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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2017 10:12:45 GMT
The answer to all those questions for me is 'yes'. My problem with a lot of the classic series companions is that we don't know a lot about their background, who they are and where they came from. In the new series we meet their parents and/or grandparents, or in the case of Amy and Clara we at least see their day-to-day lives. Even Sarah Jane Smith in the classic series isn't as fleshed out as the new series companions. We know that she has an Aunt Lavina but we don't see her until K9 & Company, and we don't find out the majority of Sarah's back story such as who her parents are until The Sarah Jane Adventures. SJA did a lot for Sarah Jane's characterisation. In fact, I'd even say there's a notable difference between classic series SJA and how more three dimensional the character is in comparison in School Reunion. I do think seeing more of Jamie's life or Romana's would have improved their characters considerably. It would have given us a deeper reason to care. ...and you didn't care about them before?
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on May 30, 2017 10:25:17 GMT
The answer to all those questions for me is 'yes'. My problem with a lot of the classic series companions is that we don't know a lot about their background, who they are and where they came from. In the new series we meet their parents and/or grandparents, or in the case of Amy and Clara we at least see their day-to-day lives. Even Sarah Jane Smith in the classic series isn't as fleshed out as the new series companions. We know that she has an Aunt Lavina but we don't see her until K9 & Company, and we don't find out the majority of Sarah's back story such as who her parents are until The Sarah Jane Adventures. SJA did a lot for Sarah Jane's characterisation. In fact, I'd even say there's a notable difference between classic series SJA and how more three dimensional the character is in comparison in School Reunion. I do think seeing more of Jamie's life or Romana's would have improved their characters considerably. It would have given us a deeper reason to care. ...and you didn't care about them before? It's much harder to care about them when you know so little about who they are.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2017 10:41:32 GMT
...and you didn't care about them before? It's much harder to care about them when you know so little about who they are. I can see that, but I don't believe every person is defined by their family. Nor should they be.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on May 30, 2017 10:42:57 GMT
It's much harder to care about them when you know so little about who they are. I can see that, but I don't believe every person is defined by their family. Nor should they be. Whether they have parents or not, and how they have treated them says a lot about their childhood though and who they are today.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Jul 20, 2017 23:33:13 GMT
In light of developments, a bump up
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Post by barnabaslives on Jul 21, 2017 2:25:49 GMT
I'd love it if Chibnall could keep the show's humor on track. Stay funny, but stay classy, and don't mistake lazy or cheap shots for zany. Humor like that is best left to the viewer as an option, because it's just that easy to think of. (I'm fairly sure I can think of just about every bad joke you can make about a female Doctor just from watching a few 50s and 60s shows, so please let's not have to take the show there?) That includes having characters behave drastically out of character for giggles - of course I got a millisecond of chuckle out of "Oh Missy, you're so fine" but it just wasn't worth it for how difficult it is to fit that behavior into my head canon, and the way it diluted the character. Also, please be kinder to companions after so much outstanding work goes into making them so very likable - I think of them as friends, and that a friend of The Doctor is a friend of mine, so please try keep the unspeakable horrors they experience to the necessary minimum? :-) When it's time for them to move on, please don't forget that companion farewells aren't actually required to be particularly eventful, protracted, strange, or final. I actually seem to think that the New Series might have gotten too busy too often coming up with these elaborately strange companion departures so that other aspects of the writing might have often suffered appreciably for it? There's a very big problem with that though. What about characters like Steven, Vicki, Sara, Romana, Liz or Jamie? Would Leela have been a better character if they'd popped back to the Sevateem and the Tesh every other episode to date one of her tribesmen? Would Romana if we took a trip back to Gallifrey in the same manner to do the dishes? What about K9, why not take him back to Marius every other week? The answer to all those questions for me is 'yes'. My problem with a lot of the classic series companions is that we don't know a lot about their background, who they are and where they came from. In the new series we meet their parents and/or grandparents, or in the case of Amy and Clara we at least see their day-to-day lives. I think I might have seen a little too much of Amy and Clara's day-to-day-lives? :-) I agree very much that further back in the series, we sometimes learn too little about companions and their lives outside the TARDIS - but I'm not sure the right answer to that is a pendulum