the Michael Jackson star on the Hollywood Walk-of-Fame. But it was talkshow host?s star, not Jacko?s. His star was covered by a red carpet laid down for the premiere of BRUNO.?

I guess I’m the only one here who finds it funny that Bruno first spoofs Michael Jackson’s “baby dangling” incident, then literally walks all over the star. I really hope they don’t offer an apology for any of it.

Why are people “flocking” to his star anyway? What do they expect to happen when they get there?

Sorry for the rampant cynicism but really: why?

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I just bought the Trial of a Time Lord for ?11, then realised with a sense of deflation that it represents nearly half of Colin’s appearances.

Then I caught a bit of Kingdom the other night with Colin playing a mad old Norfolk boy with too many dogs. So things lightened up a bit there.

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>And yet Daniel is never ?Daz?, thank god.

That would be Darren.

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>Timothy Dalton should be in every TV programme. There should be a law.

Something we agree on. I’m hoping he’s a future incarnation of the Doctor.

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>And where the fuck are all the black people in Clangers?

I think you’ll find Major was a brother.

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What? But I need to know about the Storymakers! Gah!

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Oh I see. That makes more sense. I still think it was a glorious bit of credibility stretching though! I mean it. Not being sarcastic.

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Carl, you old rascal you. Taking the smeg again.

I adore people who not only deliberately get the wrong end of the stick, but wave it around their heads manically in the hope of attracting more nutters.

For some Doctor Who fans, that’s a whole hobby on its own.

It’s firmly established in the show that things changed in the series do not have an impact on the present. Otherwise, Alex would remember being looked after by Gene the day her parents died and Summers would have vanished the instant he shot himself. (I don’t think Chris looks ANYTHING like older Summers.)

It’s not “the past” it’s a shared hallucination based on “the past”.

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Ah, see now I’m going to look like a two-faced idiot, but I REALLY like Buffy, Angel and Firefly. I just thought it was funny that throughout Buffy it’s largely white-centric, with a couple of black vampires, that Mr. Trick, was it? Oh look! Black Slayer. Dead. Then there’s the headteacher. Ooh, he’s not a stereotype or a bad guy. Whoops, I was wrong, he’s a bad guy. Then you just have to look at who’s left standing at the finale of Buffy.

I agree that Angel did a better job representationally. I liked Gunn as a character and I laughed at: “Y’all can cater to the demon, cater to the dead man, but what about the black man?” Lovely bit of parody.

On reflection race isn’t really a Buffy or Angel “issue” as much as Good v. Evil, so I think my first, overly flippant post overstated things a bit.

I must’ve missed Mr. Trick (that may or may not be the name but I’m not looking it up) with his “caucasian persuasion” line because that basically underscores the whole point and undermines mine completely.

I thought it would be obvious to anyone with eyes and/or ears that Jos Whedon is a very cool creator of very cool TV, hence my OTT “hate on the black people” comment.

Sorry for any perceived offence.

My other point still stands though: Why isn’t the con artist in Krod Mandoon white? Why is the black guy from Brooklyn or wherever? In short, their playing to a sloppy comedy stereotype and generally being lazy. But then I’ve only sat through episode one.

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But not as pretty…

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I once got a smacked wrist for agreeing with a customer at the shop I worked in that a Doctor Who story would make an excellent DVD release. (This was ages ago when Doctor Who on DVD was an exciting new thing.)

The customer went home and wrote somewhere on the internet: “them at the shop said this story is coming out on DVD! I’m so excited!”

We got a phone call from a BBC Enterprises/ Worldwide friend saying: “What the blinking flip (paraphrasing there) do you think you’re doing? That’s supposed to be confidential!”

I was all: “what? what’d I do? I don’t actually know anything and haven’t claimed to know anything.”

So all I’m saying is: internet rumour, is about as reliable as the Sun, the Mirror or the Times reporting.

