Still, it's going to be VERY hard to top this teaser which was everyone's proper glimpse of Matt Smith:
It's going to be pretty hard to top the end of Matt's first episode as well imo!
agreed. Not just the ending, but that whole ep is one of Smith's best in his whole run. The transition to new Doctor was made completely smooth by him, it almost looked effortless.
I never realized how much I'll miss Smith til now.
Well, at least I get to meet him this summer at FanExpo!
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
The internet ate a post I made about how much I'll miss Matt Smith despite how much I love Capaldi. Hopefully he can make himself a proper star in his move to Hollywood, coz I think he's a brilliant actor with piles of charisma.
QuickTidal, on 28 June 2014 - 10:46 AM, said:
Well, at least I get to meet him this summer at FanExpo!
So the big news today is that the scripts for the first 5 eps of Series 8 leaked online (and are fairly widely available)...and the Beeb and Moffat are asking folks who get ahold of them not to spoil them for others.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
Amusingly, I'll wager you won't see many spoilers show up online in places that would be easy to be randomly "spoiled", like in your daily internet surfing. As long as your friends on social media aren't jerks, you can likely avoid major most spoilers.
If you chose NOT to read any of the leaked scripts yourself that is.
Even in that vein, I recall an interview with Neil Gaiman where someone asked how he wrote the script for Matt Smith's Eleven, and he said he didn't that he wrote it for The Doctor. And I'll wager that's true of the "voice"...since I've heard Peter Davison, Sly Mcoy, and Matt Smith all read Eleven's speech to the alien ships massed at the end of THE BIG BANG in S5 and though the speech is very Doctory in its dialogue...they each bring something special to it with their own voices and inflection....so though you may read a script with the Doctor in it...unless you've HEARD Peter Capaldi read it aloud, you're not REALLY reading it and all you're getting is basic story.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
The Nation estate (the man himself died in 1997) basically threw up huge roadblocks for RTD and Julie to use the Daleks in ANY way when DOCTOR WHO returned in 2005 and were very close to refusing to allow their presence in the revived show at all. The agreement that solved the problem was that the Nation estate has a SIGNIFICANT amount of control with regard to how the Dalek's are presented in NuWho. They get both script approval (and rejection) and creative control over how the Daleks are represented each time (above and beyond the BBC maintaining the license). This means that the chances of throwing them in willy nilly to hold that license doesn't fly as the Nation estate likely would reject the script. So it's a huge catch 22 in that the Beeb HAS to use them...but the Nation estate holds the keys to "how".
That said, though I see the Daleks are overused as well...since they concern a BIG part of the Time War, and Gallifrey's disappearance into e-space or wherever it is...I see no problem with them being present in the first season in which the Doctor will most likely begin the search for his homeworld.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
"Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone." ~Ursula Vernon
It would certainly be nice to see less of the Daleks - it has started to feel like just about every mystery villain plot ends with "Lol, Daleks." I was unaware of the issue with the Nation estate though - it certainly explains a fair bit.
Having said that I haven't seen much of Matt Smith's era so it could have improved from Ecclestone/Tenant's stints - did it?
TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 24 July 2014 - 08:27 PM, said:
Having said that I haven't seen much of Matt Smith's era so it could have improved from Ecclestone/Tenant's stints - did it?
With the Daleks? Or overall?
In terms of the first question, it's mixed. There are a couple of very good Dalek episodes (Asylum of the Daleks is excellent, and the most threatening they've been since season 1 of the revival), but also some absolute stinkers (Victory of the Daleks).
For the second, I like it better, it's more imaginative and the writing moment-to-moment of the dialogue is smarter and wittier, but the downside of having more complex plots is that Moffatt loses control of several of them, and there's quite a lot of mess. I watched a lot of the Ecclescake/Tennant episodes back preparing for the 50th, and it was a lot closer in quality to Moff's run than I remembered.
He captured the old man in a young man's body better than anyone else.
Only one that i would consider similar would be Troughton's whimsical young clown in an old man's body.
He was let down with some muddled scripts i agree, but when he got the good ones, he produced some truly good telly.
Three notable favourites (for me):
His speech to the Atraxi in his very first episode - see here: Speech
which simultaneously harks back to the first time you saw Eccleston (run!) and shows the previous ten actors as well
The Pandorica speech - see here:
The speech from Rings of Akhaten - see here:
One thing I think Moffat and co don't get enough credit for - their subtle nods back to classic who in dialogue.
Done obviously in the 50th (You've redecorated! I don't like it)
But there throughout the series as well (gobby Australian leading into "Brave heart Clara" from the Crimson horror)
This post has been edited by Cocoreturns: 24 July 2014 - 10:31 PM