The Gamer's Quarter

[aderack]

Out of curiosity, I stopped by the Ian Levine discussion forum. He's this "celebrity fan" guy; a record producer whose big claim to fame was supposedly leaping and grabbing the surviving cans of The Daleks out of the hands of the person who was about to throw them in the fire. He also wrote the theme to K-9 and Company and served as continuity consultant in the early '80s (during which period the show's continuity began to get all bizarre and contradictory). And he claims to have written Attack of the Cybermen, even though there's no actual evidence for this. Oh yeah, and he composed this when the show was put on an eighteen-month break in the mid-'80s.

And though he used to do some things for the classic DVDs, about two years ago he had a screaming fit because someone edited some profanity out of one of his documentaries and he burned all his bridges with the restoration team.

And the Abzorbaloff was based on him. Well, sort of.



Anyway, there's a thread on his forum titled "Ruined By The DISGUSTING New Title Music".

[aderack]

Here are dates, apparently:

Torchwood: January 16th -> March 26th
Doctor Who: March 29th -> June 21st

So. Starting Wednesday, no letup for five months.

And some weird stuff in this article. The Torchwood cast claim to pass the time by flashing each other.
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[Patrick Alexander]

Jesus christ. Fans. Fans.

No one understands what you are talking about, you stupid man!

...

Man, I love that KLF song.

[tygerbug]

Ian Levine is a mess, frankly. He has good intentions (he's tried to get fans to colorize Invasion of the DInosaurs 1 recently, and has bankrolled a project to animate some of Power of the Daleks - not my project of course!) .... but he ruins everything he touches by throwing huge temper tantrums about everything - any tiny little thing. He has serious issues and most people have given up on him because he's just difficult to deal with.

Panning and camera/character movement can be very difficult .... It's hard to reconcile the frame rare you're animating at with the frame rate your pans and sliding movements needs to be at. In these days of web and Flash animation though, I don't think people expect the animation to ever be as smooth as the pans. I'd rather see smooth panning and proper lip sync than the low frame rate Flash usually has. But it's a difficult line to straddle.

>> I'm actually the one who got you in touch with the guy who was Richard Williams' producer in the 60's

Ah yes - I can't remember his name now. I think that was a guy who I spoke to several times on the phone, but when I moved we lost contact. He didn't do email so it was hard to keep contact in the days before I had a cellphone. Um ... or was that a friend of his? My memory is fuzzy on that, it's been a while.

I remember your website and animations. Quite good stuff as ever. I think you've updated a bit since I saw it a couple years back.

It's been a good time working on The Thief. Animators have been very nice about everything and it's inspired me to do more art and animation myself, though I'm still horribly broke.

>> managed to sync the video up and make the eyebrows match and such. There's a lot of stuff you did like this that amazes me that you were able to sync, like the 4:3 scenes of Thief which you overlayed over the 16x9 ones so that at least the center was a better resolution.

The Thief stuff was actually easier than some of that Star Wars stuff - the eyebrows I had major sync issues with. I was working with PAL material and I didn't do enough work beforehand to get the 25fps material playing at 24fps. There were a lot of skipped frames, double frames - it made syncing up the eyebrows more difficult than it should have been!

When I did The Thief, I took all the PAL clips I needed and recompiled the Quicktime files at 25fps so Final Cut Pro couldn't screw it up.

This sort of thing is really fiddly and takes some massaging to get it quite right ....

>> I've read about 'the big green movie.' I wish you the best on that; If you can pull off the chroma keying it'll be interesting to see just that.

Cheers. The cast has done good work. I need to get back to it, but I've been doing this Doctor Who stuff instead. I think when I've finished most of the sprites for Evil of the Daleks I'll stop and do She-Hulk for a while ... it's going to need a few years' work though, it's a big feature.

The chromakey is never going to be good, I think - it was done on miniDV which has a very poor and limited color space. Bright colors come out as very low resolution jagged lines. It looks decent with a bit of work done to it but it will never be fully realistic. I knew that going into making the film so it doesn't really worry me or anything. I sort of planned the film to take some cartoonishness into account in She-Hulk's scenes. Some of her scenes are done with rotoscope rather than chromakey which I still have to do a lot of work on. It's a lot of work.

