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The New Doctor Who

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:51 / 17.04.05

Kids like farts = I will have an episode where all the aliens fart. All. The. Time

Heh. Straight after last night's Who I watched Dreamcatcher. Hoh boy.

I loved Who this week- it was silly like Pertwee, with UNIT (like Pertwee)- personally I thought the balance of menace and slapstick was about right (although I have to admit I've never found farting that funny- I think I'm a prude when it comes to wind). And our first cliffhanger! (Though yes, the "next week" thing should be left to a separate trailer AFTER the programme if necessary at all- when I was a kid the Who music used to soundtrack everyone in the living room turning to each other and going "fucking hell! what do YOU reckon's gonna happen next then?" and arguing about it.)

19:40 / 17.04.05

On that (and off-topic, but quickly):

I think the preview of next weeks show is something that's slowly been weasling it's way on to our screens from American telly... and it's always baffled me why you'd have a preview follow right on from the end of the show before the credits even roll.

The worst offender being something like Sopranos, where each episode, while obviously part of a series, is supposed to work as a self-contained story in its own right, with its own distinct ambience and natural progression - its own beginning, middle and end points. Before you've had even a second to digest what you've just seen, you're assaulted by a machine gun sequence of disconnected miniscenes, effectively making you forget half of the episode they're glued to the end of. Imbecilic.

miss wonderstarr

20:57 / 17.04.05

I don't want to be pedantic but as the Doctor has travelled hither and yon through human history, how can he not know that on such a such a date in 2005, the Slitheen tried to invade Earth? It's like me in 2005 not knowing when the WTC was hit by two aeroplanes.

22:48 / 17.04.05

Because he's not an Earthling? Because, as covered last week, timelines aren't fixed things and can be altered?

If you're going to ask that of this week's, then you might as well ask it of virtually every Who story that there's ever been.

I'm sort of expecting that we'll get a mass mind-wipe of some kind at the end of this storyline, to tie things back into our recognisable reality. Although, the "one year into the future" thing probably makes that unnecessary anyway.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:57 / 18.04.05

Ace mentioned this in Remembrance of the Daleks, if the Daleks invaded in the 60s surely she would have heard of it growing up in the 70s and 80s, to which the Doctor replied something like: "Do you remember the Auton invasion, yetis in the underground or the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster? Your species has the most amazing talent for self-deception matched only by it's ingenuity in trying to destroy itself." I wouldn't be too surprised if there is no mass-hypnosis thing done, the Doctor didn't do anything about people remembering the department store blowing up or the dummies coming alive and attacking people in epsiode one did he?

06:51 / 18.04.05

There is a reference to this in the next ep, chaps. Not very convincing, it must be said, but they do address it, and it's a good gag because of the paper they choose.

Squeeeeee! Guess what just arrived in the post? Oh, only 7 more hours before I can watch it. I may feign serious illness right now.

miss wonderstarr

09:03 / 18.04.05

As I said, I realise this is a bit adenoidal of me, but I don't mean "why didn't Earth people remember" but "why doesn't the Doctor remember". That he's been into Earth's future countless times, and yet greets every event with childlike wonder as if he had no idea what was going to happen, seems contradictory. If an intelligent person with a keen interest in human history went into the past now, they'd soon realise it if they were at the threshold of WW2 or the French Revolution. The Doctor knows all about Dickens, in the "past" -- but this alien invasion is also a key event of Earth's "past" for him. He doesn't greet Dickens with "this is amazing, some bearded guy and I have no idea who he is!" but he doesn't know on what date Earth made first contact with UFOs or when aliens took over the Government.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:37 / 18.04.05

Maybe I just want different things out of this show, but I thought this one was still great, if not as FANTASTIC! as the last two.

Did people feel that the political aspect (famous tower destroyed by flying vehicle crashing into it, this turns out to be a cover for the real enemy within) was too obvious? I suppose we'll see where it goes next week, but I'm liking it so far - y'know, they didn't do the most obvious things like having a Blair-alike as the actual baddie, although I would have loved for Rose to actually answer the Doctor's question about who was PM with "Blair" and for his face to fall in dramatic horror.

The farting thing worked because it's that weird, stomache-churning mix of funny shading into sinister. Think about it, the Slitheen's gas problems are probably the result of them digesting the inner bits of the humans, or air being expelled as they squidge their alien bodies around inside the human skin... eeuuurrrgggghhh! There's some great body horror stuff going on, more than just "fat people are evil" as I've seen one person quip, something to do with the way the disguised Slitheen move, the kind of sensuous pleasure they take in their human shells and in their own cruelty. And the design of their real bodies - just ridiculous enough, those little baby-faces and massive claws... brrrr.

I get the impression that this Doctor really has a swiss cheese memory - one minute he doesn't seem to know what's going on, the next it's "Defence pattern Delta!" - but I like that, it feels right to me.

