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Post by seeley on Feb 7, 2016 3:47:35 GMT
And let's not forget about the ones at the Pandorica. Moffat is particularly keen on the use of narrative hyperbole, which conjures up deliberately exaggerated scenarios for the sake of tension or drama. I think Moffat knew full well that the Draconians and Silurians weren't adversaries of the Doctor, in the same way he knew that namechecking the Drahvins was funny. He invokes a particular kind of suspension of disbelief, which is fully consistent with the story/fairy-tale motif of Series 5. It was a whole season that shirked the science fiction elements in favour of going for straight fantasy, the only story that strikes me as something that couldn't have been told without sci-fi trappings is his take on Earthshock: "The Time of the Angels". Having read the script for The Magician's Apprentice, he seems to construct and write his stories with a lot of exclamation marks and onomatopoeia. I honestly think that it'd be a match made in heaven if he went from television into graphic novels because his writing style seems ideal for it. There is a point though where invoking the names of the big monsters every two or three episodes rapidly starts to loose its mystique. The appearance of a Cyberman amongst others in Face the Raven for example was just pandering and nonsensical. The suspension begins to frack and rupture. It's definitely not an approach that's going to appeal to everyone, and I have mixed feelings on it myself. That said, I prefer nonsensical appearances of monsters to slavish devotion to continuity, not that it's a dilemma between the two. It's also worth noting that the BBC's budget only stretches so far (something that holds particularly true right now, if I understand rightly,) so the economics of reusing old monsters for alien-crowd scenes are going to trump the logic of their involvement. And yeah, Moffat would be right at home in comics (not that he's a fish out of water when it comes to drama.) Heck, wasn't Series Six described by someone on the production team as "the Batmanification of Doctor Who?"
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2016 7:32:54 GMT
It was a whole season that shirked the science fiction elements in favour of going for straight fantasy, the only story that strikes me as something that couldn't have been told without sci-fi trappings is his take on Earthshock: "The Time of the Angels". Having read the script for The Magician's Apprentice, he seems to construct and write his stories with a lot of exclamation marks and onomatopoeia. I honestly think that it'd be a match made in heaven if he went from television into graphic novels because his writing style seems ideal for it. There is a point though where invoking the names of the big monsters every two or three episodes rapidly starts to loose its mystique. The appearance of a Cyberman amongst others in Face the Raven for example was just pandering and nonsensical. The suspension begins to frack and rupture. It's definitely not an approach that's going to appeal to everyone, and I have mixed feelings on it myself. That said, I prefer nonsensical appearances of monsters to slavish devotion to continuity, not that it's a dilemma between the two. It's also worth noting that the BBC's budget only stretches so far (something that holds particularly true right now, if I understand rightly,) so the economics of reusing old monsters for alien-crowd scenes are going to trump the logic of their involvement. And yeah, Moffat would be right at home in comics (not that he's a fish out of water when it comes to drama.) Heck, wasn't Series Six described by someone on the production team as "the Batmanification of Doctor Who?" Oh, I'm not that bothered by continuity if you can think of clever ways around it and there usually are ways, but it's more a case of making the wider universe feel that bit smaller. The Rings of Akhaten for example went all out in the costume department and reused everything they could find without resorting to the big names. That looked rather terrific on screen, even if the story itself had a few problems. Reusing old costumes is nothing new to Who, nor is it exclusive to it, a friend of mine and I have a game that developed after we saw Rat Patrol and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. a couple times where we spot the pieces of set design that have been reused within and between the two television series. There's a spiral staircase that turns up at least twice every season in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The Batmanification? Well, it would fit with certain ideas surrounding the show that have cropped up recently. The Twelfth Doctor is not an adventurer like his predecessors, he's a hero. Someone who fights for a cause as his main objective rather than as a side effect of his travels; the Doctor being a title much like Superman or Batman to live up to, rather than an alias. The latter is unfortunate really because endearing Capaldi to audiences has been an uphill struggle and having him come up and say "I'm not the Doctor", rather unfairly emphasises that enmity/apathy between viewers and the show's recent lead.
