Doctor Who: now discussing Empire of Death (with spoilers!)

Topic

[Dave]

Discuss your favourite Timelord here.

• This topic was modified 3 years ago by Dave.
• This topic was modified 1 year ago by lorcan_nagle.
• This topic was modified 7 months ago by paul f.

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Well, that was all jolly exciting. Feels like Chibnall might be pulling off a proper big epic end to Flux. I hope it works out.

(And what’s the betting that it’s 5 December 2021 that’s the date Yaz was looking for?)

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lorcan_nagle

It was all right, very much dependent on how it all plays out next week.

Best likely ongoing contribution to Who?  The Lupari, a load of northern dogs who are fun to feature.

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lorcan_nagle

All the stuff around the Timeless Child feels to me a bit like when JMS took over Spider-Man and suggested that his powers might not have been due to the radioactive spider but a lineage of spider-totem god creatures.

People got very worked up about it but the whole point of the story ended up being for Spider-Man to turn around and say that no matter what the origins, it doesn’t make a difference to who I am or what I am, and I care more about being a good person and helping people than I do about the “true story” of who I am and how I got my powers.

It feels like Chibnall might be driving towards a similar conclusion here, and honestly it feels like the best way to resolve all the Timeless Child stuff.

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lorcan_nagle, Ben

But that’s not really a fair comparison. The totem stuff was an extra layer added onto Peter’s origin. It can be ignored (and was) because it doesn’t fundamentally alter the basics or the emotional core of his origin (which is not the radioactive spider but his own hubris killing Uncle Ben).

The Timeless Child stuff (assuming nothing from last season has been contradicted by Flux) is bigger than that. It not only roots the Doctor as an exploited victim, but it alters everything they (thought they) knew about their past. Shrugging it off and ignoring it as an irrelevance is disingenuous to the weight of it. While I can understand successive writers choosing to do so out of expediency, if that’s Chibnall’s intended resolution to the arc it renders the entire thing a destructive, self-indulgent folly. There’s a difference between vague mystical totem mumbo-jumbo being pasted onto events and finding out you had entire lifetimes and a childhood of abuse erased from your memory by your abusers.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Weren’t the Time Lords always presented as being total dicks? Or is that now being retconned into them being okay unless they happened to be Division?

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lorcan_nagle

I thought they were always mostly dicks. So the Division must be real dicks if they’re the cream of Timelord dickery.

(Hopefully this will be dialogue in episode six.)

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Uncle Retrospective, Rocket, lorcan_nagle

Martin Smith wrote:

But that’s not really a fair comparison. The totem stuff was an extra layer added onto Peter’s origin. It can be ignored (and was) because it doesn’t fundamentally alter the basics or the emotional core of his origin (which is not the radioactive spider but his own hubris killing Uncle Ben).

The Timeless Child stuff (assuming nothing from last season has been contradicted by Flux) is bigger than that. It not only roots the Doctor as an exploited victim, but it alters everything they (thought they) knew about their past. Shrugging it off and ignoring it as an irrelevance is disingenuous to the weight of it. While I can understand successive writers choosing to do so out of expediency, if that’s Chibnall’s intended resolution to the arc it renders the entire thing a destructive, self-indulgent folly. There’s a difference between vague mystical totem mumbo-jumbo being pasted onto events and finding out you had entire lifetimes and a childhood of abuse erased from your memory by your abusers.

I think it all depends on the approach. And it’s also about the differences in how the viewer reacts to it all compared to how the Doctor reacts to it.

For the viewer there’s a sense of this turning everything upside down by giving the Doctor a new weird origin story and implying regenerations before Hartnell  and making her not really a Timelord and all that. I can understand why that has got people worked up as to some degree as it changes the story that the show is telling to be about this big cosmic conspiracy saga with the Doctor at the centre of it, rather than the Doctor just being this man (or woman) of mystery who waltzes through time and space having crazy adventures.

But from the Doctor’s perspective I think there could be a way of telling quite an empowering story by having her basically say fuck this, I don’t care about the Division and I don’t care about these secret origins, I’m not going to let it change who I am and what I do. And that lets her go back to being the cosmic adventurer that she has always been (just with a slight reduction in the mysterious-background element).

