Doctor Who discussion (spoilers)

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by Grayvorn

Last of the Time Lords was a cracking end to what for me, has been perhaps the best season of Doctor Who ever!!!!

Dr. Wykoff, please come to isolation ward four...

[Zeke]

I know this will come as a huge shock to everyone, but I loved it. Sure it was a sort of deus ex machina, but it made more sense than Rose the Time Goddess. One advantage Doctor Who has over Star Trek is that nothing in the series stands up to complete scrutiny, so all the writers need to do is give a good nudge in the direction of sense. We don't know the mechanics of the Doctor working himself into the psychic network or harnessing the human race's collective will, but we know there are mechanics; it's not an Earthbound/MegaMan Battle Network sort of thing where everybody praying gives you energy all by itself.

There's too much good stuff here to let the silly parts get in the way. The paradox machine concept lived up to the coolness of its name. The identity of the Toclafane was perfect: not Daleks or Time Lords (both of which I was worried about), and like the solution to a good detective story, something we had all the clues to figure out. I'm a sucker for RTD's technique of drawing together seemingly unimportant elements of past episodes. (Farscape had the same habit.)

Two moments particularly stood out for me. One was the creepy, effective intro. (Who was sending that warning about the Earth's "terminal extinction", anyway? Do we know?) The other was the climax. It was a given that the Master would die, and once the anti-Time-Lord weapon was introduced, I assumed it would be used on him. (It's almost too bad it wasn't real -- the concept was certainly plausible.) What I didn't predict was the Master letting himself die just to hurt the Doctor. Now that's a dedicated villain.

On the other hand, I don't like the revelation about Jack. It's clever, I admit (almost too clever), but there are two problems. One is that if the Face were Jack, it wouldn't have told the Doctor he wasn't alone as if that were a good thing. He saw firsthand that finding the Master would only hurt the Doctor. The other is that I just don't like this fate for Jack. It'll hang like a shadow over the character now whenever we see him. I want him to get his cure someday and have a normal death. Since RTD was apparently vague about this in the podcast, and since everything else we know about the Face makes less sense if he was originally human, I'm going to assume for now that Jack was just messing with the Doctor's head. He brought it up out of nowhere, after all.

So yeah, overall I thought this was great. Certainly very far from the disaster you guys are talking about. One of these days I should try agreeing with the majority about some show, just as a change of pace....

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by Zeke

I know this will come as a huge shock to everyone, but I loved it. Sure it was a sort of deus ex machina, but it made more sense than Rose the Time Goddess. One advantage Doctor Who has over Star Trek is that nothing in the series stands up to complete scrutiny, so all the writers need to do is give a good nudge in the direction of sense. We don't know the mechanics of the Doctor working himself into the psychic network or harnessing the human race's collective will, but we know there are mechanics; it's not an Earthbound/MegaMan Battle Network sort of thing where everybody praying gives you energy all by itself.

There's too much good stuff here to let the silly parts get in the way. The paradox machine concept lived up to the coolness of its name. The identity of the Toclafane was perfect: not Daleks or Time Lords (both of which I was worried about), and like the solution to a good detective story, something we had all the clues to figure out. I'm a sucker for RTD's technique of drawing together seemingly unimportant elements of past episodes. (Farscape had the same habit.)

Two moments particularly stood out for me. One was the creepy, effective intro. (Who was sending that warning about the Earth's "terminal extinction", anyway? Do we know?) The other was the climax. It was a given that the Master would die, and once the anti-Time-Lord weapon was introduced, I assumed it would be used on him. (It's almost too bad it wasn't real -- the concept was certainly plausible.) What I didn't predict was the Master letting himself die just to hurt the Doctor. Now that's a dedicated villain.

On the other hand, I don't like the revelation about Jack. It's clever, I admit (almost too clever), but there are two problems. One is that if the Face were Jack, it wouldn't have told the Doctor he wasn't alone as if that were a good thing. He saw firsthand that finding the Master would only hurt the Doctor. The other is that I just don't like this fate for Jack. It'll hang like a shadow over the character now whenever we see him. I want him to get his cure someday and have a normal death. Since RTD was apparently vague about this in the podcast, and since everything else we know about the Face makes less sense if he was originally human, I'm going to assume for now that Jack was just messing with the Doctor's head. He brought it up out of nowhere, after all.

So yeah, overall I thought this was great. Certainly very far from the disaster you guys are talking about. One of these days I should try agreeing with the majority about some show, just as a change of pace....

You seem to think that the programme itself is gibberish, so Runt Q Dawkins' nonsense is excusable anyway. THAT is the fault in your reasoning.

