Post by Paul McDermott on Sept 7, 2015 9:11:55 GMT
So umm, I hear it's back soon. I trust those of us who like it have caught the trailers?
If not, go here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02wns22
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02zfwz9
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031lh9r
This also will give a taste of what's ahead:
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/fd3d5d2b-bb11-4e24-862e-7ce282413e1c
The costuming this year seems to have knocked things up a notch, there’s what looks to me to be a 60s influence but this time it’s in glorious HD. Like Capaldi’s Pat pants. Like Coleman’s top. There’s also a nice symmetry in patterns between the pair of them, one has checks, the other does in a slightly different way. Ditto spots. Very cool!
The underwater base - is it tying in to the alleged release of TUM? Please, not the return of Zaroff! Or the fishy folk!! (Wherever I did go. ) Mind you, if I was to give any team the benefit of the doubt that they’d manage to pull it off in a way that wouldn’t have me behind the wall behind the sofa behind the house behind ours, it’d be this one…
Liking the look of the principles in the trailers. The Doctor seems more vigorous, vibrant, like he’s warmed up and not as dry and brittle as last time out. It’s makeup and lighting, but it’s also a creative focus I’m sure. And though we’ll likely see a swathe of different looks over the coming eps, I think the notion that this is going to be prime Who is not in any doubt.
The current model has come through the slow burn of last year, warmed up like an old tube set and is ready to throw himself and the viewers into remarkable and surprising adventures. Bumping the start of the season to late September is savvy I think. Colder, darker weather. Less of a gap between end of 9 and the Christmas special. More time to prepare this year’s helping. I don’t think we’ll be disappointed by the results.
Going out of the gate with Missy is just pitch perfect. They don’t feel they have to hold back the cards we know they’ve got, they play them expecting we’ll still be surprised by the way it’s done. We know she’s back, she was a major asset last run, and to open in a strong way will show a confident and capable team at work providing what they do best: engrossing and captivating viewing for all ages with thriving evergreen living proof - witnessed and loved the world over, and in growing numbers - of one of the very best things the Beeb has ever come up with.
And I agree with Moffat, only the Beeb could have backed this marvellous and mad concept, and despite some very tricky turns at its earliest stages, turn it into the current magical necessity that transcends and transfixes generations. Those who would harm the Beeb would harm all that it makes, for everyone who benefits, the world over. It’s a strange thing that some would reward deserved national pride and global success with schemes of sabotage. Were Bob Holmes with us today, I can’t help but think The Sunmakers might get a newly reworked version in Series 10!
What are my hopes and musings for the new batch of eps? See below, and please follow up with your own!
I’m glad to see Jemma back as the Brig, but having her on a bike would be very heaven. Surely she’s not forgotten how, after several series of Bramwell?
Osgood returns, but I’m thinking it’s a safe bet it’s the Zygon model. And that’s no reason she can’t be as nice as Osgood was, even if it takes a little while to get her there. I can see distinct possibilities in a shapeshifting companion, as you could now get opportunities never really available before. (Sorry Kamelion!) Can you imagine guest spots with companions of the week, who could be literally anyone? Old friends from decades past. Contemporary celebs doing their Batman ’66 cameo. Literally, anybody. Maybe even Doctors! The promise of Frobisher from the DWM strip, minus the monomorphia. And why not let the Doctor not be the one to change all the time? Mix it up a bit. Keep us guessing. Change doesn’t have to be bad or sad, sometimes it can be funny. A Zygon companion could offer that in spades. Of course there’ll need to be a bit of blarney re organic crystallography but heck, if she’s living aboard the TARDIS, I think this is not really a problem. I’d rather good stories than nitpicking over minutia, anyway.
The Doctor in shades is a good look. He’s old enough (like Capaldi) to carry off an aged rocker. Wonder what this model Doctor’s musical tastes are? They ought to get the new boy to cut a novelty single for Christmas, a cover of Who Is The Doctor, by him off The Navy Lark. If only there was a fan who was a record producer out there somewhere, to help things along…
The trailer for ep 1 is full of promise and mystery. The facially irregular chap, could he be this era’s first peek at a Muto? If they are on Skaro - maybe so. Will they be called Thals, though? Been a long time since we’ve heard that word uttered. Maybe we’ll get another nod to the 60s strip and have one of them called Yarvelling? That city seems very much of the same design language, as was the big auditorium in Asylum Of The Daleks a few years back.