swing in the opposite direction, or where half an episode is devoted to domestic affairs. There's a bit of difference between wondering if Turlough even has parents, and watching Rose's mum do her wash. It was wonderfully cozy, but I don't think the series has ever really suffered for lack of a laundromat scene. :-) It's much harder to care about them when you know so little about who they are. I'd be fairly happy with mainly occasional odd bits of background info offered in conversations rather than having to park the TARDIS in the family's backyard for a whole season just to get to know somebody. I actually find most companions very easy to care about because we quickly learn so much about what they're like and how much character they generally have. I really don't know much about Bill but I just adore her, and I think a very big part of that is knowing what she's like when the chips come down. That meant way more to me than learning more about her family or her past. I felt like I was getting to know her and not just details about her. I saw her as an ordinary, likeable person who would get out this wonderful, almost River Song-like, determination to rise to the occasion, even if sometimes reluctantly, just when it was needed most. Outside of what I thought were a couple of bad moves, I thought she was remarkably well-written in all respects. Granted, a season with a companion's family is probably more warm and personable than loitering around UNIT HQ, but I don't think it makes an adequate cover for being Earthbound, and I don't know if budgetary concerns are either (a space/time-travel show is eligible to recycle a lot of different sets and costumes, I imagine). I know kids probably giggle over the special effects quality in the OS, but so did I once - brilliant special effects were never what I watched the show for. I think there must be a happy, creative, and cost-effective medium in there, somewhere between making alien worlds out of a quarry and a color filter, and every glimpse of another planet having to be a million-dollar CGI shot, that might help the show fulfill the promise of going places?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 6:09:54 GMT
I want to see the series be grittier and see actions have consequences. No hand waves that make everything okay again. If people die it should be messy and permanent.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Jul 21, 2017 7:59:25 GMT
I want to see the series be grittier and see actions have consequences. No hand waves that make everything okay again. If people die it should be messy and permanent. I'd say Bill's fate had a consequence. It's essentially her essence who joined Heather, so technically Bill is still dead.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 8:15:01 GMT
I want to see the series be grittier and see actions have consequences. No hand waves that make everything okay again. If people die it should be messy and permanent. I'd say Bill's fate had a consequence. It's essentially her essence who joined Heather, so technically Bill is still dead. Hardly what you'd call messy though. It's not like Mr Tully being fed to the Darkness in Sapphire & Steel where we hear the scream and Steel simply walks away knowing exactly what he's just done. He's left a kind and benevolent man to be tortured for eternity so he can slow that thing down and let all the other people it's been torturing finally rest. Even if he can never really stop it, only delay it. Another good example is Ruth in another assignment where she's burned alive inside the photograph she's trapped within. Screaming, screaming, screaming with nothing either he or Sapphire can do while her friend watches. Doctor Who could be really good at that. Really genuinely unpleasant horror like Noah in The Ark in Space (trying to break his own mutated arm on the console) or the utterly chilling Cybermen in The Wheel in Space (forcing their own unwilling agents to commit suicide rather than be deprogrammed), I'd like to see them try their hand at it again.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Jul 21, 2017 8:20:40 GMT
I'd say Bill's fate had a consequence. It's essentially her essence who joined Heather, so technically Bill is still dead. Hardly what you'd call messy though. It's not like Mr Tully being fed to the Darkness in Sapphire & Steel where we hear the scream and Steel simply walks away knowing exactly what he's just done. He's left a kind and benevolent man to be tortured for eternity so he can slow that thing down and let all the other people it's been torturing finally rest. Even if he can never really stop it, only delay it. Another good example is Ruth in another assignment where she's burned alive inside the photograph she's trapped within. Screaming, screaming, screaming with nothing either he or Sapphire can do while her friend watches. Doctor Who could be really good at that. Really genuinely unpleasant horror like Noah in The Ark in Space (trying to break his own mutated arm on the console) or the utterly chilling Cybermen in The Wheel in Space (forcing their own unwilling agents to commit suicide rather than be deprogrammed), I'd like to see them try their hand at it again. I don't know if I'd want to see either of those happen to a companion in Doctor Who. I think Bill being shot through the chest and becoming a Cyberman is as far as the show should go. That gaping hole through her chest was possibly the show's most gruesome scene, but hearing a companion scream whilst being swallowed alive or as s/he is being burnt alive would be too messy.
