Topic: The TV Show Thread

@PegasusActual93 In certain aspects, I guess maybe? Like the really bad trance music combined with actors very very painfully pretending to be drunk and high is entertaining in a car-crash sort of way. It’s mostly just painful though which, to be fair, is a lesser crime when it comes to Doctor Who than the boring episodes. A lot of Six’s stuff from the 80s is rubbish but entertaining schlock, which can’t be said for the times Moffat thought he was the smartest man alive or Chibnall’s utterly banal writing during the doldrums. Some of my favourite episodes on the show are the utterly stupid and camp ones so there’s maybe a glimpse of Tony Blackburn fuelled fun to be gleamed.

Started watching Scavengers Reign. It's a new animated scifi series about spaceship crash survivors who are stranded on a mysterious planet. Quite good, the characters are slowly being developed and the environments and ecosystem of the planet is well thought out with some unique alien designs. It's also just refreshing to see more adult animated series that don't rely on crass sex jokes or nothing but shock value.

I completely agree with this assessment and as soon as I "got wise" to that fact when I watched it, I started enjoying it on a different level. I have yet to see "Midnight Mass", but I must say that Flanagan's Netflix output is quite strong, overall.

Makes me cautiously optimistic about his "Dark Tower" project

The Sandman - not that one, the Doctor Who audio.

Six has always been maligned for one reason or another but mostly because he’s a f***ing psycho at times including choking his companion. This audio basically asks ‘what if a whole planet sees The Doctor as the baddie’ and it works because Colin Baker plays up on being a pantomime villain. It’s a good one to be honest, even if Evelyn, his older companion, doesn’t have much to do.

@LN78 Sounds like my kind of jam, so will definitely check it out!

The Church and the Crown - Fantastic 5th Doctor audio adventure, my favourite archetype is the historical stories so this was right up my alley. No aliens, no monsters, just the Doctor and his companions thrust into Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu’s court amidst Buckingham’s plot to conquer France for his King/boyfriend (look it up). It’s hard to create companions for exclusively audio adventures but Erimem, a Pharoah who was removed from her time in a previous story, is superb here. Peri continues to prove that she was massively underserved on screen too, although I’m not sure if showing a whole history she had with the 5th Doctor before his regeneration in Caves of Androzani actually undermines the idea that he sacrificed himself for a companion that he barely knew.

If there was ever a story that I’d want adapted to TV, it’s this one. There hasn’t really been a true historical since what, the Troughton years? The TARDIS is a Time Machine so I wish they’d lean into that more without relying on aliens.

@RogerRoger I didn’t really gel with most of Whittaker’s episodes, especially the space ones, but other than the wildly over the top ending song to Rosa, it did at least stick in the memory in a good way. I honestly think her best episodes come in the Flux miniseries, with a couple that I really did enjoy, and her final episode was very watchable, if slightly messy.

Bang-Bang-A-Boom - I never thought an audio play could sound garish but here we are. A parody of both Eurovision and Star Trek, it’s a sometimes entertaining mess of jokes that either land or really, really don’t. Graeme Garden is brilliant but you’d expect him to be, the fake Terry Wogan honestly is one of the funnier characters which is a hard act to do, speaking as a long time Eurovision fan. Bonnie Langford is so much better than she ever was on screen, following a long list of companions so much better served by audio. Sylvester McCoy is equally funny and insanely hammy, which sort of works. The woman doing a ridiculous ‘Valkyrie based alien race’ accent just sounds like Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles which is both a bit irritating and honestly quite funny. I’m not sure I ever wanted to hear Sylv pretending to have his face smooshed in a woman’s buxom and acting like a strange horny old man affected by pheromones but there we are.

A complete car crash that is occasionally funny, that’s about as generous as I can be. It does come across a bit up its own arse though, to be expected given it’s co-written by notorious self-arse-immersion enthusiast Gareth Roberts. Plus, it wouldn’t exactly be an unfair statement to say that Star Trek’s output from the time Doctor Who was off-air was a million times higher quality than almost anything that the BBC could muster post-Davison. It feels a little snide and bad-faith to send up Star Trek when they completely reinvented sci-fi in that time period while Doctor Who was a relic past its sell-by-date. It did rub me up the wrong way a little. I wouldn’t say this was anywhere near as bad as The Rapture but honestly, poor Seven has been a bit under-served in the audios I’ve listened to recently. Colditz was great, give me more of that instead!

Bonus - try to listen to 5 seconds of the squirrel alien character from this story without your ears bleeding. Makes Jane Horrocks sound like Barry White.

@LN78
I think the racist time traveler is right where I stopped watching Doctor Who. I haven't seen any of the last two seasons and have no real urge to go back.

@RogerRoger Very excited when I saw the air dates, but I do think that I’m slightly disappointed I have a whole month to wait still. At least all of Classic Who comes on iPlayer on November 1st!

