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Yeah, it's Lake Powell, part of their trip to the US when they shot the s6 opener. But it's what I'm saying, I can't remember other locations after that for Smith besides A Town Called Mercy.
I should check the wiki
I don't really remember Hell Bent that well, but all the flash forward stuff is in the diner, right? If so: that place is actually in Cardiff(and is the same location as in Impossible Astronaut - it's a massive Who nerd pilgrimage site because it's also right near the Torchwood hub). He is in a desert at the end when the diner-TARDIS disappears, but I honestly assumed they shot that stuff pick-up while they were abroad for either the Zygons or Gallifrey, cos the terrain looks very similar to the Gallifrey stuff just without the orange tint.
Those are the bits I meant in Hell Bent. The episode opens with an aerial shot in the desert iirc
Maybe my main takeaway is that location shooting only seems to have a notable impact when its not just used for 'generic alien planet terrain'. Like, I even remember people at the time Planet of the Dead aired, with all the furore about the bus and filming in HD, noting how it looked good but probably wasn't worth the effort. I've just thought of Kill the Moon too, where they graded Lanzarote to look like the Moon, which was fine but not noteworthy. Yes, you can get some slightly more abstract looking alien terrains, but as seems to be the case with this S11 filming, using a real world location that isn't just a backstreet in Cardiff is sometimes more effective.
Just got done watching Capaldis last season and Twice Upon time. Don't know what to say but have a lot of memories and emotions spanning 3 years condensed to "wow, where did 3 years go?"
I remember where I was standing and what I was doing when I heard Capaldi was going to be the new doctor. I remember being very disappointed with his first season, dropping mid season 2 because ...wasn't into it before finishing it and just got around to watching his third in last two weeks.
And yet for some reason, even if I felt Moffat could have done more for him, it hit the feels to see Capaldi regent.
Wish I could have enjoyed the moments more. I felt swept away in The Who hysteria during Matt Smith era but missed out on the culture during Capaldi.
Amazing actor and maybe time will have me appreciate his run more even if I loved the hell out of what he did for the character itself.
I remember where I was standing and what I was doing when I heard Capaldi was going to be the new doctor. I remember being very disappointed with his first season, dropping mid season 2 because ...wasn't into it before finishing it and just got around to watching his third in last two weeks.
And yet for some reason, even if I felt Moffat could have done more for him, it hit the feels to see Capaldi regent.
Wish I could have enjoyed the moments more. I felt swept away in The Who hysteria during Matt Smith era but missed out on the culture during Capaldi.
Amazing actor and maybe time will have me appreciate his run more even if I loved the hell out of what he did for the character itself.
I am kind of glad they aren't staying in once place for the entire series which is what a lot of people predicated with 13 losing her TARDIS and everything
Did people genuinely think that? They saw one shot of the TARDIS bailing out and maybe a set photo of the Doctor running around in Sheffield and thought, "I know what, she won't have a TARDIS for a whole series!"?
Jesus...
Jesus...
Since finishing a bunch of Hartnell episodes last fall, I've moved on to a lot of Troughton stuff this month (with a plan to get through a lot of Pertwee and Tom Baker episodes across the rest of the year, before S11 hits). I grew to really like Hartnell, particularly when he was paired with Ian and Barbara, but I do really like Troughton's Doctor too -- I had seen him before in The Tomb of the Cybermen, which I thought was great, and the multi-Doctor specials, which were...not as good, but he was a lot of fun in them. But naturally, he's way more compelling on his own, leading the show, then playing second fiddle to others.
The Power of the Daleks
I meant to start with this, but couldn't get past the first episode. I know this was a labor of love on the restoration team's part, particularly given how little time and budget the BBC allowed for this project, but the animation is just too awkward, it's distracting. Like if Space Ghost/Aqua Teen/Archer tried to play it straight. It doesn't help that Troughton is pretty quiet here, so not only do you lose the physical performance (which the animation can't really capture anyway) but you have a lot of these awkward moments where character models are just standing around, silently, staring or blinking in a weirdly off-putting way. Maybe I'll give this another shot some day down the line.
