Doctor Who

Started by Lottery, August 04, 2013, 07:17:03 PM

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Lottery

Woah, there isn't a DW thread here? Well if there is and I've missed it, be happy to merge/delete.

Anyway, Malcolm Tucker's been announced as the new Doctor. I stopped watching the show regularly when it started going down the toilet about a season ago. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll see new things happen (need a new showrunner though)- and there will most definitely be a test of the new fanbase's loyalty, which will be funny.

I'm quite happy he was selected.

Jeremy Blackman

I've kind of been meaning to try this one. What's a good season to start with?

Lottery

Hmmm, I started with the older stuff when it was still on TV but I think general newcomers, starting with the Christopher Eccleston
season (first reboot season) is the way to go. If you stick with it, it gets really, really good.
But yeah, Eccleston as a starting point. The reboot seasons do well to accommodate folks who are new to the series.

Sleepless

Wow. This thread is smaller on the inside.

Anyone else watch this? I know it's a guilty pleasure, but it usually quite fun. Like anything, just ignore the "fandom."

We're two eps into the new season, first with Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor. It's very early days, of course, but I'm already pretty optimistic following the Steven Moffat years. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of some of the earlier Moffat-penned eps - some of them are my favorites - but once he took over as show runner, I think the show took a sharp turn downhill overall. Hopefully the fresh crew behind the scenes will breathe new life into this old horse. Liking the dynamics with the three new companions so far too. They're setting up some conventional dilemmas and relationships between them, but it feels like there's a lot of potential there.

Serious, no one else watches?
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

WorldForgot

From the RT Davies series 1 reboot - to series 7 I was hooked. Its revival came at the perfect time, grade school-age sinking my teeth into asimov and YA sci-fi, and then the swap with Moffat, erm, well, then I was HS-awk, as awkward as that Amy Pond/River Song arc, and my little brother joins me in tripping out to weeping angels and time loops -- then, Series 7 specials, love em, early netflix app days on the Wii.

After that I couldn't keep up or didn't have the will. Didn't have the proper attitude for it? The show is still dear to my heart and last year on Halloween a highlight of the night was Screwdriver Flashlight cleanin'. Just haven't tuned back into the show, yet picking up on it everywhere.

Quote from: J.M.R. HIGGS -- KLF CHAOS MAGIC MUSIC MONEY, minuz hyperlinkz
'Doctor Who began way back in 1963. Its first episode was broadcast on the holy day of November 23rd, a date the honor because it is also Harpo Marx's birthday. The day before, November 22nd 1963, brought the assassination of JFK and the deaths of CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley (...) When it returned for its 23rd series, it was distinctively unimproved. The programme had had, in essence, its final warning. Michael Grade ordered that Colin Baker be replaced.

It is here that our threads return to the show. A number of actors were auditioned to replace Baker, but it very quickly came down to a choice between two: our good friend Ken Campbell (who had put on Illuminatus! a nine-hour cycle based on the writing of Robert Shea and ), and Sylvester McCoy (whose first job in showbiz involved sticking ferrets down his trousers as part of the Ken Campbell Road Show.) Campbell auditioned by performing a speech about the nature of time modelled on Alan Moore's Dr. Manhattan character, wearing a long coat, sleeveless cartoon t-shirt and wide brimmed hat (...)

As McCoy remembers, "the executive producer of BBC Series and Serials wanted Ken, but the producer of Doctor Who wanted me, and his argument was that he thought Ken would frighten the children, and I think he was right. The producer in fact threatened to resign if Ken got the job. So I got it."

With the money they made from their Doctor Who record Drummond and Cauty made a film called The White Room. There was one major role in the film that required a 'name' actor, and for this role they cast PaulMcGann (...)

When Russell T Davies brought the series back to television he reinvigorated the character by using the narrative device of surviving a great "Time War." The "Time War" idea originally came from Alan Moore, who wrote a number of Doctor Who comic scripts in 1981 about a "4D  War" which had two time-travelling armies attacking each other at increasingly earlier points in time so that neither side had any idea what the war was about or who started it.' (...) The growth of the story, compared to any other fiction from the same period, is deeply unusual. Indeed, it has become arguably the most expansive and complex non-religious fiction ever created.

According to Moore's model of Ideaspace, this fiction may be complicated enough to act like a living thing. Note that this is not to say that Doctor Who is a living thing, for that would sound crazy. It is to say that it behaves as if it were a living thing, which is a much more reasonable observation. Of course, if you then go on to try and define the difference between something that is living and something that behaves like it is living, you will be a brave soul indeed.