john

None of those people worked there at the time of the 50th special and he still turned it down. He probably just doesn’t like Doctor Who all that much.

12 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Eek. Barrowman's colonel has a lot to answer for.

I really hope Barrowman kept himself contained for those Ecclestone episodes with all the kids running about in gas masks.

I mean, it doesn’t seem that Christmassy.  

Outrageous! I speak of course about Tennant’s potential salary demands for the inevitable 14th Doctor Disney Plus spinoff.  

I find the bigeneration a lot less annoying than the Timeless Child. Although it’s quite funny how much RTD likes to have his cake and gobble it down too. Tennant could do a three doctors special all by himself now.

It didn’t even have to be an ancient Gallifreyan myth, it could have just been something the Toymaker did. There was a higher chance of him winning the catching game when it’s 2 versus 1. But it does have the unfortunate effect of making Gatwa seem like a offshoot Doctor flying off in a copy of the Tardis.

On 11/25/2023 at 9:08 PM, Werthead said:

That was - very easily - the corniest and cheesiest ending anyone has ever written for Doctor Who, ever. Breaking through the wall of cringe into a new dimension where the upper limit of arrrgh has not yet been defined.

Surely not. What about James Corden resisting cyber conversion because he loves his son, or something? It was some cheesy bullshit all right but at least it was some original cheesy bullshit (well, apart from the bit where they “let it go,” Elsa did that first).

it’s quite hard to put your finger on what makes a fairly standard RTD episode better than a lot of what Chibnall wrote, it doesn’t seem like that high calibre an episode in concept but watching it is somehow more enjoyable. Part of that is Tennant, certainly, but the writing in general just seems to flow better.

I quite admire how direct RTD is with what he wants to get across. He needs a moment where the Doctor has to restore Donna’s time lord mind to save the situation but with tragic consequences for his best friend in the universe? Ok, so there’s a big barrier inexplicably comes down in the middle of the engine room. He’s used almost the same idea before with the weird pair of boxes that are apparently specifically designed so the Doctor needs to kill himself in order to unlatch the other box with Wolf trapped inside. The other writers (especially Moffat) might come up with some convoluted pot scenario to get to the same point but RTD is just like, nah, a big barrier comes down.

It’s like with his reaction to the question of why 14th Doctor’s clothes regenerated. I read an interview where he was asked this and he seemed totally unfazed by the idea that this shouldn’t work in the lore. He just thought it would be weird and possibly offensive to show Tennant wearing Whittaker’s costume so he changed the clothes. And this kind of direct approach definitely contributes to the streamlined storytelling.

Anyway, I’ll definitely watch this one again some time, which is more than I could say for most episodes of the last ten years.

Oh man, Secret Invasion was so bad. I’m sure this was all said in the last thread but

Anyway. Yes I loved Loki and yes the trailer for Loki 2 looks good.

I thought it was pretty bad. One of the most disjointed tv shows I’ve seen for a while. Good actors, good performances because you need that these days when everybody is trying to make prestige television. But it was just a collection of scenes strung together with barely any sense. Yes, some of the scenes were cool but there’s no impact to them if there’s no purpose. The politics, factions, motivations were all really thin.

I didn’t get much satisfaction from Geralt’s final scene either. He got angry and brutally murdered some guys to save a little girl he probably traumatised for life (and handed her back a presumably blood soaked doll while she quaked in fear beneath a wagon ). Could have just given up his Witcher’s medallion if he truly has chosen his side.

That said, the scene where Ciri meets the Rats and fights the Arabic Scottish dude was the best thing in this season. Shame it’s possibly the last bit of Witcher we get.

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Well that is a not a defence that i'm remotely interested in, at all.  You know how many victims are so in thrall to their abusers (i'm not saying he is an abuser FYI) that they defend them to the hilt? 

What’s defence got to do with it? You said yourself there’s no evidence a crime was committed.

Yes, obviously you can feel sorry for the person who is so in thrall to his abuser that they issue a flat denial anything improper took place. But you have to make up some stuff in your head to be able to do that.

Something tells me that if Spocky had instead praised the Sun’s intrepid journalism, HoI would have come in bemoaning the wokist absolutism that hospitalised a respectable father of five.