I can send you the trailer if you PM or email me.
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http://orangecow.org

[Harveyjames]

[aderack]

Man, lots of... information here. Of varying qualities.

Mentions of Andrew Cartmel, John Barrowman surprising Eve Myles in the middle of an interview by groping her, the potential for Gwen Cooper to hit Who... And John Barrowman being suddenly uncertain about something, and crabby about something else.
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[Harveyjames]

[Westacular]

[aderack]

Some people were grarbling about how the Doctor keeps behaving like an ass, and Davies is stupid, and the Doctor is supposed to be perfect and heroic, and what the hell was the deal with that "I'm a Time Lawwwd" speech? Oh GOD why does this show keep trying to manipulate my emotions?! And why is it so BAD at it!?

Someone mentioned that it's possible to watch drama from a detached perspective, and that you're not necessarily supposed to identify with any of the characters, or take the emotional cues literally. Lots of huffing. I mentioned that the shot was so on-the-nose that it's very hard to conclude we -- as media-savvy twenty-first century viewers -- were supposed to identify it as anything other than "The Hero Shot", which becomes important later when the Doctor can't come through with all of his promises. Follows:

[Westacular]

[aderack]

That too.

Oh, and apparently the replacement script is by Phil Ford, writer of two of the better SJA stories, rather than RTD himself. We'll see how that goes.
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[Westacular]

Of course, the "I'm a Time Lord" speech is significant in what it means that the Doctor would even consider making such a speech in front of a bunch of frightened strangers -- the Doctor accepting his identity and fate and all that.

There's a progression of these moments through the Christmas specials -- first, accepting a new identity and boldly declaring himself the defender of Earth; second, acknowledging his Gallifreyan heritage; now, third, hanging it out there for the world to see just to get some folks to shut up and start moving.

[aderack]

Now that you mention it, also the little trickles of verbiage. Gallifrey wasn't mentioned at all until Runaway Bride. "The Constellation of Kasterberous", in a similar speech, this time.

Going from saying there's no higher authority than him to declaring, hysterically, that he "can do anything".

Apparently series four is going to go into the ethics of being a Time Lord -- what you can and can't do with that power. Presumably leading up to him being tested, as the last and highest authority. Seeing if he can spot where that line is between accepting responsibility and playing God.
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[Westacular]

Yeah. The return of Donna, Astrid's death (among others), and that closing comment about one ought not have the power to decide who lives and dies all point in that direction.

Has there been any mention of this year's keyword?

[aderack]

If there's a word or phrase thing going on this year, it's not obvious yet. Lawrence Nightingale had a White Star Line sticker on his folder with Sally Sparrow's DVD list, sort of subliminally presaging Voyage. That's kind of like what happened in 2006 with the Saxon headline in Love & Monsters, except... not.

The theme is supposed to be hinted at in something the Master says in one of the last two episodes. That's probably not a word thing so much as it is a broader theme. It could be anything, of course, yet there's this one moment when the Master says, about screwing with time, "I'm a Time Lord. I have that right."

Then there's the business with Pompeii, which is supposed to sort of blow Donna's mind because the Doctor can't or won't do anything. And the backstory to the Ood, where humans destroy their whole culture.

And if Davros does appear, and it's a younger version of him... hmm...
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[Harveyjames]

I'm interested in what you said about watching drama from a detached perspective. I'm sort of fascinated by the ability of some of my very intelligent friends to enjoy TV shows like Lost where they know that the dialogue is crap and are constantly aware of the mechanics of the storyline, but in fact their awareness of how it's written is a huge part of their appreciation of the show.

Actually, I think the most extreme form of this is my friends in college who were into pro-wrestling, for whom discussing the storylines, the writers and the decisions they were making, good and bad, was as big a part of the hobby (if not bigger) as the whole dudes-jumping-about-in-tights thing. Like there was even lingo to describe when a character suddenly turns from being good to being evil, which was 'turning heel'. I'd always thought that was called 'ridiculous bullshit', but then I guess I don't have what it takes to be a pro-wrestling fan.