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Post by ulyssessarcher on Feb 7, 2016 20:46:59 GMT
I like to think it was the 3rd Doctor who first met Madam Vastra and became friends with her. The 2010 Big Book of Doctor Who has it as The Fourth Doctor. Nice idea, though The 2010 Big Book of Doctor Who What's THIS? Did I miss it? Is there a new version, do I need this? Oh, oh , oh, I'm hyperventilating here, gotta calm down, and breath...
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Feb 7, 2016 21:00:19 GMT
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on Feb 9, 2016 3:40:43 GMT
I rather like the idea that the Doctor met Vastra through Henry Gordon Jago, Jago's a big hearted man who'd take pity on a "freak" and give her gainful employment, one day she gets involved in one of his and Litefoot's Infernal Investigations and find she likes it. Enter the Doctor...
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Post by icecreamdf on Feb 9, 2016 4:13:35 GMT
I rather like the idea that the Doctor met Vastra through Henry Gordon Jago, Jago's a big hearted man who'd take pity on a "freak" and give her gainful employment, one day she gets involved in one of his and Litefoot's Infernal Investigations and find she likes it. Enter the Doctor... He didn't seem to recognize her name when Strax mistook him for her.
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Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on Feb 9, 2016 4:19:55 GMT
I rather like the idea that the Doctor met Vastra through Henry Gordon Jago, Jago's a big hearted man who'd take pity on a "freak" and give her gainful employment, one day she gets involved in one of his and Litefoot's Infernal Investigations and find she likes it. Enter the Doctor... He didn't seem to recognize her name when Strax mistook him for her. Pity.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2016 4:25:47 GMT
I rather like the idea that the Doctor met Vastra through Henry Gordon Jago, Jago's a big hearted man who'd take pity on a "freak" and give her gainful employment, one day she gets involved in one of his and Litefoot's Infernal Investigations and find she likes it. Enter the Doctor... He didn't seem to recognize her name when Strax mistook him for her. That clashes with The Brilliant Book quite a bit. According to that text, she was making her living as the main act in Henry Gordon Jago's "Monstre Gathering" and then as a masked bank robber. This was before she rescued Jenny from being molested by a Chinese Tong gang and gaining her house on Paternoster Row. Taking all of that into account, the timeline doesn't quite square away like it should, so maybe she was using an alias while working for Jago?
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Post by icecreamdf on Feb 9, 2016 4:48:56 GMT
He didn't seem to recognize her name when Strax mistook him for her. That clashes with The Brilliant Book quite a bit. According to that text, she was making her living as the main act in Henry Gordon Jago's "Monstre Gathering" and then as a masked bank robber. This was before she rescued Jenny from being molested by a Chinese Tong gang and gaining her house on Paternoster Row. Taking all of that into account, the timeline doesn't quite square away like it should, so maybe she was using an alias while working for Jago? I think BF and the books are in seperate continuities/universes/timelines.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2016 5:02:50 GMT
That clashes with The Brilliant Book quite a bit. According to that text, she was making her living as the main act in Henry Gordon Jago's "Monstre Gathering" and then as a masked bank robber. This was before she rescued Jenny from being molested by a Chinese Tong gang and gaining her house on Paternoster Row. Taking all of that into account, the timeline doesn't quite square away like it should, so maybe she was using an alias while working for Jago? I think BF and the books are in seperate continuities/universes/timelines. Or it's a mistake by the writer:) Since it come from word of God, I think we have to take it at face value that it's canon and just ignore any inherent contradictions. The Great Intelligience did it!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2016 6:33:07 GMT
I think BF and the books are in seperate continuities/universes/timelines. Or it's a mistake by the writer:) Since it come from word of God, I think we have to take it at face value that it's canon and just ignore any inherent contradictions. The Great Intelligience did it! I'm quite happy to ignore anything from the Big Book of Doctor Who. If it wasn't on screen or in a Big Finish then it didn't happen. If everythin Moffat wrote was canon we'd have to reconcile Sally Sparrow having her Angel adventure twice, once as a child, once as a grown-up.
