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

6. The Doctors Daughter

"I was a dad once..."

thought it was supposed to be a son he had/has

RTD sez

"At 6.20pm, it'll get 1.5m less viewers than it already has," he said, speaking at a Broadcast event in London. "I've told them this, but they won't shift at all. You need to maintain slots and they've gone and cocked it up now. Maybe they're right, but I think they're wrong."

The producer, who was behind the revival of the show, also confessed to rewriting others' scripts if he did not like them. He said: "I'll rewrite 100% if I have to. With Steven Moffat's scripts, I don't touch a word, but anyone else's I do...

"We're not there to experiment and we're not there to let someone fail. You've got to do everything you can to make it brilliant every week."

so just think how bad some of the scripts must've been before re-writing!

Oh God, please tell me that "The Doctor's Daughter" has absolutely nothing to do with that awful Lance Parkin book...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41JY8GBG18L._AA240_.jpg

AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID

NO WAI

RTD is bit grumpy this year, isn't he? What changed?

6.20 is a stupid time. Fucking reality tv must go out at 7.

Lance Parkin wrote two of my favorite Who books (Just War, Cold Fusion) and then followed them up with a bunch of mediocre-to-bad ones.

Does this mean they're bringing back Susan?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Whitney_Houston-_My_Name_Is_Not_Susan.jpg

How great would it be if Whitney was Susan?

yeah and have the doctor's granddaughter be a massive druggie.

That would be kinda woah.

TS William Hartnell vs Bobby Brown

悪狼

Why the hassle over the broadcast time, doesn't everyone have a video or sky+ or tivo or something these days? Also, it's not like it doesn't get repeated on BBC3 or anything.

Ratings innit

BBC innit, ratings shouldn't matter that much.

Also it's DOCTOR FUCKING WHO you'd think the thing would be popular enough that enough people will switch on whatever happens regardless of half and hour here or there. Especially with some decent promotion.

why not make it 6.23pm

BBC innit, ratings shouldn't matter that much.

^lol

Probably want people to miss it and watch on iPlayer then the bbc can point to what a roarinf sucess iPlayer is.

damn thing stalls every time i try and watch Torchwood on it (not so bad with other shows)

The Sontaran Stratagem

that would be sontarans then. hello ILX

Probably want people to miss it and watch on iPlayer then the bbc can point to what a roarinf sucess iPlayer is.

-- Ed, Wednesday, 2 April 2008 21:45 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Doctor Who most-viewed iPlayer show
12 April 2008

This weekend's Doctor Who's fourth season premiere is the most popular programme in the iPlayer's history, a BBC spokeswoman said today.

The episode, featuring Catherine Tate's debut as a regular in the series, was requested by 2,830,000 computers in the UK. Director-General Mark Thompson is a git.

Maybe the Sontaran's strategem is ... erm ... not to appear in the episode!

A friend has just asked me to participate in his fan fiction. PARTICIPATE. As of this moment I have nfi wtf he's talking about.

Is that like cosplay, life modelling or just being written in, whichever it is I fear you may be finding out if the doctor's little TARDIS is bigger in or out.

man i have no way of watching this, and it is bothersome

yes you do. Get your bt client up & runnin'.

SOME DO NOT LIKE TO STEAL THE BREAD RIGHT FROM THE WRITER'S MOUTHS, KINGFISH.

EVEN IF IT IS A HAMMY, JOWLY MOUTH.

and some of us like in the u.s., where broadcasts aren't as easily seen...

and some us live in something called REGION 4 which basically means YOU WILL DRINK WATER FROM THE COLD TAP.

Also it's DOCTOR FUCKING WHO you'd think the thing would be popular enough that enough people will switch on whatever happens regardless of half and hour here or there.

You'd think the thing would be popular enough that it would stay in a prime time slot. Prime time is prime time for a reason. It's when most people get most time to watch TV.

Maybe it's on early because it's a children's programme?

^

Where's the thread for the christmas special? I watched it last night for the first time and thought it was GREAT. I almost cried!??

When the ABC waits six months to broadcast the series, yeah BT is warranted.

I think they call it family viewing. xxp

When the ABC waits six months to broadcast the series, yeah BT is warranted.

You're not fucking wrong.

I couldn't wait for the S3 finale, so I downloaded it before it aired on Sci-Fi here. Then I caught parts of it when it did air, and I was horrified - you wouldn't think a couple minutes cut here and there would ruin an episode, but they did more than that, cutting literally seconds out of the middle of scenes, reaction shots, etc. It ruined the pacing and feeling of the show far more than I expected. I shudder to think about what I've missed in pieces from the show over those seasons by watching these hacked versions on Sci-Fi.

