Japan has 3 writing systems and this comic seems to be conflating Katakana and Kanji together as “stabby”, leaving Hiragana as “adorable”. All of them are (long ago) derived from chinese, but only the Kanji still look similar.
I would have introduced Chinese first, and then in the Japanese panel present the stabby and adorable ones both being attacked by flying contraptions. (And a few floating around the korean one, too)
Netflix’s short stint with FMV / chooe-your-own adventure games highlights a perfect case of difficult preservation - all the runtimes are closed source apps, all the data is streamed from a server, and all the logic is held on the server.
In theory (big caveat) with enough time, effort, and determination you could reverse engineer your way around even the worst Denuvo has to throw. For simple streamed content like images and sound you can always analog-hole your way around preserving content.
But for anything where the key thing you want to preserve, like logic, that depends entirely on a server somewhere existing, that’s a problem.
Honestly, “country of origin” will have straight lines drawn on a map that are so far removed from where the people who lived there originally considered their borders even that’s probably not pinning it down well enough.
I agree about the gelth - initially they seem able to inhabit dead bodies on their own, but then they need a conduit to come through, but then they aren’t able to stay in the bodies when there’s gas around them, which is a bit inconsistent.
I missed the first couple of episodes of this rewatch, so joining in here.
Compared to the newer episodes a lot of the direction in this one feels more like the classic series - more like a stage play than a typical TV drama, which fits the theme of the story well.
There’s lots of jokes sprinkled throughout this story, and it really works well with Christopher Eccleston. I missed that mad grin he does.
Acting - In the theatre, I did notice some of the bg extras not really running quite as fast from the ghost as they should have been, which was amusing. And the actors playing the reanimated dead bodies was really cheesy, felt less like an entity controlling them and more like they were playing stereotypical zombies. I did enjoy the portrayal of dickens as the sceptical and haunted artist.
The gelth needing the dead bodies because they’ve lost their own reminds me a bit of that voyager episode where the aliens take dead bodies to reuse them. It set up a nice conflict between Doctor and Rose - but after the tense conversation it doesn’t go anywhere, and an exploration of what it could mean is undermined by the twist that they’re evil. I didn’t really like the cgi, even considering it’s a couple decades old.
It’s not the best episode, but certainly not the worst. I think this might actually be the first time I’ve rewatched this episode since I saw it live when it aired.
Random bit I noticed at the end - they look at dickens through a viewscreen monitor on the Tardis console just before they leave. The Tardis often has futuristic looking interfaces in modern series, seeing a plain cctv camera view is very retro (and dare I say it seems more useful than a semi transparent screen with a bunch of circles for no good reason ;) )
I was mildly confused, as I suspect a lot of fans were, I don’t know if that quite constitutes “backlash”. Are there people really getting that militant about this?
This is why you keep a several hundred megabytes history file set to remember “forever”
fiercely confident of their own independence
In fairness, if you let the average cat out into nature it would be fine. Dump the average libertarian into nature and they wont last the night.
The retcon of Belinda’s history also bothered me. It kind of gave me those Moffat-era vibes, where women could go on fun, exciting adventures and all of that but eventually they’d settle down in the wife and/or mother role that represents the person they’re really supposed to be. Boo. I didn’t think RTD2 would echo Moffat like that and I’m as much disappointed that Ncuti Gatwa only had two seasons as that Varada Sethu is gone after just one.
This bugged me as well. I was very surprised in the last ep and the beginning of this one to see just how protective and loving Doctor and Belinda were being to poppy. But then by the end, only Belinda is the one that seems to care deeply for the child. The doctor is given a chance to make a farewell, but then he just leaves with (as I understood it) the implication that he is never going to come back and that he’s been replaced by a human dad. It just confuses me why any of that needed to happen.
I kind of enjoyed this, at least the first half.
On the first half, It was alright. The big thought I had was - if this whole Whoniverse thing doesn’t pan out, RTD and Bad Wolf would be great fit for doing a live action reboot of Captain Scarlet. A massive sci-fi weapons battery in the middle of a London disguised as a skyscraper is very spectrum.
