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Author Topic: New Doctor Who  (Read 59086 times)

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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #60 on: June 26, 2008, 11:52:44 PM »

Haven't seen it.  I thought it was for the prepubescent crowd of both genders.

Can anyone who's actually seen it comment?

I am going to go out on a limb and assume it can't possibly be as bad as Torchwood.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #61 on: June 28, 2008, 03:39:46 PM »

Okay.  Still better than expected, but there's still a part 3 that can blow everything.

The good:

  • Daleks are scary again.  As I've said before, the "Daleks are scary" bit of suspension of disbelief requires the cast to act utterly terrified when they show up, and the reaction shots were appropriate to that.  It's still hard to get over their utterly ludicrous previous appearance, but by the end I was doing it.  More than that is the scary imagery.  [spoiler]The new Davros with no eyes and exposed ribcage[/spoiler] is going to give children nightmares, and [spoiler]exposed, gibbering Caan[/spoiler] is likewise eerie.

  • Rose being total attention whore; everyone ignoring her.
  • Shadow Proclamation; more references to Doctor and Time War.  The presence of a galactic power recalls the days when Gallifrey and the Time Lords were still around.
  • [spoiler]Richard Dawkins cameo.  Wonder if his wife will be showing up at any point in the next few years.[/spoiler]

  • Bees = dolphins.


The bad:

  • Doctor pining for Rose.
  • "Clap your hands" redux.  (In fairness, less dumb than last time.)
  • More "Daleks don't understand humans and that is their weakness" schlock.


Scoreboard:

a big reveal with Caan and Davros at the end.

[spoiler]Happened in middle of second ep, not end of first as predicted.  End of first would have been better for dramatic pacing.  All the "Bad Wolf" shit which was immediately ignored in the beginning of this ep?  Sorta lame by comparison.[/spoiler]

For episode two, expect that bit with Harriet Jones that all the tabloids were yakking about back in March.

[spoiler]I am starting to believe that was deliberate misinformation fed to the tabloids, but it's still possible.  We don't actually see her get shot.[/spoiler]

Other characters I expect to appear, in order of likelihood: Jenny,

[spoiler]Haven't seen her yet, but the hand reappeared in the beginning of this ep.  Could have just been there to foreshadow regeneration.[/spoiler]

Jackie, Mickey, Pete

[spoiler]Could still happen, but looks like they went with Martha's family instead of Rose's.  Rose seems to be the only one hopping between universes.[/spoiler]

At any rate, there's SOMETHING up with the Supreme Dalek.

Other thoughts:

When Donna's sitting alone in the Shadow Proclamation, you can clearly hear the sound of drums.  I don't expect the Master to pop his head in in the finale, but that may be significant.

And of course the biggie: [spoiler]REGENERATION!  Either there's going to be a new Doctor next week, or it's going to be a dodge.  I still think River Song's dialogue implied she'd known the Tenth Doctor, and the Beeb originally said Tennant would stay on through the movies next year, but OTOH there was the foreshadowing from the Ood early in the season.  I'd say a cheat is unlikely but not impossible.

If there IS a new Doctor next week, and it's somebody who the tabloids HAVEN'T been suggesting, that'll be a coup in and of itself.

Rose's "You can't!  He can't!" bit was interesting.  Just personal attachment to the Tenth Doctor, or could it actually be something important?[/spoiler]

And have we seen the albino woman before?  She looks really familiar.

Anyway.  All in all, a fairly strong first two eps, but still plenty of time for the finale to fuck it up.
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Mothra

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #62 on: June 29, 2008, 12:13:34 AM »

Auughgghh!!

