Dr. Who Season 3 Thread (1 Viewer)

[BrianW]

Thanks for the tip, Matthew. I'll definitely read that when I get a chance. Perhaps it will shed some light on my "talking points" above. I did think the story was very compelling, and David Tennant, as the reluctant but ultimately heroic Human John Smith, really shined. I thought his performance was very touching and very sweet. In a reversal of the usual trend, I'll be surprised if the novel measures up to the television version that just aired. I really enjoyed it.



Aside: My wife asked me why I enjoy watching Doctor Who, and I told her that watching Doctor Who makes me a better person. I don't think she believed me. Oh, well.

 

[Phil Florian]

My wife and I are on the Sci-Fi airing schedule so can only comment on that run but I have to add my praise to the Human Nature two parter. This season has been really inconsistent for me. I liked the opener and the Shakespeare follow up (as cheesy as it was, of course). They really lost me with the Dalek two parter and though solid, 42 and Lazarus didn't get us hooked again. But Famiy of Blood/Human Nature made me forget just about every complaint I had about this season by having the most compelling situation the Doctor has faced in a long time. It is now my favorite of the new series since RTD brought the show back.

It was nice to see Tenant getting to stretch a bit and play a character that is in many ways counter to the Doctor. I also liked to see Martha carrying more of the load. She is still the "rebound" Companion but dealing with it in a more interesting way. Having Jessica Hynes in it was also a treat. I loved her in Spaced and even her cameo in Shaun of the Dead. I really didn't know her beyond these and seeing that she has some dramatic chops was nice. Had she not totally made the strong decision at the end I would say she would make a great future companion. Their match would be akin to the pairing on the radio shows done since the tv show stopped in the 90's (where the doctor had a companion from the 19th century, if I recall).

Great story, fun marching minions (they kind of have mastered the whole "marching faceless horde" shot, haven't they?), cheesy space ship but great supporting cast, some real pathos, and a story that was worth wading through some milder episodes to get to enjoy.

One question. Do we know for sure that they are elimination Time Lords as a storyline? Is this akin to the declaration of no capes-no tights for Smallville? While it would be a cheesier addition I kind of miss the Time Lords as a sub plot. The Doctor being a renegade, The Master duking it out, etc. I would love to see something of his return and NOT another visit by the Daleks who, after years of special effects work, have ceased to be interesting or scary. The Eccelston doctor's encounter with the "last" one stored in the museum was a perfect ending that they should have stuck with for a while.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, the Face of Boe claimed that there was at least one other Gallifreyan kicking around. I'm guessing it's not Romana or the Rani.

Although, I have to admit, I'm not sure how the Daleks and Time Lords can really go extinct - I guess the Time War must have involved them each preventing the others from mastering time travel, but I suspect it would be really difficult to wipe out a time traveling species that was really determined to survive.

 

[Phil Florian]

Jason, good point. I forgot about the death scene for the Face. They never really explained that "Final Battle" that supposedly killed off both Daleks and Time Lords but I think he basically said something along the lines that it was fought all across time and space and he initiated some sort of "Armageddon" scenario that sacrificed all the Time Lords to defeat the Daleks. I think they were basically removed from the current time line at all points. Maybe it was something similar to how he got rid of the Daleks the last time (not including the "oooh, we have feelings and pig minions" episodes). I am surprised they have gone this long without dealing with it a bit more.

They really hinted at it in the first season but since then they kind of let it go a bit. It is there but not much more than wistful looks and so on. I would love to see more. They must be saving it up for something big, maybe? I like that they set up stories. They set up a fun return to the Elizabethan age when it was clear the Doctor had been there and upset them but he didn't know why. It could be a joke for a fun moment or a fine story seed.

