![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixie- What on EARTH did Sarah Sutton do to deserve that...that thing she was wearing throughout this episode? At least Tegan's outfit, while not the most brilliant of fashion choices and definitely from the 80s, has only two egregious errors: the ridiculous heels and the top that's just a leeeettle too tight. Tight to the point where I think Janet Fielding might actually be having trouble breathing in some shots. Whoops.
- Aw, the snakes got (very) slightly better SFX this time around! Good for them.
- *coos at the last bit with Tegan and the Doctor*
*
So. This whole Divergent Universe thing.
I'm tending to agree with what seems to be the popular opinion that it was a cool idea, but not executed well. Or rather, not so much "not well" as "why bother making this universe lacking in time when that didn't affect anything about the stories told"? It could just as easily have been a run of the mill parallel universe. In fact, it would have been far easier, because there was the constant logical conundrum of having people like C'Rizz, who claim to not understand time, use words like "before," and "after," and units of time measurement, and I was forever going, "But you don't know what time is! You can't say that!" Also, while the description of the view of that universe--where galaxies and planets are being born and dying all at once--in Zagreus was pretty awesome, it also pretty much means that you can't have linear storylines. Yet there they were. Buh?
C'Rizz having an exoskeleton is awfully cool, but beyond that, he's a human with an exoskeleton and a funny religion. Not that Doctor Who has ever been interested in making their alien companions at all alien, though, so I suppose I can give them that. Points for using the audio medium to go where a television budget would never allow in regards to C'Rizz's appearance, though, not to mention with some of the other aliens (Kromon, Charley turning into a bug, etc.).
Then it just seemed to end rather abruptly at the end of The Next Life. Hey, the spheres are aligned! We can go back! Cool! Eh?
Ah, well. Now we're back in our universe, yay. The very end of TNL, with the Daleks, was fantastic. Hee. I'm looking forward to Terror Firma.
Less general stuff:
- I thought throughout the majority of The Natural History of Fear that it was just another garden-variety dystopian story, and the Doctor and his companions would eventually break free of the eeevil government and perhaps overthrow it before moving on. And then I hit the very end, and found out that the whole time, we had actually been hearing the story of the bug-like, short-lived inhabitants of that zone who sometimes thought they were Charley or the Doctor or C'Rizz, and my jaw was on the floor. That was frakking cool.
- I kind of wanted Nine to be present in The Last so that he could have laid a much bigger smackdown on the Excelsior than Eight did. I wanted frothing at the mouth, man.
All the rest of this is about The Next Life.
- Paul McGann hamming it up as the Doctor-playing-magician had me laughing so hard. Can we have more of that?
- C'Rizz: "Do you want to ask?"
Charley: "No, you, I did it last time."
[...]
C'Rizz: "Doctor, what's happening?"
Charley: "No, not like that. Ahem. Doctor, what's happening, Doctor?"
C'Rizz: "Oh, that's good!"
Charley: "Mmm, practice, you see."
Best. Exchange. Ever.
- OMG, Daphne Ashbrook as Perfection/Zagreus. BWAH! Her and Charley's catfighting had me on the floor. Hee!
- "No yearnings," huh, Doctor? I see that one going over like a lead balloon (*rimshot*), particularly after you just told her in the previous episode that you still loved her. (Yes, yes, it could be platonic--whatever. Love. Also, there's so much UST between those two, I wonder why it hasn't set the TARDIS on fire yet.) Part of me--the angsty teenager part--wonders if an irreconcilable definition of "love" might be the eventual reason that Charley leaves the Doctor. Then a more sensible part of me says that there's no way in hell Charley's gonna go out like that, 'cause she's far too cool. If anything, she'd trick the Doctor into stepping out of the TARDIS, run back in, and dematerialize it. He'd find a note slipped in his pocket that says, "Be back in ten minutes. I'm going off to see the universe until I'm ancient; when I come back, I'll let you back in the ship and toddle off to retirement."
Given this and Charley's "I thought I'd met theTime Lord man I was going to marry, but it turns out I hadn't" *cough. cough. cough.* line somewhere in the middle, I'm getting a definite impression that the writer for this one, if not the entire PTB at Big Finish, would rather like to put the Doctor/Charley cat back in the bag. But they won't! Not while I'm still around! I've been a Bashir/Jadzia Dax shipper for going on eleven years now (ohmigodhasitreallybeenthatlong?). If you don't know what that means, it means that you can't out-tenacity me where my ships are concerned, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in their ways. I remain steadfast! Even to the point of being perhaps a bit deranged!
