Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

how many old Who adversaries have been resurrected on the nu-Who to date? I recall off the top of my head:

Autons
Daleks
Cybermen/Cybermats
The Macra <--- fucking lol btw
The Sontarans
The Silurians

The Ice Warriors haven't appeared yet, have they? They really should at some point (I know they've been referenced)

oh duh The Master

actually they've had the Sontarans but haven't actually mentioned the Rutan, have they?

Sensorites - one of the Good stories talks about the Sense-sphere.

you know drs daughter wasn't nearly so bad on rewatching. ood was only middling. i am quite the heretic on season finales tho - I've disliked all moffs finales, quite liked flying-magic-space-jesus dr season 2, and thoroughly enjoyed journey's end ;-)

other continuity monsters mentioned in passing as well as sensorites - ice warriors, nimon

Journey's End = FUCK YOU FOREVER, RTD. I will never forgive what he did to Donna, marrying her off to some random dude and giving her a lottery ticket doesn't make up for having her mind wiped.

tbh I thought the tragedy of Donna's fate and the danger if she ever rediscovered who The Doctor was, even though her mother and grandfather knew, was very strong storytelling

like, I hated that it happened because the evolution of Donna as a character was amazing, but it made narrative sense and was a semi-satisfying story (I agree the marriage was a little "um waht")

yeah Midnight/Turn Left is probably nu-Who's most satisfying 1-2 punch

― DARING PRINCESS (DJP)

Human Nature/Blink? Or does that count as a 1-2-3?

Recurring classic enemies who have yet to be properly revived by my count: Ice Warriors, Sea Devils, Yetis, Rani

well, "Blink" wasn't really tied to "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" at all so I'd say the actual 1-2 is HN/FOB, which I'd already read as a New Adventure and found more satisfying as a book than television episodes aside from the addition of ppl discounting Martha due to her race and her reactions to that

I think that the Sea Devils fall under the Silurian general banner

Were the any more major differences in the novel?

"Good" should have been "Ood", obviously.

The Ice Warriors get talked about in Waters of Mars.
The Face of Boe supposedly comes from the Isop Galaxy, where the Web Planet is set.
Rutans are mentioned in the Sontaran story (NB may be SJA)
Jamie gets a mention in Tooth & Claw because it's in Scotland
Axons died in the Time War
Calufrax is one of the missing planets in The Stolen Earth (I'm sure)
In the Idiot's Lantern the Doctor on the antenna says "oh no, not again" ergo Logopolis
Time Crash refers to a lot of the Wet Vet era
In Dalek, the Cyberman head is from Attack of the Cybermen
Daemos (from the Daemons) is referred to in The Satan pit, as is Sutekh
The Stolen Earth talks about the Dalek bomb in the centre of the Earth from DIoE
The drill in The Stolen Earth is what happens in Inferno
The spaceship in the Beast Below is menaced by solar flares at the same time as the Nerva Beacon Trilogy
Matt Smith's fez is from The Silver Nemesis

There are more, I'm sure

These links have a good rundown of the differences between the book and the two-parter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Nature_%28Doctor_Who_episode%29#Comparison_with_the_novel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_of_Blood#Comparison_with_the_novel

Oh, the Alliance in The Pandorica Opens includes:

Chelonians
Draconians
Drahvins
Nestene
Tereleptils
Zygons

We could go through a big list of everyone who's received a passing mention but I was more talking about adversaries who actually appeared on the show. Also, the Nestene Consciousness was in "Rose" and should be covered by "Autons"

(btw I do think HN/FOB was very good, my issue was that I basically knew the story already, having read the book multiple times, and its rewriting as a Martha story basically renders the entirety of the Virgin/BBC New Adventures era an extended alternative universe, which bums me out because Benny, Chris, Roz, Fitz and Compassion were all awesome)

I thought you might say that, but I am watching the Vengeance On Varos remaster thus I win.

I can't really argue against that

It really is great, the Arak/Etta stuff is superb and The Doctor is about to die for the second time.

season 22 is super underrated, I think because everyone only remembers "Timelash"

Peri has just been turned into a bird, real-time followers.

I'm trying to think of which companions got tortured the most/had the shittiest existences; the top five may be Adric, Peri, Jack, Turlough and Rory? (I know Katarina was blown out of an airlock and Sara Kingdom aged to death but, having never seen their stories, I don't know if there was a ton of torture before their deaths)

Ian could be a reasonable shout. Grew up during The Blitz, GOT HIT BY A DALEK RAY AND SURVIVED, survived being the cause of the Big Bang (take that, Adric), faced execution for murder, faced execution for murder and survived it by becoming a gladiator, was a slave who escaped and saw time as a gladiator, staked out in the desert and smeared with honey to attract ants, chose to leave the Doctor using a botched Dalek time ship that he had no idea would work.

actually maybe I'm misremembering but wasn't Steven Taylor's entire reason for existing to give the writers someone to torture rather than the cute girl or the old man?