I’m not sure who you’re supposed to feel sorry for in this story if not Edwards. The apparent victim has literally instructed a lawyer to inform the world that they’re not bothered. The only tragedy in this thing that’s actually verified is that a couple of parents don’t get on with their child.

Normally I’d be entertained by helicopters and machine guns but this show doesn’t need it. It needs more of SLJ and Ben Mendelsohn (and Olivia Colman) talking to people. Jackson being old is a problem in an action scene. It looks even more ridiculous than it does when he’s hobbling around in the flashbacks with his de-aged face.

Dust and Shadow is the cream of the crop, imo, although I suppose it’s debatable whether ACD would have written a long novel about Jack the Ripper.

Caleb Carr wrote decent book in the Doyle style, The Italian Secretary.

Recently I’ve been enjoying the Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota series by Larry Millett. They’re not really in the style (sometimes departs from Watson’s first person if you can believe it), although Holmes and Watson speak and act like themselves, but they are very good anyway.

On 7/5/2023 at 12:23 AM, Ran said:

I recently got back into reading Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips graphic novels, having missed a whole mess of noir-inflected mystery yarns featuring an original character that Brubaker created (inspired by Richard Stark's Parker to some degree). The first comic is Reckless, featuring the eponymous detective (though he's more a fixer/problem-solver) who had a background as an underground FBI agent who infiltrated radical groups in the late 60s. The first book starts in the early 80s and in general they move forward in time to different cases, but not always. There are five in total so far, and I think Brubaker and Phillips have taken a brief break from it to do other stuff, but they mean to turn back to it.

I enjoyed them.

I’ve very much enjoyed all of Brubaker/Phillips’ pulp stuff. They have a talent for telling new stories in cliched environments. I think the Fatale series is their masterpiece although Reckless is pretty good too. I’d quibble on him being inspired by Parker though, I think he’s much more like Travis McGee, the unlicensed detective who will recover anything you’ve had stolen for half its value.

Re Peter Robinson - I think he’s realistic in the way people talk and behave but I never found him that realistic or convincing on police procedure, the way some writers are. I was surprised to find out he was an adopted Canadian, he seems to embody Yorkshire.

I started reading The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett. This is adapted for Paramount + apparently, although I didn’t know that when I got it. A forensic anthropologist, expert on gruesome murders, retires to the countryside to be a village doctor after his wife and daughter die. Only the gruesome murders start happening there don’t they? So far so cliched but it is well written and readable with a skilful underlying menace in the thriller aspects.

On 7/7/2023 at 4:51 PM, Spockydog said:

It's nothing more than performative, gammony bullshit.

Imagine seeing this headline and thinking it was a good thing. What kind of cunt must you be?

And there’s apparently enough of them to make a difference in an election???

Yeah, that’s some strategy. And there’s another year of this.

He’s not brilliantly written on the show either, although maybe they are just setting it up for when he finally discovers a backbone.

I thought it was very similar to the book, although it’s been ten years since I read it. I was hoping they’d have more time to go into the dynamics of everybody living a structured existence where they all depend on each other. But it was very plot driven, which is ok too. Common was very good, I bought his character even more than Ferguson’s.

I quite liked the second episode but I thought the other two were rubbish. Although I did laugh out loud early in the first one when Emilia Clarke says ‘show your true form’ and the guy transforms into a person wearing an obvious green rubber mask. The two deaths seem unearned and don’t serve much purpose other than shock factor and getting Cobie Smulders out of a contract where her character has had shit all to do for ten years.

Also, spoilers I suppose although it’s just speculation 

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

I guess I am very surprised that you did not know this about her already (or even that James Arryn just discovered it a year ago.)  I thought this had been general knowledge for years among fans of the mystery genre. 

True, you’d think I would have heard about it. Didn’t know about James Ellroy’s unhappy past either. I suppose I don’t know much about most of the crime writers I read compared to fantasy and sci-fi, even though I consume more crime books.

I’ve read everything by Michael Connelly and, apart from assuming he was an older white guy, I didn’t know a thing about him. Just looked him up on Wikipedia and apparently he saw a guy secretively throw a gun into a hedge when he was a kid. I guess they all have some kind of trigger moment, so to speak.

