If you’re anything like me, Sunday is quickly becoming notable as being Dr Who Night. So here’s a second open thread.
43 Responses to “Open Whoverse Thread II”
Leave a Reply
Please read the comments policy. If you would like an icon beside your comment, please register a Gravatar.
There is a Comments Preview function below the typing box which activates when you start typing.
Free individuals, (and who in the universe is freer than the Doctor and his Companions?), choosing to act for the common good free of compulsion. What more could one ask of the Libertarian spirit? Every episode is an indictment of the collectivist and coercive mindset of the left.
I guess someone here should object to that analysis.
Is that a Sontaran? Gawd I remember watching The Dr ( Tom Baker) battle with the Sontaran Linx in the early eighties? How exciting!
That most certainly is a Sontaran!
I’ve only got one beef with the current Dr Who series.
The writers, in their attempt to present a “more human” Dr have just ended-up creating a frustrated galactic metrosexual who sounds and acts like some sort of Jesuit.
I mean, here he is, busting about Time in a little blue box with any number of be-sotted Tardis Chicks (not to mention Captain Jack) all of whom are falling all-over themselves trying to get into his pants.
And what does our Hero do about it? Sweet FA.
He’s gotta have the worst case of blue-balls in the known universe. This has got to end.
So, a little suggestion to the script-writers: I don’t care who he shags, as long as he shags someone.
I blame the whole “love interest with the companion” thing. But - conversely - now that meta-narrative’s been set up why is Donna exempt from it? Cause she’s 40 or something?
Perhaps a better way of thinking about all this is that the Dr is teh gay and is pining for the ever elusive affections of Capn Jack?
Evan,
I have already seen the entire 4th season, and the problem you enunciate is well and truly taken care of.
Counting Cats is right: Evan’s “blue-balls” theory is properly put to rest, without turning the whole show into a mega schmulz affair. (And I rather like this Doctor. David Tennant impressed me from the start in “Taking over the asylum”, and we share equally pretentious dress-sense and a favourite Doctor (Peter Davison).
Counting Cats is also horribly wrong, however, as anyone familiar with DW (let alone the complex multi-functionalities of spacetime) would realise that individuals -even the Doctor - are *not* actually entirely free to do as they please throughout time and space (indeed, this is the realm of behaviour of the Master, and the Daleks).
Don’t believe me? Two words (from this series, anyway): Bad Wolf. There are other examples in earlier series of more powerful, unexplained forces at work (be they scientific or sentient - or both), not to mention the fact that the Time Lords (presumably through their study of spacetime causality) imposed a rigorous social discipline upon their people regarding their use of the technology at their disposal. The Doctor/ Master rivalry (reprised throughout DW over the years) is a wonderful miniature of the conflicts at work. (And ex-cannonically, the story of “Omega” is a challenging counterpoint).
This is not to say that everything is preordained either, of course, but “free will” carries consequences. As Marx and Engels so pertinently recognised, “freedom is the recognition of necessity”.
For the Doctor (at least) there is considerable compulsion - he can see the full consequences of inactivity in the face of “meddling” (here differentiating between set and fluid “facts” of history), as well as the inverse.
“Collectivist and coercive mindset of the left”??? Puh-lease! (A wee joke perhaps?) That might wash with Cold War-hacks or survivors of NSW ALP branch meetings, but not with this little marxist puppy. :-p
Onya, Wombo!
Naturally, Kim. After all, I am BRILLIANT, aren’t I?
She’s far too modest to attempt self-promotion, so may I plug my partner Catriona’s excellent series of liveblogging posts on the new series? The most recent covers The Sontaran Strategem. And, marking/thesis corrections permitting, another shall begin at 7:30PM tonight.
The Doctor being romantically linked with his companions never happened and, when you stop to think about it, is basically unthinkable.
(link)
For, with the exception of Susan and Romana (and Susan was the Doc’s grand-daughter, so that rules out any socially-acceptable romance), the Doctor’s companions have not belonged to the Dr Who’s species.
To regard the Doctor’s companions as sexual companions would, in a way, be like saying Tarzan preferred to sleep with Cheetah than with Jane (a monkey looks sort of like a human, after all, even though it isn’t).
Then again, I gave up on the ‘new’ Doctor Who when (1) the scriptwriters inferred that Sarah-Jane had had an affair with the Doctor, and (2) they assumed that humanity would progress so little in technology and society in forthcoming millenia that Big Brother would be an all-conquering television programme in the year 500,000AD.
a. No they didn’t.
b (or 2). I think you mean “implied”
He’s not teh Gay, he’s a Whomosexual.
Also, terangeree, not to pick on you, but it was the 51st century, not the 501st. In any case, as Damien Broderick is fond of pointing out, science fiction is about the present, not the future.
