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Post by mrperson on Oct 11, 2022 19:58:04 GMT
Think I might rewatch the whole Flux thing, starting tonight.
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Post by bonehead on Oct 12, 2022 18:12:06 GMT
The Five Doctors (Special Edition)
Every time I watch this, a differfent performance rises to the surface and reminds me all over again how good it is. There are two this time. It's a given that the story is choc-a-block with big names and big personalities. But Philip Latham is excellent as Borusa. What a terrific actor he was. And Mark Strickson, stuck aboard the TARDIS, is great. Reassuring? Not at all. Alongside Susan, he witnesses the Cybermen putting together their bomb (which they take half the story to detonate) "Big. Isn't it," he drawls. When Susan asks what they should do, he replies, "Die. It seems."
There's a genuinely epic quality to this, albeit on 1983 terms. The location filming is very effective, and looks freezing; Peter Howell's tweaked music is great, especially the Cybermen's march; the direction is very good, and of course its bitterweet to see all the old faces again, and sad that so many are no longer with us.
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melkur
Chancellery Guard
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Post by melkur on Oct 12, 2022 22:50:02 GMT
Delta & The Bannerman - Maybe not the best story in the world, but one I've always had a bit of a soft-spot for (the fact that I've named a character in the thing I've been working on for a while now is neither here nor there ) Dragonfire - It's alright, I guess? A decent-enough story, but I don't know if it's one that I would strictly watch reguarly... The Tenth Planet - A little 'light' in comparison to the regeneration stories that would follow, but a near-perfect 94minutes for a Wednesday evening!
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Post by sherlock on Oct 14, 2022 19:29:53 GMT
Scream of the Shalka
I tried the 2003 cul-de-sac out of curiosity. it’s got some interesting ideas and has its moments (mainly scenes involving the Master), but the performances are quite flat and aren’t helped by the basic animation, so it’s not that compelling a watch.
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melkur
Chancellery Guard
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Post by melkur on Oct 16, 2022 17:38:22 GMT
The War Games - Dang girl, are you serial ZZ because I started nodding off during parts 5 & 10! (The latter explaining why, yes, you maybe shouldn't allow me to start watching something at almost 2.30 in the morning)
Planet Of The Spiders - A decent-enough story, but you could have dropped most of the part 2 chase scene & lost nothing...
Logopolis - Would it be sacrilege to say that, whilst yes, a decent story, this one is a little... Slow off the ground?
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Post by Kestrel on Oct 22, 2022 4:25:17 GMT
Some brief context: I made my way here in 2020, finding Big Finish in the immediate wake of the soul-crushing experience that was The Timeless Child. While much of the fandom was involved in what would turn out to be a very prolonged meltdown, my thinking was simple: if I didn't like what Chibnall was doing with Doctor Who, I could simply redirect my attention elsewhere.
Jump cut to the now, and I'm one of those weirdos who'll insist that Doctor Who is better on audio than it's ever been on TV.
In hindsight this was a brilliant move and you are all very welcome to refer to me as a "super genius."
So, anyway, the point is that I haven't watched any of the Chibnall era since the series 12 finale. Until today.
With Whitaker's era very nearly over, I am diving into Flux. One episode in, and I find I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would. Though perhaps that is unsurprising considering how much I enjoyed series 12 right until until the finale... regardless, it's a lot funnier and imaginative (in some respects) than I expected. Loved the gag with Dan being so poor (or simply so emoty-headed) that the only food in his house is... four uncooked spaghetti noodles. Absolutely perfect laugh-out-loud sight gag.
Also very excited to see Sontarans! And to finally get to the Sea Devils! Glory and riches to all the lizardfolk of the world!
Also also, I'm doing super poorly right now, so there's a good chance I'll wind up getting through all of this before Power airs in two days time. Then I'll finally able to be current and topical, for a rare change of pace.
