Doctor Who Series 8 |OT| We've fucking time-travelled, yes?

Status
Not open for further replies.
No doubt. Considering Capaldi himself is somewhat of a throwback, I wonder if/when he gets a redesigned sonic, it's going to be more like the sonics from the classic doctors.
 
So I saw an article earlier about 4 little known Doctor Who Spinoffs, and I thought #2 was very interesting, especially in light of recent conversation about the Daleks and the Terry Nation estate: (I trimmed a little from the article and highlighted what I thought were the most interesting parts.)

2. Wartime and the Reeltime films

This is where it starts to get really obscure. See, the BBC had made it apparent by the early 90’s that they weren’t very interested in Doctor Who anymore... That’s when a crazy plan started to hatch–if BBC wouldn’t give up the rights to the Doctor to allow other parties to continue the show, then there might be other ways to get fans their fix. With the way that British copyright law works, the rights to entities created by TV writers for individual episodes of a show still belong to the writer. The most famous case of this is the Daleks, the rights to whom are currently shared between the BBC and the estate of their late creator, Terry Nation. When Daleks hit it big, Nation tried to take the rights with him to create a spinoff with American production companies, forcing the show to stop using the enemies for a while. Reeltime films, a group of direct-to-video distributors, decided to take this tactic as a means of creating indirect Doctor Who spinoffs. The first of these is called Wartime, which focuses on recurring character John Benton of UNIT out on a solo mission.

Reeltime went on to produce several more of these, including a film about the Sontarans and one called Downtime that features both the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith. The latter film also acted as the first appearance of Kate Stewart, the Brigadier’s daughter who first showed up in Doctor Who proper in series 7’s “The Power of Three.”
 
Probably won't, at least not for this season. Ten kept Nine's.

But I'm sure merchandising will demand that at some point Twelve's breaks and he has to make a new one, so it can be turned into a toy and sold :)

Looking at shops they made so bloody many after the 50th of 11's screwdriver that they've got to keep it for a while just to get rid of the stock!
 
Looking at shops they made so bloody many after the 50th of 11's screwdriver that they've got to keep it for a while just to get rid of the stock!

I doubt it'll change for toy reasons since they've already begun to reprint all the boxes for the 11 screwdrivers with Capaldi on.

Tomorrow's episode is apparently being censored


http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s7/d...eading-scene-after-journalist-executions.html

I understand why they're doing it, but I dislike the concept of censorship in general. Hope the BluRay contains the uncensored version. Considering it's pre-watershed, I doubt it'd be graphic enough to cause offence. Outlets like the Daily Mail would just rip into the BBC if they had kept it, though.

Having seen the episode, I have no bloody idea how this is going to work. It's sort of a pivotal moment.
 
Radio Times' Robot of Sherwood poster:

56362.jpeg

I really hope they release some kind of 'compilation' of all of these at the end of the series. They would look damn good framed.
 
Just watched Destiny of the Daleks the other day.

They called the Daleks "robots" about fifty million times.

How do you get that wrong? Matter of fact, how did Terry fucking Nation get that wrong? He wrote the thing.
 
Gonna go ahead and say it's The Rani.

Think about it, her return has been on-going joke for years so no one would actually expect it. The Missy=Master thing is a total red herring baiting us into thinking the wrong Time Lord is making a return to the show. She has a TARDIS so she could create the heaven landscape and save people just like the Doctor did with Journey, plus she has an established interest in preventing the return of the Time Lords.

Yeah, I know this has been an ongoing joke for a long time but so was McGann, you know? And now he got his return in the 50th, maybe it's time for the Rani too. I'd love to see another time lord or two come back before Gallifrey's inevitable return in the next few years.

Haha, just kidding it'll be the Papal Mainframe with a cameo from River Song because that's exactly how Moffat would end the series.

Oh boy... I hate how plausible these kind of theories sound... I hope it's nothing like that.

*EDIT* And oh man! Those posters are great.
 
Just watched Destiny of the Daleks the other day.

They called the Daleks "robots" about fifty million times.

How do you get that wrong? Matter of fact, how did Terry fucking Nation get that wrong? He wrote the thing.
That's the episode where the Daleks became "total machine creatures" with no more organic components, or some such thing. They really were meant to be robots in that episode to fit with the stalemate theme with the Movellans.

But like a lot of Doctor Who continuity, that particular bit didn't stick and was never heard from again.
 
Just watched Destiny of the Daleks the other day.

They called the Daleks "robots" about fifty million times.

How do you get that wrong? Matter of fact, how did Terry fucking Nation get that wrong? He wrote the thing.