It was always strange to me. It seemed like the content of these shows was irrelevant. I mean, Pro Wrestling is obviously awful as drama. Why waste all this discussion on something you know to be junk? I thought perhaps it's because they wanted to appreciate it for whatever reason (say, the pared-down, simplified depiction of a clash between good and evil super-men appeals to them) but because the actual content isn't good enough to be worth discussing, they have to find some other level to talk about it on.

I just wondered what your thoughts were on this. I guess this is a general query on the manner in which people enjoy TV programs these days. Please don't think I'm comparing Doctor Who to Pro-Wrestling.

[Westacular]

I've seen the situation you're describing about pro-wrestling, too, and am similarly baffled as to... why bother. I think you just have to be able to first engage it at a basic "cheering and booing!" level for all of the high-level structural stuff to become interesting, and that's not me.

TV programs these days are steeped in a lot of self-awareness of the forms and conventions of TV storytelling; TV writers know the stuff described at tvtropes cold, and are increasingly realizing their audience does, too.

The good ones use this to their advantage: both as a short-hand to accomplish things more economically (i.e., if you're adhering to a trope/archetype/whatever, you can get by with saying a lot less), and as a way to make things more interesting and fun by intentionally subverting the tropes. Joss Whedon is known for this, and what he did with Buffy acted as a beacon to other TV writers about the wonderfully possibilities of toying with and breaking conventions.

This isn't exactly your question, though.

In order for me to engage with a show, it has to work for me on a basic level -- I have to enjoy the characters and dialog -- and it has to have enough on-going story arc develop to keep me coming back. For a drama, it needs to have fun with what it's doing, but still take itself seriously.

The truly good shows occasionally manage to crack open my icy steel heart and sympathize with drama, and have actually clever stories from time to time.

The great shows manage to do this consistently, and are filled with interesting structural aspects -- stuff like parallelism between storylines or characters, recurring motifs -- that don't hit me until a couple hours after watching it, and are filled with all sorts of little details that I can watch an episode three times in a week and still notice cool new things.

So:
-decent, progressing story arc
-characters I can understand
-some fun dialog
-when there's a moment in an episode that was clearly inspired by the writers thinking "it would be so awesome if...", that moment had better be awesome.
-try to avoid glaring inconsistencies
-don't sacrifice the above for the convenience of an individual story or to set up a set piece or to get all melodramatic.


I'd categorize Lost as one of the great ones. The dialog isn't crap. It has it's faults, sure, but never any lines bad enough to really distract me, and it has its great moments, too.

[aderack]

My Sonic Screwdriver still hasn't arrived. Don't know what's up with it. It got tracked to Oakland, then fell off the map.

This is sort of interesting, though. Not super high quality, but not super expensive either.

I'll think about your question later, bearsplosion.

[Harveyjames]

[aderack]

NO IT IS DANGEROUS

It's worse than wikipedia, as far as making a person vanish.

I've got it in my Firefox search bar. These are the sacrifices I make for all of you.
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[Harveyjames]

Jesus balls, in terms of standards of writing that website makes Wikipedia look like Encylclopedia Britannica. This is from the entry on Akira:

[aderack]

I don't know. That sounds quite elegant compared with most Wikipedia pages I've seen.
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[Harveyjames]

Not to me! If that was on Wikipedia it'd have a red flag on it saying it didn't meet up to their standards.

[aderack]

Well, keep in mind also that the site's tone is generally pretty irreverent and snarky. Yet it holds to that voice pretty well. For a densely-linked compilation of abstract concepts, it's kept pretty clean and consistent. You get a quippy summation of what they're talking about, and some examples, filled with links to other concepts -- many of which are pretty powerful!

Adaptation Distillation is a pretty good example. Not all the examples are amazing, and there's an apostrophe in "its" up there, and that last sentence in the intro is just weird. Still, there's a certain efficiency and lightness in communicating the ideas. You get the message without having to parse it much at all.

Compare to Wikipedia, which is bloat incarnate. It takes some skill to write small, and to do it with a semblance of voice and style.
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[Ashura]

Human beings have five fingers on each hand. (citation needed)

[Harveyjames]

[Ashura]

Oh, I love Wikipedia. It's a great starting point for research.

I think some of the politics are crazy though.

