The Dr Who thread

[IronGiant]

I'll chalk that one up as a success - great fun, nicely acted, sharp script and direction - nice one Russell, the first of your episodes that I have REALLY liked.

[Jac]

Anyone recognise the actress playing Ursula? I'm sure I know her from something else but struggling to recall.

Is she the ghost in the toilets in the Harry Potter films?

She is - Shirley Henderson. She's also in the Bridget Jones films, the recent BBC Shakespeare adaptations (Taming of the Shrew), and used to be in Hamish Macbeth, if you remember that. You wouldn't think from looking at her that she's 41 this year, would you? She passes for a 14 year old pretty well in Harry Potter...

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Anyone recognise the actress playing Ursula? I'm sure I know her from something else but struggling to recall.

Is she the ghost in the toilets in the Harry Potter films?

She is - Shirley Henderson. She's also in the Bridget Jones films, the recent BBC Shakespeare adaptations (Taming of the Shrew), and used to be in Hamish Macbeth, if you remember that. You wouldn't think from looking at her that she's 41 this year, would you? She passes for a 14 year old pretty well in Harry Potter...

Blimey!

[Harlequin]

* <-------- Moves thataway

That was excellent. A so-so baddie concept and plot, but told in such a way it raised the material to one of the best so far. And the performances were all-round excellent, with the monster and Jackie being particularly impressive. The hero and narrator did well to make the episode his own. Even the Doctor and Rose, with their appearance at the end being particularly well done.

Davies doesn't seem at home with logic or with frightening monsters. He writes for human relationships and dramatic flow and leaves the SF/horror thriller episodes to others. I thought that this was a lovely light episodes with very dark and meaningful overtones.

And I liked Jackie's perpetual fuse problems

I don't even know sod all out of Torchwood let alone L.I.N.D.A.

I've posted what we know from the episodes so far in the 'unspoilered' thread.

*One disappointment - Mark Benton's character could have been revived from the first episode of Eccleston's series. Would have made a stronger link in my opinion.

Difficult, as we saw him killed in that episode. I was hoping to at least hear some mention of him, though, or of one of the people who kept Clive's Who Is Doctor Who site alive (such as Mickey).

H.
_________________
How To Write Good
13. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

[KlaxonCow]

KC. Russell Davies wrote the episode *and* picked the winner of the competition. Hardly dumped on the poor writer's desk

Sorry. I apologise.

Despite making 5 references to RTD as being the writer of the episode...

Here:

a fairly poor episode in the grand scheme of things, due credit to RTD

Here:

by not including the Doctor and Rose until the end, RTD cleverly

Here:

though I didn't like the episode so much, all due credit to RTD

Here:

was actually a work of minor genius on RTD's part.

And here:

how simultaneously clever and sneaky RTD was to write the episode

(Where this last reference spells it out explicitly that I knew RTD wrote the episode.)

...I was somehow completely unaware that RTD wrote it.


And let us review the hypothetical situation I proposed near the end:

IMAGINE YOU'RE A WRITER FOR THIS SHOW and then someone dumps a 9 year old kid's drawing on your table

This is a hypothetical situation, where I've placed you hypothetically as the "poor writer".

As the main clause is conditional on a hypothetical situation, the rest of the sentence is also conditional on the same hypothetical situation.


Allow me to demonstrate the comprehension error here with a different but similar example.

If I had said instead: "Imagine you're a woman and President of the United States" then the reply "but Bush isn't a woman" is completely and utterly missing the point.


But, yes - putting the automatic contempt to look down upon me as idiotic shit on your shoe which appears now "traditional" behaviour in the forum to one side - then RTD choosing the competition winner is very likely a case of "damage limitation", by selecting the monster that's most usable for the episode.

A good point to make there (when divorced from the pointed implication that I'm an idiot that was unjustified and wholly unnecessary).


Please form an orderly single-file queue to call me an "arrogant prick" and I'll process you all as soon as is possible. Thank you for your impatience and lack of understanding.

[Jac]

*One disappointment - Mark Benton's character could have been revived from the first episode of Eccleston's series. Would have made a stronger link in my opinion.

Difficult, as we saw him killed in that episode. I was hoping to at least hear some mention of him, though, or of one of the people who kept Clive's Who Is Doctor Who site alive (such as Mickey).

I wondered about that, but Clive was tracking Eccleston-face rather than Tennant-face so I couldn't see how they'd cope with explaining his presence in a group only tracking Tennant-face - chronologically it wouldn't work out even though Mickey and Jackie have seen both versions. If Clive hadn't gone and got killed it would have been much easier.