The “epilogue”, I guess you could call it, was not great. I think I would have enjoyed it most if they had wrapped it up after Ruby notices that poppy has disappeared. It would have been tragic, it would have been emotional, it would have had punch, it would have been a pretty clean ending - just sometimes you don’t get the happy one.
Also, a thought that occurs as I type this - they had a Susan foreman reference not too long ago. She is established as being a descendant. But they’re sterile, so can’t have kids let alone grandkids? I know this is a timey wimey thing, and I really don’t want to encourage yet more cameos and self referencing, but surely this should have at least merited a mention. I really like the idea that you have a race of sterile people somehow trying to fix things, (I recently read The Old Axolotl, which touches on this concept) so why didn’t they do anything with it.
This is a fair point. If people demanded their money back when a film has bad audio, I wonder if that might incentivise the industry to care more about this.
This is a real pet annoyance of mine, and I have seeing apologist posts on the internet about it.
If the actors cant enunciate properly except when they’re shouting, that’s not adding realism, they’re doing bad acting.
If the sound engineers can’t get a good audio balance for anything except the loudest moment in a film, that’s not a limitation of technology/sound physics, they’re bad at mixing.
If the director can’t keep all of this in check and make a film that people can actually enjoy, that’s not artistic choice, they’ve made a bad film.
I’m surprised VLC fares that badly with CCs encoded this way. Usually it’s pretty good. I’m also now wondering if ffmpeg also shares the same problem
The skeleton walkers did initially give me vibes of the cybermen ghosts of 10’s run. They’re not quite there, but everyone can see and acknowledge them, and they seem to be bleeding in from another reality.
I think this seems to be a curse that almost every TV series is facing right now. Even for runaway critical and popular successes from companies with loads of funding (Thinking Wednesday from Netflix, all the Star Trek shows from Paramount-CBS, countless animated projects from HBO-Max-Whatever-they’re-called-this-week) they seem unable to just commit to a production pipeline, everything ends up stalling, and it prevents the kind of success that the production companies wanted, all but ensuring they fail to meet expectations, as multi-year long waits for follow ups means that only the core fan group is going to want to follow up.
I don’t know how you solve that, other than grabbing the executives by the shoulders and shaking them until they realise it’s nonsense behaviour.
Yes, this helps, thanks.
I already understood the need to avoid private money agents like Paypal, visa, etc. In the UK we have the BACS and FPS systems that allow for direct free money transfer. Though they should be more usable for day to day transactions, they work well enough if you need to send a significant amount of money between bank accounts.
Your explanation of the anonymity seems like the real value add of these digital currencies. The fact this only applies to the buyer and not the seller is a good choice, and definitely wins over blockchain crypto. Looking at it more closely, the fact they use signed tokens rather than proof-of-x is also a very good choice.
I will need to read up on Taler’s docs more closely. But looking at the summary of features on their site something hits me as an immediate problem - you need to “load up” a wallet. If Jane Doe wants to buy a coffee, it’s far easier to just use a bank card (which may interface through a private money agent like visa, or a middleman like google/apple). Loading up private wallets isn’t a difficult concept (it’s how gift cards work), but it does add extra steps of friction that I think will need to be removed before this can really be taken up by the general public.
It may harm the anonymity aspect, but I think that to get people using it a system that could operate like a tap-once-and-done bank card payment, loading up a wallet for immediate spend seems like the best solution. It would also help alleviate any fears that typically are associated with blockchain based digital currency - primarily of losing the signed digital money as it sits in a wallet out with the bank account’s protections. And once the system is normalised and people are used to it, then all the architecture is there for anyone that really needs the anonymity.
I enjoyed this, but I’m not really sure what to make of it yet, I guess I’ll have to wait for the conclusion next episode.
Conrad’s vision of an ideal world is deranged, of course. Absolute centre of the universe misogynist, ableist, and dictator (though I guess not overtly racist, so I guess it could have been worse?). Not sure why he wished for giant skeleton monsters, maybe he just thinks they look cool.
Looking for cracks, not hiding your doubts, and questioning the world around you is a good message to take away. Though this goes both ways - you can point out the injustice in the world, but unless you have a strong positive framework around which to have a good faith discussion, those who believe the opposite can do the exact same thing. A Conrad type can and will speak up about how it’s weird that women have a voice and independence of their own, and they’ll see that as an aberration. The metaphor of mugs slipping through a table makes no sense to me, but I understood it from context.
