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    Who?

    Courtesy of Mail Watch. The paper has a bizaare animus against this show.

    1) Twenty years ago, it sometimes had a political message it didn't like.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250940/BBC-scriptwriters-tried-use-Doctor-Who-bring-Margaret-Thatcher.html

    2) It's too sexy

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1272542/Scantily-clad-vampires-pass-Doctor-Who--BBCs-idea-family-viewing.html

    3) It's too scary

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1271051/Is-Doctor-Who-getting-scary-kids-Children-sofa-vampires-strike.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

    Comment


      Who?

      surely RTD's constant references to homosexuality would have got the mail more up in arms than Amy kissing the Dr

      Comment


        Who?

        That last Mail article is the best publicity Doctor Who could hope for. "This series is really scary. No honestly, it's really, REALLY scary. You probably shouldn't be watching it. Look, we asked some people what they thought: they said 'It's really scary. I love it!' So you see, it's far too scary."

        Reminds me of those articles about bands like the Stones or The Who being irresponsible untrustworthy wildmen, which used to appear in teenybopper mags in the 60s. Many of them later revealed to have been written by the managers of the bands in question.

        Comment


          Who?

          That was total bobbins. Bobbins made out of SHIT and served on TOAST made out of more SHIT. And then deep fried in sugar.

          Comment


            Who?

            You're mad

            Comment


              Who?

              Lyra wrote:
              That was total bobbins. Bobbins made out of SHIT and served on TOAST made out of more SHIT. And then deep fried in sugar.
              I like your style.

              Comment


                Who?

                From Mad Larry to Mad Lyra (except, like Larry, she's got a point).

                Comment


                  Who?

                  Has to be said that episode was utterly ludicrous (and not really in a good way). For all its invention and all its nice moments it was absolutely chock-full of cop-outs, loose ends left dangling, sudden contrivances and bits that didn't even try to make sense.

                  I can sort of understand why they had the massed monster army in the previous episode (it would have worked better if it'd just been one far-seeing Big Bad who created the Pandorica and set up the trap, but they probably felt they needed some flash to make it "feel" like a season finale for the kids). Didn't stop it being slightly sillier than Doctor Who should ever be - and there's quite a lot of leeway there - but OK. What I couldn't understand was why no one bothered to drop in simple one-line "explanations" for some of the ludicrous stuff that was going on.

                  We know the Doctor can't zip backwards and forwards in his own time-stream at will (Blinovitch Limitation Effect, and all that), because if he could it would ruin the show. So why not have him mention that the universe shrinking and time screwing up has suddenly allowed him to break the rules, just this once? There's no excuse for the ontological paradox (which you should never, ever use in sci-fi unless there's a damn good reason) which got him out of the box in the first place, but at least make some effort to "explain" it. And since when was the Doctor able to communicate telepathically with dead people, or "mostly dead" people? Rather than "sending" Amy a message about what she should do when she wakes up, why not have him press a few buttons on the computer thing which is going to restore her? It's a vague enough concept that you could easily get away with something like "oh yes, I'm altering the program so she'll have all the information she needs when the Pandorica restores her memories". A few little bits like this, and a lot of the "um, hang on" moments would have seemed less jarring.

                  That Moffat timey-wimey stuff only works when it's clever. When it's just contrived, it makes you feel short-changed.

                  Comment


                    Who?

                    More science, less woo, you mean? Or more sciencey, rationalesque stuff, less "very spiritual person" guff, cos thinking properly and doing the right thing is really the hero and point of the show?

                    Comment


                      Who?

                      Taylor wrote:
                      for the kids)
                      This is why people get a bit too het up about Doctor Who plots and endings, I feel. It's a programme that all the family have to be able to relate to and whilst it is to its tremendous credit that it hasn't talked down to children and has dealt with some fairly hairy issues, there is still at its core the fact that it's not an "adult" programme so things have to be wrapped up neatly rather than having Agent Cooper reflecting Bob in the mirror, even if that does mean a few plot holes or deus ex machinas occur.

                      Comment


                        Who?

                        sowe2boro wrote:
                        More science, less woo, you mean? Or more sciencey, rationalesque stuff, less "very spiritual person" guff, cos thinking properly and doing the right thing is really the hero and point of the show?
                        Yeah, that. There's been a bit of daft quasi-mystical crap popping up on Doctor Who since they brought it back - presumably just because when you're writing the story, it's a lot easier to hand-wave like that than to properly write your way into or out of a situation. It's not just that it's annoying (and wrong) in itself, it's that it's so bloody unsatisfying dramatically.

