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Post by thelonecenturion on May 17, 2021 16:06:57 GMT
The Behind the Scenes extra is great, it comes across so strongly how great an actor Eccleston is, how committed to his craft he is & how well thought of he is by his fellow actors. &, in the short moments he does talk about the tv show he is quite candid about some of the personal issues happening during the making of the tv show. Yeah, it was a really solid hour of interviews that flew by! Nick talking about when he first met Chris on the set of Dalek was so heart-warming to hear about.
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Post by Andymac on May 17, 2021 16:17:22 GMT
I'm not sure the upbeat 9 doesn't fit with pre-Rose, there are stages of grief. We've seen the Doctor at the end of that journey, not the start. He may just be at the denial stage if we use good old Kubler-Ross's model of grief. Denial · Anger · Bargaining · Depression · Acceptance, plenty of that could look upbeat from the outside. That is very true! I wonder if they will build up to 9 grieving over the time War? Hopefully they will do bits and pieces of it, it would feel strange to never mention it.
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Post by relativetime on May 17, 2021 16:43:12 GMT
That is very true! I wonder if they will build up to 9 grieving over the time War? Hopefully they will do bits and pieces of it, it would feel strange to never mention it. Agreed. I think Big Finish might also release a box set at the very start of Nine’s life that deals with a lot of the immediate fallout of the Time War. That’s such a raw moment in the Ninth Doctor’s timeline and with such huge potential for storytelling, I can’t NOT imagine it’s an era BF would want to tackle some day. Maybe make it a miniseries line Dalek Universe.
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Post by coffeeaddict on May 17, 2021 17:35:19 GMT
Great to have Chris back, the story was meh... Others have commented on Nick's writing and summed up my thoughts fairly well - might be a good idea to let him focus on actually writing Jekyl and Hyde.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2021 20:09:06 GMT
Great to have Chris back, the story was meh... Others have commented on Nick's writing and summed up my thoughts fairly well - might be a good idea to let him focus on actually writing Jekyl and Hyde. Apparently it's already written, so I don't know what they're messing about at.
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Post by timegirl on May 17, 2021 20:12:05 GMT
Great to have Chris back, the story was meh... Others have commented on Nick's writing and summed up my thoughts fairly well - might be a good idea to let him focus on actually writing Jekyl and Hyde. Apparently it's already written, so I don't know what they're messing about at. Maybe they are trying to get a specific actor to star in it and are waiting until they say yes to put it into production.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2021 20:33:52 GMT
Apparently it's already written, so I don't know what they're messing about at. Maybe they are trying to get a specific actor to star in it and are waiting until they say yes to put it into production. This gives you an idea as to how my mind works - but I had half a notion that person was Christopher Eccleston. Imagine that!
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Post by johnhurtdoctor on May 17, 2021 20:38:07 GMT
Apparently it's already written, so I don't know what they're messing about at. Maybe they are trying to get a specific actor to star in it and are waiting until they say yes to put it into production. Yep, an actor with the initials CE.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2021 21:16:25 GMT
Maybe they are trying to get a specific actor to star in it and are waiting until they say yes to put it into production. Yep, an actor with the initials CE. Well ... I haven't pre-ordered Jekyll & Hyde (fortunately) but if they told me that Christopher Eccleston was going to be starring in it, then that would make it a definite must buy!!!
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2021 11:24:59 GMT
For those who purchased Ravagers on CD, have any of you guys downloaded the MP3 zip file and came across the vinyl edits of each episode (split into two parts)? I did, before accidentally deleting them.
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Post by shallacatop on May 18, 2021 11:39:41 GMT
For those who purchased Ravagers on CD, have any of you guys downloaded the MP3 zip file and came across the vinyl edits of each episode (split into two parts)? I did, before accidentally deleting them. Yeah, they’ve included the vinyl edits for some reason. I mentioned it when the set was first released as the tracks were in the middle of the CD tracks on a couple of the episodes, which would’ve made for confusing listening!