[aderack]

[Westacular]

Speaking of a weird crossing over... Note, this coincidence was noticed while looking up something on IMDB and not something I would ever have realized directly:

Monday night, on the second episode of the Terminator series, the character Enrique Salceda from Terminator 2 returned. He was played by a different actor (Tony Amendola), and presumably will only appear in that one episode, because toward the end of it he was shot dead.

The actor who did originally play Enrique (Castulo Guerra) was on Prison Break on Monday, also on Fox, immediately preceding that episode of Terminator; the character he played there is presumably limited to that one episode appearance*, because toward the end of it he was shot dead.


*-strictly speaking I think he was also in the last 10 seconds of the preceding episode

[aderack]

I've heard the TV show isn't too bad so far, and that it plays a lot with timelines.

Torchwood is, overall, a lot more together than last year. It's still definitely Torchwood, for all that entails, both great and ridiculous (and greatly ridiculous). Yet it kind of knows what it's doing now. Save the Cath Tregana episodes from series one, this is about as good as it's been. It's like the high notes of half a season strung together into fifty minutes. Which weren't that high in the first place, mind you. But. Yeah. If it just gets better from here, it ought to get pretty good.

On its own, this episode is distinctly not-bad. And it's got a lot of really good moments. It also does a good job of re-pitching the show to anyone who skipped it the first time around.

And James Marsters is basically Captain Spike, yes. Which isn't unwelcome.

The show feels a hell of a lot like Angel now. You know when all of Angel's friends get pissed off at him for episodes at a time? Yeah, like that, sort of.
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[aderack]

Davies says a lot of interesting things. Amongst them, he cites the mandatory move to HD as one of the reasons for the break in 2009. And he says the changeover "will not happen while I'm there". He uses that phrase over and over. So. I guess we can take it that the specials are the last thing he's doing?

Also.

[Harveyjames]

I'm sure you guys already know about this, but there's a Mark Lawson interview with Russel T. Davies on BBC4 which you can watch using the BBC iPlayer. www.bbc.co.uk

[Westacular]

I agree with most of that about the Torchwood premiere. I'm maybe a bit less positive, but I haven't had time to digest it yet. The episode's not bad, and seems to set a good direction.

I get your comparison with Angel, but Angel was never quite this ... manic. An episode of Angel would typically hold a certain tone for most of its duration, and be visibly deliberate about it. Torchwood still seems to be wildly swinging about, but that's in its greatly ridiculous nature.

Part of that impression may be due to difficulties understanding the dialog when they talk quickly; I had to pause and jump back 10 seconds several times in the episode to catch things. This probably made the episode seem faster and more frenetic than it actually was.


The first two episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (a title I will never type out in full again) were pretty good. I'm no huge fan of Terminator -- it's not that I don't like it; I was just never that into it -- but the series format seems to be working, and frequently quite smart, and they've set up a bunch of promising mysteries and elements that could lend the ongoing story a ton of momentum. The themes they seem to be developing -- the mother-son relationship, John's gradual coming of age under the shadow of his future-self, fitting into a slightly foreign world -- are a fresh perspective, and look like they'll be handled well. Hard to say much, because that stuff is on a slow burn.

The series totally ignores Terminator 3, which is fine, because trying to be consistent with that would make the series impossible. Still, it borrows a couple ideas. Some casual thought doesn't reveal any terrible lapses in the show's logic or timelines. The people from the future are from a different future than the original -- which they know, thanks to their future-John -- and now our heroes are trying to avert the new judgment day. The apparent ages of the characters at the start of the show (in 1999) are within the right ballpark of being consistent with the first movies.

The show also makes more inventive use of time travel than just "send a good guy and a bad guy back in time, to the same time, to fight".

Summer Glau's character is left largely a mystery. Nobody but herself seems to know what she is or what she's capable of, and she's not saying much, but what she does say hints at a possibly intimate relationship with future-John. Which makes things weird, but in a good way.

[elvis.shrugged]

I thought Torchwood was pretty decent. Entertaining and manic, as usual. It had a tighter feel than most of last season. I'm going to keep watching it through the season, I think.

[aderack]

It's just, it strikes me as pretty disposable, rather like series one. I enjoyed it when it was on; rewatching it seems like a waste of time. This is compared with Who, where in most cases multiple views are almost mandatory to get all the meaning.

