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Old Doctor Who - Part 4

Started by Ambient Sheep, June 04, 2020, 11:02:35 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

JamesTC

Season 17 out in December. Episodic version of Shada amongst a huge amount of new features. Looks like it could be the best set yet.

Replies From View

Trailer for the release:  https://youtu.be/Fwv3-PGCw8o


Tom is looking worryingly thin.  Is he okay?

JamesTC

Quote from: Replies From View on October 07, 2021, 03:56:10 PM


Tom is looking worryingly thin.  Is he okay?

Remember reading from somebody involved with the range (around the time of Season 14's release) that he is more sprightly and energetic than he was a few years ago.

Norton Canes

Quote from: Replies From View on October 07, 2021, 03:56:10 PM
Trailer for the release: https://youtu.be/Fwv3-PGCw8o

Ha ha, worth watching for the hilariously inept Nightmare of Eden special effects 'upgrade'

Replies From View

Okay, good.  It's a striking contrast to the last time I saw him - I guess it was the
Spoiler alert
final scene of the completed Shada
[close]
or thereabouts.  People can undoubtedly lose weight for positive reasons, but being the age he is obviously raises some concerns that he might be ill.


purlieu

That's an uncharacteristically late announcement. Normally it gets announced five months beforehand. How are they going to fit in the requisite seven release date delays in this short time?

JamesTC

Galaxy 4 and The Evil of the Daleks were also announced fairly late on.

They won't want to delay this one. Every kid around the country will want The Horns of Nimon on Christmas Day.

Quote from: jamiefairlie on October 07, 2021, 05:16:11 PM
Lalla Ward....sigh.....

If it is any consolation, it is probably the last set she will be involved in. They recorded some interviews with her in advance (I think whilst they worked on Season 18) in anticipation of her leaving the country.

frajer

Quote from: purlieu on October 07, 2021, 05:21:53 PM
How are they going to fit in the requisite seven release date delays in this short time?

Heh yeah I just preordered and thought "there's no way that'll be arriving before Christmas."

pigamus


daf

#1180
Don't think she is, is she?

Was still up for recording for Big Finish - including a box set with Tom and Matthew Waterhouse!

JamesTC

Quote from: daf on October 07, 2021, 06:54:44 PM

Was still up for recording for Big Finish - including a box set with Tom and Matthew Waterhous!

Tom records separately. I think Jane Slavin stands in for whoever his companion is (which led to her playing his companion for a run).

daf

That's right - she usually teams up in the studio with John 'K9' Leeson, I think. She's in Hong Kong now, so maybe they're done. *

Fun Fact - Tom's next companion on audio will be played by
Spoiler alert
Nerys Hughes
[close]

- - - - - - - - - -
* (Though, during the thick of Covid everyone was recording from home, so that might not be an obstacle - if they want to do some more)

Jerzy Bondov

I think Jamie was sighing because she is extremely lovely

Catalogue Trousers

All the more amusing because she isn't...

jamiefairlie

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on October 07, 2021, 07:27:27 PM
I think Jamie was sighing because she is extremely lovely

How can anyone misinterpret as anything else. She's perfect.

pigamus

Quote from: Jerzy Bondov on October 07, 2021, 07:27:27 PM
I think Jamie was sighing because she is extremely lovely

But why did James say it would be a consolation that she's leaving the country?

purlieu


The Medusa Effect by Justin Richards

Hmm.
The first half of that was great. Benny is hired for an investigation. An experimental spacecraft that disappeared on its maiden voyage has mysteriously reappeared and is heading home. Benny does Event Horizon, maybe? When the team get there, a pile of dead bodies is found, and soon people are seeing ghosts of the original passengers. A spooky ghost ship story. As time goes on, Benny and a mysterious character called Stuart discover worrying similarities between the original passengers and the new team. Simultaneously events start to repeat themselves as the new team begin believe they are the original passengers. At this point I began to get worried, because, great and spooky as all this is, it's all happened before the halfway mark. And then it falls apart. Benny and Stuart are treated like stowaways and chased and attacked by everyone else for ages, then the rest all kill each other, then there's an "it was all an experiment to make a weapon" yawn reveal and they have to deal with a terrible pantomime villain who's trying to kill them to keep the secret safe. A side plot including a murderer who found his way onto the original voyage is narratively important, but utterly, utterly boring. Disappointingly, Richards's usual rich prose is largely absent in the second half, making it a really tedious runaround. My reading ground to a near halt, getting through a few pages a day at most. Major disappointment.

And with that, I pass the halfway mark with the Benny NAs.

Next time on Doctor Who... oh God it's another John Peel Dalek story. FML.