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Post by thelonecenturion on May 18, 2021 11:48:55 GMT
For those who purchased Ravagers on CD, have any of you guys downloaded the MP3 zip file and came across the vinyl edits of each episode (split into two parts)? I did, before accidentally deleting them. Yeah, they’ve included the vinyl edits for some reason. I mentioned it when the set was first released as the tracks were in the middle of the CD tracks on a couple of the episodes, which would’ve made for confusing listening! I downloaded it the day after release, and they weren't there - I think it was an error on early downloads.
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Post by mark687 on May 18, 2021 12:53:39 GMT
Review Quotes GIF
Regards
mark687
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Post by grinch on May 18, 2021 13:17:16 GMT
Great to have Chris back, the story was meh... Others have commented on Nick's writing and summed up my thoughts fairly well - might be a good idea to let him focus on actually writing Jekyl and Hyde. Apparently it's already written, so I don't know what they're messing about at. It’s so strange because I did see the original play and it’s very dialogue heavy. Would translate perfectly to audio so I don’t know why it hasn’t manifested yet.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2021 13:36:23 GMT
Yeah, they’ve included the vinyl edits for some reason. I mentioned it when the set was first released as the tracks were in the middle of the CD tracks on a couple of the episodes, which would’ve made for confusing listening! I downloaded it the day after release, and they weren't there - I think it was an error on early downloads. Most likely, since they're only exclusive to the vinyl releases. While I feel guilty about deleting the initial download, by mistake, I'll always prefer listening to an entire episode unabridged.
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Post by Chakoteya on May 18, 2021 15:13:25 GMT
Okay, finished now. The three stories held well together, and all the clues were presented to us though not necessarily in the right order. It got a bit self-referencing towards the end but all in fun. Now, back to Benny and the Unbound Doctor. He's tied hanging upside down in a cave at the moment...
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Post by Kestrel on May 18, 2021 17:55:04 GMT
I'm definitely indecisive on how I feel about this set as a whole. I think pretty much all of the criticism y'all have laid out, positive and negative, is valid.
Ultimately, while I enjoyed my time with each story, and the structure of the narrative, and the characters--especially Aurora, who turned out very interesting--and the snappy dialog, I also wasn't very engaged with the underlying drama. I think I was able to clearly recognize this due to the fact that I finished listening to Dalek Universe immediately after Ravagers, and found myself much more emotionally invested in its third story, despite its much narrower scope and scale.
The problem, I think, is that "oh no, the universe is ending," is not--and will never be--an interesting conflict. Obviously, the universe is never going to end. Even killing off the Doctor or losing the TARDIS produce more tension, because there's always the possibility that the Doctor may regenerate or the TARDIS may be absent for a few stories. But the universe ending? That's a conflict that, by its very nature, can never really go anywhere. So who cares? It also doesn't really tie all the story threads together as satisfyingly as maybe should have been--the convoluted time travel plot is undone with a retcon; Aurora's villainous tendencies are never adequately explained; Nova's hidden familiarity with time travel winds up being a contrived misdirect. All combine to make Ravagers significantly short of the absolutely perfect 9th Doctor Boxset we all hoped it would be (that it was never going to be).
But at the same time... I don't think that's all necessarily damning here. As others have said, this set functions mainly as a vehicle for Christopher Eccleston's triumphant return as the 9th Doctor. And, in that respect, I really appreciate the sheer spectacle and scale of Ravagers--it genuinely feels like a lavishly-created two-part TV episode, and with the advantage of our imaginations producing an adventure of a scope and scale that would never be possible with the TV show's notoriously finite budget.
The flitting about through different time periods and nonlinearity also reinforce the mystery and chaos of the Doctor's nature as a time-traveler, which was a prevalent theme in RTD's first season that was largely downplayed after David Tennant assumed the role of the Doctor.
The music is also pretty masterful here--perhaps the best sound design in any Big Finish audio to date. While the absence of Murray Gold's iconic tracks will always handicap the New Who audios right out of the gate (why is this, btw?) the newly-composed tracks here do a good job of approximating those classic tunes. One, in particular, felt like a very effective reimagining of 'All the Strange, Strange Creatures.'