Yeah, Angel is pretty static. There are usually only a couple of sets per episode, and most of the running time is taken up by talking. I guess this is like Action Angel? The overall tone and dynamics are Angely; it's just the structure and pacing and attention span that are off.

I've watched the first two Terminator movies; I remember being impressed with the first one, especially for the time it was made, and greatly enjoying the second. The third looked... kind of the way that Silent Hill V is looking. I honestly can't imagine getting too obsessed over Terminator, but maybe it'll be more interesting as a long-form work? This wouldn't be the first time that a TV show based on a movie surpassed the movie in execution. Buffy, Stargate (apparently!), even Weird Science. And. Yeah, sounds like it's off to a decent start.

Some more curious Davies comments here. As usual, disregard the site's spin as it's just strange.
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[Ashura]

I liked it a lot. It was just... so much more upbeat than the rest of Torchwood has been. I would actually watch it again.

The trailer at the end was good as well, and it looks like we'll see John Hart again. It's also cool to see some Martha Jones in there. Aderack, do we know the breakdown of Torchwood episodes at all?

[aderack]

Sort of. The first half of the season, up to Martha's introduction. (I like the short cue of her theme, in the trailer.)

# 2.01 - Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
# 2.02 - Sleeper
# 2.03 - To the Last Man
# 2.04 - Meat (by Cath Tregana)
# 2.05 - Adam
# 2.06 - Reset (Martha joins)

After that, it's all a blank. The second episode is a Tosh one. There are some plot and haracter hints for further episodes. 11, for instance, is a double-banked one with Gwen on her own. There's a wedding with her and Rhys. Martha leaves again after episode 8.

Something else I'll say about yesterday's episode is that there's a lot more TO it than most of the series one episodes. Note that the Rift is actually involved! For the first time outside of a Cath Tregana episode or the finale! And notice that they're exploring its dynamics a bit -- the sudden time leap. That's probably setting up something. And just in its own right, it's curious. A little lateral twist, the likes of which we didn't really see in series one.

First mention of the Time Agency since The Doctor Dances. Lots of other little continuity cues, going both forward and back. Apparently there's a "Private Gray" somewhere in Who 4, which might have something to do with Jack's reappearance there?

Eve Myles is tolerable here despite Gwen still being an irritating character, by the sheer strength of her acting. I was often quite impressed with her decisions.

I was kind of disappointed that we never saw Jack pop himself back into shape after his fall.

EDIT: Added the bit about MEAT. I just realized that Ms. Tregana is basically the Moffat of Torchwood. Wouldn't be interesting if she took over after Chibnall!
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[Ashura]

Interesting.

Yeah, Davies mentioned episode 11 is essentially Gwen investigating disappearances/murders of children? One of the darkest episodes ever?

Also, again, looks like John Hart comes back.

Also also, Torchwood looks really brilliant in HD.

[aderack]

I have not seen it in such!
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[Ashura]

Hmmmm.

Also, I concur completely about what you said re: Law & Order feeling completely new. I like the new cop, and I like the interplay between McCoy and Cutter. There also seems to be some actual character development going on between Green and Lupo re: His Sister in Law /Ex Girlfriend.

She was oddly, oddly, oddly strange in the first episode.

[Harveyjames]

There's a drama series on ITV about a man who is a television screenwriter, followed immediately by the actual soap he has supposedly written. As you might expect, the events of the first show bleed into the second. I haven't seen it, but as premises go I think that idea is genius.

[aderack]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDDOMD7VPhE

Notice the accent.
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[aderack]

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[Westacular]

I bet his mother is really proud of her handiwork

[Westacular]

... why couldn't they just chop her arm off?

[aderack]

Yeah, I was expecting that. Maybe it was more complicated?

Wait, that comment could refer to either of the past two episodes. I assume you mean today's?

Though it's not inspiring, exactly, and the terrorism thing is a bit on-the-nose, this right here is pretty much how I was expecting from the start that the average Torchwood episode would be written. It's generally smart, well written, confident. It tries and mostly manages to avoid or lampshade cliche. A more genuinely adult premise and execution than usual. And there's just this overall sense that the show knows what it is and what it's doing, that was rarely present in the previous series.

