nuWho

[avevale_intelligencer]

So...history can't be changed, except when it can, and the only way to know the difference is to be the writers. And once again the Doctor is responsible for the deaths, in the name of preventing a future he doesn't know about, in which the Whatever-their-name-was (I heard it loads of times and couldn't make it out) try to take over the planet (and are surprisingly defeated in the first shower of rain).

They're trying desperately to make Donna less shouty and abrasive, and as a result she is turning into Rose/Martha. Of course.

"You can't rewrite history, not one line" was always just something the Doctor said, and we knew it wasn't true, because he changed the history of the future every four to six weeks. But it never seemed like dishonesty before.

The effects were impressive. They always are. I would trade them in an instant for a writer who actually knew, and loved, Doctor Who as it was, and not as what he thought it should have been.

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"So...history can't be changed, except when it can, and the only way to know the difference is to be the writers. "

Yep. Just like in the good old days. =:o}

"... the Whatever-their-name-was (I heard it loads of times and couldn't make it out)"

Pyrovile. But yes, the vocal treatment was a bit extreme. My sinus-addled ears are having trouble with the dialog even on a second hearing.

" ... try to take over the planet (and are surprisingly defeated in the first shower of rain)."

They covered that. "Water can be boiled!" Their intention was dry the planet out first. (Slightly iffy science: You've got to boil enough of the oceans to create a total cloud blanket that magnifies the greenhouse effect. From there, the surface gets hotter and hotter by itself, but you can help it along with your own heat-generating powers... eventually you reach a stable point where no rain ever falls, 'cos the atmosphere beneath the cloud layer is just too hot. Your next step is to persuade all that airborne vapour to achieve escape velocity, which simply means adding more heat...

"They're trying desperately to make Donna less shouty and abrasive, and as a result she is turning into Rose/Martha. Of course."

[NODS] Chameleonic characterisation of the companion, shifting back and forth at the whim of the production team... It's Sarah Jane all over again, I tells ya. =:o}

The main criticism of Donna in her first outing was that she was too shouty, so they've toned that down. And yet, Donna remains mouthy when it counts.

So apart from being less shouty, in what way is she turning into Rose/Martha? As opposed to, say, Leela?

"You can't rewrite history, not one line" was always just something the Doctor said, "

For some of us, it was something he said and *damn well meant it*.
"The Aztecs" isn't just a blip. It's a warning that Time/History is a huge and powerful sleeping beast. You can maybe gently push its tail to one side to retrieve the sword that it unfortunately lay down on and get away with it; but use that sword to try to jab it into moving elsewhere, and it's *you* that will get smushed. And the beast will then lie down and settle back to sleep, just exactly where it was.

(I used to use the metaphor of a river: Try to divert it just a little, and you'll get away with it. Try to divert it a lot, and you create an unstable situation whereby the river eventually bursts its banks, wipes out the settlements you'd built on either side of it, and eventually either settles down into its original bed (most likely), or carves a new one that's so radically different to either the original or the new route you'd planned for it that you never would have imagined it.


" ... and we knew it wasn't true, because he changed the history of the future every four to six weeks. But it never seemed like dishonesty before."

The point was glossed over before. We all knew, as viewers, that the dividing line was really "what's in the history books at school is fixed; only what's "unimportant" (i.e. affecting only the "little people") enough to not be recorded in those books, or is set in our own future, is changeable... And the fact that there was no in-story justification for that division just got ignored.

But now we have an in-story justification: Some events are fixed, some are malleable, and the Doctor (as a Time Lord) can tell the difference. And really, that's just exactly the justification fans have converged on every time they've looked at the issue over the years, so why not make it canon?

I think we'll have to remain divided on *why* exactly RTD isn't the person we'd each like to have running NuWho. I have to ask: Is there anything NuWho can do at this point that *would* make you happy? Are they allowed *any* room for innovation?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

There was always room for technical innovation. I have no problem with that. And if there are unalterable financial reasons why every story has to be complete in one episode and zip along at three hundred syllables a second, I'll reserve the right to grumble that I can't make out what's happening, but I have no real problem with it.

