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john

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  1. 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. I really hope Barrowman kept himself contained for those Ecclestone episodes with all the kids running about in gas masks.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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
  14. 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.
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