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The big CaB Doctor Who (2005) rewatch thread - starts May 30, 2022

Started by Mister Six, May 24, 2022, 03:30:33 AM

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daf


What's on TV (30 April 2005)TV Times (30 April 2005) 
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Radio Times (30 April 2005)


daf


Daily Star on Sunday (1 May 2005)  |  Daily Express (2 May 2005)  |  The Times (2 May 2005)

olliebean

Quote• The STARDIS, Banto Zame and Sally-Anne's mock TARDIS, is shaped like a portaloo.


BritishHobo

How wrong can one review be? To not like it is fine, but to misunderstand such a basic point and say "it wasn't scary at the end!" is bizarre.

Mister Six

Quote from: BritishHobo on July 08, 2022, 11:14:55 AMHow wrong can one review be? To not like it is fine, but to misunderstand such a basic point and say "it wasn't scary at the end!" is bizarre.

Was going to joke about Daily Star hacks being dense, but it's probably more likely that they were assuming their audience is full of thick yobbos who'd want the Dalek blasted to bits and couldn't understand the point of the episode (even though it's bloody obvious and plastered all over the surface of the story in every line of dialogue).


Mister Six


Psybro

I love the reference to Celebrity Wrestling (ITV's salvo to the revival no less!), which roots this firmly in a seven week period in 2005.

BritishHobo

A two-hander this week in terms of shooting locations, as is probably obvious from the small scale of the episode. The bulk of it was filmed in the Millennium Stadium (now Principality), which, as always, largely inaccessible. Every fucker I know was in there last week for the Rammstein gig, but not old muggins here, old Mr 'don't check the filming locations until you've watched the episode'. Either way though, I'm presuming the majority of the rooms used - all the bunker-esque corridors and stairways - are off-limits unless you pay for a full tour, which I'm not doing, because I already did one fifteen years ago, SORRY.



Are these the stairs up which the Dalek famously flew for the first time in history? I doubt it. But they could be! (When I take this offline as a tour there will be a tip jar at the end)

The alien museum though, was filmed at Cardiff's National Museum. There's currently an exhibition of images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards, so I bought a ticket and went along. Looking for accessible filming locations is forcing me to engage with cultural opportunities I would otherwise have not known about, and I'm glad I did here as there were some stunning images on display.







Tom Felton who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films often visits the Harry Potter Studio Tour to revisit the sets and meet fans. I wonder if Bruno Langley ever comes here.

"And this is where I leered at Billie Piper, all sweaty in a vest. Different times back then, of course. In 2005 you could get away with that sort of thing and only get in proper trouble for serious sexual assault, allegations of which I maintain are very likely to be false. Moving swiftly along, this is where John Barrowman and Noel Clarke dipped their cocks in Chris Eccleston's Ribena."

BritishHobo

It's pretty astonishing that all three of the men RTD had as TARDIS companions ended up accused of dodgy behaviour. Only lovely Cribbins bucked the trend.

Mister Six

If Cribbins turns out to be a wrongcock I'll never recover.

"Right," said Fred, "Both of us together
One each end and steady as we go."

Not looking good for Cribbins.

daf


The Times (16 May 2005)
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The Times (17 May 2005)  |  The Times (19 May 2005)

daf


Radio Times (14 May 2005)  |  The Stage (9 September 2005)

Mister Six

Gove's piece complaining about "Censors" worrying about violence in schools is odd,* because he absolutely radiates "child who was bullied to hell at school". But I suppose he was one of those kids that internalised that shit and glommed onto the big lads to cackle with them as they bullied others, in the hope they wouldn't turn their gaze and fists on him.


* Well, not that odd since being an empathy-lacking cunt that exults in mundane cruelty and conflict is on brand for a Tory, but still.

BritishHobo

He really is a pointless little spod.

I don't disagree with some of the opinions in some of the letters - namely that the episode's theme and importance is showing the Doctor stop himself succumbing to hate - but the framing of it all is such tabloid hysteria. Calling them censors and saying it prevents freedom of thought or whatever. Just have to buy the DVD yourself instead of your kid buying it, right? But I appreciate my perspective may be bringing too much baggage from the culture war stuff that has ensued in the years following these articles.

