To be honest, I didn't really expect that. But I wish!
Spoilers Wild Blue Yonder grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
My wife, who only really got into the show during his first run, then bailed during the Whittaker-Chibnall era, has started watching again. But she reckons she won’t be interested after he goes. I’m hoping that Ncuti is good enough during the Christmas special to change her mind.
And still has one episode some will claim to be filler.
I mean, sure, it’s filler.
I wonder why the word filler has such a negative connotation.
Stories don’t have an obligation to be 10 hours long.
So if you have a story that’s one or two hours long, you are telling me, that you rather not have a third hour in addition?
Then those same people complain, that a story is unnecessarily drawn out and padded with extra stuff if they do a 10 episode single story serial.
Just cannot win.
I wonder why the word filler has such a negative connotation.
Stories don’t have an obligation to be 10 hours long.
So if you have a story that’s one or two hours long, you are telling me, that you rather not have a third hour in addition?
Then those same people complain, that a story is unnecessarily drawn out and padded with extra stuff if they do a 10 episode single story serial.
Just cannot win.
You know, it occurred to me, I'm still not sure what the deal was with making "Wild Blue Yonder" (the song) the through-line of the episode. Was it with the edge of the universe being like the endless sky? Is it the TARDIS being blue, though it's a stretch to call it a "yonder." What about the debate over whether it was a fun, jaunty song or a martial one, that didn't seem to go anywhere, either. That last part, at least, feels like RTD's old habit of raising probing, uncomfortable questions, and then just dropping them without exploring or answering them.
It can be two things at once. It’s written on the hammer this season. Which is why I suspect the rumoured bifurcation regeneration is true.
I bloody love you Donna Noble!
Also, what a nice tribute for Bernard Cribbins at the end. It's so bittersweet seeing Wilf again, I just about held it together.
The tardis landing on Isaac Newton's head, and causing Newton to discover 'Mavity' had me in stitches!
Also, what a nice tribute for Bernard Cribbins at the end. It's so bittersweet seeing Wilf again, I just about held it together.
The tardis landing on Isaac Newton's head, and causing Newton to discover 'Mavity' had me in stitches!
Really fun and creepy AF! Catherine and David did beautifully as their Other Non-Selves, as well as Donna and the Doctor. Gave me "Midnight" vibes without (to me) being derivative. I loved that the extremely sloooooooow robot had a good reason for being so.
Newton added a variation to the meaning of gravity in his Principia - it already mean to tend towards the centre of the Earth in his day. Yes, the scene is funny, but it is also gross misinformation. Tut, tut.I bloody love you Donna Noble!
Also, what a nice tribute for Bernard Cribbins at the end. It's so bittersweet seeing Wilf again, I just about held it together.
The tardis landing on Isaac Newton's head, and causing Newton to discover 'Mavity' had me in stitches!
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I still maintain that this is another example and direct canonical tie-in with the CiN special "Destination Skaro". Which is ironic, since if "canon is rupturing"*, then we'd see more misinformation as debatably being played out by the Toymaker. Or hopefully rather, but we'll know next week what is and is not the case, including the big big rumors now claimed to be "official" that were revealed in my news feed so I'm not linking to those sci-fi "news and/or tabloid" sites.
Especially as it was the 4th Doctor who should have dropped out of the tree with the truckload of apples. Unless time got rewritten again (a concept that, if true, is another one that's starting to get overused for the sake of a throwaway joke that generic fanfiction could generally conjure up as the main series would never send itself up so - which I am not accusing the show as doing since the theory that Toymaker is meddling is a very plausible cause, though the YouTube channels otherwise griping about the story aren't making that connection so I'm probably wrong...)
Now Toymaker could be manipulating Donna as a pawn, but not the Doctor directly. That seems unlikely. Then again, with canon rupturing and all, any reason can be handwaved away complete with sonic screwdriver... Among many others, Cartmel was right in that its use should be diminished again... (or for actual and far more dramatic verbiage, read this instead.
)
I still maintain that this is another example and direct canonical tie-in with the CiN special "Destination Skaro". Which is ironic, since if "canon is rupturing"*, then we'd see more misinformation as debatably being played out by the Toymaker. Or hopefully rather, but we'll know next week what is and is not the case, including the big big rumors now claimed to be "official" that were revealed in my news feed so I'm not linking to those sci-fi "news and/or tabloid" sites.
Especially as it was the 4th Doctor who should have dropped out of the tree with the truckload of apples. Unless time got rewritten again (a concept that, if true, is another one that's starting to get overused for the sake of a throwaway joke that generic fanfiction could generally conjure up as the main series would never send itself up so - which I am not accusing the show as doing since the theory that Toymaker is meddling is a very plausible cause, though the YouTube channels otherwise griping about the story aren't making that connection so I'm probably wrong...)
Now Toymaker could be manipulating Donna as a pawn, but not the Doctor directly. That seems unlikely. Then again, with canon rupturing and all, any reason can be handwaved away complete with sonic screwdriver... Among many others, Cartmel was right in that its use should be diminished again... (or for actual and far more dramatic verbiage, read this instead.
)* and from a special whose episodes have typically been deemed "noncanonical", which is part of the fun and/or possible point to what's going on to whatever extent...
Maybe it's a portmanteau of "mass" and "gravity," reflecting it's a universal force of anything that has mass, and not just attraction to the Earth.
See, my reaction in the moment was, "That's a very stupid joke," but now we've talked about it enough that I've automatically come up with a rationalization. The system works!
What the joke did well was show that the Doctor is aware of big and small changes to history.
He was surprised for a little moment but then seems to accept and roll with it for better or worse.
He was surprised for a little moment but then seems to accept and roll with it for better or worse.
Maybe it's a portmanteau of "mass" and "gravity," reflecting it's a universal force of anything that has mass, and not just attraction to the Earth.
See, my reaction in the moment was, "That's a very stupid joke," but now we've talked about it enough that I've automatically come up with a rationalization. The system works!
(In short, I really love that explanation and just wanted to do more than the usual "like" one-up
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(Ditto! Also, it took me a couple re-looks, but the body language/kneejerk reaction/otherDescriptiveVernacular is there... )
It's by definition [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/filler], when it implies lower quality, which it generally does:
13. (television, music) material of lower cost or quality that is used to fill a certain television time slot or physical medium, such as a music album
That's how it was used way back in the 20th century. I understand today that the kids use it to mean something else, entirely unclear.
And sometimes (not often, definitely not always) something filler could turn out to be your favourite track/episode.
This isn't a bottle episode in any sense that term is used.
Also baffled by the idea that this was intended to be filler... nobody reseting a franchise and giving about £10 million an episode goes "well the second one is filler" - especially RTD who would find this remark insulting.
