Doctor Who [8]

Petty!   

Blame Bluebottle, it won't happen again.

Matt Smith deserved that award, whilst I'm still not overly sold on 11, after watching a few of Smith's earlier eps...I forgot how convicing he was as a character, hard to believe he was only four years older than me when cast (I am an AWFUL actor)

Well, they're your national telvision awards.  

Thank you for that Petty. I find this page on tumblr that referenced Doctor Who gifs by episode. So I went a bit over the top, but at least it kept the thread going and was ... on topic.   

I am convinced Malick that the more and more of classic Who a person sees, the more their appreciation for Smith's performance will grow. So keep watching those classic eps!

Talking of which I just watched The Pirate Planet, 4th Doctor Douglas Adams script- some solid scifi ideas, some over the top performances but with a pay off to them, and plenty of trademark Adams, he even paraphrases his himself the cheeky bugger.

Hitchhikers Guide- Arthur asking Ford whats so unpleasant about hyperspace-

Ford- Its unpleasantly like being drunk.

Arthur- Whats so unpleasant about being drunk?

Ford- Ask a glass of water.

-ship goes into hyperdrive-

Arthur- I'll never be cruel to a gin and tonic again!

The Pirate Planet- Doctor encounters a corridor that accelerates you down it- the Doctor goes through it-

Doctor (as he travels along) - I'll never be cruel to an electron in a particle accelerator again!

Blue- I will let you offon the awards thing, this time! But your other work is appreciated  

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I am convinced Malick that the more and more of classic Who a person sees, the more their appreciation for Smith's performance will grow. So keep watching those classic eps!

Well I've finished Hartnell's stuff, and so far I've watched Tomb of the Cybermen and Enemy of the World (there are what, 10 Trougton stories available?) out of Trougton's, I'm still really enjoying it, Trougton definitely inspired Smith, he's funny and rather odd in comparison to Hartnell but equally imposing.

Though I do seem to be alone in actually preferring Hartnell (what can I say the 'grumpy old bastard' that was The First Doctor somehow resonated with me...)

Then I have 10 seasons of Mcgann Audios to listen to at some point...

That's appreciated, Petty.   

I really like the Pirate Planet.   Adams basic concept with the planet cannibalising other planets is brilliant.

What let's it down a bit for me is that you have these model and studio shots of a desert town and when you get the location shots all you see is lush grassland. Kills the mood a bit.

The thing about Troughton is he is the one who really made it so we had Who for 50 years- that was the massive gamble- could you get away with changing the lead actor with a different one, keep the same character, but not try to pretend nothing has changed but to make the change part of the story and how the show works.
If audiences had not taken to Troughton's very different interpretation it would have died there and then.
He had the very daunting job of not only following Hartnell but convincing the audience and taking them with him.

I love Hartnells Doctor, he created the basis of the character- from his stern gruff old man routine to his impish childish squeals of delight when he finds something new or interesting, or from his darker ruthless side to his outbursts of compassion on behalf of others- but its the ability for the show to change that really keeps it going, and thats down to Troughton pulling it off that first time.

Blue- yeah I think that period of Who has some of the poorest effects. It suffers from the fact that computers were being used when really they could do very little, and all that looks laughable now.
Most of the older series model work stands up better than a lot of the 4/5th Doctor period effects do.

Oh yeah Petty, don't get me wrong Trougton's great, and it's great that he was so great...I just like Hartnell more.


Have you checked back on the thread to the youtube video I posted?...It will either make you laugh or give you a very big headache.

Is that the all the Baker episodes at once vid? You can still make out the daleks through the din! Superior species sound!   

Yeah that's the one, I wonder if there is a video with All 600+ eps in one? That would be terrifying to watch!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Good work keeping the Who thread alive Blue- but no mention of Who wining Best Drama at the NTA's? Or Matt getting best drama performance for the Doctor?  Sloppy!  