Besides, there was that exchange about Charley being in a league of her own, when they were almost certainly giving each other the biggest, goofiest grins imaginable, and he was probably touching her cheek like Nine did to Rose in Father's Day. So, hey, they're a big happy team. Why not. Two of them will just be redefining that word a bit without the help of the third. *eg*
- Aw, the snakes got (very) slightly better SFX this time around! Good for them.
- *coos at the last bit with Tegan and the Doctor*
*
So. This whole Divergent Universe thing.
I'm tending to agree with what seems to be the popular opinion that it was a cool idea, but not executed well. Or rather, not so much "not well" as "why bother making this universe lacking in time when that didn't affect anything about the stories told"? It could just as easily have been a run of the mill parallel universe. In fact, it would have been far easier, because there was the constant logical conundrum of having people like C'Rizz, who claim to not understand time, use words like "before," and "after," and units of time measurement, and I was forever going, "But you don't know what time is! You can't say that!" Also, while the description of the view of that universe--where galaxies and planets are being born and dying all at once--in Zagreus was pretty awesome, it also pretty much means that you can't have linear storylines. Yet there they were. Buh?
C'Rizz having an exoskeleton is awfully cool, but beyond that, he's a human with an exoskeleton and a funny religion. Not that Doctor Who has ever been interested in making their alien companions at all alien, though, so I suppose I can give them that. Points for using the audio medium to go where a television budget would never allow in regards to C'Rizz's appearance, though, not to mention with some of the other aliens (Kromon, Charley turning into a bug, etc.).
Then it just seemed to end rather abruptly at the end of The Next Life. Hey, the spheres are aligned! We can go back! Cool! Eh?
Ah, well. Now we're back in our universe, yay. The very end of TNL, with the Daleks, was fantastic. Hee. I'm looking forward to Terror Firma.
Less general stuff:
- I thought throughout the majority of The Natural History of Fear that it was just another garden-variety dystopian story, and the Doctor and his companions would eventually break free of the eeevil government and perhaps overthrow it before moving on. And then I hit the very end, and found out that the whole time, we had actually been hearing the story of the bug-like, short-lived inhabitants of that zone who sometimes thought they were Charley or the Doctor or C'Rizz, and my jaw was on the floor. That was frakking cool.
- I kind of wanted Nine to be present in The Last so that he could have laid a much bigger smackdown on the Excelsior than Eight did. I wanted frothing at the mouth, man.
All the rest of this is about The Next Life.
- Paul McGann hamming it up as the Doctor-playing-magician had me laughing so hard. Can we have more of that?
- C'Rizz: "Do you want to ask?"
Charley: "No, you, I did it last time."
[...]
C'Rizz: "Doctor, what's happening?"
Charley: "No, not like that. Ahem. Doctor, what's happening, Doctor?"
C'Rizz: "Oh, that's good!"
Charley: "Mmm, practice, you see."
Best. Exchange. Ever.
- OMG, Daphne Ashbrook as Perfection/Zagreus. BWAH! Her and Charley's catfighting had me on the floor. Hee!
- "No yearnings," huh, Doctor? I see that one going over like a lead balloon (*rimshot*), particularly after you just told her in the previous episode that you still loved her. (Yes, yes, it could be platonic--whatever. Love. Also, there's so much UST between those two, I wonder why it hasn't set the TARDIS on fire yet.) Part of me--the angsty teenager part--wonders if an irreconcilable definition of "love" might be the eventual reason that Charley leaves the Doctor. Then a more sensible part of me says that there's no way in hell Charley's gonna go out like that, 'cause she's far too cool. If anything, she'd trick the Doctor into stepping out of the TARDIS, run back in, and dematerialize it. He'd find a note slipped in his pocket that says, "Be back in ten minutes. I'm going off to see the universe until I'm ancient; when I come back, I'll let you back in the ship and toddle off to retirement."
Given this and Charley's "I thought I'd met the
Besides, there was that exchange about Charley being in a league of her own, when they were almost certainly giving each other the biggest, goofiest grins imaginable, and he was probably touching her cheek like Nine did to Rose in Father's Day. So, hey, they're a big happy team. Why not. Two of them will just be redefining that word a bit without the help of the third. *eg*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-26 05:27 am (UTC)Pft 'no yearnings'.
Besides, there was that exchange about Charley being in a league of her own, when they were almost certainly giving each other the biggest, goofiest grins imaginable, and he was probably touching her cheek like Nine did to Rose in Father's Day.
Awww.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-26 06:53 pm (UTC)Hee. I'm glad someone does.
Pft 'no yearnings'.
