Slashdot Mirror
Online Doctor Who Documentary
mikey writes "There's an online documentary called Planet of the Doctor about the influence of Doctor Who. It's put out by the CBC and it's got some decent interviews with original producers, writers, and cast as well as fans and others. So far, it's been very entertaining and informative. They've got four episodes out with another couple to come. If you're a Doctor Who fan (or even a generic Sci-Fi fan) it's worth checking out."
Am I alone in being turned off by excessive commercialism? For example, the latest Star Wars offering may be entertaining, but with all the tie-ins, from Pepsi to fast foods to Saturday morning cereal advertisements aimed at children, to my formerly-favorite candy M&M's (for which I almost went to jail over once-don't ask), coupled with all the astroturfing...well the stench of desperation is turning my appetite off. And that's just one example.
I'm ready for a revolution. Tear it all down and start fresh, or at least, let the writing and acting stand on its own.
KOA
Possibly because the Time Lords have been exterminated. It seems that there was a Time War in which both the Time Lords and the Daleks were wiped out; the Doctor claims that this was his doing.
For eight whole lives the Doctor was the superior being, a Time Lord from Gallifrey, impressing the hell out of the lesser humans - but he never needed them. Now, though, there's no home to go to, no Gallifrey, no Time Lords, just him and the TARDIS. No wonder he's clingy with Rose: he's got nobody else now.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Secondly, yes we DO have off-air recordings on DVD. Some of the grainier recordings used in recovered stories (I think Invasion may have been one of these) were fan recordings, which is why they are of such low quality. Good quality recordings are used where they exist, but they don't always exist.
And, to answer another troll, yes the BBC should damn well have been saved from its mistakes. First, the BBC is owned by the British Public, and the British Public wanted (and wants) those stories. Those who pay the piper call the tune.
We aren't talking about some namby-pamby private corp that can do what it likes in its own private dungeon. The BBC is public property, and answers to it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My one complaint is that every episode thus far has been set on/in orbit around Earth, and most of them in the 20th and 21st centuries. The beauty of SciFi is you can do anything, see anything. Its the ultimate escapism. So why go to early 21st century London so often?
Maybe I'm just looking at the old series through rose coloured glasses, but I much preffered it to the new one.
The writing of Doctor Who really started to decline tward the end of the Sylvester McCoy era. I liked Sylvester McCoy but the writing was a touch lackluster. Others may argue that this started post Tom Baker. I must admit Peter Davison made a very lethargic Doctor. Colin Baker I liked dispite the fact he came across as an arrogant bastard. The whole Trial of a Time Lord, while looking very much like they picked up the scraps of two incomplete stories and copy and pasted them into three, did a good job of making us look at him and say he's not all bad. I would have loved to see a complete series of Paul Mcgann, but the one TV movie was all flash and no substance.
In way way you are wearing Rose colored glasses. But part of Doctor Who's charm was the fact that they didn't resort to crude bodily fuction humor and treated sexuality in a very respectful tasteful way. The current series has already made reference to breast implants, homosexuality, getting a room, and other aspects of humanity never touched on before. I have yet to decide whether this is a good or bad thing.
Also, I find much of the impact that the original series had is lost though having 45min start-to-finish episodes. One of the best things about the old series was the great cliffhangers.
Expect cliff hangers here and there. This current season has 3 out of 13 episodes. I agree I like the old style, but I can live with the current one.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
So why go to early 21st century London so often?
;)
because this is where the series is grounded - it's where rose comes from, and it's where the viewer comes from. this isn't about pure escapism, it's about relating these outlandish situations to things people can understand.
having said that, it does sound like it's dumbed-down - it isn't. and the later episodes do go off galavanting around other times for a lot longer - in fact, around the double-episode in the middle of the series, it's quite a shock to go back to the 21st century.
the return to our time is also about continuity - without it, it would simply be "rose and the doctor and different things every week" - i for one feel the series gains from these extra characters, it helps flesh out the protagonists. some recurring other characters (no spoilers!) also help.
while i was one of the other many kids terrified by daleks and cybermen in the late 70s, looking back on them there is no denying the original series are crap. the laughable special effects aside, the plots are tenuous and the dialogue at times abysmal. these are all areas i think the new series has pulled away from and improved. it HAS kept the quirkiness of the doctor particularly well, it's going to be sad to see christopher ecclestone leave after just one series. it does, however, maintain the slightly patronising plot-explaination within almost every episode, where perhaps it could have been a little more subtle. but maybe they thought they'd alienate the american audience by doing that
if you guys are only a few episodes in... KEEP WITH IT. the first few set the scene and illustrate the changes, and are a bit samey. they do improve, though, and start getting awesome around episode 6.
the first series of Quatermass went the same way.
