honestly, thank god. I haven't kept up past Jodie's first season, but it was just very obvious that she was a good/great doctor and the show was.......not.
User reviews for Edge of Reality seem to indicate that there's a good game in there but a lot of bugs getting in the way at the moment. Might want to give this one a couple of weeks until it's been patched.
"It’s taken longer than expected if we’re being honest. I’ve been throwing batons at people for about a year now. And finally, someone’s picked it up,” Chibnall said on the search for his replacement.
Yeah literally only three people want to run Doctor Who
Bloke always has such a positive, upbeat tone whenever he says anything about Who but blimey you can see that relentless positivity breaking a bit there
I’d have thought there’d be a queue of up-and-comers for a gig like that, although it is a monumental amount of work. Maybe it’s time the BBC ditches the “show runner” model altogether.
Well if I were an up and comer I would be afraid of busting my ass for low pay just to end up being known as the person who put the final nail in the coffin of the Doctor Who revival.
Well particularly if you’ve seen even 1% of the interminable, tedious and disproportionate vitriol Chibnall cops online
He has plenty of faults and issues, but bloody hell the way some people go on, you’d think he’s spent the past three years stealing children’s sweets and kicking people’s dogs
Well particularly if you’ve seen even 1% of the interminable, tedious and disproportionate vitriol Chibnall cops online
He has plenty of faults and issues, but bloody hell the way some people go on, you’d think he’s spent the past three years stealing children’s sweets and kicking people’s dogs
Well...
...nuking Gallefrey (again) and doing it via Master off-screen sure wasn't the best turn to take. I'm honestly not gonna blink if sooner or later they just have the Gallifreyians pop back in, having taken a page from the Doctor's book by mass-jumping into a pocket dimension when the Master started shooting. If they got enough sense to hide at the end of time, they have to have at least made some plan in case that wasn't enough.
Well particularly if you’ve seen even 1% of the interminable, tedious and disproportionate vitriol Chibnall cops online
He has plenty of faults and issues, but bloody hell the way some people go on, you’d think he’s spent the past three years stealing children’s sweets and kicking people’s dogs
Well...
...nuking Gallefrey (again) and doing it via Master off-screen sure wasn't the best turn to take. I'm honestly not gonna blink if sooner or later they just have the Gallifreyians pop back in, having taken a page from the Doctor's book by mass-jumping into a pocket dimension when the Master started shooting. If they got enough sense to hide at the end of time, they have to have at least made some plan in case that wasn't enough.
I mean personally I'm hoping we move on from Gallifrey and the Time Lords and the Doctor's past. The TV series has a preoccupation with Gallifrey and the Doctor that I think sometimes gets in the way of telling more interesting or forward-looking stories (Capaldi's era is an exception for me, but then again, all the bits with Gallifrey weren't the point). It's also all been written into a bit of a corner:
if the Time Lords show their face again, the Time War's just going to start all over again
the Time Lords are such static, unchanging, passive chumps that even after centuries at war, they're still doormats to both the Doctor and Rassilon
the Doctor is now so ridiculously pivotal and hyperbolically important that enemies turn and run at their name, most of the universe would literally die without them (Wedding of River Song), they can overthrow actual Rassilon with 14 words, and maybe they're also a universal force holding back the bad guys?!? (Twice Upon a Time)
I miss the Doctor who was just a curious scientist and traveller, who didn't have to matter and didn't have to be important (and where they were from never came up because it didn't matter). The modern series has really made me appreciate The Lawrence Miles Progression(tm) from 1997-2002 in the novels: the Doctor is dead in the future > the Doctor is dead in the past > the Doctor is dying now > the Doctor's in heaven and we killed him he's dead and irrelevant now and you'll never hear from him ever again
(Not that I think you need to kill the Doctor in order to just move the hell on and into more interesting territory, but can the TV series please just stop navel-gazing at the Doctor's ego and Gallifrey's uselessness?)
