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

supposedly Donna softened him up (as he her). otherwise yeah he would've just committed genocide against the Daleks like he drowned the spider things (altho that seemed awfully inconsistent itself given his past form). blame the writers.

Tom Baker's Doctor dithered over destroying the Daleks at the moment of their creation and ultimately blew it. This isn't a new thing.

whereas Hartnell basically just said "fuck you, I'm out" and ran away and Troughton said "oh dear" and ran away and Pertwee said "JUDO CHOP!" and ran away when it didn't work and Davison said "I'm peaceful!" then tried to shoot them all and CBaker said "I will melt your face" and then proceeded to melt Davros's face and McCoy said "lol blow yrselves up" which the Daleks did and McGann said "Daleks? I don't think I'm allowed to fight those unless they are in really shitty stories written by John Peel"

haha. That McCoy was a wily one!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed and is upset with the 10th Doctor's slow descent into docility and sentimentality.

So is the next one the one where he regenerates? Or the one after that?

Maybe the next one is set on future earth and the Tardis turns up outside Holloway prison just as little Zoe Salter checks out.

Slater, even. You know. Lady Lara Croft with the Ethan Hunt kitbag.

i assumed the next one would be August Bank Holiday weekend. he's not regenerating until the fourth one (next year?) right?

Last three specials can be considered a trilogy, apparently, but looks to have looser connections than Utopia did with Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords. First one is on early November (although Hallowe'en is not ruled out) and the last two will be 'around Christmas/New Year'.

Anyway... this was sort of OK. Way too full of basic writing gaffes (once on the other planet they talk about fixing the bus so the Faraday Cage is reinstated, for example, but never actually get around to fixing it; or why, having established big metal vehicles are safe, the Doctor doesn't just ask UNIT to drive an armoured car through to pick them up, then close the wormhole himself; or exactly how you can remove the capstone from an ancient dome by hand without it collapsing and later pass through it while remaining inside the building; or how you can see things on the horizon "a hundred miles away", and yet not see a giant spaceship which you can arrive at on foot quicker than things which are flying towards you fast enough to warp space...) and Rusty's continuing to give himself timing issues (The Next Doctor being in the past was supposed to enable him to fix the 'one year in the future' problems, but then he had to go and mention it was after The Stolen Earth and put himself right back in trouble) and there was no real plot to speak of, but it wasn't any worse than Partners In Crime.

RUSTYBOWDOWNANDWORSHIPMEIAMSOCLEVARRWATCH: Did you see? Did you? The space alium things looked a bit like sharks? WELL THEY WERE SHARKS, RIGHT? And. Did you see? The Doctor made the bus fly? That's a bit like jumping, isn't it? YES IT IS. And. Did you see? The bus jumped over the sharks. HAHAHA THOSE FANS WON'T BE ABLE TO ACCUSE ME OF JUMPING THE SHARK BECAUSE I HAVE DONE IT LITERALLY. HAHAHA I AM SO CLEVARR.

I wish I was making that up, but he boasted about it on a commentary track.

Ummm.

I have a feeling you've been trolled there.

They looked much more like stingrays than sharks. It sounds like the sort of thing that occurred to him after filming and he threw it in there to wind up the ming-mongs.

Tennant mentions it first, and he's most congratulatory to Rusty on how clever he is. Could well be trolling, but there's a fair few people playing it straight for minimum payback.

I thought this was very good!

I am a little sick of people who can see the future but then refuse to communicate about it in anything other than cryptic speech fragments. It's like, are you TRYING to be annoying? Wouldn't a nice or helpful person try to explain a bit more, with normal sentences?

I also thought the Doctor and his irritating posh thief companion spent quite awhile just kind of slouching around after RUNNING from a DANGEROUS STORM that threatened to ENGULF THEM ALL.

But those were my only two complaints. I thought it was very moving. Not even Lee Evans' tired schtick could deflate the warm glow at the end.

No I have one other complaint: I thought the bug-people were pretty hard done by.

My favorite line was Lee Evans' explanation of how he had figured something out: "I set the device to register what it CAN'T DETECT! And then reversed the signal!" The Doctor: "Brilliant!"

