The Dr Who thread

[XOR]

The 7th Doctor was much more badass.

I don't remember Michael Palin being Doctor Who?

Reminds me of '...If'.

[Harlequin]

I somehow find it very difficult to imagine Eccleston carrying off this story as well as Tennant has done.

No, maybe not Ecclestone - but I can easily imagine most of the previous Doctors making a decent job of it.

Some of them but, strangely, not those who are often listed as 'favourite Doctors'. Pertwee was not a character actor and Tom Baker would not know how to be quiet, restrained and unassumingly average. Troughton, Colin Baker and, of course, McCoy could probably have managed it.

the reference to Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert as Smith's parents.

Ooh, well spotted... wasn't Verity an old sweetheart in the book?

In Smith's memory, yes. The references in the episode were, however, apparently inserted by the Davies.

[juice]

Probably more akin to nabbing a couple of skin cells, but let's not split hairs.

*applause*

However... I like splitting hairs:)

According to google, the sun's volume is approximately the same as 1.3 million Earths. A bit of further Googling indicates that the smallest star so far is 93 times the mass of Jupiter, which'd be approx. 130'000 Earths.

It'd have to be a bloody big spaceship for it to be able to suck off enough plasma for a living star to notice!

Why couldn't they have gone for creatures living on the surface of the star?

Have to go against the flow here. I thought it was a very nice idea, but something was missing in the actual execution. Once the novelty of the situation wore off the pacing was quite poor in my opinion.

My girlfriend agreed with me.

Yups - although my girlfriend liked it - though it's the first Dr Who she's ever seen. It did feel slightly off, though it could just the aliens-masquerading-as-humans thing feeling a bit passe. The scarecrows also felt like monsters searching for a reason to exist.

All in all however, the last few episodes have certainly been a step up from the earlier part of the series - no mutant pigs, significantly less screwdriving and generally more intelligent scriptwriting.

One more hair-splitting: the bit with the machine gun seemed out of place, especially when coupled with the apparent belief that there wasn't any wars likely anytime soon. With every empire and his dog making noises and building dreadnaughts in 1913, I would have thought that war would have seemed a very real possibility!

[MadHippo]

One more hair-splitting: the bit with the machine gun seemed out of place, especially when coupled with the apparent belief that there wasn't any wars likely anytime soon. With every empire and his dog making noises and building dreadnaughts in 1913, I would have thought that war would have seemed a very real possibility!

I don't know for sure, but from what I remember from the vague bits of WW1 history we were taught at school, everyone was in a sort of "ignorance is bliss" state of mind. The UK was still very much a military based, empire building nation, having to defend the empire's borders against "natives" (hence the spears comment) and that's why the pupils at private schools were taught weaponry skills. I don't think any civilians really expected war on a big scale, although the government and armed forces probably were aware of a build up.

[F-ZeroOne]

"Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun and they have not"...

I don't have any problems with a school teaching its pupils weapons training - these boys were supposed to be the future Officers of the Realm, after all - but I'd be a little bit suprised to find that they might have machine guns; which in those days before true war-standard mass production were well-crafted, expensive bits of kit (they were fairly rare even in the British Army at the time). Also, they use a lot of ammo, and bullets aren't free either...

[Harlequin]

A junior division of the Officer Training Corps did exist in public schools of the period. In the book, a Vickers gun had been loaned to the school for a month by the Regiment. The headmaster was very eager to play with it.

[juice]

"Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun and they have not"...

I don't have any problems with a school teaching its pupils weapons training - these boys were supposed to be the future Officers of the Realm, after all - but I'd be a little bit suprised to find that they might have machine guns; which in those days before true war-standard mass production were well-crafted, expensive bits of kit (they were fairly rare even in the British Army at the time). Also, they use a lot of ammo, and bullets aren't free either...

True dat - while it seemed a bit incongruous, it was a public school for kids who would almost certainly end up in the armed forces and would be expected to do their bit for king and country. The times, they have a-changed...

Also, according to Wikipedia, the British armed forces had introduced the Vickers machine gun in 1912: it's conceivable that some now-obsolete Maxims could find their way down to a school, rather than to a lower-priority military unit. Unlikely, but possible.

I'd have expected Lee Enfields, personally - though it could be argued that as officers-to-be, they'd be kept away from all such nasty commoner weapons and be given nice revolvers and a riding whip, instead

[juice]

A junior division of the Officer Training Corps did exist in public schools of the period. In the book, a Vickers gun had been loaned to the school for a month by the Regiment. The headmaster was very eager to play with it.

Hmm... maybe I should s/maxim/vickers/ on my last post:)

Giving them a Vickers seems a bit more unlikely than a Maxim, but I suppose that the old-boys network would have been a significant factor in deciding where shiny new toys should go to.

[benedictw]

Giving them a Vickers seems a bit more unlikely than a Maxim, but I suppose that the old-boys network would have been a significant factor in deciding where shiny new toys should go to.

Yeah, our school had better radios than the army - the reason being these ones werent 'volcano proofed' or something so the regular army still needed to use the backpack sized jobs while we were wandering around with something the size of a hardback book.

[DutchLlama]

It does seem a bit irresponsible to me holding machine gun exercises in a school backyard. I guess the school was insured very well not having to worry about passers-by being shot to bits.

[Harlequin]

It does seem a bit irresponsible to me holding machine gun exercises in a school backyard. I guess the school was insured very well not having to worry about passers-by being shot to bits.

No more of a problem than trespassers being hit with cricket balls.

There was a point in the book, though, where Tim was accidentally almost shot during the exercise.

[MadHippo]

What's the book that everyone keeps talking about?

[HGFB]

What's the book that everyone keeps talking about?

The one in my invisible posts

[HGFB]

Have a free Ebook chaps. Who Killed Kennedy

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/wkk/

[merman]

Have a free Ebook chaps. Who Killed Kennedy

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/wkk/

Cracking read, one of my favourite Who novelisations...