+2
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
It seemed like that was the direction they were heading mid Moffat run, at the end of S6
he fakes his death, then tells Dorium "I got too big, too noisy. Time to slip into the shadows for a while."
At the start of S7, Oswin erases all trace of him from the Dalek hive mind. With that, the Doctor has a clean slate! He can be anonymous again.
And then like 5 episodes later they reverse all of that, the Daleks know who he is and a universal war hinges on his name.
Well particularly if you’ve seen even 1% of the interminable, tedious and disproportionate vitriol Chibnall cops online
He has plenty of faults and issues, but bloody hell the way some people go on, you’d think he’s spent the past three years stealing children’s sweets and kicking people’s dogs
Well...
...nuking Gallefrey (again) and doing it via Master off-screen sure wasn't the best turn to take. I'm honestly not gonna blink if sooner or later they just have the Gallifreyians pop back in, having taken a page from the Doctor's book by mass-jumping into a pocket dimension when the Master started shooting. If they got enough sense to hide at the end of time, they have to have at least made some plan in case that wasn't enough.
I mean personally I'm hoping we move on from Gallifrey and the Time Lords and the Doctor's past. The TV series has a preoccupation with Gallifrey and the Doctor that I think sometimes gets in the way of telling more interesting or forward-looking stories (Capaldi's era is an exception for me, but then again, all the bits with Gallifrey weren't the point). It's also all been written into a bit of a corner:
if the Time Lords show their face again, the Time War's just going to start all over again
the Time Lords are such static, unchanging, passive chumps that even after centuries at war, they're still doormats to both the Doctor and Rassilon
the Doctor is now so ridiculously pivotal and hyperbolically important that enemies turn and run at their name, most of the universe would literally die without them (Wedding of River Song), they can overthrow actual Rassilon with 14 words, and maybe they're also a universal force holding back the bad guys?!? (Twice Upon a Time)
I miss the Doctor who was just a curious scientist and traveller, who didn't have to matter and didn't have to be important (and where they were from never came up because it didn't matter). The modern series has really made me appreciate The Lawrence Miles Progression(tm) from 1997-2002 in the novels: the Doctor is dead in the future > the Doctor is dead in the past > the Doctor is dying now > the Doctor's in heaven and we killed him he's dead and irrelevant now and you'll never hear from him ever again
(Not that I think you need to kill the Doctor in order to just move the hell on and into more interesting territory, but can the TV series please just stop navel-gazing at the Doctor's ego and Gallifrey's uselessness?)
The Lawrence Miles Progression is 3/4 of the way to fitting the melody of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." Now you can't unhear it!
Also I know your comment about the vitriol wasn't directed at me, but I do apologise for my contribution to that vitriol. I love a good whinge about plot holes and always will, but I definitely got too worked up in here sometimes. (Weirdly, those times coincided with other things in my life not being that great! What are the odds?)
Though I give myself some small credit that even at my most irrationally annoyed I never came close to accusing Chibnall of ruining my childhood. Which I maintain is the dumbest thing an adult can say about a current piece of media.
It’s a time travelling TV series so, uh, its writers can also time travel to punch your childhood right in the Christmas presents?
Cyvros on
+3
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
The Doctor is on the Universe's greatest authenticity trip, as a character. To thine own self be true... 'To doctor' something is to modify a pre-existing ontological construct - even if that construct is your own sense of self-identity.
The new episode was some good stuff. It felt like an episode of Old Who, but with a bigger budget.
Chibnall might work better in this format.
The episode actually had some suspense to it.
+2
Options
Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
I wish there had been some room for the episode to breathe, some quieter more reflective moments, but there is so much other sci-fi out there these days for Who to compete with, I get that they have to go 110% 'bombastic' nowadays.
Some serious FUBAR high-stakes, more at 11...
What I'm saying is I'm thinking of watching Blakes 7, or Space 1999 again.