Just saw that Anne Perry died. And, on reading her obituary, discovered that, as well as being a hugely successful crime writer, she was a teenage murderer and inspiration for Kate Winslet’s character in Heavenly Creatures. Huh. I kind of feel like they should put that disclaimer on the books.

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

What if I watch Netflix on my TV's app?

Then your TV will define your main location. The location is either set by the account holder or Netflix detects it based on activity. Then any other devices on the same network have to log in once a month (launch the app and, according to some news sources, actually watch something).

If you’re travelling and using a device that hasn’t logged in then you can access with a verification code sent to your account contact details.

So it’s not really a problem for account holders (well, if you watch through a VPN I suppose you can’t do that anymore) but for kids living away from home you’d need access to the verification code and for people at a further remove it would probably be too awkward to log in anymore.

My brother in law uses our account but if he can’t get access he’s definitely not going to buy Netflix, he’s just going to download what he wants to watch from somewhere.

5 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Are you... allowed to say anything bad about the books?

Please react with a sad emoji if you need help!

Ha! Don’t know what you’re talking about. These bruises are from working out so hard like my hero Liam Hemsworth.

Obviously whether it’s good or not … will spend on whether it’s good or not. But I do wish more shows would do this, it makes much more sense to me than recasting the lead with a similar character and making up some weird in universe explanation for it.

The Witcher as great literature - I’m reliably(?)  informed by various Poles that the English translation does it few favours. They seem to consider it great popular literature anyway.

The Witcher as TV show - It’s ok but yeah, it’s better than Rings of Power.  

I always figured he’d have to do a lot of work with older Kvothe in the framing sections to wrap up the story. Unless it’s supposed to have an open ending just with Kvothe reinvigorated setting off to save the world.

There’s going to be more seasons of Shetland, they’re bringing in new lead detective. Poor Tosh, she’ll never get the top job.

I read the Ink Black Heart by Galbraith/Rowling. It was ok, some of the stuff about toxic fandom was interesting, Robin and Strike are as annoying as ever but still readable. I actually thought the last book Troubled Blood was the best pure detective story she’s done, like a Christie classic except that rather than have Poirot’s boring on in the drawing room eliminating the other suspects and naming the murderer, you have all the suspicious characters eliminated over the course of a year’s investigation through painstaking detective work. Book was definitely spoiled however by the frequent insertion of Rowling’s politics.

Just finished A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle, which is pretty hyped over here as a modern book in the golden age style. Murder on a transatlantic ocean liner in the early 20s. Didn’t really like it, I felt like the classic style was overdone and then there is a twist designed to feel more modern, which was very easy to predict.

I did think Homelander getting knocked about so easily was odd, what with the constant worry over stopping him that’s dominated the show from the beginning. From what we saw it seems the right combo of supes would be able to take him down. Why is A-Train so scared of him? Now he has access to his powers seems like he could just zip out of the way. Of course now there’s nobody taking temp v and maeve is depowered it got trickier but there’s still enough power around to defeat him, it seems like.

54 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

I'm guessing he survived narratively speaking to be experimented upon, eventually leading to the harnessing of his anti-supe power for The Boys to use.

Good point. They need that power at least for the conclusion of the show, otherwise all the good supes, including Annie, need to die. Or at least they need to have the power loss power as an option, hopefully the actual conclusion will be more messy.

Btw, I felt like they needed to deal with this issue more on the show. Butcher, and Hughie at times, literally thinks all supes should die but the existence of Ryan and Annie should really put more of a dampener on that, never mind all the team ups.

Agreed it was a good season with a weak finale. Too many characters ultimately choosing to do the right thing for selfless reasons, that’s not really the essence of The Boys. Personally I would have had Starlight getting smacked down, not necessarily dying, despite Hughie learning his lesson. Just add a little nuance, sometimes the selfish, evil, violent act is the best one. I’m happy Maeve survived but, yes, they needed some dialogue to fix the fact that she lost her powers and somehow survived. Generally I’d agree that the show is spinning it’s wheels a bit but still has enough entertaining scenes and plot points cleverly portioned out from the comics source to keep it watchable.

Naomi Novik’s The Last Graduate 99p UK Kindle.