Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
Gotta be honest, I'm not exactly jumping for joy considering the shit show Labour is up against. It took high profile government resignations to get that two point lead, as well. Is this the sort of whack ass victory we're taking as a big seismic shift now? Christ alive. Yes, I think somebody more centrist with wider appeal would do better.
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
Of course I want Labour to be anti Brexit - when an overwhelming majority of the Tories are pro Brexit and yet 48% of the Electorate voted it, I don't know why the party would align themselves against it. Labour wards were also far more likely to vote remain than Tory wards. Further, eight out of ten polled card-carrying Labour members oppose the party leadership's opposition to a second referendum on a Brexit deal, for instance. This begs the question - if Corbyn isn't serving the people in the wards who voted remain and he isn't serving the Labour members, who exactly is he bloody serving? Other than himself, and his Eastern-European stoked Euro-skepticism? You didn't ask for a name btw, but Dan Jarvis or Chuka Umunna would be good candidates as far as I'm concerned. It'd be great to see David Lammy on the front bench, too, but there's a long list of good people including many of the 52 front benchers Corbyn has seen resign in his tenure who'd be extremely useful in the current fight against the Tories. It's a bollocks sort of stat, by the way, but an amazing thing is that in a poll of a few thousand people on the streets of the UK last year YouGov listed key Labour figures and asked public if they recognized them, if they liked them. Every single Labour politician came out with a negative score, with more people saying they disliked them than liked them, but Corbyn was dead last with a -40% score. Dan Jarvis was -1%, btw. It does carry that the more well-known you are the less liked you are, but Corbyn and Miliband both had toxic scores, though since that poll was taken Miliband's fucking about as a celeb post-politics appears to have raised his stock with the general public a lot. Just dismissing this as "anti Corbyn nonsense" misses the point, I think. It's real, impactful stuff.
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
That front page is going to be enormously damaging to May. Christ.
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
It's a shame that Labour is incapable of seizing on this weakness currently. We should realistically be staring down 10 years of Labour now, but nope
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
These people need to realize that as we're steered further and further into a disastrous Brexit without a 2nd ref or public vote on the deal and as the NHS and BBC are being gutted that they are absolutely complicit in what is happening, because Corbyn stand up to them even if he wants to. He's the wrong man at the wrong time, and in turn it has made the party as divided and as weak as the Tories. It's not going to necessarily be a very popular thing to say, but the party needs a different leader (and some policy alterations to follow that). Somebody a little more center left without the enormously divisive history/baggage/ammunition for the opposition Corbyn carries who holds up an actually staunch anti-Brexit stance would, I think, be able to pick up an enormous number of socially conscious middle-drifting anti Brexit Tory voters and quite possibly even get one or two hugely anti Brexit Tories to betray and cross the aisle. The problem is when you ask those drifting voters in the middle you need to win an election which they feel more uneasy about - Maybot's instability or Corbyn potentially being "Full Commie" (even if he patently is not), a lot of them say the latter, especially older voters. Blair was obviously a shit and did some terrible things - he's arguably a war criminal - but his center left, borderline 'soft tory' party got them over a decade in power which did an enormous amount of social good in Britain - it's just overshadowed by the war shame (rightly) and the fact that all that has now been undone by the Tories... and some genuinely dog shit decisions around things like rail and public transport. Anyway - even a party a bit more left of New Labour would've by now I think fully undermined the Tories and probably would've won May's snap election - but Corbyn is just too divisive to be realistically electable - and if he did get in it'd be by a hair, not with the majority you'd need to make sweeping changes. In this sense Corbyn is the definition of a pipe dream, because even if they gain momentum next election and get in, it's not going to be by enough to actually pass anything. I think the truly sad (and dangerous) thing is that Rees-Mogg is probably more electable than Corbyn when push comes to shove. In many ways he is the Tory Corbyn - the man who most represents the absolute furthest reaches of the party to the point of almost being a caricature - but the difference is all about those middle voters. While I think Mogg is a contemptible toff tit who doesn't have any idea about what normal people worry about or live through, he has what I would've called the Boris Factor, before everybody woke up to what Boris is - where an awful number of those middle-of-the-road voters think he's cute, bumbling, old fashioned, and therefore quite likable. Corbyn meanwhile just sets off mad alarm bells about reds under the bed for many of those same people.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler Review Thread
If you did that you'd be limited to four of the eight stories, since when you do a character's story they have to be present in the playable party. Also, the game assumes you're going to be tackling all stories on and off a bit, so if you tried to do just four characters all the way through, the jumps are like - Level 5-10 for Chapter 1, Level 22-25 for Chapter 2, Level 28+ for Chapter 3... which means, broadly speaking, if you only did four and nothing else you'd probably find yourself under-leveled and have to do some grinding to get to the right place level wise to do those four's next chapters. Whereas if you do six or even eight chapter one stories, you'll then be more suitably leveled to take on chapter 2... but then you have to grind the four of the cast you use less often. Does that make sense? I feel like I've just gone cross-eyed.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler Review Thread
You could definitely be more proactive but it's always going to be an issue. Your first character is in the party, though, so they will get mega powerful and tanky over time regardless of class. RE the grinding - I've been playing it a lot in bed and while watching TV for the grinding, so it'll be decent for that, yeah. If you set the cursor to remember in battle you can then obviously one-button most grindy random encounter battles after the first turn where you set attacks up to match enemy weaknesses.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler Review Thread
The main character stories are honestly pretty short (45-90 minutes per chapter, several chapters per character) so long as you're the appropriate level, tbh. Grinding takes up a lot of time though, as there's no EXP share between characters who aren't in the current party and each character be present for their own story beats, when means inevitably you hit a situation where you need somebody to be level 25 for their Chapter 2 and you have to grind them up from Level 10 or whatever.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler Review Thread
Here's me on VG247. We don't do scores, but the long and the short of it is that I like the game a whole lot but the structure of the game significantly damages it in multiple ways (story problems, encouraging a lot of soul-crushing grinding, etc): And one over on RPG Site:
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
It's a balance concern as well, 12 new characters is a lot of even if they all share the same normals. It would've been cool if the dolls had ended up like Bowser Jr/The Koopalings in Smash - one character with multiple distinct skins, but ultimately all the same character - but they gave them all those unique specials and so that's not a doable thing now. It's perplexing to me the dolls aren't being used in Extra Battle though. Why always Shadaloo Soldiers? I feel like Decapre would be a great freebie bonus character at some point if they wanted to do it, though. I guess they wouldn't do it out of the blue so the next chance would be the next full AE-style relaunch of the game now.
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Thread: Could Blue Point Games pull off a Final Fantasy VIII (8) Remake?
The problem with the PS1 FFs is that the original code/background renders/etc are lost to time. This is why the PS4/PC/Mobile ports of 7 and 9 are based off the PC version and emulated, and why while they can sharpen up the 3D models the backgrounds will never be higher resolution than 640x480. Basically, doing touch-up remasters of those games is very difficult. To do them you'd have to re-render every background from scratch, which would be an enormous amount of work.