The only complaint I agree with is that having built up to a terrifying three-pronged cliffhanger, it totally fucked it up to cut straight into next week's trailer. The thing about Who cliffhangers is that traditionally they are often resolved very easily - but at the time they are utterly terrifying. Eg, a monster staggers towards the Doc or somebody else, and they sort of cringe backwards and scream - then at the start of next week they just do the sensible thing and run off to the side or something, and the monster lurches after them but slowly - somehow the illusion always held because the tone was so creepy. And I really think that would have worked this time as well. Tsk.

10:48 / 18.04.05

I think you are reaching a bit flybers...

Yes, it is alien body horror, there is even a line about problems with the gas exchange to explain why the disguised aliens cant't go more than a few seconds without trumping - but at the end however you dress it up and justify it, this is still invasion of the body-snatchers with farting aliens... It just disappointed me and detracted from the thrust of the story... But, you know, it is family entertainment and it's not like Dr Who hasn't featured some pretty naff aliens in the past...

11:04 / 18.04.05

So we've gone from Dickensian ghosts that were "too scary" to a farting alien invasion.

Sounds like classic Dr Who to me. Ridiculous and terrifying at the same time.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:11 / 18.04.05

I'm not "dressing it up" - I'm suggesting that the overall tone is very sinister/comic - the Slitheen are constantly suppressing titters of glee - and that it worked for me.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:27 / 18.04.05

Agree entirely on the cliffhanger - the rapid resolution of a seemingly deadly situation is a key Who thing (since you woudl normally have a single plot extedning across 4 or 5 episodes, each of which required an accent. So, Doctor is trapped in room which is about to flood with lethal decontaminants. Beginning of next episode, somebody opens door, Doctor bundles out, plot continues.

I enjoyed this episode - as a set-up, it's maybe bound to be less satisfying than the self-contained. Returning Billy to her home context was a bit weird, in the sense of being profoundly un-Whoish: Ace did it, but one of the things about being an assistant in the past was that it cut you off from your previosu environment, whereas Billy has been seen relating to her home in three of the four episodes so far.

The farty aliens... well, yeah, all the farting did seem a bit silly, but then the aliens weren't meant to be physically menacing - the fact that they are so giggly and silly about their mission in their human suits I found much nastier. And the idea that the gas is a process of digestion/deliquescence: that's clearly the aim, but I'd wonder whether there wasn't a better way to do it...

More to the point, UNIT! Frickin' UNIT! Highly-trained, efficient and hopelessly outmatched military units always give me a happy.

On the Doctor's selective memory - I think to an extent necessary for dramatic consistency, but you can get round it to an extent by supposing that time is loopy and disorganised - so, events slide around, are manipulable, and happen differently depending on what happens around them. So, the Earth is scheduled to die at a certain point, and does, but he is surprised by the shenanigans around Platform One. Presumably with the entire span of time and space to study, the Doctor's knowledge will be fragmentary and possibly anecdotal; by way of example, how many people have read Dickens but would have difficulty describing what was going on in history in any given year of the 19th century? An alien invasion that is over before it begins (the destruction of the UNIT top brass being presumably the first stage) and hushed up/explained away woudl pretty quickly become a historical footnote... it's not a deal-breaker, I'd say.

11:44 / 18.04.05

As is probably quite evident, it didn't work for me. Not sinister, more like a misjudged joke. In fact, thinking about it, the show was a conscious parody of alien invasion stories, which is all fine and good, but parody usually prevents the audience engaging with the the story in the terms of the form it is aping. Airplane isn't a disaster movie as much as it is a comedy spoof of the form - the fate of the people onboard isn't particularly relevent. I don't think Dr Who has ever really attempted parody before outside of some charity shows, (the aliens were a bit creaky and unconvincing for everyone except the doctor and character's in the programme) and I don't think it works particularly well here...

But, as I said - this show is aimed at a broad family audience, other people might have liked it more than I did and it wasn't bad enough to prompt me to switch over... etc. etc.

I'm still glad Dr Who is back...

11:54 / 18.04.05

On the Doctor's selective memory

Hell, there are plenty of easy ways to explain that away.

So the Doctor's got an interest in human history. Fine, but everything he knows about it comes from having experienced these things first hand, or having the events described to him by somebody who has. The moment of first contact, afaik, has never been addressed in the show before - that's first contact as in the big official "we have made first contact with aliens" news report. I'm prepared to be shown to be entirely wrong on this, though.

If you want to get really anal about this, then you have to try and figure out how the Who universe addresses the issue of time as a dimension. Have his actions in that past altered the timeline so that he never really knows what's coming next? This bunch of aliens might never have been around Earth if he hadn't foiled the Daleks' takeover bid back in the 60s, and the Daleks might never have decided to try and take the planet in the 60s if he hadn't blah blah, all the way back to him meeting Davros when he was first sticking gooey Dalek parts into giant pepperpots.