[spoiler]I am going to flip a complete shit if Tennant turns out to be done by this season. Guy is hands-down the best Doctor ever, in my book.[/spoiler]
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LaserBeing

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #63 on: June 29, 2008, 12:22:55 AM »

It may be too soon to say, but I think [spoiler]Mad Dalek Caan may have just swiped the award for Best Dalek Ever from sassy old Sec.[/spoiler]

Regarding The Biggie: [spoiler]Caan gibbered something about "the Threefold (or maybe Three-Formed?) Man", which makes me wonder if RTD isn't going to cap off his reign with a full-out Three Doctors type extravaganza. Bringing Eccleston back at least would be completely in keeping with the way this finale is going, and Tennant's death scene wasn't nearly overdrawn and sappy enough to be his real exit.[/spoiler]
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #64 on: June 29, 2008, 01:20:01 PM »

That's something I considered too.  Lord knows [spoiler]McGann[/spoiler] never got enough screen time, and of course [spoiler]either he or Eccleston would be the last Doctor who saw Davros[/spoiler].  On the other hand, that would rather negate [spoiler]#10's surprise at seeing him again[/spoiler], but some technobabble about [spoiler]Caan overcoming the time lock[/spoiler] could probably smooth that continuity gap over.

Another possibility that I think is supremely unlikely but would be kinda cool: since we're dealing with parallel universes, what about [spoiler]parallel Doctors?  EG, the alternate Ninth Doctor from Scream of the Shalka.[/spoiler]

At any rate, [spoiler]#10 getting shot[/spoiler] was both totally abrupt AND totally cliche...but given that it's RTD we're talking about, neither of those things necessarily mean there's a better explanation coming.  (It also bears noting that there's precedent here -- [spoiler]the Fourth Doctor's death[/spoiler] was abrupt, and, while it was obvious that it was going to happen at some point in [spoiler]the movie, the Seventh Doctor's death was laughable in the unexpectedness of its execution: he stepped out of the TARDIS into the middle of a gang fight and just got shot.[/spoiler])

But one thing's certain: there's more parallel universe stuff coming from Rose and Donna next week.  As noted before, this week's did absolutely nothing to explain the shit that happened at the end of the previous week's; [spoiler]the Daleks moving Earth across the galaxy doesn't explain anything about why stars would start going out, the phrase "Bad Wolf" would start appearing everywhere, or the Doctor would proclaim it the end of the universe -- or in fact Rose would say EVERY universe is in danger.[/spoiler]

Anyway, they've certainly got a lot of questions to answer, and we're getting a 65-minute episode as a result of that.

Trailer for next week's.  I guess technically the preview pic counts as a spoiler of the most recent ep, but fuck it; all it does is confirm the worst-kept secret of the season.

(The rest of it, of course, contains more significant spoilers of the most recent ep.)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DTxWRZKHI6s
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Royal☭

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #65 on: June 29, 2008, 07:46:58 PM »

When Donna's sitting alone in the Shadow Proclamation, you can clearly hear the sound of drums.  I don't expect the Master to pop his head in in the finale, but that may be significant.

Possibility: Donna is a Time Lord.  People keep saying there's something important about her, and the general coincidence of her being with the Doctor can be attributed to the Time Lord's picking and choosing when they humanize themselves.  This might also tie in to the ending of season 3.  Just my theory, though.

Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #66 on: June 29, 2008, 09:58:22 PM »

If we REALLY wanted to go far-out with it, we could suppose that [spoiler]Caan's reference to "the Doctor's most faithful companion"[/spoiler] could mean Donna is Romana.  But I really doubt it.  I don't see any more fob watch situations coming up.  Alternately, there's Jenny, or any other Time Lady really, given regeneration and all.

But I think all that would be needlessly convoluted.  My guess is she's something different, not a Time Lady but someone who has the natural affinity for the multiverse that Time Lords have for time.
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LaserBeing

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #67 on: June 30, 2008, 03:36:07 AM »

Donna is the Master.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #68 on: June 30, 2008, 10:29:18 AM »

 :ohshi~:
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Sharkey

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #69 on: July 01, 2008, 10:34:41 PM »

Dispensing with spoiler tags. Nobody reads this fucking topic until they've seen the damn show. And by Tuesday? You've seen it. If not, fuck off.

Hum. Only a few years in and a reunion episode. Gotta be fun having a conference call with all your ex girlfriends and their families.