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Thread: Rumor: SFV Season 4 Cast Leaked
The only Fight Money exclusive costumes are in Extra Battle, and the missions every week (which take 30 minutes to clear out weekly, tops) always contain more FM than you need to earn those. The cash costumes are way too pricey though, no argument.
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Thread: Rumor: SFV Season 4 Cast Leaked
Capcom has given away quite a lot of free content in SF5 when you think about it - so I could believe that part of it, tbh. What I don't believe is that this season won't have a single SF2 rep - they are going to do Honda to reunite the original 12 world warriors. He's the last one now. And I just don't see the point in Q - he's just a Balrog (Boxer) clone/alike when it comes down to it, so they'd have to change him significantly... which is what it seems like G is gonna be, similar ideas executed in a very different fighter. This feels a lot like a decently educated guess, though. Sodom and Viper seem like likely inclusions and obvious choices - we know Sodom was in planning/development before even the vanilla game was released, and Viper is the only character of import who isn't playable who mysteriously has an all-new design in some character story modes - plus her mechanics just seem like they'd naturally lead to quite an interesting incarnation in SF5. Makoto is the highest ranking character from the popularity poll not yet in SF5. I feel like those three "fit", plus Honda - which'd leave space for two more.
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Thread: New Final Fantasy VII Remake Image
The above is true, but I'd not be surprised to see the remake will probably go down the opposite path and double down on her death being a fated event that has to happen for the world to survive and so on and so forth. Certainly the rest of the compilation leans in on that, and while we know this game won't be canon to the compilation that series was built by a more similar crowd to this game, whereas I've a feeling (based on interview snippets etc) that the attitude to death in FF7 was probably more from Sakaguchi than anyone else, even if the idea a death was from Nomura.
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
I think if there's a leadership contest the pressure to call for a GE is going to be immense. One PM without a public mandate (and then with one barely) is a big ask. Two is too far.
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
It would, but historically Tories love a bit of internal blood letting and if they scent it in the water they may forget themselves and just go for it
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
Woof. Nasty. If I was May I'd get vindictive now - I'd even potentially look into withdrawing article 50. Like, fuck 'em. It's time to start pitting the two sides against each other if a compromise isn't good enough.
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Thread: 'FIFA World Cup 2018 |OT4| All according to Lukaku
Hooted laughing at this.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
I wonder how fast they find a way to get Lorca back. I really think the show somebody like Jason Isaacs.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
Well, I mean, to be fair - as soon as they have private time she says he's not like the man she knew, and then goes as far as to say she's going to have him removed from captain and that he needs help, and she probably made the first move to initiate the first time they met and he rolled with it, one would think. The dialogue in bed is the biggest red flag of all we have prior to the reveal, though: "All these months I have ignored the signs, but I can't any more. The truth is, you are not the man I used to know." "Of course I am." "I'm not like the rest at Starfleet, blinded by your victories. You lied on those psych evaluations, and you did it so brilliantly that you fooled everyone. It's worse than I even thought. Your behavior is pathological." He only escapes all this because she then gets captured.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
I think the funny thing about this episode is that it really turns matters around on Saru - he immediately feels like captain material, and it feels like a natural place for them to go that'd be 'new' - a non-human captain of the main protagonist ship. It depends, right? That slave-owner analogy is flawed because Lorca is, as has been demonstrated, . He's been trained, and from the looks of it is an expert in espionage and subterfuge, and even in things like resisting torture (we see an Agonizer scar on him early on, so he's clearly been in the booths before). From this we can assume he'd be better at controlling his impulses. Indeed, even Tilly is able to step up and do the reverse in becoming 'Captain' without getting rumbled (albeit briefly) and she's somebody with like a tenth of the resolve.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
I think in pretty much all forms of genre fiction like this evil geniuses can do this sort of thing quite well, that's just sort of a given, but... We even see Burnham, against all her starfleet training, do the same in reverse anyway. The difference with her is we see her soul-searching in her private quarters. We don't really know if Lorca was furious or frustrated or seething at pretending to be goodie-goodie when he was in private, and he was certainly up to loads of non-Starfleet shit anyway, from us seeing him eating Kelpian in the prime universe to keeping a hostile lifeform aboard the ship and essentially torturing it, etc etc. The warning signs were there, and wasn't the entire point of Lethe, episode 6, to demonstrate that he was constantly riding the line? Somebody who knew the old Lorca was on to him and had pledged to take away his captaincy already, so I'd call it believable, honestly.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
I feel like she's gotta die. She was resolved to die anyway, so no doubt she will help the federation and absolve her soul - giving us the squishy "the federation is so brilliant it can even soften the heart of a dictator" moment, but also boxing her away so they don't have to deal with the touchy subject of how somebody like that should be punished. "What have you done to me?" she asks - she doesn't want to be in that world anyway. She'll help and sacrifice herself. And that aside, Yeoh probably wouldn't be a TV regular and get locked up for the better part of a year of filming anyway, would she?
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
Well, he was a character with an evil alignment pretending to be good. So of course he felt in-between, of course he seemed grey - he was pretending to be good but couldn't completely hide his true self, so the result is that grey man, a good guy who occasionally goes too far. The moment there was no need for the facade, he dropped it. This makes sense, imo.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
In fairness, we don't know that it did. The exact phrasing is that our Discovery appeared in the last known position of their discovery, so the natural suggestion is that there was a swap, but there could've been some temporal anomaly that just the other discovery or something.
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Thread: Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
I would be so, so into it if they ended up at the very end of the timeline after all this. Complete freedom to do what they want, and a real headfuck to boot.
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Thread: RTTP: Street Fighter V
It's a good game now. Regarding speed, it's pretty bloody quick on PC in terms of loading etc. Like, literally, it's about two seconds for me to go from a match back to training mode, then while in training it searches for a new match. PS4 load times are still pretty slow comparatively though, but still improved over vanilla. It's worth keeping in mind you can skip the VS screen animation by hammering start, which improves time-to-match quite a bit as well. RE colors - it's just they want you to play, and spend fight money. You can get colors through survival, but you can also buy them from the store with FM (not real cash), and you can also get colors from the loot box/gacha purchases, which also gives you consumable items to use to make survival easier. This stuff is all weird as it feels like something they'd use to squeeze money out of people, but since you can't spend real cash it's really just encouraging you to play more, complete the FM missions, etc.
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Thread: RTTP: Street Fighter V
Big smurfing problem at that level too, I guess.
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Thread: SUPER NT ｜OT｜ a TRUE 1080p FPGA-SUPER NINTENDO GALORE
A bit of shameless self-linking, but I spoke to Christopher from Analogue recently after toying with the Super NT for a while - not much here will be new to anyone in this thread, I don't think, but you might find the chat fun/interesting anyway: He talks about and hints towards Mega Drive/Genesis in the future once again, and while I don't go into it much in the article we spent quite a while nerding out about shit like the difference between the Mega Drive 1/2/3 sound chips and how FPGA could be used to switch between them. We also nerded out about the idea for a CPS2 machine. One thing they seem keen to explore is actually working with the rights holders/publishers of the original products, too. Hopefully that comes through. Sega are always super willing to license out the mega drive name/games/characters out to low-rent companies, so a deal with Analogue for something officially licensed doesn't seem completely nuts...!
