26 (edited by graybags 2024-06-08 08:58:06)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

Merc wrote:

it is not really Doctor Who. More like Doctor where are you? eps 5 and 4 he dont really figure in it?

Isn't that the start of the lyrics to the Scooby Doo cartoons?  smile

2020.  Meh.

27

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

s01e06 - Legit question from a straight man to someone gay

Spoiler

Do you feel this episode trivialized gay feelings/relationships?
As an outsider I couldn't help be look at this... 1 dance and there's a ring... 1 date and talk of "run away with me" and I was reminded of the joke "what does a lesbian bring on the second date? A U-Haul." and I'm sure the show producers weren't planning on the show being the punchline of a joke.

It seemed like this Doctor was willing to walk away from his life, Ruby, etc. after a 20 minute spark with someone... Which reduced his committment to his *best friend* whom he was responsible for her safety - or to bring this Capt Jack Light into his life without even knowing his real name.

I know I'd never do that with a woman I just met.  So it felt like it trivialized gay relationships/feelings/reactions whatever you want to call it.

28

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

Go Woke Go Broke

29 (edited by TheFizza 2024-06-12 10:20:59)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

SgtSaint wrote:

s01e06 - Legit question from a straight man to someone gay

Spoiler

Do you feel this episode trivialized gay feelings/relationships?
As an outsider I couldn't help be look at this... 1 dance and there's a ring... 1 date and talk of "run away with me" and I was reminded of the joke "what does a lesbian bring on the second date? A U-Haul." and I'm sure the show producers weren't planning on the show being the punchline of a joke.

It seemed like this Doctor was willing to walk away from his life, Ruby, etc. after a 20 minute spark with someone... Which reduced his commitment to his *best friend* whom he was responsible for her safety - or to bring this Capt Jack Light into his life without even knowing his real name.

I know I'd never do that with a woman I just met.  So it felt like it trivialized gay relationships/feelings/reactions whatever you want to call it.

Interesting perspective, thank you for sharing.

I hadn't seen any of that but arguably I was caught up on how, after all that build up with the bounty hunter's trap, that you could just pick up someone and jump in their place... I mean why didn't the Doctor do that and tell Ruby to wait in the TARDIS as he uses a beckon call to pick him up or something.

It was pointed out earlier in this string that this incarnation doesn't feel like the Doctor annnnd tho neither did The Valeyard, or heck did Six at times, what does seems frustrating, to me, is Fifteen's forward thinking seems sporadic at best. Whereas many a former Doctor might have a plan they had been laying from the start or a clever last minute trick, Fifteen is a bit more seat of their pants. I'm not sure if that's because this Doctor considered a new being and is not supposed to have got it together yet or if they are just a bit shite tongue

All that being as it is, I imagine the why Rusty likely got to 'go-ahead' to make such a shift into the realm of magic would have been because of the piss-poor ratings of the Whittaker Era. But I do think as a story teller RTD has a deft hand at tension and wibbly wobbly, timey wimey explanations and should be able to not offend with magic on the whole. Rusty's not very subtle when it comes to subtext but I'm here for the space adventure, if you wanna TOS it up go right ahead. Just give me a fun adventure.

And to that this last ep almost had me, there was a lot of the old '05 vibe to it but over all,  but not quite... Like with the whole Capt Jack we have at home thing, ROGUE was a bit of a miss for me, in more ways than one.

https://next-episode.net/sig/sig.php?alias=default&kk=fe18e3ede310c4d0ddb3af64211e19ec

30

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

TheFizza wrote:

how, after all that build up with the bounty hunter's trap, that you could just pick up someone and jump in their place... I mean why didn't the Doctor do that and tell Ruby to wait in the TARDIS as he uses the beckon call to pick him up or something.

I know, right?  WTF?  I was honestly expecting to see her shoes still stuck the trap since it was a molecular bond that appears to be... well... 1 molecule thick judging by the fancy honeycomb light pattern.  So how about just jumping out of your shoes and onto the un-trap space next to you?

Just played back that scene... What the actual fuuuu... He jumps in from the front, shoulders Ruby in a direction that would be INWARD of the triangle not out of, takes 3 more steps and turn...

Just a fraking mess of a scene if you are older than the Disney+ target audience.  Just like Dot+Bubble they couldn't hold on to their own rules & concepts for the duration of the show.

31

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

It may have been a proper episode but there were so many plot holes you could drain your veg with it.