The Moonbase
So more animation here, but it's only 2/4 episodes instead of 6, and it's done way better here. Why didn't this team do all of the animations for missing episodes? The facial expressions and movements are handled so much better here. Anyway, this serial is a lot of dopey fun. The moonbase characters make for good supporting players, Polly is MVP companion (Ben's a little annoying and Jamie's mostly bedridden, moaning about 'the silver piper'), and the Cybermen are still working that classic costume creep factor here. The Doctor seems like he's a step behind the curve for much of the story, but does manage to one-up the Cybermen in the end. Fun stuff.
The Power of the Daleks
I meant to start with this, but couldn't get past the first episode. I know this was a labor of love on the restoration team's part, particularly given how little time and budget the BBC allowed for this project, but the animation is just too awkward, it's distracting. Like if Space Ghost/Aqua Teen/Archer tried to play it straight. It doesn't help that Troughton is pretty quiet here, so not only do you lose the physical performance (which the animation can't really capture anyway) but you have a lot of these awkward moments where character models are just standing around, silently, staring or blinking in a weirdly off-putting way. Maybe I'll give this another shot some day down the line.
The Moonbase
So more animation here, but it's only 2/4 episodes instead of 6, and it's done way better here. Why didn't this team do all of the animations for missing episodes? The facial expressions and movements are handled so much better here. Anyway, this serial is a lot of dopey fun. The moonbase characters make for good supporting players, Polly is MVP companion (Ben's a little annoying and Jamie's mostly bedridden, moaning about 'the silver piper'), and the Cybermen are still working that classic costume creep factor here. The Doctor seems like he's a step behind the curve for much of the story, but does manage to one-up the Cybermen in the end. Fun stuff.
It's mostly just idiot fans theorizing because something happened once before (Third Doctor) it's more likely to happen again, even though it only happened the first time because of budget and was regarded by almost everybody involved to be a mistake
Yes, I recall my contemporary feelings about the matter. I thought "This is really bad. I watch it because I love time travel stories, and now they've taken away the time machine."
There are a lot of reasons why I would be more tolerant of a repetition, not the least of which is that the Third Doctor gave the show an ensemble of recurring characters and a fairly consistent earth-based narrative universe which has been a sturdy foundation on which the revival writers were able to build.
Still, I hope the TARDIS doesn't go away for too long.
i would guess an episode at most but hey, if they want to turn it into a season arc to find the TARDIS, then that could also be interesting
She will be in it by the end of the first episode and will hold a new sonic screwdriver by the end of the first episode because it will have significantly higher viewing figures than episode 2 and they will want to hit the 'big beats' of Doctorishness to 'prove' that she is the Doctor within her debut. See also The Eleventh Hour
Interesting. I thought that whole bit with her falling out was to simply add suspense and not to suggest an overarching storyline for next season.
It's just a slight tweak on the whole "TARDIS crashing after a regeneration" running gag. This time it's the Doctor who's crashing. The TARDIS will be back with a new console room almost immediately.
I don't really think the TARDIS will be gone for long if it disappears at all. I quite like the idea of it zooming down and picking her up in the first scene of the first episode.
But what do we know already? She's the first Doctor Who from Yorkshire, and it's assumed that the city she's seen plummeting over in the final scene of the Christmas special is Sheffield, because Jodie and other announced cast members have been seen in location shoots around the city.
So we have Doctor Who ejected from her TARDIS, in Sheffield. I did what I'd do if I were Doctor Who looking for my TARDIS in Sheffield.
I googled Sheffield police box.
And there is in fact a disused police box in Sheffield near the Town Hall. It's a famous landmark and seems to be quite well maintained, though the dimensions and the paint job don't look very TARDIS-like. Chances of Doctor Who going to take a closer look at it seem quite high to me.
https://www.thestar.co.uk/whats-on/...y-centre-police-box-back-in-business-1-297608
Little known fact: while it's true that most planets have a North, in the whole of space and time there has only ever been one planet with a Yorkshire. Ask anybody from Yorkshire.