I wish there had been some room for the episode to breathe, some quieter more reflective moments, but there is so much other sci-fi out there these days for Who to compete with, I get that they have to go 110% 'bombastic' nowadays.
Some serious FUBAR high-stakes, more at 11...
What I'm saying is I'm thinking of watching Blakes 7, or Space 1999 again.
Now's as good a time as any - all of Blake's 7 is finally streaming on Britbox (at least US and Australian)
I've really been enjoying some of the more character-driven Big Finish stuff recently, like Stranded and some of their Torchwood range, so I can't wait to get to their B7 range too. It's all been a nice break from relentless 'threats to the entire universe' plots. Secretly hoping
the Flux is an entirely natural phenomenon so it's at least something a bit different
I really wanted the cracks back in series 5 to be a pure force of nature, something that in some ways couldn't be tamed or prevented or fought or negotiated with. And I think it could have fit in with the fairytale aspect of Eleven's era, particularly after reading Moffat's beautiful little take on "You are the universe experiencing itself" in the Day of the Doctor novelisation:
‘The universe was born alive,’ said the Doctor, answering Clara’s question, as they crunched down the second flight of stone steps, ‘but it could only become aware of itself by developing sensors across its surface, known as life forms—that’s us—each of which suffers a temporary delusion of separate identity during data collection—that’s what we call consciousness—but in reality has no more individual existence than the hairs on your forearm when they tell you there’s a draught—’
Positives:
- What a joyously OTT cold-open. It felt very Fifth Doctor, somehow. I could see a version of that scene playing out in an '80s Who episode, only with some really rubbish green-screen* and an anti-grav prop that was just two bike locks painted silver.
*Translator's note: "green-screen" means "colour separation overlay"
- The element of distrust between Yaz and the Doctor is a welcome change to their dynamic. I still have reservations about the Timeless Child thing, but if nothing else it works as a believable and sympathetic reason for the Doctor to not tell Yaz the whole truth - she hasn't yet come to terms with it herself.
- Not quite sure yet what their dynamic is going to be with Dan, but this episode did a great job establishing him as a character.
- The new Sontarans look fantastic and the guy playing Ritskaw has loads of screen presence. Looking forward to seeing him play off JW.
- Oh thank God for a second I thought the villain was going to be "Tzim-Sha somehow survived." Yeah this Swarm chappie seems like a proper nightmare, he can stay.
- Beautiful costume design with Karvanista, and such an interesting idea for an alien species. I hope they explore what this "protector" role means to them in the episodes to come.
- SO MUCH GOING ON in this episode. I don't know if any single episode of Doctor Who ever set this many plates spinning at once. Yet somehow it worked! It didn't feel rushed or slapdash, it felt exciting and ambitious.
Negatives:
- Only serious negative was the sound mixing, it was hard to hear what people were saying in scenes where there were explosions in the background (which was a lot of them). Deffo going to have subtitles on when I rewatch this.
- This is very minor, but... a fleet of seven billion Lupari I get, they're one-to-one matched with humans. But why seven billion ships? Did their species never discover car-pooling?
Other:
- Everything else from this episode is filed under "Seems interesting but no idea where they're going with it yet."
The Doctor Who newsletter says that the next one is set during the Crimean War (so 1853-1856), and that lady she's talking to at the start is Mary Seacole.
Gotta say this sounds like a pretty great set-up. The Crimean War was an absolute mess so the Sontarans will feel right at home there.
+3
Options
Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
This latest episode was a little cheesy cake for my tastes. :P
See, now I wish that there'd been a First Doctor story set in the Crimean war. A six-part, plodding, pure historical story with no aliens and lots of running back and forth in front of some twigs and a prop cannon left over from another show.
What, just me? Alright then.
Good
- Kind of amazed that the pacing worked as well as it did. Narrowing the focus of the Crimean war sections to just two contemporary characters was smart and stopped things from getting too crowded.
- Dan's storyline worked really well. He's a quick study at being a companion, this one.
