@ilduclo I had to try Dirk Gently after reading your post, and the first episode was pretty awesome.

this week finished a couple of dr. who stories from s2 of the reboot:


the one about the coronation tvs

and

the impossible planet

pit of satan was great though it stole mightily from the star trek movie about going to the center of the universe/galaxy/what was it and also heavily from alien (the original not the crap sequels).

rose looked really weird in it though. her face looked odd and she had a kilo of makeup. very distracting.

but overall a really good story, quasi-plagiarism and all. good performance by tennant.

also actually very star-trekky in its unabashed celebration of "humanity." was the early series like that too or is that new?

what was the name of the star trek movie? the final frontier, or something? with spock's shamanic brother, exorcizing people's pain? that was so much better. "i need my pain..." anyway...

Impossible Planet/Satan Pit is probably my favourite story from S2. Although I didn't like how it ultimately became more about building up the Doctor-Rose love story. All that "I believe in Rose Tyler" crap. But yeah, it's a good fun story and Tennant is excellent, and I love the Oud! The scene with 'Satan' is also cool but the crap CGI almost kills it, making him look a bit too much like an end of level boss from a PS2 game.

The celebration of humanity stuff was there in the classic era but never as in-your-face, or earnest. It's a side of the new era I don't like, along with how it become far more character (rather than story) driven.

Hah! See? That was one of the episodes I talked up a bunch!! It's clearly one of the best Who episodes ever. Bad graphics and "plagiarism" and all.

And you're talking about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and you're right — there are some similarities. I've never thought about that before. Interesting! Gonna have to rewatch that one.

I happen to kinda love all of the original series-based Star Trek movies (II and IV are just objectively excellent films, but all of them are fun), but most people consider Star Trek V a complete disaster. Me, I always liked it. Spock's half-brother is named Sybok! Lol!

And I love that Kirk line, "What does God need with a starship?" And then Kirk gets zapped or whatever. Hahaha.

Dude. Who doesn't love an Oud? :D

The Oud were a nice bit of Lovecraftian Weird-horror that I really liked. Great additions to in the mythos. I wonder if they'll ever be back.

oh yeah the poor damn oud!



their whole thing was disturbing. interesting for the story but their status left me uneasy. which-- made for a good story. moral ambiguity or straight up corruption? hmmmm... "i only had time for one trip" . suuuuuuure doctor, suuuuuuure. spock might have chosen differently as he was a follower of spinoza ("the needs of the many..." etc).

in any case. i just killed a bunch of mosquitoes that were breeding in a water barrel. true story.

Yeah, keep watching dude.

sure sure. unfortunately i know they reappear in season 4, "evolved" and shit.

but dont tell me that, as episodes go, you didnt find the whole thing with them disturbing.

"yay triumph! we just let 50 intelligent beings to die. but hey--with honors!" lol nope. i'd run into a burning building to save my cat. the ouds are falling into a black hole, awake and fully conscious.

but i'll leave it at that till i get to season 4 and see for myself

Yeah no spoilers from me, I promise.

Yes, I found that part of the episode disturbing and YES I am absolutely running into the burning building to save my cats! They're better people than I am!

But I think the Doctor was haunted by that too. It's been a while since I last saw that episode, but that's the impression I had. Maybe I'm forgetting something? Anyway, I also think the Oud were meant to be a kind of unsettling wild card themselves in that episode. Weren't they starting to retaliate a bit? I can't really remember, but I recall a sense of unease about them, and I think they scared the Doctor.

Dammit, now I want to watch the episode!! Is it on Hulu!? I'm thinking about getting a free month of that shit and then bolting so I can watch some stuff that's not on Netflix.

all of it is on prime video free with amazon prime which is like $12/mo or $100/yr (they have other perks like photo storage and other stuff. discounts to washington post subscription etc.)

unlike other streaming services you can actually offline it to your phone if your home internet is too slow or to take on the road. my wife downloads at work and then we jack it to the tv with a lil' adapter. apple tv not necessary. the lightning-hdmi adapter is 50 bucks not cheap but worth is for us and has a year warranty. prolly can get off-brand for $10.

**SPOILERS SPOILERS***

the issue w/ the oud is they get possessed by the big satan, but the humans disrupt the telepathic field and zap it out of them. then they're starting to recover consciousness. then big satan gets thrown into the toilet but oh yeah, the doctor chooses to rescue one human who turned blue and leaves the 50 ouds to face their death fully awake. and the doctor says he couldn't go back because his time machine didn't have time (!). then he's all cheery saying goodbye. the more i think about it the more it fucks me up. buuuuuuut it's a good story anyway. much darker than it appears tho when you consider the "cattle" angle.