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Thread: SUPER NT ｜OT｜ a TRUE 1080p FPGA-SUPER NINTENDO GALORE
For what it's worth, the officially licensed conversation with Taber came about when I asked him if these consoles, like vinyl, need to begin driving software reissues/reprints. Iam8bit did SF2 recently with Capcom's blessing, but with carts becoming rare and expensive and batteries dying on many save driven games, like vinyl with music it may be time for iconic classics to be reissued. He said that'd require the rights holders, obviously, and that led to us talking about the idea of a licensed machine. It also linked in to a chat we had about CD based systems. Like, even if the hardware could support it for Saturn, Dreamcast or PS you'd need the bios... Which would need to be licensed, as that's software. This is why emulators for those machines online would never include the bios back in the day; it was how they'd keep it legal.
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Thread: Jessica Jones | Season 2 on Netflix | 3/8/18 (Spoiler-free discussion)
Finished it. Some thoughts, no major spoilers, but talking about who is/isn't in the series, so I'm gonna spoiler anyway...
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Thread: Jessica Jones | Season 2 on Netflix | 3/8/18 (Spoiler-free discussion)
Because the division of Marvel that makes TV is different from the division that makes the movies, and the movie people seem to want to play in their own toybox without the TV people, which is why we're never gonna see these guys cameo in the MCU, basically. Netflix's deal presumably restricts them to TV shows.
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Thread: Jessica Jones | Season 2 on Netflix | 3/8/18 (Spoiler-free discussion)
I mean, I love the idea, but contracts are rarely so flexible. Marvel also would surely want to avoid any confusion, and with Netflix now doing brand-new cinematic releases like Bright... well, is Bright a TV movie, or a movie? In terms of budget, cast, perception and marketing it's certainly a fully-fledged movie, right? So the line of what is a 'proper movie' is being blurred by the digital services... and what I'm saying is a Marvel Movie on Netflix would be broadly regarded as a Marvel Movie on Netflix, which would lead people to associate it directly with the MCU, and this is where the contracts seemingly get very restrictive. The MCU brand as a whole is obviously incredibly valuable to them and they want to keep that 'pure'.
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Thread: Cryptocurrency |OT2| Money's New ERA Shoots for the Moon! | Read OP for Thread Rules
I've been mining vertcoin fairly consistently while in the background at work, and to get my eye in - I haven't mined since I mined a few BTC and a shed load of Dogecoin (ha) in about 2012. All of that got sold (the bitcoin when it was at about 4000 - should've held, alas), but I wanted to get in on a growing currency or two. Should I stick with VTC or try another?
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
They replied to me once when I referred to them as "I Am Dog Shit" asking me what the problem was
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
they are absolute con artists
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
iam8bit strikes again eh please stop buying vinyl from them, guys, god damn.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
If you want the Limited Edition, that'll be gone within half an hour. You'll also only have a shot at the LEs if you sign up to Data Discs' newsletter, cos then they give you early access to the site to purchase. Data's LEs are actually unlike many other brands though. The other copies tend to stick around long enough that you'll stand a decent chance.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
Amazon UK has had it, so the advice really is just sit tight. It's printed on nice white vinyl, which is cool.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
iam8bit strikes again - better artwork or not, this is a pattern, and people seriously need to reconsider supporting them or else they'll getting big, desirable releases when they could be going to better vinyl houses.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
I will say they're quite nicely presented sets. Lovely packaging etc.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
Out of interest, how much did you pay for the SQ Trax you imported from Yahoo Japan? I've been thinking of picking this up and I'm wondering if the ones on the site right now are overpriced (12k yen)
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
Ah, thanks. This is good to know what to look out for. I've been on the hunt for both that and the FF Vinyls box set from a few years ago, but both very rare and expensive...
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
I am dog shit strikes again
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
Enormously uneven quality thanks to poor quality control and poor communication, mostly. They tend to make decent-quality sets in terms of presentation, and I think that's part of why they get away with it - a lot of VGM vinyl buyers are in it for the collection aspect only, and that's fine. The Last Guardian vinyl set shipped with some truly shameful problems with surface noise and stuff though, and it was a widespread problem. That's the sort of thing Data Discs recalled a whole release line of records for, but iam8bit just kept on trucking as if nothing had happened. That's why, mostly. It depends what you're after, basically.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
I'm drawing the line, I swear, I won't continue to order from them. I won't. This is a hard one to turn down, but no.
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Thread: Game soundtracks on vinyl | 45rpm All new cartridge
BW and DD are definitely the best. Laced Records are good too. Mondo also. To be honest even when ThinkGeek has done stuff (Mass Effect, Dark Souls) that stuff has been decent. iam8bit is just an outlier with shameful quality control. People do get good quality records out of them, but they ship a lot of disgraceful stuff too. I think they get away with it because an awful lot of their customers probably never actually play the records and just buy them as collector's items, but, yeah.
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Thread: Canto Bight (Star Wars) vs Stormbreaker (Infinity War)
Would be curious to see the two side-by-side, but the Canto sequence seems like it's a lot, lot longer. The big difference, though, is that the Canto sequence has no real pay-off in the end - there's no moment that comes directly from that sequence that makes it worthwhile, except for possibly the final scene before the credits. Stormbreaker has a few different key pay-offs that are enormously heroic - the arrival into Wakanda is one, obviously, but equally good is moody teen Groot finally 'waking up' and doing something significant, etc The thing is - and this was a realization that hit me like a lightning bolt the second time I saw IW - these big team-up movies aren't really anything. I think this is where Ultron failed, actually - it tried to have some greater themes and ideas and there was actually no room for it once you'd done the character moments of these heroes interacting and established the greater threat. IW isn't really about anything, it doesn't really have a theme - but I suppose the point is that it doesn't really need to, because there's all these ancillary movies whose themes feed into it - that's what makes it so successful. I don't even think not being about anything is even a criticism you can level at IW at this point, because it's not intended to be. I have no problem with it, fwiw - I loved Infinity War and saw it three times - it's just a thing about how these films are structured. I wonder if Avengers 4 will have more actual substance, given it's going to be juggling a much smaller cast, which theoretically should make some room.
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Thread: Avengers: Infinity War |OT2| Good luck, Morons (Unmarked Spoilers)
I mean, in defense of this - Hulk is one massive impact, right? The attempt to take him down on Titan is the opposite of that - for one, Hulk is aiming to injure, they're aiming to subdue. For two, Hulk is a huge, singular force, whereas the attempt is more death by a thousand cuts, with five different heroes working together to just restrain him long enough for Mantis to put him under. It's apples and oranges, I think, as in that segment they don't hurt Thanos any more than Hulk does - they just briefly immobilize him and get close to getting the gauntlet off.
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Thread: Keri Russell joins 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
It's not helped by members of the cast or even people like Simon Pegg going around in the wake of TLJ saying "yeah, this wasn't the original plan, it was very different", obviously. People will be hung up on what could have been for years, and is not a phenomenon unique to the Star Wars fanbase. (IE I'm a bigger Doctor Who fan than Star Wars fan, and that fan base is terrible for that too to the point where show runners & cast members are briefed to not talk about what could've been or anything not nailed down as certain in interviews because it'll become gospel on a wiki somewhere). I think what-ifs are interesting from a creative standpoint (one day it'd be very nice to read in detail both George's treatment for 7-9 and JJ's original overarching plot for 8/9, for instance), but at a point people need to let go and accept the bloody stories we have.
