All New Who

{{Caught some Cagney and Lacey fairly recently and was pleasantly surprised to find it was still excellent drama well acted and written. THe characters, situations drama and setting remains as well realised as ever.

Unlike current Who- saw this, its supposed to be a supercut of all the best lines from series 11 and the special. Only its more like an endurance test to see if you can make it through to the end and highlights that firstly, there are hardly any good lines compared to previous series, secondly that 13's witterings to herself all the time are as annoying as you think, and thirdly that the best Who drinking game if you really want to get blitzed out your mind within about 10 mins of any episode starting, is to drink anytime 13 looks gormless or does that weird face scrunch thing! You may need an ambulance on standby however if you play along. }}

I got to "2.50" & took a well earned break. The Bin boys were coming round & that was the distraction I needed. She said....at "2.31" ..Im really smart.....??? well how long do you need us to wait before we see it !!. At "1.37" Jodie apologised to Yaz saying she forgot she was there, guess what, EVERYONE has forgotten Yaz & not for a few minutes ! So, basically, someone who between Job centre visits, who had worn out all the job applications for that week decided to put every line spoken in a compilation & call it...….dum dum darrrrr…….. "The Best Lines"..  All this does is highlight how truly awful the script is. Jodie babbles too fast, this constant referring to long dead people as tho theres a huge Café in the sky & she knows them all intimately is annoying !! Stop it ! "Fam" is not the word of the century. It sounds like it should be a male fanny. Ive got 3 daughters & a son I don't call them "Fam". Thanks to that snippet with the Dalek in the last episode we know where exactly where her hearts are located & I can stab her in the right place if this continues because that's how it makes you feel !   The only well said remark is at "6.14" when the guy said about experiencing comprehension deficiency!  YES ! Hallelujah ! my God ! the first sensible person in all of this unholy mess !!

Somebody tell Chibbers to make me the next Doctor. I could do it you know. I think Jodie has ruined it for Northern Doctors though.

I got about 2 minutes in. I think the Pythagoras line was pretty good.

{{Odd you should pick that one Halfy- its pretty much borrowed, referencing historic figures in this way was something 10 occasionally did and in particular 11 and 12. 11 most of all was known for doing so.


DOCTOR: Don't worry, fat fellow will be doing the rounds later. I'm just scoping out the general chimney-ness. Yes. Nice size, good traction. Big tick.
BENJAMIN: Fat fellow?
DOCTOR: Father Christmas, Santa Claus or, as I've always known him, Jeff.
BOY: There's no such person as Father Christmas.
DOCTOR: Oh, yeah?
(The Doctor produces an old photograph.)
DOCTOR: Me and Father Christmas, Frank Sinatra's hunting lodge, 1952. See him at the back with the blonde? Albert Einstein. The three of us together. Brrm. Watch out. Okay? Keep the faith. Stay off the naughty list.


- A Christmas Carol

11 had a thing for hanging out in 50's Hollywood with the Bratpack and got accidentally married to Marilyn Monroe in a Vegas Chapel after singing a duet with Sinatra! None of which we see, its all offscreen shenanigans just referenced and built up over a series of humorous throwaway lines. Heres another one from Vampires in Venice-

DOCTOR: Venezia. La Serenissima. Impossible city. Preposterous city. Founded by refugees running from Attila the Hun. It was just a collection of little wooden huts in the middle of the marsh, but became one of the most powerful cities in the world. Constantly being invaded, constantly flooding, constantly just beautiful. Ah, you got to love Venice. So many people did. Byron, Napoleon, Casanova. Ooo, that reminds me. 1580. That's all right. Casanova doesn't get born for a hundred and forty five years. Don't want to run into him. I owe him a chicken.
RORY: You owe Casanova a chicken?
DOCTOR: Long story. We had a bet.



or this from Town Called Mercy-



[size=13]DOCTOR: That's not right.
RORY: It's a street lamp.
DOCTOR: An electric street lamp about ten years too early.
RORY: It's only a few years out.
DOCTOR: That's what you said when you left your phone charger in Henry the Eighth's en-suite. [/size]

So the best line you like so far is something he nicked from previous showrunners (and doesnt do as well) }}

{{This isn't short but it is a timely reminder of how far things have fallen in so short a time.
Dialogue is better, emotional stakes are higher, a central performer who commands the role and every line, companions you give a toss about, and even in this you can feel the weight of the material, the variety and breath of subjects, ideas, experience it explores and delves into- where is the meat in series 11?- where's the content?- what was it supposed to be about? }}

What a difference ! the quality is palpable. Capaldi instantly put a smile on my face, I relaxed & I believed...in...him.

