10 O'Clock Live - S2E2 Pre-review

Reading some tweets. It seems it's again Charlie who's going to snatch the points. Apparently he's going to rap? A Sun Poem? Hmmm...

10 O'Clock Live - Season 2, Episode 1

So, it’s been a week since the first episode of season 2 aired and it’s already been a few hours since the second episode aired and I haven’t even said anything about the first episode. I have to admit that my attention was taking up by other things, but I have already watched the first episode and I am now waiting for the second episode to surface on YouTube.

I didn’t do an exhaustive research. I didn’t even check Twitter to see what the reactions were. So, what follows are my view on the show only.

First thing that actually popped in my head just now was that the audience wasn’t half as annoying as last year; I didn’t even really notice them. That’s definitely a plus, though the lack of responses might have had something to do with the tepid start of the season.

No-one stood out.

The only thing I remember Jimmy Carr doing is a dreadful sketch; so that they didn’t take out. Shame. He must have done a ‘Week that’s been’, but I can’t remember a single word of it, so it probably wasn’t very impressive.

Charlie Brooker wasn’t impressive either; forgot his piece as well. No, hold on, I do remember him wearing an incubator. Okay, so minor points for impressiveness.

David Mitchell lost his speech segment of which I forgot the title; he now only did an interview. I forgot what the subject was. Not really impressive I guess. What I do remember about the interview is that someone on YouTube said the interviewees were annoying talking over David. So yeah, no points there. I said it last year and I keep saying it: “David should get some education about interviewing techniques”.

Then we have…uh…thingie…Oh, Lauren Laverne. She’s the ringleader, like last season, which means she has not much to do.

In one sentence, I found the first episode rather boring. At least last season the audience gave us something to grumble about.

Points:
Charlie Brooker, hesitantly 1 for doing something vaguely memorable.
Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell & Lauren Laverne, 0 for failing to make any impression at all.

the Doctor's messy state of mind

I found a creepily accurate and detailed website about Gallifrey and about the Doctor. However, reading the Doctor's personal timeline is highly amusing:

In his fifth incarnation:
The Doctor looses his spare Mark 2 Sonic Screwdriver under the TARDIS console. (Don't mind how canon it is, just check the link below)

In his eigth incarnation:
The Doctor finds his spare Sonic Screwdriver under the console.

He's such an idiot.
5th Doctor's timeline
8th Doctor's timeline

"10 O'Clock Live" - They're Back!...Nearly.

Coming Wednesday will see the start of season 2 of "10 O'Clock Live". They said they learnt from last year; it's shorter... Yes...

I feel I ought to get back into the swing of things and start reviewing. Well, not quite yet. I'm probably gonna be way behind, because my internet connection at home has been reduced to my phone and the show will now be on on Wednesdays. Hardly a convenient day for me to dedicate myself to other things than work. Also, only thinking about it makes me feel exhausted.

Anyhoo, they were on to something, so maybe they really did learn. Also they had a nice break, a lengthy one in which a lot of reflection could take place. I'm curious how this season will work out. Eventhough things didn't go as perfect as hoped, I still think this could become something great. Let's just wait and see.

I am Pleased

Interview with Paul McGann (8th Doctor)
You’ve also been working with Carole Ann Ford as Susan again.
I’m enjoying going back – you can’t really say that in Doctor Who, can you? – going sideways to the stories involving the great grandson and granddaughter. I’m fascinated by the history, the idea that Bill Hartnell first appeared with a granddaughter.
When one stands there on stage on your tod, yakking to 300 serious Doctor Who fans, sometimes it’s electric because you ask these questions about the mythology and there’s people out there with degree-level knowledge about such matters. I’m always amazed that people out there have timelines, essays in their head about what happened when and to whom. I never understood it to start with and was never a fan anyway as a kid, I just watched the other channel, I watched the football! But I’ve really grown to be seriously fascinated, as much by the people, by its adherents, as the stories themselves. I’m kind of a newfound… I don’t know if I can call myself a fan, I don’t know about anything, I couldn’t even get an O level in it, let alone a degree in it! But the last couple of years in particular the penny’s really dropped about it.

This really pleases me. Paul McGann has always admitted he was not a Doctor Who fan. He never really watched Doctor Who when he was young, nor did he ever understand it. However, over the years, since he started (I am saying “started”, because actors taking up the part never really stop playing the Doctor, maybe except for Christopher Eccleston.) he started to get more interested, even fascinated, by the characters and the stories in the Whoniverse. For me that’s a big reason why I love Doctor Who (the series) as much as I do. Of course I’ve got also a fascination with the Doctor, but never mind that… Anyway, I am so pleased because he (Paul McGann) now understands a great part of why fans love Doctor Who. And the fact that he hung in there with us crazy fans only receives bucket loads of respect.

