Did anyone else feel like the Professor character, the one played by David Warner, had more going on than meets the eye? I haven't heard anything about him coming back for more episodes, but there was just something off about him. Not that I thought he was the Master or anything, but I had the same vibe I got when David Jacobi turned up a few seasons ago. Maybe it was just good acting on Warner's part adding depth to a supporting character, but I just kept feeling like there was some bigger mystery there.
I agree. For a guy of that age bracket to be enamored by Ultravox and Duran Duran, which were fairly modern bands during the era this episode took place, seemed a bit odd, and his reactions to almost every aspect of their predicament seemed out-of-place, or to borrow Chris' descriptor "off.
Did anyone else feel like the Professor character, the one played by David Warner, had more going on than meets the eye? I haven't heard anything about him coming back for more episodes, but there was just something off about him. Not that I thought he was the Master or anything, but I had the same vibe I got when David Jacobi turned up a few seasons ago. Maybe it was just good acting on Warner's part adding depth to a supporting character, but I just kept feeling like there was some bigger mystery there.
I agree. For a guy of that age bracket to be enamored by Ultravox and Duran Duran, which were fairly modern bands during the era this episode took place, seemed a bit odd, and his reactions to almost every aspect of their predicament seemed out-of-place, or to borrow Chris' descriptor "off.
The musical tastes just seemed like something quirky to make the character stand out. But when he started hanging out with the Doctor and Clara, taking every strange thing in stride, I began to wonder. Plus, the way he delivered that early line, something like 'Yes, probably a mammoth..." led me to believe he knew already that what was in that ice was no mammoth.
And something I just realized this morning - wasn't he the one that found the sonic screwdriver after it fell to the floor? I already deleted the episode from my DVR, so I can't double check, but it was odd enough that they made such a big deal about dropping the screwdriver (shot of it flying through the air, plus a shot of Clara seeing it as she regained consciousness) that you'd have assumed it was going to play into something important later on. Instead, we just got the Professor handing it back to the Doctor. For a show that typically has a lot to cram in in its 45 minutes, it struck me as odd to devote time to that.
Maybe I'm just over-analyzing, or maybe he did something to it, or switched it with another. Something about the whole thing just made my radar go up.
That's a fun theory but I doubt Clara's mystery will go back to a past doctor's companion. I just think too many new viewers have arrived and it would be too complicated for the writers to have to explain what all that was about. No, whatever Clarla's deal is it wont be something that harkens back to Rose.
Cold War got mixed reviews in our house. My wife was utterly bored by it, but I kinda liked Mark Gatiss's attempt at writing a Troughton story. The base under siege is a classic Who trope that works well when used sparingly, and I thought it was great to see the Ice Warriors (or an Ice Warrior, at least) make a comeback and be left relatively untouched in terms of design. Too bad Clara didn't get a lot to do... and even too badder that David Warner was given even less.
I enjoyed a nice little nerd moment in there, though... the second the TARDIS disappeared I thought "Huh, he must've set the HADS," so I was pretty psyched to hear it get brought up later. :-B
Liked the most recent episode. Matt Smiths constant yelling is starting to get on my nerves though.
I think it would be nice if the next Doctor was a little more laid back. I remember years ago on the Around Comics podcast one of the hosts asked why they didn't have a Doctor he didn't want to punch. The spazziness that began with Tennant got pretty amped up with Smith. I just don't want to see it become a permanent fixture, especially since it's the exception, not the norm. Pertwee, Tom Baker, and Davison were typically more low key and it still worked.
Liked the most recent episode. Matt Smiths constant yelling is starting to get on my nerves though.
I think it would be nice if the next Doctor was a little more laid back. I remember years ago on the Around Comics podcast one of the hosts asked why they didn't have a Doctor he didn't want to punch. The spazziness that began with Tennant got pretty amped up with Smith. I just don't want to see it become a permanent fixture, especially since it's the exception, not the norm. Pertwee, Tom Baker, and Davison were typically more low key and it still worked.