Capaldi is Velvet, Jodie is polyester
Capaldi is Bernini, Jodie is Tracy Emin
Capaldi is bespoke hand made furniture, Jodie is DFS on a Sale day.
In such a short time span it begs the question of how could it have sunk so low, who allowed this travesty to unwind. I cannot lie peacefully over this. I may not know every character, every story line & every word ever uttered but, Dr Who grew up with me, it was always there with me, its so much a part of my life that you dare get it so bad, as it is now, & you deserve to be blindfolded at dawn & shot.

{{Thing is you can do the same with a vid for 9 or 10 or 11.
They all seem comparably miles above Chibnal era.

I am not an RTD era fan, but that is because I was not interested in exploring the things RTD was- the Doctor in a romantic relationship with his companion for example, or the domestic side to companions lives being a large feature. But these are differences in liking something, not a complaint that RTD couldn't write.

His era gave us Blink, The Empty Child, Midnight, Turn Left, Family of Blood, Waters of Mars among others which would stand out as excellent episodes in any series of Who past or present.  Characters are well written and rounded, stakes are suitably high when needed, it was new yet respected the shows heritage, companions always have stuff to do, affect events and the Doctor and form relationships of meaning.

Its direction and RTD's tendency to hand wave solutions out of thin air might not have been to my tastes but compared to Chibnal era its a writing masterclass. Even when it comes to including diversity.
I can't help but think that whilst RTD gave us Captain Jack as a omni-sexual character who'd shag just about anything of any sex and species so long as it was capable of saying yes and had some sort of pulse, if he were a Chibnal character that feature would be all there would be to him and all they'd show or focus on. Whereas with RTD it was an aspect of Jack but not by far the most interesting thing about him (mind you to write a Captain Jack Chibnal would have to capable of writing a fun character, and on the evidence he doesn't do fun. }}

I think Turn Left is my all time favourite Who episode, if I had to choose just one. closely followed by Blink.

The Empty Child would have to be my fave....

couple of intriguing Big Finish developments:

Rose Tyler will shortly be returning in her own audio drama spinoff!:

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/billie-piper-reprises-rose-tyler

- Can't say I was a hge fan of Rose or series 2, but this was going to happen sooner or later, and it will be interesting to see how they develop her family dynamic without the Doctor, and in a parallel universe, also nice to see Clive return he was an interesting character and i think New Who's very first death(?) all the way back in 2005 in 'Rose'...

Also hearing rumours Big Finish are going to resurrect the 'Doctor Who: The Lost Stories' range in the next year, this range adapted to audio drama various written/drafted/submitted but never filmed scripts and storylines for the Classic series, the range ended a few years ago, but it was known at the time there were several other scripts they had wanted to adapt but had been unable to due to scheduling/budget reasons.

intriguing....

{{ Ive listened to some of the previous Lost Stories, mainly 6 and 4, and really enjoyed them overall. I'd be happy for more.

Will be interesting if they ever get to the modern era and lost stories }}

{{Irony abounds in the Whoverse right now.

Rotten Tomatoes which currently has user reviews for series 11 at an abysmal 22% has conversely awarded the series its top award as the stand out hit sci-fi show of last year! (thanks to the stupidly high critics reviews).

And Jodie has been nominated for a NTA (National Television Award) for her portrayal of the Doctor.
Now given her portrayal consists largely of puling faces portraying various degrees of idiocy in a series utterly lacking in any dramatic conflict for her whatsoever, and the fact Capaldi the best actor to ever inhabit the role never got so much as a nomination in 3 series and with critically acclaimed episodes like Heaven Sent where he is the sole performer for an hour, and this is only Jodies first series its very hard not see this as 'here have an award for being a woman'.
It will be a complete travesty and injustice if she wins. }}}

wot?  an award for gurning and being tedious and boring.