And while Aurora wound up being the more interesting of the pair, I stand by my initial hit-take: Nova works better as a companion than Rose. Essentially, at this point, they're the same character: young working-class women dreaming of a better life, quietly desperate, willing to risk it all on a particularly strange stranger. Both, also, are more intelligent than they seem (though the "nerd" twist, such as it was, seemed kinda underwhelming). The key difference here is that Nova is Rose minus all of the flirting and (supposed) sexual tension, which never really worked for me with Billie Piper and Tennant, and especially didn't work for me with Eccleston. That age gap is kinda a big deal, right?
(And TBH I think it's kind of an unfortunate missed opportunity that, when designing a new companion, Big a finish once again fell back on the "pretty young woman" thing. The fact that the Doctor keeps picking up kids has always been kinda sketchy, especially when they tend to be vulnerable young women (or even teenagers). Obviously I'm not going to say the Doctor comes across as a sex pest--he doesn't--but the unintentional framing is there, and it's unfortunate that Big Finish has decided to perpetuate it here. Besides, we've already seen what the 9th Doctor is like with Rose: much like Tennant's revelatory season with Catherine Tate, it'd interesting to seem Eccleston's dynamic with a different character archetype.)
That said, I'm definitely excited to see how Nova's story with the Doctor plays out. Especially keeping in mind that it's unlikely to end well, given the Doctor's arc in his solitary season. Eccleston in particular seems to be approaching the Doctor slightly differently this time around--he feels a bit more abrupt, a bit less open, a bit more demanding and harsh. It's a subtle difference, but I'm excited to see where it leads.
I don't necessarily think Big Finish will take the gamble, but setting these stories prior to Rose does allow them the freedom to totally recontextualize the 9th Doctor's character arc. We all think we know why the Doctor is the way he is in Rose, but what if we don't? He could change any number of ways depending on where he starts out, and--crucially--we don't have any idea how he starts out. The immediate, post-regeneration 9th Doctor could be a very different man from the one we know, or see here. Perhaps, more simply, his relationship with Nova will end poorly, move the Doctor to a more insular, less trusting place, and we'll see an arc where he gradually learns to overcome that in order to be in a position to travel with Rose and eventually be the best Doctor he can be.
Really, Big Finish is in the same kind of position with Eccleston now as they were with Paul McGann nearly 20 years ago. There, they had a starting point but no ending point; here, they have an ending point but no starting point. In both cases, this gives them a freedom to take the character in any direction they like, quite unlike the situation with any of the other Doctor Who characters they work with. The 8th Doctor's character arc, played great nuance and subtlety, has been absolutely captivating and wonderfully imaginative. I can only hope Big Finish takes this opportunity to do something similar with these newborn 9DAs. This debut set may be more spectacle than substance, but it leaves me immensely excited to see what the future holds.
So, ultimately, while I don't think Ravagers is a terribly engaging or emotionally resonant story, I do think it is unrelentingly fun, and almost-perfectly evocative of Eccleston's singular season: a wonderful popcorn adventure. If I were to rate it out of 5, I'd give it a 3.5 or 4, depending on my mood at the moment. But I won't be doing that, because I don't want Nick Briggs to attack me on Twitter.
