Re: All New Who

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jul 30, 2017 3:27 am

{{Fun trailer for an episode I always find surprisingly fun to watch every time, Asylum of the Daleks, enjoy }}

{{And if thats put you in the mood for it you can watch it here }}

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11xpgj

{{{Ps anyone know why when I try to use the dailymotion embed link it keeps telling me its an invalid link? Got a feeling had this problem before years ago and young Eldo had a solution, but can't quite remember, as well, you know, I was probably drunk back then. And I definitely am now. drunken

}}}

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jul 30, 2017 1:32 pm

{{{ Lovely tribute vid to a Time Lord and his best box-shaped friend in the universe}}

by malickfan Sun Jul 30, 2017 3:16 pm

Apparently the BBC are doing an animated reconstruction of the incomplete 1979 serial Shada with Tom Baker returning as the 4th Doctor, although it's exciting they are doing more animations I can't muster up any excitement for yet another version of this story, I actually preferred the McGann remake to the original Baker version and I don't think the story is quite as good as its reputation suggests...

We already have:

The McGann audioplay,
The McGann animated webcast
An unofficial animation by uber who fan Ian Levine animation
A recent Novelization by Gareth Roberts
An audiobook of that novelization
The 1992 video releases containing the filmed footage with linked to camera narration by Tom Baker (in character as a 'Curator' I wonder if Moffat had been watching...)
A scriptbook

Would the addition of a possibly bored Baker doing it for the money improve the story at all?

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Jul 30, 2017 3:23 pm

{{You can add to that list the fact Douglas Adams re-appropriated the characters and setting and chunks of the story for the first Dirk Gently novel. Professor Chronotis, his time machine university rooms, in fact Chronotis is clearly a Time Lord, the book gets around this- he is so old he has forgotten who he was or where he came from or why he has a time machine! And then Adams has the cheek to combine that with City of Death- an alien whose ship explodes in earth prehistory and survives through time as a sort of ghost.
Dirk Gently's Holisitc Detective Agency, much as I love Adams and Dirk as a character is basically just a rehash of two of his Who stories Shada and City of Death. So no, personally I dont need another version of Shada. Its fame originally came from the fact Adams wrote it and it never got finished or shown. Not for the substance which no one saw. }}}

by Pettytyrant101 Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:37 pm

by malickfan Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:31 pm

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Listening to my copy today Smile

by Mrs Figg Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:37 pm

managed to watch World Enough and Time.

note to self, never ever become a companion. its shit.

Spoiler:

by Pettytyrant101 Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:52 pm

{{{

Spoiler:

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by Mrs Figg Thu Aug 03, 2017 8:37 pm

Spoiler:

by Pettytyrant101 Fri Aug 04, 2017 12:42 am

{{ See, not so dark as you feared Figg!

Rumour is Murray Gold's last episode will be the xmas episode.
If so that means when it comes back it will be a complete reboot- when Moffat took over it was all new cast all new production, but Gold was still there.
This time its all new cast, production and sound - not only will have a new look and feel but a new sound-track too. Presumably that means a new version of the theme tune too by whoever they get to do the scores for the new series.}}}

by Pettytyrant101 Fri Aug 04, 2017 3:09 am

{{{looks like Rachel Talalay might be joining Gold- she is dropping strong hints the xmas episode might be her last. Moffat also wrote this in DW magazine -

'Rachel Talalay, our finale specialist, is directing. She’s come back to see number 12 off into the shades but I very much hope she’ll be directing more Doctor Whos in the future. She keeps hinting that she won’t, though.'

Talking Talalay in her blog she responds to a message she got from a young would be director-

' I just wanted to tell you how happy it makes me to see that some of my favourite dw episodes have been directed by a female director. It really shouldn't be such a big deal but it helps me a lot to fight my doubts and continue going this crazy adventurous road in the creative (filmmaking) world.'

