Doctor Who

[Benji]

1 hour ago, New Year New Srar! said:

I caught up last night. Bill is 10 billion times better than Clara. Clara was dragging the show down so badly and Bill is making it fun again

It still irks me that she was so bad and yet was the longest running companion of "New" Who. It wasn't like people couldn't put their finger on it, the writing was bad, but that character made it so much worse and most people said as much.

[Benji]

Okay episode, probably the weakest of them so far and the "twist" was obvious from about the very first second. Never a big fan of the space station style episodes of new Who, outside of The Beast Below duology, they never seem to hit the right notes for me.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Benji

[Rocky]

Every time I see a space station episode, I think it's going to be the Vashta Nerada... I don't know why though.

[Skummy]

Not a bad episode, still, so I'm still enjoying this series, but probably the least interesting/memorable episode so far. I get that a Space Station fits the "enclosed space, nowhere to run" requirements for a zombie story, but it feels like we've seen this a thousand times before. "Last enclaves of humanity, on a space station somewhere in the future" is a set-piece I could do with them not revisiting again any time soon. It just seems like the dullest sci-fi setting imaginable.

Capaldi's still great, though, Bill's brilliant, and even Matt Lucas was okay in this one.

[DFF]

I enjoyed the episode for what it was.

As for Capaldi's regeneration, which we know is coming, I have a couple of theories:

 

Spoiler

1. The Doctor does not get his eye back at all, and ends up deciding he needs to regenerate to see again.

or.

2. The next episode's blurb talks of a book that leads to the death of all that read it. I'm wondering if this factors in to the Doc's regeneration (something slowly kills him).

 

[GhostMachine]

DFF....

 

We're probably going to get a false regeneration this season. In fact, I'm sure of it due to some pictures that are out there. (I can elaborate if you want, but I don't have links to those pictures at the moment.)

Eleven did use regeneration energy to fix River Song's broken wrist. Maybe Twelve stays blind for a bit, but eventually does it to fix his eyesight? I cannot believe they'd have him staying blind until the Christmas special.

Edited May 15, 2017 by GhostMachine

[Benji]

In a universe full of the fantastical, the only way to restore his sight is surely not through regeneration? I mean, we basically have limited versions of that technology right here and now on earth.

[DFF]

16 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

DFF....

  Hide contents

We're probably going to get a false regeneration this season. In fact, I'm sure of it due to some pictures that are out there. (I can elaborate if you want, but I don't have links to those pictures at the moment.)

Eleven did use regeneration energy to fix River Song's broken wrist. Maybe Twelve stays blind for a bit, but eventually does it to fix his eyesight? I cannot believe they'd have him staying blind until the Christmas special.

@GhostMachine

Spoiler

I recall seeing a clip of the Doctor sort of bracing himself against a panel or something, and what looks to be regeneration glow emanating from his hand.

 

[GhostMachine]

On 5/16/2017 at 04:33, DFF said:

@GhostMachine

  Hide contents

I recall seeing a clip of the Doctor sort of bracing himself against a panel or something, and what looks to be regeneration glow emanating from his hand.

 

 

Yes, and he looks to be wearing his usual outfit in that, if I remember right. There are a couple of pics out there from a scene where he's wearing something similar to the dark red jacket outfit and in full on regeneration mode (ie, hands and head glowing), and another pic from the same scene showing him smiling. 

I'm assuming the `full on regeneration' scene is the false regeneration.

Edited May 17, 2017 by GhostMachine

[TheWho87]

David Tennant and Billie Piper reunite for Doctor Who audio dramas

In other news Michelle Gomez announced she is leaving the show along with Capaldi and Moffatt.

[DFF]

Yeah, I suspected Gomez might leave. She did say she was open to a one-shot type appearance down the line.

[Benji]

Is it really leaving if you just pop in once or twice a season and are still open to doing so?

[GhostMachine]

The Tennant-Piper audio dramas reunion doesn't mean much to me. I can't afford to buy the shows, and Rose is my second least favorite NuWho companion, after Clara.

[TheWho87]

8 minutes ago, GhostMachine said:

The Tennant-Piper audio dramas reunion doesn't mean much to me. I can't afford to buy the shows, and Rose is my second least favorite NuWho companion, after Clara.

Does that include that prick with a hole in his head?

[GhostMachine]

No, because I wasn't counting one-shot companions. I assume you mean Adam?

[Naitch]

Rose was pretty terrible.

Bill is already my favourite 21st century companion, which is excellent because its probably also been the strongest season so far and I was worried that she'd be terrible after I watched the very first trailer.

[Benji]

10 hours ago, Naitch said:

Rose was pretty terrible.

Bill is already my favourite 21st century companion, which is excellent because its probably also been the strongest season so far and I was worried that she'd be terrible after I watched the very first trailer.

Rose was good. She was what the show needed at the time - a soundboard for new viewers. She had personality and was both damsel in distress and smart enough to help when the story needed it.

I like Bill, but she's still got Donna, Wilf, Amy, Rory, and Jack (in that order) to beat.