It's misleading since the story is about the fact the Daleks and Movellans (who are robots) were in stalemate due to their computers being so logical they couldn't outthink each other. Somehow that became The Daleks are now robots, hence their need to find Davros. Eh, they're beaten by a virus in the next story so ignore.

It's a bit silly but it is a fairly typical Terry Nation script. He also changed the Dalek progenitors from Dals to Kaleds as well. Genesis of the Daleks has the whiff of having had a massive rewrite by Robert Holmes since no other Terry Nation script before or after ever had the same depth to it. Destiny's script editor was Douglas Adams, while a genius writer, wasn't acknowledged as being a great script editor.

That said, having the Movellans back would be great. Unfortunately, that's more Terry nation estate to deal with.
 
Oh boy... I hate how plausible these kind of theories sound... I hope it's nothing like that.

I get the impression, based on absolutely nothing at all, that Moffat is done with his Smith era plot threads (River, the Silence/Church, cracks in the universe, etc.) and starting fresh with Capaldi.
 
Yeah I think one of the special features on the DVD mentions how Douglas Adams added a line about dalek mutants to try and explain it.

Edit: in reply to Htown

I hate it when posts appear out of thin air :(
 
I get the impression, based on absolutely nothing at all, that Moffat is done with his Smith era plot threads (River, the Silence/Church, cracks in the universe, etc.) and starting fresh with Capaldi.

Yeah, I do too, Capaldi's very much a departure from the three previous doctors, as is his new relationship with Clara (I flipping love the constant barbs - Clara : "I'm not an old woman", Doctor : "That's a girl, keep your spirits up!") and the two episodes we've seen so far seem to be trying to cover all new ground. Except those darn Paternosters... man, they need a break. I liked the head UNIT lady in "Power of 3", can UNIT come back?
 
It's misleading since the story is about the fact the Daleks and Movellans (who are robots) were in stalemate due to their computers being so logical they couldn't outthink each other. Somehow that became The Daleks are now robots, hence their need to find Davros. Eh, they're beaten by a virus in the next story so ignore.

It's a bit silly but it is a fairly typical Terry Nation script. He also changed the Dalek progenitors from Dals to Kaleds as well. Genesis of the Daleks has the whiff of having had a massive rewrite by Robert Holmes since no other Terry Nation script before or after ever had the same depth to it. Destiny's script editor was Douglas Adams, while a genius writer, wasn't acknowledged as being a great script editor.

That said, having the Movellans back would be great. Unfortunately, that's more Terry nation estate to deal with.

Completely Unrelated Question Time :

I've seen it mentioned that the Daleks used to be a race called Kaleds before, which is kind of hilarious... but when I saw a Town Called Mercy and the alien doctor's race was the "Kahler" I immediately thought of the Kaleds. First off, they sound the same, ergo, they are the same, right? :P

Secondly, they're both super advanced civilizations, right? With smarty brains and technology that's centuries beyond human understanding? And they both invested a lot of energy into creating the "perfect soldier" by merging man and machine in ran effort to end a horrendous war. I've never seen the Dalek origin story but that's the way I understand it, at least. Any chance they're related, or that Kahler Jex is at least an homage to the Kaleds or something?

Have the Kahler ever been mentioned in any previous stories?
 
Completely Unrelated Question Time :

I've seen it mentioned that the Daleks used to be a race called Kaleds before, which is kind of hilarious... but when I saw a Town Called Mercy and the alien doctor's race was the "Kahler" I immediately thought of the Kaleds. First off, they sound the same, ergo, they are the same, right? :P

Secondly, they're both super advanced civilizations, right? With smarty brains and technology that's centuries beyond human understanding? And they both invested a lot of energy into creating the "perfect soldier" by merging man and machine in ran effort to end a horrendous war. I've never seen the Dalek origin story but that's the way I understand it, at least. Any chance they're related, or that Kahler Jex is at least an homage to the Kaleds or something?

Have the Kahler ever been mentioned in any previous stories?

Pretty sure that's just a coincidence. It's a long series and you're bound to have names that sound vaguely alike.

In any case, judging from "Genesis of the Daleks" at least, they didn't really have cyborg soldiers, but rather everyone was mutating from the nuclear radiation from the fighting, and Davros decided that this mutation was the natural endpoint of the Kaleds, so he deliberately created mutants and put them into special armor, resulting in Daleks.
 
Doctor Who really needs more 2-episode stories.

Agreed. I felt that part of why the 7th series seemed a bit weak was because they were very adamant about the one story, one episode thing. Sometimes a story just needs a two-parter to allow it to breathe and not feel so rushed all the time.
 
Agreed. I felt that part of why the 7th series seemed a bit weak was because they were very adamant about the one story, one episode thing. Sometimes a story just needs a two-parter to allow it to breathe and not feel so rushed all the time.

