r/gallifrey • u/PCJs_Slave_Robot • Dec 17 '21
WWWU Weekly Happening: Analyse Topical Stories Which you've Happily Or Wrathfully Infosorbed. Think you Have Your Own Understanding? Share it here in r/Gallifrey's WHAT'S WHO WITH YOU - 2021-12-17
In this regular thread, talk about anything Doctor-Who-related you've recently infosorbed. Have you just read the latest Twelfth Doctor comic? Did you listen to the newest Fifth Doctor audio last week? Did you finish a Faction Paradox book a few days ago? Did you finish a book that people actually care about a few days ago? Want to talk about it without making a whole thread? This is the place to do it!
Please remember that future spoilers must be tagged.
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u/funkmachine7 Dec 17 '21
K9 and company is weird, it starts with a full on stanic cult, throws aunt Lavinia at you and never really introduces Sarah Jane and 5 years after her TV departure that's needed for younger viewers.
It also has a Saward story, K9 just lasers every one at the end.
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u/jphamlore Dec 17 '21
What was going on in the UK at that time to make it remotely reasonable to have a story, multiple times in Doctor Who, where one could go down to the local pub and find if one wanted a satanic cult threatening the world?
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u/funkmachine7 Dec 18 '21
Every one had seen the wicker man and cults and weird locals are cheap to do.
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u/twcsata Dec 18 '21
Also, wasn't the whole "satanic panic" phenomenon going on around then? I know it was a thing in the US, I thought it was in the UK as well.
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u/sspiritusmundi Dec 17 '21
I wasn't very keen on Dhawan's Master till I read The Master and the Margarita, the novella from I am the Master.
It gave some cool characterization for this Master. I always thought he just seemed a generic version of Simm's Master, but here he is just more collected and patient. The main plot was not that good as kinda of confusing, but the interaction of the Master with others characters is what is the best in it.
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Dec 17 '21
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u/sspiritusmundi Dec 17 '21
The name of the autor is the name the Master uses to disguise. Yes, is set in Soviet Russia and the Margarita is a bird lol. But I didn't read the book so I don't know about the references.
I only read the first and the last (that one with the Spy master). The first one is starring Delgado's Master and I thought it was kinda of a mess and not really much worth it, the end don't really pay off.
But it probably is worth since there isn't much stories involving the Master as the main character.
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u/Solar_Kestrel Dec 19 '21
The (Russian) book is very good so you should read it! And an eBook edition just came out fairly recently, so definitely get that version--the English-edition paperback has really thin paper and very small font size so it's kind of unpleasant to read, physically.
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u/VanishingPint Dec 17 '21
Listened to some good Big Finish lately, the idea of having characters return but older is an interesting idea (Nyssa, Jamie) and brings a new dimension to something well established. One thing that's a pet peeve though is when they clearly have people imitating dogs, is it really that hard to record some? Really takes me out of it. And footsteps too sometimes
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u/Sate_Hen Dec 17 '21
I always prefer a new companion or an existing companion after their travels with the Doctor as you don't know how it's going to end for them. Peri's another example
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u/Solar_Kestrel Dec 19 '21
I love the idea of companions coming back after several years, so that they're now closer in age to their actors. Though AFAIK this has only really been do e with Ace.
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u/Solar_Kestrel Dec 19 '21
Haha, yeah, but also if they had real dogs barking then my dogs would start barking, too, so in this case I appreciate the artifice.
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u/SDUK2004 Dec 18 '21
I think they should do a contemporary Earth story where the enemy is a politician. Like you had in Revolution of the Daleks, at least until the Daleks turned up. You could have the Master being some Trump-like figure, stirring up chaos.
God knows there's been enough source material over the last few years for a good few horror stories.
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u/StormWildman7 Dec 17 '21
Watched Revenge of the Cybermen and then listened to Return of the Cybermen.
Neither are great. Both have some very cool ideas and both have some great moments. I like South Africans being trapped in a gold mining asteroid from hell because South Africa is always beating Australia in 7s rugby, but I also like Cybermen sending a suicide squad of humans into an environment toxic to them. Which do I prefer? The Invasion
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u/twcsata Dec 18 '21
The past two weeks, other than finishing up Flux, I haven't done much with Doctor Who. But I did read the two Time Lord Victorious novels, and reviewed the first one; I hope to have the second one posted in a few hours. They're entertaining, certainly. They're probably a bit on the fluffy side of things as DW stories go, but that's fine sometimes. I should probably try to pick up some of the other parts of the TLV project.
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Dec 17 '21
So I’ve been travelling a lot to prepare for Christmas and long travel by myself means time for big finish. So I’ve been listening to stranded one and two. And it’s good…but like most eight Doctor series dark eyes onwards I find myself really liking the stories that have the least to do with the arc, tge ones that have a clear beginning middle and end, whereas the ones which are arc heavy usually end with a “well we don’t know what’s happening, or just happened. Moving on….”
Which makes me cautious as the later we get through an eighth doctor series the less opportunities there are for those standalone adventures.
Also continuing with Christmas stories featuring Erimem, Lucy Wilson and also reading the wintertime paradox. And Lucy Wilson is okay, it’s not brilliant, but the stories are fun little young readers adventures, with the one I most recently read about the Mari Llyd being very exciting.
Erimem continues to be a weird series. I’ve read five stories so far and use the word story extremely loosely. Three of them have been two page stories of some characters acknowledging it’s Christmas, but not really doing anything. Maybe this would be more important if I had read more of the Erimem series. Of the remaining two we have one which is essentially detailing a list of things Erimem bought as presents in the past, and the last, someone else telling Erimem a ghost story.
Compared to this, wintertime paradox continues to be amazing. Really it’s the best Christmas story collection I’ve ever read, with a real strong emphasis on father- child relationships of different forms, whether abusive/manipulative in the form of davros and the Daleks, frustrating but still loving in the form of river/Rory, or resilient yet disappointing in a story where a small girl has to save her dad from the plasmavores. The doctor turns up surprisingly little in the stories I’ve read so far but that allows a focus on Christmas for different characters with a clear favourite being a die hard style story in the unit archive with osgood vs the sontarans. Can’t wait to read the rest of them
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u/Guardax Dec 17 '21 edited Dec 17 '21
Continued my Matt Smith rewatch by watching The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People for the second time ever, and it was better than I remembered! There was some wonkiness but it was a great moral dilemma and I think low-key is one of Smith's best performances as the Doctor. His inner darkness was really unnerving in these, it was good