If you’re characterising the Timeless Child backstory as a history of abuse, then that would be a way of the Doctor standing up against her abusers by not letting that history define her. By choosing who she is rather than letting someone else tell her.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

saga wrote:

Weren’t the Time Lords always presented as being total dicks? Or is that now being retconned into them being okay unless they happened to be Division?

The description of Division this week basically made it feel like the Celestial Intervention Agency all over again. Or at least how they’re depicted in tie-in media given they were a throwaway CIA joke in the actual TV show.

I rather enjoyed the Herge’s Adventures Of Yaz parts, which could almost have been an entire episode in and of itself (although where did the little girl from the village go?). None of the Division/Timeless Child elements are working for me whatsoever (why exactly is the Doctor’s adopted mum doing any of this?). It rather undercuts the whole ‘Earth invasion’ part of the story when the real threat is the destruction of the entire universe (again). It also seems like a whole lot of effort to cram in so much exposition about the Doctor’s backstory when it most likely has no real bearing on the Doctor’s future. In years to come, I’m sure the only lasting contribution Flux will have made to the show’s mythology will be the welcome introduction of the Lupari.

The Grand Serpent really took the name Prentis? Does a Prentis need a Master?

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DavidM, Uncle Retrospective, Dave, lorcan_nagle

saga wrote:

although where did the little girl from the village go

Didn’t she have to stay there to grow up to become her older self later?

saga wrote:

Herge’s Adventures Of Yaz

Excellent.

I’m sure she could have fit in a little trip to China at some point in the intervening decades.

I assume that a little girl wouldn’t exactly have been an asset on a globe-trotting adventure where you’re fighting assassins and climbing mountains, so they found someone to take her in

I wouldn’t have assumed that the old man would have been either. In any case, a brief line of dialogue about her would have been easy to include in a serialised story. Not a big deal, I suppose.

Dave wrote:

(And what’s the betting that it’s 5 December 2021 that’s the date Yaz was looking for?)

I think that’s very much the idea, getting the prophecy from some temple in Mexico but it being hard to decipher. Its pretty cleat the ‘joke’ is going to be people read the Mayan prophecy date in the wrong order, which is actually quite a fun idea.

Flux is still holding up really well for me. It’s quite cleverly plotted I think, the way the story has seemingly gone off on tangents but so far they’ve always connected back. Strands like Di, the ‘jilted’ girlfriend now teaming up with the guy manning the deserted space outpost has worked quite naturally.

As to the little girl, they did pretty much lay out what happens to her in the last episode, she stays in the village and becomes the old lady in 1967 who warns everyone. With so much else happening I’m okay with her being taken in by somebody being told off panel.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

Old school:

The Jon Pertwee martial arts…

😂

The Flux finale I thought was a bit all over the place. Big and epic and fast-paced but I just didn’t feel there was a solid story at the heart of it.

And the lack of conclusiveness over all the Division stuff meant it ended on quite a flat note. Presumably Chibnall is going to draw that plot out a little further, over the final few specials, to see out his run.

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lorcan_nagle

Yeah.  I’m not quite sure what it all amounted to in the end.  Clearly the Master is going to turn up in one of specials.

Oh and the personification of Time is a total bastard.

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle

Also I’m a bit unclear on the status of things as this series ends. In the first episode(s) of the series I got the impression that the Flux had devoured the entire universe except for Earth, which was protected by the Karvanista ships.

But then here we had ships suddely appearing from elsewhere in the universe and plenty of stuff going on outside Earth. And by the end of the episode it doesn’t appear that any of the Flux’s previous destruction has been reversed. So is Doctor Who now set in a universe where only Earth exists?

It all feels a bit sloppy and not really thought through, like they just want everything to be big and epic and ultra-high-stakes but without any real internal logic to any of it.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle, Ben

The Flux destroys the entirety of the Dalek, Sontaran and Cyber armies…. Wait, we need the Daleks for the New Year special, quick….. er…. The Flux destroys lots of aliens, there, much better.