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Post by sherlock on Oct 22, 2022 8:00:52 GMT
I’ve done an edited highlights tour of favourites, plot essentials and ones I though deserved a second outing for Whittaker’s era. Some bite-size thoughts- The Woman Who Fell to Earth: Still love it, though after four years it’s weird Grace’s death is the still the most emotional moment of the era.
The Ghost Monument: Feels on the verge of greatness idea-wise, but execution is very so-so, though the 8 minutes are great. Rosa: A worthy statement of intent that this era’s historicals sould go places the past eras wouldn’t touch.
Arachnids in the UK: A messy one in terms of morality and plot, though some nice grisly deaths along the way.
Demons of the Punjab: A beautiful work of tragedy.
Kerblam!: In which a totalitarian Space Amazon is wonderfully set up…and then just left intact; that fairly significant odd choice aside it’s got a good plot.
The Witchfinders: Alan Cumming eats the scenery gloriously and everything else here matches perfectly, even if the monsters are underdeveloped.
It Takes You Away: My favourite performance of Whittaker combined with a great plot, and yes I love the frog and I will die on this hill.
Resolution: Fine Dalek thriller, but started the trend of Chibnall cramming his stories with characters and the narration is bizarre.
Spyfall: Not as good as I remembered but still enjoyable, primarily due to Dhawan’s Master.
Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror: A perfectly enjoyable mid-series runaround.
Fugitive of the Judoon: Aside from the brute forcing of the companions out of the plot to meet Jack for foreboding reasons, this is absolutely perfect.
Can You Hear Me?: A worthy endeavour but execution doesn’t quite match, as it really feels crammed into 50 minutes.
The Haunting of Villa Diodati: Love it.
Ascension of the Cybermen: A good Cyber thriller with Whittaker on particularly good form.
The Timeless Children: Enough has been said about this one; I don’t hate it but it’s not good.
Revolution of the Daleks: Shame about the unceremonious ditching of the promising ‘Doctor in prison whilst companions solo an invasion’ premise and the very little focus on ‘Daleks as state brutality’ angle, but I still enjoyed it.
The Halloween Apocalypse: I can’t help but get caught up in the energy if this one, it’s a perfect opener.
War of the Sontarans: An excellent exploration of the Sontarans.
Once, Upon Time: I admire the ambition here more than anything else.
Village of the Angels: A creepy nightmarish Angels story which puts them right back up among the top tier Who villains.
Survivors of the Flux: Where Flux starts to fall down with the pointless companion side quests, unnecessary detour into UNIT (and I still don’t know who the Serpent really is and why he’s bothering) and a frustrating confrontation with Division.
The Vanquishers: An utter mess of a story; possibly the worst finale by simple virtue of being so chaotic.
Eve of the Daleks: Still love it; Chibnall writes sadistic Daleks well.
Legend of the Sea Devils: Stuff happens and none of it got any real feeling from me: nice epilogue on the beach though.
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Post by aussiedoctorwhofan on Oct 22, 2022 10:32:39 GMT
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Post by Kestrel on Oct 23, 2022 3:29:41 GMT
Nearly done with Flux. These glitter aliens really aren't doing it for me, and this Division stuff is just so bizarre. This story would work so much better is S11 and S13 were all of the Doctor Who that existed and the preceding 50 years or so were jettisoned entirely. I think I can enjoy this more if I frame the 13tg Doctor as an alternate version of the 1st Doctor.
That out of the way, my favorite episode so far is the Sontarran one. The Sontarans, in general, are the real highlight of this series. Invading the Crimea just because they like horses, getting bribed with chocolate, etc.
And, as ever, I remain impressed by how anathema Chibnall finds character development. It's really amazing to me that he wanted to make these three companions friends (I forget the Doctor's name) so he just did a 2-year time skip, and now they're all pals.