But yeah, the whole regeneration bit. Abrupt as hell, though slightly foreshadowed. Then again, pretty much everybody getting fucked has been foreshadowed at one point or another this season. Given that they really didn't drama the hell out of it my money is on a NONE OF IT HAPPENED bait-and-switch along the lines of last season. With some wackiness in between. Hell, we already had the whole deus-ex-global-cellphone bit again, and it ain't getting any less fucking stupid.

And way to make all the potentially interesting explanations for the bees bugging out just getting a couple lines of "yeah, dolphins" when it could have actually meant something a little more important and less predictable.

On one hand, I almost like seeing RTD going out on such a shit note. He did a great job of revitalizing the thing back, well, in the first season. Then got rutted pretty badly in very silly formula, and honestly, the best episodes of every season have been written by someone else. On the other, I like Tennant quite a damn bit and would be pretty damn annoyed if he weren't on for the rest of this thing.

Given his enthusiasm for the gig I have a hard time imagining a scenario where he'd want to leave. It's kind of too late to dodge typecasting, I think, and if he really minded that I don't think he would have stuck it out for three seasons already. And hell, don't I remember something about him being contracted for the little movie thingies next year? I figured he'd be on for at least that long.

Anyway, Daleks are nice. Shame this was so sketchy in every other way. And that there's actually enough spinoff media already that it feels like the more awkward bits of going home for Christmas and running into family you don't exactly hate, but haven't cared enough to keep up with for the last year. I don't know or care what Torchwood and Sarah Jane have been up to, and while I have a lingering fondness for them I neither want to hear an in depth explanation (actually watch those shows) or deal with the superficial "How're things?" "Eh, okay."
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #70 on: July 01, 2008, 11:58:27 PM »

Given that they really didn't drama the hell out of it my money is on a NONE OF IT HAPPENED bait-and-switch along the lines of last season.

[...]

Given his enthusiasm for the gig I have a hard time imagining a scenario where he'd want to leave. It's kind of too late to dodge typecasting, I think, and if he really minded that I don't think he would have stuck it out for three seasons already. And hell, don't I remember something about him being contracted for the little movie thingies next year? I figured he'd be on for at least that long.

Plus, while I can't pull up the quote, I'm almost certain he said he wanted to keep people guessing as to how long he was staying on.  I also recall him being quoted as saying he wanted to do more eps than Pertwee, but the first Google result for that is my favorite always-hilariously-wrong fan site, so it's best to ignore it.

...But all right, fair.  While I stand by my citation of Baker and McCoy dying rather abruptly, I'll switch the "possible, but not likely" call from not-regenerating to regenerating.

Plus there's Ham's observation about "the threefold man" -- I didn't catch that line the first time, though I've gone back and watched the scene again.  Yeah, an appearance by two other incarnations of the Doctor would seem likely.  (I still like my "bring in the Shalka Doctor" idea, but it ranks south of "Donna is a Time Lady" and just north of "Donna is the Master" in terms of likelihood IMO.)

Though for all I like Tennant, I prefer the sudden, unexpected deaths to the big dramatic ones.  A new Doctor next week would make for a better story than a dodge.

With some wackiness in between. Hell, we already had the whole deus-ex-global-cellphone bit again, and it ain't getting any less fucking stupid.

I'd say mildly less.  It had nowhere to go but up.

On one hand, I almost like seeing RTD going out on such a shit note. He did a great job of revitalizing the thing back, well, in the first season.

Yeah, but even that was so hit-or-miss.  Pretty much everything after the Nestenes and before the Dalek could have been dumped.  After that, I'd say Father's Day, the Moffat twosie (of course), and the half of The Parting of the Ways that Rose wasn't in were pretty good.  Basically the rest were Eccleston propping up a bunch of mediocrity.

Anyway, Daleks are nice. Shame this was so sketchy in every other way.

I thought the Dalek bits were good enough to redeem the rest.  That and the soft bigotry of low expectations -- bear in mind I was expecting the red Dalek to open up and turn out to be Harriet Jones.  The mere fact that that didn't happen meant the episode was about a million times better than I expected.