Plenty of ways to explain it. None of them quite as smart as "he forgot," "he didn't know," or "it wasn't very important."

13:37 / 18.04.05

Does he really have to remember all 5+ million years of human history? Key points and parts of it that he found interesting (ie: Dickens) would stick in his mind but as a Time Lord that travels the entire universe I doubt he has an unlimited memory capacity.
Unless it's stated elsewhere that he does have that ability.

I dunno, it seems a small thing to gripe about. Some event happens that he isn't aware of in the past, isn't that the general problem with dashing around the timestream grinning like a loon and saying FANTASTIC! all the time?
You change things.

17:02 / 18.04.05

This Time Wars malarkey is getting annoying. Much as I'm glad he revitalised the show, Eccles is becoming rather flat rather quick. Anyway, Dalek kicks ass until the last five minutes when he puts on the angry face once too often for my liking.
Anyway, great baddie(s), and some very very nice touches. Daleks get scary again. It suffers much less from the kiddie angle, but loses it a bit on the Rose/Doctor "romance" stuff. She's pretty good given a bit of a duff script. This one should please the hardcore Who fans no end.
The next one after that is the Pegg one, kids, and looks as though it might be sliding into Colin Baker/bad McCoy cheap sets/wacky world territory. I hope I'm proved wrong.

If I'm annoying you with this stuff, let me know and I'll shut up. I'm trying very hard not to spoil, which might be coming of as "I know something you don't know"...

17:38 / 18.04.05

Um... slightly... but then I'm still pissed that my boyfriend failed to tape this weeks episode properly so it's all general spoilage for me.

Anyone know if they repeat the episodes later in the week? I missed both Saturday and Sunday's showing. Grrrr.

nedrichards is confused

18:50 / 18.04.05

rawkusboy: do you have access to boradband/bittorrent? If you do then typing query strings such as 'who' into websites with 'torrent' 'spy' and '.com' in some sort of random order may lead to a world of surprise.

So I'm told.

11:38 / 19.04.05

I have a phobia of downloading anything larger than a music file to my pc, it's hobbling along barely enough as it is without accidentally downloading some corrupt file.
Thanks for the suggestion though

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:07 / 19.04.05

Could cube perhaps stay with the episodes as we see them on British TV? Thanks awfully.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:32 / 19.04.05

Should we, in fact, start a spoiler-free thread?

14:35 / 19.04.05

I don't think a spoiler free thread is necessary... Just keep conversation to current episodes, the one that has just aired and discussion on the one that is about to air (due to the "next week on..." trailer at the end of each epsiode).

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:44 / 19.04.05

OK.. so we don't want Cube talking about what's coming up? I'm cool with that... how about we edit the title of this thread to take off "SPOILERS" and then those wanting to read about the preview episodes Cube has seen can have a sub-thread?

15:39 / 19.04.05

(Not that Tennant isn't good as Casanova, but he's so wrong for Who. He will drag it into Tweenies teatime territory - where's the darkness?)

Nonsense. I've been going through a few of the Tom Baker stories again recently, and watching Casanova last night with the idea of Tennant as the Doc in mind it struck me just how brilliantly he could take the character (and, providing the writing's up to scratch, the show) back to that sort of high. Thinking of the Baker eps I've watched over the last couple of weeks, I can easily imagine Tennant being there in his place, saying the same lines and making the whole thing just as believable - all the elements of them, not just the humour.

And he could certainly handle the humour a lot more effectively than Eccleston, who always seems fairly uncomfortable with it, has managed so far.

16:57 / 19.04.05

Ok, not willing to spoil, so shutting up as of now.

Whisky Priestess

20:39 / 19.04.05

Yeah, fair points, but I'm not sure that more obvious humour (esp. of the farting aliens/Doctorial wackiness type) is what it needs ... A lot more nihilistic black comedy, a bit of gallows humour, maybe? Whedon it up a little.

Sorry. I just like my Doctors dark and brooding. Like Peter Davison.

21:24 / 19.04.05

Well yeah, I agree with you entirely on the type of humour, but that's not really down to the actors.

I'd like to see more funny lines, really, rather than 'funny' scenes. Stuff like the rubbish PI in City of Death (guess what I've been watching today) grabbing Baker's non-functioning sonic screwdriver off him while he's trying to use it to escape from their cell and smacking it against the wall, resulting in it working again and having Baker turn to him and ask, entirely deadpan, "do you want to be my scientific advisor?" I think Tennant could pull that sort of thing off beautifully while remaining alien, commanding and faintly sinister.

The last episode... it felt like Davies was entirely uncertain about what a 7PM audience would find appealing. I'm slightly scared that this combined the complaints about the scariness of Gattis' episode may well mean that we see even less of the morbid humour come the next series.

