I tapped out on Paul after Dark Eyes. And now that they've got him paling around with a Kaldor City reject who's snogging a troon , unlikely to ever pick up again.
Yeah, Dark Eyes mostly sucked. (Despite having my favorite non-classic Master in a prominent villain role. Jfc, I wish they would bring back Alex Macqueen more often.) The first set was decent enough though, it just had an obvious end point... and then they just kept going on and on after that, clearly having nothing fucking planned out beforehand.
I think I remember hearing that they weren't even originally wanting to make it 4 box sets, and that shows.
It's been a while since I've listened to Doomsday Coalition, but I remember thinking it was pretty solid, despite violently disliking the new companion.
She's a shitty person, who has a "you're treating me badly because I'm a woman" chip on her shoulder (when no, more often than not it's because she's a shitty person, even if that wasn't the writers' intention.), that as of the last time I heard her hasn't gone away yet.
Also, Ravenous... certainly happened.
Not gonna lie, I remember maybe one or 2 standout episodes from all 4 Ravenous sets (16 episodes), and I guess I've forgotten the rest. That's hardly a ringing endorsement, I know. The titular villain was literally clown world, and they were barely even mentioned until like halfway through entire series. IIRC, they were actually supposedly so creepy that they somehow inspired clowns to also be creepy. Except... I'm reasonably certain that after the events of the sets, the Ravenous never actually existed because of timey-wimey bullshit... except for the end part that set up Stranded. Why do clowns still exist?
Speaking of Stranded, I only listened to Stranded 1.
Believe it or not, the troon wasn't even the worst part of it... However, he was particularly obtrusive in this in ways that troons aren't even usually in things like this.
-This is purely an audio experience, and the troon dude still sounds like a man, so when he says "Um.. I have a confession to make, I'm not really a woman, I'm actually a troon." (Obviously he doesn't say it like that, but he totally should have.) If I hadn't already known that there was a troon going into this, my literal reaction would have been, "Oh, was I supposed to think you were a woman? Sorry bro, I didn't. Literally no honest person listening to this thought you were a woman."
For me, the worst part of "Stranded 1" was that they wrote 8 completely out of character, as if he had always been this uncaring and unfeeling asshole, ala early Sixie (and I still love Sixie overall, especially after BF fixed him), or early 12 (before the shitty writing gave him a midlife crisis), and had all of his companions who are still both terrible people in their own rights, act like he's *always* been this aloof uncaring asshole whom they've always had to handle. This isn't even remotely how 8 has typically been presented, and it's still fucking bullshit.
Morbid curiosity will probably get the better of me eventually, and I will probably at some point listen to the rest of stranded. Does literally *anybody* here think that Stranded has gotten better after the first one?
Also, I don't think it's out yet, but if anybody gets it, how bad is Stranded 4?
I've made no secret of the fact that I've never liked "Old Tom Baker is now a future incarnation of the Doctor," because there's literally no way that they could ever really pay that off, unless Jodie literally regenerates into him now, and that would just be really fucking stupid.
I actually think that "Old 4" regenerating into "Old Sixie" is even worse. If *nothing* else, (and I've never really liked Peter Davison,) why didn't "Old 4" regenerate into "Old 5"?