Lots of cameos popped up here, I hope they end up doing something useful and weren’t just there for fanservice.
The Rani did go a bit villainsplainy towards the end, but the writers did catch that covering with the need to kickstart the doctor’s memory, so well done there.
Looking forward to next week.
There’s something I’m really struggling to understand when talking about things like Taler, and the “Digital euro” idea which has come up recently as well: What is it actually doing that’s new?
Money is distributed digitally already. When you get a paycheck, no-one is actually moving physical paper and metal cash from a business account bank vault to a customer account bank vault, it’s just numbers in a spreadsheet. So what’s actually new when we’re talking about digital currency like this post?
There must be something I’m missing here.
Preface: I’ve heard people say far too often that the ESC is “too political”, and that’s nonsense. The ESC is not political enough. It is produced and sanitised and sterile with just enough of a hint of backroom politics to keep people angry in the right way without causing too much damage to the status quo. It needs to be more political, and it needs to be the artists themselves being political. Art without politics is worth less.
Now on to the episode: I enjoyed it. Being an ESC episode, I knew there had to be a Graham Norton cameo, and that did not disappoint. The acerbic “wish I hadn’t signed away my appearance rights” was great. I recognise the name Rylan, but I actually have no idea who that is IRL.
We have in this episode one of the most dangerous villains we’ve ever had, and it was a random wronged victim, not a demigod, not a race of nazi-standin stormtroopers, just a regular person who was maligned by society. I like this a lot. It’s a reminder that if you push people too far, you make them into lone wolf villains that can be more dangerous than you could imagine. The fact that the Corp killed an entire planet for fake honey is disgusting, but makes for an entertaining story. Totally not subtle but at this point I feel like subtlety even outwith doctor who is kind of dead, at this point I don’t mind it that much. The fact that the threat was really high stakes but not “the entire universe” high (because someone has to stay alive to hold the Corp to account) paradoxically makes it seem like higher stakes than usual. As in, it could actually happen without meaning the series has to end. Doctor going nuts is a bit off putting to watch, but that’s the point. It reminds me a bit of 10s first outing where after the PM kills all the Sycorax he loses it, though certainly not as off the rails as happens in this ep.
I enjoyed the song contest parody, especially the juxtaposition of the horror and the camp awfulness. Lots of diversity here in the casting and characters, which is good as always. The gambling rule was a good justification for the plot to proceed as it did. The whole episode is poking fun at and criticising the awful things that sponsors of nice events and causes do. I wonder how the ESC / Morrocanoil feel about this - the ESC’s main sponsor, and there’s suggestions they operate in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, which bears some echoes to what the Hellia went through. I notice that they didn’t explicitly mention the ESC by name once in the episode. did they have difficulty getting the rights to that? Can’t imagine why… The whole hellia story needs to be explored in more detail.
Grumbles: Plotwise I am a bit confused how Kid got into the station in the first place. Surely it would take more then just having one Helper already on the inside. I’m getting the same annoying reaction of “this highly important place has really shit security” that I got from UNIT previously. Is there no 2FA in the future?
There was a pronoun thrown in there (she/her), and aside from a “definite article” gag it was the only one. I usually dont nit-pick on these things but it stood out in a bad way here. It would have fit in better if they had done that more than once, maybe with a few neo pronouns thrown in as well (there are aliens after all).
Miscellaneous wider plot notes: A confusing susan cameo, amazing they actually got Carol Ann Ford for that. Wonder if that’s going to be followed up or not. Finally got answers for Mrs flood. I’m glad it wasn’t the master. Interesting they’re making bigeneration a general thing, and not just a one-off.
I enjoy this episode, though it certainly has its problems. I took notes as I was watching. Lots to say.
The sub-plot of Rose having vanished for a year is a really nice idea, especially as she just up and left without saying anything to anyone. It is a useful way to set up the tension with MR ickey. It’s a testament to his overall blandness that even when Rose comes back pretty much everyone forgets to tell him. Mickey in the tardis later gets a chance to flesh himself out a bit as what we would probably now call an open source intelligence guy. I think that the doctor works better when he’s got a smart entourage he can bounce off, whether it’s individuals like Mickey, SJS, or the modern unit crew with Kate. Mickey though never really felt particularly interesting as a character.
