Vamp

Its not Colin's fault that when he went through the hypderdimensional scoopaloop the polarity wasn't reversed and so the interdimension stabalisers weren't corrected to allow for the variable of the horizontal access.

Or to use a more technical term, timey wimey init.

That looks like something somebody might do for a comedy skit.

I know I've debated this on here before but I still think it'd be great if they were in the 50th somewhere. Even if its just something small. I know people have argued that they don't look the same but since that's a silly thing to worry about in Doctor Who of all things I still think there's every reason to get them in somewhere. Even if its just a case of the 11th Doctor dying on the floor, looking up and seeing faint images of some of his previous incarnations and them willing him on, you could either use inserts for the first three Doctors (they've shown they're willing to do that) and have the others aged because the Doctor's dying as a whole and so they all look older or just only have the living ones there. And then Matt gets up and whizzes off and the story goes on. Its not really hard to whizz up some balderdash for that. I mean this is a writer who's come up with the term "timey wimey" to explain almost anything. I just think it'd be a shame to not have them in there somewhere. Doctor Who's up its own arse quite oftenand if there's ever a day to not worry about it then the 50th will be it. And most of the reasons for not doing it, "the kids won't know who they are" or "they're old" or "they don't look the same" are mostly very silly. Its Who, if you can't explain why the Doctors look different than you're not really suited to writing it (and Moffat obviously can do it). And if you have a line that says they're the old Doctors then I don't think that's too hard for kids to get. In fact they'll probably just go "cool." Not doing it because it doesn't fit into the story's a fair reason not to do it I guess. Still seems like a wasted opportunity. And in that last Bond movie they managed to shoe horn in the old Aston Martin and it was awesome, didn't really make much sense, and I'm pretty sure everybody loved that. And that's "we're being serious now" Bond.

I dunno, sometimes I think its fun to just have a jolly old knees up.

Presumably this means we might be getting a teaser sometime soon too. Presuming they do a few teasers building into the trailer. Although the current rumour seems to be about webisodes or something. I'm taking that with a pinch of salt since that seems to be involve a rumour about Paul McGann being in them and that sounds silly. And I'm hoping that the rumours about John Hurt's character being an older version of the 8th Doctor arent' true because that seems a bit mean to poor old McGann.

The 'Bad Wolf' sign is interesting.

I know this is pretty off-topic... but does anyone remember the last game in the series that had a game mode where you had to beat the others in contention for a title, climb the title rankings and beat the champion which (I believe) unlocked the title to use in exhibition mode... if I'm not just making this up?

2010 maybe?

I'll take those 5 minute bits over the entire first half of Uncharted 3, though.

See the bit of Uncharted 3 that pissed me off was the the invincible shot gun guy on the deck of that sinking ship. I know that was a matter of timing and luck but it felt quite cheap.

1 had those rubbish transport bits though. Like the boat that you had to stop to shoot. I know that's realistic or whatever but it still felt fiddly and too stop-start.

Uncharted 3 suffers a it from their decision to make bits too hard. Uncharted work best with a bit of flow and there's bits that are really annoying and just take you out of it.

I don't think its gone downhill like others do though. Uncharted's amazing at the big set pieces, and the characters, at the feel, at the look and at the stunts, and I think there's few games thaqt challenge it on that. Although my opinion's skewed by the fact that I don't really play a lot of shooters because they tend to bore me to hell so I'm not comparing Uncharted's mechanics to other stuff so much. I still think the three games are some of the more interesting games on the PS3. I can think of few games this generation I had as much fun playing as I did Uncharted. And that goes for games like Red Dead Redemption that everybody rates. And consider that's what Uncharted aims for, being fun, I'd say its damn good.

Is that not a result of general sports AI shittiness? I've long since stopped playing football games but even the NHL games (I'm only up to 12 admtitedly) have annoying AI. I'll be the better team during a game with more shots, plenty of which the goalie makes astounding saves to stop, I'll trounce them physically, give up about three shots to the opposing team and they'll win from scoring a weak ass goal or getting a burst of speed and invicible status where I'm unable to stop them skating. Sport games just don't seem to be that well made.