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lorcan_nagle

Yep, “How fucked up is the universe?” was definitely what I was left pondering at the end. Earth was meant to be the centre of destruction so where dog man and the happy family go at the end? 🤷‍♂️ Episode was fast, flashy and best enjoyed without really engaging the brain.

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Vikram, lorcan_nagle, Ben, Dave

It’s suggested on one reading that the Sun and the rest of the solar system was taken out by the Flux.  But hey, no biggie, right?

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lorcan_nagle

[saga]

The fate of Jericho summed up the while episode. He could have chosen to make a sacrifice in order to ensure the safety of ’60s psychic lady. Instead he just blows up his own transporter then just kinda gives up and waits for death before a different type of death can get to him first. Whatever was the point?

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by saga.

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Bruce, lorcan_nagle

So, the good news for Chibs is that he did manage to make a long-form Doctor Who story better than Trial of a Time Lord. But this episode really felt overstuffed as everyone that’s been set up along the way has to get resolved here at the very end, and a lot of it felt like it was introduced just to pay off at the end as opposed to being a more organic part of the drama. I think a big part of the problem is that the whole “novel for television” idea seems to work on the idea that you need to pay off everything in the last episode, but that’s not how novels work. Plot elements get resolved along the way, or merge back into the core plot. With a bit of judicious reworking you could have moved some of the reunions or revelations in episode 6 to episode 5, giving the important elements here more time to breathe. Or just, you know, cut half the stuff orbiting around the Sontarans/Division/Flux side of the story altogether.

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DavidM, Ben

I am fairly certain that at no point did anyone get to say the line “What, the Flux?” and, for that omission, Chibnall gets zero writing praise.

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Ben, Rocket, Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective, Todd, lorcan_nagle

saga wrote:

I am fairly certain that at no point did anyone get to say the line “What, the Flux?” and, for that omission, Chibnall gets zero writing praise.

It’s the lack of introduction of any kind of capacitor that I find most unforgivable.

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DavidM, Ben, Rocket, lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Ben wrote:

Oh and the personification of Time is a total bastard.

Was she saying that she was the doctor in the dark coat? or was she just mocking the Doctor because the Doctor can’t remember the times when she was wearing the dark coat? or is the reason the Doctor can’t remember those times because they happened to Time and not the Doctor?

Like I know what’s going on there.

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DavidM

Well this I watched pretty close to airing so well done Chibnall.   The ending was pants.  Incoherent.  There were ideas in there, but it was like a first draft that desperately needed more passes.  State of the Universe should be great to mine for stories, but it looks like Chibnall once again has no understanding of, nor desire to deal with, consequences.  Was it better than the end of Key to Time – possibly because Armageddon Factor is an awful story.  Better than Trial of a Time Lord – possibly, but Valeyard has so much more potential for stories.  The Grand Serpent could have been great, but wasted.  How you waste Craig Parkinson is beyond me, but the story did nothing with him in the end.   Too many side characters, Daley’s showing up to negotiate, and squandering the Ravagers.  It was a mess and it had potential.

First episode back, RTD retcons the Chibnall Doctor to be one of the early incarnations that got lost and introduces the real 13th Doctor.

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DavidM, Rocket, Todd

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Daniel R, DavidM, Todd, Vikram, garjones, Bruce, Dave, Rocket

What an amazing coincidence that the reporter’s name is Dai Lek! I mean, what are the odds????!!!

Wait…..What?

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DavidM, Todd, lorcan_nagle

njerry wrote:

What an amazing coincidence that the reporter’s name is Dai Lek! I mean, what are the odds????!!!

Wait…..What?

He was a guest columnist, their usual Doctor Who correspondent is Si Berman.

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DavidM, Rocket, Todd, njerry, lorcan_nagle

I’d rather read anything either of those two have written over Chibnall.

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Rocket, Todd, njerry

Still pretty damn weird to have to wait until New Year’s Day, isn’t it?

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Bruce

Yeah, I agree.

