OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY: nu-Who season 8

OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY: nu-Who season 8

but then it was well-paced and framed

nb in contrast with all of the following bits of fight scene

watched The Krotons ep 1 last night (up on iView this week, Australian readers): Jamie slowly arm-wrestling a dude with an axe in real time >>> the Paternoster gang being trapped in a circle of robots with sword-wrists for about ten minutes, their time, while not really doing anything

I thought that I'd seen the Silurians the species that Vastra comes from in much earlier episodes.
They date back to Jon Pertwee days, though they look pretty different at that point.
JUst come across links to the Peter Davison episode I refer to earlier in the thread, it's called Warlords of the Deep and it seems they economised greatly on the way they portrayed the aliens. This is the Silurians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwExauvltnM

and this is the Myrca the creature I said looked like a hobby horse, I meant as in morris dancing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUCSlb-jhsU
you have to wait about a minute into the clip though but it is shortly followed by some of the least convincing martial arts i've ever seen.

That second clip is one of my favorite Doctor Who scenes of all time.

Warriors of the Deep is the earliest Who story I can remember watching on first broadcast (I would've been five) and I thought it was incredible so I've avoided watching it again ever since.

The Myrka is effectively frightening to a five year-old I can tell you.

My other most fondly remembered serial from childhood is Paradise Towers, haha. Which I have rewatched.

Oh god, I remember when that scene with the Myrka was broadcast - my brother and me looked at each other and laughed for a full minute, it seemed. He was a Who sceptic and would regularly rib me about the crappy monsters and effects, but even I had to laugh at that.

How old were you?

Holy shit at karate vs. Myrka, I laughed so hard!

Warriors of the Deep is alternately hilarious and GRIM AS ALL FUCK, I love it so much.

I liked Paradise Towers at the time too. I was pretty easy to please.

"I tried to read that, but it's still confusing as hell... The Valeyard is the Doctor's future incarnation, but he still tries to get the Doctor executed? Why would he want that, wouldn't he'd stop existing too when the Doctor dies, since the Doctor would never have the chance to regenerate into him?"

well, we said it wasn't well thought out or well done.

Paradise Towers is a secretly amazing story weighed down by a couple of bizarre, nonsensical production choices IMO. I was shocked at not only how well it held up when I rewatched it a few years ago, but also by how much better it was than things like The Happiness Patrol and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

correct, except Greatest Show is one of the most secretly amazing stories in the series' history

Bin POLLer: Red Kangs Vs Blue Kangs POO

I like Greatest Show too. I'm pretty fond of McCoy's stretch, even the bad stories, since they were the first ones I saw on first-run

That makes me feel old. I grew up watching Tom Baker and Peter Davison. By the time McCoy got the gig I had pretty much stopped watching.

I'm not sure how much of that later stuff I'd seen prior to downloading and watching the whole lot through about 5 years ago. I know I saw Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker as a kid. Think I saw some of the davison at least.
I may have watched bits of McCoy & the 2nd Baker. Can't remember.
Do remember that I had seen Sylvester McCoy on stage at Stratford when I was a kid, in a play called An Italian Straw Hat the poster for which I had up on my wall for a while after.
Also knew Davison from It Shouldn't Happen To A Vet.

But Tom Baker is still a pretty definitive Doctor. His autobio Who On Earth Is Tom Baker is a really really good read too.

he is oogly

I have a stupid question- If Clara The Impossible Girl has been in every phase of the Doctor's life, why does she have such a hard time reconciling how he is after regeneration? Did she get her memory wiped after the 50th anniversary show? I can't remember.

She vaguely remembers being fragmented through the Doctor's timeline but not really; they basically handwaved past this in 11th's last story.

If we care to fanwank this: she basically splintered into different times, and each of the splinters has its own discrete consciousness that isn't shared among the others, so that when she "returns" to the normal timeline, she doesn't have access to the memories of the splinters.

got it. I knew it was a handwave, just couldn't remember the circumstances. It got pretty jumbled as these things tend to do.

A simpler answer is "shitty writing".