Mister Six

The gammon view on the BBFC is intriguing. They're against CENSERING ARE FREEDOM OF SPEECH when it's ruling on a Doctor Who episode being too violent, but presumably they'd be up in arms if the BBFC decided to loosen up and allow some lady nipples to go on view in a PG movie.

BritishHobo

Oh good, it's not just me. I also hate the very 'PC gone mad!' fearmongering of 'you can't even hurt a dalek anymore!' I can picture a Littlejohn article about how it's offensive to say daleks are evil, you have to say they're "morally challenged" and sign them up for mental health counselling AT THE TAXPAYER'S EXPENSE

H-O-W-L



Couldn't be a Tory without throwing a bit in about how it's OK to glass Brown People™️ could he? Couldn't fucking help himself.

Mister Six

After reading some of the letters up there, I'm going to go back a bit on my earlier remarks about the script being too obvious - since this series was most kids' introduction to The Doctor, I suppose it makes sense to be quite explicit that him torturing the Dalek is a bad thing and so on. It's just a little disappointing looking back on what seemed like a near-perfect episode at the time, realising that it wasn't nearly as complex and thoughtful as some later yarns.

mjwilson

Quote from: BritishHobo on July 07, 2022, 01:21:12 PMI wonder if the set up would still have been the same, so the Toclafane being the main enemies of Gallifrey in the Time War. I'm not hugely knowledgeable on classic Who, and haven't seen any past Tom Baker - did the idea of the Daleks being enemies of the Time Lords exist much in classic Who, or was this the first episode to establish that? Interesting to think of the Toclafane being the driving force in the Doctor's Time War trauma.

The nearest thing in the classic series is probably Genesis where the Time Lords send the Doctor to wipe out the Daleks at the moment of their creation. This has been retrospectively claimed by Russell as the first shot of the Time War.

Psybro

Davros explicitly wants to wipe out the Time Lords in Remembrance of the Daleks too.  I think a theme is established that after he finds out about the galactic politic from the Doctor in Genesis, he has a bee in his bonnet from that point on about there being time-active races on their high horses out there.

H-O-W-L

Ironically the Time Twats probably ensured their genocide by sending the Dongdiddly back to call Davros a turd.

Alberon

The Long Game

Set in the year 200,000 on a space station this episode does come across as cheap, even though it probably wasn't. One set being redressed again and again to represent different floors isn't a bad idea, but even that didn't really have the budget it needed.

Bruno Langley again seems wooden against Eccleston and Piper. Apparently this was originally intended to be more of a Doctor and Rose light episode and feature Adam more, but the focus was shifted back in the broadcast episode. It's not all Langley's fault as the character is, fairly understandably, not written as deeply as Rose and the Doctor. Reading up on the episode on a Doctor Who wiki it seems it was originally intended to have Adam looking to cure his father with future technology rather than just acquiring it out of self-interest which would have put a more intriguing spin on events.

Simon Pegg has fun with the role of the Editor getting a couple of good lines. One being something along the lines of 'what happens to non-entities - they get promoted'. The Jagrafess itself is quite well done in CGI.

Talking of CGI the head door thing actually works quite well. There's a moment when Adam is prodding around the hole with his finger and he pushes back one of the doors. It's little touches like that sells it so well.

The whole news satire is very thin and weak, though.

While Adam has cocked things up badly the Doctor is a bit of an arse again when dumping him back in his own time. I've already got a human, the Doctor tells him, don't need you.

Adam's mum not screaming and instead just going 'tilt' is good as is the dog around the phone for some reason. As is usual in early Nu-Who there's a fair amount of death and corpses around. This episode is better than the Slitheen ones, obviously, but still not up with the good ones. The writing doesn't fly like it has before. It's okay. Ultimately forgettable and probably would be completely if RTD wasn't pulling an Ark in Space/Revenge of the Cybermen style revisit at the end of the season.