[Kelloggs]

Clive was tracking Eccleston-face rather than Tennant-face so I couldn't see how they'd cope with explaining his presence in a group only tracking Tennant-face - chronologically it wouldn't work out even though Mickey and Jackie have seen both versions.

Bear in mind, the word "chronologically" doesn't really work very well for describing the activities of a Timelord; less so, in fact, when one considers that we know we're not seeing every single scrape he gets himself into. When watching tonight's ep (actually yesterday's, but you see what I mean) my brother's GF asked about the Shadow event (and I can't shake the feeling Shadows could be interesting) and my bro pointed out, he's a time traveller; this could have been yesterday for him. Because, of course, we only see what he does on Saturdays.

I was reading some Gallifreyan history yesterday (Life? What's one of them?) and I had to apologise to my friend who I'd gone round to see. When I looked up from my laptop and explained what I was reading, I said "Whoa. Headfuck. All the dates are in chronological order... but none of the events are." He agreed. Headfuck.

[Harlequin]

* Skims KC's post...

KC. Russell Davies wrote the episode *and* picked the winner of the competition. Hardly dumped on the poor writer's desk

Sorry. I apologise.
Despite making 5 references to RTD as being the writer of the episode...
[... Waffle...]

That looks like a rather odd and somewhat unconvincing apology to me. I could almost believe that it was not entirely sincere.

As you quoted, above, up there, in your post, in that box [continues to hammer the same point in a Russell Brand fashion as if everyone were so dim as to not get the point before the first comma..]:

KC. Russell Davies wrote the episode *and* picked the winner of the competition. Hardly dumped on the poor writer's desk

HGFB was pointing out the combination of the two facts together. I could provide numerous and tedious examples of logical combination but I prefer to keep my posts to a readable size (by my personal measure). Put simply, his statement implied that you were unaware a) of either of the two facts or b) of both of them. Droning on about the one fact that you evidently did know will alter neither the mathematics nor the semantic logic of such statements, as case a may still be true.

H.
_________________
How To Write Good
27. Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.

[Jac]

Clive was tracking Eccleston-face rather than Tennant-face so I couldn't see how they'd cope with explaining his presence in a group only tracking Tennant-face - chronologically it wouldn't work out even though Mickey and Jackie have seen both versions.

Bear in mind, the word "chronologically" doesn't really work very well for describing the activities of a Timelord; less so, in fact, when one considers that we know we're not seeing every single scrape he gets himself into.

Well, no, but I was thinking of the non-Timelord characters - i.e. pretty much everyone in this episode. Clive apparently had no data on regeneration so it would take some very large revisions of history to make him suddenly know all about Tennant-face too, even if he weren't inconveniently dead. This plot bunny won't hop.

[Harlequin]

Difficult, as we saw him killed in that episode. I was hoping to at least hear some mention of him, though, or of one of the people who kept Clive's Who Is Doctor Who site alive (such as Mickey).

I wondered about that, but Clive was tracking Eccleston-face rather than Tennant-face so I couldn't see how they'd cope with explaining his presence in a group only tracking Tennant-face - chronologically it wouldn't work out even though Mickey and Jackie have seen both versions. If Clive hadn't gone and got killed it would have been much easier. :wink

Good point. I don't think that Mickey posted any more pics of the Doctor after he accepted him as a good guy

H.
_________________
"Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like apple-sauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
[Marx]

[psychorob]

that was the strangest episode of Hustle i've ever seen



p.s. I quite liked it, me dad and sister said it was rubbish but they just thought that cause of the lack of the doctor in it, i thought it was quite a funny story

[KlaxonCow]

* Skims KC's post...

And there's your first mistake.

Try not skimming and then you'll see why.

Sorry. I apologise.
Despite making 5 references to RTD as being the writer of the episode...
[... Waffle...]

That looks like a rather odd and somewhat unconvincing apology to me. I could almost believe that it was not entirely sincere.

It's called sarcasm.

Trust me, it was better than the anger I had in the first draft but I thought better of it.

As you quoted, above, up there, in your post, in that box [continues to hammer the same point in a Russell Brand fashion as if everyone were so dim as to not get the point before the first comma..]:

Again, you criticise that which you haven't read.

You don't actually know whether I did or didn't hammer home the same point. You're just assuming it out of your prejudice against me.

In actual fact, you're wrong. Completely wrong.

But you couldn't even manage the civility of reading my post before criticising it.

I changed points after showing the 5 places where I referred to RTD, to explain the hypothetical nature of my "poor writer" paragraph, demonstrating that the accusation made did not even apply or make sense with what I was actually saying.

