Doctor Who 2008: Sontarans cometh, RTD Ood 'ave 'im etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/21/michael-moorcock-doctor-who-author

Moorcock on his plans to write for the show

Queen Bess thing = Rusty tying up the bit at the end of the Shakespeare Code when The Doctor has pissed off Queenie without actually having met her yet. Oh look, now he has, another loose end tied up, pat Rusty on the back and give him a cigar. But yeah, could he not just have nicked a crown or something?

I should really watch it again, this time without several gallons of wine inside me.

xpost: The article says that Moorcock is to write an original Dr. Who novel, not a script - unless you've heard differently? Be interesting to know if other big UK SF names have been asked.

Ah, yeah, the Queen stuff was pretty horrible. But that whole lurch from the end of last episode back to chirpy irritating tennant was pretty horrible anyway.

i dunno, he's done all this stuff between the desperate "No!" of WoM and arriving on Ood planet (is it really ice and snow all over their whole planet? how unlike our own - ok i know this is tv sci-fi law but still), plenty of time to flip back to cocky hedonist again

Sure, but I'm interested in the story from our perspective, not his.

Flipping from serious and emo to glib and chirpy is kind of what Tennant's Doctor has always done though. Is this an actual episode that's worth watching, btw?

no, you'll see it on Xmas Day anyway - not sure if its the opening scene or what

I couldn't put myself thru Children in Need even to see this so that's good to know.

Is on YouTube. That shit with the Tardis remote control lock seemed way too Children in Need throwaway to be actually in the Christmas eps.

One of the odder mash-ups I've encountered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW0H_rprV-g

i was entertained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZyTZyQVNck

read some stuff about the press screenings - general postitivity and real excitement about it all (except maybe the apparently "preposterous" actual details/caues of The Master's resurrection...i don't know anything about this other than what's in the latest trailers doing the rounds) including talk of a big twist/the most exciting wtf ending yet and that's just part 1 of the 2. have some emerging theories about this based on the trailers/clips but going to try and not read any more spoilery things.

they're showing what seems like quite a lot of stuff in the trailers (and battle scenes with The Master in this wasteland environ actually look a bit shit so far) but reviewers saying it's the tip of the iceberg. awesome.

my name...is *the master*! : D

at last we are at the beginning of his final adventure

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/04/article-1135510-033258D3000005DC-113_468x376.jpg

lol. that was fucking amazing btw, roll on pt 2.

Suddenly, after so many years of the tardis being moved or stolen being a basic plot device, it's really very easy to hide the it!

Otherwise, pretty cool.

It wasn't amazing. Noisy, overblown, daft ect ect but roll on pt.2 anyway?

In RTD terms it had some great parts in it, and not much painful head-slap. Very much reserving judgement to part 2, if we must have a reboot plz god let it be a consistent reboot.

Cribbins and Tennant in the caff staring down the double barrels of mortality was one of the best things in the show for ages tho.

It wasn't amazing

it was. the obama bits were cringy though.

I was hoping, when the Master became everyone, that John Simm's face would be morphed onto ppl Aphex Twin Style: women with the Master's face, children with the Master's face, 'Barack Obama' with the Master's face...

The Timelords turning up at the end was cheesy but pretty cool. Kind of like the whole thing.

No more Timelords any more was always bullshit - Timothy Dalton looks totally right in the robes.

Come on, Rusty's just setting it up to kill them all off again next week, surely?

First 20 minutes was a hideous mess, and the rest was kind of daft fun. Clip from next week up on the BBC website explains a lot of the Tim Dalton stuff btw.

What I hate about Rusty is his tendency towards narratives in which THERE WERE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF THEM but they're ALL GONE FOR EVER AND EVER and IT'S TRUE, because IT'S TRUE!

So, like Daleks, Cybermen and Time Lords are never EVER coming back, because Rusty says so? I find it easier to imagine these entities stuck in interminable checkmated confilct . .

They left the Master thing open ever since the picking up of the ring, but it was done in such a cack-handed way. No surprise though. Based on that clip, I like where this Time Lord thing is going. Master's bizarre plot (Aphex Twin OTM) was just sooooo damn goofy from a basic visual sense that I can't figure out why RTD didn't come up with something better. Also, that cafe scene was pretty great. dude upthread otm re: that.

Whoever said the first twenty minutes were horrible OTM as well. And RTD didn't bother to flesh out the billionaire and his daughter in the slightest. Still had fun though, especially watching with my teenage cousins (just me and them while the grown-ups talked downstairs, ha).

Just watched it, Aphex Twin referenced in our house as well. Whole bunch of meh really, but looks like it's building to something decent. Everyone OTM re cafe scene.

Aphex Twin *and* Being John Malkovich, I should say. How the holy fuck was The Master still imprinted on Lucy Saxon's lipstick after a year of her being in prison?

Don't try and make sense of anything in this episode.

ffs everyone, i was really excited by the end. maybe just the references to gallifrey and the return of the timelords and the end of time and john simm being as good as the master as tennant is as the doctor and bernard cribbins as an old man helping you see the dr on a humanistic level and the mortality thing again. i loved it so far.

rubbish

Cribbins and Tennant in the caff staring down the double barrels of mortality was one of the best things in the show for ages tho.

