Television programmes [2]

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I fear there is more than one rule being broken on this thread...

{{{Egads Halfy! Well spotted. I hope They didnt spot it }}}}

{{{ And discussing Who and the Moffat-monster to boot! }}}

just mentioning the M word should be enough to get alarms ringing in the admin tower.
its like in HP, He who cannot be named, is named.

{{Too risky here on this thread now!! I shall rebel elsewhere!!! }}}

Go forth & rebel

{{{I shall Azriel! I shall- starting with this- here's the BBC radio interview in which Capaldi talks about his future post series 10-

https://twitter.com/BBCRadioScot/status/706850311915212801

Very pleased though the BBC have shown faith with him on this one, he has certainly deserved it- not only been outstanding in the role but been an outstanding ambassador for the show too}}}

Came across this petition, obviously the rumours about Capaldi being forced out now appear to be false, and it's possible he'll leave anyway but I signed it anyway to voice my support:

https://www.change.org/p/charlotte-moore-at-the-bbc-keep-peter-capaldi-as-the-doctor


After Night Of The Doctor aired a petition was started to give McGann his own spinoff:

https://www.change.org/p/steven-moffat-paul-mcgann-create-a-series-of-live-action-eighth-doctor-adventures

over 20k signed it, news eventually got back to McGann himself who responded enthusiastically and signed it himself, so you never know...

malickfan wrote:Came across this petition, obviously the rumours about Capaldi being forced out now appear to be false, and it's possible he'll leave anyway but I signed it anyway to voice my support:

https://www.change.org/p/charlotte-moore-at-the-bbc-keep-peter-capaldi-as-the-doctor


After Night Of The Doctor aired a petition was started to give McGann his own spinoff:

https://www.change.org/p/steven-moffat-paul-mcgann-create-a-series-of-live-action-eighth-doctor-adventures

over 20k signed it, news eventually got back to McGann himself who responded enthusiastically and signed it himself, so you never know...

drat the McGann petition is closed.

Mrs Figg wrote:
drat the McGann petition is closed.

You could always start one yourself (he signed a six year contract with Universal apparently so I think he's owed at least one more episode...)

House of Cards Season 4. TWO THUMBS DOWN! Can't even finish the last two episodes. Just as bad as last season, and they're making more!?!?!?!

watching Vinyl. its great.

Vinyl . coolest show evah!. god what a blast from the past.

{{{Capaldi talking in the Express and criticizing the BBC scheduling of the last series and talking ratings}}}

'PETER CAPALDI has risked biting the hand that feeds him as he criticises the BBC's inconsistent scheduling of Doctor Who.
The programme shifted about in the timetables several times last year, as the lengths of Strictly Come Dancing's live shows fluctuated from week to week.

At the time, he called for the corporation to go back to airing the sci-fi series in one regular slot, and has now re-enforced those claims once again.
"The BBC is an incredible organisation, but... sometimes people there think, 'That's looking after itself'. And it's not being looked after," he told Newsweek.

"I think maybe their eye was taken off the ball, or the show was seen as a thing they could just push around. It's not. It's a special thing."
The programme's ratings were up and down last year but its catch-up numbers remain strong.

The actor continued: "I have to pay attention to ratings - I'd rather not - but it's the way the business is. I think overnight ratings are a thing of the past.

"You can't really measure the success of the show by its overnight ratings, which is what the papers do. But there's still a place for families to sit down and watch the show - that's still a great, fun thing to do."

He added: "That's what the show's success has been based on. That has to be protected."

Thank gawd someone's on the ball !

{{{Oddly enough I think it was the shows success, ahead of all other BBC shows on catch up that made them think it was fine to just move it about week to week, and often outside the 5-8 family viewing region, in the belief the audience who didn't move with its changing schedule would just watch on catch up, which did largely happen in fact, but Capaldi is right, you need to also keep and cater to that family watching all together on a Saturday night audience. Its the slot the show was created to fill way back in 1963. Its the shows backbone}}

Who cares about ballroom dancing anyway.

Ive been following that one & its good ! The sight of Hiddlebums peachy bum was not to be missed either

"Not available in your country."

The Wikipedia synopsis sounds really promising though!

{{{Excellent piece about Heaven Sent by its director Rachel Talalay entitled- 'Do Time Lords Have Free Will'- some interesting insights into the process on this most unusual and brilliant of episodes. I still think she should have got showrunner.}}}

Do Time Lords Have Free Will?: another Heaven Sent BTS blog

Spoilers below. If you have not yet watched Heaven Sent, you probably won’t be reading this. But, just in case, this definitely contains spoilers. So, go watch it. Now. Do not pass go.

Why are you still reading? I said “Now!”

I have been asked what Peter Capaldi and I disagreed about on “Heaven Sent”. I presume these queries are based on the interview segment where Peter talks about us discussing different points of view on the script? (Feel free to let me know if he said something else somewhere, because I don’t absorb all the press).

Sorry to disappoint, but we did not have any dramatic ding-dongs. What I believe Peter was referring to was that the complexity of the script meant that there were many ways to interpret scenes, especially in terms of tone. Often there wasn’t a right/wrong as much as a lot of shading, so sculpting the whole was an ongoing discussion. For those of you who have read the script, you might see where there was more than the usual amount of room for varying viewpoints.