I'm trying to think of which companions got tortured the most/had the shittiest existences; the top five may be Adric, Peri, Jack, Turlough and Rory?

Jack seems to be into the torture so does it really count if the person enjoys it?

Steven suffers a bit in The Myth Makers (gets stabbed and has bllod poisoning) but apart from that his worst fate is having to sing repeatedly in The Gunfighters.

okay so Steven and Dodo should both be counted for having to suffer through The Gunfighters

Can you really not suspend your disbelief about that stuff while watching a FAMILY SHOW ABOUT A TIME-TRAVELLING ALIEN?

this times a billion

Hey, I saw the Doctor get himself out of space in Four To Doomsday by throwing a cricket ball against a spaceship and using his own energy to propel himself.. I said I was being deliberately cranky for laffs.

Also, doesn't it imply that the Silurians detected Adric's spaceship, filled their own spaceship with dinosaurs, launched it and put themselves in suspended animation in deep caves in Derbyshire in less time than The Doctor could tear his eyes off the TARDIS scanner and save his bestest E-Space mate.

To be a nerd about this, the reason the Silurians all went into suspended animation was because of the arrival of the Moon, which in the Who universe appeared from deep space during dinosaur times and fell into orbit, rather than crashing into the planet as the Silurians had expected: because the diaster they expected never happened, they never got automatically woken up when things returned to normal. The Adric shuttle which killed the dinosaurs happened later on.

"Good" should have been "Ood", obviously.

The Ice Warriors get talked about in Waters of Mars.
The Face of Boe supposedly comes from the Isop Galaxy, where the Web Planet is set.
Rutans are mentioned in the Sontaran story (NB may be SJA)
Jamie gets a mention in Tooth & Claw because it's in Scotland
Axons died in the Time War
Calufrax is one of the missing planets in The Stolen Earth (I'm sure)
In the Idiot's Lantern the Doctor on the antenna says "oh no, not again" ergo Logopolis
Time Crash refers to a lot of the Wet Vet era
In Dalek, the Cyberman head is from Attack of the Cybermen
Daemos (from the Daemons) is referred to in The Satan pit, as is Sutekh
The Stolen Earth talks about the Dalek bomb in the centre of the Earth from DIoE
The drill in The Stolen Earth is what happens in Inferno
The spaceship in the Beast Below is menaced by solar flares at the same time as the Nerva Beacon Trilogy
Matt Smith's fez is from The Silver Nemesis

There are more, I'm sure

despite my disdain for fanny obsession with detail, this post delighted me more than you can possibly imagine

The best thing about the Doctor apparently being thought dead/forgotten/deleted from all databases = no more Jesus Doctor. Thank fuck.

'despite my disdain for fanny obsession'

good lord

fwiw I'm watching the start of series 23 and remembering how great c baker was (yes I'm serious)

I don't believe you.

Anyway, er -- how?

By the same token I watched a couple old Sylvester McCoys and I'm not sure I totally agree the against-the-grain reading of McCoy as a "good actor with bad scripts". He's totally panto.

you caaaan't

put meeee

on trial

xp yes, mccoy was astoundingly weak

c baker's character might have been a bit… off, but he had the chops

He rose to panto when required, which was more often than not (see: bad scripts).

But it's important to remember that he's the definitive Doctor, by which I mean he's definitely the one I started watching.

I still quite like mccoy's doctor, but his 'acting' was never much more than turning up and being conscious, despite his best efforts

Season 23 - love Mysterious Planet, really like Vervoids (it's easy to imagine it as a Hinchcliffe era TB story, like a more Agatha Christie Robots of Death) and my only real problem with Mindwarp is that the Brian Blessed/Peri plot is totally unbelievable. I don't really get the point of the Ultimate Foe, but the overall Trial story (even though it makes no real sense) needs closing out.

McCoy's last series is the one where I'll stand by good actor/bad scripts. Although bizarrely they're the ones with good plots too, but still bad scripts.

I'm not sure I totally agree the against-the-grain reading of McCoy as a "good actor with bad scripts". He's totally panto.

This is how I felt as well, but I have to say I quickly got fed up with the stories with him in it available through Netflix -- there might be some great performances I missed but I thought he was pretty meh.

quite honestly, the more ridiculous his stories, the better McCoy comes across; I still think "Paradise Towers" is one of the best from his run

I really loved Paradise Towers when I was nine.

it's one of the few totally ridiculous stories that really embraces its ridiculousness; the overall "yes we really did do that and we know how nonsensical it was" tone really helps sell the story to me

by contrast, "The Happiness Patrol" has a lot of the same elements but I feel like half the actors didn't get the memo that they were in a ridiculous shitshow and didn't adjust their performances accordingly; I feel like too many people in the story are trying to save it from itself rather than just going "this is stupid fun, enjoy"

Even nine-year old me knew that The Happiness Patrol was shite.

Haha, I think when I was nine I took PT 100% seriously. I even drew a 'movie poster' for it while it was being broadcast.