General TV News

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Wrathbone
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Re: General TV News

Post by Wrathbone » Tue May 10, 2022 1:34 pm

Raid wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:09 pm
I went to see if I could find a list of stories set there, and found a wiki page longer than my university dissertation.
That's brilliant. I had a brief look over episode descriptions and to be fair the Doctor went to Colchester once, so he's venturing out. :lol:

I think the problem is that the writers aren't interested in writing about the Doctor a lot of the time. Locations aside, it used to be that the Doctor had an assistant, or maybe two if things got really bad. Now there's a whole entourage of randomers wandering about, bloating stories with their mundanity while the Doctor gets on with spacetime adventures off-screen. The last episode with Jodie Whittaker that I half-watched barely featured her, and I seem to remember two Londoners having a slow and tedious heart-to-heart in a London kitchen. It was like Eastenders with sporadic glimpses of a dalek.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Sly Boots » Tue May 10, 2022 1:53 pm

Wrathbone wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:34 pm
Raid wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 1:09 pm
I went to see if I could find a list of stories set there, and found a wiki page longer than my university dissertation.
That's brilliant. I had a brief look over episode descriptions and to be fair the Doctor went to Colchester once, so he's venturing out. :lol:

I think the problem is that the writers aren't interested in writing about the Doctor a lot of the time. Locations aside, it used to be that the Doctor had an assistant, or maybe two if things got really bad. Now there's a whole entourage of randomers wandering about, bloating stories with their mundanity while the Doctor gets on with spacetime adventures off-screen. The last episode with Jodie Whittaker that I half-watched barely featured her, and I seem to remember two Londoners having a slow and tedious heart-to-heart in a London kitchen. It was like Eastenders with sporadic glimpses of a dalek.
Yes, this, and afaik it's a phenomenon that began with Whittaker... almost like the writers were afraid a female doctor wasn't enough of a draw and they needed a massive cast of characters. Including Bradley frickin' Walsh! It was another layer of awful on a dreadful period for the show, where the writing just dropped to the worst kind of preachy-but-written-for-concussed-toddlers quality, which meant I switched off about halfway through her first series. Which was a shame as taken solely as a doctor, I don't think Whittaker was all that bad. But everything else made it unwatchable.

I have no opinion on the identity of the next doctor, and I shall give them a chance when it airs, for me the main issue that needs to be addressed is the writing quality.

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Raid
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Re: General TV News

Post by Raid » Tue May 10, 2022 2:02 pm

Everything I hear about the Whittaker series just makes it sound worse and worse. I only ever watched her first story and frankly can't remember much about it, just that it wasn't great, but there did seem to be four or five human characters that I couldn't have cared less about. You don't watch a recently regenerated Doctor's first episode for the assistants.

To be fair, the only assistant I ever actually liked was Amy, because it didn't feel like she just deferred to The Doctor as a general rule. I had no issue with a story being about her because she was an entertaining character in her own right, and not just there as someone for The Doctor to explain things to. Captain Jack wasn't bad, but I don't recall him really being a permanent fixture.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Sly Boots » Tue May 10, 2022 2:04 pm

I actually really liked Martha (Freema Agyemang), thought she struck a good balance of being a strong female character while being interesting and rooted in life outside of her relationship with the doctor, no idea why she only lasted one season. I hated hated hated Catherine Tate, who seemed to be in the show for blimmin' ages. A character whose defining straight is stroppiness is not good viewing.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Raid » Tue May 10, 2022 2:42 pm

I can't remember Martha's character at all. I remember her voice and what she looked like, but I can't remember where she comes from, why she leaves, or any of the stories in between. I can remember bits from The Stolen Earth, but I think she's a bit different in that one having become a soldier by that point. I don't remember disliking her, I just don't think she made any impression on me.