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Thread: Keri Russell joins 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
Yeah, that's true, and fair. I just think Disney will let JJ do whatever he wants, though. Johnson has creative control over whatever he wants over on his own little Star Wars playground for his trilogy now, after all. I just think Lucas/Disney is big on giving over creative control within the scope of each individual project, that's all. I commend them for doing that, too, as I think if they were as constrained about that stuff as it appears Marvel Studios are TLJ probably would've been a very very different movie. With that said, I think JJ is too intelligent a storyteller to actually want to change Johnson's work - I think he will find a great way to bring it home in keeping with what TLJ establishes, and the less desirable segment of the fanbase can cry about it all they want.
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Thread: Keri Russell joins 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
To be honest, while I don't think they'll actually do it... is there really anything to stop them from changing Rey's background? Yeah, so Kylo says that they were nobodies and Rey believes him. So what? He might not know, he could be lying to fuck with & manipulate her - he's a dick. That's established. JJ can basically write what he wants, and he could totally revert to his Ep 9 original plan for Rey if he wants her to be a Kenobi or whatever. Nothing in TLJ sets that in stone, and if TLJ is anything it's a demonstration that you don't have to take everything from the previous movie as gospel. Like, what happened with Luke is not something you can change, but Rey's parentage is just a couple of lines and nothing firm at all.
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Thread: Keri Russell joins 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
Johnson completely tossed out JJ's ideas for 8 and he was perfectly happy to return for 9. I don't think you take on & make a franchise movie like this without knowing how much control you actually have when push comes to shove, which is why you get things like Trevorrow departing 9 or Wright leaving Ant-Man. I'm sure JJ will have just as much carte blanche to do what he wants as Johnson had on 8, even if it means retconning or going against bits of 8. I don't really care what the piss babies say though, so I hope (for instance) JJ finds a big role for Rose that's more than just Lando levels of involvement in ROTJ, etc.
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Thread: Keri Russell joins 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
I'm not campaigning for it, fwiw - so I don't need to give it up, as such, but I'm saying narratively if that's a path JJ wants to take they absolutely could take it, that's all. I will say that in the films there is a definitive tonal difference, though, where her being 'nobody' and from 'nowhere' in TFA is played more as an ooo spooky mystery, whereas in TLJ it's played straight as the truth. I think that's just also a difference in film makers too though, where JJ loves mysteries (those Lost instincts, ey) and Johnson likes to challenge expectations rather than provoke speculation. I do think Star Wars desperately needs to move away from being the story/saga of one family, though. As far as I'm concerned I hope 9 kills Ben and then we're rid of the whole Skywalker clan (and any connection to Obi-Wan, too) for whatever they choose to do next.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler: Preview Thread
The guys behind I Am Setsuna sat opposite me in an interview once and enthused to me that it was going to be a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger. Like, the devs can think what they want, reality is a different thing. RE Octopath specifically - I'm about 25 hours in and I think it's pretty great, though one major thing is really dragging the game down for me, which is delivery of aspects of the story. It doesn't feel like FF6 at all, though - aesthetically it has similarities in its visual attitude/identity/delivery, but in real terms it doesn't play like it and the story is handled in a way that is in many ways the absolute antithesis of FF6's strongly-developed, closely intertwined ensemble. Even if you just take that quote from that interview about it being gameplay-descended from FF6 it's just... not, though. That doesn't mean it's bad either! But to be fair if you're going to evoke a game as classic as FF6 (and for Setsuna before this, Chrono Trigger) you'd better actually be on the money with the comparison at least in terms of design if not quality. The comparison seems flawed to me, but Octopath has a really interesting identity all of its own. If you're really gonna compare it to an FF systems-wise, btw, the closest is 10 by a country mile.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler: Preview Thread
Oh yeah, it's a direct copy, but in pretty much every other sense I think it's a swing and a miss on the CT comparison front. Even combat, direct rip as it is, isn't anywhere near as good feeling. Lost Sphear is a better second attempt, though it's still a ways off. My point is really more to say: it doesn't really matter what a dev (or anyone else) says the influence is, it's what's there that matters. It can be a useful shortcut to help someone understand if you'd like a game, though. Mind you, Setsuna is a thousand times more like CT than Octopath is like FF6. Which brings me to... Whatever Jason's response was and whatever you make of its tone, after like 25 hours with the game I don't know what to tell you other than whatever their intent was, it doesn't really resemble FF6. To my eyes the battle system - completely different, closer to FFX if you really want an FF comparison. Progression - see previous. Story - delivered in a completely different way and with a very different style/tone. The area where it skirts closest is in visual identity - the design of the world and the art style that delivers that definitely evokes that look - but even then it's still pretty far from it, I think, just due to how the game uses things like character animation on the field etc etc. Mind you, I don't know why this is something everybody's getting hung up on: the game is still really fun and interesting imo (something Jason might not agree with, but that's how opinions work) - though some of the areas where it is interesting don't quite work... but the embargo really prevents me from getting into the nitty gritty of that. It's still worthy of your attention regardless. Like, a colleague of mine asked me on twitter earlier today if he should definitely pick up Octopath given that FF6 is his favorite game of all time. My answer was just - wait for the embargo and read some reviews and get a real good idea of what the game is in-depth, as the 'it's like FF6' shortcut isn't actually a very helpful or accurate description, regardless of what the developers say. The fact my answer wasn't an immediate yes should speak to where it stands compared to FF6 in terms of similarities. I think it's gonna be a good thing in its own right, tho.
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Thread: Octopath Traveler: Preview Thread
Ah, cool. I haven't actually had a chance to read Jason's preview yet, (and I tend not to read others' work too much while I'm partway through the review process anyway), but I was assuming it was negative based on the over-the-top reactions I'm seeing to it, haha. Consider me told!
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Thread: Octopath Traveler: Preview Thread
Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, I think if you asked (and I may actually get a chance in the coming weeks, Nintendo's trying to sort an opportunity out) they'd probably say they were looking to evoke the feeling of FF6, because visually at least they accomplish that fairly decently, so there's a feeling of that game around the world. Mechanically and narratively I don't think it resembles it at all.
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Thread: Hitman 2 will have six locations at launch
RE level size, this is what was put out for the previous game to demonstrate the size of its smallest level vs the largest level of the previous game: So yes, these levels are .
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Thread: Hitman 2 will have six locations at launch
Well, to be fair to IO the point is to have large locations that allow for a huge amount of variety for the contracts, elusive targets, etc etc. There are vast parts of levels in the 2016 game that aren't even used in their main missions that then get used in genius ways in the alternate takes on those levels. That's harder to achieve in smaller levels. There's something really satisfying about seeing a level you already know well in a whole new light six months after launch thanks to some new piece of live content, I think.
