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Freema Talks About Surviving Dr. Who

I really liked Martha in Season 3, especially "Smith and Jones", the WWI two-parter, and the three-part finale, but I'll agree that her appearances in Season 4 were a bit lackluster. Of course, two-fifths of her episodes in that season were written by Helen Raynor...
 
And for that matter, she was wasted on Torchwood, where only in her first episode did she have a significant role.
 
Well... Helen Raynor is a better writer than Freema is an actress.

And not to get too far off topic but SM, that quote in your sig... Wow. If RTD actually meant that seriously, he's really got no clue.
 
Personally (and yeah, totally just my own personal opinion), I don't think DW is a great showcase of anybody's acting ability. I mean, it's meant to be sort of hammy and cheesy, isn't it?

I remember watching Billie in the first season of nuWho. There are times when she actually forgets to move while saying her lines, and then has to do a sort of little running-skipping thing to get to her mark for the next shot.

I don't think Tony-worthy performances are really the point of DW. It's always a bit school-play level, and meant to be, I thought.

Can't wait to see how Freema does in L&O though. (I'm really looking forward to that - it's got Harriet Walter!)
 
Personally (and yeah, totally just my own personal opinion), I don't think DW is a great showcase of anybody's acting ability. I mean, it's meant to be sort of hammy and cheesy, isn't it?

I remember watching Billie in the first season of nuWho. There are times when she actually forgets to move while saying her lines, and then has to do a sort of little running-skipping thing to get to her mark for the next shot.

I don't think Tony-worthy performances are really the point of DW. It's always a bit school-play level, and meant to be, I thought.

Can't wait to see how Freema does in L&O though. (I'm really looking forward to that - it's got Harriet Walter!)
Both David Tennent and Catherine Tate have showcased some fantastic acting talent, Billie's acting was way above what anyone expected, and I think you're mistaking an acting choice for an acting mistake with those skipping run things, if I'm think the same thing you're mentioning.
 
And not to get too far off topic but SM, that quote in your sig... Wow. If RTD actually meant that seriously, he's really got no clue.

Yeah, that's right. The man who revived Doctor Who from a decade-and-a-half death, cast some of the most brilliant actors in the whole of Great Britain, transformed a kitschy, ill-remembered children's series into one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed programs on British television, wrote episodes like "The End of the World," "Boom Town," "The Parting of the Ways," "The Christmas Invasion," "Army of Ghosts," "Doomsday," "The Runaway Bride," "Smith and Jones," "Gridlock," "Utopia," "The Sound of Drums," "Voyage of the Damned," "Midnight," "Turn Left," "The Stolen Earth," "Journey's End" -- to say nothing of such critically acclaimed prior works as Queer As Folk, The Second Coming, and Casanova -- winning such awards as the Siân Phillips Award for Outstanding Contribution to Network Television, the Dennis Potter Award for Outstanding Writing for Television, Best Dramatic Series (BAFTAs) and Pioneer Audience Award, a nomination for Best Writer in the BAFTA Television Craft Awards, an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University, and an appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire...

Yeah, the guy has no clue. No clue at all how to write good television.

:rolleyes:
 
Are you taking this personally? Did I insult your hero?

An ill-remembered children's show? Wrong.

Some of the most brilliant actors in England? Wrong again.

The episodes you cite, most are complete crap. Fanwank and vast armies of Daleks in three out of four series finales. Sounds like a guy that has little left up his sleeve and keeps regurgitating the same swill.

His previous shows? Again, nothing special and a lot of swill.

Critically acclaimed? As you may or may not be aware, critics are simply people who, rightly or wrongly, get paid for their opinions. And that's all they are. Opinions.

Nominations and awards? Big deal. Plenty of people win awards. And quite often, undeservedly so.

OBE? Again, big deal. Plenty of people get OBEs, MBEs, etc etc. Again, means nothing.

If the man thinks a hero needs a gun, device or magic wand to be a hero, then obviously he lacks the intelligence to write a character that doesn't need to rely on such devices.

And if you think he's so bloody fantastic, well, you are entitled to your opinion. Thanks for providing me with a good laugh though.
 
Davies's comment was in specific reference to "Partners in Crime", when the Doctor and Donna need to escape from Miss Foster and her two machine-gun-wielding goons. And seriously, having an unarmed character escape two people wielding machine guns... it's a difficult problem, and one anyone would be hard-pressed to solve on a consistent basis. Which Davies does.
 
Are you taking this personally? Did I insult your hero?

Less so that than that I found your comment irrational, motivated by a desire to engage in anonymous mean-spiritedness towards an artist, and just plain full of nonsense. (I'm not particularly interested in any of Davies's other shows, so I'm not sure how he could qualify as a "hero" to me.)

An ill-remembered children's show? Wrong.

