Doctor Who

[avevale_intelligencer]

I have indeed kept watching, and mostly I have refrained from spilling my niggles all over this journal (thank goodness--niggles are so hard to get out of the carpet, it's the little hooks on the ends). So I think I can get away with one post about the currently approaching series end.

It's rather a shame that all the Beeb's attempts to maintain some kind of secrecy about their series endings keep getting blasted out of the water. I hoped there might be some kind of misdirection going on, partly because the only possible "clue" I saw that pointed to Mister Saxon being the Master--the stupid anagram--doesn't work in character terms, indeed doesn't even work in actor terms after this episode, and the name would have been so much more appropriate for the Meddling Monk, another Time Lord who could have survived and an underused character who could have been developed in all sorts of interesting ways.

Ah well. They do what they do. And to all who are wondering how the Master got to regenerate again, I bet I know what the answer is. He's pinched one of the Doctor's. The Master is now the eleventh Doctor. Which means that whenever Tennant gets an offer that pays more, John Wotsisname can take over (lots of angsty drama for whomever is the companion that week). He's playing the Master exactly the way Tennant plays the Doctor anyway. It's not really typecasting, since as far as I can gather the other programme he was in was really just a hospital drama where they concentrated on the patient's hallucinations, and not sf at all.

There were good things. Jack works so much better as irritating sidekick than he does as boss of Torchwood, and Barrowman's energy can cover a multitude of sins. Sir Derek could be good in anything, and it would be nice to believe he was as keen to do the part as they made out in Confidential (but I remember similar quotes about Interim!Doc, so the salt truck has its own parking space round the back). Chantho was nicely imagined, and they used her well. The watch business would have been more effective in a different season from the one in which it was introduced--the longer you leave these things the more the shock when they come back--but the way they've chosen to do this show doesn't allow for any long-term planning like that, and they wrung as much drama out of it as they could with all the flashback flannel and hammering the point home in dialogue. As if we'd had time to forget.

So, not a total whinge. See, I'm trying to be good.

And the big surprise at the end of next episode is apparently the--[STIFLED SQUAWK]

Comments

[caomhinmaca.livejournal.com]

of course they could use the dna-rewrite as the excuse for resetting the Masters reincarnation-clock... and of course that would apply to the Doctor too....allowing as many new Doctors as they need/are forced to by runaway actors..

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

But that kind of invalidates the twelve-regen-only rule and makes Time Lords potentially (stands back in horror) immortal.

("Mummy, Mummy, that nasty man said a bad word!"

"Never mind, dear, I'm sure he didn't mean it.")

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

the twelve-regen-only rule

Not sure -- yes the Master used up his 12, but we was able to use tech to steal Tremas' body, and "regenned" that way, and, apart from the fact that his entire body-morph has altered, this time he appears to use the artron energy of the Tardis, as opposed to his own physical energy.

Plotwise, they will do what they like, but canon-wise, I think we've an argument that says that he is simply piggy-backing onto other sources of energy. Which means *never* tell him about Cardiff.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, but my point is, if every TARDIS has one of those things (and we know at least two did) and every Time Lord at the end of his lives could therefore rewrite himself at whim as a standard lamp or something and then come back as a Time Lord with a dozen new-laid regenerations in the larder, then that would be viewed as cheating. So I don't think it does that. I preferred the book version, in which the thing that turned him human was dodgy tech he had to buy in a market somewhere. But then, I pretty much preferred the book version full stop.

[armb.livejournal.com]

> He's playing the Master exactly the way Tennant plays the Doctor anyway.

Confidential sort of implied that was hammering home the point that "he's a Timelord too, he regenerates just like the Doctor did", so he might settle into a new character. Maybe. Possibly even one recognisable as the Master. Oh, is that the salt truck?

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Those are pretty much my thoughts. Mf f-list is full of squee, but I really am still so bowled over by Blink that anything DW does for the foreseeable future pales by comparison.

Really, you shouldn't expect logic in NuHu. [Waves hand airily], it's a time travel show - anyone can go back to any point in time and change what passes for rules in the Whoniverse.

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

Wow. We sure do have different ways of looking at things.

I see you didn't watch life on mars, then.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I don't know about smallship1, but the reason I couldn't be bothered with Life on Mars was the fact that it was so obvious that Sam was in a coma that I couldn't be bothered to watch.

Incidentally, Life on Mars is not made by the BBC (who therefore had to keep secrets about the same, as they did not own them), while Dr Who is.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I didn't. I was never too big on 70s cop shows as such, except for some strange reason The Professionals (I blame soren_nyrond--he led me astray), and the conscious effort to remain ambiguous about what was going on irritated me, as it tends to. I don't mind some forms of ambiguity, but that particular manifestation seems to me like a failure of nerve. As lil_shepherd said, the only possible reason for not making it clear that it was a time travel show is that it wasn't, and without that element there was nothing about it to grab me.

But, having said all that, I'm sure it was very well done (or it wouldn't have been so successful) and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Life on Mars

[armb.livejournal.com]

I didn't follow it from the start, but the last episode was clearly trying to send a "it wasn't all just hallucinations in a coma" message.
I have seen a fairly convincing argument that it made more sense if both the 70s and modern sections of it were being run as simulations on some future computer, and programming bugs were allowing leakage between the two because the same character was being used in both. Which is clearly SFnal, if not what the writers intended.
There will be a new series with a different time-shifted character.

[willibald.livejournal.com]

It raises the point of should Richard E Grant be Doctor 11? He voiced the doctor in the webcast Scream of the Shalka where he had a robot of the Master voiced by Sir Derek.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, unless they cheat the regen rules, there are only two more slots, one if John Thingy is in the queue. I can't escape the chilling feeling that RTD's secret ambition is to preside over the absolute final END of Doctor Who...

[willibald.livejournal.com]

But surely Michael Jayston is already lined up for the final regeneration (The Valeyard)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And has, like Sir Del, done an "Unbound" audio for Big Finish. Oh well, that about wraps it up for those lives... :)