Also strange is that I saw the ad for the NY special earlier and was interested until I realised it was Doctor Who.

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Bruce

I got the animated recon of Fury From The Deep for Christmas.

I was a little hesitant about it because when I watched through the entire series, one episode a day, a few years back, I watched the telesnap recon of it and found the whole thing to be utterly tedious and dull.

This is great though. The animation is excellent, with the character models for Troughton and Jamie looking the best they have yet. I watched the colour version (because why not) and it’s utterly gorgeous. There are liner notes from Gary Russell, who was the director for this, and he talks about not wanting to bother accurately recreating the sets from the original production because, at best, they’d look like shonky 60s TV sets and so the story gets to take place in these big locations, which really works. The design has a faithfully 60s aesthetic, but mixes in modern touches like touch screen controls, to make the story’s near future setting feel less dated. The only negative is that some of the skin tones and shading on faces look a bit odd at times.

There are various parts of the story that probably look better than they ever did in live action, mainly all the stuff with the seaweed. The bits of writhing seaweed sticking out of the sleeves of infected people looks great here, which I really doubt it would have before. The helicopter chase is a lot of fun too.

It’s definitely not a story suited to telesnap reconstruction so without that hurdle, it’s much easier to appreciate. For a six parter, it’s surprisingly short on padding. It’s properly creepy in places too.

This is excellent. Enough to almost make you wish they’d lose a few more stories so they can improve on them in this way. It’s mad that after doing this and the Macra Terror and Faceless Ones (all of which are by different teams, I think, oddly) the Beeb decided to use that ridiculous PS1 era CGI for Web of Fear.

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DavidM, Todd, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Power of the Daleks: Special Edition is something I picked up for about £9 the other week.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember the original release of this animated recon being particularly bad – though I only watched it once when I got however many years ago that was. I only really upgraded because I’ve been selling off my Who DVDs en masse and upgrading to blu-ray. That was one of the first to go (for no particular reason) so I can’t compare back to it.

It sounds like it was an absolute mess though, going by the liner notes to this release (written by the director of both projects), which utterly slates it, especially the first episode. Apparently, rather than just being commissioned to deliver it whenever it was done (which would make sense for a home media release) they were forced to rush its release to tie into the 50th anniversary of its broadcast.

Thing is though, watching this SE, especially just after Fury, I can’t say it feels particularly impressive. Even that first episode, which they supposedly redid from scratch, has many of the flaws that the director bemoans of having been in the rushed original release, such as choppy animation. There’s one moment where the Doctor uses the TARDIS console that is practically just key-frames.

Visually, this whole thing is a bit of a dog’s breakfast. While there are some nice touches here and there, the direction is often ropey. Stiff, rigid characters frequently appear to stare off into the distance a few feet to the side of the people they’re talking to. The CGI elements, such as the Daleks (and especially the Kaled creatures inside them) feel utterly disconnected from the rest of the animation, as they’ve all been coloured with smooth, shiny gradients that make them look 3d while everyone else is flatly cel shaded. The character models really aren’t fit for animation, with too many unnecessary lines and busy, angular shading that uses too many tones. All that facial geometry going on with pretty much every character means the mouth animation often looks distractingly weird, as you get odd lines and bold blocks of shadow flickering by for fractions of a second, looking more like a flickbook than something appearing to actually change shape or move.

The original release of this had, on its blu-ray at least, a colour version. That’s been ditched this time, as the director haughtily informs us that it was a crude addition added at the behest of Americans and that the story is best viewed only in black and white. I don’t know if I agree really. I think part of why this animated recon suffers is the opposite to why Fury was so successful – it’s slavish to the original version. We get people talking on what are clearly 60s phones with curly cables, bad costumes replicated accurately and while none of that ruins it, it’s not of any particular benefit. A bit of creative license, and a bit of colour, might have helped this work a bit better.

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Dave, Bruce

Well, I really enjoyed that. A lot of it was down to Aisling Bea basically being herself as Sarah, but the plot moved along well and had some decently exciting moments.

