Doctor Who

[Mara 29]

LOL, yes, I know they list the title.

IMDB should be okay in finding out which season/series it's in.

Seems PBS is in season 2, current episode "the Girl in the Fireplace."

Edited May 12, 2008 by Mara

[Andy 60]

Ah, season 28.

Yeah it's generally fine to jump right into those ones. It's early on in that season so most things will probably have a brief explanation (if required) for new viewers anyway. :)

Edited May 14, 2008 by Andy

[Andy 60]

I voted for the 5th Doctor, yay

With his little stick of celery. hehe

I loved the Time Crash charity episode where the 5th and the 10th Doctor meets himself. hehe

[Bad furday 57]

Voted for the Fourth Doctor! Tom Baker with his scarf :D

[Mara 29]

28? IMDB calls it season 2, lol. But IMDB is just like Wikipedia...used-based information.

Okay. Well, perhaps I will remember it to tape it someday.

[Andy 60]

Yeah, it's a big argument. When they revived the show in 2005 they called it the "first series" and have labelled them as such on the DVD boxsets etc. even though it doesn't technically make sense as they have continued on from the previous seasons of the show, which ended on season 26.

It only makes sense to start from 1 again if the new series was starting fresh, but as they continued with the previous 42 years of history they should have continued the numbering from season 27 onwards.

IMO. ;)

Edited May 15, 2008 by Andy

[Mara 29]

Yeah, I agree.

Otherwise, aren't there now like double season/series 1s, etc? I think that would have been more confusing. Usually things only start over again at 1 if it's actually a new series, like the iterations of Star Trek.

I don't even think IMBD had anything on there before 2005, unless it was listed separately, as a "separate" show. I'd have to look.

The official site would be more accurate, though, methinks.

But you still don't think I would miss too much starting "in the middle" with the second season 2?

[Andy 60]

The episode you mentioned was the 4th episode, so you're not quite in the middle yet.

I don't think you'll have missed anything of too much importance. lol

[Mara 29]

I meant being that it's the 28th, not the 2nd... it's sort of the middle. Or is each season a separate entity?

[Andy 60]

There is a continuity, but each season generally has it's own plot that is resolved in the season finale.

Occasionally they will do a flashback to remind you of something that happened previously. You shouldn't have too much trouble following it though, it's designed for family viewing, so even kids should be able to follow it without too much trouble.

[Mara 29]

All right. Easier than "LOST," eh? :p

[Andy 60]

Yeah. I only saw a few of those... and I found it to be an aptly named show. :p

[Mara 29]

Hahahaha. :p

[Andy 60]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7411177.stm

So, finally Russel T Davies has stepped down as executive producer of Doctor Who.

Davies will remain in command for the specials next year, but season 31 (or season 5, depending on you POV) will be headed up by Bafta award winning Steven Moffat.

Moffat has been responsible for some of the best episodes of recent times, including The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances (2005), The Girl in the Fireplace (2006), Blink (2007), and the Children in Need special, Time Crash (2007). Also, he has written a two-part yet-to-air story for 2008: Silence in the Library & Forest of the Dead.

I look forward to seeing what he can do with the creative reigns to the BBC's flagship sci-fi drama.

So, what were your thoughts of Russel T Davies' leadership?

Loved Steven Moffat's episodes?

Any other thoughts?

Edited June 28, 2008 by beeurd

[Bad furday 57]

I loved the Blink episode! Scary, engrossing, and even though it's a Dr. lite episode, it works so well that there's minimal Dr. parts.

I bought the "The Angels Have the Phonebox"/ "Don't Blink" shirt from xenoapparel.com Fantastic!

Ps........Had that episode come out a few years earlier, I would have been totally creeped out to be one of the few people in the statues secton of the Met. :shifty:

[Andy 60]

I was never a fan of the Doctor-lite episodes, but Blink is awesome. :D

[Andy 60]

Scary episode! I loved it.

I had been thinking that this series was rather week, but this episode was great. Good old fashioned mysterious adversary, harking back to the classic era. And didn't seem rushed at all.

It's in the same vein as 42 from season 29, but as good as Blink, I thought.

Next week is this season's Doctor-lite episode, Turn Left, with the trailer with the words "The Doctor is dead" near the beginning. Presumably it is up to Donna to fix everything.

Oh, and lalalalalalalalalalalalala ROSE too. I couldn't just say "Rose" and spoilerise it because a word that short would have been obvious....so I'm padding it out abit, lol. Even though it's not really a spoiler seeing as it's been hinted at all season and is in the trailer...

:)

[Andy 60]

Well executed episode, I thought.

It's a good old-fashioned "what if" episode, which usually tend to be poor.

COMMENCE WITH THE SPOILERS!

So, we start of with a short scene of the Doctor and Donna enjoying an alien version of chinatown, which seems pretty reminiscent of the Roman market in Fires of Pompeii... Anyways, Donna is tempted by a fortune teller who urges her to change an important decision in her life... There is something on her back - a time beetle used to hold a paradox in place when Donna changes her mind and turns right taking a different job over the one that leads her to meeting the Doctor in The Runaway Bride.