Which is one more reason I now believe that was a fake plot point deliberately "leaked" to the tabloids.  But the fact that it was entirely believable says a lot.

And that there's actually enough spinoff media already that it feels like the more awkward bits of going home for Christmas and running into family you don't exactly hate, but haven't cared enough to keep up with for the last year. I don't know or care what Torchwood and Sarah Jane have been up to, and while I have a lingering fondness for them I neither want to hear an in depth explanation (actually watch those shows) or deal with the superficial "How're things?" "Eh, okay."

OTOH, as the universe gets bigger it gets silly to ignore the supporting cast.  One of the laughable things about the first episode of Justice League Unlimited where they did the pan across the 100 or so superheroes in the Watchtower was the sense of, "Okay, where the fuck were all these guys at the end of LAST season when the world was being invaded by Thanagarians?"  (There was a throwaway line in a later episode to the effect that they'd all been out fighting in some capacity, but still.)

That said, they were handled much better in the previous episode, where they didn't even show up and Rose just explained how they all died trying to do the Doctor's job.

But I can understand why they're there.  Sky full of alien planets, Jack's going to drop what he's doing to check it out; soon as he finds out it's Daleks he's going to go looking for the Doctor.

Sarah Jane is less of a plot necessity, but she's the only other character at this point who knows who the fuck Davros is, and two OH SHII~s are better than one.  (That said, while reaction shots are necessary to remind the audience that Daleks are scary, they're a lot less necessary for a guy with an exposed ribcage and organs.)

The problem isn't so much that they're there as that RTD seems much less interested in the why than the how.  It's not "Why are they here, what's their motivation?", it's "How can we fit them into the story because THIS IS MY LAST ARC AND IT HAS TO BE BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER DONE BEFORE!"  Their supporting casts stuck out even more (though I grant the "someone sent the rest of Torchwood on a wild goose chase, that's why they're not here" plot couldn't really be used again).

As for what's been happening on the shows, yeah, I've never caught Sarah Jane so I had to hit up Wikipedia to find out when the hell she had a kid (he's adopted) and what was up with Mr. Smith (he's an alien intelligence who is apparently yet another literal deus ex machina).  I'd read about the Torchwood finale previously and knew that they'd killed off half the cast.

I think the whole "kitchen sink" business is best summed up with Gwen calling her husband.  We've got the leading lady of a supporting character's spinoff appearing as a supporting character and calling a supporting character from her show (not seen).  How many characters I don't care about can be worked into this flow chart?  Well, then there's the bit where the Daleks come in and Dull and Annoying and Welsh promise that they will sell their lives dearly, just like those other two characters who I don't care died.

That said...that's all pretty much what I expected.  And I expected the Daleks to be as lame as they were last time.  And for one of them to be Harriet Jones.

So you can see how this episode exceeded my expectations.
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Sharkey

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #71 on: July 02, 2008, 11:59:19 AM »

Well, when your low bar is "RTD coming to my house and shitting directly in my open mouth," yeah, I'd call this a resounding success.
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Royal☭

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #72 on: July 02, 2008, 12:11:21 PM »

LAST OF THE TIME LORDS

Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #73 on: July 02, 2008, 01:57:15 PM »

Well, you know, it's the old chestnut about how pessimists are never disappointed.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #74 on: July 05, 2008, 03:00:19 PM »

...So when I said this would be just like all the other finales, I didn't actually think he would literally take the first act from The Parting of the Ways, the climax from Last of the Time Lords, and the ending from Doomsday.

I was actually enjoying it for the first 40 minutes or so -- not because it was any good (the "Doctor is actually a total bastard" angle was promising, but of course relied on this season turning both Rose and Martha into Buffy for no adequately explained reason -- plus Batman Beyond did it better), but precisely because it was so wonderfully bad.  It was just utter sci-fi schlock: every single plot twist explained through increasingly absurd technobabble, with visuals cribbed straight from Star Wars.  I was laughing out loud by the time [spoiler]the TARDIS pulled the Earth back to the solar system[/spoiler].  In the end, it was enjoyable for the same reasons as MST3K, Masters of the Universe, Superfriends, and train wrecks.