So this year I'm not bothering to wait, BT it is. RSS torrenting = godsend.

That's why I can't watch it on sci-fi -- the editing is just so awful and random.

Why is that? I'd always assumed the whole reasoning behind the 45 min episode length was so they could sell it to the international market without need for additional editing - 45 minutes of content plus 15 minutes of ads snugly fills a one hour slot.

Networks are cocks. They whine when people torrent yet they pull devious shit like this.

It needs to be about 38-40 minutes long to fit an hour in the US.

Hang on, it became a problem because *MARTHA* was in love with him? Um, hello? Rose?

Not a bad start otherwise, tbh.

As I put in the wrong thread

The only thing missing from that was the two goons with the guns walking into the blue oyster bar.

-- Herman G. Neuname, Saturday, 5 April 2008 19:10 (29 minutes ago)

Nice start.

Well that was better than it had any right to be.

Let's not get carried away.

Pretty goofy.

I've only just watched it.

Jesus fucking Christ Davies you big fucking bell-end.

Assembled timelords looking like the Old Republic senate didn't bother me. You have a shitload of members of an interstellar race who have a history of tending to have their heads up their asses. of course their meeting hall is going to look big and pompous.

I don't know, I thought it just didn't fit. The Time Lords shouldn't be depicted they way they were in the finale for a couple of reasons. First, because the character of the Doctor is pretty much defined by the fact that's he's a renegade Time Lord. If they all start acting like him, traipsing around the universe en masse, it makes him less interesting.

Second, I always imagined them losing the Time War not because they didn't have the means to annihilate the Daleks, but because they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it until it was too late. Because they are isolationists in the extreme. Just making it a clash between two super-powerful alien races, both perfectly content to fight and take revenge, etc. is kind of boring, and is far outside the realm of Doctor Who. That's Babylon 5 shit.

The Time Lords are supposed to be a pompous but decrepit race, so insular they're a little nuts, like Grey Gardens, not pompous and bombastic. They wouldn't cheer some speechmaking president... they'd all want to make their own speeches before committing to any course of action, and it would be boring as hell and go on for years. That's why the Doctor stole a TARDIS and split!

Well, that was better than the first part. Just.

Yet again with Rusty, he forgets not only main Who continuity, BUT HIS FUCKING OWN. We all suspect that the Doctor might die from jumping out of a spaceship (without even considering that something that needs to survive in a vacuum - and presumably faster-than-light travel - has a hatch you can just lift with your hand, or that while travelling at 400mph minimum you can manage to hit a glass dome, never mind take out the angular effects so you fall vertically) because he dies from a fall in Logopolis and arguably Time and the Rani - but he doesn't. Though we don't need to worry about the radiation (despite the demise of Wurzel Doctor and the Wet Vet) because Rusty wrote in Smith And Jones that the Doctor can absorb enough radiation to kill the entire world and just do a funny dance and shake it out of his foot and be all right. Oh no, wait, we do, it kills him.

We invest over 10 minutes in a piece of melodrama between two characters (including "I'd be proud of you were my dad" OH JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE) in which the WHOLE POINT is that the Doctor realises killing the Master will free the Earth. This then gets entirely undone (in much the same way as the return of Rose ruined the ending of the first EmoDoc series, or that he fucks with the ending of the Catherine Tate series by "subtly" changing "if she remembers it will kill her" to "if she remembers it'll save her, then make her a bit tired") by having Rassilon deus ex machina that plot away as soon as he turns up.

Incidentally, how did Rassilon come back to life after the Five Doctors? And is this confirmation that the Doctor isn't The Other, as surely Rassilon would have called him that?

So, the Doctor killed all the Time Lords and the Daleks in the Time War. WHY THE FUCK IS HE MOPEY ABOUT THEM FROM THE VERY START THEN? Back as far as The End of the World he's talking about how sad it was, despite it having pretty much just happened. In fact, doesn't he blame the Daleks for it in Dalek? And more to the point, as soon as the first dalek turns up doesn't he realise his super weapon failed and there are bound to be Time Lords about as well? The only conclusion that can be made for how it's all got "timelocked" is that the Doctor does it somehow (presumably using "the moment"? This really was a 'cram in as many cool names as I can think of! HOOT!' session), so once you realise your lock is easily picked...

When the plot got resolved (!) and there was still 25 minutes to go the first thing I thought of was Return of the King, and in a way this story was very much like that - you'd sat through enough shite before then that you were still vaguely interested and had to see it through, but you knew it was time utterly wasted that you would never get back and you felt kind of dirty and used afterwards.

