Well, that's an overstatement. I'm not one of those people who'll act all melodramatically betrayed just because a story goes in a direction I wouldn't have chosen. Life is about adjusting to things that are less than ideal, and you can disagree with some of the choices in a story but still find other merits in it. This is the way Doctor Who is now, so I'll adjust. It's changed and redefined itself many times before, and it's the changes that keep it interesting, even granted that it occasionally changes in ways I'm not crazy about. Plus, of course, I haven't even seen the most recent season yet, only heard about it. What a story does is generally less important than how it does it. I may not have liked Moffat's tendency to make the Doctor the center of the universe, but the actual execution of a lot of those stories was inspired, and I enjoyed the stories even when I wasn't crazy about the underlying approach. Will I enjoy "The Timeless Children" when I finally see it? That remains to be seen. Hopefully the execution will be good enough to balance out my issues with the concept.
I'm far less passionate these days for TV Who. I'm just waiting for Chibnall to leave so someone else can remake the show to their image. Until then, I likely won't engage into length arguments like kirk5555 does. Beyond that, I do agree about Moffat. Of course I would.
Watched Daleks! episode 3. Loved seeing the Mechanoids in this and see them go toe to toe with the Daleks. Fun episode. On a side note, who else here wants to see Mechanoids return to 'Doctor Who'?
I’m the same, it’s just not working for me at the minute. I’ve always like JF but there’s something lacking in her performance; I’ve no problem with the idea of a female Doctor and I can think of a half dozen actresses I’d like to see in the role. In fact, I think Jodie might fare a lot better with a different show runner. Can’t get overly enthusiastic about any of the companions, even if they’re played by a likeable enough cast. I don’t mind the so-called “woke agenda” that many are complaining about (it lines up with my politics, for the most part) but stories should come first and I don’t find them grabbing me. But that’s the thing about DW, maybe in another few years the new setup will be more to my taste.
Yeah, nothing against Jodie or the so-called "wokeness". The era's just dull to me, and the companions are the perfect analogy for that. Ethnic variety but empty shells of characters.
I’m not a fan of all the gender swapping myself. I would be just as mad if they did that to Romana or the Rani
Ever since regeneration was introduced, its strength was that it allowed each Doctor to be fresh and distinct, to bring each actor's own individual personality and attributes to the role and make it their own. It only stands to reason, then, that broadening the pool of actors beyond white men is true to the essence of the thing and should have been done long before. It vastly multiplies the possibilities for future casting.
Watched Daleks! episode 4. More cheesy fun. I'm looking forward to next week. I think they are doing a diary of River Song episode with the Mechanoids too. I wonder if this will eventually lead to an onscreen appearance.
I caught up on Daleks! this morning. "The Deadly Ally" sees the number of Daleks in the entire universe down to two -- the Emperor and the Strategist -- as the Mechanoids' planet is about to be attacked by the Entity. While the Emperor spends his time with the Mechanoid leader in a bunker, the Strategist and a Mechanoid scientist work together to find a way to neutralize the Entity. This episode was a little odd in that the Daleks aren't the protagonists this time. Neither the Emperor nor the Strategist do anything; the problem in the episode is solved by the Mechanoids. And, in some ways, that makes the ending disappointing, because the Mechanoids could end the Daleks forever... and instead they let them go, presumably to rebuild the Dalek Empire. I don't want to say much of present-day politics, but the golden domed Dalek Emperor has shown himself to be really dumb, a leader who believes his own press and asserts his superiority in defiance of all evidence but doesn't actually bring anything to the table. There are golden coifed leaders on both sides of the Pond who exhibit similar characteristics, and I wonder if that was intentional on James Goss' part. I can guess at a rough outline of the fifth episode. The Emperor will blame the Strategist for the complete and utter destruction of the Dalek Empire, the Strategist will come up with a plan (maybe he dredges up a long-ago memory of a lost Dalek army they can recover), the Strategist lives to scheme another day, the Emperor gloats about how the Daleks are the supreme race in the galaxy, and so we end up with the status quo for the Daleks before "Defender of the Daleks." Overall, Daleks! has been enjoyable. I don't mind the PS2 quality graphics at all, as it gives the production a retro, throwback feel, much as the 1960s Dalek comic strips were rooted in Golden Age space opera tropes.
