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What's this? A Doctor Who thread?
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aderack
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Apparently everything decent in the recent Dalek two-parter was by Davies -- though he didn't get to do a complete rewrite and he barely touched part two, on account of his illness at the time.

Jonathan Blum wrote:
I have a vague recollection that most of the theme- and motivation-related stuff in the first part was RTD's -- particularly the bits where the Daleks talk about their motives. One scene I do remember as being Russell's was the scene in part one with Dalek Sec and Mr. Diagoras looking out over the New York skyline, with the mentions of this city being rebuilt and rebuilt throughout time.

Which, yeah, is the one really good scene in the story; the one you would think would set the whole thing up, thematically.

Quote:
OTOH, I think less of the thematic stuff in part two was rewritten -- I may be mistaken, but ISTR the stuff where Sec's motives become explicit, where he talks about humanity during and after the Hooverville battle, wasn't listed as a rewrite.

In the second part, the main bits I recall being attributed to RTD were the action up to the return to Hooverville, and the climax at the theater, replacing one in the streets of New York which they just couldn't afford...

This all seems more of a last-minute practical rethink than a creative one. Can't afford a battle like this, so let's confine it.

Then there's a bunch of squabbling where one guy doesn't believe that RTD basically rewrites everyone else's scripts except for Moffat, Greenhorn, and Graham (unwisely, perhaps, in that case). Even though he's said as much, and several other writers often say as much, and the script editors have said as much. One might well conclude that the abject failure of this story, whereas the worst stories have otherwise been pretty okay, has to do with Davies' relative lack of input. But anyway.

Jonathan Blum again wrote:
As RTD has said in his DWM interviews, and Paul and Rob and other people have said here, Russell routinely does a final-draft polish on the other writers -- the ones who he makes exceptions for are the ones who have showrunner-level writer-producer experience of their own. Which would include Steven Moffat (Coupling etc), Matthew Graham (Life On Mars), and apparently Stephen Greenhorn (though I don't know what he's run).

So it's hardly an insult that Moffat gets to be the exception to the rule -- he's got the resume to put him in a different league! And just for the record, pretty much no Who writers before RTD got to do all their own final drafts -- even Robert Holmes got rewritten by Saward. (The only exceptions I know of were in Cartmel's day -- he tended to make the writers implement his notes rather than taking their scripts away.)

The degree of rewriting in the final draft varies from story to story -- apparently almost every page of "Impossible Planet" was rewritten to some degree or another after shooting had already started (because most of the early days of production were spent on "Satan Pit"). "School Reunion" also had a lot of rewritten pages, though most of those appear to have been for production reasons (scaling down the number of Krillitanes and their CGI shots, losing Tony Head's wings, et cetera).

Seems most of the interesting Dalek stuff was added. The first appearance, the scene where the Doctor first sees one in the sewer, the hushed debate between the two Daleks about what Sec was up to.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You know, the logistics of episode counts only the other day occurred to me. There are 52 weeks (plus 2.26 days) in a year. Divide by two, you get one "season", or six-month run. Thus, the 26-episode standard. 24 and 22 are also common. 4x6=24, there being roughly four weeks in a month. 22 is the standard "extension" length, though I'm not sure of the logistics there. If you've got thirteen episodes, often there's an option for nine more.

Thirteen episodes would be one quarter of a year, or one calendar season.

Part of the weirdness of traditional broadcasting is that they commission 26 episodes for a nine-month run -- meaning a full third of the broadcast episodes will be reruns. Yum. So basically, if a slot is successful for one show they want to keep it open as long as possible, rather than simply airing the show for its season then swapping to something else in the off season. Say, X-Files from September through February, followed by Millennium from February through August. Or whatever.

I suppose it's hard to fill the schedules to start with, but oy.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whoa, "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane" is... kind of eventful, so far. It's certainly the most imaginative script yet. Reminds me very slightly of "Captain Jack Harkness", from Torchwood. It's got a big role for Maria's dad.

The previous story was all right. Not amazing; no real problems. The enemy was kind of interesting. Some of the guest cast way over-acted again, and the overall premise was unfortunate. It managed to avoid a lot of the "videogames on television" cliches by focusing instead on lase tag. And overall it held together well enough. Easily skipped, though.