32

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

We all have to face it, Doctor Who v3.0 or whatever the hell they've chosen to call it now is Disneyfied, Americanised, woke, inclusive, and a whole bunch of other modern words I can't be bothered to type.

Its target audience won't analyse it like we are and they won't care about the previous 60 years of Whovian lore.

Sad, sad times.

2020.  Meh.

33

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

graybags wrote:

We all have to face it, Doctor Who v3.0 or whatever the hell they've chosen to call it now is Disneyfied, Americanised, woke, inclusive, and a whole bunch of other modern words I can't be bothered to type.

Its target audience won't analyse it like we are and they won't care about the previous 60 years of Whovian lore.

Sad, sad times.

they are getting ready to turn him/her/it into a trans-person? thats the way of all things American

34 (edited by TheFizza 2024-06-13 05:25:51)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

graybags wrote:

We all have to face it, Doctor Who v3.0 or whatever the hell they've chosen to call it now is Disneyfied, Americanised, woke, inclusive, and a whole bunch of other modern words I can't be bothered to type.

Its target audience won't analyse it like we are and they won't care about the previous 60 years of Whovian lore.

Sad, sad times.

Not for nothin', everyone's entitled to an opinion, but as someone who came in well after the revival began but has watched all of classic Doctor Who, including reconstructions of the lost episodes, I kind of have to agree with this article title:
Doctor Who has always been woke!

https://next-episode.net/sig/sig.php?alias=default&kk=fe18e3ede310c4d0ddb3af64211e19ec

35

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

TheFizza wrote:
graybags wrote:

We all have to face it, Doctor Who v3.0 or whatever the hell they've chosen to call it now is Disneyfied, Americanised, woke, inclusive, and a whole bunch of other modern words I can't be bothered to type.

Its target audience won't analyse it like we are and they won't care about the previous 60 years of Whovian lore.

Sad, sad times.

Not for nothin', everyone's entitled to an opinion, but as someone who came in well after the revival began but has watched all of classic Doctor Who, including reconstructions of the lost episodes, I kind of have to agree with this article title:
Doctor Who has always been woke!

I read that article yesterday and I really don't agree with it at all.  I've never seen Doctor Who as "woke" until now.  It was ground breaking and all that, but not even close to what RTD has done to it.

2020.  Meh.

36

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

IMO classic Dr. Who wasn't woke at the time. There was no agenda it was just Dr. Who.

It's like comedy. Stuff that was funny in the past is now not allowed.

Yes Dr. Who from the past may have some woke stuff in it, but it wasn't made that way.

The difference is Dr. Who being made now is pushing agendas and being made with ideologies in mind.

Sometimes it can work if done correctly. Look at the latest season of The Boys. It has neddled some woke stuff in but kept to the feeling of the show and still managed to be brilliant.

37 (edited by SgtSaint 2024-06-13 23:09:44)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

Celleron wrote:

IMO classic Dr. Who wasn't woke at the time. There was no agenda it was just Dr. Who.

It's like comedy. Stuff that was funny in the past is now not allowed.

Yes Dr. Who from the past may have some woke stuff in it, but it wasn't made that way.

The difference is Dr. Who being made now is pushing agendas and being made with ideologies in mind.

Sometimes it can work if done correctly. Look at the latest season of The Boys. It has neddled some woke stuff in but kept to the feeling of the show and still managed to be brilliant.

100%

Another good example is old Star Trek versus new.  Trek even in the 1960's was groundbreaking.  They did interracial things.  They've address orientation and even body gender swaps.  Curzan Dax to Jadzia Dax for example.  Or Riker falling for a gender neutral from Angle One.  But the story was still the story not that being trans was the story.
It was always done as part of the story.  And told in a way that it simple *is*.  That's it.  People are people, now save the ship.  The message wasn't the reason for the show.  The show wasn't used as a vehicle to promote an agenda being aggressively stressed with every single scene, and the plot is just vaguely there to provide the framework that the producer's message can ride on.

Its the difference between Discovery trying to force it on you - and nobody accepts the show for it - versus something like Walker having a gay brother and that just simply *is*.  The audience can tell the difference between a show manufacturing scenes to cause controversy on purpose and a show that has two men or two women living naturally and affectionately in a real-life way.

38 (edited by TheFizza Today 04:51:42)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

I find it funny y'all seem to be disputing what I see as a tenant of most mainstream SF, since pretty much it's rise to popularly, the subversive nature baked into it and in fact most of the fiction we're talking about here.