The official BBC website for Doctor Who has been updated for the new Doctor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0
Unless they're going crazy with how well Time Lords can take a fall from thousands of feet, I think yeah, materialize under her catching her into the swimming pool, spit her out in a junk yard and shut down or bail again lol
Which logo?
If she fell into the swimming pool she would be wet and consequently need a change of outfit...
We don't need a showrunner any more, we can just write this stuff ourselves.
We don't need a showrunner any more, we can just write this stuff ourselves.
Time Lords are basically immortal for the first 12 hours after regeneration, I'm sure she can take the fall fine.
What does it take to kill a freshly regenerated Time Lord? Beheading?
RTD's logic not just on post-regeneration was that in general you have to be killed by something instantly, basically. So if the Doctor were shot in the head, that'd do him. In the time war Daleks racked up plenty of kills with one-shots (incidentally, this is why the Dalek that shoots the Doctor in The Stolen Earth only scores a glancing blow, thus allowing him to regenerate) -- so anything that doesn't kill them instantly gives them a chance to start the process, and they then need to remain safe while the process takes place.
I'd assume largely the same applies to freshly regenerated, really, it's just that the healing doesn't cost an actual regeneration.
good interview with Moffatt on his tenure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOfIIqb8Uhg&feature=youtu.be
Talks about the failure of the Series 5 Daleks a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOfIIqb8Uhg&feature=youtu.be
Talks about the failure of the Series 5 Daleks a bit.
Last week's is worth a look too. It's about Moffatt during the RTD era but they dip forward at times.
If this video doesn't create some sympathy among the Moffat haters in the community, I don't know what will.
Being told that the only actor they had under contract for the 50th was Jenna Coleman and having to come up with some awful sounding alternative script where no Doctor directly appeared; having the BBC schedule Sherlock obligations right alongside Doctor Who obligations; working on Series 6 at the same time as Series 5. Sounds awful.
Going back to Season One. I have yet to see Eccleston and Tennant's run.
Watched the first three episode of Eccleston's doctor. This dude was pure magic and is doing everything right for me. Nails the aloof, funny, and yet dangerous sides the Doctor has and can exude. Billie Piper is also just brilliant as Rose.
Watched the first three episode of Eccleston's doctor. This dude was pure magic and is doing everything right for me. Nails the aloof, funny, and yet dangerous sides the Doctor has and can exude. Billie Piper is also just brilliant as Rose.
Let's ignore the haters. In a scene I selected at random six minutes in, Steven Moffat articulates a conundrum I've often puzzled over. The interviewer reiterates the concept that there was a shift in series 5 "from Russell's kitchen sink drama to a more fairytale, escapist vibe." Moffat's reply:
"I think Russell and I, in order to make us look different, have to be caricatured in our approaches. I think most people who are not Doctor Who fans, if you described the first four years of modern Doctor Who as a kitchen sink drama, would be wondering what the hell was in your kitchen. People say it's a soap opera. It really isn't. That's a grotesque exaggeration and the fairytale approach is a grotesque exaggeration."
He goes on to take ownership of the latter. "It fits sometimes. It doesn't fit all the time." And he remarks that you'll see the same fairy tales if you go back to Russell's episodes, because that's the genre that most precisely describes Doctor Who.
I don't hate Moffat, but I don't like his first several seasons much at all. That does provide some context for why.
Re: Rose, I didn't ever hate her, but I didn't really appreciate what Billie Piper brought to the table until my rewatch.
Re: Rose, I didn't ever hate her, but I didn't really appreciate what Billie Piper brought to the table until my rewatch.
TBF I think the fairytale thing came from a combo of the show's own publicity machine and that Weeping Angels story in Series 5 where the Doctor and River have fairytale related bantz at the end. I've literally found a quote from Moffatt from 2010 saying the was going to give the show more of a storybook quality.
