Doctor Who: Christmas 2016 and through to the End of the Moff Thread.

[Tetsuro]

They really have not been very good at establishing the difference.

What was the name of the other Cyberman planet anyway? The one from Tomb IIRC.

[Skyquake87]

I'm not sure, in the finale, The Doctor must have repeated the names of the planets where he's encountered them twice, but just Mondas, Telos and Marinus have stuck.

Both of the newer designs showed up in the finale (disappointingly, i have to say), to show how the Cybermen had evolved over time - so it was a shame the Invasion and up redesigns didn't also make an appearance (always liked the Silver Nemesis design best of the 'classic' looks).

The series finale was pretty solid, I thought. Just a shame there was a bit of a struggle to find something for the Master/ Missy to do, although I did like the final scene between them. Likewise, Nardole's exit seemed little more than deck clearing before the new production team comes in. I've liked having him around, but we haven't really got to see much of why he's there and what he's all about. Oh well.

I did like how Bill being a Cyberman was done and resovled (although the pilot flashbacks were unnecessary) - good choice to have her appearing human, otherwise those scenes would have been impossible to take seriously done in the staccato of the Cyberman's synthesized voice.

Capaldi was brilliant throughout, and I loved his speech to The Master, just asking him to do the right thing for once.

and that is my thoughts.

[Brendocon 2.0]

I never want Capaldi to leave.

Nice to see Simm playing the Master straight for once. Though boo to overexplaining the symbolism at the end there.

They really have not been very good at establishing the difference.

What was the name of the other Cyberman planet anyway? The one from Tomb IIRC.

Telos.

Or was it Planet 14.

Or Marinus?

[inflatable dalek]

Mind, if memory serves Planet 14 was Marinus in the comic that was referencing...

Simm being a bit older seems to have slowed him down, resulting in a much better less bouncy twat performance (a John Simm fan on twitter was very angry at this, saying the difference was just direction. Boo to the Tennant era peeps who were directing him to act badly then). There was basically no reason for two masters, or even much of the Missy arc in the end, but they played off each other well enough for it to work.

Generally a very good finale, of the sort that makes you will Moff could do this every week. A little derivative in places (how often has Nick Briggs would up playing a companion now? Three times?), but still nice and foreboding stuff that ended well.

Not sure about the return of the First Doctor and Christmas special looking to be set between scenes in The Tenth Planet. Still, we shall see.

[Brendocon 2.0]

I liked the idea of doing a Two Masters story just for the sake of it, tbh. Especially as it ties up the (admittedly unnecessary) "when did he regenerate" loose end, and also means that the Cyberman plan in Dark Water is basically a direct continuation of what he was upto here.

Did think that the "character from twelve episodes ago pops up and uses vague god-level sub-atomic-rewrite powers" to save Bill was a massive cop-out though.

Currently enjoying the small subsection of people on Twitter who don't realise Bradley was playing Hartnell and think he's the new Doctor.

[EDIT] Black clothes, beard, eyeliner, rubber masks, not bouncing about like a twat... yeah, definitely the direction o_0

[Tetsuro]

Pretty sure Telos was the one.

The only thing that really bothered me about the episode was the lack of a definitive ending to the whole spaceship story. It's still stuck by a blackhole with cybermen creeping in on the surviving humans. The Doctor said Nardole will guard the survivors for the rest of their lives, but y'know those survivors are eventually gonna grow up and have kids too. What is he gonna do then?

[inflatable dalek]

Currently enjoying the small subsection of people on Twitter who don't realise Bradley was playing Hartnell and think he's the new Doctor.

Mind, there is a point there that to get the impact you have to remember a one off docudrama from four years ago. Hartnell himself has been in the actual program as recently. I can see it falling flat/being confusing for a lot of folk.

I'm enjoying the Very Angry folk on Gallifrey Base who have worked out he's going to be terrible from five seconds because he's not going to play it exactly like Bill would.

No, not that Bill.

[Brendocon 2.0]

Mind, there is a point there that to get the impact you have to remember a one off docudrama from four years ago.

I didn't remember that until about an hour after watching it, tbh.

Unrelated note, when are they going to get off their arses and animate the rest of the missing episodes?

[inflatable dalek]

Unrelated note, when are they going to get off their arses and animate the rest of the missing episodes?

There's some confusion there. Cast members like Anneke Wills keep saying more are happening (and in the case of one guest star from Evil of the Daleks, that's he's been filming motion references!), but the folk who'd work on making the special features/restoring the soundtracks keep seeming legitimately baffled by this.

I suppose it all depends on how much Power depended on the now defunct BBC store.

[Brendocon 2.0]

I suppose it all depends on how much Power depended on the now defunct BBC store.

I hate to think of anything depending on the BBC store.

[Ryan F]

There's some confusion there. Cast members like Anneke Wills keep saying more are happening (and in the case of one guest star from Evil of the Daleks, that's he's been filming motion references!), but the folk who'd work on making the special features/restoring the soundtracks keep seeming legitimately baffled by this.

I suppose it all depends on how much Power depended on the now defunct BBC store.

Stupid question (Gallifrey Base scares me sometimes), but would the Restoration Team have much work to do on the animations? I mean, all the audio was cleaned up by Mark Ayres for the CD releases years ago, so that stuff is presumably available off the shelf.

