Doctor Who: now discussing The War Between the Land and the Sea (spoilers!)

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[Dave]

Discuss your favourite Timelord here.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Dave.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by lorcan_nagle.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by paul f.

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Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill have started a podcast together – called Pondcast – where they rewatch their run of Dr Who and invite guests on to  reminisce about working on it, with the first being Steven Moffat. Incredibly, this is somehow not a joke.

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Dave, Ben

Ben wrote:

Interesting. Not the first time Big Finish have done that and they do similar for Twelve. Do have an uncanny skill for casting too.

Wasn’t it John Culshaw playing Twelve? He had it down pretty well as I recall.

Culshaw’s been doing a fair bit of BF work. He’s done some audio novels, played The Brigadier and has very recently done Twelve.

Both Eleven and Twelve in their Chronicles ranges were voiced by Jacob Dudman.

I had thought TWBTLATS was starting tonight; it feels weird that Who is in the big Sunday night slot on BBC One.

paul f wrote:

I had thought TWBTLATS was starting tonight

I thought that too. There was even a Guardian TV preview yesterday that indicated as much.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/06/tv-tonight-a-mega-new-doctor-who-spin-off-from-russell-t-davies

Good start to it.

Did love Kate’s line:

“I’m in the mood for a bollocking.”

I watched the first episode and thought it was alright – a lot more coherent than recent Who, with a reasonably interesting setup and a fun hook at the end of episode 1.

I am cautiously hopeful that it might not be the shitshow that Gatwa’s run ended up as.

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lorcan_nagle, Dan

Nice to see the plastic bag from American Beauty make a cameo in episode 2. I’ve always wondered what they were up to.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

I’m up to date on TWBTLATS The Sea Devils Show now – four episodes down and one to go (this Sunday).

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

It’s still not amazing top-tier TV, but it’s telling an engaging story in an entertaining way, with good performances and makeup/effects and some interesting ideas at the heart of it.

It also manages to incorporate progressive aspects (particularly when it comes to environmental stuff) without beating you over the head with it or being overly blunt.

Even Russell Tovey is likeable in it!

I wish Doctor Who had been more like this for the past couple of years.

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Ben

Yeah, I’m liking this.  It just now needs to nail the landing.

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Dave

Dave wrote:

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

Martin Smith wrote:

Dave wrote:

I think RTD should be embarrassed by this series. Because it’s written by someone else and it’s head and shoulders above what he’s been doing with the main Doctor Who show for the past couple of years.

He only writes episode one, which is the weakest so far – the other three episodes so far are written by Pete McTighe.

There are more details on how the writing worked here, but in essence RTD came up with an initial episode and then basically turned the idea over to McTighe to actually write the rest of the series, with RTD only contributing basic plot ideas. Maybe he should move more in this direction with Doctor Who if he sticks around as showrunner.

However RTD is returning to write the finale of this miniseries. But he’s good at finales, right?

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Uncle Retrospective

How did writing the series as a co-writer with Russell T Davies work?

Russell and I have known each other for ages, so it’s always a joy working with him. He had written episode one before he wrote any of the 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials. So, quite a long time ago he’d written it and it kind of sat on the shelf. And then when I had delivered my first draft of my Doctor Who episode, Lucky Day, he said, there’s something else that I’d like you to have a look at. Do you know, do you want to be involved? And I read this script and thought it was extraordinary. And of course I was involved. Absolutely. From reading page three or four, I was in!

We were filming Doctor Who at the time, so we didn’t have a lot of time to plot stuff. Russell had broad ideas about where he wanted the show to go. So for every episode, we would just sit down and snatch time here and there, an hour here, an hour there, and talk about what we think might happen. And then I’d go away and write, and then we’d come back together and, you know, move certain things around. So, for instance, some characters that I established in episode two, we would then go back into episode one and seed them there, so they’re established in there. I knew that he would be writing the finale, so I had to write episode four, leading towards certain plot points and knowing what was coming. But it was just a really lovely, close working relationship, and we just laughed a lot. It was never a drama. And yeah, it was great fun writing.

But yeah, sure, keep minimising RTD’s involvement to suit your own narrative.

All I’m saying is that RTD didn’t do the majority of the actual writing of the series, as credited – three out of four episodes broadcast so far have been by McTighe – and it has turned out better than recent RTD-scripted Doctor Who stories.

RTD is still showrunner and very much in charge of this era of Doctor Who, and is obviously still driving the ideas, but this series shows how much better things can be when he steps back and lets other writers take charge of the actual scripts.