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Post by icecreamdf on Feb 9, 2016 7:28:13 GMT
Or it's a mistake by the writer:) Since it come from word of God, I think we have to take it at face value that it's canon and just ignore any inherent contradictions. The Great Intelligience did it! I'm quite happy to ignore anything from the Big Book of Doctor Who. If it wasn't on screen or in a Big Finish then it didn't happen. If everythin Moffat wrote was canon we'd have to reconcile Sally Sparrow having her Angel adventure twice, once as a child, once as a grown-up. I'm pretty sure that he's said in his DWM column, more than once, that anything he says that isn't on screen is just his own fan theory.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2016 7:43:38 GMT
I'm quite happy to ignore anything from the Big Book of Doctor Who. If it wasn't on screen or in a Big Finish then it didn't happen. If everythin Moffat wrote was canon we'd have to reconcile Sally Sparrow having her Angel adventure twice, once as a child, once as a grown-up. I'm pretty sure that he's said in his DWM column, more than once, that anything he says that isn't on screen is just his own fan theory. But wasn't that more when he wanted to keep details vague onscreen and leave certain things up to the viewer? It seems to me to be different territory to presenting the history of Vastra and Jenny, particularly in something geared to a big percentage of the show's audience. Yes, there were contradictions ahoy in other media before the revival, but I don't the current set of Who writers would have the same mindset and want everything to be as straight as possible. What I Did on My Christmas Holiday was also offically debunked as part of canon.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2016 8:38:57 GMT
I'm pretty sure that he's said in his DWM column, more than once, that anything he says that isn't on screen is just his own fan theory. But wasn't that more when he wanted to keep details vague onscreen and leave certain things up to the viewer? It seems to me to be different territory to presenting the history of Vastra and Jenny, particularly in something geared to a big percentage of the show's audience. Yes, there were contradictions ahoy in other media before the revival, but I don't the current set of Who writers would have the same mindset and want everything to be as straight as possible. What I Did on My Christmas Holiday was also offically debunked as part of canon. And that makes perfect sense since Blink was considered the more popular rendition of the two. It's not strictly necessary to do as both Human Nature as a novel and as a television two-parter can both exist in the same universe without causing too much of a scuffle since their executions are so different, but it saves a greater headache on the part of fandom. The same solution can be argued of Shada (the Fourth Doctor version existed until the events of The Five Doctors, which allowed the Eighth Doctor's version to come about), but a lot of people often choose to pick one account over the other. I have a hunch that even before the revival there was an effort to keep everything straight between the various forms of media. The VNAs extended into the DWM comics with their own internal chronology and set of rules which the majority of writers by and large stood by. That more or less evaporated by the close of the nineties when Big Finish turned up, BBC Books took over the Eighth Doctor's tenure and DWM once again veered off into its own continuity altogether. So with the same structure in place, there are bound to be inconsistencies that crop up between Big Finish (who exist externally) and the stuff produced at the BBC. Canon is basically left up to the reader/listener/watcher, who can argue Word of God or Death of the Author as he or she pleases.
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Post by constonks on Feb 13, 2016 21:49:57 GMT
Or it's a mistake by the writer:) Since it come from word of God, I think we have to take it at face value that it's canon and just ignore any inherent contradictions. The Great Intelligience did it! I'm quite happy to ignore anything from the Big Book of Doctor Who. If it wasn't on screen or in a Big Finish then it didn't happen. If everythin Moffat wrote was canon we'd have to reconcile Sally Sparrow having her Angel adventure twice, once as a child, once as a grown-up. There are no weeping angels in What I Did. Just a time loop and a little girl in 2006 named Sally Sparrow. A coincidence but this is a universe full of doppelgangers and repeated themes.
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