And then Rose would've shown up. I completely agree with you. I think it would have been a perfectly fitting ending that would've given HUGE amounts of closure to a BUNCH of things. I was so happy about the person delivering the message!
Hate on RTD all you want, but RTD would have known that you needed a scene like that, whereas Moffat is probably too busy thinking about whether he can make the Eiffel Tower into a Dalek somehow.
Spoiler link, some new pics from the rest of the season: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/doctor-who/23075/updated-doctor-who-new-series-7-set-pictures So adorable! I can get over the Ponds I think with these looks. Also: Neil Gaiman's second episode will be in this second half, yay!
So while I'm incredibly late to the party here on the Doctor, my son and I were bored on Saturday night and wanted to start a new show. We first tried Star Trek DS9, and he was bored not even 30 minutes into it, so I said lets give Doctor Who a try. Instant hit, and I'm loving it as well. We're already up to midway through season one (he got to see his first Dalek) and we're having a great time. How have I missed this all these years?! Such a good show to share with my son who's just seven, but wanting to share more grown up science fiction fun, and this fits the bill quite nicely!
Since I'm a ways from catching up with you all still, updates on my son and I's discovery of The Doctor. Finished season 1. We love the Daleks (I'll chase him around the house saying "Must Ticklenate the Doctor"). Sad to see the Doctor go, and am starting to get used to the new guy a few episodes into season 2. They are dropping Torchwood hints all over so I guess we'll have to peek into that series at some point as well for fun. Looking forward to seeing the Cybermen at some point in this season based on the previews we've been seeing. Also, I love British television, because with their small pool of actors, you're always going to see people you know in episodes! ("Mrs. Crawley, Prime Minister")
Torchwood is not a fun series. Torchwood is bad. As in "oh god, this is embarrassingly horrible why would someone do such a thing?" Avoid Torchwood like the goshdarn plague.
I would beg an exception for the BBC 1 mini series of Torchwood which was sort of passable as Sci Fi TV and a bloody miracle considering the episodes of TV that preceded it.
It's also explicitly not for kids so it's a bad choice to watch with your young child ( nixon66 doesn't say how old his son is but based on the super-cute "ticklenate" they either have a pretty weird relationship or he's too young for Torchwood). I believe RTD conceived of it as a more "mature" Doctor Who, which it is in the same sense that Grand Theft Auto is a "mature" game. Actually I think Torchwood is pretty telling as to why Moffat is so much better at Doctor Who than RTD was, because despite being an actual Doctor Who spinoff it retains none of the wonder and excitement and fun that make Doctor Who good in the first place; it's all replaced with edginess and nihilism and gratuitous sexiness. Moffat's other shows are tonally more similar to good Doctor Who than Torchwood is. That said, there are a few bright spots in Torchwood, not that they make it worthwhile to watch the whole series or anything. Children of Earth was pretty good I thought, mostly just the first few episodes, with the caveat that it makes no sense whatsoever to have it take place in the same universe as Doctor Who. Apart from that, what's the one where the lady is driving over the bridge from Wales into England and makes some crack about it? That's good. There are a few good jabs at England since it's set in Wales, which is kind of a nice change of pace. But these are consolation prizes you get for putting up with the show, not reasons to watch it in the first place.
Whenever I can't place a British actor, I just ask my wife, "Who was he/she in Harry Potter?" and she tells me. All British actors have been in Harry Potter at this point.
I love the fact that the actress to whom nixon66 was referring, Penelope Wilton, has been in neither Harry Potter nor Band of Brothers. Or in any Jane Austen/Charles Dickens adaptions on Masterpiece! Though she did play to type in South Riding, which we imported via Masterpiece.
Are you sure she's British? Or maybe she's not an actor? I'm just saying, because if she wasn't in Harry Potter, she must be Australian, or at least Irish.
Well, her Wikipedia article says she's British. Edit: Oh, no, wait, now her Wikipedia article says she's a robotoid sent from the year 2714 to conquer the past in a grand battle for time itself that history has since forgotten. Edit edit: And now it says she's a lizard-man. So unreliable!* *Wikipedia, not lizard-men. I'm no lizard racist.