That's not really Moffat's style though. If you give him two episodes to tell a story, he just takes it as an opportunity to cram even more in, rather than give what's already there more breathing room.
 
So I saw an article earlier about 4 little known Doctor Who Spinoffs, and I thought #2 was very interesting, especially in light of recent conversation about the Daleks and the Terry Nation estate: (I trimmed a little from the article and highlighted what I thought were the most interesting parts.)

Big Finish redid the dalek stories for their Lost Stories series, synopsis below :-

" The Daleks: The Destroyers
adapted by Nicholas Briggs and John Dorney

In 1967, the Daleks were written out of Doctor Who as their creator, Terry Nation, prepared to launch them in their own TV series. Production was halted at the eleventh hour, but the script has survived – now making its debut on audio.

When the crew of Explorer Base One is attacked by the Daleks, Space Security Agents Sara Kingdom, Mark Seven and Jason Corey are sent to investigate. They discover a plan that threatens the future of the entire galaxy…"
 
That said, having the Movellans back would be great. Unfortunately, that's more Terry nation estate to deal with.

The Movellans have about the dumbest weakness I've ever seen a species have in a Who story.

Robots who are supposed to be highly advanced as a warfaring race, but you can defeat them by grabbing a cylinder off a holster at their hip and playing keep away for ten seconds.

Fucking maybe put it inside your clothes? Hell, you're robots, why not stick it into some input slot inside your chest cavity or something?

edit: Also I think I liked the old Romana better, but I'll give the new one some time.
 
The Movellans have about the dumbest weakness I've ever seen a species have in a Who story.

Robots who are supposed to be highly advanced as a warfaring race, but you can defeat them by grabbing a cylinder off a holster at their hip and playing keep away for ten seconds.

It's pretty typical of most of Terry Nation's scripts. Destiny of the Daleks shows just how much uncredited rewriting Robert Holmes did on Genesis of the Daleks. You realise this most when, apart from Genesis, almost every great Dalek story was written by someone other than Terry Nation

edit: Also I think I liked the old Romana better, but I'll give the new one some time.

Keep watching. Lalla Ward really owns the role.
 
Romana 2 is so great. There's nothing really wrong with the first one, but 2's chemistry with Tom Baker is so great after a while - probably because they started dating in real life as well. It gets a bit sad towards the end of Romana 2's time on the show though - probably partly because Tom Baker was losing interest in playing the character (which he didn't really hide in his performance) and because Baker and Ward ended their relationship as well. There are a couple of scenes in those last stories where you can cut the tension between Romana and the Doctor with a knife.

Still, the first part of her run on the show is great. The first image that pops into my mind when I think of the fourth Doctor is him running hand in hand with Romana through the streets of Paris with that great music in City of Death. That's also, as far as I can remember, the first Doctor Who story I ever saw (after I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in my early teens I had to find every single thing Douglas Addams had ever written). It's my favorite Tom Baker-story, although I suspect that Shada, if they had ever finished filming it, might have topped it. There's a reason they remade that story so many times in novelisations, audio's and animation, not to mention Douglas Addams reusing most of the plot in his Dirk Gently novels.
 
I don't think City of Death took for me until the third viewing or so. I have no idea why.

But I'll always prefer Romana I to Romana II. She just oozes class.
 

With all the speculation about Gatiss taking over from Moffat as showrunner going around, it might be interesting to note that he said in that AMA that he didn't want to keep renewing old properties in the future, but that he wants to focus on creating new stuff going forward. Not exactly confirmation of anything, but interesting that that's his frame of mind right now.
 
With all the speculation about Gatiss taking over from Moffat as showrunner going around, it might be interesting to note that he said in that AMA that he didn't want to keep renewing old properties in the future, but that he wants to focus on creating new stuff going forward. Not exactly confirmation of anything, but interesting that that's his frame of mind right now.

At the same time, though, there's one job he'd probably never turn down, and it's Who. When he was asked around the 50th if he wanted to be next, he laughed and said "you know I can't answer that."
 
Leela isn't even the best Leela in science-fiction, though I enjoy her when she's in historicals.

Romana II is fucking amazing, though she is basically a female Doctor. Romana 1 is very much her own thing.
 
phew, didnt like last weeks episode at all.
so much cringeworthy stuff in it, the scene with the tear was 100% parody material.
while capaldy met my high expecations last week I felt he was a bit forced on the badassery today and failed to deliever. and in many scenes I couldnt shake the feeling he wondered what the hell he was doing in this nonsense.for the most part, this felt like a typical, bad RTD episode.

but then again, I really dont like daleks.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom