The Doctor Who Opinion Topic (by popular demand)
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Continuing the discussion from Return of the Doctor:
i just thought it took a month for there to be enough content with the new doctor for someone to start an opinion topic about him.
As for the last season, I'm a little disappointed. It holds up, but it seems like Moffat is too busy fishing for Emmy to keep people entertained. If it was a Matt Smith season, I'd probably give it a pass.
Oh, and for the
hot wide-faced assistant
, she's okayish, but that boyfriend guy seems even more annoying than Mickey, and that's quite a bar.
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I don't watch this, but having Googled the
@darkmatter said:hot wide-faced assistant
I'm wondering if I should start.
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eeeh... the new doctor is OK, but nothing to the awesome that was the fourth doctor.
(and flamewar about the best doctor starts in 3.... 2.... 1....)
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I feel like he's kind of all over the place, you know? I kind of feel like there's a lot of conflicting goals. "Make him witty and funny like Smith, but also angry and aging like Hurt, and emo like Tennant. Oh, and drag him into a love triangle, but don't make him in love with his companion, people are starting to complain about that happening. Also, make sure you do one of every type of episode before the halfway point of the season so people know what to expect."
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The first few episodes I didn't like all that much--too much like the previous few doctors. But I like where it's going lately--it more like the TOS, and I preferred that over the modern incarnation.
The big problem is that this is in a lot of ways a modern show--faster paced, less plot, more running around, jump cuts, and so on.
Also, I was enjoying the brief period before we found out there was going to be another drawn-out season(s)-long plot. Can't we just have a couple of people tooling around helping people out of jams and every once in a while interrupting some big plots? I realize that gets stale eventually but I'd love a season or so of it.
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The big problem is that this is in a lot of ways a modern show--faster paced, less plot, more running around, jump cuts, and so on.
I don't mind it being modern - but more dramatic and edgy episodes worked way, way better when there were 1 or 2 of them per season in an otherwise silly show. Now they're just running a dramatic show.
I feel like he's kind of all over the place, you know?
Hm, I don't see that. 12 does have a very distinctive personality (though the whole "am I a good man?" thing seems a bit out of character). Granted, it seems like he got a huge blow in the head and forgot what humans do, but his trope seems to be mostly "I don't care about anybody around, but I still save them 'cause I'm just that cool".
I expected Capaldi to be a bit more like Eccleston, but it seems like the Time War is now long forgotten.
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I do love the attack eyebrows. I think as of Time Heist I'm starting to get a feel for him, but last week derailed that again, as I'm sitting here going "Really? He's gone all stupid about people again? Oh, great, and now he abruptly has a huge problem with Clara's boyfriend so we can have more romance drama. Can't we go back to kicking ass? What was wrong with that?"
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Oh, great, and now he abruptly has a huge problem with Clara's boyfriend so we can have more romance drama.
As I said. Mickey feels like the coolest guy in the universe now.
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I like him. He's going for the stoic type, and the poor guy just can't seem to catch a break with Clara always darting off. I might hate him by the end of the season, but meh, he's cool.
Rory > Mickey =~ Pink, though. And everyone >>> Rose Motherfucking Tyler. #flamebait
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I like him. He's going for the stoic type, and the poor guy just can't seem to catch a break with Clara always darting off. I might hate him by the end of the season, but meh, he's cool.
I don't know; he seems just as butthurt as most of the guys. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, time and space, billions of galaxies... but do you love me, Clara?". Uuugh.
Then again, guys in the show have been less than brilliant from the beginning of the new series. I still think the coolest one was that kid with a hole in his head from Sat5.
And everyone >>> Rose Motherfucking Tyler. #flamebait
Not taking you on it, but she was okay to me. At least the romance was proper, instead of those ambiguous love triangles.
Still, it would seem fitting for this Doctor to pick up some alien companion, or perhaps *gasp* a male one, but it doesn't seem likely.
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See, I got a very different vibe from that scene. I read it as more, "You have this amazing wonderful life full of indescribable wonders, and you didn't even consider bringing me along? SADNESS." I will call BS if his lie-detecting ability doesn't turn out to be because he has some alien DNA or some such, though. He's too good at it to be natural.
As for Rose Tyler, I was bored by her to begin with, which isn't a huge sin, but then she just refuses to go the fuck away. She has so little to offer over any other companion, but somehow, she's the Chosen One, the most Mary Sue of all Mary Sues.
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To be fair, all companions are the most Mary Sure of all Mary Sues. (Especially those that need a title to distinguish themselves from each other (e.g. "the girl who waited", "the impossible girl", ....)