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Thread: Love Island [UK 2018]
Wow, Laura has fully cracked. Good job she wasn't acting like this yesterday else she'd probably be in serious danger with tonight's vote
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Thread: Luke Cage | Season 2 on Netflix | 6/22/18 (Spoiler tagged discussion)
Well, Luke himself hits the nail on the head at one point in the season when a guy shoots at him and he says "everybody wants to see is the myth is true, huh?" And this makes sense, tbh. Are the viral videos faked? Is he just a mega tough dude with an over-the-top reputation? Maybe he got lucky and it spread? It's easy to believe why people wouldn't believe it's true until they see a bullet bounce off themselves, tbh. Or at least... it is if you take these four shows as their own enclosed thing. It becomes a lot more difficult to believe if you actually try to accept they're in the MCU, as with all the other shit that's happened in New York alone you'd think people would take more supernatural shit at face value.
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Thread: Luke Cage | Season 2 on Netflix | 6/22/18 (Spoiler tagged discussion)
Definitely feels like (Ending Spoilers/Season 3 Speculation)
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Thread: Love Island [UK 2018]
Alex is such a wet blanket, just awful. And Megan... geez.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I think them being short isn't a big deal, honestly - I think there's something about how they're short and stocky, whereas the massive, bulky ones somehow are less imposing, and they'd still feel so even if they weren't in the nasty colours. I'd quite like to see the 2005 look in some different colours, though. There's some fan builds which are the 2005 blueprint with classic series silver/blue colours and I'm just like - how have they never made one of these?? The gold should be the standard, obviously, but a bit of variety is fine...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
If you watch the Doctor Who Confidential from 2010 - 5x03, "War Games" - they specifically say that the 2005 Dalek was built so that its eye stalk would be a match to Billie Piper's eye line, but Karen is the better part of a full foot taller, and next to Karen the old ones when shot in a flat shot do look a bit silly. So, yes, they are a different height than the classic ones. The reason that's cited in 5x03 is of course that's the episode covering the new, taller design. It wasn't the sole reason for the change but given they specifically bring it up it was definitely a factor.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I wonder what's going on with that old they have to appear every year clause with the Nation estate. We've been getting them at least once a year still even if not with bonafide episodes, so it seems like that clause in the contract still exists. It'd be really surprising to see them completely unused, though... I feel like a Doctor isn't really the Doctor until they've faced them. Maybe it'll be a surprise turning up in the very last episode, as with Tennant's first year, hmm.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
While the BBC has never commented on it, we've had a few clues over the years that it is true, like RTD saying he had to "work a Dalek in" to the specials year (which ultimately manifested as the brief, one-scene Dalek cameo in The Waters of Mars). The fact that every year Moffat has squeezed one in somewhere (the decapitated one during The Wedding of River Song during Series 6 and the brief Kaled/Dalek war scenes in The Pilot in series 10, for instance) suggests it's probably a real thing. After all, if they're off air for too long, the seemingly quite greedy Nation estate probably sees a drop off in their toy revenue, ha.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I mean, you only need to look at ten-plus years of history for an answer to this anyway - Christmas episodes always bundle with the series, and are always produced as part of the following series' block. So The Christmas Invasion was produced as part of Series 2 and shipped as part of that DVD, The Snowmen was part of Series 6 production, etc etc. The only exceptions have been when a Doctor/team has been departing - both The End of Time and Twice Upon a Time were tacked on to the previous series' production cycle, so... surely the same deal here. If Chibnall's crew do a Christmas Episode (which I'd honestly expect - Moffat said part of the reason he stayed for one more episode was to keep the continuity of a Who Xmas episode, because once the show misses that slot once it'll be easier for the BBC to not reinstate it), it'll be attached to Series 12 production-wise, it'll be the first episode of that next production block and have DVD placement to match. And if there's no Christmas episode there'll be ten episodes on these discs, as that's how many are in Series 11. So we're losing two episodes this year, though each episode will be 5 minutes (ish) longer to clock in at 50 minutes each. American/international viewers may or may not get those extra minutes, as they might be cut for ads - previously Doctor Who was often cut from 45 to 40 for US broadcast by trimming gaps and removing a scene or two - not sure how they'll marry that to the extended length.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
That's true, though I honestly don't expect them to change the formatting. It's all a bit weird, mind. It's the least certain any of this has been since the split series in series 6, ey.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The Twitch marathon is into Pertwee now, and, god - Sarah Jane is the template for Rose (and therefore everybody who came since), isn't she? It's so striking.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Very Tennant, as predicted. I think the whole era is going to whiff of a modernization of those years... Into it.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Osgood seems like the sort of character you potentially bring back for the anniversary but leave aside otherwise. Like, she's a fun connection to that era who can be out there and age - and obviously she could potentially be key to any future Zygon outing - but otherwise, yeah, keep her out. The World Cup trailer thing makes a of sense, which is precisely why it might be a guess from some over-excited fans, ha.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I wanna note, btw, that chances are if they do a trailer it'll be a specially-filmed thing like these: Moffat's era stopped doing these after Matt's first year, for some reason, but this seems like the sort of thing Chibnall would bring back. That series 1 trailer, with its bizarre editing, is one of the best ones they've ever done. It was also a pretty good, fast glimpse at what that Doctor was about. It'd be pretty good to get something like that for 13.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
It seems the attitude now is that Doctors and companions are off-limits for the most recent era, but everything else is OK. Like, Smith was barely out of the role and we were getting Big Finish stuff with Vastra, Jenny and Drax.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
He's definitely gonna do it. Matt too - Matt's even said in interviews he's looking forward to doing it but is waiting for the thumbs up from the BBC. I reckon we'll get a series with David and Freema and then we're going to get Matt/Karen (assuming her newfound Hollywood success doesn't keep her away? She seems the type who'd make time for it though), then they'll loop back around for more Tenth Doctor stuff. There's a lot of weird shit about the movie. Like the original characters, Grace and Chang - they belong to Universal/Fox, who co-produced the TV movie, the BBC. That's why there's never been 8th Doctor audios from Big Finish with his 'original' companions. Like the Doctor Universal wouldn't own The Master because he was an existing character, but the TV movie was still a black hole licensing-wise for many years. I didn't even get a home video release outside the UK until 2010(!) because of the rights problems.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I assume based on some teases in the prose of the Day of the Doctor novel that Moffat is going to to the silence stories next, as there's a few prods and nods to that storyline being a bit incomplete, and a 'deleted' chapter missing from the book where it's implied you've read it and immediately forgotten thanks to them. I wonder if RTD will do another? I assume Gatiss must be doing one, I bet he can't resist. I'd love to see Cornell do Father's Day, too...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
bad, bad, bad. the whole point of the new logo is that it has that through line, it looks bad stacked. I hope this doesn't become regular formatting...!
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I really dislike the framing device of the Day of the Doctor novel, but the meat of the book itself is really wonderful. Some great new stuff!
