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Author Topic: New Doctor Who  (Read 59187 times)

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Mothra

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #220 on: January 07, 2010, 10:12:43 PM »

Wish we'd had a little more insight into how the time war worked, but like everyone already said, the whole [spoiler]Time Lord[/spoiler] part of the plot seemed rushed as hell.

I'm relieved we DIDN'T get more than we did.  The Time War has always worked best as a mystery with an occasional clue thrown our way.  Spelling it all out would be a mistake.

Yeahhh, you've got a point there. If anyone's going to take it on, I'd like it to be Moffatt, but even then, why not leave a celestial trans-temporal struggle over our heads?

First time Doctor Who's ever done that.

...I'm sure I could slap a link to an episode or serial with a convenient "neither" resolution to a moral quandary on every word in that sentence, but those were the three I thought of offhand.  ...hm.  All season finales, too.

Then again, I'm a superhero comics fan; the notion of presenting the deep philosophical question of "Can a hero kill?" and then conveniently sidestepping it by having the Green Goblin accidentally impale himself/Joe Chill fall off a scaffolding/somebody else shoot Joe Chill before Bruce gets the chance is old hat to me.

A lot of anime does this too. I guess it's just generally weak writing, and a paranoia about taking chances with the property. One of the things I really liked about Battlestar was how characters had to choose something, every time. You gained a way deeper understanding of them by what they'd chosen to do when the chips were down - you could never go back to how things were. CONSEQUENCES. We need more of them in entertainment.

I'm not the biggest fan of Torchwood (I mostly just caught the finale), but one thing I liked was that there didn't seem to be many Deus Ex Machina tossed around until AFTER everyone had made their true colors shown.

My dad swears that [spoiler]the mystery Time Lord[/spoiler] is the Doctor's mother, but my money's on his wife. I remember him saying something off-hand to Donna about being married once, and it would be in keeping with his glance over at Donna in a wedding gown.

And of course the thing about Time Lords is that her age doesn't mean anything.  The actress's relative age to Tennant, Ward, Ford, etc. is irrelevant to the character's age, because of the various regenerations everybody's experienced over the past 46 years.

I was always hazy on this, but we've been following the Doctor since his first regeneration, right? So the first Doctor, that old, grumpy bastard, would likely be the man she'd married.

The relative ages of Time Lords in general aside, it's not too far-fetched. He literally became a different person than the man she'd fallen in love with.
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Verde

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #221 on: January 08, 2010, 05:04:59 AM »

It took a second viewing before I realised the implications of a time-traveler giving someone [spoiler]a lottery ticket[/spoiler].  :derp: In my defence, that happened towards the end of a half-hour or so of goodbyes, when my mind had already switched over to "Please just get Tennant the fuck out of here and show me the Series 5 trailer" mode. Also, it took my partner's squeals of laughter to hammer home how absurd [spoiler]an Ood singing the Doctor to sleep[/spoiler] must seem to people who aren't regular viewers.

All in all, it was a satisfying final episode for Tennant/RTD. The cop-out deus-ex machina solution was more than balanced by [spoiler]Wilf knocking four times and the Doctor's reaction[/spoiler], and the scene on the spaceship showed RTD's strengths at writing dialogue. It's really just a shame that the moment he has to write something actually happening it immediately becomes overblown and self-indulgent.

Wilf was a wonderful choice for the Doctor's companion this episode, and John Simm was amazing as usual. I'm glad they [spoiler]left the door open for the Master to return[/spoiler], but I hope it doesn't happen too soon.

RE the trailer: I'd much rather they leave Blink as a stand-alone episode and not try to squeeze a Dalek into the new series, but I'm still wishing my life away for Spring. Bring on Matt Smith Steven Moffat!
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #222 on: January 09, 2010, 11:45:49 PM »

A lot of anime does this too. I guess it's just generally weak writing, and a paranoia about taking chances with the property. One of the things I really liked about Battlestar was how characters had to choose something, every time. You gained a way deeper understanding of them by what they'd chosen to do when the chips were down - you could never go back to how things were. CONSEQUENCES. We need more of them in entertainment.

