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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Doctor Who: Season 2 UK

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Kali, Queen of Kitteh

17:09 / 11.11.06

I have to wait until January to get season 2 on DVD.

Grr.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:40 / 11.11.06

Oh, I have no problem with the compositions, generally. While I didn't care for the "Satan! In an ASTEROID!" episodes, the music was great. The sentimental stuff is a little OTT, but I this is a melodrama, after all. It's just that yeeeenk! that gets on my nerves, especially since it's been overused to the point that it's now a grating tension-killer. For me, anyway.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:41 / 11.11.06

Oh, and Kali, a little Internetting might find you a hack from your DVD player that will let you order DVDs from the UK and play them no problem. There's a key sequence for my Electrohome that converts the region coding, for instance. Shipping's expensive, but that's the price of being the first kid on the block!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:48 / 11.11.06

I didn't care for the "Satan! In an ASTEROID!" episodes

You are, of course, perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I just don't get it. At all.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:13 / 11.11.06

We've had this discussion before. I am of the opinion that the first part was infinitely better than the second. Y'know, that whole "TARDIS as deus ex machina" thingy.

21:07 / 11.11.06

Those two episodes are just, utterly (I'd say perfect, but that's a bit too much) brilliant. When the Doctor and Rose are re-united in the TARDIS, they hug and Rose makes that little noise of relief, the music swells and they're the stuff of legends.

I need to lie down.

21:19 / 11.11.06

I didn't care for the "Satan! In an ASTEROID!" episodes

Clearly you can't process awesome.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

22:05 / 11.11.06

Obviously I'm in the minority on this one... to be honest, I think the whole thing fails for me at the concept stage. I'm just not big on "ancient myth: explained!" as premises for episodes in the first place, and I found that trying to juggle The Black Hole, The Abyss, and Event Horizon was just too much stuff for me not to feel that it didn't just wind up people waving their hands around and going "wallah wallah!"

The whole "this trap has been foreseen and everything's been set up just the way I need it!" bit had been done, and better, in Tooth and Claw a few episodes previous, and I just couldn't buy into the "magic angels" needing to set up an entire asteroid so the Doctor could fall down a hole into a breathable atmosphere and do the Brain Dance in front of Satan.

Plus, the Doctor basically spends all his time in a big pit for basically no reason. In the end, it all comes down to Rose re-doing the end of Alien. Too many deus ex machinas, too many razzle-dazzle elements that amounted to nothing.

I'm not saying it wasn't well-executed, just that the whole underpinnings of the thing left me totally flat. Maybe we should agree to disagree. It is what the Doctor would do.

23:55 / 11.11.06

Then he'd flip a switch on his sonic screwdriver, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and send you straight into a fiery hell of no return, with nothing but a muttered: "I'm so sorry," to keep you company.

I think the reason I'm so fond of the Satan Pity Duology (phrase steal!) is because it takes place after some distinctly average episodes. The cybermen two-parter left me cold and a little disillusioned with the show and The Idiot's Lantern was fun the first time around, but I can never sit through it again. The Satan Pit episodes are bombastic, exciting, funny and emotionally involving. The Cybermen two-parters try a lot of these things, but ultimately come off as boring, poorly paced and extremely irritating (it has to have some of the worst and most annoying additional casting in both seasons of New Who, while The Satan Pit duology has the best supporting cast that Who has ever seen. I still say that they warrant a spin-off more than Jack does).

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

00:03 / 12.11.06

The Satan supporting cast was stellar, absolutely, and I loved the Ood design as being both pathetic and really creepy.

I liked the first Cyberman duology, partly I suspect because I like Doctor Doom supervillains and Lumic fit the bill quite nicely. Given the "Trigger!" chatter about that ep on the boards, I assume that there may have been a bunch of well-worn British character actors that others found jarring in those episodes, but I'd never seen before. Similar with whoever-it-is coming up in the Christmas Special -- those in the UK seem quite familiar with her, but it's a new face to me over here in Canada.

07:42 / 12.11.06

Plus, the Doctor basically spends all his time in a big pit for basically no reason.

