Doctor Who - Series 8 (Part 3)

[Attila]

Maybe it's all been  a dream since way back when that fellow droned, 'No. Not the mind probe' in The Five Doctors.

It would explain not only J Coleman's wooden acting but also the pauses and beats in her delivery.

[Replies From View]

Or since just before Hartnell broke the fourth wall to wish everyone a happy Christmas.

[Cerys]

Or the Doctor is still looking into the Untempered Schism as a child.

[biggytitbo]

Maybe this is a dream and we're not even real ourselves?

[Thomas]

I had a dream about Mädchen Amick last night, and then I woke up to a disappointing reality, so I know I'm awake.

[Attila]

Sidney Newman is still trying to decide how to get a science fiction programme off the ground since John Wyndham refuses to write a script for the BBC [really! He was approached in 1961 or 62 and asked to help create a show; I've seen the document/memo discussion in the BBC Written Archive]. We're all part of a Triffid dream.

[Cerys]

I had a dream about Mädchen Amick last night, and then I woke up to a disappointing reality, so I know I'm awake.

Maybe the dream about Mädchen Amick is the reality and sleeping Thomas just has a really boring subconscious.

[Replies From View]

Maybe this is a dream and we're not even real ourselves?

I like to imagine that you and I are dreaming when we're on CaB, and that in the waking world the only difference is that our bummer/bummee roles are reversed.

[Thomas]

Maybe the dream about Mädchen Amick is the reality and sleeping Thomas just has a really boring subconscious.

The emotions did feel very real.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Sidney Newman is still trying to decide how to get a science fiction programme off the ground since John Wyndham refuses to write a script for the BBC [really! He was approached in 1961 or 62 and asked to help create a show; I've seen the document/memo discussion in the BBC Written Archive]. We're all part of a Triffid dream.

Really? Dammit, that could have been great. :(

[Attila]

Really? Dammit, that could have been great. :(

I'd have to dig it out (I'm pretty sure it was one of the documents I scanned), but a number of current science-fiction authors were set down on a list of possible candidates to write for an anthology-type show. Another was Poul Anderson, and some helpful bod at the BBC had crossed out 'Poul' and replaced it with 'Paul' -- and in response someone else had crossed out 'Paul' and pencilled in POUL in the margin. Bless.

[mothman]

Literally every piece of fiction involving dreams has had a "It was all a dream... or was it?!" coda appended, that's all the tangerine was. That and Moffett saying "Why, yes, I HAVE seen Inception." And helping to reassure the kiddies that Father Christmas really DOES exist, as someone else has already said.

I've been, for some reason, reading the 'Doctor Who and the TARDIS' page on Facebook, which is full of those horrible Tumblr attempts to reduce everything in the show to the most simple, unsubtle romantic bumwash. Like this:



I am angry.

That would explain how 9Doc had time to visit the South Seas, stop people embarking on the Titanic, etc., at least, if his first appearance in "Rose" was shortly after his regeneration... Not that I really care, mind.

[BritishHobo]

It would, but I hate the idea that Nine spent years fucking moping around just thinking 'Oh, I wish that one girl I met for a couple of hours that one time was with me, it's broken my heart that she said no.' People are obsessed with making the Doctor and Rose boyfriend and girlfriend in a really fucking shit, twee way.

[Jack Shaftoe]

I'd have to dig it out (I'm pretty sure it was one of the documents I scanned), but a number of current science-fiction authors were set down on a list of possible candidates to write for an anthology-type show. Another was Poul Anderson, and some helpful bod at the BBC had crossed out 'Poul' and replaced it with 'Paul' -- and in response someone else had crossed out 'Paul' and pencilled in POUL in the margin. Bless.

Hee, that's brilliant. I do remember reading something about the BBC having a bit of a meet after the success of Star Trek (the series) in the Sixties and wondering if they could get some British writers to come up with series ideas, then realising it would take so long to train UK SF writers up in script structure and the like, it wouldn't really work, so they'd have to go another way, and came up with Doctor Who.

Some or all of the above might be completely wrong.

[biggytitbo]

Hee, that's brilliant. I do remember reading something about the BBC having a bit of a meet after the success of Star Trek (the series) in the Sixties and wondering if they could get some British writers to come up with series ideas, then realising it would take so long to train UK SF writers up in script structure and the like, it wouldn't really work, so they'd have to go another way, and came up with Doctor Who.

Some or all of the above might be completely wrong.

They must have had a tardis to see Star Trek before Doctor Who was thought up, since Who predates it by 3 years! (a year if you include the pilot).

[biggytitbo]

The emotions did feel very real.

I hope it was Madchen Amick from that scene in 'Dream Lover'. Next time she pops up will you ask her to come and be sexy in my dream please?

[Replies From View]

I hope it was Madchen Amick from that scene in 'Dream Lover'. Next time she pops up will you ask her to come and be sexy in my dream please?

All you have to do to make a lady sexy in your dreams is to repeat over and over in a Doctor Who thread that they are a good actor even when they are shit.

Not that I've assumed Madchen Amick from 'Dream Lover' is shit; her very existence in life is in fact news to me.

[gloria]

Classic Who - the Hinchcliffe stuff especially - often nicked ideas from well known literature and films and gave them a sci-fi/fantasy twist.  So you get King Kong becoming the Giant Robot, Frankenstein's monster becoming Morbius, the Doctor becoming Sherlock Holmes and fighting a sci-fi version of Fu Manchu in Weng Chiang.  The Master was created to be the Doctor's Moriarty, etc.

Nu-Who is different in that rather than giving other works a sci-fi twist, it simply nicks other people's science fiction stories and ideas outright. So the ending of Doomsday is lifted from The Amber Spyglass, River Song is the Time-Traveller's Wife, Into the Dalek is The Fantastic Voyage and now in the Dream Crabs we have so patent a rip-off of the Facehuggers from Alien (not just in general concept but in design too) that there's a self-conscious lampshade-hanging joke in the script about their amazing similarity.

[BritishHobo]

Don't forget those well-hidden homages 'A Christmas Carol' and 'The Doctor, The Witch and The Wardrobe'.

[The Roofdog]

That's only a notable difference if you're saying King Kong, Frankenstein and Fu Manchu definitely aren't sci-fi or fantasy though, and I'm not sure how true that is.

You could equally have picked Agatha Christie & C.S. Lewis on the Nu-Who side, and Forbidden Planet, Dune, Isaac Asimov & Fantastic Voyage (Invisible Enemy?) on the Hinchcliffe side (and that's before we even get to the Bidmead era).

[Blumf]

the Dream Crabs we have so patent a rip-off of the Facehuggers from Alien (not just in general concept but in design too) that there's a self-conscious lampshade-hanging joke in the script about their amazing similarity.

Don't forget this:


(which also appeared in Blade Runner, where this cap was from[nb]More robot references? Even though that's presumably done with now[/nb])

[Replies From View]

DR 5

[biggytitbo]

Don't forget the homage to Deep Breath in Robot of Sherwood too.

[Natnar]

And don't forget the homage to Blink in almost every Moffat penned script!

[The Region Legion]

SomethingAwful posted a great article detailing future Doctor Who episodes recently.

http://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/drwho-episode-ideas/2/

Itsy Bitsy: In present day (2013) London, a man is taking a poo in a public stall. He's reading a newspaper with the headline "London Mayor inaugurates new sewer system." The man is startled by a rubber spider with a goofy face. A couple of snickering hoodlums is dangling it over the top of the door. He shoos them away by shouting "Oi, you kids!"

A few minutes later, the man is disturbed by a creepy scraping sound. He think it's the kids again and goes "Oi!" But it turns out to be a giant spider that rips the stall door off its hinges and devours the man! The rest of the episode is The Doctor and Clara bumbling around while the death toll mounts, along with numerous cuts to children creepily chanting the nursery rhyme "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

In the last five minutes of the episode, The Doctor realizes that a creature that big could only get around without being seen by using London's newly expanded sewer system. He flushes the spider out of the sewers by opening a big valve, quipping "down came the rain and washed the spider out." Once in sunlight, the spider burns to cinders for no apparent reason except that it's peripherally related to the nursery line "out came the sun." Six people are dead.

[BritishHobo]

The Daleks realize that even The Doctor can't be everywhere/when at once, so they concoct a scheme whereby they invade Earth at all points in time; past, present, and future, simultaneously. There is a quick montage of scenes where all The Doctor's friends across history, the lizard lady, Van Gogh, various queens, Churchill, and Donna's family look up at the sky as Dalek warships arrive overhead to blot out the sun. Things look bad for a while, but The Doctor is eventually able to find the paradox engine that is keeping the invasion stable and reverse it, thereby turning the very existence of Daleks into a paradox, causing them to be destroyed throughout all time and space, explicitly including ones hidden in pocket dimensions, space paintings, refractory crystals, "null zones," prehistoric retroviruses and "anywhere else they might be hiding that hasn't been named."

The Doctor says "It's over, the Daleks have finally been destroyed and they're never coming back!" The closing credits stinger is a scanned .PDF of a notarized document signed by the president of the BBC stating that the Daleks have really been permanently destroyed.

Clara learns of a planet where imaginary things can become real and wants to go. The Doctor refuses, stating "there's nothing more powerful than your imagination... or as dangerous." But Clara reallllly wants to go and finally wears The Doctor down. When they arrive on the planet, things go well at first until Clara accidentally imagines some Daleks. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, as the imaginary manifestations are supposed to have a temporary existence and cannot leave the planet, but the Daleks trick Clara into imagining a machine that can make temporarily real imaginary things permanently real. The Daleks escape the planet to rebuild their empire. The Doctor is very cross about this.

Superb.

[gloria]

That's only a notable difference if you're saying King Kong, Frankenstein and Fu Manchu definitely aren't sci-fi or fantasy though, and I'm not sure how true that is.

You could equally have picked Agatha Christie & C.S. Lewis on the Nu-Who side, and Forbidden Planet, Dune, Isaac Asimov & Fantastic Voyage (Invisible Enemy?) on the Hinchcliffe side (and that's before we even get to the Bidmead era).

Hmmm.  You kinda sorta make a point.  Let's just say that Who of all eras has no shame about appropriating the ideas of other writers.

[Replies From View]

"Doctor Who thrives on good original ideas.  They don't have to be our own good original ideas though you see, you know."

Terrance Dicks talking about the Master being an unashamed rip-off of Moriarty.

[The Roofdog]

It's like that time I invented the Waldorf salad.

[biggytitbo]

"Doctor Who thrives on good original ideas.  They don't have to be our own good original ideas though you see, you know."

Terrance Dicks talking about the Master being an unashamed rip-off of Moriarty.