Personally, I love Smith's Dr. But I can see the point - and wouldn't mind a change of pace on the next Dr. Tom Baker is actually my all time favorite Dr. and I was a big fan of Davison as well.
I like Smith as well, but still feel like he wasn't quite enough of a change from Tennant. Looking back, most regenerations resulted in Doctors very different, sometimes even polar opposites, of their predecessors. I'll feel a little better if the next Doctor isn't a further variation on the Tennant/Smith personality.
I think the manic personalities of the last 3 Doctors is more a reflection of the compressed nature of the show since it's reboot rather then Smith, Tennant, or Eccleston making a conscience desicion to amp up the crazy. Take "Cold War" as an example. Classic Who would have taken an episode and a half for the Ice Warrior to be revealed. That's probably around 40 to 45 minutes. It's easy to be laid back at that pace. I think Cold War ran around 46 minutes in total. You got to haul ass to get your lines in.
I'm growing more and more fond of Matt Smith's Doctor. I adore the whimsy he brings to the roll. It diffuses all the sexy that bugged me about Tennant's Doctor. Even the yelling and the spastically waving around of the sonic screw driver are growing on me.
The yelling isn't really anything new (most Doctors have yelled when their authorities and/or egos have been challenged), but Smith's spastic mannerisms and movements are pretty uniquely his, and I think that's pretty much how he is most of the time, if Moffat is to be believed. I think he once used the phrase "drunken giraffe" to describe the way Smith moves through everyday life. A little of that goes a long way, but it's this Doctor's quirk and I've come to accept it.
Getting a little tired of the constant use of sonic screwdriver, though. It's less a tool now and more like the writers' "Get Out of Jail Free" card for any situation they don't want to have to explain (especially since it allegedly now scans, too, though that's the sort of feature the Doctor could easily be making up :D ). I was actually excited when he lost it in Cold War and was hoping it would stay gone for the rest of the episode. It's a device with a long history in the show, of course, but Troughton, Pertwee, and Tom Baker only ever seemed to use it sparingly, and when it broke for good during the Davison era, it's not like it was ever particularly missed.
The other night I was watching Stones of Blood. The Doctor is going to break the seal of a prison cell to see what was inside. He pulls out the sonic screwdriver, points it at the seal, and shoves the end of it through the panel.
I had forgotten all about that. Nearly fell off of my chair.
I think the manic personalities of the last 3 Doctors is more a reflection of the compressed nature of the show since it's reboot rather then Smith, Tennant, or Eccleston making a conscience desicion to amp up the crazy. Take "Cold War" as an example. Classic Who would have taken an episode and a half for the Ice Warrior to be revealed. That's probably around 40 to 45 minutes. It's easy to be laid back at that pace. I think Cold War ran around 46 minutes in total. You got to haul ass to get your lines in.
I'm growing more and more fond of Matt Smith's Doctor. I adore the whimsy he brings to the roll. It diffuses all the sexy that bugged me about Tennant's Doctor. Even the yelling and the spastically waving around of the sonic screw driver are growing on me.
I can see @chrisw 's point - and I agree, would like to see a starkly different Dr. in the next regeneration. But I wouldn't call Eccleston's Dr. "manic." Excitable, perhaps - but he struck me as a lot darker than Tennant and Smith. Smith definitely has the most whimsical feel of the new Drs. Perhaps an older guy for the next one?
TV Legends Revealed | Did BBC Buy Rights to Blue Police Boxes? TV URBAN LEGEND: Did the BBC buy the trademark to blue police boxes from the Metropolitan Police?
When the first episode of Doctor Who was written in 1963, one of the biggest points of debate was over the appearance of the Doctor’s time machine. Eventually, they determined it would look like a police box, a little blue concrete room that was, in effect, a miniature police station.