The standout episodes of the two Gatwa seasons were also ones not written by RTD, so although I’m not trying to construct a “narrative” it also feels like there’s a definite trend.

Sigh, that ending to The War Between The Land And Sea really didn’t work for me. Oh well.

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Uncle Retrospective, Dave

Ben wrote:

Sigh, that ending to The War Between The Land And Sea really didn’t work for me. Oh well.

Yep, it was terrible. Felt like a different show entirely and threw away all the potential of the preceding episodes. What a shame.

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Uncle Retrospective

Humanity has destroyed 90% of a sentient species, to the point that their corpses are clogging up the Thames.

But that’s ok, let’s have some underwater frolicking. 🤷🏻

I mean, it was better than Doctor Who, but that’s a very low bar these days.

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Ben, Dave

Yeah it was just such a tonal mismatch. Very clunky and weird and left a ton of stuff up in the air and unaddressed.

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Uncle Retrospective, Ben

Doctor Who: Short Trips: The Wednesday That Wasn’t
This brilliant 13th Doctor short story was also the winner of Big Finish’s annual Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity competition, and it quickly becomes very clear as to why.

What’s particularly smart is the various mix of ideas, from the high impact notion of granting war money conscience to everyone, everywhere and when counting, no matter what they do.But you don’t have to take my word for it. All you need do is gamble 40 minutes on this free story.

https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-short-trips-the-wednesday-that-wasn-t-3335

Third Doctor: The Annihilators

Listening to the interviews for this relaunch of Big Finish’s Third Doctor stories, I noticed something rather interesting. They talked of how they wanted to invoke the style of Pertwee’s first series as the Doctor, including the stucture. Thus, a seven-part story.

Thing is, I don’t know that series, there’s load of Doc Who I haven’t seen. So does that impair the story for me? No. If you know what it is drawing on then it probably gets a boost but it works just fine without it. Noticed it too on the earlier Vols 7-8 collections too.

It sees another fun team-up with Treloar’s Doctor and Culshaw’s Brigadier. Along with tapping into Who’s British nature, where alien invasions and infiltrations happen in quiet, seaside towns or experimental bases in Devon.

There’s also a clever weaving in as, depending on the order you encounter them in, either a link to or preview of the then new Second Doctor stories.

As ever with stories involving time and timelines and other temporal mechanics, go along for the ride and don’t think about it too much.

I love that first series of Pertwee stories.

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Dan

This is the cover to this year’s Doctor Who annual.

They can’t put the current Doctor on the cover because for the first time ever nobody has a clue who the current Doctor is.

What a shitshow.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Showrunner describes original ending for The War Between the Land and the Sea

RTD: “I totally changed the ending to some new tossed-off rubbish, and then gave a big scene meant for one character to a completely different character instead, in a way that didn’t make any sense any more. Isn’t it wonderful?”

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Ben, Uncle Retrospective

Lost episodes found:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g7kwq1k11o

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

Great news!

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Great news!

Apparently not though if you prefer AI slop.

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Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

Massive pile of shit in fan of AI shock

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Dave, Martin Smith, Todd

Not like Levine to try and make it all about him.

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Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle

Careful, he might hear us and make another charity single

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Todd, Dave, Martin Smith

Tennant’s returning to Big Finish for a 4th series, of 12 stories, plus a trio box set.

https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/david-tennant-returns-as-the-tenth-doctor

The other three episodes comprise a brand-new box set (release date to be confirmed) in which the Tenth Doctor teams up with some of his other incarnations.

I wonder if one will be the 14th Doctor.

It’s not impossible for the trio box set, as that one is titled Out of Time 4. A series that sees 10 teaming up with other Doctors.

Tennant is returning to Doctor Who? Must be time to buy a new loaf of bread.

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Todd

I am getting increasingly hyped to see those “new” episodes of Dalek’s Masterplan at Easter (when even is Easter?!). I hope they haven’t screwed them up “restoring” them with AI though. The season 21 Collection blu-ray came out this weekend and that is apparently as badly afflicted as season 13, even though they said they’d “taken on feedback from the reception to 13” and adjusted it accordingly. I’m still vainly hoping it’ll be corrected before the standard edition releases (with replacement discs for everyone who bought the LE – sounds crazy I know, but they’ve just done that for season 20, which had some issue with juddering on certain players. Anyone with the LE can get replacements of pretty much every disc in the set, which are just the ones in the SE release).