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Post by timegirl on May 18, 2021 18:20:20 GMT
I'm definitely indecisive on how I feel about this set as a whole. I think pretty much all of the criticism y'all have laid out, positive and negative, is valid. Ultimately, while I enjoyed my time with each story, and the structure of the narrative, and the characters--especially Aurora, who turned out very interesting, even if the narrative never fully explained why she had to pretend to be a villain in the first two stories--and the snappy dialog, I also wasn't very engaged with the underlying drama. I think I was able to clearly recognize this due to the fact that I finished listening to Dalek Universe immediately after Ravagers, and found myself much more emotionally invested in its third story, despite its much narrower scope and scale. The problem, I think, is that "oh no, the universe is ending," is not-- and will never be--an interesting conflict. Obviously, the universe is never going to end. Even killing off the Doctor or losing the TARDIS produce more tension, because there's always the possibility that the Doctor may regenerate or the TARDIS may be absent for a few stories. But the universe ending? That's a conflict that, by its very nature, can never really go anywhere. So who cares? It also doesn't really tie all the story threads together as satisfyingly as maybe should have been--the convoluted time travel plot is undone with a retcon; Aurora's villainous tendencies are never adequately explained; Nova's hidden familiarity with time travel winds up being a contrived misdirect. All combine to make Ravagers significantly short of the absolutely perfect 9th Doctor Boxset we all hoped it would be (that it was never going to be). But at the same time... I don't think that's all necessarily damning here. As others have said, this set functions mainly as a vehicle for Christopher Eccleston's triumphant return as the 9th Doctor. And, in that respect, I really appreciate the sheer spectacle and scale of Ravagers--it genuinely feels like a lavishly-created two-part TV episode, and with the advantage of our imaginations producing an adventure of a scope and scale that would never be possible with the TV show's notoriously finite budget. The flitting about through different time periods and nonlinearity also reinforce the mystery and chaos of the Doctor's nature as a time-traveler, which was a prevalent theme in RTD's first season that was largely downplayed after David Tennant assumed the role of the Doctor. The music is also pretty masterful here--perhaps the best sound design in any Big Finish audio to date. While the absence of Murray Gold's iconic tracks will always handicap the New Who audios right out of the gate (why is this, btw?) the newly-composed tracks here do a good job of approximating those classic tunes. One, in particular, felt like a very effective reimagining of And while Aurora wound up being the more interesting of the pair, I stand by my initial hit-take: Nova works better as a companion than Rose. Essentially, at this point, they're the same character: young working-class women dreaming of a better life, quietly desperate, willing to risk it all on a particularly strange stranger. Both, also, are more intelligent than they seem (though the "nerd" twist, such as it was, seemed kinda underwhelming). The key difference here is that Nova is Rose minus all of the flirting and (supposed) sexual tension, which never really worked for me with Billie Piper and Tennant, and especially didn't work for me with Eccleston. That age gap is kinda a big deal, right? (And TBH I think it's kind of an unfortunate missed opportunity that, when designing a new companion, Big a finish once again fell back on the "pretty young woman" thing. The fact that the Doctor keeps picking up kids has always been kinda sketchy, especially when they tend to be vulnerable young women (or even teenagers). Obviously I'm not going to say the Doctor comes across as a sex pest--he doesn't--but the unintentional framing is there, and it's unfortunate that Big Finish has decided to perpetuate it here. Besides, we've already seen what the 9th Doctor is like with Rose: much like Tennant's revelatory season with Catherine Tate, it'd interesting to seem Eccleston's dynamic with a different character archetype.) That said, I'm definitely excited to see how Nova's story with the Doctor plays out. Especially keeping in mind that it's unlikely to end well, given the Doctor's arc in his solitary season. Eccleston in particular seems to be approaching the Doctor slightly differently this time around--he feels a bit more abrupt, a bit less open, a bit more demanding and harsh. It's a subtle difference, but I'm excited to see where it leads. I don't necessarily think Big Finish will take the gamble, but setting these stories prior to Rose does allow them the freedom to totally recontextualize the 9th Doctor's character arc. We all think we know why the Doctor is the way he is in Rose, but what if we don't? He could change any number of ways depending on where he starts out, and--crucially-- we don't have any idea how he starts out. The immediate, post-regeneration 9th Doctor could be a very different man from the one we know, or see here. Perhaps, more simply, his relationship with Nova will end poorly, move the Doctor to a more insular, less trusting place, and we'll see an arc where he gradually learns to overcome that in order to be in a position to travel with Rose and eventually be the best Doctor he