5/10

BritishHobo

This is an odd episode, and possibly the first that I think really suffers from the new 45-minute format. I like the premise - again, it's got a real bleak anger to it. The team go to the future and everything is shit. The idea behind it all is great, timeless social commentary, the ultra-rich using their influence on news media to control people into being so insular that they don't notice they're being robbed. As with all great social commentary, it feels incisively relevant to today's problems (as it's easy to forget we're still dealing with the same shit we were in 2005), particularly the stuff about closing off borders to extraterrestrials.

Where I think it falls down is it's a very tell-don't-show episode, and I think that's because of its runtime. Where in old Who, or in a two-parter, you could take your time establishing the world, here they really have to rush through it. So instead of seeing how shit everything is, the Doctor largely just tells us. Apart from the few glimpses on TV screens, all we really see is a chaotic food stall and then the 'news room'. I think the setting and the satire would have worked a lot better with more time to see the state of things.

I read on Wikipedia that it was originally planned as being from Adam's perspective, essentially his version of Rose/The End of the World. It would have been called 'Adam', or 'The Companion Who Failed'. This makes a lot of sense, as you can see a lot of parallels - the viewing platform where he can look down on a future Earth, being given the phone to call home, etc. I assume it would have been like the Buffy episode 'The Zeppo', and you would occasionally see the Doctor and Rose in the background yelling about the dramatic stuff they're battling off-screen. A proto-Blink/Love and Monsters, in a way. As it is, Adam's storyline feels like an odd side-thing, and it makes you think "why did you introduce this character?"  I like the Doctor's schoolyard "He's your boyfriend" line, but it emphasises what a weird relationship it is. I don't feel Rose has shown any interest in him. I don't know why they've brought him along. And when he makes his moral fuck-up, the sidelined nature of it and the fact that it's only his first time in the TARDIS makes the Doctor's response seem a bit disproportionate. The bit at the end where the Doctor implies he'll get dissected, and then Rose just stares at him before going in the TARDIS, feels proper odd. As with Mickey, it adds to a strange air of exclusivity which doesn't really suit the show. Again, this probably would have worked better in the original version of the episode, as the Doctor and Rose would feel more like strangers.

There is good stuff. As I say, I love the anger to the satire - humanity is stunted by the intolerance pushed from above. Simon Pegg is having an absolute ball, and Tamsin Grieg is sweetly sinister (which again makes me feel a little bad for Adam). I like the design of the Jagrafess, with its funny mouth bit, and there's some nice body horror weirdness with the brain holes. But overall I think it's a clash of too many ideas. The furious satire and the failing companion premises are both very big concepts, and cramming them both into one 45-minute episode sadly means both get watered down too much.

4/10

Alberon

I forgot to mention Tamsin Grieg, she was subtly quite odd in a fun way and she does steal the whole scene (not that there is much competition).

When I rewatched, I realised that one of Pegg's zombies is now rather famous.


Thomas

kronkburgers

Deviating from the canonical rewatch, I saw a double-bill of the newly restored Cushing films over the weekend. Dr. Who and the Daleks is a right slog, but Daleks' Invasion is superior by a few rels. The only things to really enjoy about these films are the design, behind-the-scenes, and meta elements - the lovely Daleks, the presence of Bernard Cribbins. Visually pleasing curios.

I love Moffat's way of fitting them into the series proper, as featured in his novelization of the 50th (after failing to secure the rights for the televised episode). They show up as a couple of banned films in the Black Archive, based on the Doctors' adventures. Moffat's novel also amusingly explains that Cushing's friendship with the Doctor is how he keeps showing up in films long after his death.

Psybro

Quote from: BritishHobo on July 11, 2022, 09:41:48 AMAnd when he makes his moral fuck-up, the sidelined nature of it and the fact that it's only his first time in the TARDIS makes the Doctor's response seem a bit disproportionate. The bit at the end where the Doctor implies he'll get dissected, and then Rose just stares at him before going in the TARDIS, feels proper odd.

It reminded me of nothing less (and this is a huge leap in cultural reference points) than the Powerpuff Girls episode where they beat the shit out of the clown at the end after he's already been redeemed.

The weird dissonance of that seemed to be either a mean-spirited gag or surprisingly incisive social commentary in an unexpected setting, whereas here it seems half the former and half rewriting issues.