Who’s the little bloke in the field of eyed hands digging themselves out of the dirt? My punt is that this folds back into Listen, and that he’s the Doctor, as a Time Tot, post barn, after running off from seeing the Untempered Schism. Might be Idris in The Doctor’s Wife was referring to him stealing her “the first time”, not the second we saw in The Name Of the Doctor. Maybe he gets lost, and he gets helped back home, after the TARDIS is damaged in ways that have it eventually relegated to the scrap heap. The actress from Game Of Thrones, I wonder who she is? Maybe she’s the TARDIS when it was new, decanted after the young Doctor breaks the thing in his running off from his troubles back home. In that Smith ep, we saw it remembers past and future altogether so she’ll know who our current Doctor is.
The surreal imagery of the eyed hands is very nice. It also totally brings to mind del Toro’s masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth, which features a story of a child in a complex, moving story. So I am wondering at the parallels with what Moffat has established in Listen, and suspect we’re going to see consolidation and extension from it. Missy mentions the Doctor’s will - but my guess is this was written when he was a scared kid, after he ran away from home and got marooned somewhere really bad without any chance of a way home. Getting her clutches on him as a lad - so perfectly apt given her evil nanny persona - may be just why she’s got this link with Clara. The latter is always there to save him, and somehow, she’s going to use Clara to lead her to when the Doctor is most vulnerable, before things (in her mind, probably) went awry - before they stopped being friends. I think there’s going to be small scale and affecting stuff along with the galactic evil in the exploration and resolution of this year’s dance between them.
I’d not want to see too much of it, as it devalues what’s so lovely about it, but Capaldi’s Doctor when he’s on his own and not being watched to me is one of the real treats of his era. His happy kooky but clumsy dance when he thinks he’s got the TARDIS off the train tracks. The rage and pained anguish of still being denied his home, finding Gallifrey is still as lost as the moment Missy gave him those false coordinates. I look forward to exploring more of him, slowly and slightly, at unexpected intervals, over the next batch. He’s not the known quantity of some recent versions, and I think that it’s a strength that will remain, even though he’s become a bit more relaxed and centred now. I agree with 11’s summation of his previous self, that he had vanity issues. School Reunion, the Doctor goes undercover in a school as a physics teacher. Jump ahead to Capaldi in The Caretaker, and he’s getting busy with a broom and bucket!
If there’s any justice, the Boneless will come back this year. I can’t think of a more perfect recurring menace for the 12th Doctor, they have it in them to easily be this era’s Angels, and then some. So many possible ways to play with maths, and make intriguing and alarming visuals, with a threat who very probably can’t even be reasoned with. Better than the Borg before they got the threat let out of their tyres, the Boneless aren’t interested in anything we can offer, save our dimension. They don’t have to play by our rules or the Doctor’s, which is why a more edgy, surprising incarnation is just right to tackle this implacable but intellectual threat. Smith’s version seems to tell kids it’s okay to be your own style, even if it’s out of step with everyone else. Capaldi’s seems to say that’s true for being brainy and socially off-kilter, too. (Even, horrors, being older!) The math and science phobia has been banished from the console design along with the techno-babyspeak. Less apologies, more purposeful iconoclasm. Yep, I grew to like Matt’s version but I think Capaldi is my New Series Doctor. I hope he stays happy in the part for a good long while yet!
Two parters! Actual cliffhangers, more the rule than the exception, again. Can’t say fairer than that!
One thing I would like to see, as it’s long overdue, is a cameo by Stephen Hawking. He’s done Trek and Groening’s cartoons. Sir Patrick Moore and Richard Dawkins have had a look in, it’s time for another famed British ambassador for science to get a look in! And no, Eddie Redmayne isn’t good enough! If Ken Campbell could spend time with SH talking about the fascinating and funny aspects of cosmic science in Reality On The Rocks, surely we can have a few moments of him in Doctor Who, preferably in a good natured clash with the more acerbic Capaldi model! Maybe he can drive over his foot or something!
Another, though I feel it’s probably more remote despite what I’d expect is considerable support in various circles, is to have Uncle Terrance in for one last performance. Have him do a mini ep or something, anything. Give him help, kippers, whatever. So much of what the show is now is built on what he did, and so many of us learned to read and love writing because of his novelisations, back in those dim days of antiquity when VHS was still coming soon!
