Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

Yep, that.

it's "fanservice" of the non-sexual variety, but good fanservice

Ah, right, sorry!

Lots of love for his 80s IPC comics styling too

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_UXAS_nP2y/

Halfway through, here's the list for the Human Nature tweeting, with Paul Cornell, plus director Charles Palmer and spooky little ballon girl actor Lor mostly going "ooh look at that": https://twitter.com/i/lists/1253615527408402432

from the last rewatch: a new prequel story/reading by Cornell, and a likewise new sequel short

NEXT TWEETALONG is "Dalek" at 7pm UK time / 11am West coast US time today, on the 15th anniversary of broadcast.

Writer Rob Shearman, Dalek voice Nick Briggs, and Dalek driver Barnaby Edwards will be tweeting on hashtag #TheMetaltron

Combo list for all three: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1255867279788605440?s=20

Ah, science fiction: predicting in 2005 that the next US President after 2012 would be a Democrat because "they're just so funny."

It's been known for a long time that the sixth draft of the Dalek script was internally called Absence Of The Daleks, and invented the Toclafane as a stand-in for the Daleks, at the point when Steven Moffat's mother-in-law was playing hardball with the BBC over the rights (a 2003-2005 from-the-beginning classic Who repeat on Australian TV had all the stories that even contained Dalek cameos pulled from the schedule after it started).

To commemorate the anniversary watchalong, Rob Shearman has now released some other excerpts of draft scripts getting around the rights issues.



Not in the above list, just playing along for fun, DWM writer Jonny Morris posted a thread of fun facts and notes based on the real multiple drafts that Shearman went through:

The creature inside is rather different from the Dalek mutants seen in The Five Doctors (1983), Resurrection Of The Daleks (1984) and Revelation Of The Daleks (1985) but it is fairly similar to the blob glimpsed in The Power Of The Daleks. pic.twitter.com/6dCHjoCOgd

— Jonny Morris (@jonnymorris1973) April 30, 2020

And Mr Shearman is doing another tweetalong tomorrow: the MR-James-y audio story mentioned above, The Chimes Of Midnight, will be free on Soundcloud to stream from 7pm UK / 11am PDT. Shearman and actress India Fisher will tweet commentary hashtagged #PlumPudding.

(The story is also on Spotify, for those with accounts.)

As predicted, these Big Finish cheapos are getting on my tits. Though Slavishly sticking to the 4-part format when you only have the plot for 2 is, to be fair, not unknown in TV Who.

All 3 of their personalities and writing styles in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/w9xzKojbQC

— Max Curtis (@MaxCCurtis) April 30, 2020

Sic, thanks for that Morris thread, that was very interesting. Now wondering if any Chibnall-era script has ever got past draft #2.

Next watchalong:

https://i.imgur.com/sebVkl5.jpg

The Girl In The Fireplace on Wednesday, with Steven Moffat and Sophia Myles tweeting. 7pm UK, 11am US west coast.

No word on any new material this time around - the rewatches seem to have been inspiring Moffatt generally, but adding anything to this story (on the 14th anniversary of TX! that's the distance between The Web Planet and The Invasion Of Time) would probably be diminishing to the original.

I like The Girl In The Fireplace less every time I watch it, partially because Madame de Pompadour is so much more interesting than The Doctor, Rose, or Mickey in it that the missed opportunity of her not joining the TARDIS crew crosses over from being the romantic underpinning of the story to becoming the primary dissatisfying emotion the story gives you; it's the polar opposite of Blink, where Sally's story comes to a satisfying conclusion and you walk away thinking her life has been improved by interacting with the Doctor rather than just disrupted. (It also helps that the monsters in Blink are better.)

clockwork robots are pretty dope but. and robots wearing masks is always a great budget saver in Who.

becoming the primary dissatisfying emotion the story gives you

Disappointment that Mme and the Doctor can't be together is intended though - you're meant to feel sadness or loss, not a neat admiration (iirc - have only rewatched it once).

Yeah, but the loss I feel is "I would rather watch a show about Madame de Pompadour"

There will be a new something posted after the rewatch, apparently. This list will have both tweeters in it, but after a quick squiz at Myles’ feed, there might be way more chaff than content if you use it.

RTD tweeting too, chock-full of facts.

Mini-sequel by Moffat and Myles, recorded in and for isolation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seNAqQ4gzn0

that's a good one

Next watchalong on Sunday: The Zygon Invasion at 7pm UK / 11 am leftern USA, The Zygon Inversion at 8pm BST / noon PDT.