KC. Russell Davies wrote the episode *and* picked the winner of the competition. Hardly dumped on the poor writer's desk

HGFB was pointing out the combination of the two facts together.

Yes. In the context that they did not represent "dumping" the kid's monster on RTD's desk.

But I never said RTD's desk. I said it was your desk, in a hypothetical situation where you're the writer.

In everyone haste to condemn me, you're all repeatedly not bothering to read a single word I write.

You criticise that which you haven't even read.

You give me a "book review" without even reading the book.

That's simply prejudice.

I could provide numerous and tedious examples of logical combination

Now who's treating who as the dim-wit?

My reply does not dispute the logical combination at all. But you wouldn't know that because you're too prejudiced and hateful to even bother to read what you're in such a haste to criticise.

I'm a low-level programmer and I fully understand logical operations (even the fuzzy variety).

But, seeing as you want to address logic, if I hypothetically said "you're a eoman and President of the United States" then would "but Bush isn't a woman" be the natural logical reply?

Because that point was in the part which you didn't bother to read.

Put simply, his statement implied that you were unaware a) of either of the two facts or b) of both of them.

Yes, that's right.

But that's not what I replied.

If you weren't a bit of an idiot to criticise things you confess to having absoltuely no knowledge about - telling me how parts of the post you didn't even read where wrong, without having any knowledge whether this pure guesswork has any basis in reality whatsoever - then you'd know that already.

Droning on about the one fact

Wrong.

I didn't do that. You're assuming I did because you're a prejudiced idiot who criticises that which he hasn't even bothered to read. But you are wholly and totally wrong.

that you evidently did know will alter neither the mathematics nor the semantic logic of such statements, as case a may still be true.

That logic would make sense, if that's what I did.

But I didn't.

I pointed out that my "poor writer" was not RTD but "you" in the hypothetical situation which I propsoed. Which is only hypothetical anyway, so only a prejudiced arsehole who just likes spewing hate would have any wish to scrape the bottom of the barrel trying to search for any tiny tid-bit to criticise and personally attack me with.


What I wrote originally was perfectly fine. It was my opinion of the episode - giving RTD praise for the way he handled it, even though I wasn't totally enamoured with the episode - and I feel I made it in a perfectly acceptable way.

The true "arrogance" here is people who criticise things they haven't read and the automatic persumption to treat me like shit and that I must be wrong somehow (and if I'm not, then you'll make me wrong by ignoring facts or skmming over things I've said or "implying" things or whatever it takes to solidify your sad little prejudiced hatred).

[starshipcommand]

Crikey, calm down KK...

I think HGFB's point was that because the writer chose the winner, he could choose the one he could best turn into a story, and therefore it wasn't just dumped on his desk - the fact that it's RTD isn't relevant.

Don't know why I'm even joining in this conversation 'cos I didn't even see the episode...

[KlaxonCow]

Well, it proves the point I was making to a few people who told me I shouldn't leave.

I pointed out that though I appreciated what they had to say, the problem was that those who hate me (for reason as yet remaining a total mystery. Though arrogant elitism springs to mind as likely) will still do so and would continue to react to whatever normal, perfectly innocent things I had to post.

I hate leaving things unresolved, therefore I just had to make that one last post. A post where I did nothing but make a positive remark about RTD's handling of the episode and state my personal opinion about the episode reasonably, just like everyone else on this thread.

You snapped at the bait. Proved my point. Clearly demonstrated where the problem really lies. Openly confessed that you were criticising things you haven't read (because there's no way, if you're skimming a post and not reading it in its entirity, to have any basis on which to say things like "hammering the same point home all the way through the post". If you didn't look all the way through the post - as you confess - then there's no possible way you could actually know that. Better yet, your guess was quite wrong and proved clearly that you're attacking and criticising things which aren't even there and haven't actually been said).

Never once did I have a problem with anyone. Despite vicious rumour, I never once intended to talk down to anyone and did not come anywhere near thinking I superior (no, you did that. When you thought having your friends around was licence to bully your prejudices).

You crucified me without even knowing who I was. You condemned me because I tried, for your benefit and mutual understanding, to write my posts properly and, like, you know, talk proper and shit, innit. You assumed by the way I expressed myself alone that I was "posh" or summit. Not the first or last prejudiced assumption that was absolutely wrong.

You've got me all wrong but you'll likely never even read this sentence because your prejudice won't allow it.


So long and thanks for all the fish.

[Harlequin]

Who hated him?

I'm reminded of someone talking about 'paranoid personality disorders' on IRC yesterday

H.
_________________
"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."
[Sri Syadasti]