Not true. The first series of Quatermass was broadcast live (as was most TV at the time) and the first two episodes were 'telerecorded' as an experiment. Telerecording involved pointing a synchronised 16mm film camera at a TV screen and at the time it wasn't done very much. On reviewing the results of the first recordings it was deemed not of sufficient quality and subsequent episodes were never recorded.
I think there's a much simpler explanation of why he's so attached to Rose ...
hides
James P. Barrett
What i dont understand is why no one has managed to piece together that the bad wolf, is a reference to the dalek fleet sitting cloaked mere light years from earth.... and why no one has realized that if the doc and a dalek could survive the time wars, whats to stop the master or tha Raini (spelling) from surviving?? Granted this wont be confirmed till saturday night, but i guarentee the daleks are back... they didnt go through all that trouble to get the rights just to kill them off so quick....
I think I agree with a lot or what you say. I will admit to missing the old three-or-more-part stories, and I do really miss spending more screen-time away from Earth (both Platform One and Satellite 5 were near Earth, efen if not planetside), but the current series does work. It's just different.
Plus it does deal with some of the issues that would be relevant today that weren't as relevant in previous seasons. missing persons (especially young human females) is an even bigger deal now than it ever was. Just having the new companion up-sticks and never look back would leave too many questions unanswered. The first return to London dealt with that pretty well, I thought. And I am enjoying the fact that there is a bit of Earth continuity - familiar people and situations that we keep glimpsing in at. If anything I think the drawback is that it's a relatively short season. If it was double the length but had the same amount of "back home" episodes it wouldn't seem to dominate the series as much.
I also think it's a new look at Doctor Who. It's a new generation of viewers, many of which won't have seen every last bit of the original series. I also get the feeling that, at least early on, we were getting a look at things from Rose's point of view. And that is bound to be very different from "Classic" Who.
The only real changes I'd like to see next season is a return to the multiparters being the rule rather than the exception, and a few more alien visits between popping back to contemporary Earth. Apart form that, though, I'm very much enjoying the feel of the new series.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
I think what is unfortunately happening here is that you are missing the subtleties. The first few episodes were geared towards showing who The Doctor is and what he does, but there was more to it than that.
Lots of references are made through the first few episodes - the tree-being in the second episode who consoles the Doctor on his loss when she finds out what race he is, for example. That eventually builds up into him telling Rose that his race, and his planet, were both destroyed in a terrible war.
Later, in Dalek, we learn that they died to destroy the Daleks, that they were the antagonists in the war, and that the Time Lords and Daleks destroyed each other, with no-one-knows how many other planets destroyed in the meantime. This is leading somewhere, not just backstory.
All through the series, there are references that viewers have managed to catch. The Nestene Consciousness from the first episode screams 'Bad Wolf' when it sees the TARDIS. A child spraypaints the same on the side of the TARDIS. The space station exploding is a 'typical bad wolf scenario'. 'Bad Wolf' is written in graffiti on a poster for a rave in the 1980s. A telepath sees the big bad wolf in Rose's mind.
Hit up google and see what you find. The episodes may seem... well, episodic... but they're not. There's another subtext that keeps running through all the episodes, and it's going to come to light who - or what - the 'bad wolf' is in this Saturday's episode - titled 'Bad Wolf'.
Perhaps it's not as obvious as the first series, with its constant cliffhangers between one episode and the next, but the problem with that is that you can't miss an episode or you don't know what's happened. With this, however, there's a subtext, there's a vein that travels through the episodes, and you're not missing anything overt if you miss an episode - it's all meant to be missed, meant to be pieced together after it suddenly clicks one day. If you miss an episode, you miss that story, which stands on its own, and you miss that subtext, but nothing in the next episode is going to rely on your knowledge of the previous (and if it does, they'll show clips at the start to refresh your memory).
Personally, I would rather have it this way. I get the resolution of one story, but I get to look forward to the continuation of the story arc in the next episode. Personally, I can't wait for Saturday to arrive, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way.