Writer Peter Harness and Osgood / other Osgood actress Ingrid Oliver are both tweeting, & putting together a new mini-ep called The Zygon Isolation.

I didn't like that one at all, but curious to hear Harness talk about it.

I'm rewatching the RTD seasons after enjoying his Rose novelisation. I'd forgotten just how good the first Ecclestone season is - never bettered, really. It's just such a fun, diverse set of stories. Even the farting aliens one is better than I remembered.

I seem to recall Season 2 being a massive dropoff but maybe being age (mine and its) will improve it.

hey i don't do twitter or podcasts so i have no idea about anything about who fandom

i randomly ran across a video by this guy who seems to have a lot of views and whose content seems pretty interesting to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0q45-Puayk

is this josh snares guy a decent human being as far as anybody knows? thanks

I have seen him tweet a very little and watched half a video once and he did not appear to be a garbage human

btw tomorrow's watchalong is now going to be at 7.15 and 8.15, to show respect to the Prime Minister, who will be addressing the nation at 7pm.

I have seen him tweet a very little and watched half a video once and he did not appear to be a garbage human

― Elon's musk (sic)

good enough, thanks!

stay away from the harry's haunted house guy, he is an anti-sjw nut

thanks for the heads up. doesn't seem like the style of criticism i find very interesting, but if i do tend to run across it in future i will know to avoid!

I like Josh's documentary-style YT posts, he's big on the lost/as yet unrecovered classic episodes and has done quite a lot on that subject.

i devoured molesworth's book on the topic. these days i'm less interested in the actual episodes than its implications for history and empire. i am not sure i would have known about the turkish invasion of cyprus if not for "the reign of terror"!

took me a few days to catch up with Sunday's tweetalong: the new Zygon Isolation mini-ep was released as an intro, with Osgood and Osgood in a Zoom meeting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XhhdxTJbeY

and Harness' tweets included a variety of deleted script excerpts. Here's one which used exposition about The Day of The Doctor to bring the previous 3-D multi-Doctor anniversary special into proper canon:

Here's that bit: #TruthOrConsequences pic.twitter.com/Z5gJJBO7KN

— Peter Harness (@mrpeterharness) May 10, 2020

(The only telly Dr Who made by the BBC between 1989 and 2005 was a two-parter 30th anniversary story where Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Tom Baker and thirteen companions spanning 1963-89 were time-trapped into the setting of BBC soap opera Eastenders. It has never been repeated, and will never be released for sale.)

A good deletion.

^^ oops, Pertwee was in that too

More fun bits:

A UNIT gag that never made it in:

THE DOCTOR: Do you have a partner? Boyfriend, or -?

OSGOOD: (shakes head) You kind of give up on dating if you have anything to do with UNIT.#continuityobsession #TruthOrConsequences

— Peter Harness (@mrpeterharness) May 10, 2020

Here's Bonnie being rude about Scandinavia. #TruthOrConsequences pic.twitter.com/fohL0xw94L

— Peter Harness (@mrpeterharness) May 10, 2020

(Harness wrote Wallander.)

Rebecca Front's soldier was originally the Brigadier! From back in the days before the BBC was ruined by SJW agendas forcing them to recast traditionally male roles with black women.

Harness dressed as the Fourth Doctor. Harness dressed as the Seventh Doctor.

The "Doctor Funkenstein" reference has an extra joke hidden inside.

I was so busy looking for a dirty joke in the UNIT gag that I missed the actual joke

And after the episode commentaries, Harness posted several pitches he'd made for episodes before Moffat pitched him the Zygon story. Including a Meddling Monk story where he's listening to disco in his TARDIS, goes to 1917 to play "Ra-Ra-Rasputin" for the lols, accidentally buggers up human history, and has to regenerate into Rasputin to set things back on course.

The Meddler to be played by Matt Berry. When the pitch was rejected, Harness started a novelisation of it instead, which he also tweeted the first page of.

Haha! Thank you so much. Yes, maybe it'll happen one day. Every time he gets shot, poisoned or thrown in a river, he just has to sigh irritatedly and regenerate into himself again!

