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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on May 24, 2016 2:38:19 GMT
Incidentally, there's stuff in "the Book of the War" where a Homeworld (Time Lord) Renegade (suggested to be either the Doctor or the Master) is dosed with a time-active drug that makes them hallucinate the War (or even WITNESS parts of it). One important part of the Riviera Fragment is said renegade going on about checking the sun.
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Post by Ela on May 24, 2016 3:10:28 GMT
I haven't find Miles' stories in the Who universe that compelling honestly. He's too much work to understand and his books have not been among my favorites from the Doctor Who and Benny series. Aww, not even Dead Romance? No, not that much. In fact, I recently commented on it in the Last book you read thread: Finished the Bernice Summerfield New Adventure series book Dead Romance. Very odd story. And Bernice wasn't even in it, though she was mentioned. I think it could have benefited from a bit less wordiness, frankly. Toward the end I read kind of fast just to get finished with it. And I didn't like much how Chris Cwej's character was portrayed toward the end. I feel like I'm missing some pieces in terms of how he landed where he was in that particular story. Like most of Miles' stories, it had a convoluted overly-complicated plot that was hard to keep track of. I thought Christine Summerfield was a whiny uninteresting character. I love Chris Cwej, but didn't love the way he came off in that story.
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2016 5:10:19 GMT
Aww, not even Dead Romance? No, not that much. In fact, I recently commented on it in the Last book you read thread: Finished the Bernice Summerfield New Adventure series book Dead Romance. Very odd story. And Bernice wasn't even in it, though she was mentioned. I think it could have benefited from a bit less wordiness, frankly. Toward the end I read kind of fast just to get finished with it. And I didn't like much how Chris Cwej's character was portrayed toward the end. I feel like I'm missing some pieces in terms of how he landed where he was in that particular story. Like most of Miles' stories, it had a convoluted overly-complicated plot that was hard to keep track of. I thought Christine Summerfield was a whiny uninteresting character. I love Chris Cwej, but didn't love the way he came off in that story. I have this sneaking suspicion that Miles is a fan of Alan Moore in that respect. I don't think the convolution is that bad in this one. It isn't Ghost Light where you're missing a key element of explanation for the story or Interference where the two novels actually double back over themselves. The evidence is all there in little bits and pieces, it's just not immediately obvious until you get to the crux of the matter itself. Ah, see, I didn't get that with Christine. I put a lot of her antisocial behaviour down to the fact that she's the last survivor of Earth 1970 wandering about its ruins. Even then she wasn't doing great before the Time Lords' interference on Earth. Considering her misanthropic introversion, it's likely Chris was a lot better at his job than she thought he was. On the surface, he came off as a bit unobservant and naïve, which to me seems very much in keeping with Chris's character, even post- Eternity Weeps. From memory, he was seized by the Time Lords and brainwashed into believing that the Doctor had kidnapped him and murdered Roz, placing a very different emphasis on many of the important elements of his life, so he's not the Chris Cwej we know. Nor the only one, if you count the Cwejen seen in The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel.
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Post by seeley on May 24, 2016 5:43:24 GMT
So who did Miles originally plan to be GrandFather Paradox? (I know who he originally planned to be the Enemy btw ). Wasn't there something about a Black Hole or Star thing that was never picked up on as well? PM please. As much fun as it has been to speculate these last 20 odd years, I'd like to know his intention. Me three, si vous plait. I assume you are referring to his plan when writing Alien Bodies (not the Whale King ).
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on May 24, 2016 5:47:01 GMT
I've started a new Faction Paradox-centric thread.
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2016 16:17:43 GMT
I've started a new Faction Paradox-centric thread. Thanks, this thread was drowning beneath stuff about stuff I've never heard of. I've never seen so many long posts, it's clearly all really deep stuff, but having a separate thread is better so people can navigate around it if it's not their thing.
