Catford?

[alexsarll]

Hypothesis: the reason the very rich did more interestingly insane things in eg the eighteenth century than they do today is that cocaine had not yet been discovered, and so could not sponge up all the excess.

Yesterday I went on a Tubewalk which was actually a DLRwalk, where we found a beach! From which we skimmed some stones. I then proceeded to skim brick, glass, metal and wood. I rule at skimming. Some distance from the beach, or indeed any water, we found an inexplicable and inaccessible derelict lighthouse on some waste ground. Then we went to the farm where there were sheep and cows and the hill on which that Fad Gadget video with the skyscrapers behind the field was filmed. 10/10
Subsequently: pub, pizza, and eventually making it to Balham in spite of an arsehole under a train. Once in Balham, I played some truly lamentable pool.

'The Sontaran Stratagem': better than one might expect from Raynor's prior Who scripts, of which we do not speak. But given all of the components, it should still have been better than it was. And surely the Sontarans weren't always that short? I remember them as squat, but big with it. As for the cliffhanger - breaking car windows is fairly easy, Doctor.

Comments

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

Kevin Lindsay, who was in The Time Warrior and The Sontaran Experiment, was very short. The dodgy ones from The Two Doctors don't count - "clones" where one was short and the other was a foot and a half taller. Invasion Of Time - yeah, more stocky than supershort, but not particularly tall.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Fair enough; it's a while since I've seen any of the previous stories.

That's a thought - Invasion of Time was very much the same sort of plan as this - hiding, proxies &c. So why is the Doctor acting as though it's so unlike them?

I loved the ship and the 'SONTAR!' stuff, though.

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

I think they're choosing to ignore Invasion Of Time - the other stories say a lot more about Sontaran honour etc which seems to be big in this story, plus isn't IOT the story where the Doctor uses de-mat guns to kill the buggers? This time around he's even more anti-guns than usual, despite using the water pistol shaped like a real gun in Pompeii.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember being a bit uneasy about the water pistol. But then, this isn't a new inconsistency; the Doctor has always flip-flopped between getting tetchy about pistols, threatening Davros with a gun, and blitzing entire planets with SF weaponry.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think it may have its uses for the very shy or what-have-you, but it's like my dad sometimes says - people always seem to get into the wrong drugs. So the lazy sods become junkies and the already hyper take coke, when if they swapped they'd probably both be OK.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The cliffhanger was one of my favourite bits - menace the likeable character whose survival isn't guaranteed! (unless he's already confirmed as in the later episodes, of course, but I haven't checked).

It was quite podgily directed I thought, but some very good bits.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Point taken, but...could he not have been menaced in some better way than 'I am now going to do a really stupid thing, putting me in a situation from which there is an incredibly obvious escape route which does not even require the sonic screwdriver, just an actual screwdriver. Or a brick. Or Ma Noble's FACE'.

Though I liked the Doctor's near-panic in the gas clouds in the street. That bit worked.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Presumably they've protected the windows in the same sort of way as they've locked up the guns?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Mmm, potentially, but I didn't see anybody even make a convincing effort, much less a comment, which could test that theory. I suppose we'll have to wait for next week, but I'm fairly sure Ma Noble just went into the house to get something heavy with which to smash it, enabling her to then be disapproving of the Doctor's failure to deal with the situation.

(The gun lock thing was also fairly lame in and of itself - and, as the Doctor said, a bit out of character. But what's the guessing that the Sontarans are desperate because they've lost their planet?)

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

I thought Bernard Cribbins had lots of experience in taking all the doors off, etc etc.

[thedavidx.livejournal.com]

Very good.

[miss-sheldon.livejournal.com]

I am still waiting for Captain Jack and Rose. I am a rubbish Doctor Who fan! x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

TBH given the quality of his acting in the second series of Torchwood, Jack is going to have to do a lot to win back my affection. But after that first episode tease, I do find myself more excited about the Rose idea than I thought I'd be.

[miss-sheldon.livejournal.com]

I've been re watching season 1 of Torchwood and although I liked it alot, I thought season 2 was better. And I like John Barrowman. He is a larger than life character, and so is Jack. I couldn't imagine him being anything other than. And I like how Torchwood blurs into Dr Who every now and then too. But I am no expert. I just hope that Jack and Rose are in the same episode.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the shared universe (although it weirded me out a bit when the same species of alien which was lezzing up Tosh cropped up in The Sarah Jane Adventures with the kiddies), I just think that Barrowman has been getting hammier of late, presumably because he's doing so many talent shows and concerts and so forth that he doesn't have as much time to rehearse Jack.

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

Or that he hasn't really had a decent script as Jack since... well, Empty Child/Doctor Dances, to be honest. RTD just never seemed to have as firm a grasp of the character as Moffat, and as for the Torchwood scripts... less said the better.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

OK, with the best will in the world, Torchwood has been horribly flawed - but it has had a few very good episodes, some of them even fairly Jack-heavy ('Out of Time' for one). And while I will complain about RTD's writing with all but the most obsessive haterz, I think the finales of the first and third seasons, while not as good as Moffat, are where he has most got it right.