Created in the United States, they began appearing in the United Kingdom by the turn of the 20th century, with the iconic blue version of the London police box introduced in 1929. The police boxes contained telephones that would connect directly to police stations; a light on the top let officers know when the station was trying to contact them. By the 1950s, London was covered with police boxes, with nearly 700 dotteing the streets. Therefore, if you wanted your time machine to fit in in London in 1963, disguising it as a police box would be a great idea. The police box is revealed in the series to actually be a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which is exponentially bigger on the inside; it’s simply camouflaged as a police box. However, in the first episode, the camouflaging technology malfunctions, leaving the TARDIS stuck in that form. There was some debate over possibly having the TARDIS disguise itself as different objects as the series went along, but for whatever reason (almost assuredly budgetary, but I don’t know that for certain) the producers decided to stick with it just being a police box.
Legend has it that the first TARDIS was a re-used prop from the popular police television drama Dixon of Dock Green (which was, in turn, based on the 1950 police film The Blue Lamp), in which Jack Warner played Police Constable George Dixon for decades. This isn’t true, however. (Wow, two legends debunked for the price of one! Lucky readers!) Production designer Peter Brachacki built the police box used in the first episode of Doctor Who (which was then used for the first 13 seasons of the show). Anyhow, another legend is about who owns the trademark to the TARDIS. A common bit of Doctor Who trivia is the following (I got it from this Doctor Who site, but I’ve seen it in plenty of places): The BBC actually owns the copyright to the design of the police box used as the design for the TARDIS. It was bought from the Metropolitan Police. Besides using the term “copyright” when they mean “trademark” (a common mistake and not one worth making a fuss about), the first part of the trivia is correct. However, how the BBC got the trademark is a lot more complicated than that!
In 1994, England revamped its trademark law with the passing of the Trade Marks Act 1994. Soon after, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), owners of Doctor Who, registered the blue police box as a trademark, for use on pretty much every commercial avenue that you could think of (TV series, toys, shirts, posters, etc.). This simply means that if a T-Shirt or a poster had a picture of a blue police box on it, said product was made or licensed by the BBC.
However, instead of going along with the BBC’s efforts, the Metropolitan Police filed an opposition claim in 1998 to the trademark claim. They argued the blue police box (known commonly as the “Police Telephone Box”) was a trademark of the Metropolitan Police, not the BBC, and that the object was most commonly associated with British police. Further, while they gave consent decades earlier for the BBC to use the box in Doctor Who, they never intended to give up their rights to the trademark of the item.
The Metropolitan Police’s problem, though, was that by 1998, the police box was no longer the ubiquitous sight it once was. The advent of compact communication devices in the late 1960s (first walkie-talkies and by now, mobile phones) made the boxes mostly superfluous. From nearly 700 boxes in the 1950s, the police had less than 100 by the end of the 1990s; today, there are fewer than 30. Compare that with the fact that Doctor Who is popular not only in London but all over the world. Therefore, the box was now far more associated as being the TARDIS than a little-used police box.
Moreover, even if the Metropolitan Police could prove the public associated the box with them, it would only be an association for actual police work. That is not something, then, that they would expect to see on T-shirts, posters and toys. The TARDIS, however, is a different story. Finally, the fact that the Metropolitan Police did not actually create the look for the police box was also a knock on them (as noted earlier, the police box originated in the United States).
In the end, the Patent Office ruled against the Metropolitan Police, fined them a little more than 800 pounds and made them pay the BBC’s legal costs. So the blue police box is now all the BBC’s! Amusingly, since then (especially since the current version of the series has proven so popular), the police have explicitly used the TARDIS connection to market the boxes, especially when they try to sell them.
The other night I was watching Stones of Blood. The Doctor is going to break the seal of a prison cell to see what was inside. He pulls out the sonic screwdriver, points it at the seal, and shoves the end of it through the panel.
I had forgotten all about that. Nearly fell off of my chair.
I wonder if that was one of Baker's ad-libs Seasons 16 and 17 are when he was really known for that, to the extent that by season 18 producers were actually telling him to tone it down.
I liked this ep quite a bit - had just the right balance of mood and action, and I LOVED the packed final few minutes (kind of funny - actually). They're there at what appears to be the end. My wife pops off to take care of something and tells me to keep it playing. She comes back and says "did I miss anything of substance"?? Those were perhaps the most packed 3 final minutes of an episode in years! lol
I'm still a bit on the fence on Clara. I like her, but feel like there's something missing. She's a bit bland/doesn't stick out in the way previous companions did. It's almost like she's too perfect.