So. Of the five stories shown, three (Bane, Gorgon, WHtSJ) are really good. Well, the second half of the Gorgon story was less interesting. And again, another episode to go in this one. Then two more, for the final story. That one's supposed to focus on Luke.
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 3:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As for "Peth", apparently it's Welsh for "Part".

So, uh? Part-TARDIS? TARDIS part?

Also.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 3:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I seem to remember some murmur about this, but apparently Andrew Cartmel is now writing for Torchwood. It would be nice to get him back into Who, certainly. Marc Platt would also be interesting to see again.

Other news: The Time Meddler is finally confirmed for release; it was done a year ago, then delayed because they couldn't get someone for the commentary in time. One of the best Hartnells, and one of the most significant. You could argue that here is where the whole concept of the show shifted and expanded.

Also, the Eighth Doctor audio "Absolution" is out. This is where C'rizz departs. Only one more, to be released next month, in which Charlie gets a send-off, and the original Eighth Doctor era is at an end. From there on it'll just be his independent seasons. And about damned time, too. They've just been drawing this out since 2005.

A reminder: Time Crash in about two weeks.
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Westacular
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 5:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That 10 Doctors comic is not bad.

I need to catch up on SJA. I'd be more inclined to if I didn't have to use a slow proxy to get anything from the Demonoid website. Ironically, they aren't blocking Canadian traffic to their tracker, so I don't need to proxy anything in the torrent client.
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aderack
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 8:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, right. I forgot about the Canada business.

Well, how about some outside links?

http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=sarah+jane+adventures+%5Bmm%5D+-hq
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 9:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I know. It's easier to just use another site as my first searching point. It's not actually really a good excuse. I just wanted to vent.
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aderack
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 9:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah. It's kind of awkward when a resource disappears like that.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If it disappeared, I'd move on. As it is, I still use it, but get frustrated when it's slow and features don't work. (Because of going through Tor)
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aderack
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 3:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So "Absolution" has been about as ho-hum as most of the C'rizz/Charlie stuff since 2005. It's weird that they have such trouble writing for such an interesting set of characters. The last few minutes are good, though -- and quite in line with the new series. It's kind of startling, actually.

Oh, come to think of it, I think it means to set up the New Eighth Doctor Adventures series -- the episodic BBC7 stuff. The Eighth Doctor has been changing ever since his third season, but here it's showing some consequences.

With the resolving of McGann's timeframe, I guess there are only three real things that Big Finish has left to tackle, besides continuing on forward with McGann: telling how Mel actually joined the Doctor's company; satisfactorily explaining just why the Sixth Doctor regenerated in Time and the Rani; and telling how Hex and Ace eventually left the Doctor's company. It's kind of interesting that one companion never got a proper TV introduction, and another never got a proper send-off.

For anyone interested in diving into Big Finish, this all used to be on Wikipedia until it got deleted for some reason. I wrote up a lot of it anyway, so here it is, messily formatted. Sometime when I'm not lazy I can tidy it up a bit.

I'm not sure why BF doesn't ever list or organize its releases by continuity -- though they do provide "production codes" in the original series style, to give you an idea where they're meant to fit in. It's pretty much assumed that people listening to the audios will just know offhand where they slot in between existing serials. Which... says a lot about Big Finish and about Doctor Who fans in general, I think.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 6:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, just to mention, so far S4 is looking like this:

* CIN07 - Time Crash - Moffat
* 4.0X - Voyage of the Damned - RTD
* 4.01 - Blues (Donna joins) - RTD
* 4.02 - Planet of the Ood - Temple
* 4.03 - [Pompeii] - Moran
* 4.04/4.05 - [Sontarans] - Raynor
* 4.06 - TBA - MacRae?
* 4.07 - The Unicorn and the Wasp (Agatha Cristie) - Roberts
* 4.08 - TBA - Greenhorn?
* 4.09/4.10 - [Cybermen?] - Moffat
* 4.11 - TBA - RTD
* 4.12/4.13 - TBA - RTD

And... Martha's episodes aren't all in a row. Rather, she seems to turn up whenever they trundle back to 2009 Earth. Maybe she's a member of UNIT now? Maybe that's what she's doing on Torchwood? Because UNIT is all over the place in her first story back (that being the Sontaran one). And... what's that name tag she's got? And hey, she's back in her lab coat. Always thought that better suited her.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/gallery/sontarans/

And apparently Mr. Barrowman has mentioned filming for Who in the new year, once he's done with holiday pantomime -- so I guess he's returning for the finale again.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 12:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey. trailer for New EDA Series Two.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 8:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote



A sizable number of people seem to be spazzing about how terrible the new costumes are, and declaring that the originals from The Time Warrior are perfect to this day. Why did they have to replace a classic? It doesn't even look like a Sontaran anymore! It's not threatening, as it should be!