I think while the description is obviously reductive, Moffat's answer is reductive in another, different way - he dismisses it probably because he thinks it takes too simple a view of his work, but the flip side is by dismissing it out of hand, well... it dismisses that... it's true, really.
The fairytale stuff comes from the format of Moffat's series early on: we often see the Doctor through the eyes of the companion, and to Amy he is a fairytale figure because for years she wasn't even sure if he was real or not, imaginary friend, etc etc. "He was just a story, a game," as Rory said, like most fairytales. This carries through to very, very much of that series and really comes to define Smith's Doctor. What is he in his last story to the people of Trenzalore if not, y'know, a mad fairytale come to life? When you get to the scenes of him doing Punch & Judy and playing with the kids this is really very clear.
Compare this to Rose (this goes for Donna and Martha, too) and what the Doctor is, well, it's pretty matter-of-fact, but the memorable difference, at least among fans, is that RTD's era is a show where the Doctor sits on a sofa and watches Blue Peter during an alien invasion, a show where he gets slapped by the companion's mothers, a show where a pivotal character beat for a major character takes place over a chance encounter as she washes her underwear in a launderette. I think one of the best scenes of that era is just Jackie and Mickey talking absolute crap over chips in a dialogue exchange that's so blisteringly mundane, dull and silly that it feels absolutely real--
JACKIE: And it's gone up market, this place. They're doing little tubs of coleslaw, now. It's not very nice. It tastes a bit sort of clinical.
MICKEY: Have you tried that new pizza place down Minto Road?
JACKIE: What's it selling?
MICKEY: Pizza.
This dialogue is where the kitchen sink drama talk comes from, and people don't talk like this in Moffat's Who. They don't even talk like it in Torchwood or Sarah Jane, or at least not nearly as much - it seems like it was a specific decision by RTD to ground the show for a really broad Saturday night audience, whereas SJA didn't need it because it was for kids and Torchwood didn't need it because it was for sci-fi fans.MICKEY: Have you tried that new pizza place down Minto Road?
JACKIE: What's it selling?
MICKEY: Pizza.
Obviously there's crossover between the two - we have The Lodger in Moffat's era and we have the Doctor as a legend woven throughout RTD's era, but I think the comparison is absolutely real. I think Moffat's show ultimately moves away from it - the fairytale thing is specifically a Smith thing and even more specifically mostly an Amy/Rory thing - but it is very much real, and it's a defining pillar of that era. It's reductive because there's a lot else to it, but the 11/Amy and the River stuff is all absolutely fairytale, and that's fair enough.
The same threads are throughout like Moffat says, but they're handled in different ways- like the Doctor dropping in and out of Amy & Rory's life is a fun game, but with Rose and Martha it's depicted as some awful, life-shattering stuff for the people around them. That's where the kitchen sink stuff comes from, really. We haven't had a character like Jackie in Moffat's era, and she is basically a soap opera character. She could walk onto Albert Square tomorrow and she'd fit right in.
If he feels that way about it, I guess he is.
I personally detest those first two years now. There are maybe 4 total episodes from 26 I would consider to be truly good.
I bet there's someone on a Doctor Who fan forum who's already written this exact thing as fanfiction and made it their headcanon to go along with their "quitting the show forever" posts.
Bantz? Oh never mind. Banter or flirting.
Yes, you mean the Pandorica.
So this is Doctor Who explicitly referring to something he believes to be a fairy tale, while River is telling him teasingly that it's real. As somebody pointed out, the Time of the Doctor is essentially told as a fairy tale. Doctor Who literally defends Christmasland from all comers for hundreds of years. And before then, Series 6 is basically the apogee of the myth-making.
Then again, Toclaphane. Martha spends an entire year spreading the tale of the hero who has saved our lives many times but nobody even knows he exists. His friend Jack is kept in chains, dying each day and being reborn. He is betrayed by the scientist played by Ellie Hadington (I forget her in-universe name), but finally rises again when everybody on earth says his name, Doctor, simultaneously.