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I found bits of Krod Mandoon funny but I loathed the American “comedy” method of laying out a joke for you, then labouring heavily on the build up before sticking a funny face on the end of the punchline.

Anneke likes sex. No kidding? How funny is this going to be throughout a series? Will she contract an alarming STD? Unlikely.

I did like SuperMac from Ashes to Ashes being “turned” gay after two weeks in prison, but I think Krod Mandoon has some serious stereotyping issues.

The black guy is a con artist, the attractive woman is a slut and the first openly gay man we see is what… puerto rican? It’s almost as bad as Jos Whedon’s hate on black people. (Seriously, how many series of Buffy and Angel? How many black people feature?)

Ah hell, now I’ve turned into one of those whiny liberals who gets all cross about nothing much in particular on behalf of groups of people who probably couldn’t care less.

Sorry.

Krod Mandoon: mostly dull with the odd funny bit. Might get better. Funniest moment, I thought, was stabbing the wrong lord at the table.

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Carl, you’re like Scotty or something. Just when we think it’s running out of energy, you reroute the energisers or something and pow we’re past warp 10!

“We need more depravity, Mr. Carl!”

“I’m giving her all she’s got!”

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Are you going to do another series of Story Makers? Because that show was awesome.

Oh and do you resent Jelly and Jackson getting spin off series?

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I think you?re the only person on the planet who likes Sliders.

There are others. They also like big wooden building blocks, slip-on shoes and their white jackets with sleeves that tie up round the back.

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On the subject of commentaries, I’m currently listening to Red Dwarf Series 8 with commentary. My God! Talk about overcrowded. Everyone yelling over everyone else and everyone trying to drown out Norman’s moaning. Some of it’s funny, some of its just so whingy!

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Oops, double post. It really wasn’t funny enough to warrant saying once, let alone twice. Erm… Nothing to see here. Move along please.

Except that maybe Bobby Llew and Neil Gaiman should write Red Dwarf?

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Wow, did Tony Martin write stuff, before, after, or during the time he served for shooting two young intruders who broke into his home?

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Pfft.

I believe the forum parlance is: “This.”

I’m a bargain bin trawler so will likely upset any future plans for Red Dwarf by buying it sometime around the Olympics (probably not even the British hosted ones either). (I’ve been buying up previous series DVDs this year.)

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I’ll take EIGHT!

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Wow, we really have just crashed through the floor when it comes to taste in this thread haven’t we? Do we think we can do more depraved than this? I’m willing to bet we can. When I say we, I mean you.

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Have to say that I thought the Director’s commentary on the Dr Who TV Movie was near wrist-slittingly dull! You need more than one person on commentaries in order to talk about stuff! Still not as boring as the Daredevil commentary:

“Here this shot is CGI. That’s not Ben. That’s some nice CGI. We put some CGI in there because Ben would have died otherwise, my fault: asking him to act. That’s not Jennifer Garner’s real head. That’s CGI…”

Best commentary line, or at least one that I can remember is from Spaced where Edgar Wright asks Mark Heap something like:

“Do you want to talk us through how you approach playing Brian?”

“No.”

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Almost perfect except you’ve still got the transform handles on the bottom right of your image. Apart from that. Very funny. Sort of.

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Have to say that Martin Summers is/was not Chris. Summer got Chris to replace him, having shot himself for reasons that I’m still not sure of except maybe he hates himself. Understandable really, given that accent. Older Summers isn’t Chris. He is /was an evil git who could think his way through a corkscrew without touching the sides.

“Hmm, I want to foil a robbery I was involved in… shall I tell the other person here with me? Nah, I’ll stalk her, shoot myself, make her bury me, terrify her and refuse to answer any questions. I’m sure she’ll get what I’m on about. Then I’ll have killed myself for being such a loser and then make someone else into a loser for me so that they fill the role. I’ll be the crime boss, she’ll be the hero… oh it’ll be great fun!”

In the end it was all about one sad old man, his regrets and a strange desire to write and direct mystery theatre.

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