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That's what I mean. Sure, Amy and Clara and Martha and Donna are all flavors of Mary Sues, but Rose is THE Mary Sue that is somehow special and amazing and unforgettable among all the Mary Sues. What makes her so much better that she HAS to show up for every special event ever? What makes her like, the Doctor's soulmate or whatever the fuck?
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@created_just_to_disl said:
To be fair, all companions are the most Mary Sure of all Mary Sues.
Donna was cool, from what I remember. Though it might be because she came after Martha Jones, and she was the blandest of the blandest.
See, I got a very different vibe from that scene. I read it as more, "You have this amazing wonderful life full of indescribable wonders, and you didn't even consider bringing me along? SADNESS."
Even worse then - "you have some sort of your own life? This cannot be!"
What makes her like, the Doctor's soulmate or whatever the fuck?
Well, she... kinda was, at least to Ten. And she had at least traces of personality, unlike Martha and Amy (Donna was cool, as I said). Clara seems to be taking her over by a mile in the witty department, though.
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@created_just_to_disl said:
To be fair, all companions are the most Mary Sure of all Mary Sues. (Especially those that need a title to distinguish themselves from each other (e.g. "the girl who waited", "the impossible girl", ....)
...which is a complete fail, relative to the old show. Sarah Jane had a "never say die" attitude coupled with a ridiculous ability to scream; Harry was somewhat befuddled, perhaps an older-and-more-sarcastic Arthur Dent, Turlough had a deep secret, Adric was a twit, and so on. None of them where the fucking Chosen One.
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Donna was cool
Oh how I hated Donna. She was a big-mouthed stupid harridan until she turned into DoctorDonna, and then she became insufferably smug.
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the old show
Eh, I should watch it eventually. Though the sheer volume of the old series is quite terrifying, and I'm a bit OCD about shows I watch (plus the missing episodes aren't helping).
Oh how I hated Donna. She was a big-mouthed stupid harridan
Exactly! Personality, dammit! Maybe the cheapest sort, but personality!
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All the old episodes are missing, are from the very early days. Mostly second doctor, I believe, with a few first and third. I would recommend, if you want, to just start with the third, or maybe the fourth. It won't be too big a deal to miss the earliest ones; besides, they've physically aged poorly due to the BBC's original cavalier attitude to archival. Dailymotion.com seems to have a lot or even all of 6+7, and might have 4 + 5.
Honestly the continuity is mainly in the recurring villians; you can almost watch it in reverse.
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Exactly! Personality, dammit! Maybe the cheapest sort, but personality!
Well, I'll give you she had something that you could loosely call personality, lol.
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hot wide-faced assistant
She is pretty OK, but she is no Karen Gillan. I have always dug redheads, and she is an amazing example of ginger female beauty.
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I expected Capaldi to be a bit more like Eccleston, but it seems like the Time War is now long forgotten.
From that comment I'm assuming you didn't see the 50th anniversary episode.
History has been altered now. The Time War did not end how it did before. Don't want to say anything for those who haven't seen it.
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All the old episodes are missing, are from the very early days. Mostly second doctor, I believe, with a few first and third.
Everything from Three onwards should be complete, IIRC.
I'd start with Three anyway where the fundamentals of the character are well established (regeneration, alien history), though the whole 'stuck on Earth because of the Time Lords (and definitely not 1970s BBC budget cutbacks)' shtick got tiring. Four is, of course, the definitive.
Though if anyone here bitches about the companions, you have no fucking idea. I give you Adric. FUCKING ADRIC. The only companion in 50 years to actually be written out of the program with a death because no-one liked him.
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The only companion in 50 years to actually be written out of the program with a death because no-one liked him.
I think you must've suppressed the memory of Peri.
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yeah, time heist was great. the other ones were mostly meh.
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What makes her like, the Doctor's soulmate or whatever the fuck?
well she did get her own dr copy?
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Oh how I hated Donna. She was a big-mouthed stupid harridan until she turned into DoctorDonna, and then she became insufferably smug.
plus 10 billion
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she's okayish, but that boyfriend guy seems even more annoying than Mickey, and that's quite a bar.
I haven't seen the new season, but I liked Mickey.
Also I liked when he got blown-up in Star Trek Into Darkness.
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My favorite of the new companions is Donna, the only one of them to have an actual character arc. (I mean, one that seems to have been planned-out in advanced and didn't all happen in about 15 minutes in the last episode of the season.) Also her dad Wilfred, who was amazing in Turn Left.
However, the season finale she's a part of is somehow even worse than most Doctor Who season finales. Which is goddamned saying something because they're all fucking terrible.
And I admit it I was annoyed with the way they just kind of disposed of her in a way to guarantee she could never really be a Doctor Who character again. That was just shitty.