What's a good adventure game on the PS3? I've played all the Uncharteds (and love them) and the Assassin Creeds (which are alright) and am currently going through my second playthrough of Skyrim but I'm looking for something else. Something that feels like a blockbuster adventure. Preferably something I can pick up on the cheaper side second hand.

The bit thing about the Hartnell era was the difference between what they had originally planned and what they unexpectedly achieved straight away with the Daleks. The early ideas knocked about certainly suggests they had different plans to what Who soon evolved into. They didn't really intend for it to be a monster of the week show and like Who says had intended for more educational approaches to their stories. Then the Daleks immediately caught everyone's attention. There's a few glimpses hereand there in the Hartnell era where you can see what they had intended.

Its quite funny to compare the original ideas with the Pertwee or Baker run.

Yes and no. I'd be surprised if people pick their favourite Doctor by the books. Their favourite stories possibly, but not their favourite Doctors since that depends so much on the portrayal. Possibly with audio I suppose.

You tend to find in these polls that Tennant, Baker and Troughton have large fan bases on account of Tennant being around at the start of the international explosion of New Who, Baker having such a long run and Troughton not having as many surviving episodes which cuts out a lot of the crap he might have done and giving him a better hit rate.

I know a lot of Doctor Who fans dislike it for being bombastic and overly sentimental but I liked End of Time and still do. There's some nuggets of gold in there. Wilf, the Doctor's consideration of regeneration, Wilf, RTD having the audacity to criticise gluttony on Christmas fucking Day, cynicism over 'feel good' political campaigns, cactus like aliens, Wilf, that goodbye sequence, Wilf, the "fuck it let's blow up the TARDIS" ending, the music, the church at the start. Some real good stuff there. Sometimes RTD's stories, especially this one, remind me a bit of the Happiness Patrol where there's all this glorious and wonderful campness, which is pretty much Who at its best, but with a real darkness and cynicism underneath.

I didn't mind the volume of enemies, but some of the situations you found them in was a tad silly, I agree.

I like the volume and the situations, because I see them as being part of the genre they're trying to recreate. Sort of like adventure serials where things just suddenly happen to make an excitign scene sometimes with little logic.

The big problem I had with Uncharted 3 were the cheap almost invincible bosses.

I'm not a fan of a lot of really long games. Some games seem to go on forever and a day. I'm fine with it in certain cases, Skyrim and the like should be epic and sprawling, but then you get games which are like the Nolan Batman films where you think "didn't this already end?"

There's nothing more retro than Brock Lesnar and John Cena.

Lesnar vs. Goldberg is coming up to 10 years ago, that's quite retro.

Solace wasn't too bad. And I surprisingly enjoyed the new Goldeneye. But this game was just an utter mess.

"You need to hack the console! Press Triangle to cycle your gadgets!"

".....my gadgets aren't cycling."

-ten minutes of furious button mashing passes-

"Oh. So you mean I have to pull my phone out THEN cycle."

--2 minutes later--

"You need to match the icons to hack faster"

".....okay, so how do I match the icons?"

-ten minutes of furious button mashing passes-

"Oh, L2 and R2 huh? Coulda said that or shown something."

This was the point I turned the PS3 off. I can't imagine it gets WORSE from here, but it's a long hope that it would get better.

Really? I played that game and explained it all pretty well. Its shit, don't get me wrong, but not really for that reason. There are many, many other reasons though. It feels like an incredibly lazy game to be honest. The gameplay's dreadful and the less said about the stealth bits the better.

There have been points where Matt's had to deliver the most overlywritten dialogue and done it masterfully and with great conviction. I'm thinking of that singing episode mainly, people talk about it being a great speech but without a great delivery I think it'd have fallen really, really flat.

But McCoy's in Happiness Patrol! Anybody involved with that mental genius can't be the worst of anything.

