Dr. Who

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Lone Wandering Courier said:
In my rewatching of the classic series, I reached the 4th doctor story "The Ark in Space". Unfortunatly I had two choices: a) use the xvid copy I had previously downloaded which seemed very fuzzy/blurry and with the original exterior model shots OR there is b) download a different copy which had a clearer picture but with CGI replacing the chroma keyed exterior shots. I ended up choosing b and the cgi was a bit jarring. I don't know if the blu ray release of season 12 at all has the option to watch that story either way, but apparantly the DVD version of the story did have both the original effects and the cgi versions. I know I eventually want to grab blu ray copies, but I don't have anything that actually plays them.
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The BluRay sets I have with updated CGI versions have both, but they're the imports. Not sure about the US. The only time I've seen worthwhile CGI updates on classic stuff is OT Star Trek, Paramount actually did a pretty damn good job making the new effects look period-correct about 75% of the time. The Dr. Who CGI updates are universally shit.
 
alright fine said:
The BluRay sets I have with updated CGI versions have both, but they're the imports. Not sure about the US. The only time I've seen worthwhile CGI updates on classic stuff is OT Star Trek, Paramount actually did a pretty damn good job making the new effects look period-correct about 75% of the time. The Dr. Who CGI updates are universally shit.
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I guess Star Trek is banking on nostalgia vibes for the ones watching, while Dr Who is more interested in simply recreating the factual story events for archival?
 
Betonhaus said:
I guess Star Trek is banking on nostalgia vibes for the ones watching, while Dr Who is more interested in simply recreating the factual story events for archival?
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More likely Paramount had actual money to spend and good CGI houses to do it, while the BBC is notoriously cheap even when it comes to their one moneymaking franchise. All the Dr. Who extras that look good are usually done out of love for free by industry fans, while the stuff the BBC pays for themselves and oversees are almost always cheap garbage. NPL, but in my last job, I got to talk to three people who worked on Dr. Who licensed materials in the US and they all were dumbstruck at just how cheap, petty, and incompetent the BBC were and what a nightmare they were to work with.
 
alright fine said:
More likely Paramount had actual money to spend and good CGI houses to do it, while the BBC is notoriously cheap even when it comes to their one moneymaking franchise. All the Dr. Who extras that look good are usually done out of love for free by industry fans, while the stuff the BBC pays for themselves and oversees are almost always cheap garbage. NPL, but in my last job, I got to talk to three people who worked on Dr. Who licensed materials in the US and they all were dumbstruck at just how cheap, petty, and incompetent the BBC were and what a nightmare they were to work with.
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IIRC the reason Red Dwarf moved to Dave was the BBC was too cheap to continue making episodes despite the show being a good little money maker for them. Then there's them taping over their own shows which lead to many missing episodes of Doctor Who and if not for a network in Texas the total loss of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
 
Random thoughts:

1. IIRC RTD never really mapped out the entire Time War, hence giving Moffat the ability to handwave the Doctor not actually killing everyone along with the heavy retcon that there was a lot of civilian Galifryians running around innocent of the carnage who the Doctor saved via teleporting it outside time/space. The closest RTD got was mapping out the early days and some vague ideas about how it ended, but it says something that we STILL don't have an official explanation as to what the fuck happened to Susan, Leela, and most important Romana in the show itself.

2. The idea of making the Time Lords a bunch of humorless paper pushers in papal robes was a good decision. If the Time Lords were literal living Gods, then Doctor's rebellion made zero sense thematically unless you say he loved to slum among the mortals. Making them paper pushers, social climbing nitwits, and the worlds most annoying bureaucrats makes the Doctor's rebellion make a lot more sense especially with how we saw the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Doctors behave.

thediad said:
IIRC the reason Red Dwarf moved to Dave was the BBC was too cheap to continue making episodes despite the show being a good little money maker for them. Then there's them taping over their own shows which lead to many missing episodes of Doctor Who and if not for a network in Texas the total loss of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
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Are you sure? The story I always heard was that Terry Gilliam was hanging around the BBC after the first season wrapped up airing and found out by pure luck that the season one episodes were being designated for junking and that after finding out that BBC routinely recorded over episodes of their shows and Monty Python had been earmarked for such treatment, rushed to his bank, withdrew all of his money and basically returned to BBC headquarters, where he saved the first season by way of buying the BBC new tapes to record shit on, along with getting his personal contract rewritten on the spot so that they would take money out of Gilliam's paycheck every season the show was on the air, to pay for new tapes so that Monty Python would be taken off the "air once and record over" list and preserved in full.
 
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Dixieland Buckaroo said:
Going way back, The Monk.
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That's Meddling Monk to you, good sir! ;) :D

(Excellent recall, btw! Even I'd forgotten about him.)

But yeah, the more I think about it the more all the non-exile Time Lords have names. The presidents of Gallifrey were Borusa, Pandon (???), Rassillon and others. Romana had her real name - unless you count "Fred" as a title. It's like Time Lords give up their name with their membership of Time Lord society when they depart it.