Let's put it another way. The End Of Time was about the same length as an old 6 parter, in fact looking at the DVD cover I see it's 7 minutes shorter than Genesis of the Daleks which is probably nearly all consumed in the extra credits. So, let's try and rewrite Genesis so it follows the same structure as the End of Time:

Ep 1: Nyder magics Davros using The Secret Books of the Thals from some dust and a used tissue. Some daleks using their brand new extra fast flying power and the Doctor run about on the wastes of Skaro not really chasing each other shouting EXTERMINATE and JELLY BABIES at each other. Harry gets some other people from the Navy to help him find Sarah Jane, who he thinks might be in Orpington.

Ep 2: The Doctor and Mogran have a long chat about how Sarah Jane could get a man if she just wore better clothes and how the Doctor wishes she wasn't in Orpington and was on Skaro. They both cry a bit. We see Davros' laboratory, and Ravon is introduced as a comedy gay.

Ep 3: Davros works in his laboratory a lot, monologuing and overacting, until the Doctor and Mogran arrive. He announces he has perfected his dalek. SLOW PULL BACK TO LONG SHOT SHOWING GIGANTIC DALEK FACTORY. MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF THEM. HOOT!

Ep 4: Harry and Sarah Jane turn up, then Sarah passes out and Harry gets stuck in a giant clam. The Doctor has a long chat with Bettan about how he'd like her to adopt him. Bettan gives him the Time Ring.

Ep 5: It turns out that the Time Lords let Nyder resurrect Davros deliberately just so they could put The Doctor in the position of feeling a bit awkward. They let him wonder for a bit about whether he should kill him or not before magicking away all the daleks, turning Davros back into dust again, ending the war on Skaro, unmutating all the Kaleds and Thals, waking up Sarah, freeing Harry and activating the Time Ring to send them all home.

Ep 6: The Doctor takes Harry and Sarah, gets them on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and slips them the answers. He then goes to stand about and look at Jo Grant, Liz, Jamie, Zoe, The Brigadier, Victoria, Ben, Polly, Vicky, Dodo, Steven, Ian, Barbara, Susan and Sara Kingdom from a distance, twiddling the end of his scarf. A Wirrn appears and they both look a bit sad. Then something blows up, so the episode finsihes with a bang.

Hardly a classic, is it.

So, farewell Rusty. I suppose the best thing I can say about you is that you hung about for shorter than JNT.

DOUBLE DEAD LOCK THREAD.

damn dude

don't like that the master dresses down. hoody and jeans? shape up man.

whoas
xposts

tho also
lols
awesome

i don't know how i feel. sorta annoyed by 'plot'/'rationality' but also, shrug. i miss tennant's doctor already, sigh.

Thought the end of Genesis of the Daleks was pretty ropey in its own right TBH.

Hush you.

don't like that the master dresses down. hoody and jeans? shape up man.

As far as I can tell from Britishes new outlets a hoodie is the most SINISTER thing a person can wear in public.

So it works as a super-bad-guy top.

It doesn't really connote Machiavellian genius tho but.

Yeah neither does being like 'AWR MEAT GOTTA EAT MEAT FLESH MEAT NOM WHERE'R MY IHOP" for five straight minutes.

but scruffy master is soooo cute

Looking forward to a Telegraph think-piece on declining standards in Super-Villainy next week.

"In 1965 a world-threatening megalomaniac was required at the very least to have a solid PhD in Nuclear Physics. Today's enemies of mankind get by on dumbed-down GCSE grades and an insatiable lust for so-called Big Macs."

The MASTER? More like the ASSOCIATE'S DEGREE.

Scruffy Master is wickedly bringing out my inner caps lock.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/Delgado.jpg

1972

http://somelikeitnotcrushes.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/dappy.jpg

2009

The MASTER? More like the ASSOCIATE'S DEGREE.

I think he's still working on a certificate from DeVry.

City & Guilds in Villainy and Basic Plumbing

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2009/363/0/5/The_Master__s_Facebook_Page_by_The_Hellish_Gnome.jpg

i love john simm but i thought he really whiffed this one. he never found anything to do with the master beyond leering.

it would have been neat if the doctor's farewell tour included a stop somewhere we hadn't seen before, with a character we'd never met, and she blushes, and he winks

^^ that's what i'm talking about!

it would have been neat if the doctor's farewell tour included a stop somewhere we hadn't seen before, with a character we'd never met, and she blushes, and he winks

That would have been great.

So the RSC production of the Tennant/Stewart Hamlet is online from the usual sources now...