[Naitch]

@Benji For me, every RTD era companion is bogged down by the fact that I really disliked the direction of the show at the time, made a little weirder by Torchwood being brilliant. It wasn't until Moffat took over that I felt I could relate the show to the original series and actually enjoy it. Before that it felt like a chore watching it for the sake of being a pre-revival fan.

Its possible that Bill will later slip back below Jack and Rory in my estimations but so far she seems to have a good trajectory and I can't see her falling lower than that.

[Benji]

I think Bill could make it, but right now I don't know what her arc is. Presumably there's something with her mum going to happen, but they're being very coy about that.

[Skummy]

27 minutes ago, Benji said:

I think Bill could make it, but right now I don't know what her arc is. Presumably there's something with her mum going to happen, but they're being very coy about that.

Oh God, I hope not - I hadn't thought of that, but it's so obvious now that you mention it. I don't want Bill to even have an "arc". Clara and Amy were both, at some point or another, The Most Important Person In The Universe and the crux of everything going on, and that's the exact opposite of what the companion should be, for me.

The companion is an audience surrogate, and I think Bill does brilliantly at that - she asks the right questions, reacts with just enough genre savvy, and gives Capaldi a platform to gleefully explain how everything works, and the pleasure he takes in that performance is so evident; it's something he never had chance to do with Clara, and as a lifelong Doctor Who fan he must relish really being the Doctor in those moments.

I was worried in the first episode, when Bill asked if they would ever meet the girl with a star in her eye again - I thought we'd have another Clara or Me on our hands, with a magical girl popping up all over the timeline and no satisfactory pay-off. I've been pleasantly surprised by this series moving away from the Moffat high concept story arcs and back to a more RTD-like approach of each story being self-contained, with the Big Bad only played up at the beginning or end. "The Vault" is like a throwback to Bad Wolf or Vote Saxon, more than anything Moffat has written.

 

39 minutes ago, Naitch said:

@Benji For me, every RTD era companion is bogged down by the fact that I really disliked the direction of the show at the time, made a little weirder by Torchwood being brilliant. It wasn't until Moffat took over that I felt I could relate the show to the original series and actually enjoy it. Before that it felt like a chore watching it for the sake of being a pre-revival fan.

I agree here. Moffat has made some big mis-steps and has been pretty flawed, but I would take him at all but his Robot of Sherwood worst over all but RTD's very best. The direction under RTD never appealed to me, and it always just felt too camp and cheap, and not in an endearing way. Not to mention RTD writing the Doctor as far too much of a Messianic figure, hand-waving continuity with The Time War, and being utterly incapable of writing a pay-off to a two-parter; he was superb at writing the first half, and ending on a cliffhanger, and then appalling at reaching a satisfactory conclusion. Moffat at his worst never wrote as bad a "I do believe in fairies, I do I do I do!" deus ex machina as RTD did.

I think a large part of my problem with Rose is, like Naitch, she was so inexorably tied up in the direction and style of the show at the time, and that did nothing for me - especially with Eccleston. I get that the show was still a risk, and no one was sure how much they could get away with in terms of tying it in to the original series, but it just never appealed to me personally at the time. She's not a very interesting character, and only gets lauded as so great because, for a lot of viewers, she was their first companion. I probably rate Ace a little higher than she deserves for the same reason. I always tend to look unfavourably on any companion written as a love interest, too.

Also, Rose is tied up in one of my least favourite Doctor Who moments ever. I watched the first couple of episodes of New Who and hated it, so skipped until the Dalek episode. I liked the idea of the museum, loved that there was a Cyberman head in there before we'd ever seen them in the series, and figured this was the start of them acknowledging the show's history, and in a reasonably subtle way. Instead, it was one of the most appalling episodes I've seen. Aside from introducing the Dalek only to all but immediately kill its credibility as a scary monster with, "I just want to see sunlight", and aside from the Dalek giving a "we're not so different, you and I" speech to the Doctor that goes completely over his head, only for it to work perfectly when Rose says it later on, it had one scene that I just fucking hated, I was practically shouting at the TV at the time.

Rose runs up a flight of stairs to escape the Dalek. She then shouts down at it, mocking it for not being able to climb stairs. Two things wrong with that - Rose has never seen a Dalek before, so has no idea about them not being able to climb stairs, and Daleks had been able to fly/hover since the '80s. So it doesn't make sense as a bit of in-character continuity on two levels - either Rose has never seen or heard of one, so "it can't climb stairs" would be a bizarre conclusion to jump to, or she's at least heard of them through stories from the Doctor, who has inexplicably forgotten that they developed the ability to fly, despite the fact that he's just spent hundred of years in the Time War fighting them - and it doesn't even make sense as a bit of fan-service, because it ignores the stories in the '80s. It's a blatant cheap line and one instance of the "audience surrogate" approach being a mis-step, for me.

 

Anyway, as for favourite new Who companions, Wilf and Rory are easily my top two, though Bill's making a good case to slip into the top three so long as they don't ruin her with a big reveal that she's anything other than an ordinary modern-day student.