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

Just paste in the "long" Youtube link, a la:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEmm6UP5G88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEmm6UP5G88

giant spoiler is out for the 50th but I won't actually mention it here. if you search around you'll find it. no idea if it's true.

went to a Waris Hussein Q&A on Sunday, and later stood beside him while watching a staged recreation of An Unearthly Child.

I realised I didn't actually care about spoilering the episode for myself that much and had a look and it turns out that a) that is a massive spoiler and b) I really, really hope it happens.

other ppl itt might care tho so pls guys

Yeah I'm not going to mention it here.

I'm assuming this is the one that was in Bleeding Cool yesterday, that the individual in came from said the BBC had explicitly asked him not to release it but fuck'em?

Not a spoiler, rather a new minisode:

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2013/11/the-last-day-201113103008.html

The clip is currently listed for £2.49 in the United Kingdom store, or for free in the United States.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c203/abunay/FunnyStuff/WTF-DoctorWho.gif

Check the update: confirmed mistake, free everywhere now.

Or just go here

http://io9.com/the-time-war-is-hell-in-the-newest-doctor-who-minisode-1468384384

so not worth paying for too feel bad for those who did.

Taylor Parkes in the Quietus on that which is the Doctor. Nice overall reflection, really.

http://thequietus.com/articles/13940-dr-who-anniversary-bbc-taylor-parkes

There is very little about that article that is "nice" IMO.

Very curmudgeon Brit article. Not that it's all unfair, but there's a lot of nostalgia for the pain suffered of being a "real fan" as a kid or whatever.

Has there been any talk of the bio play thing that debuts tomorrow night or the Matt Smith & Carla presented historic overview that Bbc3 repeat tomorrow?

aAiSaT is on tonight, not tomorrow and is followed by aUC (and Tribe of Gum).

Grumpy fan is grumpy = that Quietus thing

aAiSaT is on tonight

Tomorrow in the US.

Poster said BBC3 which made me assume he was a Brit. (Don't have jaymc.xls to hand to know by name)

Right, had it as tomorrow, just got in and found out I've missed first load of it and presumably the Matt Smith history thing. Shit.

Well, that was lovely. Don't miss it.

I hope it is getting reshown before too long. Missed the first half but what I saw was great.

What is it that you are talking about? Out of the UK right now.

The Gatiss docudrama about the Hartnell era.

Oh yeah I really want to watch that.

Meantime:

https://www.google.co.nz/

As I quipped on Bookface: This week is all about sending an "it gets better" message back in time to the adolescent me in the mid-'80s as he shame-facedly struggles to stay awake watching a 6-part Hartnell episode on Iowa Public Television at 10:00 on a Friday night...

<3

my earliest memory of Dr Who is seeing the end credits when I was waiting for one of the other kid's shows on the govt-run channel ABC to star. And that big silver tunnel and the music SCARED the crap out of me.

my next memory was glimpsing part of an episode where Tom Baker encountered a monster that looked like a huge moving pile of black plastic seaweed. I had nightmares about that thing.

eventually I was old enough to watch it and enjoy it, but I didn't watch it regularly enough to always follow the storylines, I don't think I really got that they were serialized until I was much older.

Meanwhile, anyone think this is going to go anywhere?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP3Bu4sCRvY

(Sons of Gallifrey, a pilot being developed not by the BBC, but involving some Who people, allegedly about a young doctor and master).

Is Rusty behind that? (Can't watch YouTube at work) I think in A Writer's tale has says about how his final Who dream was to produce a Young Master 'n' Doc series set on Gallifrey - inspired in a large part by the success of the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot. NB this may be the source idea for his Wizards vs Aliens series.

I haven't watched Hartnell who in a couple of years so can't remember if he drops the more negative traits of his personality. Was surprised by things like the underhanded way he tried to do a couple of things in that first story, like the picking up a rock when the 60s pair are trying to help the stricken caveman who's just been through a fight with the unseen animal. Also his lack of practicality in things like creating fire without matches. Would think there would be things he'd have picked up along his travels if his superior intellect couldn't work them out for himself.
Wondered if they were things that were got rid of as the character was further developed after that first story, or if feedback from the audience would be likely to sway anything, if it were negative about those things.
Interesting to note both the Doctor and Susan announcing it was strange that the Tardis hadn't changed its camouflage. I take it that is being kept as that design currently (2000s) for sentimental reasons rather than because there is a problem with the circuit? Not sure what current back story is. Also that the word TARDIS was claimed to be an acronym coined by Susan in that first story, that has presumably been changed now? I guess there wasn't necessarily more than one of them being thought to exist at the time. The Dr mentions they are in exile but not sure if Gallifrey and the Timelords had been coined that early. There presumably is a text that is thought of as definitive on things like this is there? Not looked too deeply at the 50th Anniversary specials, them all seeming prohibitively expensive.

I also noted that the beginning of the first programme seemed to be a more in depth play than I was expecting. Things like the schoolkids having a little intrigue as you go by them before arriving at the character you were being introduced to were a nice touch.

Yes, Hartnell's character gets smoothed out as the early years go by, partly because they were making it up as they went along, partly explicitly because he got humanised by Barbara & Ian.

Yes, it's been the case for decades that the Doctor keeps the police box camouflage out of sentiment.

Susan coining TARDIS was dropped after that first episode, and we didn't see another one for years, and didn't see a second other one for more years after that. (The SIDRATs came in between though.)