I'd rate Ecclestone highly because his performance was utterly perfect for the story they were trying to tell which is the most important thing, he was also always completely believable and I don't think many of the other actors to have played the Doctor could have done what he did, which was what was needed. There's a few who could have, but Ecclestone just had an incredible confidence, and quite rightly so, to just *be* the Doctor rather than try and act like the Doctor in his first and only series. To me without Ecclestone's performance you don't get the more adventurous performances of Tennant and Smith.

I've also not really had an issue with Moffat's writing and series direction for the most part - it's patchy, but I'll take bait-and-switch storytelling and constant mysteries over "everybody clap your hands" and "THE UNIVERSE IS IN PERIL!" RTD bollocks and the amount of blatant heartstrings pulling he played at.

Its funny you bring up RTD's yearly "the universe in peril" plot because I realised the other day that the new "the universe is in peril" is "the Doctor's going." I hadn't really realised to the reveal show when they started playing clips from Matt's era. He was nearly written out of the history of the universe once, and did a goodbye lap, he was dying, and did a goodbye lap and then he went to the end of his timeline which featured his friends and another goodbye to his wife. It feels like we've always been saying to Matt's Doctor. Makes me wonder where they're going to go with the regeneration. It'd be quite nice, after pretty much endless foreboding about his inevitable (not so inevitable) demise if it was just sudden. If after those times where he's had to prepare himself for his demise he just dies, suddenly and without warning.

I love Gaiman but there has been some prior examples of how he thinks in terms of gender, notably admitting that he believes books have genders. I'm not in the Gaiman is sexist camp, just pointing out that he does distinguish things in terms of male and female. Which, really, I think its quite hard not to as a writer, at least on an instinctive level. Perhaps its not a progressive thing to think but stories and characters do just feel male or female, due to the way our society is. Its difficult to get away from that.

I'm not sure I buy the whole "it wouldn't work as a woman narratively" argument. Moffat's on record as saying he thinks you shoudl write all characters the same and that the difference between them comes out in the performance anyway. And given this current doctor has been strongly affected by the women in his life, Amy leaving (I don't buy that he gave a jot about Rory) really knocked him through a loop and he stopped beign the Doctor he was. He's fallen in love and married River, and she's clearly had a great impact on his life in terms of opening himself up to another person both sexually and romantically. And because of the impact these strong women have had on his life I think it'd actually make sense narratively for him to regenerate into a woman. Just as it does for him to regenerate older.

I was a bit put off by the ending to be honest. I mean the shots looked impressive but it was a bit "things aren't as bad under my old mucker Dave's watch as the nasty people say" even if that wasn't the intention. And the "things aren't as bad as everyone pretends" message might have had more merit if that message hadn't been spread about so much by them. I'd have much rather they'd have done something silly.

The bus bit was the only good bit of the show really. Although it made me long for an episode where all three run their own individual bus services. I'm sure that'd be a logistical nightmare but it'd be fun.

I have the feeling that any feelings of being underwhelmed that someone might have probably weren't helped by the format of the show to be honest. And I suppose some of the hype about it being a "surprising" choice might not have helped, its good that they've broken away from the young and sexy mould but its still, when you think about it, quite a conventional choice. That's not by any means a criticism though, he's a damn good actor who's obviously passionate about the show. Moffat's got this thing about writing all Who's the same (I loved the fact that Capaldi referred to him as Doctor Who) so it'll be interesting to see if he does so with Capaldi.

As much as I'd have liked Ecclestone to do another series as I loved his portrayal of the Doctor, I think the fact that he only did only did one series really works well for introducing the show. He gets a pretty strong character arc and they manage to get the audience used to the idea of regeneration very early on. It just works quite well. In fact it works so well that its quite easy to believe that him leaving after a series was the plan all along.

I seem to remember also that, during a recent Press release, it stated this would be the Twelfth Incarnation of the Dr and that "time is running out for him"

Makes you wonder if they have an end game in sight and are using the 13 regenerations thing as gospel

Only if they're really, really stupid. Which they're not. They don't even need to write themselves around the 13 regenerations things really, despite people seeming to think they do for some reason, but they certainly won't decide to give up on the show because of it. Its proven that its an idea that can be rested and brought back later. They'll rest it at some point, inveitably, but they'll leave it for a return.