**END SPOILERS**

Yeah, I remember. And yes, a very dark story. And yes, not having time doesn't make sense, but I think every Doctor has a moment where they kind of flip shit over "not being able to save everybody," and I'm not sure, but I'm just saying I think the Doctor harbors some regret over that decision.

^ not a spoiler because I really have no clue. Can't remember.

I can't wait until you see [NOT GONNA NAME THE EPISODE BUT IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, BOUNCE BACK A FEW PAGES TO WHEN I WAS TALKING ABOUT IT WITH DEMONRAIL]. I think you'll like that one. In fact, I think you'll think it's the best.

Yes, the Impossible Planet/Satan Pit is one of the episodes that made me really shit the fuck up and start taking the show seriously, not just as sci-fi fun, but as an intelligent artistic endeavor with some actual balls. I recall some interesting and tense moments when the Doctor is lowering himself into said pit that made me go "Oh wow, this is good television — there's some attempt to weave good and evil philosophy into the writing of this show!"

Aaaand that's how we nerdos feel validated. When sci-fi overlaps with genuinely smart, compelling ideas. Because then we are no longer nerds and spazzes for liking it... we are :cool: intellectauls :cool:

i skimmed over your post and NO FUCKING WAY IM DOING WHAT YOU SAY and looking at or expecting anything NO.

i already glazed my eyes once over that page, what moron would i be to go there on purpose?

anyway as for genuinely smart compelling ideas, i find the star trek movie way more interesting, see

-they're going on a search for god and find... a capricious violent monster imprisoned. like the old testament god. much more subversive than putting satan himself there. "religion is the demon."

-a dude wants to relieve the crew of their pain, but eventually they realize that they need their pain lest they turn into elois. are they talking about straight pain or about suffering? either way, very anti-buddhist.

-they go there pulled by feelings, intutions and ideas. reason shows them otherwise. anti-romantic and anti-hippie all the way.

-don't fucking trust shamans

if you wanna talk about ideas, that movie has better ones precedes this show by i think 3 decades. maybe less im not sure. but anyway...

I really like Star Trek V dude. Love it. Haven't seen it in an age, but it's great. I'm not saying this episode of Who is better than that Ster Trek (though I do prefer Doctor Who as a thing to Star Trek and Star Wars), I'm just saying it was one of the episodes that made me take the show seriously. Like, as a show. That's all.

Also, you and I are two of maybe four people I've ever met who like Star Trek V. Just sayin'

i dont understand what you're just sayin'. like.. what about these numbers? i dont understand (sorry.) explain?

as for the star trek movie (forget the #) i mentioned it cuz there are some major similarities between that movie and this story. namely, "we're at this impossible place in the universe looking for a miraculous x" and the miraculous x happens to be a fallen god of sorts. the writers were heavily influenced. comparisons for me are inevitable. then again, intertextuality is a bitch. and don quijote is in every novel, or something.

but yeah i always though that was the point of dr. who--ideas. it was shown on pbs when i first saw it, ha ah ha. and with the cardboard sets the appeal had to be the ideas. i mean. i saw a bit of the first season the other day and it had the worst production values ever ha ha ha. then again nothing wrong wth that, but when there's no spectacle one has to rely on actual ideas and imagination.

btw--have you ever seen i claudius? holy fuck. that thing is the best thing ever made for peanuts.

I'd have to be reminded what Star Trek: V was about, but I'm one of the people who actually liked Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and I think I've liked all the Star Trek movies with the original cast but also Generations.

I used to love Dr. Who as a kid, and as a young adult I read a few Dr. Who books, but I still don't consider myself a Who fan.

i dont know them by names or numbers but the one im talking about is the one where spock has a surprise hippy vulcan brother who has embraced emotion and goes around with a beard and a toga or something using the mindmeld to free people of their pain and gets a cult following and they hijack the enterprise and and kirk says "i need! my pain!" and they go to the unexplored center of the galaxy "to find god" and they find a powerful imprisoned creature that looks and sounds a lot like ywhw-1 and they nuke him to shit and fuck off .

Ohhh yeah. Yes I liked that one too. It's hard to go wrong with Star Trek.

Thankya

Whoops, our wires got crossed somewhere. Probably my fault. I know what you' were getting at with the plot of "Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier" (Star Trek V) being very similar to that of Impossible Planet/Satan Pit.

With the numbers I was just saying basically that just about everyone seems to hate that Star Trek movie, except a very few people. You and I happen to be two of those people. I thought that was cool... I guess.

More later! Sorry for confusion!

oh i get it now. the masses are the asses as kegmama used to say. ha ha. but no, i think a lot of people like that movie. what's not to like?