It wasn't until Troughton's final story, six years in, that Time Lords or the Doctor's planet were thought up.

There presumably is a text that is thought of as definitive on things like this is there?

What sort of text?

Not looked too deeply at the 50th Anniversary specials, them all seeming prohibitively expensive.

Er...?

A book or something that had whatever background details one ought to know. I thought some of that material would be dotted through the 50th anniversary magazines but they seem to be €14 or 15 a pop.
Think there have been editions on Doctors, companions, enemies possibly something else too. Might be connected to the Doctor Who magazine, I'm not sure. Just leafed through them in Easons.

There is one book that I've seen that's a companion or something but seems to be more fanbased, like its compiled from a Who forum or something. Might have that wrong.

Watched aUC, but after a stupidly early start in the morning didn't have the stamina to watch any more than 3/4 of Cave of Skulls (interestingly announced as episode 2 of aUC by continuity). It was as great as ever - last watched <6 months ago - but Tribe of Gum is a plodder, really.

In terms of characterisation, smoothed is definitely the way to describe Hartnell. In The Daleks/The Mutants/The Dead Planet/Serial B he empties the fluid link to fake a reason to investigate the city (which would be barking if it wasn't all a con, as he has no way of knowing that the Dalek city might have mercury in it). In the Edge of Destruction/Inside The Spaceship/Serial C he drugs Ian and Barbara because he suspects them as saboteurs. In The Aztecs he very nearly decides to stay there indefinitely, as he meets a woman and they are going to get married. In The Romans he decides to go to the city, lengthening their stay by months - precisely because of this delay Ian and Barbara get captured. But then when the Time/Space Viewer turns up he's quite happy for it to be played with so Barbara can see the Gettysburg Address. He's definitely the most self-serving Doctor, and in many ways the most child-like. He's doing things because he wants to do them, not because he thinks it's fun for anyone else. But he actively grows up by the time companions start leaving, and once we get to Steven/Dodo he's *probably* close to what was originally imagined for the character.

TARDIS camouflage is made explicit in Attack of the Cybermen, where the chaeleon circuit is linked to the guidance control - fixing it causes a forced landing and while it works in Part 1 of the story it has reverted to the police box shape itself by the end of the story (suggesting it's the sentient TARDIS that has the attachment to the shape, not necessarily the Doctor).

yeah, think I know the fate of the 2nd TARDIS to appear. Will teach Meddling monks to arms trade with defending Brits won't it? Or is that the one?
& if so what species was the character played by Peter Butterworth? Is it stated/

I thought there might be some input on the chameleon circuit from the sentient TARDIS yeah.

Oh right I see when I said specials I meant the magazines I'm talking about in the message above you took me to mean the tv specials?

xp

There are the About Time books by Tat Wood and Lawrence MIles – they have a lot of the basic series info (they're structured as episode guides) but are also full of speculation, argument, tv history, culture rambles. I really enjoy them as a casual pick-up read (I don't know what more hardcore fans think of them).

'casual pick-up read'. Apparently saying they're good books for the loo is beneath me.

The Monk's is the first other TARDIS we see, yes. One of my favourite cliffhangers.

You could also try the three Discontinuity Guides - making a good case for there not being a single canon of what's right and what's wrong.

yeah was trying to see if there actually was an accepted single canon, was what I was asking.

Is anything currently being written in the broadcast tv stories actually reliant on any kind of continuity from the 60s stories? Other than the Great Intelligence that is. Just wondering if there is likely to be relevance anyway.

Other than basic story that this is a guy who for some reason is somewhat adrift in space/time.
& now that is because he was about the sole survivor of a race that wasn't introduced until the end of the 60s because of a war that was only introduced as a backstory for Christopher Eccleston in 2005.
& the relationship with the Tardis has been rethought and more thoroughly explained than at the time

So I'd guess not that much really? Not on a cosmic scale.

no, there's no single coherent canon of Doctor Who that can be pointed to. there's plenty of little pieces of continuity from the 60s and up though, and it's all theoretically in the same one story - but it takes fanwank to excuse a lot of the casual contradictions.

(Moffat's simple fanwank is that the Doctor just fucks about in time so much that things get changed by accident.)

It's not even stated that The Monk is of an alien race, just that he "must come from the same [future] time" as the Doctor.

I'm not able to play it on zing, but the animation of that google doodle is BULLSHIT. Hartnell, Colin and McCoy never had a sonic screwdriver and Troughton's was actually screwdriver-sized. GHOD google GET IT RIGHT

also the google thing doesn't seem to have John Hurt Doctor in it but i am probably demonstrating my ignorance

well that's because John Hurt isn't the Doctor

(ie the whole "giving up the title in order to be the bastard who ends The Time War" thing)

i said i was ignorant! i mean i don't care too much, the fanboy/retcon stuff hurts my head, i'm just in it for the ride

also i don't want to spoiler for tomorrow but "I am not a Doctor" is some hilarious cobblers

Impressive contributors to this BFI listicle:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/50-best-doctor-who-moments

Marcus Hearn's new 'vault' book is a partic good on the show's production history.

Thought Jessica Raine was partic gd as Verity Lambert in the Gatiss thing last night.

Yeah, the Marcus Hearn book is really pretty good for production material. A bit light elsewhere, but you can't have everything.