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Post by sherlock on Jul 21, 2017 11:42:14 GMT
I want to see the series be grittier and see actions have consequences. No hand waves that make everything okay again. If people die it should be messy and permanent. Tbh World Enough and Time/ The Doctor Falls is the darkest I think the series should go. Was Bill's fate a bit of hand waving? Yes. Now I'm going to sound like a massive hypocrite given what I've said about Clara's departure, but I actually appreciated her ending. In that scene, with the Doctor lying seemingly dead in a blasted wasteland, his body being weeped over by his companion who has had her entire body mutilated, her very humanity stripped from her, it was arguably the bleakest image in Who's history. In that moment I actually wanted a handwave, because it was so bleak. At it's core Who is not a gritty and bleak show, it can absolutely do episodes that are bleak and gritty, but it's not what it's ultimately about. That's why The Caves of Androzani is an amazing one-off, but a terrible template for the show as a whole (as Season 22 kind of proved). Regardless of the handwaving, The Doctor Falls is still a tragedy. Nardole is left guarding people he barely knows, in a ship likely never to escape its predicament and potentially Cybermen still on the way. Bill leaves with Heather, believing her best friend is dead. The Doctor finds himself in the TARDIS, facing a regeneration he doesn't want and presumably believing Bill died back in the ship (who knows how he thinks he ended up in the TARDIS, but there's no reason for him to assume Bill made it out). Also actions did have consequences in World Enough and Time, the Doctor's failure to take the situation seriously immediately led to Bill being shot in the chest, and subsequently trapped for 10 years, and subsequently converted into a Cyberman, if that's not enough consequences what is?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 12:13:19 GMT
Hardly what you'd call messy though. It's not like Mr Tully being fed to the Darkness in Sapphire & Steel where we hear the scream and Steel simply walks away knowing exactly what he's just done. He's left a kind and benevolent man to be tortured for eternity so he can slow that thing down and let all the other people it's been torturing finally rest. Even if he can never really stop it, only delay it. Another good example is Ruth in another assignment where she's burned alive inside the photograph she's trapped within. Screaming, screaming, screaming with nothing either he or Sapphire can do while her friend watches. Doctor Who could be really good at that. Really genuinely unpleasant horror like Noah in The Ark in Space (trying to break his own mutated arm on the console) or the utterly chilling Cybermen in The Wheel in Space (forcing their own unwilling agents to commit suicide rather than be deprogrammed), I'd like to see them try their hand at it again. I don't know if I'd want to see either of those happen to a companion in Doctor Who. I think Bill being shot through the chest and becoming a Cyberman is as far as the show should go. That gaping hole through her chest was possibly the show's most gruesome scene, but hearing a companion scream whilst being swallowed alive or as s/he is being burnt alive would be too messy. I don't think so, what the series has done manages to push the bar fairly high. What happened to Sara was pretty horrific, Katarina deliberately blows herself into the vacuum of space, Adric died in a fireball aboard a freighter full of Cybermen and one Peri was shot to death by Yrcarnos in a blind fury. That's not even counting what happens to some Big Finish companions (whose fates I'll keep spoiler free). And remember that graphic horror doesn't always mean bloody. The Caves of Androzani is about a man who survived being boiled alive (and who consigns another to exactly that same fate) only because of his hatred for the monster that did it to him. The Talons of Weng-Chiang has Greel laughing as one of his failed minions bites down on scorpion venom, Leela screams as a giant rat tries to tear off her leg and there's an autopsy scene between Litefoot and the Doctor early on in the story. Going all the way back to The Daleks, there's the Dalek ambush against the Thals where dozens of unarmed people are slaughtered by them in their city. It's a straightforward massacre, but no blood and that typically makes all the difference. In that scene, with the Doctor lying seemingly dead in a blasted wasteland, his body being weeped over by his companion who has had her entire body mutilated, her very humanity stripped from her, it was arguably the bleakest image in Who's history. In that moment I actually wanted a handwave, because it was so bleak. At it's core Who is not a gritty and bleak show, it can absolutely do episodes that are bleak and gritty, but it's