Oh, yes, I'm sure that the original series is remembered with complete earnestness and respect by critics and audiences alike for its sophisticated storytelling, subtle acting, and remarkable production values, right up there next to such groundbreaking television programs as The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, All in the Family, Hill Street Blues, and M*A*S*H*.

Some of the most brilliant actors in England? Wrong again.

Christopher Eccleston? David Tennant? Penelope Wilton? Simon Pegg? Anthony Stewart Head? Sophia Myles? Jessica Hynes? John Simm? Catherine Tate? Bernard Cribbins? Alex Kingston?

Sir Derek Jacobi?

I mean, c'mon, if nothing else, you've got to give the man Sir Derek Jacobi. The man holds two knighthoods for his acting career.

The episodes you cite, most are complete crap.

No, most are at least fun and enjoyable, and some, like "Midnight" or "Utopia," are downright brilliant.

Critically acclaimed? As you may or may not be aware, critics are simply people who, rightly or wrongly, get paid for their opinions. And that's all they are. Opinions.

Yes, but unlike, say, random people such as you and I on the Internet, they know what they're talking about and their opinions matter.

Nominations and awards? Big deal. Plenty of people win awards. And quite often, undeservedly so.

OBE? Again, big deal. Plenty of people get OBEs, MBEs, etc etc. Again, means nothing.

Uh-huh. Sure.

If the man thinks a hero needs a gun, device or magic wand to be a hero, then obviously he lacks the intelligence to write a character that doesn't need to rely on such devices.

He said no such thing; you're completely misreading what Davies said. What he DID say was that it is difficult to find a way, without relying overly much on the sonic screwdriver, to consistently write a character that overcomes adversaries who wield powerful weapons such as a gun without wielding guns himself. Davies engaged in self-criticism, in essence -- acknowledging that he relies too much on the sonic screwdriver but not knowing how to avoid that without using other, deadlier weapons to overcome the power of deadly weapons.

It would be completely fair to say that Davies relies too much upon the sonic screwdriver. I think he does as well, and so does Davies. But Davies raises a valid point when he says that it is very difficult to present plausible scenarios in which the Doctor can overcome gun-wielding weapons whilst not wielding a gun himself if he does not use the sonic screwdriver. To take that and twist it into, "Davies thinks that a needs a gun to be a hero!" is irrational -- either a deliberate misrepresentation of Davies's words or a fundamental failure to comprehend them, and one apparently motivated by a desire to engage in an anonymous, mean-spirited ad hominem attack upon the man instead of a reasoned, reasonable, critique of his work.
 
Davies's comment was in specific reference to "Partners in Crime", when the Doctor and Donna need to escape from Miss Foster and her two machine-gun-wielding goons. And seriously, having an unarmed character escape two people wielding machine guns... it's a difficult problem, and one anyone would be hard-pressed to solve on a consistent basis. Which Davies does.
Of course, he's also the one getting them into those problems. :p
 
for what its worth I think its an odd comment as well, it suggests that the Doctor could get out of any sitution if only he had a gun, there are of course situations where a gun might be helpful, but the sonic screwdriver is used to get out of lots of other situations.
 
Davies's comment was in specific reference to "Partners in Crime", when the Doctor and Donna need to escape from Miss Foster and her two machine-gun-wielding goons. And seriously, having an unarmed character escape two people wielding machine guns... it's a difficult problem, and one anyone would be hard-pressed to solve on a consistent basis. Which Davies does.
Of course, he's also the one getting them into those problems. :p

I think that comes with the show's conceit of being an action/adventure show that often returns to the present day.
 
Yeah. If the Doctor didn't get into problems you would have some pretty short episodes, I think.

The sonic screwdriver takes a lot of flack, but the plot structure problem (if you want to call it that) it represents is much larger and much more fundamental to the decades-old Doctor Who format than the screwdriver itself.
it suggests that the Doctor could get out of any sitution if only he had a gun
No, it suggests that in this specific situation (and others like it) the Doctor uses the screwdriver where another hero might use a gun.
 
Yeah. If the Doctor didn't get into problems you would have some pretty short episodes, I think.

The sonic screwdriver takes a lot of flack, but the plot structure problem (if you want to call it that) it represents is much larger and much more fundamental to the decades-old Doctor Who format than the screwdriver itself.
it suggests that the Doctor could get out of any sitution if only he had a gun
No, it suggests that in this specific situation (and others like it) the Doctor uses the screwdriver where another hero might use a gun.

To be fair, Davies could choose to completely up-end the dramatic conceits of the series -- instead of doing an action/adventure program where the Doctor is invariably threatened by evil aliens and/or evil robots in whatever time frame he finds himself, he could, for instance, do the equivalent of a BBC costume drama-slash-political drama, with the Doctor trapped in, say, 1860s London for an entire semester as he tries to, say, repair the TARDIS and keep another time traveller -- maybe a Human? -- from messing with the timeline -- in short, present the Doctor with a dilemma and an adversary that doesn't directly use violence and against whom both violence in the form of a gun and techno-McGuffinism in the form of a sonic screwdriver, would be useless.