For the most part, and often especially in the more commercial sort we are most often exposed to, SF has an undercurrent of subversion. Or at least had when it began to emerge as part of our fictional library as series like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek gained larger acceptance. A legacy that, from my perspective, series like TNG, Babylon 5, The Tomorrow People, Stargate, Farscape, Fringe and The X-Files then later Dark Matter, 12 Monkeys, The Orville and For All Mankind all continue. Along with drama and speculative discoveries there's usually some trend or trends that are expanded on.

Like when Eleven went to a world where they are perpetually stuck on a highway or when in the 1970s Survivors [spoilers on a 40 yr old series] when, after a pandemic that kills most of world's population, survivors in a small community vote to kill the developmentally delayed guy because they think he's a rapists and murderer. But after they do, they find the person who actually did it is essential personnel thus must compromise their beliefs to survive. These are all in part morality plays, they are satirizing the world we know by exaggerating something then exploring that exaggeration. It all comes together to form the SF soup on which we've all come accustomed to dining out.

Andromeda, The 100, Firefly, The Expanse, to name a few, all do this. They challenge perspective, long held ideals, satirize society and encourage diversity... And the most impressive thing about SF is that it can do all this in a safe space. Which is, in no small part, what has always drawn me to SF... since I first read of the Eloi and Morlocks, as a child.

Speaking to my development as a SF fan, the communities I matriculated through held ideals, often associated with most of the SF I have mentioned, in high esteem and that is acceptance/inclusion... We are the communities that the weirdos tend to be floating about in wearing capes, kilts and Star Fleet uniforms in everyday life. A thing which, from what it sounds like, many here might labeled as woke.

When I was a kid being taken to SF conventions, by my family, and folks would say things like IDIC [Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations] they were more than just words, they were aspirational. Just like all the ideals of Federation or of The Doctor or heck even of Dr. Weir and James Holden... as a result, I dare say, all my examples would fall under the definitions of woke... as well they would all likely also be labeled ANTIFA. But whatever we call them or however we each see them, using these hyperbolic terms seems to do nothing more than divide us...

I was under the impression we were all here to celebrate our common appreciation for series!?

Listen if you're not drawn to SF for the same reasons I am, one of which being because I have always seen myself as an outsider, that's cool. You do you. However, it just seems to me, to cry out this is all-of-a-sudden, something it was never... Well, that can't help being needlessly divisive and, in some part, disingenuous. Maybe when The Doctor preforms an act of social justice, like when he sabotaged the Company on Pluto, it's not what you came for but it's always been there... Since The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan first meddled in Skaro history, SF has had something to say... Since Lokai and Bele screamed at each other on the bridge of the Enterprise, SF has had something to say.

It may not have been, the gays aren't so bad, but it was something.

Denying it because one does not feel comfortable with what aspects of the status-quo these stories are challenging now when it was right there the whole time seems, to me, to say more about the viewer than the fiction. Tho this is just my opinion.

https://next-episode.net/sig/sig.php?alias=default&kk=fe18e3ede310c4d0ddb3af64211e19ec

39

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

Today's World is so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!

40 (edited by SgtSaint 2024-06-14 09:02:45)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

TheFizza wrote:

I was under the impression we were all here to celebrate our common appreciation for series!?

I think it would be more accurate to say:
> This is a space to discuss the show, good and bad, not just be yes-men and celebrate it blindly even when the scripts are sh!t.

I've tried to be fair through my earlier posts and give credit and even hope when there was reason for it.  If they did something good like elements of the land-mine episode I made a point of posting it.  If my comments seem to be weighted towards negativity I think that reflects at the balance of good and bad in the show, the writing, the directing and direction.

I'll put it much more blunt than that:
I don't give a darn who you are, who you date nor do a care what hole you're sticking it in - I just don't care one way or the other: Someone else's orientation doesn't change the cost of my Starbucks so I don't care.
I do care about horrible writing in my shows.  I do care about shows being hijacked in a way that 93.4% of the population are getting hammered by a message for the other 5.6% of the population AT THE EXPENSE OF the quality of the show.

B-5 had a great story - a pre-conceived 5 season arc in advance for F! sake.
The Expanse showed people of every orientation and relationship including entire polygomy ship|family.  No problem.  Great show and nobody ragging on the show for having gays, straights, poly, bi, whatever. Its not until the show, the actual show, takes a back seat to the creator's desire to use the show for their agenda does anyone get {rightfully} upset.