I never liked Rose very much, strangely I liked Mickey better than her, because at least Mickey seemed like an actual real person. Martha was pretty good. Amy and Rory were pretty good, but only when traveling together.
River is irritating as shit.
Clara's ok I guess.
NOW YOU KNOW.
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I think you must've suppressed the memory of Peri.
Peri had her arc, she wasn't dead unless you're misremembering the events of Trial of a Time Lord; she ends up with Lord Yrcanos - alive.
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As far as the old series, I watched a shitload of Tom Baker back on PBS when I was a kid, and I don't remember anything apart from:
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That episode where the leather chair eats a guy, and
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That episode where Tom Baker had that HUGE BOOGER hanging out of his nose for like 5 minutes ON-SCREEN and they didn't bother reshooting it because nobody at the BBC gave a fuck before about 1995 or so.
(Also, the "BBC Red" phenomena, where one specific shade of red has a huge glowing distracting halo around it at all times, because they so didn't give a fuck, they didn't even give a fuck about purchasing working cameras.)
Oh there was also an episode with a machine that was a ripoff of the spice gatherer from Dune, and it was full of killer androids or something. Basically, the show's fucking forgettable as fuck. I watched the US pilot on Fox, and it's also so forgettable I don't remember anything about it except he punches his way out of a morgue or something.
BTW, I've seen both the non-canon movies, and they're terrible but, at least to my warped sense of entertainment, much better than anything they were doing on TV at the time. (Mid-60s.)
Compare that to, say, Blakes 7, where years later I can still remember almost every episode because it fucking rocked.
Also: according to Wikipedia, young Rory was played by "Ezekiel Wigglesworth".
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Robots of Death (the one with the sandminer) was the first story I encountered.
The US pilot as you call it... that's like the 8th Doctor haha, and I have no idea why they even billed it as a pilot for a show that already had had its 30th anniversary by then.
As for the non-canon movies, yes, they were comparable to much else of British production at the time. Bonus points if you noticed Bernard Cribbins was in one (or both?) of them... years and years before being Wilfred Mott.
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He was the "companion" (so to speak) in the second movie, Doctor Who: Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.* He's a cop who wanders into the Tardis while trying to report a crime, and then the Doctor kidnaps him (for some reason?) and takes him to 2150 AD (again, for some reason? They never explain why they go to 2150 AD, nor do they explain why they don't just let the cop out of the Tardis before leaving. Also he's bizarrely ok with being kidnapped.)
* Which, BTW, also doubled as the World's Worst Movie Title until Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo came out.
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It's been way too many years since I watched either of the non-canon films.
Stop questioning the plot holes, though, that's where the rabbit hole lies. This shit isn't supposed to make sense.
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It's been way too many years since I watched either of the non-canon films.
http://schend.net/images/animated/dr_who_rope_trick.gif
http://schend.net/images/animated/dr_who_panic.gif
Now you've seen the best bits.
I recommend the Rifftrax of both. "The bombs are useless!" "They're the robo-men of bombs!" is gibberish out of context, but while watching the second movie I laughed so hard I needed CPR (not true).
Stop questioning the plot holes, though, that's where the rabbit hole lies. This shit isn't supposed to make sense.
Right; but even by Doctor Who standards the "why the fuck did they go to 2150 AD, again?" thing is GLARING. (Also the, "why did they kidnap a cop?" thing is pretty weird. But weirder is, WHY THE FUCK DID THEY EVEN GO TO 2150 AD IN THE FIRST PLACE!)
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Yes but you're missing the point... it's glaring but you're supposed to ignore it because it's that obvious.
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The US pilot as you call it... that's like the 8th Doctor haha, and I have no idea why they even billed it as a pilot for a show that already had had its 30th anniversary by then.
Because the show had been cancelled 8 years before or whatever. There was talk of an actual American Doctor Who show if the movie did well.
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Yes, but it wasn't a pilot for a new show, that's what I'm getting at. It was a reboot, not a new pilot.
If it had been a new pilot, we'd have had a new origin story. Though they did pull some serious bollocks in that TV movie... I mean, that's where the 'Doctor + companion romance shit' started, the Doctor claiming he was half human... wtf is that about.
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That episode where Tom Baker had that HUGE BOOGER hanging out of his nose for like 5 minutes ON-SCREEN and they didn't bother reshooting it because nobody at the BBC gave a fuck before about 1995 or so.
I remember reading somewhere — I wish I could remember where — their budget was so low that there was pretty much no chance to reshoot anything. IIRC, they had access to the set for long enough to do one rehearsal, pretty much straight through, with no chance to stop and change anything, before shooting. They were so short of cameras and video equipment that they only available for something like an hour and a half to record a one hour show. Pretty much all the video editing was done live. If something went horribly, horribly wrong, they could reshoot it and edit it in later, but for the most part it was like doing live TV; they had one shot at it, and whatever they got, that was it.