What do the rest of you think? Looking forward to things? Alarmed by what you’ve seen in the trailers? Hoping for a crossover in The Force Unleashed?
If not, go here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02wns22
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02zfwz9
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031lh9r
This also will give a taste of what's ahead:
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/fd3d5d2b-bb11-4e24-862e-7ce282413e1c
The costuming this year seems to have knocked things up a notch, there’s what looks to me to be a 60s influence but this time it’s in glorious HD. Like Capaldi’s Pat pants. Like Coleman’s top. There’s also a nice symmetry in patterns between the pair of them, one has checks, the other does in a slightly different way. Ditto spots. Very cool!
The underwater base - is it tying in to the alleged release of TUM? Please, not the return of Zaroff! Or the fishy folk!! (Wherever I did go. ) Mind you, if I was to give any team the benefit of the doubt that they’d manage to pull it off in a way that wouldn’t have me behind the wall behind the sofa behind the house behind ours, it’d be this one…
Liking the look of the principles in the trailers. The Doctor seems more vigorous, vibrant, like he’s warmed up and not as dry and brittle as last time out. It’s makeup and lighting, but it’s also a creative focus I’m sure. And though we’ll likely see a swathe of different looks over the coming eps, I think the notion that this is going to be prime Who is not in any doubt.
The current model has come through the slow burn of last year, warmed up like an old tube set and is ready to throw himself and the viewers into remarkable and surprising adventures. Bumping the start of the season to late September is savvy I think. Colder, darker weather. Less of a gap between end of 9 and the Christmas special. More time to prepare this year’s helping. I don’t think we’ll be disappointed by the results.
Going out of the gate with Missy is just pitch perfect. They don’t feel they have to hold back the cards we know they’ve got, they play them expecting we’ll still be surprised by the way it’s done. We know she’s back, she was a major asset last run, and to open in a strong way will show a confident and capable team at work providing what they do best: engrossing and captivating viewing for all ages with thriving evergreen living proof - witnessed and loved the world over, and in growing numbers - of one of the very best things the Beeb has ever come up with.
And I agree with Moffat, only the Beeb could have backed this marvellous and mad concept, and despite some very tricky turns at its earliest stages, turn it into the current magical necessity that transcends and transfixes generations. Those who would harm the Beeb would harm all that it makes, for everyone who benefits, the world over. It’s a strange thing that some would reward deserved national pride and global success with schemes of sabotage. Were Bob Holmes with us today, I can’t help but think The Sunmakers might get a newly reworked version in Series 10!
What are my hopes and musings for the new batch of eps? See below, and please follow up with your own!
I’m glad to see Jemma back as the Brig, but having her on a bike would be very heaven. Surely she’s not forgotten how, after several series of Bramwell?
Osgood returns, but I’m thinking it’s a safe bet it’s the Zygon model. And that’s no reason she can’t be as nice as Osgood was, even if it takes a little while to get her there. I can see distinct possibilities in a shapeshifting companion, as you could now get opportunities never really available before. (Sorry Kamelion!) Can you imagine guest spots with companions of the week, who could be literally anyone? Old friends from decades past. Contemporary celebs doing their Batman ’66 cameo. Literally, anybody. Maybe even Doctors! The promise of Frobisher from the DWM strip, minus the monomorphia. And why not let the Doctor not be the one to change all the time? Mix it up a bit. Keep us guessing. Change doesn’t have to be bad or sad, sometimes it can be funny. A Zygon companion could offer that in spades. Of course there’ll need to be a bit of blarney re organic crystallography but heck, if she’s living aboard the TARDIS, I think this is not really a problem. I’d rather good stories than nitpicking over minutia, anyway.
The Doctor in shades is a good look. He’s old enough (like Capaldi) to carry off an aged rocker. Wonder what this model Doctor’s musical tastes are? They ought to get the new boy to cut a novelty single for Christmas, a cover of Who Is The Doctor, by him off The Navy Lark. If only there was a fan who was a record producer out there somewhere, to help things along…
The trailer for ep 1 is full of promise and mystery. The facially irregular chap, could he be this era’s first peek at a Muto? If they are on Skaro - maybe so. Will they be called Thals, though? Been a long time since we’ve heard that word uttered. Maybe we’ll get another nod to the 60s strip and have one of them called Yarvelling? That city seems very much of the same design language, as was the big auditorium in Asylum Of The Daleks a few years back.