- Every "back of the neck!" moment. I never get tired of seeing Sontarans get conked on the head.
Bad
- Are the Sontarans planning to invade Earth at multiple timepoints? Don't you just need to do that once, as far back as possible? I mean they ARE as bloodthirsty and reckless as a sack of weasels on PCP, but still. These are the narrative problems you create for yourself when you let everyone have a time machine.
- How does fucking up the food pumps on a few Sontaran ships change the fact that they still occupy all of Russia and China? Why did you show us that map, Chibnall? We didn't need to see the map!
Other
- I have... no idea what's going on with the Atropos Temple stuff.
Overall, not quite as good as last week's but still very entertaining. I'm really enjoying how ambitious this season is, each episode feels like it's holding nothing back and just swinging for the fences.
I thought it was weird that the general was poring over that map working out his next move
Seemed like the scale was a bit too small to actually be of help, and was just there so that they could reveal that Russia wasn't there
Also, that general was impressively sneaky, getting several barrels of gunpowder across a battlefield and into position under the Sontaran ships without the Doctor realising
Good:
- Nice to see the Fugitive Doctor make a re-appearance! I always thought it was criminal to introduce her and then whisk her away before we get to know her personality, so it's good that that's finally being remedied in this season.
- I got spoiled on the ending of this episode (thank you, Doctor Who newsletter) and promised myself that I would give it points if the Angel didn't get onto the TARDIS by just randomly teleporting. And it didn't, it trojan-horsed via Yaz's phone. So... points!
- Hovering Daleks is just smart production. You can overlay CG pepperpots on the screen without worrying about them interacting with twigs or leaving tracks.
- The Doctor's caginess with Yaz is getting to the point where she's just being kind of a shit. I like this! Thirteen's finally showing that streak of darkness that all Doctors have.
- Thaddea Graham as Bel
Bad:
- Chris, Angels don't move every time anyone blinks, it's when no-one is looking. But I guess it was doing the make-the-lights-flicker trick from Blink so this doesn't matter that much anyway.
- We see the Doctor treating Yaz like crap but we don't really get to see how Yaz feels about this. How does she rationalise putting up with this? Does she trust the Doctor to have her reasons? Is she scared of her, or scared of being kicked off the TARDIS for asking too many questions? Is this damaging her self-respect? I hope they deal with this later in the season, but there were already points in this episode where they could have worked it in and didn't, like Yaz's time-skip with her sister.
I don't really have an overall verdict this time, it feels like scoring an individual chapter in a book. But I will say this is the first Chibnall season where I'll be enthusiastically rewatching the entire thing on Blu-Ray, and not just a few choice episodes. Wherever the rest of the season goes, it is definitely holding my attention.
In 1986 [Colin] Baker told an interviewer: "Tom Baker did [Doctor Who] for seven years. ... There's a part of me which likes to have a tilt at records. I would like to think that maybe I'd still be doing it in eight years' time."
So if you go by the original dates of broadcast for the regeneration episodes, Tom Baker actually held the role for six years, nine months and thirteen days. Part of the reason I've held on to this avatar for so long is to get Colin the record he always wanted, in some trivial sense. In fact, at seven years and six days it's the longest I've had any single avatar since I joined the forums in 2003.
Well done, Sixie, you outlasted them all. But it's time to hang up that Coat of Too Many Colours. Preferably in a lead-lined wardrobe away from any population centres.
Posts
Seven: Silver Nemesis
Ten: The Shakespeare Code
Twelve: Robot of Sherwood
I just needed to share this with people
Steam
https://www.doctorwho.tv/news/?article=russell-t-davies-to-return-as-doctor-who-showrunner#_
Steam
Well I did not see that one coming. He's a good choice, but also a very safe one.
honestly, thank god. I haven't kept up past Jodie's first season, but it was just very obvious that she was a good/great doctor and the show was.......not.
Honestly a Halloween Special is a pretty great idea, it's surprising it hasn't been done before.
