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Post by Kit on Dec 6, 2008 19:44:00 GMT
Hey, I like Leela. =D And I'm a perfectly straight female, thankyouverymuch.
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Post by merrythemad on Dec 6, 2008 20:07:01 GMT
Heeee-eeeey! It was supposed to be a joke, a gentle good-natured joshing! It was very early and I had not yet had my second cup of coffee and I sincerely apologise to anyone I may have inadvertently offended, truly. I meant no harm. *raises arms to display tye-dyes* "No, really guys, I come in peace!"
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Post by magnusgreel on Dec 6, 2008 23:06:16 GMT
I just PMed you if I may say that in mixed company. No prob.
I think Leela vies with the Doctor for the position of most interesting DW character, sometimes. Actually, "feral" was a very good word.
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Post by jjpor on Dec 7, 2008 1:19:48 GMT
(sorry Nyssa, that's a terrible reason to judge a person.) The thing that I don't like about Nyssa, is the way she completely got over the death of her entire civilisation in Logopolis, _in about two minutes_. I suppose you can rationalise that by saying she was traumatised or something, but it rang false to me. Not the fault of the actress or the character, I'll add - just really weird writing, but then again there was a fair amount of that in the JNT era... To reply to Merry, I think Tegan walking out at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks was just another feature of what is, for me, one of the more contradictory and nonsensical 80s who stories - the plot has more holes than a swiss cheese. ;D Magnus, I don't know when you'll get to see NuWho season 4/30, but for me the development of Donna as a character is one of the things the new series has done successfully. I agree - she was pretty awful in the Xmas special, and I cringed when I heard she was being brought back as a regular companion, but the character and the actress really did grow on me during the course of the series. I eagerly await your thoughts on her when you get the chance to see the episodes in question.
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Post by magnusgreel on Dec 7, 2008 10:05:02 GMT
I just saw the first 3 of s4 at a friend's house, two days ago. Donna is much better now. Otherwise, it seemed like a cavalcade of ideas lifted from classic Who.
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schrodinger
Cyberman
avatar amde by minami from deviantart
Posts: 299
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Post by schrodinger on Dec 7, 2008 16:47:45 GMT
(sorry Nyssa, that's a terrible reason to judge a person.) The thing that I don't like about Nyssa, is the way she completely got over the death of her entire civilisation in Logopolis, _in about two minutes_. I suppose you can rationalise that by saying she was traumatised or something, but it rang false to me. Not the fault of the actress or the character, I'll add - just really weird writing, but then again there was a fair amount of that in the JNT era... Nyssa wasn't human, so her emotions probably not the same as how a human would react. I liked her 'cause she sorta balanced things out in the TARDIS. Can you imagine just Adric and Tegan with the Doctor? She kept Tegan and Adric from arguing (like they did in Kinda, They argue anyway, but in Kinda it was really bad), and she gave Adric someone to be confused about earth with. Imagine the scene where Five is playing cricket, with just Adric trying to comprehend it. lol
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Post by merrythemad on Dec 7, 2008 19:43:30 GMT
The thing that I don't like about Nyssa, is the way she completely got over the death of her entire civilisation in Logopolis, _in about two minutes_. I suppose you can rationalise that by saying she was traumatised or something, but it rang false to me. Not the fault of the actress or the character, I'll add - just really weird writing, but then again there was a fair amount of that in the JNT era... Nyssa wasn't human, so her emotions probably not the same as how a human would react. I liked her 'cause she sorta balanced things out in the TARDIS. Can you imagine just Adric and Tegan with the Doctor? She kept Tegan and Adric from arguing (like they did in Kinda, They argue anyway, but in Kinda it was really bad), and she gave Adric someone to be confused about earth with. Imagine the scene where Five is playing cricket, with just Adric trying to comprehend it. lol While, I neither especially like or dislike Nyssa (aside from her name which is so pretty) I think one of the large "lessons", if you will, of the both the old and new series is that our feelings are what make us the same not what divide us. Hence, cybermen and daleks with their lack of emotion are among the ultimate evils. However, Schro, I think the rest of what you said regarding Nyssa's tenure is dead on. She provided someone for Adric to relate to and was something of a mediator with the other companions(as much as Tegan can be mediated).
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Post by magnusgreel on Dec 7, 2008 23:15:37 GMT
My perspective, based on life and/or what happenes in DW: Feelings divide us all the time. It's not just a matter of presence vs. absence of emotion, but different kinds of emotion based on your background. With Nyssa, I think it was a combination of that weird, awkward JNT era writing and the idea that her society was full of level-headed, detached thinkers and that she herself was a scientist.
Frankly, I think it was a relief that we didn't have to see generic grief scenes. I'm not saying anyone here would have wanted that, but that's how they might have handled it. Some economical moments showing that it did in fact affect her greatly in some way would have helped, though. The last thing I'd have wanted was an hour of tears in a generic fannish indulgent grief-fest. That's not interesting. I read a fanfic years ago about Five agonizing over Adric's death, and it was intolerable.