Hm.

I will admit that new series monster designs (from Cybermen on) seem more calculated to make way cool action figures than to seem credible on-screen. I'm not completely sure about the bodysuit, with its codpiece of death. But. Uh... a close comparison might be warranted.

EDIT: added toy Judoon, for comparison.
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Harveyjames
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, that's a pretty uninspired redesign, isn't it. You have to hope it'll look better when it's lit properly.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's certainly not the most flattering photo. Overall, though, it pretty much just looks like a Sontaran, wth... sculpted anime body armor, for some reason. And an immense crotch. Don't know what they were doing there.

And the head -- it's kind of hard to look at the original Sontaran mask and say "Ah yes! That's so much better!" And it's not like the original outfit was that amazing. Mr. Potato Head in a tin foil bodysuit. Hmm...

Weird that this guy looks so put-upon.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 4:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Personally I think the original is a lot cooler, but I guess when you're twelve, sculpted body armour and matte grey-blue tones are what's important. You're probably right about them being designed wth one eye on the merchandising.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We'd probably need to see both in motion. Maybe it's not too obvious, but the 1974 Sontaran head is... kind of poorly fixed to the actor's face. The eyes and mouth keep moving around inside it. And it's fixed to the collar, so he can only ever look forward. Also, the "mouth" on the mask is something like twice as wide as the actor's mouth, which looks really weird when he talks. The actor does a great job with it, though, sticking his tongue through the mouth hole and trying to make it more tangible than it is.

From a distance I agree it's got a bit more character to it. The new one seems to have a certain solidity that the old one didn't, though, while following the same basic pattern. The suit, well. We've already discussed that. Neither thrills me, but whereas the new one looks like Master Chief as animated by Gainax and manufactured by Takara, the old one captures the Grimace theme a little better.

Again, though, it just... looks like a Sontaran to me. Basically. So I'm a little amused by how upset some people are.

By the way, anyone up on the UNIT dating problem? Namely that in one episode a doddering old main claimed something happened "over forty years ago", his daughter (who was much younger than that) claimed it happened in 1936, and that the Brigadier later claimed those conversations took place "about four years ago"? Thus, since in fiction everyone always knows what he's talking about and means exactly what he says, surely the UNIT stories must all be set in or after 1979! Even though every direct reference that wasn't simply anecdotal placed the stories as roughly contemporary to their broadcast.

Yeah, it's... one of those things.

Anyway. A couple of vague references in New Who and SJA seemed to suggest the latter explanation: if a story went out in 1973, it probably was set somewhere around 1973. In the most recent SJA serial, though, the stated age of SJS -- which is not merely a passing reference, but a key plot point -- pretty much cements the timing of all of the UNIT stories.

Namely, in her first season on the show (in 1974) she was established as 24 years old. (That's the potentially weak link, as there was no way to "verify" this information.) And this new story hinges on the detail that she was 13 years old in 1964. So... huh!

Granted, this all does depend on SJS not having lied about her age when we first met her. That's still a bit more concrete than round time estimates, though.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 5:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote



Haven't watched the new Sarah Jane yet.

Short interview with Neil Gordon, the designer.

Quote:
Is the costume blue (instead of the traditional Sontaran black) to differentiate them from the Judoon?
Okay, now don't you start... I thought you guys were serious journalists!

Firstly the old Sontaran costumes were SILVER and black. Quite a lot of silver too. Secondly the Judoon looked nothing like a Sontaran… Put a picture of a classic Sontaran alongside a Judoon and tell me why they are supposed to be so alike? They have a helmet that looks domed from one angle is about it. In that case you may as well say it looks like a Dalek too! It's hysterical that this Judoon Sontaran similarity keeps raising its head.

When we designed the Judoon at no time did anyone talk about, or suggest a similarity with, the Sontarans - or for that matter deliberately wind up the fans by making them similar in anyway as some have suggested – that’s ridiculous and we have better things to do. Similarly when we designed the new Sontarans we didn’t make any reference to designing them in a way to be different from the Judoon because they were nothing like them in the first place. I was more concerned about it looking like Batman than I was about it looking like a Judoon.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Series three is out now, incidentally. And DeepDiscountDVD is going to hold another 20% off sale sometime this month (on top of its normal sub-Amazon prices), so you should be able to pick it up for fifty-something dollars. Which ain't bad.