Peter and I (separately) had broken the script into three acts: (I) the opening up to the dive into the water, (II) the montage of time, and (III) finding room 12 through the ending.

Section II, the montage in the middle, was the area that created the most substantive dialogue. In this section, the Doctor is telling Clara about his time in the castle and how the castle works. (Yes, he is talking to (dead) Clara on top of the tower in what, at first glance, appears to be voiceover.)

What Peter and I debated (not contentiously, but curiously, as there was seemingly no right answer) was when each scene was taking place. Because time in the castle was speculative and non-linear (like editing), there weren’t really clues as to how long the Doctor spent in the castle in each iteration. There also wasn’t information as to which iteration we were on in each scene. So we could have been watching him in iteration 10, 10,000, 1000000, or 4 billion. And, being film, they didn’t have to take place sequentially. Did he do different things each time? Yes. Was he searching for room 12 long enough to be frustrated or to start going mad? What was his mental state in each scene? Was it different each iteration, even though he was a “carbon-copy” of himself.

In other words, grand questions: do we have free-will? Or more to the point, do Time-Lords?

Of course I discussed this with Steven and he said the Doctor was always confident he would get out. As each iteration was forgotten between repeats, it was not a journey of defeat, it was still a journey of discovery. But that still left a near-infinite number of choices for tone scene by scene.

This is one reason why the soup scene was so important to me. It was its own image of the man alone in his castle — the scope of the table was critical. The echo on the spoon was an echo of all his other ghosts of being there. (Pretentious — sorry!)

Peter loves to experiment. He will try many approaches and textures and is not afraid to play. This meant the door for variety was wide open. And so, each time we came to one of those scenes, we had to make these choices.

The one time I remember Peter really questioning me was when I suggested lightening up the tone of the first scene in the bedroom. We shot that before we did any of the scenes that took place earlier in the script. Peter’s first rehearsal was played straight. It added weight to the threat of the Veil and darkness as he told the old-woman story and as the Veil approached again, trapping him without an exit.

When I suggested this lighter approach, I fully understood Peter’s wondering why I would want to dissipate the intensity at that moment. The Doctor has just admitted how scared he is, he’s in a room with a portrait of Clara, he’s gutted. It’s a heartbreaking script, and playing an entire episode of the Doctor only burdened by Clara’s death, even with the script’s jokes, felt as if it might add up to too morose and too slow. Peter, Steven and I all agreed about this.

But at the point we were shooting this scene, Peter had not done the material before, so in order to explain and justify going lighter, it was necessary to pitch how I planned to shoot the earlier materials and why I thought we could afford humor at that specific point. Because the doctor is again backed into a corner, he is using the new tone to play for time and to take control back. It was a choice to have the Doctor play against the emotions he had just shown and to tease the Veil.

After this discussion, Peter embraced the suggestions. The performance itself was all him. I could never have specified and detailed that perfect combination of physical and verbal antics which still allows for the seriousness of the situation.

This is just one illustration of our discussions, all taking place on set while shooting at TV pace. One of the hard parts about TV is that there isn’t ever enough time. Peter and I talked about the script just once before we started shooting, when I managed to nab him during a short break while he was filming episode 10. He had only read the script once, having just received it and being in the middle of another episode. I managed to give him an overview of my approach and discuss the question of how to play Clara’s death without chest-beating. All I really had time for, before he was called back to set, was to lay the most cursory groundwork.

Production is a series of problem-solving compromises. The perfect preparation in one’s head is always thwarted by realities - from weather to errors to disagreements to things not working to traffic to phone calls to equipment malfunctions to … the hold-ups are always there. Time (lack of it) is the enemy — every delay steals a shot or a take, every extra take steals from the number of shots. All day long, I balance this — as if my head is an abacus, constantly calculating and re-calculated the day to ensure we finish and the time on each scene is chosen in terms of its singular importance.

In Heaven Sent, were all scenes equally important? Are some scenes more equal than others?

As an addendum, I leave you with another question: When the doctor finds Room 12, why does he return to the top of the Tower? (Feel free to send your thoughts privately so as not to ruin other’s opportunity to think about this. Maybe the answer is obvious.)- Rachel talalay

{{{Also extra link a review of Hell Bent, the finale which she also directed and which I link to for the same reasons she does so in her own blog- 'It is a thoughtful analysis and brings excellent context to the episode. It’s refreshing to read these perspectives.-- Rachel Talalay}}

http://racheltalalay.tumblr.com/post/136291150099/whovian-feminism-reviews-hell-bent

was Peter joint producer?

{{{{Do you mean on that episode Figg or of Who in general?- in either case no, I suspect just playing the Doctor is work enough.
Some more insights from Talalay's blog on Heaven Sent, in response to being asked about how she creates her shot list from the script}}}

' I think about each shot and ask if it enhance the storytelling? So first I make sure I understand the key to the scene, then I look for a visual way into that. I try to stay away from style over substance. I have seen criticism and praise for this — that my style, especially last season, was not ‘showy’ . That is because Steven Moffat’s writing is so layered, and the actors so brilliant at portraying that, I do not want the camera to get in the way. Anyone can spin the camera 360º, but why?

I look for shots, moves, lighting, that bring something more to the scenes. If I can’t come up with something that will enhance, I stay simple and let the brilliance of the script and acting shine....I don’t try to over-create, I try to expand.'

{{{Wish PJ had thought like that when making Tolkien films }}}