I feel like you're not getting into the proper spirit of the Whoniverse

(says the dude who keeps making fun of various McCoy stories)

wibbly-wobbly hacky-lazy

It's also a resigned shake of the head because I was thinking about pre-showrunner Moffatt stories and quite how enjoyable and well-plotted they would be and now he just repeatedly gets himself tied up in these stupid and pointless narrative knots.

does the doctor usually have memory loss after regeneration? his confusion seemed out of place but wasn't sure if there was a precendent for it

I think so, to some degree. Think there certainly was with Matt Smith who was trying to work out pretty much everything in 7 year old Amy's house including do fish fingers go with custard.

& David Tennant had the Christmas invasion where he spends most of the episode sick in bed at the Tyler's place.

Think pre gap doctors all had at least one scene where they were trying to work out who they were through their wardrobe etc. I know Tom baker has a long scene where he tries on a load of different outfits with various levels of reality including Pierrot and viking outfits.
i've just seen a scene where McCoy does something similar. I watched the potted histories of the Doctors that were on BBC America 5 days before the Capaldi debut.

& Ecclestone is checking out his face in various reflections apparently getting used to it despite other indications that he has been in that regeneration for a while I think.

This regeneration was probably more traumatic anyway since he wasn't expecting to get one. Doesn't he just get given the power to do so after he's pretty much died of old age and other complicatons?

A lot of this makes more sense when you think that these introducing-the-doctor stories are really just to hold the hands of the audience through the trauma. Matt was so popular (he doubled the audience of the show) that they reeeeeeally needed to acknowledge that people were going to get whiplash - hence opening the show with familiar characters, characters being the voice of the audience, etc etc

I am totally down with and loving Capaldi but I'm thinking Moff needs to take off - that's where my tiredness comes from watching the show sometimes. There are way too many things that feel like he's parodying himself

Most obvious handholding being the phone call - 'please keep our ratings high and continue to love us!'

matt dc otm; who apologists go to insane lengths to justify the bad decisions that plague a lot of this writing

So Matt doubled the audience, but Moffat needs to go...

the phone call was actually a nice touch, had a feeling he'd pop up somehow but that was done very well.

felt desperate to me, but I was kinda done with Smith

It was sweet within the scene, a lovely cap on the themes of acceptance of change through the episode, a lovely mini-echo of the thrill of the cameo at the end of the 50th, and a fun, tiny example of Moffatt’s interest in actually using time travel for various storytelling possibilities, as exercised since Continuity Errors.

This is one of the only times the show has ever even had the opportunity to do a multi-Doctor appearance on a small scale, due to continuity of creative personnel*, which makes it not only worth taking the chance, but exciting that they kept it a surprise for viewers.

It’s also going to play really differently for all future viewers of Who, who’ll be running directly from the Trenzalore episode into this on their streaming marathons – it’s not like the past, where it has been six months or more between the previous Doctor’s last episode and the new one’s first, and you’d never see the earlier episode again. It’ll play more like closure of the hand-over, especially given the uncharacteristically abrupt regeneration itself.

*TOO LONG DON'T READ but since it occurred to me:

Wiles had actually had Hartnell written out in the middle of a four-parter, before higher-ups balked and gave Hartnell a contract extension, making both Wiles (producer) and Tosh (script editor) quit. It only took replacement producer Lloyd one story into the next season before writing him out permanently.

All hands changed between Spearhead and Silurians, along with the setting, the colour, and the cast (and Sherwin had been trying to leave for months anyway; Bryant had been almost-taking over for months, but got sent with him to a new assignment); there was a two-month gap in production before the new crew started filming again, but they became the most stable creative team in the show’s history, and came up with the idea of multi-Doctoring for the 10th anniversary. They (Letts/Dicks) then (on purpose this time) left after Tom’s first story.

Bidmead, script editor of Tom’s last season, wrote the first of Davison’s, but wasn’t commissioned to do so until months after he’d left – and they made that one after making the subsequent THREE MONTHS’ worth of episodes anyway. That whole season went through three script editors, four if you count JNT making commissions and creating K-9 & Company himself.

Davison -> Colin was the first time, 21 years into the series, where the producer and script editor carried on across a change in Doctors for more than one transitional story, and it was only five months after The Five Doctors. And TBF, Saward (I think? it’s not the sort of thing Holmes cared about) did put the past companions, even wee dead Adric and doofy old Kamelion, into Davison’s dying hallucinations.