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I'm more amused that he's doing it at all, to be honest, given how much he's shit on DW and Thor even in recent weeks. He must have another sofa to pay for (this is a reference to how, on the fucking for Thor at the Premiere, he told three separate outlets he only did the film to pay for an expensive new sofa). He's perfectly entitled to charge, though. I'm just astonished he's willing to do it at all - like 12 months ago he called conventions a "shameful stunt" for an actor to do.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The sound of them really scraping the bottom of the barrel here cos they can presumably only get Tennant in once or twice a year
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The one they should probably do is the kids from SJA grown up, carrying on her legacy. Make it a YA thing. Fighting aliens while at university, or while penniless working graduate jobs, etc.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I imagine it's going to take it being mentioned in the show first.. (and honestly, I wouldn't put an appearance from Luke out of the question under Chibs) as I presume a bit like with the Brig they will act like she's still alive until they want to make a point of her passing in-universe. I always wondered if Clara was a tribute to Liz - she cropped up the series after Liz died, and Clara is her middle name. Moffat's never said either way.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I just accidentally caught a rerun of Last of the Time Lords on TV, and boy, you really can tell RTD was rushed/ill when he wrote that. What a mess that last ten minutes is. Strong emotional core, like, but an absolute pig otherwise. I think the most baffling thing of all is how once the finale begins they teleport the Doctor and the Master to a cliff-edge for no reason other than for the imagery of them standing on a cliff, except it was clearly pissing it down based on the way David's hair looks and how much they've had to wash out the scene in order to make it play... and then there's like six lines of dialogue there and then teleport back?? It's so mad. I do miss this era of the show, though. It's easy to forget how crap and TV it looked compared to Series 6 onwards (I adore its obsession with small-scale crowd reaction shots to the alien threat), but that's really part of its charm.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
One wonders about that new DWM cover - the TARDIS image in particular. The windows have a golden glow again, which more resembles the glow we got through the windows from the Series 1-4 and Series 5 TARDIS, so I wonder if they're going to back to those earthy colors on the interior?
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The interesting thing about unleashing the restoration team on the new series, or at least the first five series of it, is that there's oodles of Doctor Who Confidential interviews that have huge unused chunks in the actual shows that are presumably archived somewhere. There's also stuff like the website podcast commentaries, some of which are absolute gold mines, that're now sort of lost (they can be dug out of the website, but not easily) so there's a lot of stuff that can be republished easily enough.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I don't really mean the actual shows, since the cut footage from the shows was mostly just music video montage rubbish - I just mean that say every time they sat down with RTD they would've shot 15 minutes of talking then only used 3 to 5 minutes of it in the episode they were talking about, and the same for all other interviewees. My point is so long as it hasn't been trashed there's a lot of lovely unused behind-the-scenes and interview footage about for that era.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Even so, they live forever through the title sequence of their era, so they are important.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The point is that they're supposed to look like the target novelizations from the 70s, which these are essentially a spiritual revival of... so if they look 70s, it's Mission Accomplished! The modern re-issues of these novels look the same, retaining the same artwork but feature the same logo/author/title treatment as these, so it's in keeping with the rest of the set. Weirdly, my main issue is that they've just chosen promo shots of the actors to use at random, so that's clearly a Series 2 Rose on that cover and the Tennant picture on the cover of The Christmas Invasion is one of him looking older from The End of Time, but hey-ho. Love 'em anyway.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I mean, you can't rule anything out with a new showrunner but...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I don't think so, though I think some of the Big Finish stories have been post Miracle Day. The Torchwood stuff has truly been all over the shop though - there's been stuff with Jack alone, stuff with Jack and Yvonne (the lady from Army of Ghosts!), stuff in between series, stuff after, etc.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Not so sure that is definitely what they're suggesting it is, to be honest.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
That's a fair viewpoint, I think, and an interesting one. I'm far more about the emotion than the rubber suits, so I'd take a Father's Day with a naff CGI monster but a really strong, heartbreaking and rather brutal emotional core over clever, scary monsters. (Probably my largest 'issue' with Moffat's era - which make no mistake is excellent - is that he's great at being clever and scary, but much less adept at being heartfelt.) Sometimes those streams cross, of course, like with Human Nature, and that's when you get the best episodes of the show. I think Doctor Who still does plenty of characters like Van Statten though when push comes to shove. Is the guy in Thin Ice last year any less of an evil capitalist pig caricature?
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I even think World War Three is a really good episode, tbh. The hardcore "fuck Blair" tone of the episode hasn't aged brilliantly (although, for the record: fuck Blair) but that's an episode that's incredibly brave - to take a drama-sci-fi-family series like Doctor Who and lock all the major players inside one room for almost an entire episode. Really good stuff.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The entire Slitheen plot is a pastiche of the Iraq War, complete with the (ultimately false) claim that the (fake) alien ship has "massive weapons of destruction that can be deployed in thirty seconds", which is more or less exactly fingering Blair's claim to the commons that Hussain had "weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in forty-five minutes", a quote that by 2005 was infamous for how wrong it was. The whole second half of the story is a parody of Britain and America's rush to a preemptive strike based on false information. I always thought that line was a on the nose, personally, given it's a near direct quote, but I get what he was trying to do. That and, er, they deliberately (and this is by RTD's own admission) kill a PM who looks like Blair. As per him laughing about it in The Writer's Tale, he insisted they get someone who looked like Blair because he was very much anti-Blair (he's no Tory, though - he just hated Labor's lurch to the middle). At the time of broadcast it caused a bit of a stir in the papers, with some of the angrier papers like the Mail decrying it as an unpatriotic breach of the BBC's impartiality rules and other papers claiming it was a brilliant mockery of real life. It's not so much subtext as, well, text - and text the writer has tacitly admitted to and spoken about, since that episode was really the first time Doctor Who as a show ever made a definitive political statement, though of course it's made many since.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Oh shit!