Would I be right in thinking that the new Doctor is not favoured?

Not flavoured either. There's no spice in her character,


If she gets any kind of award for this amateurish babbling IL go dig up my daffodils & eat the bulbs. I agree with Petty, I loved Capaldi as Dr Who, he left far too soon, the time flew by. Even Sylvester McCoy was better than Whittaker in my view. She mumbles, she pulls dumb ass faces just too often & I think subconsciously she's trying to be a female Matt Smith because she knows that character worked & was a hit & loved by many. She reminds me of JK Rowling, limited imagination & pinches ideas from else where. I may not have read the books but, Ive seen the films & too many things remind me of "Ive seen/read that in another story". I find it laughable when Joddie heaves herself up & tries to be threatening HA ! She frightens me not. Shes more like an angry chavvy neighbour down any British street, all gob & no glory. If I were an Alien baddie Id just shoot her & be done with it & carry on. Maybe we'd get a more productive Dr

Would I be right in thinking that the new Doctor is not favoured?
- Orwell

{{Hard to tell Orwell, but if a character that resembles the Doctor actually turns back up in the show I'll let you know! }}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Irony abounds in the Whoverse right now.

Rotten Tomatoes which currently has user reviews for series 11 at an abysmal 22% has conversely awarded the series its top award as the stand out hit sci-fi show of last year! (thanks to the stupidly high critics reviews).

And Jodie has been nominated for a NTA (National Television Award) for her portrayal of the Doctor.
Now given her portrayal consists largely of puling faces portraying various degrees of idiocy in a series utterly lacking in any dramatic conflict for her whatsoever, and the fact Capaldi the best actor to ever inhabit the role never got so much as a nomination in 3 series and with critically acclaimed episodes like Heaven Sent where he is the sole performer for an hour, and this is only Jodies first series its very hard not see this as 'here have an award for being a woman'.
It will be a complete travesty and injustice if she wins. }}}

My cousin, for example, doesn't like Capaldi's grim moments and I understand that. But, yes, in terms of quality acting, Jodie getting an NTA for this season over Capaldi getting one for Heaven Sent is transparently idiotic.

{{{{ Yet another one to add to my list of BF stuff I want!! }}}

{{One of the more eccentric book readings you're likely to hear from an author- but then it is Tom Baker More importantly a Who novel written in first person about the 4th Doctor written by Baker himself has to be worth a look  }}

haha, delightful. I don't think an author is supposed to laugh that much at their own writing, but one doesn't mind when it's this fellow.

He does make it "wantable" doesn't he

{{ Continuing my overview of the themes in Moffats era of Who

Clara and Danny- a sidebar to series 8

Our first introduction to Danny meeting Clara is on the surface a rather odd one. It begins with the school secretary refusing to believe that Danny is going home to read a book in a manner suggestive that she believes he is really going to be up to something rather more exciting. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. The headmaster then introduces Danny to Clara as someone to watch out for as he is a bit of lady killer, even whilst Danny protests that he really isn't.
Upon being introduced to Clara, who invites him out to a school function, we see he is in fact shy and nervous around women and unsure how to talk to them and is in fact too afraid to say yes to Clara's offer, instead making up lame on the spot excuses such as "Sorry, i have some reading to do." Only to chide himself for it afterwards.



So why this odd introduction as the lady killer, to then in the same scene disprove it? And the scene prior to this with Danny- in which he is asked by a student if he ever killed an enemy soldier, and when he avoids the answer is pushed by being asked if he has ever killed someone who wasn't another soldier- we see his reaction as someone troubled and upset and who we feel sympathetic towards but also wondering why that question troubled him so much as to provoke him shedding a tear. In the scene prior to that one, where we first see Danny he is in sports attire with the the Coal Hill Cadets, drilling them like army cadets. One traditionally masculine impression. One sympathetic display of emotion.
We are deliberately fed mixed messages about what to expect in terms of who Danny might be leading into this introduction.