                        Eggchaser wrote:
                        This is why people get a bit too het up about Doctor Who plots and endings, I feel. It's a programme that all the family have to be able to relate to and whilst it is to its tremendous credit that it hasn't talked down to children and has dealt with some fairly hairy issues, there is still at its core the fact that it's not an "adult" programme so things have to be wrapped up neatly rather than having Agent Cooper reflecting Bob in the mirror, even if that does mean a few plot holes or deus ex machinas occur.
                        But there's no reason why those should occur just because it's a show aimed primarily at kids. I mean, the fact that you're not writing "Gravity's Rainbow" should make it easier, not harder, to resolve your story in a fairly satisfactory way.

                        Most of Steven Moffat's stories are pretty complex, certainly by the standards of teatime TV, but they usually come together so neatly that anyone who can follow what's been happening understands what happened in the end. That was the bad thing about this finale - it really didn't. It was just a bit of a mess, with really lazy magicky things happening all over the place, as though he had to write it in a terrible hurry. That's a bit crap at the best of times, but when you've spent the whole series building up this complicated story-arc (sometimes at the expense of other things), it's bloody ridiculous. I mean, if you're not going to be able to write your way out of something, don't make it so complicated in the first place.

                        Comment


                          Who?

                          Taylor wrote:
                          That Moffat timey-wimey stuff only works when it's clever. When it's just contrived, it makes you feel short-changed.
                          Or, as I said right after The Big Bang, 'cheated'. But not just cheated in terms of Moffat's by-now fairly gruelling time-wimey explanations; cheated that the whole hour was such an inglorious mess of angst-ridden waft, rom-com twittery and sub-comedic flam, whilst tedious things like genuine dramatic tension went up the wormhole. The entire thing fluttered by like a cabbage white looping around the garden, just out of the reach of a increasingly more demented puppy. And as for the plot, like a bowlful of noxious ordure it was sloppy and it stank.

                          Comment


                            Who?

                            Anyway. Around this time of the year, we turn our thoughts to ranking the season's episodes...

                            1. The Eleventh Hour
                            Ah, it seems so long ago, and it seems so perfect... the whole series was going to be this good, yeah? This fresh, this funny, this clever, this sad... what an opener.

                            2. The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
                            3. Amy's Choice
                            The Angels story just gets the nod because it looks so darn slick. You can only see that it's shot on a small budget when you squint. It might have lost out to Amy's Choice, but look; when people are blasted to salt they don't make tidy little pyramids, it's more like something out of the Shake and Vac advert.

                            4. The Beast Below
                            Solid. But really, in a good season we should be down to seventh or eighth place before we get to 'solid'.

                            5. Vincent and the Doctor
                            Oddly affecting, and perhaps should have been more so. A lazily-conceived monster that was crying out to have jumped from Vincent's subconscious rather than been left behind by its so-called mates.

                            6. The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood
                            7. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang
                            What can you say? Satisfying openers collapse under the weight of collective scripting failure. But wasn't it ever thus? Perhaps there is something about Doctor Who that makes it intrinsically impossible to write final episodes that are better than openers.

                            8. Vampires of Venice
                            Ironic that a season about a crack should contain so much filler.

                            9. The Lodger
                            Next season's Blue Peter competition - design a joke for Doctor Who! Your hilarious one-liner will be used in the show by Matt Smith!

                            10.Victory of the Daleks
                            It seemed entirely appropriate that the nuDalek in The Big Bang appeared to be smothered in shit.

                            Comment


                              Who?

                              I never got round to watching 'Vampires of Venice' and 'Vincent and the Doctor', but from what I've seen, I'd rank the Top 3 as 1.The Beast Below; 2. Amy's Choice; 3. The Lodger. I think I might be alone in liking The Lodger, but then I think I was alone in liking 'The Doctor's Daughter'.

                              Comment


                                Who?

                                Sorry folks, but I rather liked the finale. Not brilliant, there are things I could quibble with - Amy imagining things back into existence ws a bit naff - but nothing to get too het up about. Maybe I'm giving it an easier ride than some of RTD's stuff because I've liked this season's portrayal of and conception of the Doctor so I can be less concerned about the details of the stories. Loose ends are a good thing, as long as you can satisfy yourself there is an explanation I don't need the programme to waste its time spoonfeeding them to me. The ontology paradox maybe wasn't ideal, but there's no problem with it logically, and I might even have encouraged him to throw a few more in if I'd known it would upset people so.

