The Dr Who thread

[Peltazoid]

Hay cant I have both majestic arse's and science that makes sense?

In a programme about a time-travelling alien who travels in a box that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside whilst using a 'sonic' screwdriver and psychic paper? No, you can't.

Hay, science that makes sense dosnt have to be *our* science.

Thats why I love the Discworld books so much, Prachett's universe has its own rules and logic. It has magic, but the magic itself works like a science.
You can break a magic spell down to just the bare nesscietys to make it work, even if it ends up being three small sticks and 4 cc of mouse blood

Isn't that what science fiction is all about, having some gizmo that defies current scientific thinking. Do you need science that makes sense in a SF story? I think not but it can help.

As if we all had sonic screwdrivers, transcendental time machines then we probably would not have SF stories.

I quite like stories that have a well thought out world, but a lot of it is made up story by story and becomes quite contradictory.

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

And yet, nobody seemed to mind a blue police box suddenly appearing with a flashing electrical blue light on top of it in the middle of a busy street..

Hm.

[Flabio]

And yet, nobody seemed to mind a blue police box suddenly appearing with a flashing electrical blue light on top of it in the middle of a busy street..

But he's been there before (well, hasn't been there before yet). Maybe they're used to seeing it about the place

[Jedburgh]

VOTE SAXON

[HGFB]

The most important thing to remember to have with you when sitting down to watch Doctor Who is your imagination. If the idea of a technology based on words instead of numbers doesn't make sense to you then you need to remember just what show you're watching.

Doctor Who covers the entirety of space time (And beyond). In each 45 minute segment you can be faced with concepts from any area of science fiction. *Anything*. Today it was the power of words to manipulate space time (Hell. They did it with numbers in Logopolis and put back the heat death of the entire universe. Why are words so strange?).

The Doctor Who novels once had a bad guy alien race that weren't physical entities. They were concepts. It still made sense.

Basically in 45 minutes of prime time family entertainment you're not going to get much hard sci-fi. You'd be better off picking up a Stephen Baxter novel to fill that need (And he fills it well). What you get with Doctor Who is a random slice of some of the wilder reaches of sci-fi. In 45 minutes of running around saving the universe there's not a lot of time left to explain to Darkflame the technical aspects of using words to make changes to the fabric of reality. Most of it you're going to have build in your own head.

And isn't that part of the fun? When Doctor Who tries too hard to explain stuff it falls flat. Just look at the Doctor's explanation of time travel to Martha. "It just works". Blue Box. Check. Bigger on the inside? Check. Travels in Time? Check. Alien bastards out to conquer the Earth? Check. 45 minutes later. Silly grin on face.

[HGFB]

VOTE SAXON

Not a BBC site

[Peltazoid]

talking of silly grins on face.

Just as the theme tune struck up at the start of the show Michala said to me "whats the stupid grin for?"

Oh and while talking of Steven Baxter, You read the Space/Time/Origin Series? They were a bit of a mind fuck and I don't think I got the grasp of what he was on about. Heavy going.

[HGFB]

Yup. I've read them. Bloody nice series.

[Ollie]

New timeslot next week because of the Football. 19:40.

Bugger. I'm out next week, which means I can't keep an eye on it and re-program the TiVo if the bloody football over-runs. I guess I'll have to add an extra hour onto the end of the recording just in sodding case.

[Flabio]

If you miss it, it'll be on at least five times on BBC3 during the week if this week has been anything to go by

[F-ZeroOne]

The most important thing to remember to have with you when sitting down to watch Doctor Who is your imagination. If the idea of a technology based on words instead of numbers doesn't make sense to you then you need to remember just what show you're watching.

Technology relying on the spoken word? That sounds like a neat idea. Someone should put that in an operating system or something.

That. Was. Brilliant!

Okay, granted, on occasion it had a slight air of an over enthusastic school play about it, but the dialogue was on fire. And I wonder if J.K. Rowling was watching...

[Darkflame]

The most important thing to remember to have with you when sitting down to watch Doctor Who is your imagination. If the idea of a technology based on words instead of numbers doesn't make sense to you then you need to remember just what show you're watching.

~sigh~
Obviously, I'm not making myself clear at all.
When did I mention at all I had a problem with the concept of technology based around words?
With the discworld example, that was precisely what I was trying too say I didn't mind.
Having alien science like that is fine, and, indeed, a necessity of good sci-fi.

Where it fell down, however, was the, imo, feeble attempt to put some of it into a "human" scientific context.

eg. The voodoo doll as a "DNA replicator".

It made no sense at all, it was just technobable.
A few random scientificaly sounded words chucked in.


They should have at least linked it too the Blood-technology we seen in the Christmas Invasion. (which wouldn't have been too hard at all, seeing as the results were pretty similar)
You dont need human science in sci-fi, but you should work too the rules of your own universe.

Still, I suppose its a tesiment to Dr Who that fans defend the show so intently from even critisms of a view lines

[PVB]

~sigh~
Obviously, I'm not making myself clear at all.
When did I mention at all I had a problem with the concept of technology based around words?
With the discworld example, that was precisely what I was trying too say I didn't mind.
Having alien science like that is fine, and, indeed, a necessity of good sci-fi.

Where it fell down, however, was the, imo, feeble attempt to put some of it into a "human" scientific context.

eg. The voodoo doll as a "DNA replicator".

It made no sense at all, it was just technobable.
A few random scientificaly sounded words chucked in.


They should have at least linked it too the Blood-technology we seen in the Christmas Invasion. (which wouldn't have been too hard at all, seeing as the results were pretty similar)
You dont need human science in sci-fi, but you should work too the rules of your own universe.

Still, I suppose its a tesiment to Dr Who that fans defend the show so intently from even critisms of a view lines

What (I think) HGFB is trying to say is that there isn't enough time in an episode to explain/justify every single 'non-real' aspect.

You mention the Blood tech, but (IIRC) that wasn't explained fully, just that with a bit of each blood type an alien race could control people as if they were robots.

We got that much explanation as it was central to the main plot, but the doll wasn't so we just got a brief bit, like the kiss/DNA transfer from the first episode.

[Snakey]

That was very good, a lot better than I thought it would be.

Yep. The stuff before the beginning credits started had me thinking this wasn't going to be a great episode.

But it turned out to be pretty damn good. 7/10. This is more like it

[Harlequin]

I think Darkflame's complaint is that no technobabble (as with the blood, kisses, TARDIS technology, etc.) is better than poor technobabble (as exemplified, perhaps, by Miles O'Brien of Star Trek). I can understand his point but can also recall how the Third Doctor loved to reverse the polarity of various things' neutron flows. The line did grate for me slightly but I passed it off as, say, a relation to the blood control principle requiring physical samples for individual physical control via virtual genome replication instead of basic blood group information used for the mental manipulation of many.

Not that I particularly care. It was fun Sci-Fi.