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Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 14, 2020 17:25:38 GMT
Hello again Thank you for your response, Charlesuirdhein. You make some very valid counter-arguments. I just thought the commentator had an interesting viewpoint, that make you think about the narrative choices made. We don't know where Mr Chibnall is going with this, he may not even take it any further, but this revelation certainly shakes things up. This is the only place where we can discuss our programme without the rancour that exists elsewhere. Thanks again for responding. I am in agreement with you doctorkernow. It does provide a rational discussion and is perfectly valid, with a wealth of evidence of how prior existing continuity generally ties together consistently. It has also received 6,600 likes to 326 dislikes at this point in time, which suggests that many others think so too. I would not dismiss it out of hand myself. Thanks for posting it. I'm never sure about likes or dislikes on things like this. I actively disliked it, yet I didn't "Dislike" it, because I never do that, or I never "like" them either. I'm not arguing the content here, just the like/dislike mechanism isn't necessarily a gauge of things I feel. Anecdotal obviously but nevertheless.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2020 17:53:38 GMT
I am in agreement with you doctorkernow. It does provide a rational discussion and is perfectly valid, with a wealth of evidence of how prior existing continuity generally ties together consistently. It has also received 6,600 likes to 326 dislikes at this point in time, which suggests that many others think so too. I would not dismiss it out of hand myself. Thanks for posting it. I'm never sure about likes or dislikes on things like this. I actively disliked it, yet I didn't "Dislike" it, because I never do that, or I never "like" them either. I'm not arguing the content here, just the like/dislike mechanism isn't necessarily a gauge of things I feel. Anecdotal obviously but nevertheless. I think you are right about the like/dislike mechanism, as it will no doubt be skewed by those who want to take aim at the current series, without articulating reasons themselves. On my part, I found it an interesting perspective with some evidence of research to support its argument. You however raised an equally valid counter argument yourself, of which I was broadly in agreement. Ultimately I think that its is beneficial to balance two conflicting arguments where one cannot reasonably conclude which is the best side to take. My main concern about the piece, was that someone should feel the need to put their case so strongly because it was not to their liking. Everyone's opinion counts to an extent, but sometimes it is an emotive issue as opposed to a rational argument.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Apr 10, 2020 18:22:27 GMT
Radio Times interviews Steven Moffat about "The Timeless Children". The quotes that stuck out to me, “Who says what’s canon?” Moffat told us. “One episode the show says that [William Hartnell is] the First Doctor, another episode he’s not.”...snip... “The big [plot hole] that no-one ever mentions is in [1966 episode] The Power of the Daleks, just to get nerdy,” he said.
“The Doctor talks as if he’s done this before. The first time it happens, he wanders around that first episode behaving as if, ‘Och my old body wore out, I got a new one.’
“He does not behave as if it’s his first time. And later on it’s retconned into the idea that it was the first time. But that doesn’t fit.
“Doctor Who never fits!” he laughed. “None of it fits together if you really look at it. Why would it? It’s made by teams and teams of different people who never ever met.
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Post by J.A. Prentice on Apr 10, 2020 23:08:54 GMT
“The big [plot hole] that no-one ever mentions is in [1966 episode] The Power of the Daleks, just to get nerdy,” he said.
“The Doctor talks as if he’s done this before. The first time it happens, he wanders around that first episode behaving as if, ‘Och my old body wore out, I got a new one.’
“He does not behave as if it’s his first time. And later on it’s retconned into the idea that it was the first time. But that doesn’t fit. I mention it. (I believe the original script was more explicit about this not being his first time.)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2020 23:34:32 GMT
“The big [plot hole] that no-one ever mentions is in [1966 episode] The Power of the Daleks, just to get nerdy,” he said.
“The Doctor talks as if he’s done this before. The first time it happens, he wanders around that first episode behaving as if, ‘Och my old body wore out, I got a new one.’
“He does not behave as if it’s his first time. And later on it’s retconned into the idea that it was the first time. But that doesn’t fit. I mention it. (I believe the original script was more explicit about this not being his first time.) Yeah, I remember that too. I think that was one of David Whitaker's notes that got sanded off in the rewrites. The thing is I guarantee everyone on this thread has a different first Doctor. Mine was William Hartnell by way of The Daleks reruns. Someone else might first seen Tom with a lion's head on The Masque of Mandragora, another might have caught the TV Movie and seen McGann's excellent shoes, yet another knew Pat Troughton from The War Games, some swept in with David Tennant... The list goes on. Whatever happens, Bill Hartnell will still be my first Doctor. The first I saw. There's no power in creation that can possibly change that and I'm rather pleased because that's -- *taps chest* -- mine. My own bit of Doctor Who, that joy and wonder I felt at discovering it for the first time. No matter how many incarnations came before or would come after. What I love about Doctor Who (and I mentioned this on the Last Great Time War thread) is that as Steven Moffat says it doesn't all fit, but many notable writers -- hell, every Doctor -- has still tried to incorporate it together. Malcolm Hulke tipped his hat to the Dravins and the Monoids of the Hartnell years in the mid-70s. John Lucarotti, who wrote The Aztecs, had the Doctor retired by the Time Lords in his 1980s novelisation. RTD made reference to the Kronk burgers and other ephemera of the comics in his run on the show. Moffat slipped in a reference to the Chelonians and Absalom Daak of the Missing and New Adventures. Through all the changes, all the musical chairs of creative decisions, no single era can say that it wasn't inspired by another. It's diversity in all its weird, wonderful, brilliant and myriad glory. Bring on the future, whatever it may hold. It will always be fun.