On the other hand, Anneke Wills can get... 'confused' sometimes, and I'm not sure why you'd hire an old actor to perform MoCap for a series of animations where natural human movements haven't exactly been top of the priority list.

In any case, why would you re-hire an actor fifty years later to study his movement in an attempt to re-create his younger self - I mean, undoubtedly their posture, gait, bearing etc. would have changed considerably over the years? Sounds like balls, if you ask me!

[inflatable dalek]

It's a case of wait and see!

I wouldn't be surprised if the filming was for a new fan recon.

On the Cybusmen, all the ones in the RTD era are from the parallel Earth (the ones in The Next Doctor are expressly said to have escaped the void, their images of all the Doctors being stolen from the Daleks).

The Moff era ones are intended to be from our Universe, but they couldn't pony up for costumes without the logo till Nightmare in Silver. Of course, the cheeky "They turn up everywhere!" dialogue in the finale basically solves all Cybermen chronology problems.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

The Moff era ones are intended to be from our Universe, but they couldn't pony up for costumes without the logo till Nightmare in Silver. Of course, the cheeky "They turn up everywhere!" dialogue in the finale basically solves all Cybermen chronology problems.

It's also a nice albeit it dark and real bit of social commentary. I loved the shot at Trump as well.

[Skyquake87]

So, Jodie Whitaker is the 13th Doctor.

I wish this felt progressive and less like...shutting up the tabloids who've been banging on about the Doctor being female since...1980.

In fiction, it just raises all kinds of questions about Timelord physiology and the populace of Gallifrey in general that, honestly, I was never had or was bothered about. Or crucially, never wanted to know about. It's been kind of drip fed into the TV series in recent years, so its just "sometimes they like to be female and others male", which is fine... but I dunno, I didn't want Doctor Who to suddenly be derailed by biology and gender issues. It probably wont be, but its such a big concept to put out there... It'll be interesting to see how / if this is tackled. I'm rambling now.

Anyway, interested to see what Jodie's Doctor will be like and she looks very smiley Even if I am a bit sad that we've lost one of the most unique male role models out there in TV land.

[Tetsuro]

Or crucially, never wanted to know about. It's been kind of drip fed into the TV series in recent years, so its just "sometimes they like to be female and others male", which is fine... but I dunno, I didn't want Doctor Who to suddenly be derailed by biology and gender issues. It probably wont be

When you put it like that, it makes me think of those situations where you tell someone you explicitly don't care about a certain topic when they bring it up, only for them to go on a rant about it anyway.

Part of me wants to be mad about this in the same way I'm always annoyed by race- and genderswapping, but I'm beginning to think that part of me has numbed to a kind of indifference. I can't stop them from pandering to demographics so there's no point getting worked up over it. Plus you're pretty much guaranteed the well has already been poisoned before you ever get involved into any sort of argument over the whole thing.

For all I know, Jodie might be fine in the role. In the other hand, they might also kill it with some kind of a lame "Hey I'm a woman now!" joke repeated ad nauseum.

I also started wondering why I never had particularly strong feelings about Missy either, and I think that boils down to the part where her identity was suspect for a fairly long time - and also the simple fact that the nu-Who Master was always a bit shit.

[Denyer]

Not an actress I'm familiar with -- I'd echo others and say it's a shame they didn't go with ginger and have the Doctor not actually notice the gender swap.

But more to the point I'll be sorry to see the current Doctor go. Didn't quite get Eccleston or Tennant (in large part I think due to lousy scripts) and the Smith companions had a similar effect a lot of the time, but I think both Smith and Capaldi carried the role well, and we'll hopefully see some multi-Doctor episodes in future.

There'll be huge bonus points if later on in the series this turns out to be Iris Wildthyme.

edit: Also, I really wanted it to be Tilda Swinton -- Whittaker doesn't have much of an alien feel.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

I was kind of hoping for Haley Atwell (Peggy Carter) she would be been a great Doctor.

[Tetsuro]

I guess Helen Mirren might've been a little too much to ask.

[Skyquake87]

When you put it like that, it makes me think of those situations where you tell someone you explicitly don't care about a certain topic when they bring it up, only for them to go on a rant about it anyway.

^This.

I also agree with your comments about Missy. Michelle Gomez is brilliant, but the character never felt nailed down enough to convince me she was The Master (didn't help that after unveiling whatever mad scheme she was doing, she just kind of ...hangs around not really doing much). I'm sure that won't be the case with The Doctor, who's a more avuncular character, but it does show that if the writing isn't there then your whole 'it's a girl!' just looks little more than stunt casting, and that's no good.

Anyway, what would I know, I can't even spell Jodie's name right. It's Whittaker with two 't' s. Tut tut.

[Tetsuro]

It also probably helped that whatever flaws she might've had, Missy still seemed like an improvement over the bouncing twat he was during the final RTD episodes. Which is even more of a shame because if the last episode proved anything, it's that John Simm can definitely deliver a solid performance as the Master under good direction and script. Although there's no way to know they're just not planning to bring Simm's Master back and have him deal with regenerating into a woman in some unspecified time in the future, kinda like Clara seems to have an indefinite lease of life now.

Although I still kind of have trouble buying the part where he literally kills his own future self rather than side with the Doctor; if his behaviour in the classic episodes is anything to go by, a somewhat understated characteristic of the Master is that he's a bit of a coward, so what is effectively suicide seems kind of out-of-character.