Right at the beginning of the episode we flash through the alternate realities of Donna not meeting the Doctor:

The Runaway Bride - Donna isn't there to stop the Doctor, and he is crushed by the forces of the Thames crashing down into HC Clements' basement, and is unable to regenerate. The Racknoss is killed by British military forces, although not under Mr Saxon's orders; the Master is still stuck searching for Utopia as Proffessor Yana.

Rose then appears, having jumped in from the alternate Earth, searching for the Doctor, and is told that the Doctor is dead.

Smith and Jones - The hospital is taken to the moon by the Sontarans, but the Doctor isn't there. Sarah Jane fills in and tries to stop it, and while she succeeds in stopping the magnetic pulse killing all life on Earth, there is only one survivor... Martha Jones dies in the incident, as she too has not met the Doctor.

Donna is sacked from her job, as damage from the events of Runaway Bride have caused a lack of business. Rose appears again, urging Donna to use a raffle ticket she had to win a holiday away from London next Christmas.

Voyage of the Damned - As the Doctor is not on board the Titanic replica, it smashes into London, causing a nuclear explosion that wipes out the city, and displaces millions of people from the south of England. Donna and her family, having taken Rose's advice are out of the city and survive, to be rehoused in Leeds.

Partners in Crime - America pledges to help the UK recover, but the Adipose strike America, turning millions of humans into walking blobs of fat. This would have happened in the UK, if it weren't for the Titanic collision. So the US is unable to help.

The Sontaran Stratagem - Britain is mostly unaffected, as nobody can afford cars any more. Rose visits Donna again, and describes how the Torchwood team have sacrificed their lives to destroy the Sontaran ship and save Earth. Rose urges Donna that she is the only one who can stop all this.

Things gradually get worse in the UK, culminating in non-British citizens being sent to "labour camps". Eventually, when Donna and her grandfather, Wilf, see the stars going out Donna decides she is ready.

Donna is taken to a UNIT base, where they have built a make-shift time machine from studying the Doctors dying TARDIS, and she is sent back in time to make sure she takes the HC Clement's job so she can save the Doctor and restor the proper timeline.

Unfortunately she realises that the only way to stop herself is to jump in front of a lorry, thus blocking off the road so she is forced to turn left. As Donna lays dying, Rose appears once more to whisper two words in her ear to tell the Doctor...

The paradox is broken, and back in the proper timeline the beetle dies, and the fortune teller runs away. The Doctor pops his head into the tent to see if everything is okay. As Roase never told Donna her name, Donna can't tell the Doctor it was her, but then she tells him the two words Rose told her in the parallel world...

BAD WOLF

Immediately the Doctor looks horrified, and sprints outside, where every bit of text in sight has been replaced by the words BAD WOLF: even the TARDIS is emblazoned with it! The Doctor assumes the worst: "It's the end of the universe," he declares.

This is the first part of the three-part finale, promised to be the biggest finale so far, and is the last story written by outgoing producer Russel T Davies.

I think it was awesome, I'd rate it 8/10

Next episode is THE STOLEN EARTH:

Davros, Daleks, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, the Medusa Cascade, the Shadow Proclaimation... and more!

[Andy 60]

THE STOLEN EARTH

Awesome and very ambitious episode.

The Doctor arrives on Earth to find everything fine. Confused, he heads back into the TARDIS, when something happens. Opening the door he finds himself in deep space... but the TARDIS hasn't moved; it's Earth that has vanished!

The Doctor takes Donna to the Shadow Proclamation, the galactic police force represented by the Judoon in Smith and Jones (S29E01). Apparently 24 other planets disappeared at the same time... The Doctor adds in Pyrovillia and Adipose 3, as mentioned as lost in Fires of Pompeii and Partners in Crime respectively, and reminisces that there was a race that once tried to move the Earth (The Dalek Invasion of Earth, 1964).

Earth finds itself stolen and surrounded by 26 other planets. Meanwhile, Rose jumps in from Parallel Earth and hacks a UNIT computer to find that the UN has declared 'Ultimate Code Red': Alien ships are moving in on Earth and a message is broadcast to it's citizens: "EXTERMINATE!"

Sarah Jane, Torchwood, and Martha Jones attempt to contact the Doctor with the help of Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister in the Whoniverse. They all know that they are doomed if they cannot find the Doctor...

Eventually they contact the Doctor, but the transmission is interrupted... by the Doctor's arch nemesis: Davros! The creator of the Daleks describes how Dalek Caan's emergency temporal shift in Evolution of the Daleks (S29E05) caused him to find himself on Davros' flagship during the Time War--which was supposedly timelocked from external interference--and lead him back to Earth. Caan, has gone slightly mad, however. Davros explains how he has cultivated this new race of Dalek's from his own cells, making them pure Daleks rather than synthesised copies.