This feels like A Torchwood Episode. Like one of the few things so far that has actually been written for this series in its own right. The Cath Tregana episodes are the other bbig ones in this category. So. Yeah. It impresses me on that level. I'm also interested that they seem to be setting up all of this mythology up at the front here. First Captain John and this "Gray" business and the closure of the Time Agency (echoes of the Doctor). Then this sleeper stuff, which is very X-Filey and I hope they don't focus on too much. If they keep introducing stuff at this rate, they should be at a full bolt by the time Who 4 kicks off.

Yeah, this wasn't awkward at all.

Though... The Man Who Eats Badgers?

EDIT: This is a pretty astute writeup. I will say that they're in danger of devolving Ianto into the wisecracking sidekick, if they're not careful. The reason his dry humor stood out so much in series one was that it was such a refreshing and unexpected bit of punctuation.
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[aderack]

I've noticed that my fondness for different eras of the show can be represented pretty well by the difference between the percentage of stories I actively like and that of those that I actively dislike. Those that don't much bother me just pad out the space in between.

Ignoring McGann, that puts Eccleston way in front. Then after a big leap (due to indifference toward a lot of their stories) come McCoy, Troughton, and Hartnell, with the latter two essentially equal and McCoy a little way ahead. Then there's another dip, and Tennant. Colin Baker comes a little after. Then another dip, and Pertwee. Then way down and you get Davison and Tom Baker.

I'll note that I like Pertwee's era a lot more after having seen the entire thing. It actually hangs together pretty well.

This doesn't take into account my fondness for the portrayal of the Doctor, which might make for some interesting algebra.

I'm just mentioning this because it's interesting to see break down the psychology of these things.

The actual figures are here, if anyone cares:

Eccleston: 90
McCoy: 58
Troughton: 48
Hartnell: 48
Tennant: 33
Colin Baker: 28
Pertwee: 14
Davison: 5
Tom Baker: 5

Whoa, god, why am I doing this instead of working?
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[Westacular]

...you're now only asking that?


To their credit, Ianto's wisecracking has been quite good so far this year. It is a welcome and effective form of comedy relief, and it's not like he's only being used for that. That linked review states it well. Still, I think I see what you mean: we could be in a "Gimli in Fellowship" sort of situation.

Yeah, this was a not-bad episode. I like your take that this was A Torchwood Episode. I didn't really care about Beth or anyone, but at the same time, the episode didn't do anything dramatically wrong, which says something... although there was an awkward U-turn in logic around when they realized others had been "activated". And the chop-off-her-arm thing.

What really would have improved the episode is a bit more clarity on the activating/implant/etc stuff; they played too fast and loose for the last third. Either that or introduce it with a bit less certainty in the first half.

[aderack]

Yeah, it's just that Ianto got a little over-caffeinated today. The "electric chair" moment was... sort of weird, for instance. That's more like series one Owen. Or Who Jack.

Speaking of Owen... plants? I like the way Gorman is playing his personality shift. It carries on from the way Owen was in the last part of the last episode of the previous series. Still an innate ass, but shocked into recognition of that and an interest in tempering it lest he face further alienation.

I wasn't sure quite what was going on with the aliens, either. I get the feeling they'll go into more detail later. Last season I wouldn't have trusted the idea of an ongoing mystery. After this episode, though... hey, maybe this could work. I like that most of them just walked away somewhere, and they're still out there.

I think I'm starting to see what they meant, that they couldn't fit Bilis Manger into this series. Amongst these guys and Spike and the Martha/UNIT business and the character stuff (Rhys learning about Torchwood, wedding) and whatever else is going on (that is, big-huge series endy stuff), it looks like they've got their hands full this time.

There's a quote from Cath Tregana somewhere. Apparently her first episode here, titled "Meat", is an action run-around. She decided to do that before she got pigeon-holed as the girly romantic writer.

Next week's episode is by Helen Raynor. Cross your fingers!

Oh, the dude who wrote "Sleeper" is also behind Who 4.3, the Pompeii episode. Considering that's purported to be a big ethical debate thing, I think he's shown some promise here.
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[Harveyjames]

I saw torchwood last might, it was bobbins

I heard there was more rumpy-pumpy in it.

i'm sorry I don't have anything more worthwhile to contribute.