I agree somewhat with Hand!

especially about the people who can see the future!

Only somewhat? :(

I agree very much with Hand

the only things I disagree with are

a) I'm not sure I thought the scientist was irritating
b) I didn't think the chick was irritating either

I also liked the line with the scientist that you liked, Hand

I should clarify that I thought the chick was irritating in exactly the way the scriptwriters intended - i.e. cocky and entitled. There is a strand of TV criticism - especially regarding Doctor Who - that takes in another level of irritation, that is, people will say a character is irritating because they don't behave the way a character like that Ought to Behave (in the Who universe, in that particular situation), as if the critic is a co-creator of the production and is making a point about directing or acting or scriptwriting technique. I do this too. But in this case I didn't mean to imply that she was irritating because she detracted from the story or the Who gestalt or anything like that - just that her character was the sort of person who would annoy the hell out of me in real life. Which was probably intentional. Though why Who would fall for someone like that is a mystery. If I were the Doctor, I would have left her behind on Earth simply because she's a stuck-up, over-clever pain in the ass rather than because I think so highly of her that I wouldn't want her to get killed in a galactic space battle. And frankly prison's what she deserves. In the story she comes from an aristocratic family that, more likely than not, acquired its power long ago via blood and the sword. After centuries of slow and uneven progress, the treasures amassed by these elites have, some of them, filtered into the public domain and are freely available for all in museums. And now she wants to take them back! Into the clink with her.

blood and the sword!

into the clink!

marvellous

slow and uneven progress!

but tho I agree about prison, Hand
I still don't really agree about the chick in general
cos
you are missing out
the fact that she is very attractive
which means she can't be that irritating

I think fatherhood has made you too responsible and sensible to appreciate these things.

Until that last sentence it was almost like pf and me had switched styles!

How do the anti-gravity clamp things allow the bus to, like, move forward/accelerate etc.?

This RUINED the whole thing for me.

Wizard.

watching 'Creature from the Pit' after bouncing around the seasons. The previous story was 'Time & the Rani'. CHRIST what a contrast. Obviously, the older story is at the same time both cheekier and funnier, whereas the newer one is really disappointing, and you seriously get a Douglas Adams vibe from the interplay of the barbarian thieves. It's like, christ, we all know they had no money, just get some decent writing and you'd be surprised what could happen.

Also, Mel was bleah as a companion.

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/2601/doctorcats.th.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8073734.stm

Matt Smith's first companion announced. I think I already love her.

Also I'm really pleased they went for an unknown actress.

I dunno about that, I was hoping for someone a bit older. I on't know if I fancy Doctor Who-lyoaks.

http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/9833/karengillan1ge0.jpg

She looks a bit like a young Donna. Maybe the timelord-y part of Donna causes her to regenerate?

she was the daughter in the Pompeii one? looks different

Was she? Hmm.

She wasn't the daughter, she had a bit part in it.

thank god it's not Michelle Ryan like the rumors were saying. The two of them certainly skew young though, don't they.

Fetuses in shoes.

To be fair, Billie Piper was only 22 or 23. Matt Smith's age does concern me too, but I'm placing my trust in Moffat for now...

I think I already love her.

― Tits Bramble (Matt DC), Friday, May 29, 2009 12:24 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

Let's see what she can do.

BTW, David Tennant's going to be in series 3 of Sarah Jane, I saw, in a proper Doctor/Sarah story (rather than as a vision or a flashback or something).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3vx_oQg448

The total absence of music in that clip made it even more freaky.

[i]http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/medialibrary/s0/images/episode-promo/s0_07.jpg[/]

The guy appears to be turning into an Ice Warrior about the mouth - or is that just wishful thinking?

Whoops"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/medialibrary/s0/images/episode-promo/s0_07.jpg

Is this Moffatt? Looks that way.

I thought they were all Rusty for the rest of the year?

Yes, no Moffatt until 2010.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/entertainment_enl_1248072857/img/1.jpg

Tweedy. I approve. Hopefully this will put an end to the 'OMG it's going to be like Hollyoaks' handwringing.