But that would be such a fundamental break from the dramatic structure of the series that it would probably severely disorient the audience.
 
Yeah. If the Doctor didn't get into problems you would have some pretty short episodes, I think.
I was trying to refer specifically to problems where he's faced with machine guns, though. And I don't think that's a necessary conceit of something set in the present day. Didn't he get through the entire first season without seeing them in the present day?

Even in the future, he managed against the security officers with guns (in Utah and on the Gamestation) with wits, without the sonic, and only once with force (the "Bad Wolf" prison break).
 
Yeah. If the Doctor didn't get into problems you would have some pretty short episodes, I think.
I was trying to refer specifically to problems where he's faced with machine guns, though. And I don't think that's a necessary conceit of something set in the present day. Didn't he get through the entire first season without seeing them in the present day?

He had an entire platoon of British Army soldiers pointing their guns at him in 10 Downing Street in "World War Three." And, amusingly enough, his solution to the entire Slitheen mess was to blow Downing Street up with a missile.

Even in the future, he managed against the security officers with guns (in Utah

He didn't manage against them. He was captured by them until they let him go so he could help them try to defeat the Dalek -- and then failed to do that. It took Rose to save the day in that episode.

I suspect a gun would be very useful in that circumstance. You could just shoot the guy. ;)

What if it turned out that, say, William Gladstone was actually a former Time Agent? Or Benjamin Disraeli? Or both? ;)

The specifics aren't the issue -- the point is that Davies could abandon the action/adventure format that so often prompts conflict from antagonists to manifest in the form of violence or potential violence and thereby circumvent the need for the Doctor to either use violence himself or to use the sonic screwdriver. But, of course, that leaves the question of whether or not the audience would accept such a radical change in format.
 
Nice to see a few posts about this overnight. :D

Sci, if you're going to make an "RTD is god" style post, I'm going to make one that says he's shit. If you want to talk about middle ground and say some of his work is good, some isn't, and you do essentially say that in your breakdown (I'm still amazed you took the time to break up the quotes) then that's better. Thank god you didn't list Billie or Freema in your list of the great actors. ;)

I hope you do realise that a lot of people in Britain want to be in DW. In that case RTD isn't so much brilliant in his casting as he's not a fool for saying no.

As for "anonymous mean-spirited", neither. The sonic screwdriver is overused. Period. You can get yourself out of situations in other ways.

As for critics and reviewers "knowing what they're talking about", no more so than you or I. Again, they just get paid for their opinions. We don't. And if you really think that every person who has ever won an award deserved it... that's what I see as naive.
 
Nice to see a few posts about this overnight. :D

Sci, if you're going to make an "RTD is god" style post, I'm going to make one that says he's shit.

He's not God and I never said he was. What I did say was that he knows what he's doing and he knows how to write good television, and that if he did not, he would not have gained that large of a number of indicators of success.
 
Sci, once again you underestimate the classic series. It ran for a full 26 seasons before it was canceled, so it's hardly a little-remembered show. Unless you mean the United States, but in Britain the show has always been a huge sucess. Even when it was cancelled, there were numerous attempts to revive it (and a huge public outcry during the initial cancellation, the hiatus), and a well-selling novel line. You really must do more research, apart from viewing a few so-so episodes like "Dragonfire" and "Survival" you should see stuff like "Pyramid Of Mars" (Which inspired the satan two-parter and even used the same actor as the bad guy) "Caves of Androzani" "Genesis of the Daleks" etc. Sure they still look low-budget, but they are well-written and well-acted. Even some of the sillier episodes ("City of Death") have a lot of stuff to recommend them. Sure, Doctor Who is low-budget, but a lot of BBC stuff is, even stuff like "I, Claudius" (With Jacobi) was shot on videotape and obviously cutting corners.


Using a clip from the show's waning days, the Sylvestor McCoy years, (hated by a good chunk of fans sort of like Star Trek TOS season 3) is not really going to prove your point. The show in the 80s was struggling due to a producer who was getting burned out, although he (and McCoy) still had his moments here and there. The thing with McCoy is that he was more comedian than actor at that point. Most of the other Doctors at least had some decent acting credits to their resume, but McCoy, Langford, Aldred were better known for Pantomime than serious drama.


There were plenty of good actors in the old show. And several of those same actors have appeared in the new series.


The Doctor's distate of weapons goes wayyyy back. It's not an invention of the new series. There are of course those points in BOTH series where there's some hypocricy on this (Such as the destruction of Skaro in Rememberance of the Daleks, the drowning of the Racnoss in TRB, etc.). Even the waning years of Doctor Who had this, with an excellent scene in the otherwise crappy Happiness Patrol.
 
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