To which Talalay responded-

' it means a huge amount for me to know that my years of battle and my hard work and love of DW pay off with a place I can ‘give back’ – inspiring/inciting directors to keep up the battle against the shameless misogyny and prejudices that used to be ‘just how it is’.
No, it shouldn’t be how it is, but, in the dark years, I was told I could never even mention it or I wouldn’t work again.
If my work is inspiring you, that is one of the great compliments and reasons for me to keep fighting. What a lovely home I have found at Doctor Who – both the show and the fandom. I would like to spread that joy.
Keep up the fight and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Thank you for this.'

You might think this sort of thing should help put to rest the without any substance ever claims that Moffat does not like hiring or working with women. And hope she doesn't leave the show- I have found her directing work to among the best in the shows history.}}

by malickfan Fri Aug 04, 2017 10:23 am

Capaldi confirms in this video he's interested in doing Big Finish audios 'once the dust has settled' Nick Briggs get on the phone to his agent!

by Pettytyrant101 Fri Aug 04, 2017 3:42 pm

{{{Excellent news- 12 gone but not finished! cheers

by Mrs Figg Sat Aug 05, 2017 12:48 pm

watched Empress of Mars, it was ok, more Victorian Gatiss. Now watching the Light one, looks promising, like the Celtic vibe at the beginning, haven't watched all of it yet.

by Pettytyrant101 Sat Aug 05, 2017 2:07 pm

{{What order are you watching in? You watched the finale first? scratch

The Eaters of Light is the Munroe episode, she wrote Survival the last story of classic Who for 7.

Couple of brilliant vids}}

by Mrs Figg Sat Aug 05, 2017 5:06 pm

must say they gave Simm nothing to work with this time, I was looking forward to him but the dialogue was embarrassingly bad. waste of time.

by Pettytyrant101 Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:23 pm

{{And there was me thinking that at last he was acting like a really good Master instead of an over-the-top shouty pantomime clown! }}}

by Mrs Figg Sat Aug 05, 2017 9:14 pm

no this time he was bland and boring. last time he was scary and brilliant.

by malickfan Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:11 pm

Mrs Figg wrote:no this time he was bland and boring. last time he was scary and brilliant.

Not sure I could agree giggling like a drunken lunatic and flying around as a flesh eating half skeleton shooting lightning out of his hands was 'scary' or 'brilliant', I can still remember watching The End Of Time with my parents and grandmother when it first aired, cringing with embarrassment or boredom though most of it...

If you want to blame anyone for the change in the Master's personality, blame Simm himself, judging by the comments Simm made a few years back, and the promotional interviews he's done for Series 10 he wanted to play the role a little differently originally:

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-10-23/doctor-who---john-simm-id-like-to-take-the-master-to-a-very-dark-place

“I’d love the opportunity to play him differently,” he told an audience at Cheltenham Literature Festival last week. “I’d love to have another take on him, to be a bit quieter.”

“I started annoying myself after a while,” he confessed. “Russell T Davies had a specific idea of what he wanted him to be like. So I just had to do exactly what he wanted me to, and he wanted a giggling lunatic.”

However, he did admit that the Master’s blond hair was his idea: “That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have listened to my instinct there.”

"There's a new writer now" he continued, referring to Davies’ successor Steven Moffat – “and I’m sure his take on him would be different so I’d be interested to have a look at it. I’d like to take the Master to a very, very dark place.”

I thought Simm's performance in the RTD episodes made Eric Roberts's Master look subtle, he was a cheesy gibbering loon, with no depth or subtext little more than a pantomime villain and the stupid drum beat in his head was a lazy retcon that crapped on the character as portrayed in the original series.

On the other hand, I thought he was great in the Series 10 episodes, much more subtle, calculating and creepy (he mentioned in an interview the Goatee was his idea (RTD has blocked the idea first time around) and that he wanted to act more similar to the Classic series masters), more importantly Michelle Gomez's Missy is already quite zany and theatrical, Simm needed to pull back his performance to provide a contrast.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Aug 06, 2017 1:09 am