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Apr 11, 2020 10:18:23 GMT
Maybe the Regeneration sparked a hidden memory that then faded and vanished to be forgotten again
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2020 11:26:43 GMT
Maybe the Regeneration sparked a hidden memory that then faded and vanished to be forgotten again Yes, there is a habit of that, isn't there? The memory thing may even be a product of age. If you go by Cold Fusion, The World Shapers and the like, Five and ol' Sixie don't tend to remember much from their first two lives anymore. It's all a bit of a blur. In humans, once you reach a certain age, though, all your childhood memories begin to trickle back into your consciousness. *shrugs* Why not the same for Time Lords? She's been through a lot and lived for a very long time, our Doctor.
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Post by mrperson on Apr 13, 2020 18:29:09 GMT
“Doctor Who never fits!” he laughed. “None of it fits together if you really look at it. Why would it? It’s made by teams and teams of different people who never ever met. See, that's not quite right. They could have kept it consistent if that was the vision from the beginning and they made an effort to keep a running list of various 'lore' points. Moffat puts it like it was an inevitability. It wasn't. It just didn't work out that way because they only half-tried. It's just the way it is.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Apr 13, 2020 21:47:28 GMT
“Doctor Who never fits!” he laughed. “None of it fits together if you really look at it. Why would it? It’s made by teams and teams of different people who never ever met. See, that's not quite right. They could have kept it consistent if that was the vision from the beginning and they made an effort to keep a running list of various 'lore' points. Moffat puts it like it was an inevitability. It wasn't. It just didn't work out that way because they only half-tried. It's just the way it is.
You know what the vision is for a new TV series? Getting the pick-up for another block of episodes and hoping what you are producing is good. Or at least not terrible. Even today so much of television production is seat-of-your-pants. And creating a TV show in 1963? It was practically live TV with no thought towards any life beyond the episode being transmitted once. No one could have imagined that it survived to its 10th or 20th anniversary, let alone planned out mythology that would codify what came before and what would come in the future. Moffat is exactly right.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2020 1:34:46 GMT
See, that's not quite right. They could have kept it consistent if that was the vision from the beginning and they made an effort to keep a running list of various 'lore' points. Moffat puts it like it was an inevitability. It wasn't. It just didn't work out that way because they only half-tried. It's just the way it is.
You know what the vision is for a new TV series? Getting the pick-up for another block of episodes and hoping what you are producing is good. Or at least not terrible. Even today so much of television production is seat-of-your-pants. And creating a TV show in 1963? It was practically live TV with no thought towards any life beyond the episode being transmitted once. No one could have imagined that it survived to its 10th or 20th anniversary, let alone planned out mythology that would codify what came before and what would come in the future. Moffat is exactly right. I think that's partly true. Going through the production history of each team, many of them have definitely got a vision for the show and its mythology. The Time Lords of The War Games are these god-like, but compassionate arbiters of justice who refuse to use their power lest it cause harm like the War Lords' experiments. That was Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke's interpretation. That remains pretty consistent up until The Deadly Assassin, where that ultimate power is still there, but the emphasis is much more on the corruption. That there was an element of hypocricy in how they used their powers only in their self-interest. That's Robert Holmes's interpretation. Both belonging to separate eras of the show. Once a tenure's ended, a new production team comes through with their own ideas. Some ideas are so thoroughly grounded into the show's mythology that they're accepted without much comment. Imagine if we'd gone from the David Whitaker-led first season of Who into the second and Dennis Spooner had decided to discard the TARDIS. We'd have ended up with a very different show. The idea of the Time Lords is much the same. They offer a good hitching post for the Doctor's exile on Earth and there's a lot to build from there. Others are discarded, like the idea that Time Lords have a regeneration cycle of thirteen, because they cease to be practical. Pragmatism rules a lot of the creative decisions, but I think it's important to note that they're still creative. Andrew Cartmel was indeed trying for a mythological take when the show was cancelled. True, that cancellation pretty much put an end to it on television, but the Cartmel Masterplan became a totem for nearly a decade of storytelling in Doctor Who after it. Everyone offering their own interpretations, this way and that, of what it meant. I don't think it's a case of no planned-out mythology. (Bill Hartnell was noted for keeping track of what every switch on the console did, so this extended down into the actors as well.) I think Doctor Who is a series of competing mythologies. Each piling on top of the other as one team left and another arrived. It's why its so fascinating that so much of it holds together as well as it does. The Doctor's fascination with the French Revolution, for instance. It's his favourite period according to Susan, but knowing about the Time Lord aristocracy, it paints a very distinctive picture about why it's his favourite period. That could never have been predicted, but it gels so well despite it. I find that really exciting.