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
It's actually a very significant spoiler because if you know what you're looking at it spoils the timeline and location of an episode, and more importantly very probably a guest star It also points to the show tackling some really interesting subject matter too, which is cool.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Out today, as a reminder:
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I don't really remember Hell Bent that well, but all the flash forward stuff is in the diner, right? If so: (and is the same location as in Impossible Astronaut - it's a massive Who nerd pilgrimage site because it's also right near the Torchwood hub). He is in a desert at the end when the diner-TARDIS disappears, but I honestly assumed they shot that stuff pick-up while they were abroad for either the Zygons or Gallifrey, cos the terrain looks very similar to the Gallifrey stuff just without the orange tint.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
It's mostly just idiot fans theorizing because something happened once before (Third Doctor) it's more likely to happen again, even though it only happened the first time because of budget and was regarded by almost everybody involved to be a mistake
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
She will be in it by the end of the first episode and will hold a new sonic screwdriver by the end of the first episode because it will have significantly higher viewing figures than episode 2 and they will want to hit the 'big beats' of Doctorishness to 'prove' that she is the Doctor within her debut. See also The Eleventh Hour
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
RTD's logic not just on post-regeneration was that in general you have to be killed by something instantly, basically. So if the Doctor were shot in the head, that'd do him. In the time war Daleks racked up plenty of kills with one-shots (incidentally, this is why the Dalek that shoots the Doctor in The Stolen Earth only scores a glancing blow, thus allowing him to regenerate) -- so anything that doesn't kill them instantly gives them a chance to start the process, and they then need to remain safe while the process takes place. I'd assume largely the same applies to freshly regenerated, really, it's just that the healing doesn't cost an actual regeneration.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I think while the description is obviously reductive, Moffat's answer is reductive in another, different way - he dismisses it probably because he thinks it takes too simple a view of his work, but the flip side is by dismissing it out of hand, well... it dismisses that... it's true, really. The fairytale stuff comes from the format of Moffat's series early on: we often see the Doctor through the eyes of the companion, and to Amy he a fairytale figure because for years she wasn't even sure if he was real or not, imaginary friend, etc etc. "He was just a story, a game," as Rory said, like most fairytales. This carries through to very, very much of that series and really comes to define Smith's Doctor. What is he in his last story to the people of Trenzalore if not, y'know, a mad fairytale come to life? When you get to the scenes of him doing Punch & Judy and playing with the kids this is really very clear. Compare this to Rose (this goes for Donna and Martha, too) and what the Doctor is, well, it's pretty matter-of-fact, but the memorable difference, at least among fans, is that RTD's era is a show where the Doctor sits on a sofa and watches Blue Peter during an alien invasion, a show where he gets slapped by the companion's mothers, a show where a pivotal character beat for a major character takes place over a chance encounter as she washes her underwear in a launderette. I think one of the best scenes of that era is just Jackie and Mickey talking absolute crap over chips in a dialogue exchange that's so blisteringly mundane, dull and silly that it feels absolutely real-- This dialogue is where the kitchen sink drama talk comes from, and people don't talk like this in Moffat's Who. They don't even talk like it in Torchwood or Sarah Jane, or at least not nearly as much - it seems like it was a specific decision by RTD to ground the show for a really broad Saturday night audience, whereas SJA didn't need it because it was for kids and Torchwood didn't need it because it was for sci-fi fans. Obviously there's crossover between the two - we have The Lodger in Moffat's era and we have the Doctor as a legend woven throughout RTD's era, but I think the comparison is absolutely real. I think Moffat's show ultimately moves away from it - the fairytale thing is specifically a Smith thing and even more specifically mostly an Amy/Rory thing - but it is very much real, and it's a defining pillar of that era. It's reductive because there's a lot else to it, but the 11/Amy and the River stuff is all fairytale, and that's fair enough. The same threads are throughout like Moffat says, but they're handled in different ways- like the Doctor dropping in and out of Amy & Rory's life is a fun game, but with Rose and Martha it's depicted as some awful, life-shattering stuff for the people around them. That's where the kitchen sink stuff comes from, really. We haven't had a character like Jackie in Moffat's era, and she is basically a soap opera character. She could walk onto Albert Square tomorrow and she'd fit right in.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Sure enough with the Toclafane -- but the flip side is that the entire Master series 3 plot is made possible by the most simple kitchen sink drama in the world - a mother concerned for and interfering in the life of her daughter. This is the thing, and this is the difference, really - RTD's series was often driven, in the background, by that sort of soap-opera like drama. All the stuff with Martha's mum and dad is the emotional rock of what Martha goes on to do, and the episode goes to pains to make a point around them because they're ordinary and don't understand the stakes or the reasoning for their own suffering in the way Martha, Jack and the Doctor do. Much of the previous episode is dedicated to them - to their betrayal, to their imprisonment, and crucially to the fury that it cooks up in Martha even towards the Doctor. My point, I suppose, is that the story is absolutely driven by them and that kitchen sink family-and-friends stuff. It's the lifeblood of the show, in a sense. The legend and fairytale stuff comes late on and is barely telegraphed to the point where the episode was derided as being terrible (I disagree) a lot at the time because of the deus ex machina ending. Moffat's endings are rarely like that, but part of the reason why is how he writes. When the crack opens in the sky of Trenzalore and the Doctor is rescued, it feels earned - but the flip side is that the kitchen sink drama-esque scenes we get with parents and a grandma we never see before or since are pretty throwaway in the same way that RTD's conclusion is throwaway. Vitally, nothing about the conversation with Clara's grandmother and parents actually set her in motion - her path is already decided, it's clear - but the scenes are only there to demonstrate where she is and that the Doctor has truly, properly sent her away. It's a different sort of tone - they're basically focused in inverse ways.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
God, I couldn't disagree more. Rose, Dalek, Father's Day, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways are all-time classic Doctor Who episodes, every one. Like, Van Statten is an irritating side character but that's sort of the point of him, right? Likewise for Adam. Christmas Invasion is brilliant too... and then in series 2 I'd say School Reunion, Girl in the Fireplace, Impossible Planet/Satan Pit and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday are all absolute classics too. Secretly I have a lot of love for Tooth and Claw and Love & Monsters too, though I know those are polarizing in a big way, so ey. The production value is very rocky and series 1 and 2 are home to two of the worst episodes in New Who (The Long Game/Fear Her), but I honestly still think they're amazing TV with some really brilliant, snappy writing. There's an energy to those first two years that is still unmatched, really, though everything else improved in kind around it. Every RTD year was better than the last, but I still don't think 1/2 are bad, really.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Well, that lines up with the Mirror rumors, which in turn confirms a few other things.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Yes, but in part it's about the travel, too.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
These are great. In fairness, and playing devil's advocate, mind -- Eccleston's series was a show coming back and was building off zero momentum. Everyone after him has an unfair weighting of the top ten numbers too, as they all did a few Christmas episodes each and those make the top ten because it's Christmas Day. The fall from 11th to 18th is pretty modest though, that's quite good. Really hope Jodie can mark a Tennant-like jump again.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
In an amazing twist of stupidity, today's papers are reporting the creators of the character of the Brigadier are considering legal action against the BBC for featuring a character related to him in the Christmas Special. In many cases, early Who creations had their rights retained by their writers (most famously Terry Nation & the Daleks) and so permission has to be gained to use them or do anything new with them - unlike with Kate, permission wasn't obtained. So dumb.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Mind that the point they're making about show format has little to do with casting though, as while I believe what you say about Capaldi even with Smith as the show went heavier in that direction the UK ratings shifted accordingly. Series 5, his simplest, and the most like the adventure format of RTD's era, is well above the rest.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