Daleks and Cybermen have and express plenty of emotion. Theirs are just the nasty kind, though. They're often angry and contemptuous and filled with ambition, all very emotional states. You can hear it in their voices (except Cybermen in the 60s, and maybe Tennant's). What they lack are the softer kinds of feelings.
There must be ways for people who have different experiences and different cultures to find common emotional ground and connect, despite different emotional reactions to the same things (which is why we have to talk to extremists), but who knows if it's the same with us and aliens? Different biology (and different neurotransmitters?) may even create divides we don't know about yet.
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Post by jjpor on Dec 7, 2008 23:18:23 GMT
I just saw the first 3 of s4 at a friend's house, two days ago. Donna is much better now. Otherwise, it seemed like a cavalcade of ideas lifted from classic Who. Yes, I think that s4 is like s3 in that it gets off to a weak start and then noticeably improves in the second half, before stumbling a bit at the end (and s4 stumbles a LOT worse at the end, in my opinion, than s3 did; maybe Moffat will be able to write season finales that make sense). For me, the watershed was the Agatha Christie episode. A lot of people seem to really like the Pompeii episode, but if I'm honest, it didn't do much for me; maybe I need to see it again. Regarding Nyssa, I think Schrodinger makes a decent point about her alienness - and about the dynamic between her and Adric. Being stuck in a box with just Tegan and Adric for company does sound like somebody's definition of hell, if I'm honest. I do agree with what what Magnus says, though; extended scenes of Nyssa grieving and angsting over the death of her people would have stopped the story and generally been gratuitous (JNT may have been excessive in many ways, but fortunately not in that; for contrast, see the way the new series occasionally wallows in this sort of thing), but it shouldn't seem as if, a scene later, she's just forgotten it as she, if I remember correctly, swaps pleasantries with Adric. I think 80s Who, though, has quite a few of these weird-seeming moments; they are not unique to Nyssa. As for Daleks, it always makes me laugh whenever somebody talks about them having their emotions removed, because they're almost hysterically emotional most of the time, driven by their anger and hatred and a general sort of anxiety and fear. You'd feel sorry for them if they weren't Daleks (and I think the Doctor sort of does, even if he is at the same time horrified by them).
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Post by Stripes on Dec 7, 2008 23:25:41 GMT
I just saw the first 3 of s4 at a friend's house, two days ago. Donna is much better now. Otherwise, it seemed like a cavalcade of ideas lifted from classic Who. Yes, I think that s4 is like s3 in that it gets off to a weak start and then noticeably improves in the second half, before stumbling a bit at the end (and s4 stumbles a LOT worse at the end, in my opinion, than s3 did; maybe Moffat will be able to write season finales that make sense). For me, the watershed was the Agatha Christie episode. A lot of people seem to really like the Pompeii episode, but if I'm honest, it didn't do much for me; maybe I need to see it again. Regarding Nyssa, I think Schrodinger makes a decent point about her alienness - and about the dynamic between her and Adric. Being stuck in a box with just Tegan and Adric for company does sound like somebody's definition of hell, if I'm honest... I didn't like the pompeii one at first, but it grew on me. I really liked the Agatha Chirstie one. Am I the only one who liked Stolen Earth & Journeys End? I also like RTD stories, most of them are my favourite.
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Post by magnusgreel on Dec 7, 2008 23:27:41 GMT
actually, jjpor, it was the last three of s3 that gave me a bit of renewed hope for Tennant DW. They were a great, emotionally overwhelming story to me. The SF elements were shaky, but at least large SF themes were being dealt with rather than ignored.
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Post by Stripes on Dec 7, 2008 23:32:18 GMT
actually, jjpor, it was the last three of s3 that gave me a bit of renewed hope for Tennant DW. They were a great, emotionally overwhelming story to me. The SF elements were shaky, but at least large SF themes were being dealt with rather than ignored. I agree! Plus The Master was in it, anythign with him in it makes me very happy.
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Post by jjpor on Dec 7, 2008 23:35:04 GMT
Am I the only one who liked Stolen Earth & Journeys End? I also like RTD stories, most of them are my favourite. I really liked the Stolen Earth, and the first two-thirds of Journey's End I thought that (spoiler, highlight): Davros was amazing. It was the ending that sort of ruined it for me, as I've said in quite ridiculous detail on other threads. ;D The two RTD episodes "Midnight" and "Turn Left" were for me the best of the season, which is hard for me to say, as a nasty RTD basher like I am. Magnus, regarding S3, when I say stumbles at the end, I mean the very end, way the story is wrapped up in the last episode - it seemed like an anticlimax after the buildup. Agreed that everything up to that point was pretty exciting.