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Uncle Retrospective, Ben, Dave

Yeah, I thought that was very decent. I enjoyed the time-loop framework (felt like quite a Moffat idea) and thought the characters and performances were fun.

There were a few logic gaps and unclear elements (like how much/which of the events of the previous loops still stood each time a minute was shaved off) but it didn’t detract too much from the overall story. Although they packed a lot into that final minute!

And I thought the character development between Yas and the Doctor was nicely handled.

So yeah, a decent episode overall. Plus, Sea Devils next!

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lorcan_nagle, Ben

Fun episode – who knew a good way to deal with the Daleks is involving an Irish lass?  I loved the final trap that relied on her mum phoning her.

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Definitely the most I’ve enjoyed the show in years. Very good (mostly) stand-alone episode.

Interesting that they’re finally making the Thirteen/Yaz stuff canon now, with only three episodes to go.

I’m glad to see Pauline McLynn get so much work lately.

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lorcan_nagle, Dave, Ben

Funny that Chibnall gets so close to the end of his run and then puts out his best episode to date. What could have been.

Can’t say I’m bothered about the remainder of the run leaning into Yaz/Doctor fanfic rather than taking the time to wrap up other loose ends, especially when we know it can’t lead to a happy ending with this version of the Doctor leaving.

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lorcan_nagle, Ben, Dave

Oh yeah, that was who was playing the mum.

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lorcan_nagle

paul f wrote:

I’m glad to see Pauline McLynn get so much work lately.

She actually lives near me and is a fixture at community festivals and the like. Very cool and down to earth.

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Todd, Dave, Ben

Watching some old stories…

It is hard to compare the Tom Baker Dr. Who adventures to other sci fi shows. It wasn’t like Star Trek in its action scenes. It was always about the Dr. figuring things out and planning something.

The scenes seemed more like a sci fi play than a sci fi adventure show. I would say the closest thing was the old “Sliders’ show from the 90s’ where they had that “remote control” device to open a dimension hole and go from parallel world to parallel world. The Tardis only went to an alternate dimension once IIRC during Pertwee.

Al-x wrote:

The Tardis only went to an alternate dimension once IIRC during Pertwee.

There’s also the E-Space trilogy late in Baker’s run, and wasn’t Logopolis a pocket universe or something?

Logopolis was a normal place, I think, but Castrovalva was some sort of shrinking dimensional trap…. thing.

<span style=”color: #222222; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;”>>  The Tardis only went to an alternate dimension once IIRC during Pertwee.

</span>Inferno, yes

E-space was a pocket universe, rather than an alternate dimension, if there is a difference :lol:

Battlefield featured a set of characters from an alt dimension… and the Dr was there at some point… probably…

In the modern series – Rise of the Cybermen was part set in an alternate world which kept crossing over…

more?

 

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lorcan_nagle

I watched a few episodes of modern Dr. Who. There is some fan backlash of sorts on the direction of the show, debate on where it needs to go, etc.

I have to leave that to you other members who watch it more than I do.

I don’t feel it needs more action to compete with other sf shows. As I said before, in the old Baker and Pertwee eras, the show came across (at least to me) as a sci fi play, with the plot and intrigue building up to the very end where the Dr. comes up with the key analysis, implements his plan, and saves the day.

I liked those angel statues that get closer to you each time you blink, but are there more threats than just rehashing the Cybermen, Daleks, etc.?

What say you all? Who should the next Dr. be, the direction of the show etc.?

Oh… and make the Sontarans dangerous again.😁

Doctor Who branded his name on patients livers

 

It prompts the ultimate question: would you kill a man to learn the Doctor’s true name?

Martin Smith wrote:

It prompts the ultimate question: would you kill a man to learn the Doctor’s true name?

No.

Coward.

In other disappointing news, it seems that Abominable Snowmen is the last of the animated recons we’re going to be getting. The recent wave of them (Macra Terror through Snowmen) has been mostly funded by BBC America and supposedly they’re not interested in doing any more. It’s a real shame as they’ve generally been great.

Trailer for season 22 on blu-ray.