can be. Really, Big Finish is in the same kind of position with Eccleston now as they were with Paul McGann nearly 20 years ago. There, they had a starting point but no ending point; here, they have an ending point but no starting point. In both cases, this gives them a freedom to take the character in any direction they like, quite unlike the situation with any of the other Doctor Who characters they work with. The 8th Doctor's character arc, played great nuance and subtlety, has been absolutely captivating and wonderfully imaginative. I can only hope Big Finish takes this opportunity to do something similar with these newborn 9DAs. This debut set may be more spectacle than substance, but it leaves me immensely excited to see what the future holds. So, ultimately, while I don't think Ravagers is a terribly engaging or emotionally resonant story, I do think it is unrelentingly fun, and almost-perfectly evocative of Eccleston's singular season: a wonderful popcorn adventure. If I were to rate it out of 5, I'd give it a 3.5 or 4, depending on my mood at the moment. But I won't be doing that, because I don't want Nick Briggs to attack me on Twitter. Totally agree with you about the universe ending never really feeling threatening! Can DW both with BF and tv just stop using the universe is ending for a while? I feel like there are far more terrifying and interesting things that could be threats. Oddly I have the exact opposite opinion about Nova and Rose. For me the romantic elements between Rose and 9 is what made them feel more real and gave me something to care about watching them. I never once even questioned the age difference because to me they felt like equals in the relationship. It made it feel like the two were somehow more special to each other. The romance made Rose and 9 feel more memorable and emotional and to be honest I wouldn’t not have cared as much as I did about 9 and Rose if that element wasn’t there. With Nova I don’t have as much to hold onto and care about with her relationship with 9. While I wouldn’t want 9 and Nova to necessarily have a romance because not every Doctor/Companion relationship needs to be romantic and I think to give 9 another romance with a character with a similar backstory would cheapen his later love story with Rose, I would like a bit more of reason to care about the relationship between Nova and 9. Some sort of deeper connection between the two.
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Post by coffeeaddict on May 18, 2021 23:37:17 GMT
I'm definitely indecisive on how I feel about this set as a whole. I think pretty much all of the criticism y'all have laid out, positive and negative, is valid. Ultimately, while I enjoyed my time with each story, and the structure of the narrative, and the characters--especially Aurora, who turned out very interesting, even if the narrative never fully explained why she had to pretend to be a villain in the first two stories--and the snappy dialog, I also wasn't very engaged with the underlying drama. I think I was able to clearly recognize this due to the fact that I finished listening to Dalek Universe immediately after Ravagers, and found myself much more emotionally invested in its third story, despite its much narrower scope and scale. The problem, I think, is that "oh no, the universe is ending," is not-- and will never be--an interesting conflict. Obviously, the universe is never going to end. Even killing off the Doctor or losing the TARDIS produce more tension, because there's always the possibility that the Doctor may regenerate or the TARDIS may be absent for a few stories. But the universe ending? That's a conflict that, by its very nature, can never really go anywhere. So who cares? It also doesn't really tie all the story threads together as satisfyingly as maybe should have been--the convoluted time travel plot is undone with a retcon; Aurora's villainous tendencies are never adequately explained; Nova's hidden familiarity with time travel winds up being a contrived misdirect. All combine to make Ravagers significantly short of the absolutely perfect 9th Doctor Boxset we all hoped it would be (that it was never going to be). But at the same time... I don't think that's all necessarily damning here. As others have said, this set functions mainly as a vehicle for Christopher Eccleston's triumphant return as the 9th Doctor. And, in that respect, I really appreciate the sheer spectacle and scale of Ravagers--it genuinely feels like a lavishly-created two-part TV episode, and with the advantage of our imaginations producing an adventure of a scope and scale that would never be possible with the TV show's notoriously finite budget. The flitting about through different time periods and nonlinearity also reinforce the mystery and chaos of the Doctor's nature as a time-traveler, which was a prevalent theme in RTD's first season that was largely downplayed after David Tennant assumed the role of the Doctor. The music is also pretty masterful here--perhaps the best sound design in any Big Finish audio to date. While the absence of Murray Gold's iconic tracks will always handicap the New Who audios right out of the gate (why is this, btw?) the newly-composed tracks here do a good job of approximating those classic tunes. One, in particular, felt like a very effective reimagining of And while Aurora wound up being the more interesting of the pair, I stand by my initial hit-take: Nova works better as a companion than Rose. Essentially, at this point, they're the same character: young