On a more general note, are there any other classic villains we haven't seen? I am an old Baker fan but even those were catch as catch can because it wasn't consistently shown as a kid. We have Daleks and Cybermen but no Master, Time Lord bosses, Davros (wasn't he leader of the Daleks?) and...that's all I remember. I am sure there might be others. I don't think the series NEEDS retro baddies but they can be fun. He is lacking his Moriarty, though. I love the idea of a recurring bad guy but the faceless and monotonous Daleks and Cybermen are kind one-note, now. The latter was used well with the alternative universe storyline but I can't see them coming back yet again. Ugh. They kind of had a over-arching bad guy in the Eccelston season but it was a character in the background. No one really with the Doctor's level of intelligence, creativity and wit. Someone that he can verbally spar with (other than his Companions, of course...or Rose's mom).

 

[Ed Moroughan]

Regarding the Daleks, they weren't all dead were they? I thought they were locked in the Genesis Ark...until they were let out and trapped in nowhere.

 

[Jason Seaver]

I think I've read that Davies doesn't intend to deal with the specifics of the Time War in the time he's got left on the property (I believe he's done after the '10 series), and I kind of agree with that; Doctor Who has never really been about the paradoxes of time travel or the consequences of re-writing history, and spending too much time on that seems counter to the spirit of it.

I have a likely-irrational soft spot for the Sontarans, with their big puffy heads and no necks; I'm not sure how well they could be updated. Although, on the other hand, I think the conceit that they're all clones of the same guy would be fun to play with.

No Davros, please. I don't think they did a Dalek story without him after "Genesis of the Daleks", and there was never any point to using him again afterward.

 

[Tony J Case]

Well, we got the Macra in Gridlock, proving that the returning bad guys dont need to be a high profile race to ping on the Anorak radar.

As far as higher profile alien races go, there's only a couple more I can think of: the Sontarans or course, the Sea Devils/Silurians, and the Ice Warriors. The only other one on the list is that there's been a popuar swell of support for the Zygons - a one off bad guy from the 4th Doctor era.

Of course there's the rumor that they've got Ben Kingsley to play Davros in season 4 - but that comes from the Sun, so take it with a HUGE grain of salt. Several, in fact.

 

[BrianW]

I can do without the Daleks and the Cybermen, and I can definitely do without an arch nemesis. Arch enemies tend to be one-dimensionally bad (hmm, much like the Daleks and Cybermen, come to think of it), with no complexity of character or any other quality that lends itself to good story-telling. Even the Family of Blood, unredeemably bad as they were, weren't just going around doing bad stuff just for the fun of it like the mustache-twisting Master used to do. They were making a concerted bid to achieve immortality. Then they were going to go around doing bad stuff just for the fun of it. ()

I much prefer stories that involve more complex sources of conflict, like kitties who torture humans so they can show great compassion to humankind, or a ship's soul-less self-repair system run amok, scavenging the crew for spare parts, or an advanced medical nano-robotic technology that erroneously tries to rebuild the human race with gas masks of flesh and mortal head wounds.

I say, enough of villains who are bad because they want to be bad so bad! This new batch of seasons has definitely raised the bar for story-telling in the Who franchise, and I hope they keep it up.

 

[RickER]

Re: The Time War. A friend tells me it happened in one of the Big Finish audio CDs. He knew of it right away when i was talking about it. He doesnt have cable, so he only sees the new Who on DVD. He says some of the series writers wrote some Big finish stories, before the series came back. I dunno if the audio books are cannon, they must be.

 

[Phil Florian]

I wondered about that. I heard some of the audio shows starring McGann. I liked them a lot, actually. He is a cool actor and would have made a good ongoing Doctor if the Fox pilot didn't shat all over the storyline. Was that cannon, by the way? Didn't he "kill" the Master (Eric Roberts? Really??) in that movie?

Anyway, I will have to look up the audio book for this Time War. That would be neat. If as neat as some I found, that could be good.

BrianW, I agree with the idea of not having evil guys twirling mustachios and stuff. But I do like the idea of an intellectual equal to the Doctor who knows as much as he knows about time and the universe who might have differing opinions. The Doctor was a "bad guy" to a certain degree to his peers because he actively interfered, right (been a while since I saw any old ones). Maybe the Master is re-imagined to be of moral ambiguity akin to the Doctors but with a more selfish bent. Like Capt. Jack before his reformation? But a bit more devious.