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Post by Stripes on Dec 7, 2008 23:39:32 GMT
Am I the only one who liked Stolen Earth & Journeys End? I also like RTD stories, most of them are my favourite. I really liked the Stolen Earth, and the first two-thirds of Journey's End I thought that (spoiler, highlight): Davros was amazing. It was the ending that sort of ruined it for me, as I've said in quite ridiculous detail on other threads. ;D The two RTD episodes "Midnight" and "Turn Left" were for me the best of the season, which is hard for me to say, as a nasty RTD basher like I am. Magnus, regarding S3, when I say stumbles at the end, I mean the very end, way the story is wrapped up in the last episode - it seemed like an anticlimax after the buildup. I didn't mind the ending. It made happy that that story had finaly came to an end and we wouldn't have to see that person again. I also liked the big D. I liked claim music played when ever he came in. Now S3 ending, I found it sad. Now I am scared, so many plot holes when the next Master comes.
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lynda
Auton Daisy
Posts: 480
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Post by lynda on Dec 8, 2008 4:04:05 GMT
I love to hate RTD, and while waiting for s4 I really dreaded his stories, but the adipose one was really cute, if not particularly memorable, and then Midnight and Turn Left came and were some of the best episodes I'd ever seen. About that point we knew RTD as leaving, and I felt really really bad for complaining about him all the time. Then the last two stories came, and by the end of Journey's End I felt justified again in my occasional RTD-bashing. His main problem, as far as I can see, is he can't write huge-scale epic season finales. Give him something small and character-driven, like the filmed-in-one-room Midnight, and he does marvelously.
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Post by clocketpatch on Dec 8, 2008 4:09:13 GMT
You've hit the nail right on the head there Lynda. It's not that he's a bad writer; he's just writing outside his talentzone (and trying to make BIG! EPIC! badfic) and it's um...
well, what more can we expect from the man who thinks the Fox telemovie is the best example of DW ever created?
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Post by magnusgreel on Dec 8, 2008 6:28:05 GMT
I think RTD cares more about what things look like and making a quick impression, than in things making sense. (Literal clockwork robots with wooden gears that could not serve a function inside a robot's head, for no reason other than that it looks interesting to the viewer. Before this decade, no responsible producer would have allowed that except in a total fantasy.) He's too accepting of Hollywood gimmickry, and emulates it. He was probably responsible for increasing the personal, emotional content, so that's good, when it works and doesn't overwhelm and distract from the SF. Bickering families should not take up much air time.
I'm saying this without having it clear in my head which scripts were his or other people's. Partly I'm talking about him as producer I guess.
I love the first half hour of the Fox movie, the Sylvester part. If RTD loves the whole thing, then it reinforces my belief that he doesn't care much about whether things make sense.
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Post by jjpor on Dec 8, 2008 23:21:42 GMT
If RTD loves the whole thing, then it reinforces my belief that he doesn't care much about whether things make sense. Yes, I take back my earlier waverings on the RTD issue - burn him! Burn him! ;D More seriously, I think RTD is pretty much producer, executive producer, lead writer, script editor, chief cook and bottle-washer all rolled into one. Apparently, just about all of the scripts apart from Moffat's are extensively rewritten by Rusty before they ever air, so I think he's pretty much the man who the buck stops with in most cases. There's a fine line between treating the characters like real people with emotions and internal lives and veering into soap opera - to be fair, I think it's something the new series does a lot better later on, after the excesses of Rose's bickering clan. I think this may be because the producers have grown in confidence and come to accept that Who can be truer to itself and still be popular, without trying constantly to be all things to all people. To be fair, most of the supporting characters have been quite well-written and well-played, but there have been times, especially in the first two series, when they seemed more important to RTD than the stories and the ideas. If I want to watch soap opera, I watch soap opera; when I'm watching science-fiction, it's because I want to watch science-fiction. Having said all of that, the conclusion of Journey's End blew away a lot of the goodwill I had developed for the new series during seasons one, three and four (season two...let us speak not of season two), and may partly negate some of the things I say above. RTD sets up a jaw-dropping plot, and then casually and clumsily sweeps it away so that he can concentrate on the things that really matter to him. I second the comments made above; he is a very good writer when it comes to the small, character-driven stuff, not so much with the big, plot-driven stuff. What annoys me, however, is the implication from RTD that we are in some way deficient if we want the big plots and the sense of wonder over the character stuff. I think that good television needs a balance of both, but it's striking that balance that's the hard thing to do.
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Post by magnusgreel on Dec 9, 2008 9:27:30 GMT
Hey, jjpor, we agree even more than I thought!
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NonCom-Com
UNIT Red Shirt
Every night, when... the stars come out, I'll look up on her behalf. ...And think of you.
Posts: 29
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Post by NonCom-Com on Aug 3, 2009 23:02:36 GMT
My "favorite" is Wilf... He isn't technically a companion, so he is my favorite NonCompanion-Companion... Otherwise I have to many, Donna, Romana I, Tegan... I know there are more...
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