Amazon UK has the Kindle edition of the first Timelord Victorious book - The Knight, The Fool and The Dead - listed as a Christmas "Last Minute Deal", priced £1.99. That might just tempt me to dip my toe into the TVic universe.
Genetics of the Daleks is out today. It's basically Alien Covenant (and the implications of that film) as a Dalek story, and it works pretty well as a standalone tale. I don't think you need to know much of anything about Time Lord Victorious to enjoy it. I liked it.
I watched the final episode of Daleks! today. Again, cheesy fun. They had a nice run. I think it might get a bit tedious if it went on too long.
The opening scene, with the Dalek saucer crashing on Skaro, brought Deanna Troi crashing the Enterprise-D's saucer into Veridian III in Star Trek Generations to mind. In retrospect, the Mechanoids should never have left the Emperor and the Strategist leave their planet after the last episode. I've seen people on Gallifrey Base speculate that the Entity was the Hond from Defender of the Daleks, but I'm wondering if the Entity was something else entirely, since the possessed Mechanoid was warning about something else. Overall, I liked Daleks! "Cheesy fun" is a good description.
Going to start reading the second book tonight, as well as listening to the Genetics of the Daleks. I hope the book is good as the first ended on a good cliffhanger
I will give Chibnall his due, his tenure may have put Who on a three year hiatus for me personally, but it did spur me to get into the Big Finish Whoverse in a big way, and like the restoration DVDs i have been buying them all up, can't get enough of them, so at least he has been postive in pushing BF sales for me anyway.
Just finished that. I can see the Alien Covenant connections. Especially with the ending. Did seem rather sloppy for the Doctor to leave before checking. I liked the story but it seemed rather easy for the Dalek to make more Daleks from humans. Just a simple injection
The second novel, All Flesh is Grass, is definitely the core of Time Lord Victorious, not just because it’s the story with all three of the event’s primary Doctors in, but because it also pulls in all the characters and story elements from other strands— the Daleks from the Eighth Doctor audios and the animated series, Brian the Ood from the first Eighth Doctor audio and the first novel, the vampires from the Ninth Doctor comic strip— and throws them into an action epic. It’s very much like the novelization of a special episode or a movie: short (the two TLV novels together are about the length of one ordinary novel), with spare but effective prose and rapid cutting between different scenes. McCormack does well with the voices of the three Doctors, and of course their interactions are a pleasure, though those looking forward to a big showdown where the Eighth and Ninth show the Tenth the error of his ways will be disappointed: the novel is subtler than that, and thoughtful about each Doctor’s flaws and compromises. This is definitely the one story to buy if you want to get a taste of TLV. If it makes you curious about some other strand, so much the better, but people who approach this event like it’s one big story aren’t going to get what they want. It’s several intersecting but fundamentally separate stories that take place at the same time with some overlapping characters. Each strand clearly grows out of the same core elements— despite what some cynics might say, they didn’t just slap the logo on stories they were releasing anyway— but the connections are intentionally quite loose.
Considering how apparently easy it is to mutate humans into Dalek mutants (here, Revelation of the Daleks, Evolution of the Daleks), I wonder just how close genetically humans are to Thals and Kaleds, especially if the Daleks eventually evolve back into the human-like Klade.
I'm not sure that's a meaningful question in a universe so full of aliens identical to humans. The distinction between human and nonhuman is often so inconsequential that it's barely even acknowledged. The New Adventures established something about a "morphic field," with the Gallifreyans evolving first and other life following the template they laid down. And IIRC, one of the early audios had some convoluted time-travel plot where the villain was a Time Lord bigot planning to seed all planets with Gallifreyan DNA in their primordial past to make sure no other intelligences evolved. No doubt that part was thwarted, but I got the impression that it was meant to explain all the humanoids.