Source: Interview in Big Finish Vortex Magazine August 2010

Doctor Who - the New Movie

So they want to make a new Doctor Who movie? As a good traditional Doctor Who fan I cried: “No!” when I first heard it. Some time has passed and I thought about the possibilities. There’s a lot possible, all of the possibilities equally exciting and dangerous. Just like most Whovians, I’m scared. David Yates, the man who directed the last four Harry Potter movies, said he wanted to start from scratch. You could hear the teeth gritting and the fist clenching. I must be honest; those sounds might have been my own.

And to keep in the process of being honest, nobody knows yet what that means. Does it mean he wants to reinvent the character the Doctor? Does that mean he wants to reinvent Doctor Who as a franchise? Or does that mean that he doesn’t want….? What!? Either way, it sounds like it’s not going to be canon, or will it? In most of the possibilities listed above, it sounds like it won’t be. Not necessarily a big problem, but I can tell you that I don’t usually enjoy works much which are canon-questionable or not canon at all. It takes the art of letting go of the reason why we, or at least I, love Doctor Who so much. I know why I am a fan and I’m not very likely to let that drift for the sake of a freakin’ movie, which to my ears sounds like ‘cashing in’ anyway.

And even when they decide to make it canon? Now I get even more scared. I can easily disregard a work that isn’t canon, but it’s hard to get over a work that says it is canon, but plays with the canon so much it brings tears to, well, my eyes. I’m still not over Paul McGann claiming he’s half-human, no matter how much I love his portrayal of the Doctor. I know certain aspects that popped up in the TV-show are hard to fit in the canon, but usually they could be filed away as one of the many lies of the Doctor, or time in flux, or some alternative timeline. It can be done, but still hurts a little. Things like the Doctor claiming he’s half-human, on his freakin’ mother’s side, just hurt so bad, nobody wants to even talk about it, but the scar tissue is there.

They could chose to fill in some gaps, like the Doctor’s life before it got well documented. I’m talking about the time before he kidnapped Ian and Barbara. That creates the risk of abandoning the Doctor’s mystery. Right now we don’t know much about the Doctor’s origin. We’re not even sure if he got born in the traditional way, got loomed into life, or even had a life before that. The uncertainty of his origins allowed a lot of writers to play with it. Make suggestions and turn ideas about who the Doctor is on its head. Always exciting, but never more than a tip of what might be. We might even run the risk of finding out what his real name is, though I hope David Yates is at least smart enough not to touch that.

Or, they could try to film the Last Great Time War. How that would work? Probably not very well. The Last Great Time War has grown so mythical and most fans have already envisioned such great scenes and ideas about that war, it can almost only disappoint. On the other hand, they could let Paul McGann come back and let him show what he can do with the character. And maybe, they can also show the regeneration from McGann to Christopher Eccleston. Oooh!!! But still, trying to capture that period of time in the Doctor’s life is very dangerous. Also, it doesn’t sound like that’s what Yates wants to do.

How will the movie be placed within the franchise anyway? The TV-show is still running and doesn’t really need a reboot, does it? And with the movie probably not being canon, I don’t see much of a place for it at all. Just like the Peter Cushing films, the ones made in the ‘60’s, the movie will then be snowed under by the canon Doctor Who stuff. Why would you make a product like that? Even if it is to pull in new audiences, as if that’s really necessary, how would that work? Those new fans then just have to drop in in the middle of the TV-show? Sure it can be done, but with no cooperation between the two, how is that ever going to run smoothly? If anything, the chances of alienating the existing fanbase is incredibly big. Is it worth a leap like that?

What about the casting? Yates said no-one ever involved in the series will be involved in this new project. Or did I understand that wrong? God I hope I did, cause this way it sounds even worse and less likely this movie is going to be about the character I love. It almost sounds like a bad biographical documentary by someone who was looking from the sidelines. Oh hold on, David Yates is looking from the sidelines.

*Hyperventilating*

I’m going to stop now; I don’t want to end up like Davros and be in a constant state of nervous excitement and blood pressure. Though on the other hand, I then could send the Daleks and exterminate the project.

Doctor Who and Violence - Part 3

In a documentary Peter Davison, who played the 5th incarnation of the Doctor, said it didn't bother him, the violence. LOL. Go figure.

So there you have it, the 5th incarnation of the Doctor is the most violent one.