Petty   

The soundtrack to the Who docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, composed by Edmund Butt, is about to be released, heres the track listing-

MAIN TITLE - AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME (0:38)
THE RIGHT MAN (1:17)
THE FIRST WOMAN PRODUCER (1:21)
I’VE GOT AN IDEA.. (1:34)
THE DALEKS (2:52)
KILL DR. WHO (1:48)
WHAT DIMENSION? (1:24)
THIS IS MY SHOW (1:50)
AUTOGRAPH HUNTING (2:31)
SYDNEY NEWMAN (1:00)
SCARLETT O'HARA (1:03)
PISS & VINEGAR (1:24)
DRESSING ROOM (1:18)
JFK ASSASSINATED (1:48)
THE TARDIS (0:57)
GOODBYE SUSAN (2:37)
10 MILLION VIEWERS (0:57)
THE FANS (0:41)
I’M SO SORRY BILL (2:45)
KISS GOODBYE (1:05)
MY SUCCESSOR (1:06)
ISOP GALAXY (0:50)
IRREPLACEABLE (1:19)
THE NEW DOCTOR (3:55)
TIME’S UP.. (1:15)

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-01-30/vote-for-your-favourite-british-tv-show-to-appear-in-captain-america-sequel-the-winter-soldier

vote for a classic BBC tv show to appear as a little cameo (it's gonna be mentioned, read the article) in the Captain America movie, winter soldier  Sherlock is in the lead, but doctor who is just right under

Dr Who t-shirts on sale.

Blue box tees

Thee hee.. Exterminating in the rain. *chuckle*

I like those- some crackers in there, the one you mention Amarie and the Ascent of Man/Dalek one leap out at me in particular.

Doctor Who has featured in those kinds of franchises before, of course.

Nicely done trailer for the classic 2nd Doctor story Tomb of the Cybermen-

I watched Tomb of the Cybermen the other night, good fun, if a bit stretched out (Is it just me or do the villians in Classic Who spend more time explaining their evil plans than actually going through with them), and clunky.

The Toberman character was a bit...dated I have to say...

Actually he was probably a bit progressive for the BBC at the time-

Spoiler:

and he gets a good bit of screen time.

I enjoyed the Doctors interactions with the bad guy- as always Troughtons performance is the highlight throughout, and I am a big Jamie fan too, despite the shows Englishcentric idea of a Highlander (and an English actor, although his accent is not too bad, even if you would be hard pushed to place it exactly).

Enjoyed this, not all the impressions are spot on but I was impressed by the line delivery and how they mimic each actors way of delivering a line-

Now 11's era is over have been given some thought to it as a whole.

And the one huge thing that strikes me most when taken as a whole is the last bit of information Moffat choose to give us- that 11 right from the start was on his last body.

It explains a lot about the early tone of the episodes. Right from the beginning he is pursued by an ominous air of things going on around him that he does not know anything about- the Pandorica, and above all Silence Will Fall, then the Silence themselves, then Madame Kovarian- all tantalisingly linked but never explained.

Death has stocked 11 from the off. And speeches he makes along the way "I've been running all my lives, and now its time for me to stop" for example are now so clearly the words of a man who knows he is going to die this time.

And this process seems to have begun in the last days of 10- his farewell tour- in the Sarah Jane story Death of the Doctor 11 tells Jo Grant that before he regenerated he, for the first time ever, looked back at all his old companions and checked on them all to see how they were doing.

The Doctor in the words of Davros is the man who never stops running because he dare not look back.
In his final moment 10 does stop and he does look back- and then he become his final regen, 11.
The Doctor who would finally stop running in the town of Christmas, defending it to his final breath.

There has always been a melancholy and ageing aspect to the 11th Doctor under the whimsy, the highlighted glimpses and reminders we are fed throughout of the old man within- from the speech beside Amelias bed at the end of Pandorica, or Rivers dressing down of him at Demons Run, and his actions towards Soloman in Dinosaurs, or the angry speech about the price of his mercy in Town Called Mercy to the summing up of his experiences in the speech in Rings of Akhaten (in which we are also reminded he had a granddaughter long ago) Moffat is consistently presenting us with a Doctor who is looking back and trying to sum up for himself what he is (turns out he is the man who will fight on to the death to save the lives of innocent people no matter the personal cost to himself or what or who he has to give up to do it).

And then there is poor Amy and Rory- the girl whose life is completely messed up by the Doctor and and the 'man who dies and dies again.' Two problems which are only finally solved by an equal acceptance of love and death, empathised by the names on the grave stone and driven home for the Doctor by his lack of influence on events, he can do nothing but weep at her graveside.
It is no coincidence Amy is the only companion who we have ever seen from childhood to death.
And there has always been an air around her of a thing ultimately doomed. Think of her sitting among the sunflowers for Vincent Van Gogh and then his description of the flower as 'Its not that I dont like them. I find them complex. Always somewhere between living and dying," and his reference to 'seeing her sadness.'