Is there anything it can do to make me happy? Of course there is. Let the next Doctor be a Time Lord and not a working-class hero (not that I have anything against working-class heroes, but the Doctor is an aristocrat from a long line of aristocrats, and till nuWho was always portrayed in that way). Let the companions be chosen from a catchment area more than a few square miles wide, and possibly be of a wider range of genders and ages, and let them be companions, not love interests. Scrap the generic telly dysfunctional families. And let's revamp the TARDIS so it doesn't look like someone's grotty garage, and fix the stabilisers so it only throws people about when there is something wrong. In other words, unchange the things that were changed not because they needed to be, but because of someone's political agenda and personal preferences. That would make me happy.

But it won't happen.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

They've been very clear that Donna is *not* a love interest, and when she says "Doctor I bloody love you!" it's not an expression of romantic love, but the same way you'd say it to an AA man that showed up as you were trying to change a flat tyre and helped (even if you weren't an AA member).

I fully believe that the Doctor and Donna will *not* be an item at any point this series (and not just because David and Catherine stated as much on the Jonathan Ross show).

They can be mates (friends), and there may be misunderstandings (that's standard for these situations) but I really don't think they are going to be Rose/Martha (and Martha was a step further than I expected).

And can we go back to last season's theme music please? This latest revamp is rubbish.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, statements made by cast and crew in the course of promoting this show have been shown to be flat out lies before. But even if the sexual tension that RTD seems to think so necessary to nuWho doesn't manifest in that particular way, Donna is still the same type of character in terms of gender, origin and, if not actual age, position in life, as Rose and Martha--in other words, the differences between them, as opposed to the differences between, say, Liz, Jo, Sarah Jane, Leela and Romana (to pick a sequence of five female companions, since what we will apparently have had by the end of this season is Rose, Martha, Donna, Martha and Rose), will be so minuscule as to be insignificant.

I'm not as okay with this season's theme music as I was with last season's, but it's no worse than the first season's version (which I maintain had several fractional timing variances which made the whole thing drag).

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

Oddly, this is perhaps the first major disagreement that I've had with you over nuWho. I liked this episode a lot.

Not the minor details: the "Celtic" running gag was just embarrassing, as were the Pompeiians using words such as "blooming" and addressing their fathers as "Dad". And that stallholder saying "lovely jubbly"...words fail me.

And Tate was just as shouty as ever. And that "you're not going to sacrifice me" scene was outright cringeworthy.

However, we disagree on the main point of the episode. The Whatever-there-name-was-run future was clearly presented as something that would cost vastly more lives than the end of Pompeii: and doubtless they'd learn to stay out of the rain. The moral choice that the Doc was faced with was convincing enough for me.

You're spot on about him being able to change History willy-nilly. What he always seemed to be doing, to me, was his level best to avoid this happening. Didn't either the 6th or 7th Doctor have that marvellous line about "playing with a fire so hot that I could scorch Eternity"? Being fully aware of the terrible repercussions that could follow, and also that he himself was not all-knowing, but desperately muddling through as best he could. Fan fiction has also explored this over the years: I fondly recall a marvellous piece where the Doc decides to start meddling wholesale. He starts by saving Temmosus from the Dalek ambush, only to later learn that Ian died in his place: every change that he tries to make for the better upsets Time in terrible ways. This seems to be what James Moran was aiming for here, and I applaud him for doing that much.

In fact, the "gosh Donna, thanks for being my moral centre, take these companion's stripes, you've really earned them!" bit really rankled with me. The ending, as it stood, could have been a thing of genuine tragedy and power. It could have been sombre and thought-provoking. Instead, the resolution was a disappointment.