Looks like they’ve done CGI effects for Timelash. Worth a try, I suppose. Can hardly make it worse.

Most surprising is that it appears to include A Fix With Sontarans (there’s a clip of Janet Fielding from it in there).

I’m quite interested in the Michael Grade interview too.

Nicola Bryant – still hot.

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Al-x, Dan, Rocket

garjones wrote:

Nicola Bryant – still hot.

Tegan but I digress…

Anyway:

She is with Richard Dawkins

A couple of things about the last two posts, that’s definitely Nicola Bryant not “Tegan” and Lalla Ward and Richard Dawkins separated in 2016. Pedant’s Corner is now closed for the day.

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Ben, DavidM, Martin Smith, garjones

Clarification:

I was saying that Tegan was the one I paid attention to during Davison’s run.

So… Lalla and Dawkins separated? News to me…

Too long spent focusing on Chris Rock’s divorce and not enough on others’, clearly.

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Bruce, Rocket, Dave, Todd, Ben

Got me there

Martin Smith wrote:

Too long spent focusing on Chris Rock’s divorce and not enough on others’, clearly.

Wait, Chris Rock got a divorce?

I didn’t know! I’m very shocked to hear that.

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Rocket, Dave, garjones

Todd wrote:

Wait, Chris Rock got a divorce?

I didn’t know! I’m very shocked to hear that.

Well, hopefully you’ll be comforted by Kim and Kanye’s strong enduring marriage.

Wait….what?!

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Rocket, Martin Smith, Todd

Got to take this elsewhere

Al-x wrote:

Got to take this elsewhere

That’s what Chris Rock’s ex-wife said.

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Bruce, Rocket, DavidM, Uncle Retrospective, Martin Smith

Seems the internet is convinced that Hugh Grant is going to be the 14th Doctor.

Remember when the internet was convinced the serial killer off the BT adverts was going to be the next Doctor?

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Bruce, DavidM

An awful lot of sites seem to be running this like a piranha feeding frenzy.  Who was in the BT ads?

Ben wrote:

Seems the internet is convinced that Hugh Grant is going to be the 14th Doctor.

I’d be behind this, but only if they change the show’s name to Doctor Hugh.

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Chris-S, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Grant has said he was asked in 2005 by Davies to play the role.

He’d be more suited to it now, at 61 his Hollywood lead days have passed.

The Daily Mirror story about his apparent casting (and yes these rumours have been wrong a million times in the past) say that with Sony’s recent buy out of Bad Wolf they are looking to boost the profile and budget of the show and set up spinoff shows. Grant would definitely be the most globally known actor to be cast in the role.

So I guess I am the only one who wants Paddington Bear to be the new Doctor?

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Rocket, Todd, Ben

garjones wrote:

Grant has said he was asked in 2005 by Davies to play the role.

He’d be more suited to it now, at 61 his Hollywood lead days have passed.

The Daily Mirror story about his apparent casting (and yes these rumours have been wrong a million times in the past) say that with Sony’s recent buy out of Bad Wolf they are looking to boost the profile and budget of the show and set up spinoff shows. Grant would definitely be the most globally known actor to be cast in the role.

Yeah I could see it. They need something to boost the show’s profile and someone like Hugh Grant (even if it was only a one-season commitment) would do that.

Ben wrote:

Who was in the BT ads?

Kris Marshall.

Oh, that guy – can see the thinking now.

saga wrote:

So I guess I am the only one who wants Paddington Bear to be the new Doctor?

They should cast Winnie so they can call it Doctor Pooh.

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Uncle Retrospective

How many Love Actually cast members have been rumoured for The Doctor at some point? Marshall and Lincoln show up all the time, Nighy has come up in the past, as I think have Freeman and Ejiofor. Atkinson and Grant were both in the Red Nose Day sketch. Firth and Neeson are probably too big. Sangster’s still a bit young, but his name will probably pop up at some point.

What I’m saying is, Shannon Elizabeth should be the next Doctor.