41 (edited by TheFizza 2024-06-17 02:43:20)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

SgtSaint wrote:

I'll put it much more blunt than that:
I don't give a darn who you are, who you date nor do a care what hole you're sticking it in - I just don't care one way or the other: Someone else's orientation doesn't change the cost of my Starbucks so I don't care.
I do care about horrible writing in my shows.  I do care about shows being hijacked in a way that 93.4% of the population are getting hammered by a message for the other 5.6% of the population AT THE EXPENSE OF the quality of the show.

I would wager you feel that way because you are among the groups which have traditionally not been under-represented or offensively represented. Those folks who haven't seen themselves or only see negative versions of themselves don't have that luxury to not care.

As for highjacked again that's hyperbolic terminology for essentially the passage of time... to the new generations making and watching series, this is important now. It's like when in the 1970s everyone was upset that there were black folks on TV not just playing small roles. It felt, to a lot to the white folks watching, that they were being forced to accept this when 'that just wasn't the way it was before and it was sooo much of it.' However that's because they were firstly under represented in the past and secondly because media wanted to catch up so quickly they pushed that re-evaluation of the status quo.

As for good or bad shows or writing, art is subjective... or to put it another way "one person's trash is another person's treasure."

SgtSaint wrote:

B-5 had a great story - a pre-conceived 5 season arc in advance for F! sake.
The Expanse showed people of every orientation and relationship including entire polygomy ship|family.  No problem.  Great show and nobody ragging on the show for having gays, straights, poly, bi, whatever. Its not until the show, the actual show, takes a back seat to the creator's desire to use the show for their agenda does anyone get {rightfully} upset.

Would it surprise you to know that Delenn from B5 was originally meant to have changed sex when they were in that cocoon?

Originally JMS wanted Delenn to start as a male and become a female then fall in love with a human male. Unfortunately that was one of myriad of changes forced upon him to get Babylon 5 made. Today this would be labeled woke but just by the fact that would have happened in the 90s it sound as though it might get a pass?!

That's not the way the world works, despite even my own wishes, it ever moves forward and one can become either time's convert or time's victim.

As for a show getting a back seat to politics, there's a little series called Star Trek which came out in the 60s and politics was pretty much a piece of every episode. I get it you don't like something challenging your views of how a series should go, and that's a shame because that's the way the wind is blowing. As the X-Men might say, "change or die!"... In other words, either evolve along with the world or you will always be back there lamenting, 'when I was young' to an ever dwindling group.

I'm not trying to say you can't like or dislike something but when you're only complaint is only 5.6% of the population is queer, that's ridiculousness. It's like saying only 40% of Americans are people of color so lets just program for the 60%. And when you're in a capitalist nation it isn't likely that companies like CBS wouldn't want to make money from all quadrants. Not to sound reductive but from my perspective you're yelling into a storm.

That came off harsher than I intended, I think, apologies... Really, I'm just saying if you don't like the story, give me the plot issues that tangle you up, let chat about it. You don't like the 'agenda' then as that has nothing to do with anything, either tune out of the show or educate yourself to maybe understand why this is an important trend to many folks?!

I legit stopped watching Discovery because it wasn't the Trek I wanted to watch... no big deal.

But again this all just my opinion.

https://next-episode.net/sig/sig.php?alias=default&kk=fe18e3ede310c4d0ddb3af64211e19ec

42

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

Huh.

Spoiler
some_one wrote:

the original was mostly "the best we could come up with on a budget of 'random generic costumes and someone's backyard'" episodes.

For some reason, when I wrote that, I kept thinking of Pyramids of Mars, specifically. It's one of the few original episodes I ever watched. It's also where the newly revealed big bad originated.


Kinda puts another point against the complaints about there being magic now: there were always beings in DW canon whose power remained poorly if at all explained. The sisterhood of Karn (originated two stories after PoM) are "witches" from Gallifrey who are "unscientific". That's all that's ever explained. Even in the new(er) show, there are the "words instead of science" witches from that Shakespeare episode, or that thing from "The Satan Pit". One of the other "gods" mentioned in the current episode was the "Trickster" which has also been around for a few years.

Even the Toymaker was already anything but a new character. Putting it into sci-fi terms, this stuff is mostly just "these beings are not from our reality, so they don't have to follow the rules of our reality. They do have to follow the rules of their own reality though, which we are usually able to break - like cheating at games". That's been around as a concept in scifi in general for a long time as well. It doesn't have to be "magic" just because the UNIT people call it that.