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Post by Kestrel on Oct 24, 2022 6:47:05 GMT
Well, I'm all caught up now and about to watch Power of the Doctor. Which I really, really hope is about a Victorian-era industrialist attempting to harness the Doctor's regenration energy in order to power a large turbine to supply electricity to London's greater metropolitan area. Some nice, very small-scale nefariousness for a change. Anyway, some brief thoughts on what I've just watched: Flux Lots of really good moments and surprisingly decent pacing, but the actual story is really, really messy. I never much cared for the "Timeless Child" stuff, but if Chibnall wanted to tell that story, I at least wanted him to tell that story. But that plotline has gone exactly nowhere. Maybe it'll finally do something in the final special? I'm not gonna hold my breath. At least, as I said before, we got some really, really good Sontarrans out of this season.
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Eve of the Daleks I honestly, genuinely believe that the first half of this story represents some of the very best Doctor Who storytelling we've had on TV for a very, very long time. It's right up there with Moffat's best work. Simple, clearly-communicated (and intrinsically interesting) premise, very efficient and effective characterization for the guest stars, excellent pacing that still finds time for some (excellent) humor... it is fantastic. Imagine if every Whitaker story were this good? The last half isn't as good, but it doesn't exactly fall apart, either. The plan to trick the Daleks was fun, if not terribly imaginative, but the actual reasoning behind the resolution was pretty incoherent. How does blowing up the building end the time loop? Who knows. But, as is often the case when watching episodes of the Chibnall era, "ours is not to reason why."*
(I actually looked up that quote to make sure I got it right... and it's Tennyson. Of course it's Tennyson. God, I love Tennyson.)
The worst part of this story -- the only bad thing, really -- is the title. Demons of the Punjab I'll always be able to remember when I want to do a rewatch or recommend a good 13th Doctor story... but Eve of the Daleks? I promise you I will have forgotten this title entirely by this time tomorrow.
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Legend of the Sea Devils If I got to the credits of the preceding special thinking, "I don't really think Chris Chibnall wrote this," which I did, then I definitely got to the credits of this special thinking, "Chris Chibnall definitely wrote this. Which I also did. If the last line of any summary can always be, "And Yaz was also there," it's a Chibnall script for sure. Is it maybe an intentional running joke? Is Chibnall that self-deprecating? So many times there'd be a scene where the Doctor breathlessly shouts exposition, and Yaz is right there in the background of the frame. Poor Mandip Gill doing her absolute best to act with only her eyes, because she barely ever gets any lines. Oof.
Anyway, story-wise I found this one to be an immense disappointment. I've complained often, and a great length, of the Anglocentrism of Doctor Who historicals, so I will always be very thankful to Chibnall for making such a conscious and consistent attempt to break free from that, and explore other aspects of human history. The results may not be great, but goddamn do I respect the attempt. Sadly, in terms of results, Legend of the Sea Devils may be the weakest historical yet -- there's virtually no history at all! And it's such a great period to explore, too! 19th century China! Pirates! Come on! They don't even so much as reference the broader historical context here, which (you'd think) would be extremely relevant. Add to that the total lack of any extras on the ship (no crew, at all) the whole thing feels extremely artificial. No sense of reality at all to this setting. At the very least, I think historicals ought to do something, anything, to inspire the audience to look up the people, places or events in the story. They should inspire! I think that's kind of a responsibility -- they need to not just do the story justice, not just the setting justice, but the audience, too. Just pick any one sentence from Zheng Shih's wikipedia page and you'll find something twenty times more interesting than anything in this story. Such a waste.
Okay, so maybe that might fall into the far-too-subjective realm of pet peeves. That, I'll concede. I probably would be much more forgiving here if there was a good story, at least. But nope. Not only is does this episode completely fail its own setting, it also completely fails the classic monsters it brings back. Sea Devils! Sea Devils! Have I mentioned lately that I love lizard people? I love lizard people. Only here... we get the Sea Devils, but they're just generic monsters. So goddamned boring. The whole thing that makes the Sea Devils (and Silurians in general) so fun in those classic stories is that they're very emphatically NOT generic monsters. They have complexity and nuance. Or they're supposed to. I don't think I'm gonna get over this one any time soon. Obviously I knew going into it to keep my expectations fairly low... but even so.