Hmmm - I'm not seeing how you'd justify this statement - As far as the Doctor is concerned, the Tardis is gone, that he later discovers that it survived does not invalidate his decision to explore the pit, or the plot development that left him trapped down there, or at least, it doesn't invalidate it ant more than any other plot resolution.

Within the narrative the idea, the idea is to seperate the Doctor and Rose as much as possible - a recurring motif of the last third or so of the season - this underlined how Rose was becoming increasingly les reliant on the Doctor. In Satan Pit, Rose defeats the Satanic entity on her own (she doesn't really have a plan on what to do next, but she succeeds on her own) - In Fear Her we see Rose goes further out on her own, rescuing the Doctor and saving Chloe webber.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

07:59 / 12.11.06

I wasn't being quite fair to the Doctor or the writers, to be honest. He does smash the magic urns and find the conveniently appearing TARDIS and save everyone from the black hole. And I can't argue that the Pit Trip did make Rose save everyone from Satan.

What I was getting at was that the whole thing was futile at the concept level, though. Had there been no pit and no giant Legend beastie, the story would have rolled out more or less the same ("Satan" as an evil psychic entity released by people mucking about on an asteroid).

In terms of this conversation, I feel like a passing comment about me not being crazy about these episodes is putting me in a corner where I have to try to poop all over some episodes that other people rather liked, and I don't want to work on ruining other people's enjoyment of them any more than I already have. I didn't say hate or even strongly dislike, just "didn't care for."

08:30 / 12.11.06

I'm not wanting to push you into a corner, but I am interested in how you think the story could have unfurled without somekind of a powerful malevolent entity down in the pit...

With the story as it stood, you needed something that could take control of the Ood and Toby and that required a planet to be in a stable orbit around a black hole...

I can perfectly understand not liking the idea of capital S Satan being dumpt into a Dr Who story (for a wide variety of different media) but, I don't agree that the enitity in the pit was Satan - it was a powerful satan-like entity. As such, it echoed the classic Dr Who stories The Daemons and State of Decay, and to a lesser extent, the Curse of Fenric (other purportedly supernatural beasts eventually placed in the context of science-based myth and legend)...

08:34 / 12.11.06

I should underline that it isn't my intention to force anyone into a corner, but yeah - I don't see how the story could work without being changed completely...

11:16 / 12.11.06

Hey, Matt, you didn't care for it: no worries! It's that The Santa Pit and Impossible Planet were - for me! - the best eps of the season. It's hard to see where you're coming from but thanks for doing the Brain Dance and explaining your thinking.

11:37 / 12.11.06

All of you people buying the DVD set, do you know how much it is? I remember seeing the season 1 boxset for some 60 quid, which I thought was disgusting and nowhere near worth the money (given that you can pick up Firefly for around 20 on DVD now). Where do you lot stand on this? Are you still going to pay over-the-odds for something that a) you can download for free, b) you've paid your license fee towards and c) over half the season came in for quite a lot of criticism.

Honestly I think I may be a little bitter, as I'd love them really but I cannot under any circumstances justify spending that much money on something that is ostensibly free on the telly. 20-30 a season, fine (or the full 60 maybe if they did full 24 ep seasons like the americans).

anyway, rant over.

11:49 / 12.11.06

Buy it when it's reduced. These things come down in price if you're prepared to wait.

11:51 / 12.11.06

Oh, and I think they should definitely refer to it as his Brain Dance in the series itself. It would make a very funny scene with the new assistant taking the piss out the Doctor.

11:52 / 12.11.06

Perhaps with some Bogdan Raczinski played over it. PROPERBRAINDANCEGO!

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

12:10 / 12.11.06

Well, as long as I'm not ruining anybody's good time, I enjoy bantering about this sort of thing. I was just starting to feel bad being a downer on something I thought everyone else liked.

Sleaze: Well, as I understand the episode, the core sequence of events was basically "Satan is trapped in an asteroid in impossible Black Hole orbit, humans land on the asteroid, Satan sends his brain out to possess a human and the Ood, the possessed Ood go nuts and the humans stop the Ood, the asteroid starts to break orbit and the humans flee in a rocket, the humans realize that Satan has possessed one of them and throw him into space and escape."