I'm not the biggest fan of Torchwood (I mostly just caught the finale), but one thing I liked was that there didn't seem to be many Deus Ex Machina tossed around until AFTER everyone had made their true colors shown.

Children of Earth did it two or three times too many, in increasingly contrived situations, but yeah, at least it did it.

Course, RTD's Doctor DID make the call on more than one occasion, it's just that he'd get saved immediately afterward.  (Letting Rose die to stop the Dalek, then turning around and letting the Dalek escape to save Rose -- yeah, in the end Rose lived and the Dalek died, but you saw his anguish in making the decision both times.  Ditto with letting the Dalek Emperor win in order to save Earth -- in comes Literal Deus ex Machina to fix everything, but he DID make the decision.  The Time War is pretty much the only no-win situation where he made the tough choice and it stuck.)

Tangentially, one of the reasons City on the Edge of Forever is the best episode of Star Trek is that it gives Kirk that exact dilemma: let an innocent person die for the sake of the future of human civilization.  And it doesn't cop out; he has to make that choice.

(Actually, in the end, the Doctor DOES make a choice like that -- [spoiler]himself for Wilf[/spoiler] -- in a scene that bears a more-than-slight resemblance to [spoiler]Spock's death[/spoiler] in Wrath of Khan.)

I was always hazy on this, but we've been following the Doctor since his first regeneration, right?

Well, technically the Second Doctor would be the first regeneration, but yeah, the First Doctor is supposed to be THE First Doctor.  That was ambiguous early in the series (I think there's an earlier episode that shows multiple faces, implying they're all the Doctor, including some that aren't actually the ones that had been shown on the series), but at this point, yeah, all the incarnations that have been on the TV series are all the incarnations the Doctor has ever had.

So the first Doctor, that old, grumpy bastard, would likely be the man she'd married.

The relative ages of Time Lords in general aside, it's not too far-fetched. He literally became a different person than the man she'd fallen in love with.

But she wasn't around even when the series started.  The Doctor's reasons for leaving Gallifrey have never been concrete, but they've always had to do with a kind of wanderlust that doesn't really lend itself to home life.  (In the Time Lords' first appearance in War Games, #2's explanation for leaving Gallifrey is a simply and wonderfully stated, "I was BORED!"; #10 explained that every Time Lord has a different reaction to the Total Perspective Vortex, and while the Master's was madness, "I ran.  I've never stopped running.")

Quick thought: this regeneration is a pretty clean sweep, but they often aren't.  I haven't seen all of them, but quick review:

#1-to-#2 (haven't seen, of course, seeing as it's lost): companions are present and have to adapt to the Doctor's regeneration.
#2-to-#3: pretty clean sweep, but not entirely.  Companions are removed and we don't even SEE #2 turn into #3, but the new status quo IS laid out: #3 will be trapped on present-day Earth.
#3-to-#4 (haven't seen): Sarah Jane present; status quo resets over the next few serials.
#4-to-#5: Happens in the middle of a major serial arc, but on the other hand, 2 of the Doctor's 3 companions show up for the first time in those serials.  Davison comes in with continuity baggage, but it's very recent continuity baggage.
#5-to-#6 (haven't seen): Peri is present, but has only just joined up.  A pretty quick change to the new status quo.
#6-to-#7 (haven't seen): Well, this was a FORCIBLE change into a new status quo.  Baker's removed without even being invited to do his own regeneration scene; Mel's present but is a relative newcomer and only lasts about a season.
#7-to-#8: well of course this is a clean-slate one because it was the series relaunch.  We see a pretty solitary #7; he picks up a couple companions just as he's regenerating, but they're both new characters.  (This is also, I think, the second-longest regeneration sequence, after Tennant's very long goodbye, of course; while the Doctor's fatal shooting is wonderfully abrupt, his slow death on the operating table and eventual resurrection in the meat locker take up a good chunk of the movie.)
#8-to-#9 (haven't seen because it doesn't actually exist): up to the imagination, of course.  At what point in the Time War did the Doctor regenerate?  Was it right as he threw the switch that wiped out the Daleks and the Time Lords, or sometime before?  In practice, of course, the '05 series was the most sweeping, clean-slate relaunch the series has ever seen (the non-canon Peter Cushing movies notwithstanding); RTD had a completely free playing field to set things up however he chose.
#9-to-#10: Rose is there, goes through the requisite disbelief as the Doctor regenerates, status quo is restored in pretty short order.
#10-to-#11: companions are dismissed (very slowly); Doctor is left alone on the TARDIS.  It's totally Moffat's to do whatever he wishes with it at this point.  That said, he's already set up a few beats he's coming back to, in the Weeping Angels and River Song.