Also, terangeree, the story in question made it very clear that the only reason that the human race in the 51st century was still stuck on Big Brother and other TV dross was that an external force was stifling progress.
Glad to see LP is catching up with the times, Kim. Sunday became Dr Who night four weeks ago.
“I remember watching The Dr ( Tom Baker) battle with the Sontaran Linx in the early eighties”
At the risk of sounding like a bit of a nerd (who? me?) Linx was the original Sontaran, in 1973’s The Time Warrior a Jon Pertwee story that introduced Sarah-Jane Smith and the “classic” opening sequence and diamond logo. Tom Baker’s Sontarans were Stor (The Sontaran Experiment) and Stire (The Invasion of Time) IIRC.
d
And, charmingly, for a clone race, the Sontarans have never looked the same in any of their appearances on the show. Perhaps their features change substantially as they age?
Their only eighties appearance was with Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton in “The Two Doctors” (1985).
One of these days we’ll see an episode where the Sontarans finally face off against their hated foes, the Rutans. Fanboi heaven.
Maybe it’s just aesthetics, but there seems to be much more of a cheap-&-cheery made for TV vibe about the look of this season so far. And the writing.
I mean, par for the course with the old show (it is made for TV, after all), but a lot less appealing than some of the last two or three seasons of the show, to my eyes at least.
I hope it improves; to be fair the first halves of each of these these Russell T Davies seasons seem to be reserved for the dross, and the second half for the cream, so I’ll reserve judgement.
Wombo,
You are right, Bad Wolf, and also Dalek Caan both raise the question of control and limiting options, and in fact, the very fact of time travel would seem to obviate the very possibility of free will. However, free will does not discount constraints, it merely, to use the Christian model (despite my athieism), asserts that you have the ability to exercise moral choice whatever the circumstances.
Whatever the broader constraints, the story lines make clear that, to a greater or lesser extent, not only does that choice always remain, but the Doctor also seems to have more room to manoeuvre than anyone else, usually based on superior understanding and mental acuity.
“Collectivist and coercive mindset of the left”, well, partly a tongue in cheek ‘wee joke’, but partly serious. Coercion is the mindset sea in which the statists swim, ubiquitous and noticed only when it is absent. There are coercives, statists, of both the left and right, but in this milieu all non statists seem to be classified as being not of the left. Never met any Marxist puppies who, when you get right down to the fundamentals, wasn’t advocating coercion.
The Doctor acts with compassion and unselfishly, and rejects coercion wherever he is subject to it. Sounds like a libertarian primus inter pares to me.
I think there’s a bit of a mid-season slump, but the first half of this season had “The Fires of Pompeii”, a quality bit of story-telling that had the seal of approval from no less a figure than Harlan Ellison!
The show’s visual quality has changed quite a bit over the last four years - it’s always been very aggressively digitally graded but I recall the 2005 season looked a bit softer and less uber-saturated. Either way, standard definition digital video gives the show a very different look from standard US action/sf television production.
It’s probably a lighting thing as well. But really, it’s probably a lot of things.
An example: ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’, maybe isn’t exactly the best of Doctor Who, but by God it looked fantastic.
Still and all, it’s not bad, and worth watching still.
“The Idiot’s Lantern” had the luck to be directed by Euros Lyn, certainly the most visually gifted of the new generation of Doctor Who directors — although there’ve been some real finds, such as James Hawes, Charles Palmer (son of Geoffrey!) and Alice Troughton (no relation!).
But the Doctor wasn’t interested in Martha “that way” either - she yearned, but he wasn’t having any. So him not being interested in Donna isn’t anything necessarily to do with her age (edited to add - probably much more to do with him still pining after Rose).
As to all the schtick that’s going on about the Doctor and Donna not being an item, for me that works because Donna’s made it totally clear that she’s not yearning for the Doctor, so he doesn’t have to cloak the “we’re just friends” stuff in the layers of tact that were required with Martha - it can just be straightforward and played around with for the yucks. There’s also another element to it which I could discuss but that would be spoilerish.
If you don’t believe that humans will be engaged in bumping uglies with any physically compatible aliens as soon as we come across some you have less faith in our species than I do. So long as everybody involved is freely consenting, so what?
The ethical problem with bestiality is not the different species, it’s that the other animals currently inhabiting the planet lack the capacity to freely consent to sexual interaction.
Tell that to a Jack Russell TG
Jack Russells are merely unethical swine, zorronsky. Which is quite the biological feat, actually.
My 6yo boy is a Dr Who addict. He has the entire 2nd and 3rd series on DVD, and has watched Blink at least 50 times since it aired.
Looking forward to Steven Moffat (who wrote Blink and Jekyll) replacing Davies as head writer in 2010, but according to wiki there will be no new series in 2009
The 10 year old has decided the Doctor’s daughter is a clone, based on the quick cutaway to the Doctor’s severed hand. She’s feeling pretty pleased with herself.