— Peter Harness (@mrpeterharness) May 11, 2020

i enjoy the idea of the meddling monk as the doctor who equivalent of the hamburglar

robble robble

:D

meddle meddle

next two tweetalongs are

Sunday 17th May: The Fires Of Pompeii, with writer James Moran and two Roman ladies tweeting. 7pm BST / 11am PDT, hashtag #VolcanoDay

Saturday 23rd May (the "half-anniversary" of Dr Who): An Adventure In Space And Time, with Gatiss and Sacha Dhawan tweeting. Same time, hashtag #London1963

I don't recall "pompeii" being very good. Mostly notable for the guest stars.

It’s mostly good for establishing Donna as the Doctor’s conscience

Not much to the content today, just the writer and actors having a nice time rmemebering, but here's an interesting tweet from Moran, and the new sequel mini-ep

You can thank Russell for the Welsh gags and the water pistol too - even though when he rewrites, he copies your style, it's BIZARRE but brilliant, feels like you've written it yourself in your sleep... #VolcanoDay

— James Moran (@jamesmoran) May 17, 2020

Added this week: Listen watchalong on Wednesday, usual times, with Moffat back at it again, plus director Douglas Mackinnon (who also did half of Jekyll, a bunch of other Who from 2008 to 2015, all of Good Omens, and won an Emmy for the Victorian Sherlock special).

https://i.imgur.com/5eMKA9R.jpg

A new thingy by Moffat online at 6pm UK time, another thingy (probably a comic) online after the ep, by James Peaty (dunno) and former DWM comic drawing bloke turned storyboard artist Mike Collins.

hard to believe Listen is an episode of the same show as The Ghost Monument (I had to look up the title of the latter)

Great ep, good tweets so far - in this list if people want to catch up later.

(BTW Amaz0n is usually making the single episodes free to purchase and "keep" on the day of the twootalongs - that's a $7.99 saving today, for some reason.)

The new Moffat piece was a Listen-themed poem.

Some highlights from the commentary:

Moffat:

Okay, the answer to the most regular question I get about Listen is ... "No, of course not. He was sitting IN FRONT of the lamp!" Honestly, you people!

https://i.imgur.com/T8D8JCx.jpg

Now I've probably said this before (I've said most things before) but I was missing the Russell days when I got to write a quirky one in the middle. So employed myself back into my old job!

And of course it was the cheap one (any minute now we'd be firing Cybers out of St Paul's) and I fancied doing one of those again. But here's the thing - I HAD TO CUT A WHOLE SCENE FOR THE BUDGET. Which I'm about to post.

one page, another page

Mackinnon, who is from Skye:

Peter would introduce me to new people on set as, “This is Douglas, who has won a competition in the West Highland Free Press to direct Doctor Who for a day.”

Moffat:

I know it's not the sort of thing you're supposed to admit, but I really love this episode.

Please note a fundamental Doctor Who rule - it is catastrophic for anyone to meet themselves unless we totally feel like it. This has been bothering me since the climax to Mawdryn Undead.

Somewhere or other I wrote a very good explanation for why Orson has that space suit. It was very convincing. I wish I could remember it.

Mackinnon:

During much of prep this was as far as the delivered script went. Steven assured me that we’d been to all the locations required already, and that there would be no surprises…

He said we might need a barn, that’s all. We went out looking at various barns in Wales.

I think I got the rest the day before the readthru. You’ll never guess how I felt when the script said we were on another planet… the last planet.

Moffat:

This was one of the few scripts - possibly the only one - which I started without knowing how it would finish. It felt like the kind of story where you need to FIND the ending. At a certain point, I KNEW we had to get under the Dr's bed.

You see, Clara gets it right. It's not catastrophic meeting yourself, it's embarrassing. Time Lords are such drama queens.

"Fear makes companions of all of us!" The very first time the Dr is nice to anyone in Dr Who, those are his words (we had to wait till ep 3.) Always loved the line, and the kindness that first emerged with it. This was my love letter to it.

And in fact, I misquoted the line. Hartnell says "of all of us" and Jenna says "of us all." Knew it was wrong, but couldn't let go of the way I'd misremembered it for so long. Like, was the (Director General of the BBC) gonna fine me cos I misquoted Hartnell? Drunk with power, I was.

Three years later, Capaldi gave Moffat a script page from Listen on their last day working together:

https://i.imgur.com/BmnPwfH.jpg

I think Listen is my favourite ep of post-2005 Who? Never really thought about it (what a poor fan) but I can't think of one I like more

‘hell bent’ for me

ballot poll

most underwhelming rewatch yet on Tuesday: The Rings Of Akhaten, with the director, a special effects blokess, and Murray Gold tweeting commentary. 8pm UK, noon US leftard coast.