I'm sure if I hit up Wikipedia for an hour or so and studied the different creative teams that worked on the original series, I'd gain more insight into why some regenerations were more clean-sweep than others.  If I had to guess, I'd say the same writers stayed on as Hartnell transitioned to Troughton but not as Troughton transitioned to Pertwee, that there was a creative transition about a year before (Tom) Baker left...things like that.  And obviously the reason the status quo stayed much the same between #9 and #10 was that the same people were writing the show.

Going to bed now, but I think this is a good topic; please share your thoughts.  Gnight!
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Mothra

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #223 on: January 10, 2010, 01:49:37 PM »

It'd certainly be something to find out that the Doctor's entire reason for travel is a century-old husband's mid-life crisis. Was it ever explained why he stole the Tardis in the first place?
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EvaKisu

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #224 on: January 10, 2010, 09:24:16 PM »

Wasn't it Eccleston's Doctor who mentioned about once having a wife and child? It's been a while..so I maybe getting things mixed up. 

I enjoyed the last one with Tennant.  I'm kinda on the I think it's his mother, but I would be good with either way. I like to think that he's making sure nothing goes wrong at Donna's wedding this time...after what happened last time..   

It kinda felt like they were just trying to add time when we went and checked up on everyone. Other then that very good show!

Me being the girl that I am, is excited that the new Doctor is eye candy as well.   :perfect:
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Bal

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #225 on: January 11, 2010, 02:17:54 PM »

The first Doctor traveled with his Granddaughter.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #226 on: January 12, 2010, 09:37:53 PM »

Wasn't it Eccleston's Doctor who mentioned about once having a wife and child?

Maybe, but IIRC Tennant mentioned it to Martha when she asked him if he had a family, and it DEFINITELY came up in The Doctor's Daughter.

I'm kinda on the I think it's his mother, but I would be good with either way. I like to think that he's making sure nothing goes wrong at Donna's wedding this time...after what happened last time..

Hrm.  Looking at Donna in her wedding dress COULD be a "wife" clue.

Course, general consensus is that River Song probably marries him at some point, and two wife reveals would get a little crowded.  (I'm sure the River Song story has some twists coming, though; she may not be his wife at all.)
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Mothra

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #227 on: January 14, 2010, 02:50:40 PM »

Hey, somebody read Russel T. Davis' hilariously self-centered book on writing Doctor Who:

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These emails don’t just describe the process of writing the Specials, they are part of the process – at one point, Davies actually decides that Wilf should be the one who causes the Doctor’s regeneration in the middle of an email.

It's not unreasonable to say the the guy just makes up shit he wants to see in a Doctor Who episode and figures out the actual plot later on. I think what tends to go horribly, horribly wrong is that every story becomes a paper-thin vehicle to bring the cast from this zany situation to that one so the Doctor can drive the Titanic or make a Douglas Adams reference or inject cameos or get a certain line out. Nothing comes naturally, it's all just point A to point B to point C.

Quote
There’s also a very interesting entry where Davies discusses the way he writes Doctor Who, which answers a recurring criticism. Discussing rewatching a repeat of “The Sound Of Drums”, he ponders the fact that you suddenly learn about things like the Archangel network, the Valiant, and the TARDIS becoming a Paradox Machine out of nowhere, with no advance seeding or foreshadowing in the script:

“I can see how annoying that looks. I can see how maddening it must be, for some people. Especially if you’re imposing really classical script structures and templates on that episode, even unconsciously. I must look like a vandal, a kid or an amateur… The simple fact is, all those things were planned. All of them were my choice. They’re not lazy, clumsy or desperate. They’re chosen. I can see more traditional ways of telling those stories, but I’m not interested. I think the stuff that you gain from writing in this way – the shock, the whirlwind, the freedom, the exhilaration – is worth the world. I’ve got this sort of tumbling, freewheeling style that somersaults along, with everything happening now - not later, not before, but now, now, now. I’ve made a Doctor Who that exists in the present tense. It’s happening now, right in front of your eyes! If you don’t like it, if you don’t join in with it then… blimey, these episodes must be nonsensical. But those classical structures can be seen in Primeval, in Demons, in Merlin, in all of them – and yet we stand with millions more viewers. And I think that’s partly why.”