Other than the "this explains the horned nature of Satan on all those planets" element, there's really no need for the pit and the big angry body at all. If the humans were just investigating a weird power source and it turned out to be a malevolent psychic entity that possessed the dude with the facial writing, it all would have rolled out identical (more or less).

Sans pit, instead of the Doctor smashing ancient angel urns, it would just be some psychic defense system that clues into the fact that Satan has escaped his psychic prison and possessed the facial-writing dude, which would have bothered me a lot less than Pottery From Before Time Itself. The defense system starts sending the asteroid into the planet, everyone flees but the Doctor who is still trying to find the TARDIS, Rose sends Satan into space, etc. etc.

And you'd need another way to tie up the TARDIS for a few hours, but there's always something going wrong with the TARDIS. Its faulty wiring is a diabolus ex machina to compensate for all the deus ex machina functions it provides in other times.

I can definitely see the loopy fun of it, but it just kind of turned me off that there was this massive multi-episode MacGuffin. I think I just have a predilection for streamlining things -- the Event Horizon lift would have been super fine, but the Event Horizon + The Abyss + Legend combo was just too much running around for no reason to suit me.

Plus, if the Doctor isn't in the pit it could be him that kills all the Ood, for a golden "There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." moment.

15:45 / 12.11.06

I dunno - hasn't the incorporial alien menace thing been done to death too? I thought the existence of a body was an interesting, but underdeveloped element. But yeah, I could really live without one less 'i'm so sorry' from the new doctor...

13:45 / 13.11.06

The good Doctor's shoes, Rose's blouse from New Earth and the Genesis Ark, among other things up for auction over the coming days.

I could just about afford the Genesis Ark, if I didn't eat, leave the house or buy anything else for the next five months.

Where would I put it though..

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

18:30 / 14.11.06

I want his shoes.

07:44 / 15.11.06

I want his shoes.

It's as close as the restraining order will let you get eh?

09:15 / 15.11.06

I love the fact that Wayne Rooney's boots signed are only worth half the price of Tennant's old pumps. Geekauctiongo!

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:17 / 15.11.06

There is no restraining order.

Yet.

Whisky Priestess

22:03 / 15.11.06

Simon Pegg's looking nervous, mind.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

12:02 / 22.11.06

Yay! My season two box set has arrived, coinciding perfectly with me being on holiday for a week! It has the Children in Need special (though I'm sure the 'previously' segment is different to the one broadcast on CiN2005 night, though I don't really care enough to check.

Some of the episodes have 'in-vision commentary' rather than audio, I assume that's MST3000-tastic. Will get back to you if the commentaries are different to the ones you could download from the BBC website.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:09 / 22.11.06

Simon Pegg's looking nervous, mind.

I suspect there are lots of men in the UK feeling a bit nervous.

Someone auction off Pegg's cricket bat!!

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:32 / 22.11.06

< watching 'deleted scenes' >

OMG! Rickey was gay! He and Byker Grove lad were getting it on! Eeeeeee!

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:50 / 22.11.06

I sort of figured that. Wonder how Mickey gets on with Jake.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:05 / 22.11.06

Pah, Mickey makes it clear that if BGL thinks there's going to be any of that it'll have to be by burglary.

Mickey: "I'm not trying to replace Rickey. Things will be different."
BGL: "You could never replace him. He was the best boyfriend I ever had."
Mickey: < boggles > "We-ell, things will be really different."

Mind you, it was about a year their time before AoG/D wasn't it? Who knows what fun they had in Paris...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:16 / 22.11.06

I'm always interested in continuity with deleted scenes. Does this mean Ricky and BGL actually were an item and we just never saw any evidence of it, or simply that they might have been, but RTD or whoever decided against it?

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:01 / 22.11.06

Going to posit the opinion that the network probably vetoed it. No need to complicate a children's show by showing evidence of a homosexual relationship now is there?*

Of course, mind you, I live in a country of rampant Christian fundamentalism.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:04 / 22.11.06

Oh yes, almost certainly, but does that mean they actually ARE an item when we can't see them? Is it canonical that they're having a relationship?

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