Regarding a certain easter egg, Steven Moffat wrote:
It's there all right, I just found it. I even got my script and read in Sally's part. I stopped when I realised I was pretending to be a hot blonde of my own creation talking to Doctor Who on my computer.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steven Moffat, you are the best.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 4:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moffat is the man.

As an aside while news is slim: Who has been watching Journeyman?

If not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUZRems7muI (episode 1... don't know where to catch 2.)
http://www.nbc.com/Journeyman/video/episodes.shtml (3 onward)

It has a really interesting structure.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 5:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That show sure wants us to know it's set in San Francisco. Good gracious. Que es el con el Espanol, eh?

Oh, incidentally, someone purportedly "in the know" has been going around, confirming that Martha does indeed work for UNIT -- though there's a sort of an exchange program going on with Torchwood for a while, explaining her appearance there for a few episodes.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I've been watching (and enjoying) Journeyman. It sets a good pace and balance between the episodic what-he's-fixing story and the serialized effects unfolding in his life, and it's pretty smart in how it goes about things. Every episode introduces/reveals at least one new nugget to get you excited about future episodes.


I still haven't watched Supernatural, but my understanding is that it's structure is very similar?
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 7:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pretty much. Though I only watched the first Youtube Hunk (need a term for the ten-minute segments into which larger works are sliced) of Journeyman.

For those with accounts, this is a pretty darned interesting discussion until Trubshawe kind of loses himself in his own argument.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 2:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Murray Gold makes playful comments about fans being inane. And yeah, that first cue from "Rose" is still one of my favorite themes from the new series.

Also, Davison/Tennant gabble.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 4:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote


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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 5:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are there a 1000 rumours that there's going to be Doctor on Doctor kissing action now?
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The question mark looks as though it's coming out of him in that picture. He's like '?'
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It does! I think they were just setting up this scene, the whole time. Talk about foreshadowing...
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote



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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 8:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Request thread title change to 'Eric-Jon's Dirty Cave'
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is no sex in the Tardis Control Room...

Who caught Supernatural last night? I was pleasantly surprised at what they did with Gordon Walker, without thinking it was unnatural and, honestly, kinda obvious. As noted by Aderack, characters seem to have a shelf life in Supernatural, and I was wondering how long they would draw out Gordon's story - it's surprising he survived the second season.

With how it seems like three seasons for this show would feel natural, there's a lot of talk in the commentary on season one how it's set up like Star Wars, and how Sam and Dean are Luke and Han, so it might be fitting. I think they've planned up until season 5, though.

From what I read, the Bella character, and the Ruby character are both recurring for the rest of the season. I would not be surprised if the Ruby character was actually their dad in some manner, since he was in hell, right? Course, I could be very wrong.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I keep forgetting about both Supernatural and Heroes. Demonoid being down doesn't help much! Grabbing the newest of each now.

S3 has been trotting along pretty well so far. As before there are some story elements that seem a big hackneyed and obvious, and I keep internally cringing about where they're gonna bring them -- yet on the basis of the last two seasons, I've got more confidence that they're not going to just do something boring and televisual. Or if they happen to, they'll give it enough of a twist or do it with enough of a smile that it works anyway.

Time Crash will have aired about half an hour ago. Should be hitting the bytes any time now.

How's the commentary on the Supernatural DVDs? Do all the episodes get it, or just a select few? Who's on it?
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's on a few. I haven't listened to the season 2 ones yet. I know the pilot, maybe a couple episodes in the middle, and the finale. Eric Kripke is on one of them, and I think the boys are on another. And maybe Kim Manners? I can't recall who else, though I mentioned she worked on X-Files, right? It's all pretty interesting, especially where he mentions that he wants to get all the well known myths out of the way so they can get to some of the really obscure ones.

One other thing Eric Kripke mentioned is how he wanted to use oldschool rock music, and the tape joke stuff in the first episode (one of my favorite scenes) was a conscious nudge so the network wouldn't make them put in current poppy crap like a lot of other WB/CW shows do. Interestingly enough, he said that the music rights for the classic songs are cheaper than a lot of new songs. Honestly, one of my favorite elements is the soundtrack.