I'm all about casually dropping hints or backstory reveals without losing momentum, but Davis seems to want to reap the surprise and "oh wow" of backstory without actually building one. He just makes shit up on the spot and barely revisits it, making it all essentially meaningless. You don't pay attention to Davis' Doctor's backstory because you know it doesn't really mean anything, it's not some juicy hidden detail you'd find in Lost, they're just words he's sputtering to sound traveled and exotic.

His style of backstory exposition isn't exciting because it's all fluff and no substance. All that's obvious, I guess, but it's good to at least hear that there wasn't anything more to a lot of what he put out beyond the flash.

Another one Thad might like:

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A line was cut from the scene where the Doctor talks to Wilf on the Vinvocci spaceship. He would have explained that he “was half-human back in 1999 for a couple of days” (a reference to the Paul McGann movie)

uhhh:

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Another [possible episode] was a kind of Star Trek pastiche - essentially “the Doctor on board the Enterprise, puncturing all that Starfleet pomposity with this sheer Doctor-ness”.

...a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover was seriously on their list of plans, until Enterprise was axed.

Some spoilers on the latest ep:

Quote
Who’s that mysterious woman in “The End Of Time”? Here it is from the horse’s mouth: “I like leaving it open, because then you can imagine what you want. I think the fans will say it's Romana. Or even the Rani. Some might say that it's Susan's mother, I suppose. But of course it’s meant to be the Doctor’s mother”.

Oh god, this could've so easily been yet another Stolen Earth:

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For two or three days, Russell was planning to bring back the Daleks for “The End Of Time” too. They would have been in an alliance with the Time Lords, and there would have been a Dalek Parliament and a Dalek Minister. He eventually changed his mind after learning that Steven Moffat is using the pepperpots in season five.

Quote
Both Martha and Mickey were originally planned to feature in Children Of Earth. Freema Agyeman became unavailable when she was cast in Law And Order: London. Mickey was only written out a week before the read-through, when Noel Clarke was offered a role in a Michael Winterbottom film.

So, I dunno, I like that Davis was trying to bring in some level of swashbuckling and adventure to Doctor Who. Lord knows the old show needed a bit more life beyond each episode's concept. But I look at a Davis episode like Stolen Earth and a Moffat on like Library and the latter is thrilling because you're engaged, you're interested in the mystery, you know what's at stake, and you're on the same page as the Doctor. You learn as he does, and sometimes fear as he does. That didn't happen with Stolen Earth, we were just strung along, following someone who seemed to fear something we didn't know, seemed to have a solution we weren't queued into until the very end. It was just fanservice and flashy lights until the triumphant magic solution dropped down and we are left to apparently stand in awe at how he pulled it off through effort alone.
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Royal☭

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #228 on: January 14, 2010, 05:05:09 PM »

Quote
As you’ve probably seen reported elsewhere, there was, incredibly, talk of a Torchwood musical, with the blokes from Abba involved!

I think at this point, the term "musical episode" should be code for "jumped the shark".

Quote
Other ideas were considered for the Easter special. One was very space opera, all dogfights and spaceships, with the Doctor arriving in the midst of a war in space. One of the races involved might have been the Chelonians - man-sized tortoises from Gareth Roberts’s Who novel The Highest Science.

Another centred around a deserted hotel, and would have seen weird, spindly-legged alien creatures like centaurs, with singsong voices, freezing Earth in time for a bizarre carnival procession.

Instead we got "Planet of the Dead"   ::(:

Niku

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #229 on: January 14, 2010, 09:38:44 PM »

Quote
As you’ve probably seen reported elsewhere, there was, incredibly, talk of a Torchwood musical, with the blokes from Abba involved!