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Post by Ela on May 25, 2016 2:46:24 GMT
No, not that much. In fact, I recently commented on it in the Last book you read thread: Like most of Miles' stories, it had a convoluted overly-complicated plot that was hard to keep track of. I thought Christine Summerfield was a whiny uninteresting character. I love Chris Cwej, but didn't love the way he came off in that story. I have this sneaking suspicion that Miles is a fan of Alan Moore in that respect. I don't think the convolution is that bad in this one. It isn't Ghost Light where you're missing a key element of explanation for the story or Interference where the two novels actually double back over themselves. The evidence is all there in little bits and pieces, it's just not immediately obvious until you get to the crux of the matter itself. Ah, see, I didn't get that with Christine. I put a lot of her antisocial behaviour down to the fact that she's the last survivor of Earth 1970 wandering about its ruins. Even then she wasn't doing great before the Time Lords' interference on Earth. Considering her misanthropic introversion, it's likely Chris was a lot better at his job than she thought he was. On the surface, he came off as a bit unobservant and naïve, which to me seems very much in keeping with Chris's character, even post- Eternity Weeps. From memory, he was seized by the Time Lords and brainwashed into believing that the Doctor had kidnapped him and murdered Roz, placing a very different emphasis on many of the important elements of his life, so he's not the Chris Cwej we know. Nor the only one, if you count the Cwejen seen in The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel. The story had elements that could have been interesting at first, but it just dragged on too long. Much like Interference, to be honest. And the whole mystery about Chris Cwej bugged me. If I am remembering correctly, the first time we see him after he left the Doctor was in Deadfall. It was a little more clear how he ended up where he was in that book, but there are no clues how he got from there to his situation in Dead Romance.
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Post by icecreamdf on May 25, 2016 3:08:12 GMT
After listening to Davros, we know that in Revelation of the Daleks, the Doctor wasn't just confused when he said that Davros' space ship exploded. The ship that he and Kim were on did explode.
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Post by elgranto on May 25, 2016 15:34:05 GMT
The Doctor met Sarah Jane in his Fifth incarnation. And in school reunion, he mentioned he had regenerated 6 times since they last met. Not taking that encounter into consideration as she had no recollection of it, as was probably the original intent? Or one of the few people he trusts enough to be subconsciously honest with about his shamed incarnation? I was going to post exactly that. You beat me to it!
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2016 22:41:10 GMT
I have this sneaking suspicion that Miles is a fan of Alan Moore in that respect. I don't think the convolution is that bad in this one. It isn't Ghost Light where you're missing a key element of explanation for the story or Interference where the two novels actually double back over themselves. The evidence is all there in little bits and pieces, it's just not immediately obvious until you get to the crux of the matter itself. Ah, see, I didn't get that with Christine. I put a lot of her antisocial behaviour down to the fact that she's the last survivor of Earth 1970 wandering about its ruins. Even then she wasn't doing great before the Time Lords' interference on Earth. Considering her misanthropic introversion, it's likely Chris was a lot better at his job than she thought he was. On the surface, he came off as a bit unobservant and naïve, which to me seems very much in keeping with Chris's character, even post- Eternity Weeps. From memory, he was seized by the Time Lords and brainwashed into believing that the Doctor had kidnapped him and murdered Roz, placing a very different emphasis on many of the important elements of his life, so he's not the Chris Cwej we know. Nor the only one, if you count the Cwejen seen in The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel. The story had elements that could have been interesting at first, but it just dragged on too long. Much like Interference, to be honest. And the whole mystery about Chris Cwej bugged me. If I am remembering correctly, the first time we see him after he left the Doctor was in Deadfall. It was a little more clear how he ended up where he was in that book, but there are no clues how he got from there to his situation in Dead Romance. Yeah, that bit's always been a mystery to me. He may be one of the Cwejen or the original Chris himself, there's no way of telling. Maybe he was time scooped from the Ardethe system shortly afterward? I noticed this with The Sword of Forever as well, the Benny Summerfield New Adventures suffer from being a series of stories that sometimes almost feel as though they were originally intended as independent works. The connection to Bernice here in Dead Romance feels particularly tenuous, so it works quite a lot better in the reprint which I've read where all connections to the ongoing range are severed.
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Post by Ela on May 26, 2016 2:59:28 GMT
Oh yeah, The Sword of Forever was a weird one that seems to reach farther into her past.
All the Virgin New Adventures are very variable in quality, but there's usually some thread, however tenuous, that links them all together.
Which reminds me of another thing I really don't buy: that whole bottle universe shtick. Seems like another unnecessary contrivance to me.
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Post by Deleted on May 26, 2016 4:33:49 GMT
Oh yeah, The Sword of Forever was a weird one that seems to reach farther into her past. All the Virgin New Adventures are very variable in quality, but there's usually some thread, however tenuous, that links them all together. Sometimes it's overt like the Timewyrm saga, Psi Powers (although, you can definitely debate that one) or the Alternate Universe arc and sometimes it's a little more subtle like the run from Falls the Shadow to Warlock where the Doctor is trying to get back to adventuring in a universe that still requires him to be Time's Champion, so he and his companions get all manner of terrors thrown at them. Reading them altogether in sequence one after the other can be a really draining experience, despite their quality and especially if you go immediately from Falls the Shadow to Parasite. Still, I think the good outweighs the bad when it comes to the NAs. You get Revelation, Transit, Just War, Conundrum, Lucifer Rising, Blood Heat, Lungbarrow, The Room with No Doors, The Dying Days; it just goes on and on. All the Virgin New Adventures are very variable in quality, but there's usually some thread, however tenuous, that links them all together. Which reminds me of another thing I really don't buy: that whole bottle universe shtick. Seems like another unnecessary contrivance to me. Agreed. It struck me in the same way that Gary Russell's multiverse theory did, in that it felt largely unnecessary. Neat little concept, but cosmically a bit pointless. Miles would later renege on the idea himself and focus on other aspects of the War. The concept behind the Horror is great though, isn't it? And the colony on the surface of Simia KK98? There are some really wonderful images in that novel.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on May 26, 2016 13:44:53 GMT
Weren't Miles's Bottle Universe and Later Russell's Multiverse meant to explain away the differences in continuities?