If you want to just Netflix the disks with the commentaries, let me know and I will dig out my boxset after the move.

Also of note is that we should watch for the fact that Sam will do things this season that he wouldn't before, since he's not "100% human", as mentioned by his actor. Also, apparently they're going to explain Dean's necklace.

Also, I mention the Gordon Walker thing is obvious because they did something similar on Angel with Gunn - and intended for Gunn to become a vampire is season 6 if it was made I heard, but I didn't see it coming here. Fun guest star in the beginning, though. The guy who plays the date rape dude is a bit schmaltzy though.

I think Supernatural manages to have more awesome than duds. I think last year the only episode I actively didn't like was the werewolf one, and even then I could cheer for Sam since he got some. I think my favorite episode was the trickster episode, and I hope they follow up on that.

EDIT:

Haha, they actually worked Time Crash into the ending to season 3.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Hello, Steven. Another day, another raft of rumours that this series of Doctor Who will be Russell T. Davies' last as showrunner.

I know, it's mad, isn't it? I keep getting asked about it.

Well, people wonder who might take over, Steven, and you've written acclaimed episodes of the last three series, a two-parter scheduled for Series Four, and now this Children in Need special...

I'm surprised and bemused at how long I've got away with it. I assume I'm going to come a cropper at some point.

We can't ignore the elephant in the room, Steven. Never mind Children in Need! This is the question that we all want to know the answer to...

I know, I know. Go on.

Is it canon?

Oh. [Laughs.] Yes, absolutely. Time Crash emphatically happens within the... well, people can make up their own minds about what's canon, but it's intended by us to actually happen... unless you don't want it to.

Yeah, I'm thinking I might even want to pick up the Supernatural sets sometime. It seems worth watching again. Though I don't expect to do any of that until I've seen the story through!

Not entirely thrilled with this past episode, though as you say I'm surprised the characters lasted this long. And it's an appropriate end. I wasn't aware of the Angel business. Mind, I've only seen the first two seasons of that. The second one annoyed me enough to stop there. It did improve by the end, though.

About that demon chick -- that's an interesting interpretation. The show's trying to hint that she just wants to be one of his followers once he goes all wuahaha. That's a bit obvious, though. I'd not be surprised if they had something else geared up for her.

Yeah, Time Crash. First time through, I kind of went "oh". It's very... winky. Almost too much for its own good. And the Fifth Doctor is written kind of strangely. Then I stopped thinking about it, and, yeah.

Bit of slang I didn't know before. Moffat again with the fan in-jokes.

I don't think that's really a "desktop theme". I think that's more like the architecture itself, stripped of all the interface abstractions Time Lords like to layer on top. The Doctor is piloting in assembly.

Anyone who hasn't seen it, vlorp. And here's the Confidential, which is almost longer than the episode itself. That hasn't been capped and Mininovalated yet. So. Low-quality is all you get. For now.

While we're posting links...
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 3:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree, this last Supernatural wasn't one of the best so far this season.

The thing with Ruby... I wonder how she convinced Bobby to rebuild the colt with her /really./

I think the episode with the kid-like-Dean was actually the most interesting so far. What I also find interesting about that episode is how my friend and I joked about how the kid could actually be their brother (since she hooked up with a hunter, and hell, their father could've hooked up with her.) I don't think they'd pull something really wonky, like, the kid IS Dean, I hope. You know they have to save Dean in some manner, I'm just curious as to how.

Time Crash was winky, but I think appropriately so. I think the only thing I found slightly weird was how the Doctor could be a fan of himself, but I think that's just showing a bit of reverence from Tennant to Davison.

As for Angel. I would watch the final 3 seasons. Word of warning, 3 and 4 make about one whole good season. There's some warbling in season 3 and the backend of season 4 is pretty shite. Season 5 is, however, 100% awesome, and even redeems the Connor character.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 5:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Man, have I seen Connor yet? I know there's a major character coming up. I guess that's him?

Colt: good point. Then again, Bobby seems pretty flexible, even given how cautious he tries to be.

Something that kind of bothered me about this episode is that it feels like they're hammering a bit much on the darkness. Dean promises to kill Lara Croft, and... sort of seems to mean it. Sam is losing compunctions. Dean doesn't care about anything. Protagonists turnin' into murderers! And crazy men! There's certainly some dramatic potential here. It seems to be wallowing, though. At the moment. And, well, maybe that's the point. It just really came to the front this week.