He has plenty of faults and issues, but bloody hell the way some people go on, you’d think he’s spent the past three years stealing children’s sweets and kicking people’s dogs
Well...
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
I miss the Doctor who was just a curious scientist and traveller, who didn't have to matter and didn't have to be important (and where they were from never came up because it didn't matter). The modern series has really made me appreciate The Lawrence Miles Progression(tm) from 1997-2002 in the novels: the Doctor is dead in the future > the Doctor is dead in the past > the Doctor is dying now > the Doctor's in heaven and we killed him he's dead and irrelevant now and you'll never hear from him ever again
(Not that I think you need to kill the Doctor in order to just move the hell on and into more interesting territory, but can the TV series please just stop navel-gazing at the Doctor's ego and Gallifrey's uselessness?)
At the start of S7, Oswin erases all trace of him from the Dalek hive mind. With that, the Doctor has a clean slate! He can be anonymous again.
And then like 5 episodes later they reverse all of that, the Daleks know who he is and a universal war hinges on his name.
The Lawrence Miles Progression is 3/4 of the way to fitting the melody of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." Now you can't unhear it!
Also I know your comment about the vitriol wasn't directed at me, but I do apologise for my contribution to that vitriol. I love a good whinge about plot holes and always will, but I definitely got too worked up in here sometimes. (Weirdly, those times coincided with other things in my life not being that great! What are the odds?)
Though I give myself some small credit that even at my most irrationally annoyed I never came close to accusing Chibnall of ruining my childhood. Which I maintain is the dumbest thing an adult can say about a current piece of media.
#ShowerThoughts
Chibnall might work better in this format.
The episode actually had some suspense to it.
Some serious FUBAR high-stakes, more at 11...
What I'm saying is I'm thinking of watching Blakes 7, or Space 1999 again.
Now's as good a time as any - all of Blake's 7 is finally streaming on Britbox (at least US and Australian)
I've really been enjoying some of the more character-driven Big Finish stuff recently, like Stranded and some of their Torchwood range, so I can't wait to get to their B7 range too. It's all been a nice break from relentless 'threats to the entire universe' plots. Secretly hoping
I really wanted the cracks back in series 5 to be a pure force of nature, something that in some ways couldn't be tamed or prevented or fought or negotiated with. And I think it could have fit in with the fairytale aspect of Eleven's era, particularly after reading Moffat's beautiful little take on "You are the universe experiencing itself" in the Day of the Doctor novelisation:
- What a joyously OTT cold-open. It felt very Fifth Doctor, somehow. I could see a version of that scene playing out in an '80s Who episode, only with some really rubbish green-screen* and an anti-grav prop that was just two bike locks painted silver.
*Translator's note: "green-screen" means "colour separation overlay"
- The element of distrust between Yaz and the Doctor is a welcome change to their dynamic. I still have reservations about the Timeless Child thing, but if nothing else it works as a believable and sympathetic reason for the Doctor to not tell Yaz the whole truth - she hasn't yet come to terms with it herself.
- Not quite sure yet what their dynamic is going to be with Dan, but this episode did a great job establishing him as a character.
- The new Sontarans look fantastic and the guy playing Ritskaw has loads of screen presence. Looking forward to seeing him play off JW.
- Oh thank God for a second I thought the villain was going to be "Tzim-Sha somehow survived." Yeah this Swarm chappie seems like a proper nightmare, he can stay.
- Beautiful costume design with Karvanista, and such an interesting idea for an alien species. I hope they explore what this "protector" role means to them in the episodes to come.
- SO MUCH GOING ON in this episode. I don't know if any single episode of Doctor Who ever set this many plates spinning at once. Yet somehow it worked! It didn't feel rushed or slapdash, it felt exciting and ambitious.
Negatives:
- Only serious negative was the sound mixing, it was hard to hear what people were saying in scenes where there were explosions in the background (which was a lot of them). Deffo going to have subtitles on when I rewatch this.