There's the essence of a great and grim story here. Just a shame that the details marred it.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Mm. It seemed to me to be presented as a choice between twenty thousand certain deaths, and an unspecified number of possible deaths. I'm not saying it was necessarily the wrong choice (though it could have been), but what I am saying is that through the whole of nuWho so far there has run a theme that if anyone suffers in the course of an episode it's almost always the Doctor's fault. If you look at Interim!Doc's exultation at the end of "The Doctor Dances" in this light, you'll see what I mean. "Everybody lives!" becomes "I managed not to kill anyone!" And this one's catchphrase is variations on "I'm sorry." Says it all really.

I don't agree with the idea behind that fan story, but then, as I said above, it's always seemed clear to me from the internal evidence (pre-nuWho) that history was infinitely rewritable all the way through, and that the Doctor's belief that it wasn't, or shouldn't be, was maybe the Time Lords' way of securing the timeline that led to them. Which, since they're now gone, maybe doesn't apply any more. But then, applying logic to something that was never clearly thought out in the first place and changed with every new writer or script editor who came along is a fairly fruitless endeavour when all's said and done.

Anyway, my comment stands. To be that emphatic about "I CAN'T" and then go "oh all right then" is, one way or the other, dishonest. Especially in the light of the abominable "Father's Day." Four people are alive now who shouldn't be. Where are the big flappy things?

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

Re your last para there: well, it's not as if RTD is a bear for his continuity. If he's just got to have his favourite Mary-Sue back in the series, he'll be contriving a way to say "a wizard did it" before you can say Sutekh.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

"lovely jubbly" made perfect sense to me ... the Tardis was translating the current day vernacular of Pompeii into words that Donna would clearly understand, and so picked the Del Boy phrase to convey that this was an AD79 Roman barrowboy.

On the other hand, he had "nunc" written on the wall behind him in graphiti and that wasn't translated, bad TARDIS!

I actually thought that after all the other episodes where he was about to give his life to save the Earth/whoever, that this was a bit of a throwaway, "oh well, we're going to die" moment and wasn't properly built up, and so it really discounted Donna's (and the Doctor's) expected sacrifice.

But you're right about the ending

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Perhaps the "nunc" was part of an incomplete graffito, pointing towards a time-travelling Pip, Squeak And Wilfred fan in ancient Pompeii...

http://www.chris-proudlove.co.uk/article/old22.htm

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Grin!

I reckon it was the same as when Donna spoke Latin and it was heard as "Celtic" ... it probably said "NOW" on the wall and the TARDIS translated it back to Latin ... obviously early graffiti from the National Organization for Women!.

[ci5rod.livejournal.com]

"You can't rewrite history, not one line" was always just something the Doctor said, and we knew it wasn't true, because he changed the history of the future every four to six weeks.

One of the things that always stuck with me was Tom Baker's Doctor demonstrating exactly the opposite to Sarah Jane in Pyramids of Mars or whatever the robot mummy episode was called. Sarah asked if they could just leave, after all someone must have handled the crisis. The Doctor dutifully hopped them a few decades ahead to demonstrate that no, no one else did handle the crisis, and it was up to them to actively not change history.

Then again, I never liked Tom Baker's Doctor. He committed the cardinal sin of not being Jon Pertwee, after all.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Mm-hm. Although it could be pointed out, if someone wanted to, that Sarah only had the Doctor's word for it that that was Earth in 1980. He could just have been pulling a fluid link on her. He's never been above that kind of dishonesty.

I loved all the first four Doctors, coped quite well with the fifth, got put off the sixth for reasons which I now think may have been not entirely justified, and was enjoying getting to know the seventh when the axe fell. If I had to pick a Doctor from those first four it would probably be Baker T, but it would be a photo finish.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

One that I was wondering about, how heavy is the TARDIS? I would have thought it was heavy enough that the Romans could not have moved it.