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they did pull some serious bollocks in that TV movie... I mean, that's where the 'Doctor + companion romance shit' started, the Doctor claiming he was half human... wtf is that about.
Well, way back at the beginning he had a granddaughter with him, so at least some kind of humanity was being implied way back then.
What we chiefly need now is another companion who dresses like Leela. Or is willing to pose topless with a Dalek like Jo Grant.
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The nature of the granddaughter was set up because it would have looked a bit suspicious if there weren't such an age gap - he would have just been a dirty old man otherwise.
But even right back at the start there was the implication that he wasn't human ;)
We do need a companion that isn't from present day Earth and for a change, not from Earth period - we've had Gallifreyans (Susan, Romana I & II), Mordee explorers (Leela), 51st Century people (River, Jack), an Alzarian (Adric), a Trakenite (Nyssa), a shape-changing android (Kamelion) and of course the multiple incarnations of K-9. There's probably others, too, but not that immediately come to mind.
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What we chiefly need now is another companion who dresses like Leela.
I would not be entirely opposed to such a companion.
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hot wide-faced assistant
To be fair, you'd have to be on meth to look that conventionally attractive.
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My favorite Capaldi episode so far is Robin Hood (Time Heist is a close second) - with the arrow into the TARDIS as a hilarious intro, the fight with the spoon, The Doctor not believing in Robin Hood until the very end (seriously, haven't we encountered anyone like that who just wouldn't accept what was obviously in front of them?) I liked how Robin Hood took a page from The Doctor's fighting example and turned it on the bad guy. Finally, the comparison of the heroes who won't admit to being heroes at the end. What's not to like?
As for companions, my take on them:
Rose: yeah, ok. A messed up Doctor and a smitten companion - could have been better, but it had its good points. I have to say, "School Reunion" with the reintroduction of Sarah Jane Smith led to some hilarious bantering and later comparing notes (e.g.: "does he still stroke bits of the TARDIS?" ROFL)
Martha: her icy personality and "I'm not impressed with you" viewpoint was a direct response to so many fans complaining about the previous smitten companion. Could have been done much better if BBC didn't snap so hard in the other direction.
Donna: loud and boisterous, SHALLOW: that was the point at the start. Ended up growing as a person right up to saving the Universe, then that personality had to die - sad, really. Note: she can come back - who says she can't be plucked out of time before the Doctor Donna occurred?
Amy: This was more what Martha should have been. I didn't like Matt Smith in the early episodes, so didn't get into Amy too much either.
Clara: Difficult for me to be objective here, since she's the first actress (or anyone for that matter) in decades that I have the equivalent of a schoolgirl crush on. My type as far as looks go, too. I really liked the intro in "Asylum of the Daleks" where she turned out to be a Dalek but refused to relinquish her humanity. Snowmen was very well done too, esp. the intro to the new TARDIS "desktop theme" with her going around the box outside (as opposed to most people's initial reaction of standing inside just gaping). Day of the Doctor: "Activation code, yeah?" /teleports away from bad guy/ Then how she gets the Doctors out of the locked cell (omitting data here to avoid spoilers) - HILARIOUS!I could go on, but I think I've posted more than enough.
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From that comment I'm assuming you didn't see the 50th anniversary episode.
History has been altered now. The Time War did not end how it did before. Don't want to say anything for those who haven't seen it.
I did, but I thought they weren't all supposed to remember that? Or did it apply only to 9 and 10?
Well, way back at the beginning he had a granddaughter with him, so at least some kind of humanity was being implied way back then.
Umm, she was a full-fledged Time
LordLady, from what I remember.
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eeeh... the new doctor is OK
Not that impressed personally.
Also, I was enjoying the brief period before we found out there was going to be another drawn-out season(s)-long plot.
This one? It's not going very far very fast at the moment.
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I googled hot wide faced assistant and got this as the third (image search) result. (First result was this topic)
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This one? It's not going very far very fast at the moment.
Yeah. Also, yeah, that's the thing with drawn-out season(s)-long plots.
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Well at least Bad Wolf was sorta faster...
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I did, but I thought they weren't all supposed to remember that? Or did it apply only to 9 and 10?
Only 9 & 10. Watch the part near the end when they're about to go their separate ways again when 11 mentions the timelines aren't in sync. Nicely done by the writers to tie up that loose end rather than just lazily let it go as "time can be rewritten."
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They have somewhat "reconstructed" some of the early episodes. There are episodes where they were able to salvage the audio, but not the video, so they took footage they already had of the sets and animated the action.