Whisky Priestess

00:00 / 20.04.05

Absolutely - it's quite a swing from terrifying ghost aliens to comedy flatulent aliens - I wonder if putting such different episodes side by side isn't a calculated risk, perhaps to see what the review/ratings reactions are and to get a sense of where the series might most comfortably sit?

God, I'm such a conspiracy theorist ...

Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!

00:40 / 20.04.05

Want spoilage!

Don't mean to spoil anything, but I think the just-broadcast episode suffers from 1st part syndrome - much better once you've seen the 2nd half.

I think the Slitheen are fucking creepy. I also think that the aliens' seeming silliness is an excellent way to make them actually quite creepy. Kinda like Jim Carrey (ick) in A Series of Unfortunate Events. At first seemingly laughable, but murderous and amoral underneath it, to the point where it becomes downright frightening. I mean, I wasn't scared, but I thought they was cool.

Can't wait for Dalek.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:25 / 20.04.05

Haus, Hearth, Home, Heart OK.. so we don't want Cube talking about what's coming up? I'm cool with that... how about we edit the title of this thread to take off "SPOILERS"

What did we do for Sopranos? As memory serves there was a 'Spoiler' thread which was effectively for discussion of the show as it appeared on American TV and then a 'UK' thread for as it appeared on UK TV. We're working the same principle here.

and then those wanting to read about the preview episodes Cube has seen can have a sub-thread?

They could go back to the original 'Doctor Who is back' thread which was by it's nature about spoilage.

I didn't mean to snap at cube, sorry about that.

A fall of geckos

10:44 / 20.04.05

I think the farting fit within the type of stories shown in past Dr Whos - but then I think parody was an area which never fully worked for the show. Still, hopefully there'll be enough horror to keep people happy as the story continues.

Incidently UNIT have a website - here. I particularly some of the material from the Unit Publications page:

UTE-3 – "If it doesn't breathe, how do I kill it?" – Common Field Questions Compendium A
UUE-3 – Unconventional Wounds and their Treatment
UTE-12 – "Hey Sarge, it's Tuesday again!" – Dealing with Common Displacement.
UTE-13b – "Corporal Cooper, is that really you?" – Recognising impersonation in the field*
UWP23 - Preventative maintenance and basic repair for UNIT-only ordnance
UTE-15 – "It's in here with us!" Surviving confined situations
UTE-17 – "Count the appendages once they're in a heap" – Proper Clean-up after operations
UTE-17 – "If you can't point it, don't fire it" Dealing with unconventional weapons
UTE-18 – "But what has happened to Luton?" Coping with common press enquiries

The secure login is "bison"

11:27 / 20.04.05

What did we do for Sopranos? As memory serves there was a 'Spoiler' thread which was effectively for discussion of the show as it appeared on American TV and then a 'UK' thread for as it appeared on UK TV. We're working the same principle here.

Well, no, I started this thread as a response to the bittorrented episode one which preceeded the show's UK broadcast. I put the word 'spoilers' in the title so those that cared about such things could steer well clear...

I'd have no objections to discussing episodes before their official broadcast here, others might disagree, and if people want to keep this thread cor discussing the current UK episode, so be it, but when i said spoilers, i meant spoilers. I am also aware that asking cube to talk about episodes he has seen advance copies of might put him in a difficult position professionally and I wouldn't want to do that...

11:55 / 20.04.05

Argh. Look, I totally fail to see why those who've downloaded episodes early can't hold off for a couple of days just as a courtesy to those who want to watch this as it appears on the TV. We've managed that from the second episode on.

Also, nothing of what cube's posted so far could really be classed as a spoiler - ze's provided no more information than you'd get from checking out the Radio Times listing a week early.

Lastly, having *another* thread about this is a daft idea, given that there's already relatively few people discussing it and we've got this far with everyone keeping the discussion in the one place. Or, in future, are we going to have to have three or four threads where US shows are concerned - one for those who've watched it in the US, one for those who've found it online, one for those who've watched it on Sky and one for those who've watched it on terretrial UK telly?

All that needs to happen is people need to exercise the tiniest bit of restraint. We can manage that, yes?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

13:07 / 20.04.05

nothing of what cube's posted so far could really be classed as a spoiler

This is true- I'm usually one of the last to see things and the first to be upset by spoilers, and cube's done that not at all in this thread.
Legal-wise... that could be different!

19:29 / 20.04.05

Slightly OT for the current discussion but I felt this would be worth adding.

As I am only the tender age of 17 this is the first Doctor I have seen on TV in living memory (besides priceless UKTV gold reruns) and I must say I am very impressed. The BBC obviously wants to aim for the child-teen market strongly and I would say they have succeeded. Pretty much all of the people I know who I have spoken to about it are enjoying it too.

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