Doctor Who is 60!

[Skyquake87]

So, Doctor Who is 60 and now some sort of joint co-funding/production arrangement with Disney, which is exciting.

There's an absolute avalanche of Who related stuff all over the BBC's iPlayer and Sounds App, so I will just waffle on a bit about the stuff I've watched and listened to.

BBC Children In Need
Fun little skit of the Fourteenth Doctor bumping into Genesis of the Daleks at an earlier point in time, when Davros was working on his prototype travel machine and one of his fellow scientists is thinking of a name. Quite enjoyed seeing a pre-war version of Davros and the gag with the sink plunger. It was fun; but then blimey social media went mental.

Turns out this isn't Davros before he was disfigured by war, but how he's going to be portrayed from now on because apparently he's offensive to disabled people. That's a new one on me. The character endured for over 40 years in his previous guise without stiff letters of complaint to BBC's 'Points Of View', so I'm not sure what's gone on there. I'm disabled, and never found any of the one eyed characters on Doctor Who offensive. May be I should? I dunno. Shame really, as there's a perfectly good in-canon way of doing this following Davros last encounter with the Doctor during Capaldi's era. Anyway, it's just a telly show at the end of the day, so doesn't really matter.

Doctor Who : The Daleks - IN COLOUR!
A 90 minute recut of William Hartnell's second adventure, that adds colour and tries to do some edits to make the story zip along a bit faster, which is pretty successful, but there are some comically jarring edits that don't work. Mainly towards the end when it's realised there's actually quite a lot of episodes to trim down to make sure this doesn't turn into complete nonsense. Along with the colour, there's some new soundtracking and what have you. I liked it, but it did remind me of that Transformers: The Movie Reconstructed.

Interview with Mandip Gill
Jas was the best companion of Jodie Whittaker's era, and it was lovely to hear how much the role meant to her and how she'd enjoyed becoming part of the Doctor Who firmament. It was a short interview (13 minutes), but covered all the bases from her audition and not knowing what part she was actually going to get to being part of the show, working with her fellow cast members and the character's relationship with the Doctor.

The Star Beast
First of three televised adventures for the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble. Adapted from Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons strip of the same name, this was a nice frothy adventure. Immediately apparent was the increase in budget (and some imaginative use of the sonic screwdriver - although this did feel a bit Iron Man), but the monsters remain as endearingly daft as ever. Beep The Meep made for a fun adversary and I liked the polite claw handed other aliens that definitely had a name. U.N.I.T. were there too and I liked the new chief scientific advisor and I hope we see more of her. Her wheelchair with all the shooty things reminded me of Stephen Hawking in the Simpsons. Guessing this is a more acceptable portrayal of disability? Interesting. Great to have Catherine Tate back, although when she gets bellowing, still sounds like characters from her sketch show. Good to see Shaun and Sylvia too, plus a new addition in her daughter Rose, who I think I would have liked more if she wasn't given some dialogue which was less empowering and just so on the nose it landed like an anvil. Shame, as the early stuff with the lads on the bikes worked really well, and then we just got the sort of posturing large corporations do on acceptance to show they care without having to spend any money. The new Tardis looks like an inversion of one of those enormous golf balls I can see on Memwith Hill that definitely don't exist. Flashy, but perhaps unnecessarily massive as it doesn't look very practical to navigate. Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor is a less excitable version of Ten, and I'll be interested to see if he brings anything different to his portrayal this time - although I appreciate that with three episodes, this may not be possible!

[Denyer]

so I'm not sure what's gone on there

Possibly this pressure group: https://www.changingfaces.org.uk/news/o ... h-the-bbc/

I suppose at his tech level cloning isn't any stretch and being a rubber mostly-corpse always looked silly.

But they've gone with the typical sunken-eyed skull-face nazi and ugly = evil anyway. RTD is very keen to make a point of dropping the previous stylings -- and be as accurate as a lot of his other writing -- by describing Davros, who since the 80s incarnations has had a life support unit with anti-gravity and other super tech, and who most of the point of is that he's viewed as halfway to being a dalek (aliens trapped inside war machines) as a wheelchair user. Sticking the head in a tank inside a Dalek casing would work better.