Learning that Danny was a soldier who left the military and became a teacher and organises the school sports activities as well there seems to be a presumption that he would be bold, strong and quick with the ladies among the other staff. But it is of course false. We are introduced to Danny on a falsehood which is then immediately disproved to show us it is a falsehood. However preconceptions are another series theme, the main question of is the Doctor a good man or not challenges the audience to consider the Doctors character as much as it does the character himself: to consider our preconceived ideas of who the Doctor is (particularly NuWho fans). With Clara she was the Mysterious Girl, the Impossible Girl, the character who was a puzzle. But in series 8 she is no longer that, our preconceptions of who we thought she was are likewise challenged. And with Danny we are introduced to him through the preconceptions of those who don't know him but have made some rather big assumptions about him based on appearance, military background and his interest in sports (when we see Danny with his Coal Hill Cadets in his sports gear as if a PE teacher even though he teaches maths, we are given the more masculine version first, we are led to draw similar false presumptions about him as the other staff do).

Their introduction marks the start of falsehoods been a flaw in the relationship between Clara and Danny. In the same scene Clara is portrayed as trying to come off as being very much in control of herself (though not without the occasional moment of being flustered and thrown off-balance, such as her joke that goes awry), but she is the one who initiates events and she is the one who convinces him to go out for a drink with her. She is bold, forthright, and aims at least to appear in control. Yet when we see the date itself she proves to be just as bad as him when it comes to personal,intimate social contact. When Clara first meets Danny she too is putting on a false front being far more confident and seemingly in control of the situation than she actually is. This is also a flaw in both their personalities as we will come to learn.

In Clara's case she has a need to compartmentalise her life in order to keep a sense of still being in control of her life. She separates time with the Doctor from her time as a teacher and home life, she writes post-it notes to herself to help her keep things organised and when with the Doctor she acts as carefree as if she had no other life, and when in her everyday life she acts as if the Doctor does not exist in it. Which of course entails more falsehoods as Danny is only part of one world for her.

For Danny we learn that he left the army after tragically shooting a civilian, a young teenage boy, in some ways teaching is his penance for that, giving something back to children. And he too wants to have control back in his life but where Clara has adventures and the uncertain life of travelling with the Doctor, he wants simplicity, certainty, stability and will lay down rules to Clara once he does find out about her travels with the Doctor about what she has to do or he will end their relationship. After taking orders and the tragedy it lead to for him and the boy he shot he too needs to feel he is in control of every situation.

So from the off two facets about both their personalities which they share doom their relationship,their need to both be in control, and the falsehoods that arise from the clash of that need for control.
It is also worth noting that these flaws will eventually led the narrative to some darker places- Danny's eventual death and resurrection as a cyberman and his self-sacrifice, but when these falsehoods finally come to light they do so in an episode styled like a romantic comedy. And in fact Clara's introduction to Danny is also done in this same comedy tone, preventing the viewer from clearly seeing the dangers they will eventually present to each other and on a meta-level being thematically a falsehood itself, you are led in the very beginning by tone to think you are going to see a traditional romantic comedy with happy ending, when their relationship has a very bittersweet ending full of tragedy for them both.



Now given this relationship is going to have a tragic end one might ask why Moffat would not choose to write a more traditional romantic storyline, less complex and less troubled, which would give that end a full heart string tug and be a lot easier to like and would instantly pander to the audience expectations? Imagine for example that had been Rory's end.

And that is point one, Moffat had already done the heroic romantic thing with Rory and Amy, so there was a need to explore a different sort of relationship.
But more importantly falsehoods, control are two strong themes in series 8 for the Doctor/Clara relationship and the Doctor/Missy relationship.
Clara's relationship with Danny is thematically linked to wider themes of the series.