It's scenes like this that redeem the bits I actually laughed out loud at for being stupid, like the Master's wife whipping out a potion she JUST SO HAPPENS to have spent YEARS ... stuff like this has been part of Who parodies for as long as there have been Who parodies.

This was a very familiar RTD blend of fantastic emotional scenes along with reveals which really aren't reveals or actually interesting ... I mean, really it felt like they were fixated on having a scene in which Obama gets possessed by the Master, and have a worldwide Master remake of Come to Daddy. The latter part is indeed incredibly cool, but there were some seriously weak contortions to get there.

Ok, the four-knock thing is a two-hearted heartbeat, that's a really clever idea. But which no Timelord would regard as being alien to them. If i tap out da-dum, da-dum to you, you're going to say 'ah right, sounds like a heartbeat then'.

I realised that the four knocks was a double heartbeat the first time the Master mentioned it, in the original Saxon story.

Moffatt can start the new series from year zero afaic but John Simm is the one element that needs to be kept hold of.

I didn't like that caff scene one bit. A third of the way in and the Dr and Bernard bleedin Cribbins start blubbing. Enough OTT emo-Doctor already. It's Christmas, give us a break.

The episode came good in the end though, like this was all just a big run, a big teaser for the final final final finale ever. Tim Dalton looks ace.

a big run up

The reason it wasn't lol emo-Doctor, even tho the emo bits have for the most part been the bits I've enjoyed during the RTD era, was that you had two really great actors playing off each other and what could've been another heavy-handed BYE ROSE HI ROSE BYE ROSE set piece was just a restrained, barely happening moment in the space before it went back into SUPER-MASTER and lol WE ARE EVIL TIME LORDS

And I know the Time Lords have always been these morally ambiguous careless Gnostic bad demiurge kinda figures but if Rusty is leading up to "you was right to blow them all up Christopher Ecclestone, those guys are asses" daddy-issues hilarity then, well, jaysus. Plus everybody who likes how this is going should never under-estimate RTD's ability to ruin a story with an unbelievably shitty deus ex machina conclusion.

I actually saw this against my will and for all that it was profoundly retarded it was also grew weirdly compelling after a first 20 minutes that is rightfully denounced here and which exceeded my every expectation of direness

Aphex Twin and BJM obviously referenced here too, and as profoundly silly family entertainment goes not the worst thing I've seen (that would be Robin Hood), but oh god that Tate woman is still on telly and I haven't actually taken anything from it

oh and all that hunger/laughing shit was ridic

I'm hoping against hope that the Moffat/Smith era will do away with the Doctor's bottom lip going whenever he's in a tight corner. Looking all dewy-eyed into the middle distance is one thing, actually being on the verge of tears... enough is enough imo.
It almost - almost - makes me pine for the days when a regen would be along the lines of: the TARDIS is hit by a bit of turbulence, the Doctor falls to the floor, he rolls over and another Doctor gets up.

but if Rusty is leading up to "you was right to blow them all up Christopher Ecclestone, those guys are asses" daddy-issues hilarity then, well, jaysus.

I wouldn't watch the second half if I was you, I doubt it's going anywhere else.

Would I be crediting him with too many pop-culture references if I thought it was all a crap computer game pun? World of 'The Simms'? No?

I think you're over-thinking it. Come on, this guy wrote the "it's a... MASTER RACE" line, subtlety doesn't really enter into it.

ugh the obama bits were so annoying. was it really necessary to mention him fixing the recession THREE TIMES? and no, it's not going to get DW more viewers in America, if that was the intention.

fucking love john simm hamming it up, especially in the scenes in the secret office, where he's just sitting in the corner with a shit-eating grin.

Obama bits also weird because so far it's been fake prime ministers (Harriet Jones, Harold Saxon) and fake pres-elect that got blown up by the master last time out, so introducing a real president into already-screwed timeline (aldo to thread?) seems totally wack.

yeah it wouldn't be as bad and would've gotten the same point across if they'd just gone with an Obama-ish US president, the way the last president was clearly meant to be Dubya.

obama has a skinhead

Slightly surprising the Doctor didn't realise what was going on with that gateway slightly earlier than he did - in fact I'm not actually sure he got a hold on it (despite being told what it did)- since he encountered people being 'mended' according to an incorrect template relatively recently in that excellent one with the gas masks - a Moffat one iirc.

Apart from that entertaining enough bosh (tho embarrassing when compared to things like Blink and Midnight). Cd do with more tension, less gaudiness for me. RTD has fun, yes, and that's definitely good, but wish sometimes he stopped rushing round having fun and had a bit more tonal variety - some slowish development rather than the hasty botch of the first 20 mins, which was as embarrassingly rotten as everyone says.

That said, the idea that the Doctor was late because of his essentially frivolous nature was good (and presumably dovetailed in Children in Need, which I didn't see) and also implied he was unwilling to face his own demise.