not what it's ultimately about. That's why The Caves of Androzani is an amazing one-off, but a terrible template for the show as a whole (as Season 22 kind of proved) And yet if you look at that first run of Five/Nyssa stories at Big Finish, there's more than a hint of Androzani to them. The Mutant Phase and Creatures of Beauty in particular stand out as stories that followed that mould. Creatures managed to be even more bleak than Androzani because it showed that sometimes the Doctor's very presence can kill an entire culture. They're very successful stories despite following the same tone. Doctor Who from its very beginning had a very dark premise: it was about two schoolteachers abducted from their home by two untrustworthy strangers without any means of getting back. The second story ever produced is about two races who destroyed their entire world in an atomic inferno, one festering in its city still trying to take their revenge in the debris, the other unwilling to fight back even to preserve themselves because of how terrible that war was. The third is all about how their mistrust leads them to turn on one another, even attempt to kill one another. What makes the difference is the Doctor and his companions, they try to uplift and help people in the most horrible and unrelenting of circumstances and they keep helping them. Time after time, world after world, they keep trying because it's the right thing to do, no matter how ugly it can get. They don't do it because it's cushy or safe, they do it because it's good, just and kind. And as much as they'd like to make it otherwise, people do get very badly hurt because they are by-and-large ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. They show that despite all this carnage, there can be another, better way of living.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Jul 21, 2017 12:21:20 GMT
I don't know if I'd want to see either of those happen to a companion in Doctor Who. I think Bill being shot through the chest and becoming a Cyberman is as far as the show should go. That gaping hole through her chest was possibly the show's most gruesome scene, but hearing a companion scream whilst being swallowed alive or as s/he is being burnt alive would be too messy. I don't think so, what the series has done manages to push the bar fairly high. What happened to Sara was pretty horrific, Katarina deliberately blows herself into the vacuum of space, Adric died in a fireball aboard a freighter full of Cybermen and one Peri was shot to death by Yrcarnos in a blind fury. That's not even counting what happens to some Big Finish companions (whose fates I'll keep spoiler free). And remember that graphic horror doesn't always mean bloody. The Caves of Androzani is about a man who survived being boiled alive (and who consigns another to exactly that same fate) only because of his hatred for the monster that did it to him. The Talons of Weng-Chiang has Greel laughing as one of his failed minions bites down on scorpion venom, Leela screams as a giant rat tries to tear off her leg and there's an autopsy scene between Litefoot and the Doctor early on in the story. Going all the way back to The Daleks, there's the Dalek ambush against the Thals where dozens of unarmed people are slaughtered by them in their city. It's a straightforward massacre, but no blood and that typically makes all the difference.. . But they don't dwell on it and it doesn't become particularly gory. I think there would be a difference between a companion being burnt alive for example and Adric's death. In the latter we just see the spaceship crash. Doctor Who is not a dark/gritty show, it's a lighthearted family drama.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 12:31:58 GMT
I don't think so, what the series has done manages to push the bar fairly high. What happened to Sara was pretty horrific, Katarina deliberately blows herself into the vacuum of space, Adric died in a fireball aboard a freighter full of Cybermen and one Peri was shot to death by Yrcarnos in a blind fury. That's not even counting what happens to some Big Finish companions (whose fates I'll keep spoiler free). And remember that graphic horror doesn't always mean bloody. The Caves of Androzani is about a man who survived being boiled alive (and who consigns another to exactly that same fate) only because of his hatred for the monster that did it to him. The Talons of Weng-Chiang has Greel laughing as one of his failed minions bites down on scorpion venom, Leela screams as a giant rat tries to tear off her leg and there's an autopsy scene between Litefoot and the Doctor early on in the story. Going all the way back to The Daleks, there's the Dalek ambush against the Thals where dozens of unarmed people are slaughtered by them in their city. It's a straightforward massacre, but no blood and that typically makes all the difference.. . But they don't dwell on it and it doesn't become particularly gory. I think there would be a difference between a companion being burnt alive for example and Adric's death. In the latter we just see the spaceship crash. Doctor Who is not a dark/gritty show, it's a lighthearted family drama. Which is why we got stories like The Caves of Androzani, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Enemy of the World, The Silurians, The Brain of Morbius, Revelation of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric in the first place right? There are elements sure, but I doubt it's only a lighthearted family drama. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had Jack being machine gunned to death (well, I say death) in Last of the Time Lords or a chained Ood suffering the same treatment in Planet. Never mind something like The Satan Pit, Utopia or Amy's Choice which had the Doctor accept what may very well have been her committing suicide with them in the van. Even Graham Williams who deplored the bloodier, nastier ways of Hinchcliffe/Holmes had the Toymaker imprisoned for all eternity to go mad in a cage of his own creation. The elements are still very much there.
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Jul 21, 2017 12:58:44 GMT
But they don't dwell on it and it doesn't become particularly gory. I think there would be a difference between a companion being burnt alive for example and Adric's death. In the latter we just see the spaceship crash. Doctor Who is not a dark/gritty show, it's a lighthearted family drama. Which is why we got stories like The Caves of Androzani, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Enemy of the World, The Silurians, The Brain of Morbius, Revelation of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric in the first place right? There are elements sure, but I doubt it's only a lighthearted family drama. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had Jack being machine gunned to death (well, I say death) in Last of the Time Lords or a chained Ood suffering the same treatment in Planet. Never mind something like The Satan Pit, Utopia or Amy's Choice which had the Doctor accept what may very well have been her committing suicide with them in the van. Even Graham Williams who deplored the bloodier, nastier ways of Hinchcliffe/Holmes had the Toymaker imprisoned for all eternity to go mad in a cage of his own creation. The elements are still very much there. I didn't say it was 'only' a light-hearted family drama, but at its heart it is. True, there are odd exceptions - but that's what they are. Odd exceptions. Even then, the episodes usually end on an optimistic outlook. Even with Adric's death in Earthshock the spaceship is said to be the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, and if the dinosaurs were still here they may have been the dominant species and not us.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 13:08:48 GMT
Which is why we got stories like The Caves of Androzani, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Enemy of the World, The Silurians, The Brain of Morbius, Revelation of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric in the first place right? There are elements sure, but I doubt it's only a lighthearted family drama. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had Jack being machine gunned to death (well, I say death) in Last of the Time Lords or a chained Ood suffering the same treatment in Planet. Never mind something like The Satan Pit, Utopia or Amy's Choice which had the Doctor accept what may very well have been her committing suicide with them in the van. Even Graham Williams who deplored the bloodier, nastier ways of Hinchcliffe/Holmes had the Toymaker imprisoned for all eternity to go mad in a cage of his own creation. The elements are still very much there. I didn't say it was 'only' a light-hearted family drama, but at its heart it is. True, there are odd exceptions - but that's what they are. Odd exceptions. Even then, the episodes usually end on an optimistic outlook. Even with Adric's death in Earthshock the spaceship is said to be the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, and if the dinosaurs were still here they may have been the dominant species and not us. Hold up. You're chasing your own tail. Go back and reread what I wrote, that's what I've said. That's what I like about Doctor Who compared to something like Battlestar Galactica. Look at The Aztecs, the Doctor offers a single consolation to her at the end: It's something I think the show thrives at its core with. There are some dark and terrible things out there, but there will always be someone to champion those who cannot champion themselves. A being who went up into the grey, snowswept mountains and discovered all the most vibrant and brilliant true colours hidden beneath the tundra on the way back down.