Jubilee - Brilliant Sixth Doctor story that formed the basis for Eccleston’s Dalek. Probably better than that story to be honest, it’s darker for sure even if the time travelley stuff can get a little convoluted. Only real criticism is that a couple of the ‘dark’ bits are a bit too grimdark, but it’s understandable given it’s 2003. Not much to say other than it’s very very good and a must listen!

I won’t be listening to the next story however, Nekromanteia, due to the widespread condemnation surrounding it. Apparently the writer thought it would be a good idea to stick a rape scene of a companion and then never mention it again and not have the perpetrator even have any consequences. Peter Davison was so enraged he requested the writer never write for his Doctor ever again.

@PegasusActual93 I was just coming here to comment on Scavengers Reign. I am quite impressed. The uniqueness of the aliens or I guess the humans are the aliens in this respect, but what each creature and plant can do is amazing. Fantastic so far, 6 episodes in and I want more.

Really sad news about Matthew Perry if the reports are true. Friends maybe wasn’t the best show out there but it gave me plenty of laughs growing up - and still does - and Chandler was the character I resonated with the most.

Had an overnight train so listened to another Doctor Who Big Finish play. Had to skip The Dark Flame because I never really read the 90s New Adventure books and that’s set there with Bernice Summerfield who I still don’t know much about. Instead….

Doctor Who and the Pirates or The Lass that Lost a Sailor - Truly brilliant. Old Sixie really gets incredible service from the audio adventures, Colin Baker is honestly possibly the best audio actor of them all. This is a strange experimental story where The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn tell a story about their adventure with pirates to a fairly unwilling listener, who constantly interrupts and points out historical inconsistencies, which Evelyn mostly makes up to pimp up the story to make it more interesting. Things such as the evil pirate having two hooks for hands and two wooden legs but later draws his sword and duels someone somehow. The cuts between the story and Evelyn doing the voices is really quite funny, especially when she forgets the other pirates’ names and just makes it up as she goes along or the voice actor of a pirate in the story starts babbling about whatever Evelyn’s clearly saying between lines of her story. It would only ever work in audio and is all the better for it.

This story also features possibly the best cliffhanger of all Doctor Who, Six deciding that musicals are more interesting than plain old stories and then starting to warm up his voice as the music starts and Evelyn shouts for him to stop before he starts singing… and then the end of episode music kicks in. The dramatic tension of him starting to sing genuinely exceeds many serious episodes. Of course, the next episode is a complete delight, with the entire cast getting at least one Gilbert and Sullivan tune adapted to the story. I have a newfound respect for Colin Baker, Modern Major-General is hard at the best of times never mind as ‘I am the very model of a Gallifreyan buccaneer’ and having to portray the Doctor as making up rhymes as he goes along. It’s just a really fun listen in so many ways. Bill Oddie kills it as a ridiculous caricature of a pirate and gets his own song too. The way they play with the audio format itself is a marvel, incredibly clever writing and directing.

This is possibly a 10/10 story even if I’m including both the TV show and these. This, Spare Parts and The Chimes of Midnight are utterly essential and I’d throw The Marian Conspiracy, Jubilee and The Holy Terror in there too, all Six stories. Sorry Seven, Colditz is good but even his best stories just are not on their level so far. I’m gonna be sad when I get to Main Range number 50, that’s the last of the ones that are on streaming services and I’d have to find a way to grab the rest.

Has anyone seen The Boondocks? Haven't watched it yet and hardly know a thing about it. No spoilers please.

@TheBrandedSwordsman
Boondocks is a show you will either love or hate. It's very satirical with how it depicts African American culture in a very no holds barred way that you will either find very funny or very offensive depending on your sense of humor. I like it but it's certainly not for everyone.

@PegasusActual93 Thanks for letting me know, I appreciate that. I plan to watch it in the next few weeks in addition to some 1970s African American culture themed movies that I'm very interested in as well, so I'll let you know how I get on with The Boondocks. My favourite music is jazz and hip hop so you can see how it all comes together in terms of the media I consume. Used to be a rock n' roll guy. Made a cultural back to roots turnaround a few years ago.

Finished watching Gen V season 1. Absolutely brilliant! The season finale was so good, it made me realise just how much I missed the characters from The Boys. Not to mention that this show was just as good as The Boys with so much crazy stuff happening. Genuinely can't wait for season 4 now!

@AgentCooper Classic Who was a great binge, I’ve always been into the show but I really loved delving into more of the older stuff than the obvious ones. An Unearthly Child is a great first episode but the rest is a bit more mixed. The Daleks is great but they’re colourising and re-editing it in like two weeks!

@AgentCooper Haha yeah, basically loads were taped over back in the day so it’s been a massive effort to find them. Mad to think of a show that big having lost episodes but basically all shows from that period have missing episodes.