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Doctor Who Series 13: Goodbye, Mr. Chibs

Started by Norton Canes, August 10, 2021, 01:08:47 PM

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mothman

Lyta's fifth-season arc with Byron and the telepaths was originally to have been Ivanova's. And in fact being able to bring back Lyta when Talia was going to be written out was almost a reverse-trapdoor. Though it did mean some of Talia's subplots (her "gift" from Jason Ironheart, for example) went unresolved.

Mister Six

Quote from: Alberon on August 20, 2021, 06:30:04 PM
True, but B5 also lost actors through unplanned events. IIRC each character had a 'trapdoor' storyline to be used to remove the actor from the show in the best way possible.

Aye, but that's a big ensemble show - this has, tops, four main characters and a handful of recurring characters. And one of those characters is indispensable, even if they're highly changeable (and each new Doctor is seen as a "jumping on" point, so I can imagine not wanting to carry over plot arcs). Much less elasticity.

Not saying there can't be a five-year plan of sorts, but it'd have to be bloody flexible and changeable.

mothman

A "five year plan" would be a godsend after three iterations of the "three seasons over four or even five years plan."

Mr Trumpet

I'd be curious to see what he did with the show. His more recent TV project was Sense8 (with Sylvester McCoy and Freema Agyeman!). It was very silly but good fun. His comedic writing isn't great but he writes a good portentous monologue.

Also he's said he doesn't care about the money, he's just keen to do the show.

Haven't seen a second of Babylon 5 or Sense8, but good or bad, a first female Doctor written by Lana Wachowski and Stracynszki would have been fascinating, and probably involved characters with motivations who talked to each other.

GoblinAhFuckScary

just read somewhere that the reason why season 1 looks a bit guff in general is because they blew all their budget on End of the World's effects as well as licensing Tainted Love and Toxic for the episode which is pretty lol

They also had to spend £3 million on Auton Mickey's rubber mallet hands because Barrowman kept shoving them up his arse and breaking them.

Norton Canes

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on August 24, 2021, 01:20:36 PM
just read somewhere that the reason why season 1 looks a bit guff in general is because they blew all their budget on End of the World's effects as well as licensing Tainted Love and Toxic for the episode which is pretty lol

Ha. Good job they didn't end up using Light my Fire, they'd still be paying it off.

Pauline Walnuts

Quote from: Midas on August 19, 2021, 10:45:09 PM
Narcissistic, self-satisfied 'ooh-aren't-I-clever?' material can be unbearably tiresome, but I like meta-fiction when the writer dignifies their self-awareness by using it as the means to explore complex thematic ideas. Robert Shearman's Deadline would be my ideal special, for example. The horrors of isolationism! ;)

I quite liked Jim Mortimore's The Natural History of Fear Big Finish Release, that was kinda meta, sorta. and it only came out 17 years ago.

Gawd, I'm getting old. At least I didn't waste my life eh readers?

Malcy

Saw this earlier

QuoteTeasing news about the future of #DoctorWho, Piers Wenger, Director for Drama at the BBC said "As with any change of Doctor and showrunner, we'll be radical [...] Change is ahead." #EdTVFest

https://twitter.com/elliot_gonzalez/status/1430524695661760516



Midas

Wenger was the person who came up with the idea to describe Moffat's first series as being "like a fairy tale", which I remember Moffat described with audible irritation, in a retrospective podcast, as being "nonsense for interviews".

Deanjam

Well it did have clear fairy tale elements to it, so Moffat should stop being a grumpy scotch egg.

Replies From View

Yeah, that description fitted well.


I remember being annoyed when Clara had some nursery rhyme style voiceover for a couple of her stories.  "Oi you aren't the fairy tale companion, get out of here!" so I'm not surprised to learn Moffat never really saw it that way.

The Roofdog

I think it's a good description too, although it was surely the main inspiration behind that awful opening credits sequence that Matt was stuck with for the first couple of years (what was it with Moffat and opening sequences? 2 out of 3 of them were the worst the show's ever had)

Thomas

I liked Matt's cloudy first title sequence. Great logo, too. Controversially, now that it has receded into the Great Hall of Bygone Theme Tune Variations, I even liked the horn motif.

The Roofdog

Quote from: Thomas on August 26, 2021, 09:51:19 AM
I liked Matt's cloudy first title sequence. Great logo, too. Controversially, now that it has receded into the Great Hall of Bygone Theme Tune Variations, I even liked the horn motif.

I respectfully disagree three times.


Malcy

Didn't like the Smith titles or the noise of the lightning over the theme. And I'm sure it got louder at some point.

Blinder Data

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on August 26, 2021, 11:06:15 AM
I stand with Thomas.

Me too. Just had a look on YouTube and cloudy is the best of the revival. Loved the DW logo.

The space one that followed was pretty good but had awful effects on the font.

Capaldi's was terrible, cheesy American nonsense, ding dongs in the theme amid clockfaces - yuk.

Whittaker's has good effects but no sense of direction - I miss that feeling of flying through the vortex.

Cloudy is BEST

Norton Canes

Quote from: Malcy on August 25, 2021, 10:11:15 PM
Saw this earlier

https://twitter.com/elliot_gonzalez/status/1430524695661760516

The full quote, with context:

QuoteSpeaking at this year's festival, the BBC's Director of Drama, Piers Wenger was asked if he had a plan for the future of the series beyond 2022. He responded: "No, I don't. As with any change in Doctor and showrunner, it will be ambitious and radical. We will have to look at the TV landscape in which it will play. So, change is ahead!"