- This is very minor, but... a fleet of seven billion Lupari I get, they're one-to-one matched with humans. But why seven billion ships? Did their species never discover car-pooling?
Other:
- Everything else from this episode is filed under "Seems interesting but no idea where they're going with it yet."
The Doctor Who newsletter says that the next one is set during the Crimean War (so 1853-1856), and that lady she's talking to at the start is Mary Seacole.
Gotta say this sounds like a pretty great set-up. The Crimean War was an absolute mess so the Sontarans will feel right at home there.
What, just me? Alright then.
Good
- Kind of amazed that the pacing worked as well as it did. Narrowing the focus of the Crimean war sections to just two contemporary characters was smart and stopped things from getting too crowded.
- Dan's storyline worked really well. He's a quick study at being a companion, this one.
- Every "back of the neck!" moment. I never get tired of seeing Sontarans get conked on the head.
Bad
- Are the Sontarans planning to invade Earth at multiple timepoints? Don't you just need to do that once, as far back as possible? I mean they ARE as bloodthirsty and reckless as a sack of weasels on PCP, but still. These are the narrative problems you create for yourself when you let everyone have a time machine.
- How does fucking up the food pumps on a few Sontaran ships change the fact that they still occupy all of Russia and China? Why did you show us that map, Chibnall? We didn't need to see the map!
Other
- I have... no idea what's going on with the Atropos Temple stuff.
Overall, not quite as good as last week's but still very entertaining. I'm really enjoying how ambitious this season is, each episode feels like it's holding nothing back and just swinging for the fences.
Seemed like the scale was a bit too small to actually be of help, and was just there so that they could reveal that Russia wasn't there
Also, that general was impressively sneaky, getting several barrels of gunpowder across a battlefield and into position under the Sontaran ships without the Doctor realising
- Nice to see the Fugitive Doctor make a re-appearance! I always thought it was criminal to introduce her and then whisk her away before we get to know her personality, so it's good that that's finally being remedied in this season.
- I got spoiled on the ending of this episode (thank you, Doctor Who newsletter) and promised myself that I would give it points if the Angel didn't get onto the TARDIS by just randomly teleporting. And it didn't, it trojan-horsed via Yaz's phone. So... points!
- Hovering Daleks is just smart production. You can overlay CG pepperpots on the screen without worrying about them interacting with twigs or leaving tracks.
- The Doctor's caginess with Yaz is getting to the point where she's just being kind of a shit. I like this! Thirteen's finally showing that streak of darkness that all Doctors have.
- Thaddea Graham as Bel
Bad:
- Chris, Angels don't move every time anyone blinks, it's when no-one is looking. But I guess it was doing the make-the-lights-flicker trick from Blink so this doesn't matter that much anyway.
- We see the Doctor treating Yaz like crap but we don't really get to see how Yaz feels about this. How does she rationalise putting up with this? Does she trust the Doctor to have her reasons? Is she scared of her, or scared of being kicked off the TARDIS for asking too many questions? Is this damaging her self-respect? I hope they deal with this later in the season, but there were already points in this episode where they could have worked it in and didn't, like Yaz's time-skip with her sister.
Other:
I don't really have an overall verdict this time, it feels like scoring an individual chapter in a book. But I will say this is the first Chibnall season where I'll be enthusiastically rewatching the entire thing on Blu-Ray, and not just a few choice episodes. Wherever the rest of the season goes, it is definitely holding my attention.
And now a moment of self-indulgence:
So if you go by the original dates of broadcast for the regeneration episodes, Tom Baker actually held the role for six years, nine months and thirteen days. Part of the reason I've held on to this avatar for so long is to get Colin the record he always wanted, in some trivial sense. In fact, at seven years and six days it's the longest I've had any single avatar since I joined the forums in 2003.
Well done, Sixie, you outlasted them all. But it's time to hang up that Coat of Too Many Colours. Preferably in a lead-lined wardrobe away from any population centres.