Some part of this episode have not aged well at all. The slaps (which the policeman present doesn’t even try to intercede in) and a remark later ‘you’re so gay’. I get that this is the way people spoke, but still… Other parts though still hits me the way it did when I first watched it - During the crash scene Murray Golds soundtrack is fantastic, and the visuals aren’t too bad considering how old this is.
The writing really gets the era right here - mid 00s, 24hr news, a few years after 9/11, after a major event this is exactly what people would be doing. The doctor as the one person in the room really paying attention while everyone else is chatting and gossiping is great. If this were rewritten for today, I wonder if everyone would be chatting, or if they’d all be shown doomscrolling instead.
Inside downing Street we met Harriet Jones for the first time. She seemed like such a grounded politician as a backbencher, it’s a shame she ended up going mad with power. Reminds me a bit of Kier Starmer - starts off fairly innocuous, just trying to do the right thing, and then faced with actual responsibility starts to go a bit too hard down on protectionism.
The fart Jokes begin as soon as we enter downing street, and as juvenile as they are, it is mildly funny to see the camera cut immediately afterwards to show the on duty security guard in the corner of the stairwell, unable to move away. This might be the only time I actually found it funny. A later scene in the cabinet office is one of the worst for fart jokes and it goes on too much here to be funny, and completely ruins the tone of what should be a horrific scene.
To this day I’m still not sure how the aliens managed to kill the prime minister and subdue the entire chain of command - if they had the resources and were able to do that the rest of the setup seems kind of unnecessary. Does the whole UK chain of command / succession really boil down to these three? We get some hints, particularly when the general tries to impose martial law as to how things ought to be working, but it doesn’t go anywhere. No deputy, no home sec, just straight to the sugar minister. And the cabinet we know are still available, they’re just waiting to be “airlifted in”, as if they wouldn’t all immediately be jostling to get in.
The doctor being apparently unaware this is humanity’s first contract moment is interesting : it’s either retconning; or the doctor who started coming to earth in the 60s hates spoilers and just wants to follow earth’s development in real time?
Rose getting the tardis key is different to how I remember watching this as a kid, I can now see its more like her getting to move into a new friends house rather than just access to a vehicle.
When Harriet encounters the open cabinet door as the invaders are leaving, we get my favourite pet peeve - an immensely secure area and they just leave the door unlocked and important documents lying on the table. Eyeroll.
In the hospital the pig reveal actually spooked me as a kid for some reason, it’s laughable now. Poor animal.
On the design of the slitheen - The skinsuit idea is a pretty neat concept, a good twist on the changeling invader concept. The obvious zip we see in some of the shots is a bit silly though, and inconsistent. When we finally see the aliens I think their designs are really impressive. It’s the first time we get a real big bad alien costume (after a few background ones in episode 2). The eyes are dead though, that’s the big thing I wish they had done differently.
The overly dramatic phone call from Jackie to the helpline is great. It makes no sense that sirens would be going if like that in some random room at downing Street, but it makes for a good TV shot, and is a decent tool in showing how important the doctor is.
When Rose realises she’s going to number 10 she seems elated. That one was always a bit weird to me - is that a place the average person dreams of visiting? I don’t feel it has quite the prestige that say a royal household, the white house, or the palace des Élysée has.
This episode has a “next time” teaser, and honestly kind of defeats the cliffhanger ending. I always hated those, I’m glad when they get bumped either to the end credits or off entirely.
As a one of episode of doctor who this one has a lot of problems. But, in the context of being the first two-parter of the revival, and watching it as a kid years ago, it stuck with me. I loved the juxtaposition of aliens against the mundane every day life that goes on, and the behind the scenes of what governments would do in scenarios like this. And I think it was a formative experience for the kinds of disaster film and scifi drama i like now - less focus on the death and chaos and more on the logistics and the how and the why. Re watching it there are some things that stick out in a bad way but overall its still an enjoyable watch.