No plan is the plan! 

olliebean

On the subject of logos, come to think of it, I actually think the logo during Chibnall's tenure has been the best (or least bad, at any rate) of the new-Who logos. RTD's was too lens-flarey, and Moffat's had a horrible blocky looking font. They're all better than the one that Sylvester McCoy was saddled with, though.

frajer

Quote from: olliebean on August 26, 2021, 11:23:17 AM
On the subject of logos, come to think of it, I actually think the logo during Chibnall's tenure has been the best (or least bad, at any rate) of the new-Who logos. RTD's was too lens-flarey, and Moffat's had a horrible blocky looking font. They're all better than the one that Sylvester McCoy was saddled with, though.

Yeah I fully agree with that. It also looks nice in plain white on the classic Doctor covers for the Big Finish ranges.


Thomas

Quote from: Blinder Data on August 26, 2021, 11:12:43 AM
The space one that followed was pretty good but had awful effects on the font.

That was a nice idea - as was the reintroduction of the Doctor's face - but a lot of the elements and layers seemed very flat. Parts of it felt like a concept rather than a completed sequence. The CGI TARDIS at the end looked awful, too, with block yellow windows - and the doors opening onto the episode was a silly idea. I did ultimately quite like what they were going for, though, in that abstract space thing.

And, musically, I liked the moment at 0:15 when the last note of the ee-ooo dips, just as Matt's name disappears; a sort of ghostly, eerie effect. For some reason they dropped that little moment after The Snowmen.

Jerzy Bondov

That's by far my favourite one of the new series

Jack Shaftoe

Quote from: Thomas on August 26, 2021, 09:51:19 AM
I liked Matt's cloudy first title sequence. Great logo, too. Controversially, now that it has receded into the Great Hall of Bygone Theme Tune Variations, I even liked the horn motif.

When was the last time the theme tune included the high-pitched (up a key? I'm not a musicologist), 'ooo WEEEE OOOOOOO!' bit. That used to genuinely scare me as a young 'un in the 80's, something properly unhinged about it.

Cloud

Unpopular opinion: I've watched most of B5 and found it quite overrated.  It's alright, and has some memorable characters and moments, but the way people go on about it like it's a masterpiece.... nah.  In particular DW needs an air of excitement and B5 always seemed quite slow and sedate and just kind of "there" to me, it floats along like that Vorlon guy.  Still, it's been a long time since and I'm sure he can do a far better job than Chibs.

Best intros I thought were during the Matt Smith era but I liked the fan-made cogs one with Capaldi also.  The intro to the Whittaker era is shite, like everything else.  A callback to the original 1963 intro sure, and it probably seemed insanely cool in 1963 but the problem is it's not 1963 any more and the swirly swelly cloud/aurora type thing just doesn't cut it now, nor the dissonant racket that is the music.
That said, every other TV show nowadays uses the same style of intro as Star Trek Discovery, presumably made by the same studio, and I hope it doesn't go that route either.  Mostly those seem to be Netflix series though.

mothman

Quote from: Jack Shaftoe on August 26, 2021, 12:08:08 PM
When was the last time the theme tune included the high-pitched (up a key? I'm not a musicologist), 'ooo WEEEE OOOOOOO!' bit. That used to genuinely scare me as a young 'un in the 80's, something properly unhinged about it.
Do you mean the melodic bit that only came back (in the new era) for the 50th anniversary ep?

mothman

Quote from: Cloud on August 26, 2021, 12:18:55 PM
Unpopular opinion: I've watched most of B5 and found it quite overrated.  It's alright, and has some memorable characters and moments, but the way people go on about it like it's a masterpiece.... nah.  In particular DW needs an air of excitement and B5 always seemed quite slow and sedate and just kind of "there" to me, it floats along like that Vorlon guy.  Still, it's been a long time since and I'm sure he can do a far better job than Chibs.

B5 is my favourite show of all time - but I get that it's not for everyone. It may not have aged that well in some ways. But I can rewatch it and feel excitement as certain things happen, narrative things like the flash-forwards in "Babylon Squared" which were a positive fucking revelation in 1994, let me tell you! Before that, the first season had been middling at best. It was a bit of a communal guilty-pleasure watch for my circle of friends at university. We even referred to it as "Babylon Shite." But then we started getting things like the "Voice In The Wilderness" two-parter, and "Babylon Squared" and suddenly we got a sense of the scale and scope of what the show was planning to do. I was irrevocably hooked from then on.

Psybro

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on August 26, 2021, 12:05:53 PM
That's by far my favourite one of the new series

It's my favourite one right up until after Smith's face appears and then it lets itself down, but I loved the aforementioned eeriness left on the high notes and the bass being brought up in the mix.

Generally I was happy to have a return to the more synthetic sound as I thought when they started going crazy with the strings it was a poor man's version of the TV movie theme.

Jack Shaftoe

Quote from: mothman on August 26, 2021, 12:20:09 PM
Do you mean the melodic bit that only came back (in the new era) for the 50th anniversary ep?

I think so, yeah. It was that bit where if you were singing it in the playground, you'd realised you started too high because you'd get to that bit and just peter out in confusion. I shall check out the 50th anniversary ep then, I'm hankering after some nostalgia-induced dopamine.