Who’s the little bloke in the field of eyed hands digging themselves out of the dirt? My punt is that this folds back into Listen, and that he’s the Doctor, as a Time Tot, post barn, after running off from seeing the Untempered Schism. Might be Idris in The Doctor’s Wife was referring to him stealing her “the first time”, not the second we saw in The Name Of the Doctor. Maybe he gets lost, and he gets helped back home, after the TARDIS is damaged in ways that have it eventually relegated to the scrap heap. The actress from Game Of Thrones, I wonder who she is? Maybe she’s the TARDIS when it was new, decanted after the young Doctor breaks the thing in his running off from his troubles back home. In that Smith ep, we saw it remembers past and future altogether so she’ll know who our current Doctor is.
The surreal imagery of the eyed hands is very nice. It also totally brings to mind del Toro’s masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth, which features a story of a child in a complex, moving story. So I am wondering at the parallels with what Moffat has established in Listen, and suspect we’re going to see consolidation and extension from it. Missy mentions the Doctor’s will - but my guess is this was written when he was a scared kid, after he ran away from home and got marooned somewhere really bad without any chance of a way home. Getting her clutches on him as a lad - so perfectly apt given her evil nanny persona - may be just why she’s got this link with Clara. The latter is always there to save him, and somehow, she’s going to use Clara to lead her to when the Doctor is most vulnerable, before things (in her mind, probably) went awry - before they stopped being friends. I think there’s going to be small scale and affecting stuff along with the galactic evil in the exploration and resolution of this year’s dance between them.
I’d not want to see too much of it, as it devalues what’s so lovely about it, but Capaldi’s Doctor when he’s on his own and not being watched to me is one of the real treats of his era. His happy kooky but clumsy dance when he thinks he’s got the TARDIS off the train tracks. The rage and pained anguish of still being denied his home, finding Gallifrey is still as lost as the moment Missy gave him those false coordinates. I look forward to exploring more of him, slowly and slightly, at unexpected intervals, over the next batch. He’s not the known quantity of some recent versions, and I think that it’s a strength that will remain, even though he’s become a bit more relaxed and centred now. I agree with 11’s summation of his previous self, that he had vanity issues. School Reunion, the Doctor goes undercover in a school as a physics teacher. Jump ahead to Capaldi in The Caretaker, and he’s getting busy with a broom and bucket!
If there’s any justice, the Boneless will come back this year. I can’t think of a more perfect recurring menace for the 12th Doctor, they have it in them to easily be this era’s Angels, and then some. So many possible ways to play with maths, and make intriguing and alarming visuals, with a threat who very probably can’t even be reasoned with. Better than the Borg before they got the threat let out of their tyres, the Boneless aren’t interested in anything we can offer, save our dimension. They don’t have to play by our rules or the Doctor’s, which is why a more edgy, surprising incarnation is just right to tackle this implacable but intellectual threat. Smith’s version seems to tell kids it’s okay to be your own style, even if it’s out of step with everyone else. Capaldi’s seems to say that’s true for being brainy and socially off-kilter, too. (Even, horrors, being older!) The math and science phobia has been banished from the console design along with the techno-babyspeak. Less apologies, more purposeful iconoclasm. Yep, I grew to like Matt’s version but I think Capaldi is my New Series Doctor. I hope he stays happy in the part for a good long while yet!
Two parters! Actual cliffhangers, more the rule than the exception, again. Can’t say fairer than that!
One thing I would like to see, as it’s long overdue, is a cameo by Stephen Hawking. He’s done Trek and Groening’s cartoons. Sir Patrick Moore and Richard Dawkins have had a look in, it’s time for another famed British ambassador for science to get a look in! And no, Eddie Redmayne isn’t good enough! If Ken Campbell could spend time with SH talking about the fascinating and funny aspects of cosmic science in Reality On The Rocks, surely we can have a few moments of him in Doctor Who, preferably in a good natured clash with the more acerbic Capaldi model! Maybe he can drive over his foot or something!
Another, though I feel it’s probably more remote despite what I’d expect is considerable support in various circles, is to have Uncle Terrance in for one last performance. Have him do a mini ep or something, anything. Give him help, kippers, whatever. So much of what the show is now is built on what he did, and so many of us learned to read and love writing because of his novelisations, back in those dim days of antiquity when VHS was still coming soon!
What do the rest of you think? Looking forward to things? Alarmed by what you’ve seen in the trailers? Hoping for a crossover in The Force Unleashed?