Something else kind of strange. In season two suddenly there was this whole formal idea of "hunters". Before that, it was just the Winchesters, out on this crazy mission, with a few contacts. in seasons two and three, it's a whole underground lifestyle. On the one hand it sort of solidifies some of the show's mythology. On the other, it sort of downplays the specialness of the core scenario.

That said, the second season wiped out most of the hunters we were introduced to. After this last episode... what, is it just Bobby? Oh, and that mother and daughter from season two.

And besides being apparently conscious of the shift of focus, the show does seem to be using it, dramatically. Stage one: indoctrination, finding their way. Stage two: acceptance, living up to all their goals and intentions. (It's not about what they're doing so much as how well they work with the situation they've got.) Stage three: transcendence; dealing with the changes required to complete stage two. (It's not so much what they're doing, or how well they use their situation, as it is coming to understand who and what they are as a result of their use of the situation.)

Winky: yeah, Moffat and Tennant both being big Davison fans sort of excuses it all in a metafictional way. I'm not sure what "You were MY Doctor" is actually supposed to mean within the fiction, though. If it matters, which I suppose it doesn't.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 2:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

People seem to think it's a really big deal that Ten mentions the Master to Five. Why didn't he remember that passing reference, several hundred years later?!?! OMG, gaping plot hole!


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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Master returns so many times, and Five doesn't even know which regeneration Tennant is. And even then, he could've been Tennant for hundreds of years at that point as far as he knew. Or hell, 'recently' could be like 20 years in his perspective. All you could say is 'he knows the Master returns sometime in the future' which the Doctor probably figures will happen eventually anyway.

It's not like Ten was like oh yeah, by the way, Yana = Master, LOL. Which WOULD have been something that could create a plot hole. Or, you know, all the other Timelords are Dead or something that might actually affect what Five does.

Also, no, Connor comes in near the end of season 3, so you haven't met him yet.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 12:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Man, I just had a thought. With Doctor Who basically off the screens in 2009, save the few special episodes, a relatively cheap way to fill the gap with basically new Who is to commission animation. You could have a whole season of Troughton for probably the cost of one new, live episode. And it would be appealing! The kids like animation. Cosgrove/Firestep has a jazzy style. And everyone loves Troughton.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 1:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

aderack wrote:



I have no idea what that's a picture of, but it's amazing.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In Time Crash, Davison barks at Tennant for changing the TARDIS's "Desktop theme". "What is this, 'Coral'? It's worse than the leopard skin."

So. Picture. That's pre-Doctor Colin Baker, aka "Seventies Porn Colin", and Nicola Bryant as Peri. Who, uh... well.

Davison has often joked that although he gave his best performance of his career toward the end of Androzani, no one ever noticed.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 1:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, various things. Yet again, R1 gets superior box set packaging -- a metallic cardboard slipcase instead of that awful plastic slipcover of the last two sets. You might have heard that they screwed with the last commentary, replacing the R2 one with the podcast versioin. The reason, apparently, is because the actors keep bursting into song and the suits figured they couldn't clear all the tunes. Thing is, they... don't, really. They just jokingly twernk a few notes here and there; all well within reasonable limits. And it's a shame, as the R2 commentary -- with Tennant, Agyeman, and Barrowman -- is kind of splendid. You can download it, though!

SJA is over now, and the last episode was rushed as hell. The last scene in particular just... sort of ended. Overall, this was a pretty good series. Ups and downs. The good parts were really, really good, though. And the low parts weren't offensive or anything, and generally were balanced off by equally good elements, sometimes in the same shots.

Torchwood 2 is... uh. Well, it's going to be broadcast on BBC2 in January, right? And the BBC America broadcast will end in December, right? With the R1 box set released in January? Well. BBC America is going to kick right in on series two, four days after the box set is released in January. Yeah, it's going to be pretty much a simultaneous broadcast with the UK. Maybe a couple of weeks later.

And apparently Tennant added the "My Doctor" bit on his own -- which makes sense, then. It seemed a real departure for Moffat.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 1:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, commentary. I haven't gotten the disk yet. WHERE can you DL it, however?

Also, it looks like Jack is in series 4 of Doctor Who? I wonder if Moffat's finally doing his 'missing two years' ? Hmm.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, torrent. Check out Mininova; most Demonoid people seem to have gravitated over there.