The scene when he advances on The Master, with its musical crescendo, even reminds me of the scene in Don Giovanni where the statue of the Commendatore comes to life and carries the libertine away to hell.
Kitchen sink?
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Sure enough with the Toclafane -- but the flip side is that the entire Master series 3 plot is made possible by the most simple kitchen sink drama in the world - a mother concerned for and interfering in the life of her daughter. This is the thing, and this is the difference, really - RTD's series was often driven, in the background, by that sort of soap-opera like drama. All the stuff with Martha's mum and dad is the emotional rock of what Martha goes on to do, and the episode goes to pains to make a point around them because they're ordinary and don't understand the stakes or the reasoning for their own suffering in the way Martha, Jack and the Doctor do. Much of the previous episode is dedicated to them - to their betrayal, to their imprisonment, and crucially to the fury that it cooks up in Martha even towards the Doctor.
My point, I suppose, is that the story is absolutely driven by them and that kitchen sink family-and-friends stuff. It's the lifeblood of the show, in a sense. The legend and fairytale stuff comes late on and is barely telegraphed to the point where the episode was derided as being terrible (I disagree) a lot at the time because of the deus ex machina ending.
Moffat's endings are rarely like that, but part of the reason why is how he writes. When the crack opens in the sky of Trenzalore and the Doctor is rescued, it feels earned - but the flip side is that the kitchen sink drama-esque scenes we get with parents and a grandma we never see before or since are pretty throwaway in the same way that RTD's conclusion is throwaway. Vitally, nothing about the conversation with Clara's grandmother and parents actually set her in motion - her path is already decided, it's clear - but the scenes are only there to demonstrate where she is and that the Doctor has truly, properly sent her away. It's a different sort of tone - they're basically focused in inverse ways.
True, I can see the legitimate complaints with S1 and S2, espeically if you are a not a fan of Rose and her storyline. I do think it is worth watching through, especially if you have seen the other seasons though.
Listening to Moffat talking about how heartbreaking it was for him that Christopher Eccleston turned down Day of the Doctor was really sad. He must really have hated his experience with the show, I mean the man did Thor 2: The Dark World but he wont come back for another episode as The Doctor.
I like Rose fine. The chemistry between The Doctor (both of them) and Rose is one of the saving graces of the first couple years. I'm not even completely put-off by 10 and Rose flirting while laughing at history, as many Who fans are and were.
The problem is how few good episodes there are and the non-existent production quality to save them. Even ignoring the really egregiously bad episodes, the stuff in the margins is rough. Take something like Dalek, which seemed novel at the time. That episode has one of the worst side characters in Who history AND I'm not even talking about the most nothing companion in Doctor Who history who got introduced in that episode. If I were to make a list of episodes I thought were essential or belonged on a best-of list, "The Doctor Dances", "School Reunion" and "The Girl in the Fireplace" may be the only three episodes from the first 26 (and 2 Christmas specials) that merit consideration for me.
I just think they are bad television and bad Doctor Who. The worst years of nuWho all told. The show picks up as something better for me around The Famly two-parter and Blink.
God, I couldn't disagree more. Rose, Dalek, Father's Day, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways are all-time classic Doctor Who episodes, every one. Like, Van Statten is an irritating side character but that's sort of the point of him, right? Likewise for Adam.
Christmas Invasion is brilliant too... and then in series 2 I'd say School Reunion, Girl in the Fireplace, Impossible Planet/Satan Pit and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday are all absolute classics too. Secretly I have a lot of love for Tooth and Claw and Love & Monsters too, though I know those are polarizing in a big way, so ey.
The production value is very rocky and series 1 and 2 are home to two of the worst episodes in New Who (The Long Game/Fear Her), but I honestly still think they're amazing TV with some really brilliant, snappy writing. There's an energy to those first two years that is still unmatched, really, though everything else improved in kind around it. Every RTD year was better than the last, but I still don't think 1/2 are bad, really.