And then the long, dragged-out goodbye sequence just sucked all the life out of it.  (I'm going to have to reference my favorite serial, City of Death, again -- there's a goodbye scene that was wonderfully short and to-the-point.  That was one of those things Douglas Adams excelled at.)

It DOES leave me with a sense of "Well, what now?"  And of course we all know the answer: six months of nothing, a year of periodic RTD movies, and then Moffat taking over in '10.
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Mothra

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #75 on: July 05, 2008, 10:53:04 PM »

Good lord, RTD, it's called restraint! Sometimes you just gotta, you know, hold off on a few things for the sake of coherence! Maybe narrow your focus here and there!

Just - next time - just sit yourself down, take a look at your script, and ask yourself: Do I need a Torchwood bullet-time scene? Do I need Germany? Do I need anything on Earth, at all? Is it completely, utterly necessary to bring in and focus large chunks of time on Martha and Donna's parents? Do we need minutely updates on the status of every secondary companion character in the show? Are those two jumps seriously worth the time you're going to spend re-explaining the dimension majiggers?! DO I REALLY, REALLY NEED ROSE'S MOM IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS EPIC FINALE TRULY COMPLETE?!
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #76 on: July 05, 2008, 11:19:42 PM »

Maybe he just wanted us to really, REALLY look forward to Moffat taking over.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #77 on: July 06, 2008, 01:24:49 AM »

Just finished the latest ish of Doctor Who Classics.  Not much to say about it, but there WAS an interview at the end about an upcoming miniseries called The Forgotten, featuring all ten Doctors.

While such an ambitious story could easily be a mess, and Kabbage's comments on restraint apply in every medium, I think this could still turn out all right.  The way I see it, you play to the strengths of your medium; if you're doing a comic book, you'd damn well better do some things that they can't do on the TV or radio series -- otherwise, what's the point?  I mentioned a couple pages back that I quite liked a little fill-in story in Classics where the Fourth Doctor regressed back through his previous incarnations; while I think stories like those are best used sparingly, they CAN be used to great effect.

Further reading has brought me to a CBR interview with writer Tony Lee.  It sounds good -- oriented around short new stories for all the previous Doctors, though he hints they'll be meeting up at some point.

And the art's by Pia Guerra.  I've yet to get around to reading Y, but these pages are definitely pretty.  (And while I think Roche has his ups and downs, I'm really digging his covers.)

Anyway.  While I still hold out hope that we'll see a live-action Three-or-More Doctors story on the TV series one of these days (where the other two Doctors DON'T consist of [spoiler]an extra Tenth and Donna[/spoiler]) -- the forty-fifth anniversary IS coming up, after all -- comics is a medium where you don't have to worry about the casting logistics of such a story and you can just DO it.

I think it can come out pretty well, so long as it doesn't turn into too much of a fan wank and they don't bite off more than they can chew.  I think "restraint" is a good Word of the Day.

...Incidentally, while I'm up on the Classics series, I haven't read the latest two issues of the new Doctor Who series.  The printer fucked up my copy of #4 (put the pages together before the ink was dry, and they're all stuck together) and my shop hasn't been able to replace it as of yet.
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Sharkey

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #78 on: July 07, 2008, 11:07:44 PM »

Hell if I don't wish I could solve all my girlfriend problems that easily. All I need are some clones and memory wipes and I can get back to the emo-in-the-rain bit.
:perfect:
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #79 on: July 07, 2008, 11:50:17 PM »

Good idea.  Even if your ex is trapped in an inescapable parallel universe, she'll just keep coming back until you set her up with a clone.

Similarly, the best way to destroy your species -- when you are, in fact, the last surviving member of same -- is to travel back in time to save your dead creator so he can clone a few million more of you first.

Really I think the whole thing had a whiff of Simon's Quest about it.
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