Yeah, at least according to Barrowman. There are some interesting logistics there. He's filming in January, right? January is when the second two-parter should be filming. That's the story that Moffat is probably writing. Moffat has talked about how his S4 story is something he's meant to do ever since S1, yet never quite got around to. So... hmm...

Oh, right, and the production team seems to be trying to wrap up a bunch of loose ends with S4, in time for the hiatus.

Some other interesting things, going by the commentaries. Disc three is odd; it compiles all the weakest stories together. It's filled with the two Dalek episode, plus Lazarus, plus 42. Lazarus is pretty good, if a bit rushed-feeling. It's not really strong enough to offset the other two stories, though. And all the commentaries there go into some detail on the problems faced in planning and execution.

The Dalek story, of course, came about just when Davies fell ill and couldn't work on the show for about a month. So nobody was overseeing it, and all he could really do was tweak some dialog and a few practical matters just before it went into production.

The Lazarus Experiment, it turns out, was written almost overnight. They were stressing out because one of their scripts fell through -- presumably the Stephen Fry one? -- and they didn't have any on the back burner. Someone knew Greenhorn through some other production; they contacted him, and he agreed to write something for them. A while later they called him to ask how the script was going, and he was taken aback. What, they wanted it NOW? Aren't they about to film? He thought they needed it for next year. So he whipped something off and sent it in. They thought it was perfect; the first thing written by anyone other than Moffat that didn't need editing -- and a good thing, since they didn't have time for it. They wheeled it right into production, and there we were. Yikes.

As regards 42, originally Davies gave Chibnall a completely different story outline. (I'm guessing it might be the Ood one.) Then at the last minute he said "No, wait, I'm going to save that for series four. Do this instead." And it was already getting late in the day; supposedly this was the final script to be written, after all the rest of the series was planned out, including the finale. So again, hyper speed. Chibnall isn't Greenhorn, though, so they went through many drafts and conceptual revisions. Then Davies came in and added all of the "important" scenes (phone, key, Martha's mom, Saxon) to help set up his finale. Then, just before they started filming, they had to go in and chop out all of the big showcase scenes because the FX budget had already been allocated elsewhere.

So. Yeah. Right there in the middle, there was this great implosion of planning. I wonder how much of it has to do with Davies being out of the picture for that month.

BBCA's broadcast of Torchwood must be a little weird for anyone who has been following Doctor Who on that channel rather than Sci-Fi. So they air Who1. Then Torchwood1 alongside Who2 -- meaning you see Cyberwoman before Doomsday. Now they're airing Torchwood 2 before Who3 -- meaning you see Jack's return to the Hub, Martha Jones joining Torchwood, and whatever carries Jack back into Who4, before you see what Jack did while he was away and before you meet Martha.

Curiously, a lot of American media outlets seem to be reviewing Torchwood as its own series altogether, with its relation to Doctor Who as more a point of trivia since the writer has never seen it. And on that basis, they seem pretty universally positive about the show.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh pooh.

SFX wrote:
Chibnall confirms that Bilis Manager won't be returning to Torchwood for its second series (but he could return in the future); Jack being the Face of Boe won't be addressed ("that's x amount of years in the future and the subject of speculation") and that Ianto's stopwatch will return...

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steven Moffat wrote:
While the Ninth Doctor recalls his experience of meeting the Tenth Doctor as the Fifth Doctor, he has his own internal sense that the Time Lords are all gone versus a brief memory of some jokey remarks made by that skinny fellow. Naturally he favours his faculties, especially as time has been rewritten by the Time War. It's only when the Yana's watch is mentioned, that he realises that Skinny Bloke wasn't joking. That's why he instantly concludes that Yana is the Master, not some other Time Lord. This was all planned in advance by myself and Russell using graphs.

I was pretty perplexed with the Doctor's reaction in Utopia. It sure seemed like he suddenly remembered something. My assumption at the time (before the following two episodes aired) was that the Doctor was responsible for the Master being there. He'd left him at the end of the universe and forgotten about him, or something. Thus his apology as the Master vworps off.

I don't know how serious Moffat is about the pre-planning. Still, yeah. That's a reasonable interpretation.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

aderack wrote:
I don't know how serious Moffat is about the pre-planning.


I think "using graphs" suggests not very.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well.

That's taken from a series four shoot, taken by a fan.
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