It is no coincidence either we are introduced to this relationship in Into the Dalek, an episode where we are presented with a premise which it seems must be false- that a Dalek can be good. A premise which seems to be proved to be false when it turns out not be good but malfunctioning, then turns out to be true after-all but not quite in the expected manner.
This could be said to be true also for Clara and Danny's relationship, their flaws tell us this relationship can never work from the start (the Doctor even describes Clara's choice of Danny in terms of a malfunction- "You've made a boyfriend error."), and indeed this seems to be the case as they clash, but is then shown not be true, but not quite as expected.
Or as Clara puts it at the very end, "I wasn't very good at it, but I did love you." Their relationship is not conventionally good, and certainly not in its portrayal. The normal way is to highlight all the fun, happy good times they had together, the reasons they fell in love and stayed in love. Instead over the course of the series it focuses on the places where their personalities clash, where the problems arise from. For some people this has proved an issue as they find it hard to see why they love each other as this is given little time it seems.
 
Yet its Danny's love that saves the day of course, as he despite inhibiting emotions will still not harm Clara or obey Missy as love is not just an emotion but also a promise, and he is keeping the promise side still.
Moffat is generally an optimist in the end, and in this case, despite the fact their relationship was doomed because of their personalities being too alike their love is not tainted by that fact, and when it counts its purity is all that is left between them, the purity of the promise to love. Its not the feeling of love, not the emotion which Danny can no longer feel, but the intellectual promise of it that saves the day in the end, the idea of love. In Moffats view love can be such a power motivating force that even when you strip it of the power of the emotion, of feeling love, it only becomes stronger. Allowing Danny to maintain his promise to love Clara and keep control and save the day. And of course helping the Doctor finally see that its not how having to be the Doctor makes him feel that counts, not what it means he will have to go through to be the Doctor, not even if all his actions in the end are good or bad, that is in the end worth it because the idea of the Doctor, the promise of the Doctor, that is purer and higher than the being himself, and that is what in the end really counts.



Of course the issue of Clara being too alike with Danny is also thematically linked to the wider series themes with Clara increasingly acting more like the Doctor as time goes on.
Naturally this relationship will come back into things as I discuss the remainder of series 8, but I felt it was worth a sort of overview as a subject in itself as people often seem to criticise it for the reason that the relationship would not work without seeming to realise that is the point.
In a way it is a more realistic relationship that we are used to seeing on Who which tend to go down the heroic romanticism route more often than not. In this case we have two people who genuinely love each other, but because of their personalities keep on clashing instead. I think many people will have had such a relationship at one time or another. But probably with less Daleks.

In a wider sense in terms of how all this fits into the wider scheme of notions of self, self determination, memory under discussion it in part explains why the relationship is not written as a traditional romantic love story showing only the good and happy times, conflict and tragedy lead to more self reflection for the characters than happiness does. How that manifests I will go onto in more detail in the following parts discussing series 8 as they are entwined with the wider story of the Doctor himself and his relationships with Clara and Missy and his own journey of self-reflection. }}

Forest Shepherd wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Irony abounds in the Whoverse right now.

Rotten Tomatoes which currently has user reviews for series 11 at an abysmal 22% has conversely awarded the series its top award as the stand out hit sci-fi show of last year! (thanks to the stupidly high critics reviews).

And Jodie has been nominated for a NTA (National Television Award) for her portrayal of the Doctor.
Now given her portrayal consists largely of puling faces portraying various degrees of idiocy in a series utterly lacking in any dramatic conflict for her whatsoever, and the fact Capaldi the best actor to ever inhabit the role never got so much as a nomination in 3 series and with critically acclaimed episodes like Heaven Sent where he is the sole performer for an hour, and this is only Jodies first series its very hard not see this as 'here have an award for being a woman'.
It will be a complete travesty and injustice if she wins. }}}

My cousin, for example, doesn't like Capaldi's grim moments and I understand that. But, yes, in terms of quality acting, Jodie getting an NTA for this season over Capaldi getting one for Heaven Sent is transparently idiotic.

Well it makes sense because the NTA are voted for by the public, and the British public are by and large idiots what with voting for Brexit and all...

Clara is delightfully persistent in that scene, but we are given no reason why she would be.  It's so wonderfully acted that you don't immediately see all the logical flaws in the interactions between them.