Seriously.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-26 04:20 pm (UTC)The Divergent Universe: I think the real problem with that arc is that it was never meant to be a short arc, where all the mysteries come neatly together over two seasons. When TPTB devised it, the idea was to leave the 8th Doctor in his own universe indefinitely. Then the new series happened, and they decided...whoops, we need to wrap this up, because we don't want so much continuity going on and on when new listeners might be getting curious about us.
The Timeless Concept: I thought The Next Life did a *decent* job of explaining this one away...the idea that things are cyclical, so you can't travel in time because the coordinates are nuts, but you do still have before and after, etc. Still a nutty idea that doesn't quite gel, but I give 'em the points for trying. It was neat to think on.
C'rizz: For me the key to C'rizz is his *emotional* chameleonic tendancies. And in the audios after The Next Life...that still has a big role to play. His arc continues.
Perfection: This is why you so have to see the 8th Doc movie. *g* She's Grace, and I'd say she and Paul McGann have awesome chemistry. And this is also why my biggest BWAH! moment in this audio is probably the dinner table scene. "Grace...there's no Grace here!" (And it makes such beautiful sense, too...that Zagreus would cast 'Perfection' in the form of a lost love of the Doctor's--and the Doctor knows it all along.)
Charley's Love: I believe the 'no yearnings' thing is another casualty of the new series happening...again, I think Big Finish wanted to pull back on some of their arcs and more radical concepts with the possibility of new listeners coming along. And to me it does make sense in the light of School Reunion...the Doctor once again trying to pull back and detach himself. It's a futile effort, of course. ;?)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-26 08:23 pm (UTC)*tries not to snicker* *fails* Poor woman. No wonder she doesn't have much love for the show anymore.
Nyssa, on the other hand...I didn't think it was *so* bad. Nice to see her allowed to wear a bit of color for once...
I...but...the...ack! I don't think I can even count the number of things wrong with that outfit. Brown biker shorts under an incredibly ugly skirt in a different shade of brown (with some kind of hideous horizontal stripe pattern) with a giant bow at the waist, then that awful Peter Pan-collared blouse with the random vertical teal stripes in the middle, topped off by black stillettos? I...abuh...ge...aaaaahhhh!!! *head explodes*
Divergent Universe: I'm less concerned with the quick wrapup than I am with the existence of linear storylines in a timeless universe. I thought that it had basically served its purpose by the time they concluded it. And I can see why they'd want to conclude a very continuity-heavy storyline in time for the new series, but at the same time...how many people drawn in by the new series are going to hunt out the audios, and out of those, how many are going to be turned off by a serious story arc? JMHO, but I'm thinking not many. Then again, I don't run any kind of business.
Timeless Concept: Heh, I was totally flashing to BSG's "All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again" mantra for that. I dunno, it almost has pretentions of making sense, and then you think about it a little too hard and it doesn't anymore.
Perfection: I knew I recognized the voice (Daphne Ashbrook has guest-starred in an amazing amount of television shows of which I'm a fan, most notably as a stripped in an episode of Cupid and as one of those annoying girl-of-the-week aliens in DS9), but I had to look it up, and I recognized the actress's name as Grace. I did catch that moment at the dinner table. Heh.
I believe the 'no yearnings' thing is another casualty of the new series happening...again, I think Big Finish wanted to pull back on some of their arcs and more radical concepts with the possibility of new listeners coming along.
Grrr, argh.
And to me it does make sense in the light of School Reunion...the Doctor once again trying to pull back and detach himself. It's a futile effort, of course. ;?)
Oooh, that's interesting. And it's definitely a futile effort. *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 06:20 am (UTC)End to Storyarcs: Oh, I know some fans who abhor story arcs, because they feel like it's a cheap trick trying to force them to buy more audios than they really want to. And I was kind of glad they decided to end it in a way...because I rather like having the 8th Doctor and Charley back home in our universe. Meeting history again. Meeting Daleks again. (I *adore* Terror Firma...fiendishly excellent, IMO!) Though I must admit, as awesome as the Next Life's finale was, I was a little saddened we didn't get my own version of the comeback...
Because ever since Zagreus I'd been imagining the universe facing some dire threat, Romana and Leela and the Time Lords and their allies all at wit's end, and then...VWORP!, the familiar police box comes spinning back into our space, just in time to save the day. (I kind of imagined it along the lines of the triumphant moment in Star Trek: First Contact, when the Enterprise comes blasting into the Borg battle over Earth, and the music just SOARS...I can still sing that little fanfare!) Actually, come to think of it...I hadn't seen the new series when I first heard Zagreus, I don't think, but this would've been a really cool way to show the beginning of the Time War. *g* (Of course, then again, I know Big Finish isn't allowed to deal with the Time War, sadly.)