Which is something the Unbound Series jumped on?
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Post by Ela on May 26, 2016 22:53:41 GMT
Weren't Miles's Bottle Universe and Later Russell's Multiverse meant to explain away the differences in continuities? Yes, that's what I've heard. The Unbound series is more an "imagine if" things went one way as opposed to another. It's not trying to explain away discontinuities. Indeed, if you took the Unbound stories as canon, they would introduce a whole new set of discontinuities.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on May 27, 2016 11:47:06 GMT
Weren't Miles's Bottle Universe and Later Russell's Multiverse meant to explain away the differences in continuities? Yes, that's what I've heard. The Unbound series is more an "imagine if" things went one way as opposed to another. It's not trying to explain away discontinuities. Indeed, if you took the Unbound stories as canon, they would introduce a whole new set of discontinuities. But thats only if you discount the Multiverse. Maybe it does exist, hense why Bernice gets taken to an Unbound univrse in the new box set
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Post by Deleted on May 27, 2016 13:16:40 GMT
I've always been a bit curious about the skull that turns up as a recurring motif for Faction Paradox, it's supposed to be from a timeline where the Time Lords were subsumed by creatures from another space -- the Yssgaroth -- and their vampiric Malakh thralls, but to me it very closely resembles the artefact shown to the fortune teller on Manussa when Tegan was taken over by the Mara in Snakedance. It's a long shot, but I wonder if there's any connection between one and the other?
Recently having watched an episode of Myth Makers focussing on William Hartnell and learning that he's an illegitimate child, it's interesting to think that the Doctor's seeming illegitimacy in Lungbarrow may have been inspired by that. His running away from a strict private school back to his artistic, almost bohemian guardian Hugh Blaker (the story of the Doctor fleeing the Academy to visit the hermit K'anpo that turns up at the beginning of the novel) also seems to have a little bit of basis in Bill's early childhood.
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on May 29, 2016 21:10:02 GMT
Can the Silents remember each other when not looking at one them? And is there any indication the Doctor forgets them?
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Post by Ela on May 29, 2016 23:11:13 GMT
Can the Silents remember each other when not looking at one them? And is there any indication the Doctor forgets them? If you mean the Silence, yes, the Doctor specifically says he can't remember them. It's sort of complex, though, isn't it? They can't remember them when they see them but at some point they start remembering that such a thing exists. Otherwise, how do they remember to make marks on their arms when they see one? There's lots of discussion about this on other sites that I've seen.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 4:16:22 GMT
Can the Silents remember each other when not looking at one them? And is there any indication the Doctor forgets them? If you mean the Silence, yes, the Doctor specifically says he can't remember them. It's sort of complex, though, isn't it? They can't remember them when they see them but at some point they start remembering that such a thing exists. Otherwise, how do they remember to make marks on their arms when they see one? There's lots of discussion about this on other sites that I've seen. Hmm... The Silurians activate a race memory in human beings that causes them to regress back to their neolithic ancestors, so perhaps it's something similar? Maybe it's a deliberate psychological block similar to anterograde amnesia that is triggered in humanoids as a means of defending the mind against them. You do remember at least on a subconscious level, but your mind can't access the memory without triggering the trauma, so it keeps it buried until faced with it again. As to why exactly this happens with the Silence in particular... I'm almost tempted to believe that they somehow exist outside of conventional Euclidian geometry, something about the shape triggers a warning signal in the back of the brain that causes it to switch off long-term memory.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2016 5:43:59 GMT
Can the Silents remember each other when not looking at one them? And is there any indication the Doctor forgets them? The Doctor definitely states that he can't remember them (and acts that way most of the time). What the TARDIS crew do is observe each other looking at the Silent and talking about it, and listen to recordings of themselves doing so. So intellectually the know the Silence exist, they've been described to them and they understand their memory wiping properties, but they can't remember what they actually look like. Retroactively, there's a few moments in Series 5 where I like to think there was a Silent which our memories have edited out.
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