I actually didn't hate Catherine Tate in the role, but only because she was vaguely similar to Amy in that she didn't just take The Doctor's word for it all the time. She was more interesting, than Rose or Martha. Oh, she was annoying as hell with the constant exasperation, but that was Tate's brand of acting.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Animalmother » Fri May 20, 2022 2:01 pm

For Letterkenny fans..

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Re: General TV News

Post by Drarok » Fri May 20, 2022 4:03 pm

I'd give it a go.

I'm surprised we're not giving it a go right now.
Raid wrote:
Thu Jan 28, 2021 2:24 pm
And that's the story of why I'm not allowed near pregnant women for the next few weeks.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Sly Boots » Sat May 21, 2022 10:03 pm

Animalmother wrote:
Mon May 09, 2022 9:28 pm
New season of Love, Death & Robots out next week, woooo!!!
Just watched the first three, and if it maintains this quality throughout it's probably the best series so far (1 was great, 2 was ehhh).

Three Robots is always fun, Bad Travelling was just spectacular and The Very Pulse of the Machine was art.

Good stuff so far.

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Re: General TV News

Post by ManBearSquid » Sun May 22, 2022 12:28 pm

I rinsed through it all yesterday. It's a very good season. Even stronger than the first, I think - less fat due to less episodes.

Season 2 was indeed a bit meh overall.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Animalmother » Sun May 22, 2022 1:38 pm

Watched the first 2 episodes and it's off to a very good start. Bad Traveling is amazing, from the character design and general atmosphere it could almost certainly be set in the Dishonored universe. Looking forward to the rest.

Season 2 was indeed very disappointing to the point I can barely remember much of the episodes. Snow in the Desert was pretty great though.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Sly Boots » Sun May 22, 2022 8:44 pm

Animalmother wrote:
Sun May 22, 2022 1:38 pm
Watched the first 2 episodes and it's off to a very good start. Bad Traveling is amazing, from the character design and general atmosphere it could almost certainly be set in the Dishonored universe. Looking forward to the rest.

Season 2 was indeed very disappointing to the point I can barely remember much of the episodes. Snow in the Desert was pretty great though.
Finished it tonight, overall very good, Bad Travelling still the best imo, but enjoyed more or less all the others.

That said, I really don't know what to make of the last one, Jibaro. Impressive animation, but the filmatography was odd, sometimes genuinely disturbing... actually made me uncomfortable watching it. I can't say I enjoyed watching it, but I was still thinking about it for a while afterwards.

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Re: General TV News

Post by arqueturus » Mon May 23, 2022 12:13 pm

It was a bit heavy on the Death this season wasn't it?

Standouts for me were The Heart of the Machine, Kill Team Kill, Swarm and Jibaro - agree that it was unsettling on the eye but the style was amazing.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Sly Boots » Tue May 24, 2022 4:16 pm

So, apparently an episode of Stranger Things 4 is going to be two and a half hours long :shock:

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Raid
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Re: General TV News

Post by Raid » Tue May 24, 2022 4:28 pm

Hopefully it's the finale. I don't mind sitting down to something like that as an event, but if they've thrown it into the middle of the season then it's going to be irritating to find time to watch it before you can continue with the rest.

It's a bloody long time since season 3 (it came out in The Before Times), I can't say I've got a ton of enthusiasm for season 4.

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Re: General TV News

Post by Sly Boots » Tue May 24, 2022 5:16 pm

Raid wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 4:28 pm
Hopefully it's the finale. I don't mind sitting down to something like that as an event, but if they've thrown it into the middle of the season then it's going to be irritating to find time to watch it before you can continue with the rest.

It's a bloody long time since season 3 (it came out in The Before Times), I can't say I've got a ton of enthusiasm for season 4.
Yeah, it's the finale afaik.

But there's going to be a couple of others that are over an hour long, it seems. And it's another one doing that weird split-season thing, with some now and the rest to come in July. I'm finding this recent trend quite annoying, and no doubt I'll leave off watching any of it until it's wrapped up. There's zero chance of me remembering what's going on in that intervening month :lol:

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