Someone earlier asked if The Rani had any particular meaning. Yes, Rani is an Indian princess or queen. A female form of Raja iirc.
 
Overly Serious said:
That's Meddling Monk to you, good sir! ;) :biggrin:

(Excellent recall, btw! Even I'd forgotten about him.)

But yeah, the more I think about it the more all the non-exile Time Lords have names. The presidents of Gallifrey were Borusa, Pandon (???), Rassillon and others. Romana had her real name - unless you count "Fred" as a title. It's like Time Lords give up their name with their membership of Time Lord society when they depart it.

Someone earlier asked if The Rani had any particular meaning. Yes, Rani is an Indian princess or queen. A female form of Raja iirc.
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I think the first named Time Lord was maybe The War Chief, in Troughton's last series? I might be off, he may have been ambiguous, as was The (Meddling) Monk. The early naming convention led fans back in the day to speculate that The Toymaker might be a Time Lord as well, in particular once The Master came onto the scene. I think alternate media has firmly established The Toymaker is not a Gallifreyan but some higher power. (But who knows what this week will hold.)

It's a really interesting observation, it's almost like these other rogue Time Lords become something greater than a Time Lord upon leaving the collective.
 
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Dixieland Buckaroo said:
I think the first named Time Lord was maybe The War Chief, in Troughton's last series? I might be off, he may have been ambiguous, as was The (Meddling) Monk. The early naming convention led fans back in the day to speculate that The Toymaker might be a Time Lord as well, in particular once The Master came onto the scene. I think alternate media has firmly established The Toymaker is not a Gallifreyan but some higher power. (But who knows what this week will hold.)

It's a really interesting observation, it's almost like these other rogue Time Lords become something greater than a Time Lord upon leaving the collective.
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No, the monk tangled with the first doctor. The war chief was in second doctor's final episode.

I like to keep things simple. For me, if a Time Lord started throwing his real name around on adventures then it would be easy for the council to locate them. (I.e. "hey here's a record of a Zxagixasik on earth in the middle ages. Let's go arrest him.") So by picking slightly generic titles to go by, it makes them a bit harder to track down.

Also it's pretty clear you could never actually "do" a time war on screen. That's why RTD was at least smart enough to only vaguely hint at it. And as much fun as the 50th is, it doesn't make any sense. (Why don't the daleks just go to the day before the TARDIS disappear gallifrey and blow it up then?)
 
MirrorNoir said:
Are you sure? The story I always heard was that Terry Gilliam was hanging around the BBC after the first season wrapped up airing and found out by pure luck that the season one episodes were being designated for junking and that after finding out that BBC routinely recorded over episodes of their shows and Monty Python had been earmarked for such treatment, rushed to his bank, withdrew all of his money and basically returned to BBC headquarters, where he saved the first season by way of buying the BBC new tapes to record shit on, along with getting his personal contract rewritten on the spot so that they would take money out of Gilliam's paycheck every season the show was on the air, to pay for new tapes so that Monty Python would be taken off the "air once and record over" list and preserved in full.
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Yes, but I think it was Terry Jones who did this, not Gilliam. Much of the pre-Python work they all did for the BBC is still lost, tho, which sucks. I remember seeing Pertwee episodes in black and white as a kid and being surprised years later to find out that they were supposed to be in color. In my mind, Baker was in color, Pertwee was in B&W and Troughton and Hartnell were just legends.
 
I wish it was a two-parter, I really liked NPH as the Toymaker. That said, it's still one of the better regeneration stories (which have always been flawed for the most part) and an actual shake-up for something that's been stagnant for years.
 
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Normies starting to have thoughts on the bi regeneration
starborn427614 said:
I wish it was a two-parter, I really liked NPH as the Toymaker. That said, it's still one of the better regeneration stories (which have always been flawed for the most part) and an actual shake-up for something that's been stagnant for years.
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Wait did russell pull a moffet and reboot the universe?
 
Here's my thoughts.

It's kind of okay, kind of shit but mostly just messy. Neil Patrick Harris was fun but I didn't really understand the character. He felt aimless and completely without any grounding. I suppose that's what they were going for but it still seems random. The show is continuing to be preachy as fuck. They've over complicated everything again just like they did with that "the Doctor is really some back fat bitch form another universe" storyline from a few years ago. Having two Doctors is messy, the only way it makes any sense is to either never go back to present day Earth or bring back Tennant every other episode. The dialogue and production values still sucks ass. I'm kind of okay with the new Doctor being a gay black man, the show is already a joke so they might as well go full retard with it. Overarching seasonal storylines are not this shows strong point because the writers aren't very good at their jobs. I did like the Flash Gordon easter egg at the end.

My kids thought it was cringe and gay so the show continues to lose the younger audience.
 
Fools Idol said:
Having two Doctors is messy, the only way it makes any sense is to either never go back to present day Earth or bring back Tennant every other episode.
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I would have been fine if they didn't also give 14 a second tardis as well, like wtf its very clearly an excuse to have Tenant show up again down the line and to probably fill time gaps in case Ncuti gets busy.
 
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