It's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. :D

This is GOOD.

Bloody hell, there's a name I totally forgot about. Whatever happened to her?

Have I seen I, Claudius? No. Why do you ask?

yep. recommended it to demonyo a while back. not sure if he's seen it yet.


she was doing well last i heard. but my guess is her kids got old enough to read this board and she had to leave XD


because it's a great show produced with very scarce means. made in the 70s with some shitty cardboard sets. whenever a roman emperor spoke to "a crowd" he's stand in a cardboard balcony speaking into the air and they'd overdub the roar of a crowd. hilarious.

but god damn great writing (based on a robert graves novel) and superb acting. highly watchable and addictive. check it out some time. also, upstairs downstairs (the original, not the modern reboot which was crap).

Yeah, I know the novel, but it's never occurred to me to watch the '70s BBC-er-whatever adaptation. I will though.

Also, don't think I've ever heard of upstairs downstairs, but I'll look into that as well.

Is there going to be one more Americans? I think so, it was left in a cliff hanger type thing. John Hurd in Claudius as Caligula meets Capt Picard as Sejanus, this is a dynamite series, and the book series is great, too.

One more bit of praise for I, Claudius.

There are tits in it. No, really! Like, tits that make you want to wank it, not ugly old lady tits.

This is high culture at its finest.

as camille paglia said loudest, not that she discovered anything new, she was just the most vociferous, high art is pornography

Bernini's St Theresa! She was fucking nuts!

yes. and bernini a horndog

Dude. ... cool. :cool:

I'd never say DW's ever suffered from a shortage of imagination. As for ideas (by which I suppose you mean philosophical ideas) I'm not sure they've ever been central or dealt with particularly seriously. For me DW belongs to a different, more playful, eccentric kind of SF, that I associate with the likes of The Hitchhikers' Guide ..., Time Bandits, right back to proto-SF like Jules Verne; none of which were especially interesting from a philosophical pov. For me, the Doctor in his TARDIS probably has more in common with Captain Nemo in his Nautilus than Kirk in the Enterprise.

Started into Episodes, pretty funny.

ah, captain nemo! AWESOME

im still waiting for the first dr. who series to arrive here... fucking netflix!

aghhhhh

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree. I mean, yes, there's the kooky Britishness, playful and whimsical, and yes I'd toss Time Bandits and Jules Verne in the same general pile, but I don't think the Doctor is anything like Nemo really. Sure, there are surface similarities, but Nemo is a hyper-politicized anti-hero. The Doctor is a hero hero, in a super traditional, no question about it kind of way.
Not that I think the Doctor anything like Kirk either. But that's because Star Trek spreads its philosophical, sort of theoretical representation of "humanity" out over a handful of characters from a handful of races. The Doctor is, I think, very much an ideal for humanity just like the premise of Star Trek is — Star Trek just doesn't compact its version of the ideal into one body/mind. Doctor Who does.

In my mind, the mythology is really closest in spirit to that of Superman. A British, intellectual, brains-over-brawn Superman. Both characters are sort of demigods (or godlike figures) who, despite being ANYTHING but human, choose to embody the best of what humanity "can be" (never will be). Both characters have the power to, in one way or another, simply force the world around them to bend to their will, and just be good and be decent, like they are, but both characters hold onto a strong conviction that humanity's choice in this is absolutely necessary, so they choose to act as guides instead of enforcers.

Both characters are basically metaphors for "God" existing as a result of human action. "God" or ultimate goodness achieved through eternal compassion.

Now obviously there are a ton of differences between Superman and the Doctor, but I think comparing the Doctor to another "mad" or daffy scientist on a cruise through the unknown is just way too easy, and probably places undue importance on the circumstances (a ship, a journey, a mystery, companions) and not enough on the real heart of the character, which is, for lack of a better term, benevolent, nearly-all-powerful superbeing with a savior complex.

I don't know though... you've seen more of the original series than I have, I think, and maybe my assessment is more based on the newer Who, but I still think there are some definite similarities between Star Trek and Doctor Who in terms of general premise, if not in a character-by-character level.

Y'know?

Fucking love Jules Verne though. Has there ever been a decent adaptation of Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea?

i think yes with omar sharif? i don't think i recall much. it was in the prehistory of color tv i think.

Speaking of the good Doctor:

Doctor Who casts series 11 companion

... aaaand it's an old dude!

close, but no cigar:

THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

i'm trying to link to a miniseries not a movie. apparently the thing was recut? something...

Defenders first two eps BORING. The next three got more exciting. I still have to finish the season.

The last GoT was very exciting.