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Dave

paul f wrote:

How many Love Actually cast members have been rumoured for The Doctor at some point? Marshall and Lincoln show up all the time, Nighy has come up in the past, as I think have Freeman and Ejiofor. Atkinson and Grant were both in the Red Nose Day sketch. Firth and Neeson are probably too big. Sangster’s still a bit young, but his name will probably pop up at some point.

What I’m saying is, Shannon Elizabeth should be the next Doctor.

I was hoping you were building towards Emma Thompson.

Ben wrote:

An awful lot of sites seem to be running this like a piranha feeding frenzy.  Who was in the BT ads?

Daniel Rigby.

Who did go on to plat Eric Morecambe in that docudrama to some acclaim, but at the time was just the inadvertantly creepy guy on the student flat share ads BT did after Kris Marshall’s ones.

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Bruce, DavidM

I think it was Rich Johnston who was convinced about Daniel Rigby. Everyone else… less so.

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Martin Smith, Ben

I don’t recall Daniel Rigby (the serial killer) being mooted, but Kris Marshall (the bumbling nice guy) definitely was. At the time I would have voted for Marshall, because I hadn’t seen Rigby being anything other than the BT serial killer. Now I’ve seen him do other things, I’d be happy with Rigby. His two flatmates from the ads could be companions, and they could reveal that the series of ads were actually canon and he was the Doctor trying to recruit them all the time. That would be hilarious.

DavidM wrote:

BT serial killer

you mean this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader

So Hugh Grant is on Twitter saying the story is a load of bollocks so there we go. 😂

Robbo wrote:

I think it was Rich Johnston who was convinced about Daniel Rigby. Everyone else… less so.

I remember for Doctor 11 that Johnson was absolutely 100% that he’d been tipped off it was Chiwetel Ejiofor.

I think the success Doctor Who brought has made the guessing harder, originally if they spotted anyone famous in Cardiff they’d make a connection but now a lot of big productions are made there between the BBC and indie studios like Bad Wolf (or they were indie until Sony bought them).

 

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

The penultimate Jodie ep will be on Easter Sunday:

https://tvline.com/2022/03/28/doctor-who-special-legend-of-the-sea-devils-premiere-date-bbc-america/

Legend of the Sea Devils — in which the Doctor (played by Jodie Whittaker), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) travel to 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching (Crystal Yu) and a monstrous alien force — will premiere Sunday, April 17 on BBC America.

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lorcan_nagle

The New Doctor has arrived. it's been an absolute joy to be involved in this! pic.twitter.com/kymGN4oCNS

— Rob Ritchie (@Robritchie409) April 1, 2022

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Bruce, Dan

Outgoing ‘Doctor Who’ EP admits successor will ‘ignore’ his canon changes

The Jodie Whittaker era of Doctor Who has made some bold changes to the canon, with the casting of a female Doctor being the least of them. Over the past three seasons, the series has retconned the Time Lord’s past in a major way, revealing that the character has had a multitude more regenerations and a much longer lifespan than we ever knew before. It’s been a controversial change, to say the least, with many fans blasting it for ruining Whoniverse continuity.

Critics are hoping that incoming showrunner Russell T. Davies will wipe the slate clean once again, then, and ignore what outgoing EP Chris Chibnall has established. Interestingly, Chibnall himself has now admitted that he fully expects Davies to do just that — and it doesn’t bother him. While speaking to Radio Times, Chibnall — who is exiting the show this year alongside his leading star — initially defended his revisionist take on Who canon.

“It’s one of the few drama series without a written bible, and every era contains a contradiction or left-turn from what has come before,” he said. “Any future showrunner will ignore it or run with it.”

When asked if this means he expects Davies to ignore his own “Timeless Child” story arc, Chibnall responded, “Oh, I fully expect Russell to ignore it!” Not that there’s any hard feelings, though. Chibnall went on to pile on the praise for Davies, who originally helmed the show from 2005-10. It was actually Davies who gave Chibnall his big break on Who back in 2007.

“Everybody should have a big smile on their face,” he said of Davies’ return. “Russell is one of the elite showrunners and Who is very lucky to have him, especially off the back of It’s a Sin, one of the greatest shows of all time. For him to have incredible ideas and passion for it, to want to take it forward again – that’s fab. Nobody has a greater love for Doctor Who.”