                                The series overall has for the most part been what I hoped it would, I wasn't expecting the first series of the new team to be break the mould too much but they've done well with most of it. Smith has been excellent, that's the real positive; Gillan very good too though I'm still not altogether sure, somehow; the writing mostly good - there was a bit of a lull and probably too many episodes that were no better than okay, but there were a handful of very good ones and only one I actually disliked.

                                Ordering would be something along the lines of:
                                1. Time of Angels / Flesh & Stone
                                2. Eleventh Hour
                                3. Amy's Choice
                                4. The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
                                5. The Lodger
                                6. Hungry Earth / Cold Blood
                                7. The Beast Below
                                8. Victory of the Daleks
                                9. Vampires of Venice
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                .
                                10. Vincent and the Doctor

                                Comment


                                  Who?

                                  Disco Sea Shanties wrote:
                                  I think I might be alone in liking The Lodger, but then I think I was alone in liking 'The Doctor's Daughter'.
                                  I liked the Lodger a lot actually. I think if we're going to be lectured about a/ true lurve and b/ not sitting around at home when we could be out experiencing everything, which 2 things Dr Who exists in part to lecture us about, I thought it was much much better than any of the equivalent Amy/Rory syrupfests.

                                  Comment


                                    Who?

                                    1. Vincent and The Doctor
                                    2. Amy's Choice
                                    3. The Hungry Earth but not Cold Blood
                                    4. Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
                                    5. The Eleventh Hour
                                    6. The Lodger
                                    7. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang
                                    8. The Beast Below
                                    9. Victory of the Daleks
                                    10. Vampires of Venice
                                    11. Cold Blood

                                    Comment


                                      Who?

                                      Go on then,

                                      1. Amy's Choice
                                      2. Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
                                      3. The Beast Below
                                      4. The Eleventh Hour
                                      5. The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang
                                      6. The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood
                                      7. The Lodger
                                      8. Vampires of Venice
                                      9. Victory of the Daleks
                                      10 Vincent and the Doctor

                                      Weird. Almost in alphabetical order.

                                      Comment


                                        Who?

                                        Ummm...

                                        1. Time Of Angels / Flesh And Stone

                                        2. Amy's Choice

                                        3. The Eleventh Hour

                                        4. The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
                                        5. The Beast Below

                                        6. The Lodger
                                        7. Vampires Of Venice
                                        8. Vincent And The Doctor
                                        9. The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood
                                        10. Victory Of The Daleks

                                        Comment


                                          Who?

                                          Finally caught the 2009 Tennant Specials:

                                          The Fly Bus - ***

                                          Liked the worm hole the metal stingrays created, disliked the fact that the metal stingrays were "part of the cycle of life" when they didn't really give back to it; loved the walking flies; hated the fact that UNIT din't have the chance to hook them up with a sewage treatment facility if that's what they really ate (back to the cannon fodder comment,) loved the Something About Mary guy doing another British accent (after otf taught me that he was wanted for a disembowelment after his butchering of the English accent loved the bus going through the wormhole during a high-speed chase;
                                          that's about all I can think of.

                                          Lady DeSouza was good enough, and the story was good enough. Like I said, I'm a sucker for Earth objects being teleported to other worlds (like the hospital on the moon, and the red bus on another planet.)

                                          Waters of Mars - ***
                                          I didn't mind the website shots, as it wasn't necessarily the Doctor's view, but it could've been how humans would've seen the page.

                                          I would've liked to have more ideas of what happened to the black ladies' eyes that she would be different, and to see what was really under the ice (would a shot of the Ice Warriors really have killed anyone ?)

                                          However, it was a nice treatise on how water can be evil (ask anyone who survived Katrina,) and had a nice vibe of the Doctor not being able to do anything.

                                          The decision to test his limits was nice, as was the final suicide. Good episode.

                                          The End of Time
                                          Part I - ****
                                          Part II - ****

                                          I don't fully understand the spite people had for Part I of this. While I hated and felt sorry for another idiotic performance of John Pimm, I felt RTD worked wonders in switching what he was going for in the final imbecilic 3-parter of Season 3 and giving Pimm a character that both made sense and made the most of his abilities.