The Doctor lands on Earth and is found by Rose, as they near eachother Dalek shoots the Doctor, knocking him to the ground... Captain Jack teleports in and destroys the Dalek, and they help the wounded Doctor to the TARDIS where he cries "I'm regenerating!"

As the Doctor's regeneration begins, the episode ends.

Non-stop action!

9/10

Next episode JOURNEY'S END: 65 Minutes of DW! The biggest season finale ever! (Apparently)

[Andy 60]

DOCTOR WHO, season 30, episode 13

JOURNEY'S END

Well, firstly, my apologies for not having this up sooner... And secondly; I saw this episode on the big screen in Trafalgar Square! So, there.

Righty ho then!

After the cliffhanger of The Stolen Earth we were left wondering what was going to happen to Earth, what are Davros and the Daleks up to, and whether the Doctor was really going to regenerate or not!

Thankfully, he didn't, and expelled his regeneration energy into his handy plot device-- erm, I mean his severed hand from 2006's The Christmas Invasion and recieved from Captain Jack in 2007's Utopia, in a scene that was pretty undramatic after the of the regeneration starting. However, it was nice that we get to hang on to the 10th Doctor for a while longer, because he is awesome.

I felt that therewere way too many characters in this episode and that they were all fighting eachother fro screentime. Let's see who was there: The Doctor (x2 - I'll get to that), Donna, Jack, Martha, Rose, Jackie, Mickey, Sarah Jane, Davros, Dalek Caan, Supreme Dalek, lots more Daleks, Wilf, Donna's mum who's name I've forgotten, and more.

Also there were a few plot lines that didn't go anywhere and were very pointless. There was so (way too much) much going on in this episode I'll seperate it into character lines to say what I thought of it.

Rose and Jackie Tyler, and Mickey Smith

I never liked Rose, and think she should have stayed in her silly parallel universe.

She wasn't at all neccesary to the story and to be honest spent the entire episode locked up in Davros along with the Doctor pretty much up until the end when she was sent back to the parallel Earth. Pointless much? Indeed.

And why bring back Jackie? She added nothing, although I did giggle when the Doctor told her to keep away from the TARDIS controls at the end.

The only good thing about Rose returning is that Mickey came back, presumeably to enable him to join Torchwood to replace Tosh as the computery expert.

Donna Noble

Donna gets a lot of bad reputation just because she is Catherine Tate, and to be fair I don't like the Catherine Tate Show, but I have LOVED Donna in this season, she's been awesome. And I was really sad to see how they handled her exit from the show. I thought it was great how she did that weird thing with the Doctor's hand, and caused it to grow a SECOND 10th DOCTOR!

Also, when that happened she absorbed some of the energy and became part Time-Lord! Which was awesome, and I don't see why they couldn't keep that... but NO, they had to write her out of the story in a lame "oh I had to wipe her memory or she would die" way.

Martha

Pretty much pointless. Osterhagen Key was a silly idea too; although the Doctor did say that himself so I guess it served it's purpose. Was still a silly plotline that went nowhere though...

Project Indigo was silly too, serving only as a convenient way for her to avoid all the Daleks by teleporting across the world... Although, when she went to Germany it was funny to hear the Daleks screaming "Exterminieren! Exterminieren!"

Sarah-Jane

While she didn't really do much, she was the only former companion who deserved a place in this finale, having been the only companion seen since the 2005 revival of the show (School Reunion, 2006) that has met Davros (Genesis of the Daleks, 1975).

And it was awesome to have the K-9 cameo too!

Jack Harkness

Did the captain actually do anything in this episode, besides provide innuendo and not die? I can't think of anything.

Davros and the Daleks

Davros was awesome, although he was not on top form. I think it si fairly safe to assume he didn't die at the end. Dalek Caan was cool, betraying the Daleks like that; even tricking Davros. The Supreme Dalek didn't get much screen time, but was awesomely Dalek-ish. However, as seems par for the course these days, the Daleks all get destoryed in a dei ex machina way. Sloppy storytelling on RTD's behalf as usual, IMO.

The Doctor(s)

(tbc - will finish this later!)

[Andy 60]

Donna is now officially my favourite female companion. She's awesome.

Rose can stay in her silly parallel universe. :p

[crunchymunchy 0]

I can' wait to see Mickey as part of Torchwood. He is one of my favorite underused Who characters.

[Andy 60]

And he should be even better without always pining after Rose. :roll:

[Bad furday 57]

I'd have to agree with B. I hated the way Donna was....escorted from the show! They spent all season making you think that Donna and the Doctor ( nice together, innit?) would last longer than one season...that Donna and the Doctor were perfect for each other, and then...she's gone and doesn't remember a thing. I would hate that. To have been to diffrent universes and worlds and not be able to remember a single thing!

[Andy 60]

The new director of Doctor Who has given his 'thumbs up' to the idea of a Doctor Who movie, as long as it didn't get in the way of the filming of the TV series.

Previous films include two 1960s big screen Dalek films starring Peter Cushing, and the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7579332.stm