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Post by sherlock on Jul 21, 2017 13:42:49 GMT
Which is why we got stories like The Caves of Androzani, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Enemy of the World, The Silurians, The Brain of Morbius, Revelation of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric in the first place right? There are elements sure, but I doubt it's only a lighthearted family drama. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had Jack being machine gunned to death (well, I say death) in Last of the Time Lords or a chained Ood suffering the same treatment in Planet. Never mind something like The Satan Pit, Utopia or Amy's Choice which had the Doctor accept what may very well have been her committing suicide with them in the van. Even Graham Williams who deplored the bloodier, nastier ways of Hinchcliffe/Holmes had the Toymaker imprisoned for all eternity to go mad in a cage of his own creation. The elements are still very much there. I didn't say it was 'only' a light-hearted family drama, but at its heart it is. True, there are odd exceptions - but that's what they are. Odd exceptions. Now this is rare, but I agree with Dalekbuster. The stories that are gritty and bleak are so applauded precisely because they're unusual, and exceptions to the norm. Modern Doctor Who is meant to be aimed at all ages, so going down too dark a path risks alienating some viewers. Equally too light hearted may have the same impact. Yes there should be gritty episodes, but making that the norm risks making Who quite a dark show.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 13:49:12 GMT
I didn't say it was 'only' a light-hearted family drama, but at its heart it is. True, there are odd exceptions - but that's what they are. Odd exceptions. Now this is rare, but I agree with Dalekbuster. The stories that are gritty and bleak are so applauded precisely because they're unusual, and exceptions to the norm. Modern Doctor Who is meant to be aimed at all ages, so going down too dark a path risks alienating some viewers. Equally too light hearted may have the same impact. Yes there should be gritty episodes, but making that the norm risks making Who quite a dark show. Oh, you can be dark without being gritty. Knock, Knock and Oxygen were fairly dark without that layer of grit. In fact, I think I'd prefer it without it. There's a lot of mileage to be gained from stories like The Seeds of Death with ruthless Ice Warriors, a cowardly, deeply conflicted Fewsham balanced with an upbeat, sud-soaked Doctor and the guest cast's comradery. That's something I think people often forget about dark shows. In any other situation, these people would have packed it in and left, but at the end of the day, they're still here because they choose to be here. I think that's a remarkably positive message, irrespective of how grim the story you tell.
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Post by barnabaslives on Jul 21, 2017 14:11:14 GMT
I want to see the series be grittier and see actions have consequences. No hand waves that make everything okay again. If people die it should be messy and permanent. I'd think I'd like for the show to not get into anything that begs for a hand wave to fix, and for consequences to be more reserved for characters who might have earned some consequences. What would be the point if the message came out, "Might as well be a rotten person because the worst things happen to the best people"? I shouldn't want to ride along in the TARDIS if it just means something irreparably horrible is going to happen. Imagine a travel agency that keeps insisting to potential customers that it's not safe to travel. Also I am surprised if nothing has been learned about killing off companions from Sarah. What is really gained by that, and why kill off companions when it's just going to make it harder for Big Finish to slot stories into a timeline when they bring the character back?
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Post by TinDogPodcast on Jul 21, 2017 14:28:06 GMT
What do I want from chibbers?
A hand written apology for cyber woman
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