For me this week was better than last week. I did not watch last week's all the way through because it was so annoying. This week I only had problems with the TARDIS being moved without at least a comment on how heavy it was, the cockney dialogue, the water soluble villains, the household gods at the end. Which is less than I usually find annoying.

If i had been as bad as last week's episode I would probably have quit watching completely.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Hmm, praising with faint damns, "It wasn't as bad as last week". Not that I disagree at all, that was basically my summary of it as well.

The TARDIS has been moved before, fairly easily, so I don't think it weighs very much more than a real police box or a wooden shed. Pretty trivial for a civilisation built out of big lumps of stone. Just get Obelix to pick it up (oops, sorry, wrong universe).

I must admit that I did like the explanation of the TARDIS translating into and from Latin (apart from 'nunc'), and translating their Latin[1] into 'Celtic'. And the Latin name gags.

[1] What on earth was Donna's pronunciation of "veni, vidi, vici"? OK, so she's supposed to be from Lunnon, innit, but I rather doubt that a Roman would have understood her even if it hadn't been 'translated'.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, the bad points for me this week were:

The dumb 'Spartacus' gag.

The ridiculous 'escape capsule' bit. The Doctor and Donna resolve to die in order to save the human race. And with one bounce...

The Doctor arbitrarily deciding first not to save and then to save. There's nothing actually written anywhere that these four people die, is there? Yes, the town dies but nothing mentioning any specific names. Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker would have given them a lift out of town without the agonising. (Having assured their escape and their companions first, of course.)

But other than that it was so much better than last week that I felt disinclined to do further analysis.

However, I take Zander's point about time-altering in general. The bit that's annoying me most for this in NuWho is the bit where he first sings the praises of the 'new golden age' that Harriet Jones is supposed to bring in and then arbitrarily writing her out of history in a fit of pique because she didn't follow his advice. Why have there been no hideous consequences for that?

[(Anonymous)]

oops....

That was me...

Michael Cule
About to leave the ranks of the unemployed again
And damn irritable about it

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose the whole Saxon/Master thing could be called as evidence that he (and, of course, we) can't get away scot free every time he mucks about. Of course, that would imply that they actually think about what they're writing from series so series, which I take leave to doubt on numerous other grounds.

But yes, that was a fairly major change of history, on what might be presumed to be one of those "fixed" points (if there's any internal logic to the series at all). Maybe BadGuy!Doctor was piqued because he denied himself the pleasure of exterminating the Sycorax and then some human did it anyway. (I still think their "armada" was as much a bluff as the blood control.)

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

Arguably, there were hideous consequences, since Jones' fall paved the way for one Harold Saxon...

[(Anonymous)]

I was thinking the sort of hideous consequences where all of time and space collapses into a gibbering mass of pink jelly-flavoured chaos thingy...

Just the human race being enslaved by the Master doesn't cut it for me.

Michael Cule
Taking the long view for once

[(Anonymous)]

And, of course, the Superman II "resolution" of Last Of The Time Lords means that Saxon/Master never was PM. Meaning that we can get "Harriet Jones, Prime Minister" back for one more trot round of that not-very-funny running gag this season. Poor Penelope Wilton, having to come out with that bilge.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, firstly I think you mean SUPERMAN I (SUPERMAN II used the amnesia dodge).

And secondly, I think they only turned time back to the point where they boarded SKYBASE (or whatever it was called) and so she's up for her second time (of three) of being Prime Minister.

And to be fair, I think the scriptwriters will come up with a different dumb joke for her next appearance.

Michael Cule
Who has come to the end of receiving 'Noes' from HR managers and is rather bitter about the fact. (Sorry, Zander...)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Mr Cule, you could always get an LJ name of your own you know, they are "free" (you'd be stuck with ads now for the free account) :-)

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

"Harriet Jones, available for parties, barmitzvahs and charities."

Yeah, it could just work...

Thanks for the Superman correction, Mr Cule - quite right too. (Yes, that was me earlier.)