Many of the people critiquing the decision here make good points.

Watched a documentary narrated by Tennant, a few of those companion + Doctor scenes, a bit of Curse of Fenric and some of the behind the scenes stuff. Haven't seen the full episode Miriam M stars in yet, but it's not like it's going to be a surprise decades later. Still got some of Thirteen to watch too.

edit: Love the fact that within 5 mins of this "Frank Richards" has been name-dropped.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p ... doctor-who

[Skyquake87]

Cheers for the links Reddit thread was a good read and good to find out about changingfaces and what they're all about.

I'm listening to Sophie Aldred on Sounds playing her favourite songs. She's great and I never knew she voiced Dennis The Menace! Brilliant.

[Denyer]

Just dropping a link to a rather good podcast, which is often fascinating listening for the actor/actress and production team interviews despite the fact I've probably managed to listen to all of about a dozen audiobooks in twenty years. They've just reviewed the new episodes (which I still haven't gotten around to watching, but have now listened to people talking about at length) and had as close to an argument about the second one as I've ever heard them get.

https://www.sirensofaudio.com/p/episode-list.html

Re: Isaac Newton... Short Circuit was one of my favourite movies as a kid and I didn't notice that Fisher Stevens wasn't Indian (in retrospect a tiny bit of a clue about ASD and other things). Whilst I get the positives of representation and there's far too much cultural baggage for it to be a good idea to change an actor's skin colour to another real one for a role, am firmly in the camp of people should be encouraged to act all kinds of parts, most stage productions wouldn't exist without whoever's prepared to get up and have a go doing so, acting is people being things they're not, etc. Theatre manages to uphold far more of those ideals with recasting than TV, it doesn't necessarily matter if nine out of ten of the cast are the wrong gender or the wrong ages for the script, or the show-runners just want to do something different.

Which reminds me, I do hope the Emily Mortimer reboot of Rumpole hasn't gotten lost in development hell. Think that her dad would've loved the concept.

[Denyer]

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/do ... ewsupdate/

Big spoilers. Still haven't watched episodes, and the plot twist is very fan-fic-slash-official-books but I quite like it insofar it could explain a lot of other things.

[Skyquake87]

Enjoyed the Christmas episode, even if the goblins weren't much of a threat and seemed a bit of a waste. Ncuti was great in his first full episode - more charisma than Ten, if such a thing were possible! Really liked new companion Ruby Sunday (sounds like a fancy desert) and the general levity and zippy pace. Not much more I think to say, except Angie Watts from Eastenders was in it too and gave the internet a hard on with her line to camera.

[Heinrad]

Definitely enjoyed everything I could get over here(let's hear it for the intrepid YouTubers who recorded the new bits from "Tales from the TARDIS", because as much as I love Doctor Who, I'm not entirely sure I can actually get a TV license, and if I can, the rate scale was confusing), loved The Star Beast(the fact they got Fudge in there at all was impressive, the little wazzok), loved Wild Blue Yonder, and am now going to have flashbacks anytime I hear "Spice Up Your Life".

Seeing a pre-explosion Davros was fun, although having him like that going forward is going to be a bit jarring. I always figured his DNA was too badly damaged for them to be able to full-on clone him. Hell, by the time of the Time War, he may have been the equivalent of a brain in a bucket, with what we see as a mock up. People see what they want to see, I guess.

And I really enjoyed the Christmas Special. Good intro to Ncuti(I think that's spelled right. I keep wanting to type "Shooty"), I'm wondering who Mrs. Flood is. I loved 14's sonic, so much that I got one off of eBay(let's hear it for China-based sellers who aren't selling them for way inflated prices), and 15th's sonic.... I love the phrase on it, but it looks like a TV remote. One of the novelty ones.

[Sades]

Christmas special was good, imo. I expect big things as a result of Disney money. Otherwise, what is it good for?