I agree...Davros was annoying. I brought him up because he is one of the few old villains I could still remember...and I remember him annoying me.

 

[Jason Seaver]

What's really kind of incredible is that Doctor Who lasted as long as it did and didn't become a mess of continuity and repeated plots - the Daleks and Cybermen would each show up every few years, the Master a little more often, but whole years would go by without any of those being used.

I seem to recall some character called "Sil" being popular during the last couple series of the original incarnation. I could happily do without seeing (or, especially, hearing) that thing again.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Ya never know. Keep watching!

 

[joshEH]

Actually, there was a mention of the forthcoming Time War (approved by Russell T. Davies) in the Gallifrey: Panacea audio drama, in which Irving Braxiatel mentions that there are "rumors out there in the big wide universe — more than rumors, in fact — that something's coming to Gallifrey, something worse than you could possibly imagine."

Because of this, Braxiatel manages to remove the Time Lord biodata archive from Gallifrey, so that the Time Lords might someday be restored after their planet meets its doom in the Time War. (The audio books are largely considered canon by the BBC.)

Also, in the Eighth Doctor novel The Ancestor Cell, the Time Lords and Gallifrey are destroyed in a war they fight with an unnamed "Enemy," although it's unclear whether this is connected with the Time War from the new series.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

josh, you might want to put a spoiler tag on the part of your post about "The Sound of Drums" as that episode hasn't aired in the U.S. yet.

 

[joshEH]

Woops...took care of it.

 

[Phil Florian]

That's fantastic news about McGann. I have always liked the actor and hell make for a nice alternate to the current Doctor characterization (though I love it, too). Glad to know the audio shows are canon. I will definitely seek more of them out as they were really well produced and written. They also could tell stories that aren't limited by budget considerations, like the one that basically jumped in and out of a ton of different time periods. Seems most current episodes have one time period and that is it. Not much jumping around in between (which is fine, of course).

Thanks for hints of future goodness for the series! Also glad to hear that these last two episodes weren't a fluke.

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

Is that a rumor or has it been confirmed??

 

[joshEH]

The talks have indeed been going on (per McGann's media remarks), but that's about all we have at the moment. It'll be interesting to see how these Eighth Doctor stories would (hypothetically) fit into Russell Davies' upcoming plots for the rest of this season, and the next. I have no idea if we're going to also see the Tennant Doctor somehow integrated into the mix, but if it does go forward, it should be fairly smooth.

Before hearing this, I was -- at best -- hopeful either for a series of novels and/or some McGann-starring audio dramas depicting the events of the Time War (both would've been good), but the fact that they're at least discussing doing it onscreen and bringing McGann back is awesome news.

 

[BrianW]

Wow, that was brilliant! I can't remember when a television show has kept me on the edge of my seat like that!

From the perplexing opening teaser to the out-of-order ending, this episode never let up.

And the Lonely Assassins are as creepy as villains get. Well, to me, at least; I've had dreams like that involving ventriloquist dummies that move when you're not looking at them.


Off hand, I can't think of an episode I've enjoyed more.

 

[NeilO]

That was a great episode and I've had to go back and review bits of it. There are lots of nice touches. Since these were basically one-off characters we had no idea which of them would survive the episode, so the tension was very high. I hope in the DVD set for this season they have the Doctor's DVD easter-egg to Sally Sparrow as an actually easter-egg on some disc. It would be cool to see that one-sided coversation as such.

From listening to the commentary it seems that part of this was a budget savings exercise like with Love & Monsters in the previous series. They took half a day to shoot the parts of the Doctor and his companion and the rest of the schedule on this episode was with everyone else. Meanwhile, they are shooting another regular episode at the same time.

On the BBC website they have the original short story on which it was based. It is at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/episo...k_annual.shtml
They also have some of the DVD covers that they had to make for the episode. Since they weren't allowed to publicize any real DVDs they had to make them up for the store.

Neil