Simm needed to pull back his performance to provide a contrast.- Malick

{{Indeed I felt the Simm Master here was very much a representative of all the previous Masters- why the goatee worked so well here in context rather being some sort of reference gimmick.
Missy is the master who finally reached redemption. In the end her actions fulfilled the Doctors criteria as described by River- Without hope- she cant regenerate, its over. Without witness- she dies alone. Without reward- she gains nothing by her actions or her redemption save death, not even the joy of seeing her friend the Doctor welcome her back as his friend. Beautifully poignant.
The Simm Master had to be the counter to that- the cold, calculating evil that revels in the chaos and the terror and misery. The Master who will sit in disguise for years just for the delicious moment of taunting the Doctor about how he abused and tortured and converted his friend into a cyberman. Gaining and then betraying her trust, all just for that one moment of hurting the Doctor.
I find that sort of patient, calculating insanity far more suiting to the Master as he was in classic than the Simm Master in RTD ever was.
Simm represents the versions of the Master Missy describes when she says, "back in the day, I'd burn an entire city to the ground just to see the pretty shapes the smoke made."
Its as Me described Missy- 'a lover of chaos'- if you look back at the Master's plans over the years they are to one degree or another barking mad. But the Master himself in conducting them never acts mad, he wasn't screaming in your face crazy. It was only when you stopped and looked at the bigger picture of what he was doing that you thought - that's bonkers.
Because since his first appearance the Master has never really been trying to take over the universe so much as disrupt it to get the Doctors attention and to try to hurt him. Friendship turned sour.
In the end its never so much been about ruling anything for the Master so much as taking pleasure in the patterns chaos causes in the universe, the unexpected and the energetic nature of chaos- its beautiful to him and worth pursuing even if you have to create it yourself. In fact ideally if you create it yourself as that has the satisfaction of the artist yet the unpredictably of chaos. And I always felt classic Master viewed himself as an artist of what he did. The orchestrator in chief.

Simm therefore can't be the cackling pantomime villain for this story- he has to be the Master as he was before Missy (and dare I say before RTD) to create the contrast between an unrepentant Master and the growth shown by Missy.

I think one of the things Moffat has done really well with the Master/Missy is going back to those original 3rd Doctor stories and getting right down to what it was really about and gong back to that and then taking that story-line on to its logical and inevitable conclusion.

For me I hope Missy is always the final version of the Master- if they need a Master story in the future there are plenty of unseen regeneration to use for the Master- he is on his second set of regens at least and we have only seen a handful of them.
I dont think you could better the Master character arc than that ending and I would rather Chibnal left it to stand. Much as when Moffat wrote the 50th he didn't want to have Rose in it as she was when we last saw her as he felt that would tread on the toes of the ending RTD had given her and he did not want to ruin that. }}}

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:16 am

{{To celebrate the Moffat era I have been going through each series (well done series 5 so far) and picking out some favourite bits of writing.
This is by no means exhaustive, or I'd end up quoting whole episodes in some cases- but rather are bits of dialogue that I found either moving, turned out to have an iconic life of their own (always a good sign of writing connecting with an audience and almost impossible for a writer to predict beforehand what will chime) or made me smile, or were just to me perfect examples of the Doctor's character.

Perhaps the most worrying thing of note was that I struggled with 3 episodes to find many quality quotes- Victory of the Daleks, the Gatiss episode and considered by many the weakest point of series 5. But also the Chibnall Silurian two parter- given we have 100 minutes here, and it does have some nice character beats, it is however short on moving or memorable dialogue, or even snappy lines.

Ive put it in spoilers, both because its quite long but mainly because reading the quotes, as they are in chronological order, will not only spoil individual episodes but the entirety of series 5. }}}

Spoiler:

by Mrs Figg Sun Aug 06, 2017 5:26 pm

Simm RTD version was the scariest I performance in Who history imo. I found him brilliantly unhinged. I had never before, or since, actually found a Who villain actually scary.

by Pettytyrant101 Sun Aug 06, 2017 6:10 pm

by Pettytyrant101 Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:09 am

{{Deleted scene from series 9's The Girl Who Died- I assume cut for time reasons as its a lovely little scene, shame it was cut. }}

by Mrs Figg Mon Aug 07, 2017 12:29 pm

its my opinion. Simms was the scariest performance I have seen on Who.