Despite Chibnall’s prediction, it’s worth pointing out that Davies might be more of a fan of the Timeless Child arc than anticipated. In his novelization of 2005 episode Rose, published in 2018, Davies inserted references to various Doctors not seen on TV, alluding to the Doctor’s secret past lives. So fans, and Chibnall, might be surprised when the next era of the show begins in 2023, Who‘s 60th anniversary year.

In the meantime, Doctor Who returns this Sunday with Easter special “Legend of the Sea Devils”.

I mean RTD pretty openly mocked it during all the Lockdown Who stuff at one point*, so I fully expect him to at least kick it into the long grass and never talk about it again or actively retcon it away.

 

*Has RTD done a big interview about coming back to Who yet (with DWM or similar)? Because I really want to know if it was revisiting his Who work during the 2020 lockdowns that made him want to go back or if he’d already thought about it before then or what. He really did seem to get into it during that period – I’d argue he very quickly and easily became the public face of Who production again.

There’s no need at all to retcon it away. Just never mention it again, and it becomes completely irrelevant. There’s no real reason why the Doctor’s past should ever impact a current storyline.

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Todd

DavidM wrote:

There’s no need at all to retcon it away. Just never mention it again, and it becomes completely irrelevant. There’s no real reason why the Doctor’s past should ever impact a current storyline.

It’d certainly be nice to have a season of Doctor Who that isn’t all about the Doctor and his/her past and whatnot.

I have my doubts that RTD is the showrunner to go that way, but maybe he got it all out of his system back then. Let’s hope.

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Uncle Retrospective, Bruce

DavidM wrote:

Just never mention it again, and it becomes completely irrelevant.

Which has been the case all the way through Doctor Who. Let’s not forget the idea of previous incarnations to Hartnell’s goes back to the 1970s and was then ignored for over 40 years.

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lorcan_nagle, Dan

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Christian

[paul f]

That was fine. Nothing very memorable.

Do we know what’s happening with the casting for the next Doctor? The final special was obviously filmed months ago, so I guess they’re planning to film a regeneration scene to be inserted into the episode at some point in the next few months?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by paul f.

I liked that – a pity Chibnell and co didn’t do more stuff like it.

I was looking at the way the three characters worked together at the start and can see Big Finish going: Yeah, we can do sonething with this.

Only sour note was the Doc’s commitment phobic rubbish and I’m not won over by the trailer for the next one.

[Martin Smith]

Do we know what’s happening with the casting for the next Doctor? The final special was obviously filmed months ago, so I guess they’re planning to film a regeneration scene to be inserted into the episode at some point in the next few months?

It would be nice to have a regeneration where the new casting is genuinely a surprise that hasn’t been preannounced. A first even.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Martin Smith.

This episode provided an answer to the unique question, “what if there was a Doctor Who special shown at Easter and nobody cared?”

There’s very little chat about this one, which is fitting as it provided very little to chat about. There was nothing especially wrong with it but nothing at all memorable about it either. It felt like all involved were very much ‘over it’.

Weird how they can produce a story with sea devils and underwater monsters and travels to the ocean floor and yet the most fake looking scenes are the ones with Dan boarding a pirate ship.

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Bruce

saga wrote:

There’s very little chat about this one, which is fitting as it provided very little to chat about. There was nothing especially wrong with it but nothing at all memorable about it either. It felt like all involved were very much ‘over it’.

Yeah, it’s just kinda there. Not good enough to rave about, not bad enough to rant about.

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It felt very much like a perfectly fine but also immediately forgettable mid-season episode.

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lorcan_nagle

saga wrote:

This episode provided an answer to the unique question, “what if there was a Doctor Who special shown at Easter and nobody cared?”

Bit like the last time we had an Easter special, really.

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lorcan_nagle

Big Finish have announced a Fugitive Doctor set with Jo Martin and a Call Me Master set with Sacha Dawan.

Both are release TBC and will be two volumes of three stories.