Quote from: purlieu on October 13, 2021, 08:31:18 PM

The Medusa Effect by Justin Richards

Hmm.
The first half of that was great. Benny is hired for an investigation. An experimental spacecraft that disappeared on its maiden voyage has mysteriously reappeared and is heading home. Benny does Event Horizon, maybe? When the team get there, a pile of dead bodies is found, and soon people are seeing ghosts of the original passengers. A spooky ghost ship story. As time goes on, Benny and a mysterious character called Stuart discover worrying similarities between the original passengers and the new team. Simultaneously events start to repeat themselves as the new team begin believe they are the original passengers. At this point I began to get worried, because, great and spooky as all this is, it's all happened before the halfway mark. And then it falls apart. Benny and Stuart are treated like stowaways and chased and attacked by everyone else for ages, then the rest all kill each other, then there's an "it was all an experiment to make a weapon" yawn reveal and they have to deal with a terrible pantomime villain who's trying to kill them to keep the secret safe. A side plot including a murderer who found his way onto the original voyage is narratively important, but utterly, utterly boring. Disappointingly, Richards's usual rich prose is largely absent in the second half, making it a really tedious runaround. My reading ground to a near halt, getting through a few pages a day at most. Major disappointment.

And with that, I pass the halfway mark with the Benny NAs.

Next time on Doctor Who... oh God it's another John Peel Dalek story. FML.

Pretty sure I read this one but I can't honestly remember a thing about it. The cover rings a vague bell, but the actual plot description rings none whatsoever. Sounds like it was Richards at his most workmanlike.

purlieu

Yeah, he usually manages a decent book, even something like Grave Matter which, according to rumour, was written in a few days to fill a gap, but once the main mystery was solved in this one it was just filling pages. It's a shame, because if the first two thirds were spread out over the whole thing with the same level of care given to the first half then it would be a fantastic story.

Well, the Barrowman cancellation didn't last very long. Barely an inconvenience!

https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/185577-itv/
https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/12/john-barrowmans-return-confirmed-after-dancing-on-ice-sack-15406189/

Has he got dirt on someone high up at ITV, how the fuck did he come back so quickly after getting "sacked"?

Alberon

He must never have been sacked to begin with. Might have just been asking for too much money to keep doing the regular show.

Norton Canes

Michael Ferguson, director of The War Machines, The Seeds of Death, The Ambassadors of Death and The Claws of Axos, as well as episodes of Colditz and The Sandbaggers (and scores of things besides) has died aged 84.



Replies From View

Quote from: Norton Canes on October 15, 2021, 12:44:34 PM
Michael Ferguson, director of The War Machines, The Seeds of Death, The Ambassadors of Death and The Claws of Axos, as well as episodes of Colditz and The Sandbaggers (and scores of things besides) has died aged 84.

BARROWMAN!!

*waves fist*

JamesTC

Such a great set of stories. Can't think of many directors that can lay claim to have helmed such a high quantity and quality of stories. The War Machines is low-key one of the most important stories in Doctor Who history. The WOTAN tower is the only landmark I was interested in seeing when I visited London a couple of years ago.

A shame he couldn't be there for The Direct Route featurette recorded last year for the Season 8 Blu-Ray. They asked him but he was unfortunately too unwell at the time.

purlieu


Legacy of the Daleks by John Peel

Imagine being the sort of person who could write only the second Dalek story in ten years, make it a sequel to both The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Frontier in Space and a prequel to The Deadly Assassin, finally have the Doctor come back to visit Susan and David thirty years after leaving them, make it the first post-Pertwee story to star Delgado's Master, set it on a post-Dalek Invasion Earth where humanity has reverted to a feudal society, replete with lords and knights ready for a civil war to see who can get mankind back to normality, introduce the concept of a Dalek machine that can turn living matter into material to make more Daleks, and have it as the first part of an arc of stories where the Doctor is searching for his companion, and still manage to make it mind-meltingly boring. It's just crap. No good characters, no tension, no humour, nothing. Just a tedious, pointless slog for the best part of 300 pages. I have no other words.

Next time on the New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield... thank God, anything but John Peel.

"Estro? ... oh ... oh, he hasn't?"

Reader - he did.

Catalogue Trousers

I didn't find it boring at all, I found it a pretty enjoyable pulp adventure yarn, but in honesty that's all that it is. I suspect that the main problem that people have with Peel's writing is that he's just such a continuity junkie. Almost as bad as Ian Levine in that regard. It is nevertheless a pity that a slightly more ambitious and idiosyncratic author didn't get that all-important approval from the Terry Nation estate at the time to write Dalek stories - as soon as he has Davros survive certain death yet again at the end of his previous book, you know that he's not going to be doing anything other than toeing the Nation/Hancock party line. I recall Lawrence Miles saying that he was once on the verge of writing a Dalek book for the BBC, only for that to fall through at the last moment. Things that could have been. Sigh.

Bad Ambassador

The only way it stands out is that my copy has a nice glossy cover.

purlieu

Quote from: A Hat Like That on October 21, 2021, 02:45:37 PM
"Estro? ... oh ... oh, he hasn't?"

Reader - he did.
I popped 'Estro' into Google Translate and it came up as 'boss'. 'Master' in Esperanto is, apparently, 'Mastro'. Which would be too obvious. So for this book, he's The Boss.