I’m enjoying Donna a lot more than I thought I would. It’s refreshing to have a companion who isn’t hopelessly in love with the Doctor.
d
Carbonsink, there’s going to be
4 “specials” in 2009the Xmas 2008 special followed by 3 more specials in 2009, still helmed by Russell T Davies, and for which they’ve already shot the footage. I suspect that these other specials will run at over an hour, like the Xmas specials.This schedule gives David Tennant time off over the next year to do his stage stuff (Hamlet and Love’s Labours Lost for the RSC for starters) and decide whether he’s going to come back for the full season in 2010 or not.
A rehearsal shot from the RSC’s Hamlet (with commentary from fandom):
Overall, I think the current season was not as good as some of the previous seasons. It didn’t really have any standout episodes until right at the end, IMHO. But those last three episodes are absolute corkers (and the Library ones were pretty good too, I guess (”Hey, who turned out the lights?”)).
Donna didn’t really do it for me as a companion. Catherine Tate is a great character actor, as anyone who has seen her own series would know, but Donna was just pretty boring. I think Donna’s parents, especially her father (and especially in the last few episodes, which haven’t aired in Australia yet), are much more interesting characters than Donna is.
I guess you never saw that traffic jam episode with the cat people.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen Torchwood yet, the later episodes of the current series make more sense if you’ve seen Torchwood (both seasons). So beg, borrow or steal a copy and get watching before the universe ends.
Dr Faustus, I’m really enjoying Donna’s character. I found Martha the Moppet pretty irritating; it’s nice to have someone who argues with DW. I also never thought there was much chemistry between the Tennant-Doctor and Rose, though there was plenty between Rose and the Eccleston-Doctor.
Now, hands up who’s waiting for the return of Tegan and more unflattering references to Brisbane…?
Another issue: has anyone else been a victim of Who Rage?
I got into a DW discussion at a party earlier this year. A woman (maybe 50?) slobbered, “David Tennant is the Best Doctor Evah, don’t you think?” I took it that we were having a discussion, and said I preferred Christopher Eccleston, because — but she cut me off. I honestly thought I was about to be physically attacked!
Is this experience common? My general impression of Whovians is that they are housebroken, and don’t care which Who you like best as long as you can discuss the minutiae of the series or at least not tell them to get a life.
I enjoyed the Who last night and thought the Sontarans had sexed up mightility (their own haka) sincle the glacial moving plastique fantastiques of the eighties (remember the protruding tongue?).
But physics definitely came off second best last night. I wondered what people had to breath after that massive fireball. And no doubt, the big whack of ghgs left afterwards.
Or do the Doctor’s rockets clean up after themselves? Who’s a clever timelord, then!
Tigtog, that might be the most awesome photo evar.
Chookie@ 33, Doctor Who fandom has many disturbing undercurrents, for instance the fans terrified that Russell T Davies’s ‘gay agenda’ is going to pollute their precious bodily fluids.
It would seem that David Tennant, like Tom Baker before him, has catalysed a body of fandom more obsessed with the specific actor than the show itself. Such fans can be rather… heated at times.
Roger, Helen Raynor’s previous script for Doctor Who, “Evolution of the Daleks”, posited that DNA can be transmitted via lightning, so I think we got off lightly in the scientific plausibility stakes.
Still, the Sontaran mothership was probably the best designed CGI spaceship we’ve seen on Doctor Who so far - respectfully acknowledging classic Doctor Who designs but feeling fresh and modern too. The show’s production design does feel better when it’s evoking Farscape rather than BSG.
I’ve been trying really hard to NOT imagine the inevitable Picard/Doctor crossover fanfiction, but I have failed, so now I’m going to evoke it for you lot as well.
ObMwahahahahaha inserted here.
Perhaps they’re clones of a founding group, rather than just of one individual?
“has anyone else been a victim of Who Rage?”
I once heard there was a stabbing at a Dr Who club in Sydney, resulting from a hotly contested committee election. That would have been twenty years ago.
d
Arg, stop it, you’re making me want to write fanfic!
I do prefer the 10th Doctor (Tennant) to the 9th (Eccleston), but the different ways they were played provided a nice transition from a character who as the 8th Doctor took part in a horrible war.
I also reckon that James Bond is a Time Lord.
Perhaps you should do it in LOLmacro-form and submit it to ihasatardis, Nick?
I’m rather taken with a recent Monty Python/Whoverse crossover there: The Tale of
Sir GalahadCaptain Jack, the Pure (mildly smutty but safe for most workplaces, extremely minor spoilers (some images from later in Season 4 Who and Season 2 Torchwood, but they don’t give away any big plotpoints)). (oh, and Part 2)But then, I still know all the words to The Philosopher’s Song.