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shutupbanks
Castellan
There’s a horror movie called Alien? That’s really offensive. No wonder everyone keeps invading you.
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Post by shutupbanks on Apr 14, 2020 1:38:18 GMT
From Terrance Dicks' Foreword to Cornell, Day and Topping's The Discontinuity Guide:
"In my days as script editor, Who never really had a "Bible," a book of rules and facts in which continuity was set in stone. Who continuity was rather like the 1066 And All That definition of history - What You Can Remember. It was what I could remember about my predecessor's shows, what my successors could remember about mine."
Continuity missteps bug me, but if one of the most loved and respected figures behind the show, whose contributions outshine nearly everybody else's, says that it's a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule, I'm not going to worry too much about it (Narrator's voice: he did worry about it).
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2020 1:59:06 GMT
From Terrance Dicks' Foreword to Cornell, Day and Topping's The Discontinuity Guide: "In my days as script editor, Who never really had a "Bible," a book of rules and facts in which continuity was set in stone. Who continuity was rather like the 1066 And All That definition of history - What You Can Remember. It was what I could remember about my predecessor's shows, what my successors could remember about mine." Continuity missteps bug me, but if one of the most loved and respected figures behind the show, whose contributions outshine nearly everybody else's, says that it's a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule, I'm not going to worry too much about it (Narrator's voice: he did worry about it). Yeah, because at the end of the day, you're just trying to tell your own story in the best way possible. If that includes someone else's creation, well, you treat it like historical research. Only a bit easier than historical research because you're probably not looking for the colour of a uniform's buttons (yes... yes, really, Regency is filled with those researches). It's much easier nowadays with things like the TARDIS Wikia, the Discontinuity Guide and various reference sites to find a comprehensive history. A creation with enormous swathes of lore around it is perfect if you want a framework for your story. In the same way that there's a framework governing what looks like science fiction versus what looks like fantasy. If you want to do an independent story, then you've absolute freedom in regards to your own creations. You don't even really need the TARDIS, it's just the Doctor and his/her companions. Sculpting it altogether into a single continuum is there if you want to cut your teeth on something. Set a challenge and push your boundaries. Take it from someone who wrote a tale that incorporated developments of The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, The Dalek Book and the characters of 60s Who into something cohesive. It was a big challenge, but I intended it to be. I wanted to push myself. Best of all, looking back on it now, it was definitely worth it. I'm really satisfied with the results.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Apr 14, 2020 3:06:25 GMT
I think Doctor Who is a series of competing mythologies. Each piling on top of the other as one team left and another arrived. Which is pretty much what I've been saying over a couple of threads. It certainly that ties into what Moffat said. I don't think one can lose sight of what the early productions teams were dealing with. They were making a low budget "kids" show that had a brutal schedule to maintain. They were doing the best they could to get 25 minutes of telly out every week. 25 minutes of telly that in their minds would never be seen again. They were making TV fast & loose and making up everything as they went along. They weren't world building, they were dealing with problems as quickly & as creatively as they could. Yes it is a wonder that as much of it fits as well as it does but I think that boils down to each incoming creative team knowing what the core basics of the show were. Certainly having Terrence Dicks be a part of the team which guided the 2nd Doctor moving into working on the 3rd Doctor era moving into Robert Holmes having written for the 3rd Doctor era moving into the 4th Doctor's tenure helped keeps some potentially messy things less unruly. Still, even there we get some wild shifts in what the show is saying about itself as you mentioned.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2020 4:04:57 GMT
I think Doctor Who is a series of competing mythologies. Each piling on top of the other as one team left and another arrived. Which is pretty much what I've been saying over a couple of threads. I certainly that ties into what Moffat said. I don't think one can lose sight of what the early productions teams were dealing with. They were making a low budget "kids" show that had a brutal schedule to maintain. They were doing the best they could to get 25 minutes of telly out every week. 25 minutes of telly that in their minds would never be seen again. They were making TV fast & loose and making up everything as they along. They weren't world building, they were dealing with problems as quickly & as creatively as they could. Yes it is a wonder that as much of it fits as well as it does but I think that boils down to each incoming creative team knowing what the core basics of the show were. Certainly having Terrence Dicks be a part of the team which guided the 2nd Doctor moving into working on the 3rd Doctor era moving into Robert Holmes having written for the 3rd Doctor era moving into the 4th Doctor's tenure helped keeps some potentially messy things less unruly. Still, even there we get some wild shifts in what they show is saying about itself as you mentioned. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that perspective. For me, though, I'd posit that it's the idea of canon that came later rather than the worldbuilding itself. I think the worldbuilding was always there. The Doctor's inability to go back home is a constant idea from The Edge of Destruction to The Massacre to The Tomb of the Cybermen, up until The War Games. The idea of canon from a production side, however, I don't think that truly solidified until The Making of Doctor Who and The Three Doctors in 1972. That was the moment when the show began to assume a certain level of consistent knowledge from the viewer and the production team. That development makes for a remarkably interesting collection of works as a result. In terms of today's writings, we have a mainstream Doctor Who universe. A televised canon that can be accessed more or less with the push of a button. The tone of the characters and their world is expected to follow a set of principles ("never cruel, never cowardly," etc.). Yet despite that, we still get homages to the anachronisms of those early days. Celebrating them. Target novelisations of unmade Peter Cushing Dr. Who films, the "missing" Doctor Who Annual 1987 finally in print, a DWM comic story that pays tribute to the TV Comic adventures of Dr. Who, John and Gillian, etc. So, despite all that change and homogenisation, these comparatively unconventional methods of storytelling have found their own home. They're time-specific subgenres of Doctor Who. Still having a place, even despite being so different to their peers. Cool, right?
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Apr 16, 2020 11:46:12 GMT
And closing out, 28 days was 5.2m.
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Post by fingersmash on Apr 18, 2020 18:17:10 GMT
Having finally watched this, can't say I'm mad tbh.
The Master makes this episode. Sacha Dhawan is hammy and threatening at once. All his scenes with Ashad are just wonderful and I loved him basically saying that Ashad's plan sucks.
The revelation is backed up with previous canon and Jodie absolutely KILLS her performance (how did no one mention the scene where she goes almost feral on the Master?). I think what really makes this is just how delighted the Master is to be the one to show this to the Doctor. He knows this is going to destroy her and then on top of that, he reveals the CyberMasters and it puts salt in the wound. I think the argument that making the Doctor "special" misses the point is indeed valid but just as much when the Doctor finds out she has all that ultimate power she still makes the choice to be a hero. The Doctor is special, yes. But that specialness didn't make the Doctor. The Doctor still made the choice to run from Gallifrey. The Doctor still became a hero. The Doctor made all those choices, regardless of whether or not they were The Timeless Child. I think that's the important thing.
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Post by timegirl on Apr 18, 2020 18:18:44 GMT
Having finally watched this, can't say I'm mad tbh. The Master makes this episode. Sacha Dhawan is hammy and threatening at once. All his scenes with Ashad are just wonderful and I loved him basically saying that Ashad's plan sucks. The revelation is backed up with previous canon and Jodie absolutely KILLS her performance (how did no one mention the scene where she goes almost feral on the Master?). I think what really makes this is just how delighted the Master is to be the one to show this to the Doctor. He knows this is going to destroy her and then on top of that, he reveals the CyberMasters and it puts salt in the wound. I think the argument that making the Doctor "special" misses the point is indeed valid but just as much when the Doctor finds out she has all that ultimate power she still makes the choice to be a hero. The Doctor is special, yes. But that specialness didn't make the Doctor. The Doctor still made the choice to run from Gallifrey. The Doctor still became a hero. The Doctor made all those choices, regardless of whether or not they were The Timeless Child. I think that's the important thing. Very well said!😀
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2020 19:20:07 GMT
One question I have about the Doctor/Timeless Child. Are the two incarnations from RTD's Target novelisation of Rose, the black woman wielding a sword and a child in a wheelchair, pre-Hartnell or post-Whittaker?
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Post by themeddlingmonk on Jun 3, 2020 19:29:38 GMT
One question I have about the Doctor/Timeless Child. Are the two incarnations from RTD's Target novelisation of Rose, the black woman wielding a sword and a child in a wheelchair, pre-Hartnell or post-Whittaker? Well considering when it was released, post-Whittaker. Guess it’s open to interpretation though.
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Post by sherlock on Jun 3, 2020 19:31:30 GMT
One question I have about the Doctor/Timeless Child. Are the two incarnations from RTD's Target novelisation of Rose, the black woman wielding a sword and a child in a wheelchair, pre-Hartnell or post-Whittaker? It’s possible. RTD certainly seemed to embrace the new possibilities in his intro for Doctor Who and the Time War, so he’d probably be open to that idea.
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