I did rather like her discussion w/The Dr on the way he might view humans given his longlivedness.
I'm still a bit on the fence on Clara. I like her, but feel like there's something missing. She's a bit bland/doesn't stick out in the way previous companions did. It's almost like she's too perfect.
I read this morning that this was actually the first episode she filmed for the series, which would explain why she felt a little off. The previous three episodes seemed to be slowly building her personality, but she felt a little bland in this one.
I still don't get a sense of why she would want to travel with the Doctor, though. Most companions I totally get it, but she seems a little distanced from everything. Maybe the truth about her character (whether the actress has been let in on it at this point or not) makes it a difficult role to connect with. I'm curious to see what happens with Clara once that's resolved.
I think I read too many articles online conjecturing about all the amazing things we might see in the TARDIS, especially things from past stories. When that didn't happen, I was a little disappointed.
It also had one of those endings that magically negates all the interesting things that happened over the course of the episode. It was so blatant that the the script even acknowledged some of the ridiculousness of it, but I still preferred the place we were at before the Doctor fixed everything.
One interesting thing we did see, though - the crib. It didn't look the same as River Song's, at least to my eyes. Was it the Doctor's? And if so, why was there a toy TARDIS with it? The TARDIS didn't look like a police box until the Doctor (and Susan, as well, I believe, were long past the crib stage). Was there another child in the TARDIS at one point that we've never heard of, perhaps?
Ugh... I may be done with Doctor Who for a while. On BBC America, there are these little "behind the scenes" things during the commercial breaks, and in one of them, Moffat talks about how now, everyone writes the Doctor perfectly. That's crap. Matt Smith, I have no problem with, but the writing has gone so far downhill, that I don't know if it can recover.
All the stories, lately, are so fantastical and illogical... it's as if it doesn't matter if they have a coherent plot or not, as long as A) Matt Smith runs around yelling and looking like he's screwed up ad really CARES, and suddenly has a great revelation... and B) we don't find out anything else about Clara, but are led to believe there is SO MUCH more to know. (Clara, by the way, has ZERO personality, and I could care less what her story is, and would just as soon see her thrown into the sun.)
I'm tired of Reset Buttons, and the Doctor stepping on, weaving through, manipulating, and otherwise molesting his own timeline, to go back 2 hours and hand himself the solution.
I'm tired of "Love saves the day".
I'm tired of the thing that looks evil is really misunderstood.
I'm tired of the companion is the key to everything, and could bring about the destruction of us all.
Moffat's best works were The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink, and they were, in my opinion, the best of the series to date, but he seems to have turned out to be a pony with very few tricks.
I think I read too many articles online conjecturing about all the amazing things we might see in the TARDIS, especially things from past stories. When that didn't happen, I was a little disappointed.
It also had one of those endings that magically negates all the interesting things that happened over the course of the episode. It was so blatant that the the script even acknowledged some of the ridiculousness of it, but I still preferred the place we were at before the Doctor fixed everything.
One interesting thing we did see, though - the crib. It didn't look the same as River Song's, at least to my eyes. Was it the Doctor's? And if so, why was there a toy TARDIS with it? The TARDIS didn't look like a police box until the Doctor (and Susan, as well, I believe, were long past the crib stage). Was there another child in the TARDIS at one point that we've never heard of, perhaps?
The TARDIS is like Snoopy's doghouse. It is so much grander when you only hear about the pool, the bowling alley, the library, etc. and don't see them.
Comments
e
L nny
And something I just realized this morning - wasn't he the one that found the sonic screwdriver after it fell to the floor? I already deleted the episode from my DVR, so I can't double check, but it was odd enough that they made such a big deal about dropping the screwdriver (shot of it flying through the air, plus a shot of Clara seeing it as she regained consciousness) that you'd have assumed it was going to play into something important later on. Instead, we just got the Professor handing it back to the Doctor. For a show that typically has a lot to cram in in its 45 minutes, it struck me as odd to devote time to that.