To quote someone on another board:

Originally Posted by Cornelia Africana

I thought this was really awful, quite possibly one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever. It's as though RTD put a collection of ideas into a hat, pulled them out at random and decided to string them together without any concern for whether the plot actually made any sensr or not. For instance, why did aging the Doctor cause him to shrink into a Gollum-like creature? And why did just channelling the thoughts of all the remaining humans through the archangel network reverse the effect, and apparently give him godlike powers to boot? What the hell was all that about? How did Martha manage to traverse the world, and communicate with all the surviving humans in just a year? Did she walk, how did she travel, or what? I could go on and on about plot holes, but by far the worst thing about it was John Simm as the Master. He basically portrayed him as a complete prat, a comic-book parody of his former self. I realise there were always camp, comic-book aspects to the character, but previous actors who played the part could carry this off with a bit of panache. Simm was just embarrassing. This was a very disappointing season finale.

Basic fact is, Zeke, as a piece of science fiction it is execrable. As a piece of television it is dross. As an episode of Doctor Who, it is so far from "good" that no word in the English language quite provides accurate meaning.

[Burt]

Oh we blessed ones.

Just when it was (for me) at a very low point... Salvation!


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6267680.stm


Genius. Simply Genius.
I don't think it's going to be a good series, I know it's going to be a good series.

[PointyHairedJedi]

...I never thought I'd be glad to head that she's heading back to our screens, but strangely I am.

[Burt]

I think Donna will be fantastic as an companion. She's different to Rose and Martha, which is what you really need. The problem (for me) with Martha, was she was too like Rose. Started off shocked...learned to grow into traveling... the whole 'in love' with the Doctor thing. Looking back at the earlier Doctors, they had a bit more different companions. Leela - pre-historic girl, Turlough - Alien, Romana - Timelady, Jamie - From the past, Zoe - from the future...
I like how she both was and wasn't afraid of the Doctor, and even how she was a little bit shallow.
I rewatched 'The Runaway Bride' yesterday. I'd forgotten how much humor was in that episode, and most of it... from Donna.
I think it's also great that a past 'companion' will be returning (In a way) instead of meeting and whisking away someone in the same episode.
Saying all that, this will probley go balls up, be the worst series so far, finish off Doctor Who forever and destroy the BBC.
However, I remain blissfully optimistic!

[Chancellor Valium]

Oh, great.

A two-dimensional, screeching chav.With the brains of a dead duck to boot.

How very Ruby N Mustard.

From now on, I'm sticking to B5, and things that aren't complete brain-rot.

[Burt]

Ok. I've re watched the last of the timelord, and maybe I was a little harsh on it.
I think it was because I was expecting so much different to how the episode played out, and plus, I'm not usually disappointed by Doctor Who. This feeling is all new to me.
The music at the start was very creepy. I liked that. And the Master...yeah very different guy to usual. Campy, over the top, but all the while... frightening. Like he was totally unstable, and could do anything, at anytime... The bit where he was pushing the Doctor around with the music playing.. made me feel uneasy. And so did the Doctor in the tent, with the dog bowl bit. For a year?
Not sure what the whole tiny doctor creature was about though...
There was something in another old episode about timelords can live for ever, barring accidents and attacks. Maybe thats what would have happened to a timelord if they didn't regenerate? And just kept living the same body?
The captian Jack/Boe thing was.... silly. Made no sense. And the End? they had better have a bloody good reason for that in the next episode!

[PointyHairedJedi]

Originally Posted by Burt

Ok. I've re watched the last of the timelord, and maybe I was a little harsh on it.

Impossible!

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

How very Ruby N Mustard.

And who's this Ruby, when she's at home?

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by mudshark

And who's this Ruby, when she's at home?

The same person as Runt Q Dawkins, Rudolf F Manatee, Rudy C Indigo, John Q Public, and Russell Nathan-Turner.

[Zeke]

I'm still no expert on Who fandom, but I have a feeling that if I were, stuff like that would annoy me as much as "Bermaga" and "The Evil Bs."

[Lostoyannaya]

Doctor Who New Series Three was fantastic.

And then someone had the idea of letting Russel T. Davies write the script for the last episode.

I'm surprised JK Rowling, Voyager and God haven't filed lawsuits yet.

[Chancellor Valium]

Don't forget Gerry Anderson.

[Lostoyannaya]

Oh, how could I have forgotten? I am reading The Indestructable Man.

[Katy Jane]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

Oh, great.

A two-dimensional, screeching chav.With the brains of a dead duck to boot.

Meh. Its a little quick to judge a character from just one episode. I'm looking forward to her being in the series because it will give the character a chance to grow. She had changed radically (imho) just from her experiences in the one episode, just think what could happen in a whole series or more.

And I'm really getting sick of the term chav, i don't put up with people calling people white trash either.

[Burt]

I still maintain that Donna will be a Fantastic companion. Untill she's proven not to be, in which case, you heard nothing.

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by Katy Jane

Meh. Its a little quick to judge a character from just one episode. I'm looking forward to her being in the series because it will give the character a chance to grow. She had changed radically (imho) just from her experiences in the one episode, just think what could happen in a whole series or more.

And I'm really getting sick of the term chav, i don't put up with people calling people white trash either.

We had an hour of pain as Catherine Tate bawled into the screen.

That's two episodes. And one hour too much. The character was two-dimensional then, and won't change. Because, and I cannot stress this enough, Rummy L Superbus has talent for writing on a par with Confucius' ability to yodel.