Timeless Idea: My brain goes back and forth. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't. It makes sense that this time wasn't in a 'format' compatible with Time Lord senses or TARDIS temporal coordinates. The fact that the people in this universe wouldn't evolve a concept of time-by-numbers is definitely more of a stretch. I really can't think of a way they could've expressed a universe with no linear progression at all, though. Scherzo maybe comes closest?
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 08:08 pm (UTC)*headdesk* *headdesk again* Oh, the pain. And they even had a fairly attractive Doctor in Five! Augh!
Wait til you see Peri's attire...
I've seen pictures. It horrifies me.
Story arcs = TEH AWESOME, but I remember being young and foolish and not liking them so much. You do have to come in at the beginning in lots of them. (I think that was why I didn't get into Babylon 5, since I tried starting it in the middle of season three or some such nonsense as that.) I thought S1 of the new Who did a good job at taking the middle road between arc-heavyness and overuse of the reset button.
And yeah, I'm glad they're back as well. Because YAY, historicals! Woo-hoo! *does the dance of the happy history minor*
Actually, come to think of it...I hadn't seen the new series when I first heard Zagreus, I don't think, but this would've been a really cool way to show the beginning of the Time War. *g*
And yet, that would kind of limit how much longer it could run... *g*
(Of course, then again, I know Big Finish isn't allowed to deal with the Time War, sadly.)
Ah, well. Maybe after several years they'll renegotiate their BBC contract and get to use it? Actually, the new series is probably going to have a flashback ep at some point...hope so, anyway.
Timeless: Scherzo was absolutely the best of the bunch as far as timelessness goes. (Actually, as far as the Divergent Arc goes. Perhaps even as far as the Eighth Doctor audios. My love for that one knows no bounds.) But that really can't be sustained over longer than they did it. You can't tell stories in a non-linear universe--or if you can, I can't see how. You have to have cause and effect to have a plot.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 08:19 pm (UTC)Story Arcs: The thing to remember is that for most people--and certainly TPTB's target audience--following a story arc means buying a $22-$25 dollar double CD every month. (Or however much these go for in pounds.) Story arcs on TV rock because you can follow them inexpensively; story arcs in comic books get more dubious as they get longer. (And here I am buying the new weekly series '52' which DC is running for a whole year. *snerk*) I enjoy them on audio, but I understand the downside... And yeah, the balance in Who on telly last season and this season is just about perfect, I'd say. :?)
*Does the historicals dance too, as someone who's got enough history creds for a minor probably, if he wasn't already doing the theater minor, and maybe even so...*
Time War: Why should it limit anything? We don't know how long the Time War lasted, and it IS a Time War anyway. *snerk* Besides, nothing would stop the audios from showing us an ending of the 8th Doc's adventures and then going back and filling in more of them anyway. They did something similar with Evelyn Smythe, the new companion they gave the 6th Doc...one of the audios has her leaving him, but they've gone right on using her anyway, just dipping back in the timeline again. And after Terror Firma, a number of us fans are rather intrigued by the idea of some pre-Charley Eighth Doc audios...
And I'd love to see a flashback Time War epi on TV too. I'd love to see them fill in 8's regeneration into Nine that way, even, though I doubt they'd go for that. (It's too bad, I have a brilliant story idea in mind myself, which would be a good story for Ten & Rose which necessitated showing 8's regeneration into 9 as well, rather than it just being a gimmick. *g* If you'd like to know, I'll share via email!)
Timeless: Yup, I totally agree. Which is why I don't fault them too much for the muddling of the concept.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 11:56 pm (UTC)Story Arcs: Mmm, there is that. I think if they stick with stand-alones but have character and relationship arcs, it can work well for either the arc-fan or the non-arc fan. It's nice that there's a range to choose from.
Time War: Well, the Time War could go on for some time, I suppose. Having the Eighth Doctor's run come to an ending and then going back to pick up earlier adventures would just confuse the hell out of me, I think. I listen mostly for the character interactions--the plots are fun, but it's the characters that keep me returning--and it would be weird if I had to keep jumping around in the timeline, I think.
Your regen story: Sure, e-mail me!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:06 pm (UTC)Time War: *Shrugs* I think they could do it without too much jumping if they wanted. One last big Time War storyline as a special event, then go back to wherever they'd previously left the 8th Doc and continue from there. Maybe the Time War would have the Doctor alone or with new companions, which would leave the regular adventures free to continue building their character arcs in whatever direction.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 10:21 pm (UTC)That would make a lot more sense to me. For some reason, I can't wrap my brain around canon showing us the end of something (such as the Charley/Doctor pairing) and then going back to fill in other adventures indefinitely. It works over the course of a few episodes and one story arc, but beyond that it does weird things to my brain.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-03 04:41 am (UTC)