Maybe I'm just over-analyzing, or maybe he did something to it, or switched it with another. Something about the whole thing just made my radar go up.
here is a website I found on this hope you guys like it! Very interesting stuff!
who-lligan.tumblr.com/post/47304596201/the-bad-wolfed-clara-theory
I enjoyed a nice little nerd moment in there, though... the second the TARDIS disappeared I thought "Huh, he must've set the HADS," so I was pretty psyched to hear it get brought up later. :-B
I'm rather fond of it
:D
e
L nny
Take "Cold War" as an example. Classic Who would have taken an episode and a half for the Ice Warrior to be revealed. That's probably around 40 to 45 minutes. It's easy to be laid back at that pace. I think Cold War ran around 46 minutes in total. You got to haul ass to get your lines in.
I'm growing more and more fond of Matt Smith's Doctor. I adore the whimsy he brings to the roll. It diffuses all the sexy that bugged me about Tennant's Doctor. Even the yelling and the spastically waving around of the sonic screw driver are growing on me.
Getting a little tired of the constant use of sonic screwdriver, though. It's less a tool now and more like the writers' "Get Out of Jail Free" card for any situation they don't want to have to explain (especially since it allegedly now scans, too, though that's the sort of feature the Doctor could easily be making up :D ). I was actually excited when he lost it in Cold War and was hoping it would stay gone for the rest of the episode. It's a device with a long history in the show, of course, but Troughton, Pertwee, and Tom Baker only ever seemed to use it sparingly, and when it broke for good during the Davison era, it's not like it was ever particularly missed.
I had forgotten all about that. Nearly fell off of my chair.
is written by Neil Gaiman.
e
L nny
TV URBAN LEGEND: Did the BBC buy the trademark to blue police boxes from the Metropolitan Police?
When the first episode of Doctor Who was written in 1963, one of the biggest points of debate was over the appearance of the Doctor’s time machine. Eventually, they determined it would look like a police box, a little blue concrete room that was, in effect, a miniature police station.
Created in the United States, they began appearing in the United Kingdom by the turn of the 20th century, with the iconic blue version of the London police box introduced in 1929. The police boxes contained telephones that would connect directly to police stations; a light on the top let officers know when the station was trying to contact them. By the 1950s, London was covered with police boxes, with nearly 700 dotteing the streets. Therefore, if you wanted your time machine to fit in in London in 1963, disguising it as a police box would be a great idea. The police box is revealed in the series to actually be a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which is exponentially bigger on the inside; it’s simply camouflaged as a police box. However, in the first episode, the camouflaging technology malfunctions, leaving the TARDIS stuck in that form. There was some debate over possibly having the TARDIS disguise itself as different objects as the series went along, but for whatever reason (almost assuredly budgetary, but I don’t know that for certain) the producers decided to stick with it just being a police box.
Legend has it that the first TARDIS was a re-used prop from the popular police television drama Dixon of Dock Green (which was, in turn, based on the 1950 police film The Blue Lamp), in which Jack Warner played Police Constable George Dixon for decades. This isn’t true, however. (Wow, two legends debunked for the price of one! Lucky readers!) Production designer Peter Brachacki built the police box used in the first episode of Doctor Who (which was then used for the first 13 seasons of the show). Anyhow, another legend is about who owns the trademark to the TARDIS. A common bit of Doctor Who trivia is the following (I got it from this Doctor Who site, but I’ve seen it in plenty of places):
The BBC actually owns the copyright to the design of the police box used as the design for the TARDIS. It was bought from the Metropolitan Police.
Besides using the term “copyright” when they mean “trademark” (a common mistake and not one worth making a fuss about), the first part of the trivia is correct. However, how the BBC got the trademark is a lot more complicated than that!
In 1994, England revamped its trademark law with the passing of the Trade Marks Act 1994. Soon after, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), owners of Doctor Who, registered the blue police box as a trademark, for use on pretty much every commercial avenue that you could think of (TV series, toys, shirts, posters, etc.). This simply means that if a T-Shirt or a poster had a picture of a blue police box on it, said product was made or licensed by the BBC.