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Post by tuigirl on Oct 24, 2022 20:46:23 GMT
Power of the Doctor. SERIOUSLY. OMG. I nearly died. I could not breathe. It took me 3 hours to make it through. This was the most amazing bit of Who in a VERY long time.
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Post by tuigirl on Oct 24, 2022 20:48:50 GMT
..........................................................
{Spoiler} Right, who talked? This was obviously posted before yesterday.
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Post by tuigirl on Oct 27, 2022 17:16:38 GMT
Carnival of Monsters. Love Jo.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Oct 28, 2022 10:27:22 GMT
I watched it on Monday but realised i forgot to type it out lol
The Power of the Doctor
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Post by tuigirl on Oct 31, 2022 19:49:49 GMT
Started on Planet of the Spiders.
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Post by elkawho on Nov 2, 2022 1:08:52 GMT
I forgot to post. Last Friday the Whovians of Central Jersey watched The Brain of Morbius for our Halloween viewing.
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Post by bonehead on Nov 2, 2022 18:39:06 GMT
Rose.
As RTD is on the verge of sprinkling magic dust on the series again, I thought I'd remind myself how he launched Doctor Who for a new generation back in 2005. Of course, at the time, Who hadn't been on air for sixteen years as a regular series, so I remember watching this (with a couple of friends), completely hooked. All these years later, it's clear that better stories were to come, but really, RTD did everything here just right. Hints at the Doctor's past, Rose's beautiful reaction to the TARDIS, an appealing cast of characters, an effectively sinister threat - it's all here.
Within the first couple of minutes, we'd been introduced to Billie Piper's wonderful Rose, her life ("You've nothing to wake up for," says Jackie. "You've got no job to go to."), and her boyfriend before being left in the basement of the shop bathed in silence, with only the creeping, creaking movement of the shop window dummies slowly surrounding her. In five minutes, we were hooked! By the time Chris Eccleston and Billie were walking round the estate, talking about planetry invasions, baked beans and chips, I remember thinking all those years ago - they've done it! They've got Doctor Who absolutely right.
"Are you made of plastic? No, no - bonehead!"
If I'm honest, I'm not hugely enthused by the immediate future of the show on telly. That's the truth. But watching Rose has reminded me that when it comes to making must-see television, RTD is up there with the best of them, and that's made me a lot more optimistic.
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Post by Kestrel on Nov 5, 2022 20:21:21 GMT
Kinda feel like I ought to rewatch the RTD1 stuff, too, but since the new CDF documentary just dropped yesterday, I think I'm gonna fling myself at the Matt Smith era instead. Trying to decide if I should start with series 7's first episode, or skip ahead to The Snowmen. Broadly speaking, of the first 10, I enjoyed series 7 the least, and generally regard Clara as the least interesting companion... will be interesting to see if my opinion will change on the rewatch.
(My first time rewatching this span... I've rewatched 1-6 before, but of the rest I'd only ever rewatched series 10... and my opinion changed dramatically after that second go-round.)
Also today I rewatched The Enemy of the World which is pretty much the platonic ideal of classic Who.
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Post by tuigirl on Nov 5, 2022 23:37:19 GMT
Kinda feel like I ought to rewatch the RTD1 stuff, too, but since the new CDF documentary just dropped yesterday, I think I'm gonna fling myself at the Matt Smith era instead. Trying to decide if I should start with series 7's first episode, or skip ahead to The Snowmen. Broadly speaking, of the first 10, I enjoyed series 7 the least, and generally regard Clara as the least interesting companion... will be interesting to see if my opinion will change on the rewatch. (My first time rewatching this span... I've rewatched 1-6 before, but of the rest I'd only ever rewatched series 10... and my opinion changed dramatically after that second go-round.) Also today I rewatched The Enemy of the World which is pretty much the platonic ideal of classic Who. I love Enemy of the World. And I like your description of platonic ideal of classic Who. Thinking about it, you hit the mark there.
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Post by tuigirl on Nov 11, 2022 13:52:05 GMT
Having finished Planet of the Spiders, Battlefield is up next.
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