She rocks in Downton Abbey, which is almost like Jane Austen, except for the being written by Jane Austen part. And the taking place in the Regency era part. Well, it's like Jane Austen because they're English at least.
Here's the thing about Torchwood, the first two seasons are, without a doubt, an abomination. I somehow made it through season 1, but dropped it a couple episodes into season 2. But the "miniseries" season 3 (Children of Earth) and 4 (Miracle Day) are actually surprisingly good, about on the level of a good Dr. Who episode. Compared to the first two seasons it's a stratospheric rise in quality. Not coincidentally, season 3 and 4 are a collaboration between Starz (the U.S. cable network) and the BBC - I don't know what Starz did, but it worked.
Torchwood would be much better if all the characters hadn't been so awful. Especially Gwen. Fucking Gwen. The writers seemed to think I'd relate to her somehow, but instead I spent my time loathing her so badly I was rooting for the bad aliens to win. If only they'd wanted to kill the Earth instead of have sex with it.* *spoilers for every episode of Torchwood ever
Torchwood would have been much better if everyone on it had died in the first episode and all four seasons had just been the camera focused on an empty lot.
God this show. Now you've got me started. Instead, you should watch the Sarah Jane Adventures with your kid.
This is the biggest, most unbelievable misstep. Why is it like that? Even after Torchwood started Captain Jack shows up in a few Doctor Who episodes and he's just as awesome as ever, so why the hell can't the spinoff show centered around him have even a hint of what makes him such a fun character? Just so people who have not seen the show know, this really happens. It's not an exaggeration. And it's actually one of the better things to come out of Torchwood, which should tell you about how good the rest of it is.
They Keep Killing Suzie and the entirety of Children of Earth are fantastic. The rest of Torchwood is absolutely dire. It's really, really bad, and with one or two exceptions (most notably Cyberwoman, which while entirely unsuccessful as drama is fucking hilarious in the same way that something like Plan 9 or Manos is) it's not any fun at all. Skip the season 1/2 episodes not named They Keep Killing Suzie, skip Miracle Day. The answer to Miracle Day's central question is Lavos, except a vagina. It's as bad as any of season 1. Though, yeah, you need to pretend that it's not actually a Doctor Who spinoff for Children of Earth to make any kind of sense. They Keep Killing Suzie, on the other hand, has the advantage of small scale there.
Which is made harder by the fact that they make a point of having Gwen pray to the Doctor to come save them at one point, which he of course does not.
Torchwood would have been rendered almost watchable with Malcolm Tucker as their government liaison, intimidating and berating everyone constantly.
I get that it's popular to like Ianto. I even understand why. Chipper little fellow who is mostly there to fill out requisition forms and make snide comments. Except then they gave him DEPTH and DEPTH came in the form of him having a cyberman girlfriend. Cybergirlfriend. Who wore a cyberbikini. Fuck you, show. And then of course he does the ultimate depth-inducer, he suddenly remembers he's gay and falls in love with Captain Jack. Now I'm sure their relationship was very adorable and everything, except for the fact that everyone is in love with Captain Jack, which means Ianto's relationship with Captain Jack is less a thing that happens with Ianto and more a thing that reminds us that Captain Jack is cool. In Doctor Who we were given a guy who said and did cool things so we thought 'what a cool guy!'. On Torchwood that wasn't enough, so instead they gave us a guy and then had other people talk about how cool he is so we'd think 'I guess he's a cool guy?' And man oh man, does Torchwood demonstrate how Kinseyan RTD is. And I don't mean that Davies believes that productive activity is influenced by aggregate demand, but that everybody is secretly bi. And sure, I have no problem with this. It is almost certainly true that most people are a little of this and a little of that. Except to RTD the Kinsey scale goes like this 'Wants to fuck everything/Dead/Dead, but still wants to fuck everything'. And no matter your sexual orientation, you will fall head over heels for Captain Jack. I like John Barrowman people, but I'm pretty sure that there was an episode where a horse proposed to him. Which brings us to my favorite character. Poor, abused, miserable