And f course we have River Song the woman who both kills him and marries him, and who the Doctor and the viewer know is doomed to die in the Library from the very start. "He doesn't like endings" River tells Amy, but nor does he now how to say goodbye and let go. 11's era is about finding how to o that, ultimately its about the acceptance of death.

A bit like LotR's when you dig under the surface of the 11 era it was always about the death and passing of things.
But this is Doctor Who and whilst its no stranger to touching on death as a subject matter it is ultimately optimistic, everything does have to end, just not necessarily yet!

11 has been reborn into 12 (or 13 depending on your counting) courtesy of the Time Lords and starts with new hope. It will be interesting to see what Moffat does with that.

I said in the Sherlock thread that Moffat likes to hide his twists in plain sight.
This was a huge example of that- the entire direction of the 11 era was flavoured by a twist not revealed until the final episode. And yet once you are told and look back it seems so obvious and highlighted in so many ways so often throughout.

Whilst fandom was still arguing among itself about how many regens the Doctor had used Moffat told them exactly and how and at the same time put a whole new perspective on 11's entire run.

I do like how Moffat slowly but certainly started unravelling a lot of the new creations of RTD. They served the show well in the first few seasons, but the Time War and a lot of those other concepts just kept dragging the show down for me.

And my biggest problem with the reimagened show to this day is turning the Doctor into this most powerful and important being in the Universe and Messiah like character. There might have been hints of such things in the original series, but I always enjoyed him more in the role of a bit of a Space vagrant and when his role in stories were more incidental.

And by some of the changes Moffat has made, I'm guessing he kind of feels the same way.   

I would certainly say that was true, although I think also that Moffat would agree that the striping down of the shows mythos for the relaunch was necessary to get as wide a new audience as possible.

But for me RTD took it too far by having the Doctor commit double genocide, it proved good angst and drama but in th elong run was pulling the character apart and was too contradictory for everything he stood for.

And whilst in the past Who has had alien invasions of earth they were usually somehow out of the way places, or covered up by UNIT in some fashion. When RTD made earth aware of alien races and had earth interacting with them it loses something for me, you have to believe the Doctor could pop into your world, and if the version of your world presented is so different from your own it fails.

Moffat originally used the cracks in time to swallow events- a time crack naturally feeds first on moments of disruption --so that gets rid of the Dalek/Cybermen invasions, the Titanic crash and the Cyberking in one go.
Then Moffat challenged the Messianic Doctor idea- Rivers speech in Good Man is all about that as his later desire to slip back into the shadows and his admission he had got to big show.
Moffat then focused the story on the mystery of him with the ultimate question and finished up by giving him a whole new set of regens and Gallifrey back (somewhere), essentially resetting the show back to where it started 50 years ago ready for the next 50.

Yeah, I like the way Moffat has developed that. Though we still had the Time of the Doctor which mostly consist of the Doctor single handedly holding of the combined armies of most of the species of the cosmos. So were back to this most powerful being in the Universe thing.

I truley find the Space vagrant angle a whole lot more interesting. Him bumbling into situations and solving them by being an outside benign presence. Like most of the invasion of earth stories are solved because the Doctor is superior to the invading species, not becuase he's the most powerful being in the Universe.

Though I dislike the Invasion of Time for the same reason. He just becomes too important as a character, and it doesn't serve the show, in my opinion.

In Time he does hold them off and for centuries, but from what you are shown he doesnt seem to do it by any special means- he outwits the cyberman- and given his enemies fear all he has to do is say his name I doubt they attack to often and very carefully.
Whilst I see the point about him holding everyone off, I dont think it marks a return to the messianic Doctor, and he doesnt do it alone as over the centuries and as he becomes old the townspeople themselves are inspired by him to defend their own town. And whilst various sides all want the same goal they are not on the same side.

Looking back over series 7 all the following episodes are traditional in the sense they either just get dragged into events, or the TARDIS lands somewhere other than where the Doctor was trying to get to-

Asylum of the Daleks, A Town Called Mercy, The Angels Take Manhattan, Cold War, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, The Crimson Horror, Nightmare in Silver, The Name of the Doctor.

Of the rest many of them the reason for going somewhere is related to the Clara arc, Bellsof St John he is looking for her, Rings he is taking her to see a wonder of the universe, Power of Three its a weird mystery, The Snowmen he is sulking in Victorian London.

So I dont think you have to worry too much that Moffat will stray far from the template of Doctor turns up stuff happens he gets involved when he probably shouldn't. Its been the mainstay of the format for series seven.