I think at this point, the term "musical episode" should be code for "jumped the shark".

can we say UNLESS john barrowman is involved

please
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Royal☭

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #230 on: January 14, 2010, 09:44:33 PM »

Niku

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #231 on: January 14, 2010, 09:52:38 PM »

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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #232 on: January 14, 2010, 09:59:01 PM »

It's not unreasonable to say the the guy just makes up shit he wants to see in a Doctor Who episode and figures out the actual plot later on. I think what tends to go horribly, horribly wrong is that every story becomes a paper-thin vehicle to bring the cast from this zany situation to that one so the Doctor can drive the Titanic or make a Douglas Adams reference or inject cameos or get a certain line out. Nothing comes naturally, it's all just point A to point B to point C.

In fairness, this is pretty common in spectacle-based science fiction.  This pretty much describes most of Spielberg's work and all of Lucas's to a T.

BTW, from here on in I'm dispensing with spoiler tags; I really don't think anyone's reading this thread who hasn't watched the finale at this point.

I'm all about casually dropping hints or backstory reveals without losing momentum, but Davis seems to want to reap the surprise and "oh wow" of backstory without actually building one. He just makes shit up on the spot and barely revisits it, making it all essentially meaningless.

Or worse.

The Martha/Mickey marriage makes for a nice twist if you don't put any thought whatsoever into it, but if you actually do...it says pretty terrible things about Martha.  At this point she's bounced from a schoolgirl crush to a broken-off engagement to an abrupt marriage to somebody else.  It pretty much undoes all the healthy growing-up vibe we got when she left and makes her one of those terrifyingly needy people who bounce from one relationship to another without ever taking a moment to get centered.

Again, the natural response to this is "It's just a show, I should really just relax."  Martha is, after all, not real, and whatever tampering RTD's done with her in her last couple appearances we can choose to ignore and still like her character from Season 3.  I'm just saying that if you take a moment to actually scratch past the surface of the "Ooh, neat twist!" you get some things that are not only unsatisfying but downright unsettling.  And he doesn't think about these things.

...anyway.  Looking at the GOOD of the too-long regeneration goodbye sequence, I liked the total inappropriateness of the "save Martha's life -> save Luke's life -> get Jack laid" progression.  The scene was getting maudlin and needed a touch of levity.

(Also, IIRC where Martha and Mickey had been upset by the Doctor's appearance and the sense of impending doom, Sarah Jane actually smiled.  Great little touch -- she was there for #3's regeneration into #4, of course, and knows this is a birth as much as a death.  She can really do a lot with just a facial expression and fans' knowledge of continuity; her reaction to Davros's reappearance was pretty much perfect too, as the only character who'd ever encountered him before.)

I think at this point, the term "musical episode" should be code for "jumped the shark".

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...maybe those are what were in the last two posts; my Flash isn't working.
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Niku

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #233 on: January 14, 2010, 10:01:42 PM »

nah, they're john barrowman singing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qdn4YBwIPo
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Bal

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #234 on: January 15, 2010, 09:00:44 AM »

We don't really have any idea when the Martha/Mickey thing took place. He's a god damned time traveler.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #235 on: January 16, 2010, 10:07:26 AM »

In Torchwood: Children of Earth, they say Martha's on her honeymoon.
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Bal

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #236 on: January 16, 2010, 11:14:40 AM »

Fair enough I guess. I don't watch Torchwood, due to it being bad.
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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #237 on: January 16, 2010, 12:13:43 PM »

As of Children of Earth, that's not longer a good reason.
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Bal

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #238 on: January 16, 2010, 06:04:34 PM »

So one special (that happened to be the intended series ender) out of the whole series was good. Forgive me for not giving it a chance.
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Thad

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Re: New Doctor Who
« Reply #239 on: January 17, 2010, 12:04:40 AM »

I watched Children of Earth because I heard good things.  I was not misled, though I think the last 20% of it was godawful (see earlier in thread).

Anyway, I think it's pretty clear that all the goodbyes (except the one set in '05, obviously) took place in the present.

Wonder if the Doctor's going to be back in '10 when he lands, still in '05, or when.
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