Anyway. Episode was reasonably entertaining. Is it the neighbour who is gonna end up being Susan? Also, the Doctor implied to have a granddaughter despite not having had children yet. Except we know that he does, actually?

43

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

TheFizza wrote:

I find it funny y'all seem to be disputing what I see as a tenant of most mainstream SF, since pretty much it's rise to popularly, the subversive nature baked into it and in fact most of the fiction we're talking about here.

For the most part, and often especially the more commercial sort we are most often exposed to, SF has an undercurrent of subversion. Or at least had when began to emerge as part of our fictional library as series like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek gained larger acceptance. A legacy that, from my perspective, series like TNG, Babylon 5, The Tomorrow People, Stargate, Farscape, Fringe and The X-Files and later Dark Matter, 12 Monkeys, The Orville and For All Mankind all continue. Along with drama and speculative discoveries there's usually some trend or trends that are expanded on.

Like when Eleven went to a world where they are perpetually stuck on a highway or when in the 1970s Survivors [spoilers on a 40 yr old series] when every votes to kill the developmentally delayed guy because they think he's a rapists and murderer. But after they do, they find the person who actually did it, is essential personnel thus must compromise their believes to survive. These are all in part morality plays, they are satirizing the world we know by exaggerating something then exploring that exaggeration. It all come together to form the SF soup on which we have come to dine out on.

Andromeda, The 100, Firefly, The Expanse, to name a few, all do this. They challenge perspective, long held ideals, satirize society and encourage diversity... And the most impressive thing about SF is that it can do all this in a safe space. Which is, in no small part, what has always drawn me to SF... since I first read of the Eloi and Morlocks, as a child.

And speaking to my development as a SF fan, the communities I matriculated through held ideals often associated with most of the SF I have mentioned in high esteem, and that is acceptance and inclusion... We are the communities that the weirdos tend to be floating about in wearing capes, kilts and Star Fleet uniforms in everyday life. All thing which, from what it sounds like, many here might labeled as woke.

When I was a kid being taken to SF conventions, by my family, and folks would say things like IDIC [Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations] they were more than just words, they were aspirational. Just like all the ideals of Federation or of The Doctor or heck even of Dr. Weir and James Holden... as a result, I dare say, all my examples would fall under the definitions of woke... as well they would all likely also be labeled ANTIFA. But whatever we call them or however we each see them, using these hyperbolic terms seems to do nothing more than divide us...

I was under the impression we were all here to celebrate our common appreciation for series!?

Listen if you're not drawn to SF for the same reasons I am, one of which being because I have always seen myself as an outsider, that's cool. You do you. However, it just seems to me, to cry out this is all-of-a-sudden, something it was never... Well that can't help being needlessly divisive and, in some part, disingenuous. Maybe when The Doctor preforms and act of social justice, like when he sabotaged the Company on Pluto, it's not what you came for but it's always been there... Since The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan first meddled in Skaro history, SF has had something to say... Since Lokai and Bele screamed at each other on the bridge of the Enterprise, SF has had something to say.

It may not have been, the gays aren't so bad, but it was something.

Denying it because one does not feel comfortable with what aspects of the status-quo these stories are challenging now when it was right there the whole time seems, to me, to say more about the viewer than the fiction. Tho this is just my opinion.

Amazing post and well said.

44

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

Near as I can tell, this is still just Doctor Who with yet another annoying new Doctor: same backstory, same succession of previous Doctors, same premise...

I can certainly understand not liking it (I don't like most of the Doctors), but if the previous shows were the same series, I don't really see how this one isn't the same series... Changing the doctor or the mood of the show, doesn't change it to a different show; Doctor Who has changed this way many times & this change seems no more significant to me than some previous ones which were still considered the same series.

45 (edited by TheFizza 2024-11-11 05:54:57)

Re: Doctor Who (2024)

So, over the time since the last season of DW aired I've been on a journey to understand what happened with this latest incarnation. As for me, while it was a step up from the last era it still felt somewhat hollow. I've read, I've talked, I've listened and I've also watched folks break the season down. As a result, I wanted to share this very-very long video and see what others (if they can or even what to make it through) think about it: https://youtu.be/QJw8SI8ebKI

https://next-episode.net/sig/sig.php?alias=default&kk=fe18e3ede310c4d0ddb3af64211e19ec