Rhys. And the thing is, I'm pretty sure that the show doesn't want me to like him. He's actually pretty smart, pretty capable, and dedicated to being a good husband to his shitty, shitty fucking wife. And I'm seriously supposed to look at tormented Gwen and be like 'boy, this is a hard decision, staying with her loving boyfriend or going with the date rapist' or 'staying with her loving husband, or having lesbian ghost alien sex with a space angel'. Rhys doesn't deserve the derision the show seems to pour on him. He's a better guy than Captain Jack, he's a better guy than the entire cast. He should really tell them all to go fuck themselves, burn Torchwood HQ down and settle down with a nice, normal girl. Or octogendered talking fish-monster. I mean, this is the RTD universe. Can't mention Rhys without enthusing over just how much I hate Gwen. I fucking hate Gwen. Somehow RTD took the ridiculous caricature that Rose became and distilled it down into a truly loathesome essence with Gwen. So you have the same monkey-faced, slackjawed idiot who treats her boyfriend like shit and who we are expected to believe is so fantastically brilliant that one of the most unique creatures in the universe would stop in his mad pursuit of everything else to well and truly love her, except with Gwen it's all dark'n'gritty so there's constantly talking about shagging. At least we never fucking saw Rose wiping slitheen semen off of her chin, but you can just imagine the scene of Gwen being spitroasted by Weevils somewhere on RTD's cutting room floor. All because all sexuality in Torchwood, human or otherwise, is fucking treated as if it's written by a 12 year old boy. Old enough to be interested but, in most cases, not quite old enough to have any idea what he's talking about. Has anyone here ever seen me express my dislike of Rose Tyler? Square that. That's how much I hate the character of Gwen. Hell, if you tossed Rose into the cast of Torchwood, she'd probably be one of my favorite characters on there. Fuck Torchwood. Fuck the idea that this episode or that episode were good. Fuck RTD. Fuck Captain Jack Harkness. Fuck zombie Owen. Fuck James Marsters, who, if Buffy really did get rebooted, should look into playing a mummy rather than a beautiful immortal vampire. Fuck Ianto-the-ornament-for-Jack's-characterization. Fuck the fact that an entire season of Doctor Who was built up to bolster this nothing of a show. Fuck. Which one of those is the one Gwen wasn't in? Neither? Pass.
So I'm sensing the general theme here is skip Torchwood from you Bahimiron unless squirting lemons in my eyes is something I enjoy frequently. Easy as pie. Too few hours in a day to see something tepid or terrible.
I was just picking up dinner and I saw a car with the license plate RIVRSNG and a "My other car is the TARDIS" bumper sticker. Just wanted to share. Part of me wants to say that's a bit much, another part thinks that's pretty cool.
Watched the Christmas Special minisode, then watched all of the Pond Life minisodes. It's seriously going to suck without Amy and Rory, and that last Pond Life minisode was sad, but I think Clara is going to be pretty awesome. A quasi-Dalek as a companion? Yeah, I'm in. The Van Gogh episode still makes me choke up a little at the end. Matt Smith is the greatest doctor evar!
Could be cool but I'm not sure they can pull it off. It might actually be easier at this point to reanimate the corpses of doctors one through three than to get Christopher "Fuck Doctor Who" Eccleston on board for something like this.
I worry about someone trying to sneak a plot in that would involve Rose being cloned so every Doctor gets one. So I hope whoever's planning the project makes sure to put a shock collar on RTD. In the interests of equality, Moffat's shock collar will need to be tuned to prevent the competing plot of all eleven Doctors agreeing with each other about how amazing and awesome River is.
They can't have Matt Smith regenerate so quickly! I mean, yeah, it's been a couple years, but fuck that, moar Matt Smithyness.
Setting the time machine back, my son and I just finished up season 3. Oh The Master is great. Loved him as a good villain. Quite a bunch of great stories this season, and loved the Weeping Angels episode (though maybe 60% of that was due to Carey Mulligan being in it.... Possibly....) and we're excited to to get started with season 4!
The Master was really awesome. He was just like the Doctor in his enthusiasm for being a time travelling adventuring dude, except evil, and it worked fantastically. Yes, longtime fans, I know THAT'S THE POINT.