However, instead of going along with the BBC’s efforts, the Metropolitan Police filed an opposition claim in 1998 to the trademark claim. They argued the blue police box (known commonly as the “Police Telephone Box”) was a trademark of the Metropolitan Police, not the BBC, and that the object was most commonly associated with British police. Further, while they gave consent decades earlier for the BBC to use the box in Doctor Who, they never intended to give up their rights to the trademark of the item.
The Metropolitan Police’s problem, though, was that by 1998, the police box was no longer the ubiquitous sight it once was. The advent of compact communication devices in the late 1960s (first walkie-talkies and by now, mobile phones) made the boxes mostly superfluous. From nearly 700 boxes in the 1950s, the police had less than 100 by the end of the 1990s; today, there are fewer than 30. Compare that with the fact that Doctor Who is popular not only in London but all over the world. Therefore, the box was now far more associated as being the TARDIS than a little-used police box.
Moreover, even if the Metropolitan Police could prove the public associated the box with them, it would only be an association for actual police work. That is not something, then, that they would expect to see on T-shirts, posters and toys. The TARDIS, however, is a different story. Finally, the fact that the Metropolitan Police did not actually create the look for the police box was also a knock on them (as noted earlier, the police box originated in the United States).
In the end, the Patent Office ruled against the Metropolitan Police, fined them a little more than 800 pounds and made them pay the BBC’s legal costs. So the blue police box is now all the BBC’s! Amusingly, since then (especially since the current version of the series has proven so popular), the police have explicitly used the TARDIS connection to market the boxes, especially when they try to sell them.
The legend is …
STATUS: False as presented
spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2013/04/19/tv-legends-revealed-did-bbc-buy-trademark-to-blue-police-boxes/
Awesome! Best episode of the JLC era! Fabulous!
I'm still a bit on the fence on Clara. I like her, but feel like there's something missing. She's a bit bland/doesn't stick out in the way previous companions did. It's almost like she's too perfect.
I did rather like her discussion w/The Dr on the way he might view humans given his longlivedness.
e
L nny
I still don't get a sense of why she would want to travel with the Doctor, though. Most companions I totally get it, but she seems a little distanced from everything. Maybe the truth about her character (whether the actress has been let in on it at this point or not) makes it a difficult role to connect with. I'm curious to see what happens with Clara once that's resolved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BCLWCsWrSxQ
My thoughts on this latest episode:
Spoiler (hover cursor over this text to view).
I think I read too many articles online conjecturing about all the amazing things we might see in the TARDIS, especially things from past stories. When that didn't happen, I was a little disappointed.
It also had one of those endings that magically negates all the interesting things that happened over the course of the episode. It was so blatant that the the script even acknowledged some of the ridiculousness of it, but I still preferred the place we were at before the Doctor fixed everything.
One interesting thing we did see, though - the crib. It didn't look the same as River Song's, at least to my eyes. Was it the Doctor's? And if so, why was there a toy TARDIS with it? The TARDIS didn't look like a police box until the Doctor (and Susan, as well, I believe, were long past the crib stage). Was there another child in the TARDIS at one point that we've never heard of, perhaps?
All the stories, lately, are so fantastical and illogical... it's as if it doesn't matter if they have a coherent plot or not, as long as A) Matt Smith runs around yelling and looking like he's screwed up ad really CARES, and suddenly has a great revelation... and B) we don't find out anything else about Clara, but are led to believe there is SO MUCH more to know. (Clara, by the way, has ZERO personality, and I could care less what her story is, and would just as soon see her thrown into the sun.)
I'm tired of Reset Buttons, and the Doctor stepping on, weaving through, manipulating, and otherwise molesting his own timeline, to go back 2 hours and hand himself the solution.
I'm tired of "Love saves the day".
I'm tired of the thing that looks evil is really misunderstood.
I'm tired of the companion is the key to everything, and could bring about the destruction of us all.
Moffat's best works were The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink, and they were, in my opinion, the best of the series to date, but he seems to have turned out to be a pony with very few tricks.