Saward quit explosively an episode before the end of the Trial, story-deaf JNT began commissioning stories again, Colin was fired so hard he refused to even shoot a regeneration, let alone consider multi-Doctor crossovering, and Cartmel’s approach once he took over after McCoy’s first story was about changing the style, tone, and considerations of the series, not looking back.

Obv nobody carried on in the 8-year and 1-ocean gaps before and after McGann.

RTD and Julie stayed in place for Ecclestone -> Tennant, the second instance in 43 years, at a time when the actor refused to do anything at all with the show, and they needed to be moving ahead anyway.

And every single senior production person, and 100% of the cast, changed between Tennant and Smith, though Moffatt tried to convince Tennant into staying on a year.

a fun, tiny example of Moffatt’s interest in actually using time travel for various storytelling possibilities, as exercised since Continuity Errors.

This is one of the only times the show has ever even had the opportunity to do a multi-Doctor appearance on a small scale, due to continuity of creative personnel*, which makes it not only worth taking the chance, but exciting that they kept it a surprise for viewers.

I totally agree with this... I loved Smith, and I didn't know he was gonna be in this, so it was indeed a pleasant surprise. And given that the Doctor's main thing is that he's an ages-old time traveller, in-universe it feels a bit strange that he doesn't come into contact with his past or future selves more often. And I liked the idea that a contact like this doesn't have to be something huge that's advertised well in advance, it can be small and low-key like here.

IMO, a great idea for an episode would be that the Doctor casually meets some strange person from the future... And later on, when the Doctor regenerates, we find out that person was the Doctor's incarnation. Since he keeps on meeting his past incarnations, there's no reason why shouldn't occasionally meet future ones too. Though of course pulling off a trick like this would mean they'd have to keep the casting of the next Doctor a secret, which probably isn't possible?

Though if the Roman guy Capaldi played in the Pompeii episode turns out to be the Doctor in disguise, I guess they would've sorta done this, in a retconnish way... In the old-Who era, did any of the Doctor actors appear in some other role before they were cast as him?

Yep, the Sixth played a Time Lord guard in a story with the Fifth.

Colin Baker appears in uniform on Gallifrey before he becomes the Doctor. I think he's a Palace Guard officer or something.

Is there any link between the characters played by the old & young Bernard Cribbins? Or is the young one just in a film so not count?

Ah. That's easy. Just waggle his tail.

Thanks for the info! I guess in those cases they didn't try to explain why some random character looked like the future Doctor, like they're doing now with Capaldi?

(xpost)

Well, now his probe circuit's jammed.

T - nope. However, in the late 1970s, Time Lady companion Romana regenerated at the start of a new season, "trying on" a series of bodies before settling in the new actress' -- who had appeared in the last story the previous year. So there's precedent there!

I hope they don't do any more than the couple of references in Deep Breath - it was just enough imo.

Is there any link between the characters played by the old & young Bernard Cribbins? Or is the young one just in a film so not count?

Philip Madoc appeared in the same film (1966), The Krotons (1968), The War Games (1969), The Brain Of Morbius (1976), and The Power Of Kroll (1978). He played different characters, from different planets, in each.

I as actually wondering when I wrote that if they were connected at all. I guess that means no.

I hope they don't do any more than the couple of references in Deep Breath - it was just enough imo.

Wasn't the story that Davies had some explanation why the Pompeii guy and the guy Capaldi played in Torchwood look the same? And Moffatt asked him if the explanation still works for the Doctor looking the same, and Davies said it does. So it sound like we're going to get that explanation.

I don't think the references in Deep Breath were enough, the Doctor says he chose that particular face to remind himself of something, but it's still unclear what that something is. TBH I don't think there was any need to explain why he looks like another character (since using the same actors in different roles happens all the time on TV), but now that they've decided to hint that there is a some mysterious reason for it, they do owe us the full story.

Time Lady companion Romana regenerated at the start of a new season, "trying on" a series of bodies before settling in the new actress' -- who had appeared in the last story the previous year. So there's precedent there!

This is interesting! Was there any plot-specific reason why she chose that particular body, or did they just like the actress?

What the Doctor seemed to be saying in "Deep Breath" was that he (perhaps unconsciously?) figured out something important, and he chose Capaldi's face so he could make the new incarnation remember what that important thing was. Which seems like an pointlessly complex of conveying messages from one incarnation to another, why not just leave a post-it note on the TARDIS's wall or something?