                                          While Mortal Kombat Street Fighting Master was completely off, what he became certainly worked wonders. The taking over of every human on earth was certainly mind-blowingly original, and worked to Pimm's comedic talents. While his first turn as the Master made him focus on things that he has absolutely ziltcho of (gravitas, the ability to convey danger, the ability to show that he is in fact terrifying,) this switched The Master from Lex Luthor to Mr. Mytzylplyx. It was an insane twist, good way version.

                                          Once the Timothy Time Lord showed up, it only added to what was happening. Instead of relying on the Daleks or Cybermen to show up through the tunnel, RTD had the Time Lords as villians. Another great touch.

                                          Part II - I loved the way they set up the Master's entire life as a 2-minute decision in a war room. I loved the Doctor speaking of all of the horrors that occurred in the last days of the Time War (please let me see that fake army or whatever it was he was talking about.) I loved the Doctor's mother or daughter or sister giving warnings, I loved Donna's dad, I loved "His Name is Alfonso" and the lottery ticket...although I wish Mickey would've ended up with Rose.

                                          Great final scene, and a great final episode for RTD. Thanks. Now Geronimo outta the way.

                                          I'll start season 5 tomorrow.

                                          Comment


                                            Who?

                                            Minor points:

                                            John Simm, not Pimm.

                                            The "something about Mary" guy is British, if you mean Lee Evans.

                                            Comment


                                              Who?

                                              Oh. Thanks. Shows what a good job Evans did in Something About Mary.

                                              Comment


                                                Who?

                                                You're being very generous to those specials in my view, JV, but each to his own I suppose. They just struck me as flashy and dumb.

                                                jasoń voorhees wrote:
                                                I'll start season 5 tomorrow.
                                                I'm really looking forward to seeing what you make of it. I think it might be quite up your street.

                                                Comment


                                                  Who?

                                                  What I respect greatly about RTD, is that he seemed to always take care of his actors. I feel that when he made a mistake and put them in a bad situation, he always made it up to them. Catherine Tate's Donna was the single worst character ever invented for Runaway Bride. He went back and specifically gave her not only a lot more to do for season 4, but things that she could do and do well. Even if no one thought she was even mediocre (I found her outstanding,) I can't believe there would be one person who didn't find it an improvement over The Bride.

                                                  Simm was part of the worst season-ending story of the show's run. He simply has no gravitas or ability to convey threat. He consistently resumed disbelief after it was suspended. The first part of End of Time was what he did last time: screaming threatening things that were non-threatening, trying to act scary to the opposite effect when he was hungry, the dopey Streetfighter/Mortal Kombat lightning bolt throws, etc.

                                                  RTD gave him a great and creative way to show what he does best. Simm as Prime Minister didn't work because he was playing it like The Joker when he needed to play it like Two Face. Trying to be Lex Luthor when he was Mr. Mytzylplyx. Simm could never play it like Two Face or Lex Luthor, so thus he was put in a situation in which he could not succeed.

                                                  I felt the 2 minutes when he became every single person on earth was one of the trippiest, mind-blowingest 2 minutes of the show. It worked wonders because there was no need for gravitas or any depth. Since he was everyone in the world, his depth was as deep as it got. It was also a Slim Shady prankster type of thing to do. It played to Simm Shady's talents.

                                                  Again, I loved the explanation of the drumming in his head, and how a split-second decision by Timothy Dalton influenced his entire life. Thus, the end of the episode with the rebel Slim Shady teenager ranting at his father was something that Simm could do well. RTD had him try to do the Timothy Dalton part in season 3. Now he was The Master as snotnosed teenager, and it was a much greater success.

                                                  In the end, RTD did right by everybody. He made sure the last we saw of Rose was not that stomach-turning kiss with Sloppy Seconds, but of a few months before they'd meet. Jack in the cantina was great, as was the lottery ticket and the parent's realization of it.

                                                  Ultimately, Since RTD brought it back and made a show that I could not only actually watch with my wife, but also give me the reality of my wife begging me to get a copy of season 5 because she had a jones for Who, I would certainly not begrudge him the Tennant/RTD farewell tour...complete with Celine Dion/Cher concert pyrotechnics for the regeneration scene.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Who?

                                                    And yes, expect **** reviews for Vampires of Venice and Victory of the Daleks.

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