working-class women dreaming of a better life, quietly desperate, willing to risk it all on a particularly strange stranger. Both, also, are more intelligent than they seem (though the "nerd" twist, such as it was, seemed kinda underwhelming). The key difference here is that Nova is Rose minus all of the flirting and (supposed) sexual tension, which never really worked for me with Billie Piper and Tennant, and especially didn't work for me with Eccleston. That age gap is kinda a big deal, right? (And TBH I think it's kind of an unfortunate missed opportunity that, when designing a new companion, Big a finish once again fell back on the "pretty young woman" thing. The fact that the Doctor keeps picking up kids has always been kinda sketchy, especially when they tend to be vulnerable young women (or even teenagers). Obviously I'm not going to say the Doctor comes across as a sex pest--he doesn't--but the unintentional framing is there, and it's unfortunate that Big Finish has decided to perpetuate it here. Besides, we've already seen what the 9th Doctor is like with Rose: much like Tennant's revelatory season with Catherine Tate, it'd interesting to seem Eccleston's dynamic with a different character archetype.) That said, I'm definitely excited to see how Nova's story with the Doctor plays out. Especially keeping in mind that it's unlikely to end well, given the Doctor's arc in his solitary season. Eccleston in particular seems to be approaching the Doctor slightly differently this time around--he feels a bit more abrupt, a bit less open, a bit more demanding and harsh. It's a subtle difference, but I'm excited to see where it leads. I don't necessarily think Big Finish will take the gamble, but setting these stories prior to Rose does allow them the freedom to totally recontextualize the 9th Doctor's character arc. We all think we know why the Doctor is the way he is in Rose, but what if we don't? He could change any number of ways depending on where he starts out, and--crucially-- we don't have any idea how he starts out. The immediate, post-regeneration 9th Doctor could be a very different man from the one we know, or see here. Perhaps, more simply, his relationship with Nova will end poorly, move the Doctor to a more insular, less trusting place, and we'll see an arc where he gradually learns to overcome that in order to be in a position to travel with Rose and eventually be the best Doctor he can be. Really, Big Finish is in the same kind of position with Eccleston now as they were with Paul McGann nearly 20 years ago. There, they had a starting point but no ending point; here, they have an ending point but no starting point. In both cases, this gives them a freedom to take the character in any direction they like, quite unlike the situation with any of the other Doctor Who characters they work with. The 8th Doctor's character arc, played great nuance and subtlety, has been absolutely captivating and wonderfully imaginative. I can only hope Big Finish takes this opportunity to do something similar with these newborn 9DAs. This debut set may be more spectacle than substance, but it leaves me immensely excited to see what the future holds. So, ultimately, while I don't think Ravagers is a terribly engaging or emotionally resonant story, I do think it is unrelentingly fun, and almost-perfectly evocative of Eccleston's singular season: a wonderful popcorn adventure. If I were to rate it out of 5, I'd give it a 3.5 or 4, depending on my mood at the moment. But I won't be doing that, because I don't want Nick Briggs to attack me on Twitter. Totally agree with you about the universe ending never really feeling threatening! Can DW both with BF and tv just stop using the universe is ending for a while? I feel like there are far more terrifying and interesting things that could be threats. Oddly I have the exact opposite opinion about Nova and Rose. For me the romantic elements between Rose and 9 is what made them feel more real and gave me something to care about watching them. I never once even questioned the age difference because to me they felt like equals in the relationship. It made it feel like the two were somehow more special to each other. The romance made Rose and 9 feel more memorable and emotional and to be honest I wouldn’t not have cared as much as I did about 9 and Rose if that element wasn’t there. With Nova I don’t have as much to hold onto and care about with her relationship with 9. While I wouldn’t want 9 and Nova to necessarily have a romance because not every Doctor/Companion relationship needs to be romantic and I think to give 9 another romance with a character with a similar backstory would cheapen his later love story with Rose, I would like a bit more of reason to care about the relationship between Nova and 9. Some sort of deeper connection between the two. The romantic nonsense is one of the things I have hated since the series came back. The show did quite well for decades without every companion trying to get it on with the Doctor. Same goes for returning to earth so the companion can check in with her boyfriend.
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2021 0:10:51 GMT
I quite like a bit if romance in the tardis. Be it 8 and Charley, 9/10 and rose or the doctor and clara (or even the doctor and the woman from the aztecs lol) always like a well executed love story. In fact, the doctors genuine delight to going on a date was a highlight of this set, after all this is the doctor who “dances”
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