They did do about the same amount of international filming, but in Capaldi's era it was generally more subtle than the "look! an international location!" stuff in the Tennant/Smith eras, really. Like they went to Tenerife to double as Skaro in Series 9, but given what it was you never really had a chance to think of it as being an international location (indeed a lot of the time you could mistake it for a matte painting at a glance thanks to the CGI Dalek buildings grafted onto it), things like that.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I think it's been a vicious circle really, where the slide in real-time viewership in the UK and it no longer being a critical darling in the UK press makes the BBC less inclined to spend money on promotion, but hopefully with the reboot they'll really go mad with it.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I mean, this too is a result of the decline in interest/live viewership/etc. When the show was pulling numbers equal to or even sometimes better than stuff like Strictly in the Tennant years the BBC would go out of their way to ensure it maintained a normal time slot, only ever moving it for things like the sport, which of course can't be moved. When it was one of their very biggest shows the BBC would also try to avoid putting it directly against, say, the X Factor lest its audience get damaged, but now the audience is down regularly they throw it in the way of shows like that on the regular. With the live UK audience at sometimes as little as half of those days now and the press no longer at fever pitch with the show as their darling, its slot has become more expendable which is on one hand understandable but of course sucks ass. I think it's absolutely key that the next series has a regular, steadfast time slot - and back at 7pm, where the show thrived previously.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
It hasn't been shunted around day-of, but it's been all over the place since about series 7 - bumped back as far as not long past 5pm. The issue really is that they change it week-to-week - basically, Doctor Who has gone from being a schedule-setter, where it aired at 7pm and the BBC fit other things around it to one of the shows that fits into the schedule around other shows like Strictly Come Dancing and the like. Hopefully the show gets some of the zeitgeist back with Jodie and can wrestle more of the schedule back as a result. As for reality TV, well - it's weird, really. If you're not a Brit, UK TV is still as such that there are really four 'main' channels (two BBC, two not) and while people have access to hundreds of others, a lot of the 'core' ratings war is between those four, especially on a Saturday night. ITV, the BBC's main rival, is awash with reality shows, and throughout the entire revival of the show the X-Factor has been Doctor Who's biggest menace, and it was something RTD's production team actually would try to get away from, as it has such an enormous footprint it'd hurt Who to go out at the same time as it.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
UK TV is split into a few 'bits'. So, like, there's the pre-digital, terrestrial TV channels - BBC1/2, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5. All 5 of these are supported by the government and taxes - the BBC entirely (thus no ads) and the other three partially (they have ads). By getting government money they agree to serve public interests - so that's why the BBC is so magnificent and must be protected, because it's not so driven by what sells. That's why the BBC can afford to spend outlandish amounts on things like Attenborough documentaries even if the figures don't add up, because their remit includes instruction to educate as well as entertain. Then there's freeview, which adds about 100 more channels that resemble US TV more. All that's free, and then of course there are paid premium packages like what you guys get with even more premium high-end channels. There's actually UK versions of most US channels like Investigation Discovery or SyFy and so on, but unless the government dismantles the BBC (which the current right-leaning government would rather like to do, methinks) Doctor Who probably won't end up anywhere else aside from reruns (and RTD-era re-runs are a staple on a few freeview channels). It's a weirdly complicated thing, the BBC, because the British public own it. So there's an argument in their remit about - for instance - anything major continuity wise should be broadcast free, because it'd be wrong to do a Who movie for instance and require people to go and pay to see it in order to keep up with show continuity. When BBC stuff has gone to cinema (like The League of Gentlemen), it's been a show the BBC aired that is owned by its production company... but the BBC owns Doctor Who. The BBC is going through some really interesting changes right now, and it all has quite a lot of meaning for Doctor Who, though it's not really clear how the impact will play out. There used to be the regular BBC which was all about public service and then BBC America, merchandise, DVDs and stuff like that were handled by BBC Worldwide. The main difference was that the BBC was commercial, but Worldwide - this was a way for the BBC to commercially exploit its properties without the thought of money poisoning the decision-making process in the BBC proper. Right now Worldwide is merging with the main program-producing part of the BBC, so for the first time ever those two ends will meet - and as one of the BBC's most profitable, internationally sold and commercially viable shows it could potentially mean big changes for Who in a couple of years. We'll see! Ratings still matter to Who because it's an enormously expensive show and that sort of use of taxpayer money has to be properly justified, but I really hope the BBC remains 'pure' and safe as it goes through transitions. It's tough times for them as they have more stuff to do than ever but the government has frozen how much money they get every year for ages now. I hope it can maintain its current form or something close to it for a long time to come, as I think part of why Who is as brave and as magnificent as it is comes down to its unique structure as a publicly-owned broadcaster.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I think that region is probably the toughest regional accent we've had yet, so I won't be surprised if we get a lot of non-Brits having to turn on some subtitles, but it is what it is, really. She's got a magnificent voice, anyway. God help non-Brits if one day they cast a Brummie! (Would've always loved to have seen Adrian Lester in the role with his natural Birmingham accent, ha.)
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Ratings news: 6th for the night with a little over 5.6 million, and it beat everything on ITV! That's great, though it is in part because it was a diabolically bad Christmas spread on TV anyway - Who was IMO by far the most interesting thing on. Good to see Who within striking distance of the day's biggest, though, and beating Corrie is a pretty big win in itself. AI is 81, which is fairly low - most other things were in the 84-86 range, with Mrs. Brown's Boys scoring a wholly undeserved 88. Anything over 80 is considered good, however. I feel like Capaldi's era has always scored a few points lower than it should've, but also this was quite introspective and subdued, and self-referential. Fully expect we'll get a very self-enclosed Christmas special next year in a Voyage of the Damned vein.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I'm wondering, is the "sometimes, children can hear the name" thing the most significant thing a Doctor has ever said that was taken directly from the actor? That entire little speech is lifted almost verbatim from an answer Capaldi gave at a comic con at some point when someone asked him what the Doctor's name is. What other examples of this do we have?
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Yeah, I always wonder what Dicks makes of that. He must be proud. It's a shame he hasn't had much involvement with the modern show - he wrote the novelization of a Sarah Jane Adventures episode, and original 10/Martha stories with the Judoon and the Lumic Cybermen, so he obviously does keep up with it, or did. I suppose he's in his eighties now but maybe he'll contribute once more at some point, I hope.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Regarding the companion group and the dynamic of a group, I think Moffat's vision of the show put the story as more of The Doctor's story than the story of the companion. The most obvious version of this is found in terms of their introductions... Take, say, the introductions of Rose, Martha and Donna versus those of Amy, Clara and Bill... Rose and Martha are introduced similarly - we meet them, see their job, and the Doctor enters stage left and turns their life upside down. With Donna it's a bit different as she'd been previously introduced, but when she joins the crew in Partners in Crime she spends most of the episode alone, and much of it is seen from her POV as she hunts for the Doctor. Amy's introduction is interesting because it also introduces a new Doctor, of course, but it's worth noting that the show opens with the Doctor, and it is him. Largely this is true for Smith's whole run - things happen to Amy and Rory around the fringes of the Doctor's life, but he drives absolutely everything. Clara's a weird one, like Donna, because of the fake-out introductions, but if we look at The Bells of St. John, her actual introduction, it opens with the Doctor again. Here he is - random phone call - who is this woman? In a sense, the situation is flipped compared to Rose and Martha - the companion is the mystery, not the Doctor. Bill is interesting as there's no build-up - she meets the Doctor in scene one - but again, it plays as him being familiar, and that's that. Part of that is to do with the show being on air for so long... I think it's difficult to act as Series 3 and Series 4 did now, with no pre-titles sequence, playing the first half of the first episode like 'Rose', with the Doctor not the focus. Anyway, my point is - this is what I think we'll see a bit more of. Back to a group focus, back to a focus, hopefully with Jodie as something of a mystery that plays out over time. We'll see, but I think Chibnall is more likely to be on the RTD end of the scale when it comes to featuring slice-of-life companion stuff than on the Moffat end - and the companions will get their chance to save the day, because a lot of kids look up to them as much as the Doctor, to be fair.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I don't think this is entirely fair as the show still has great AI figures and good audience figures, and Capaldi is arguably more critically acclaimed than Smith was - but it probably is fair to say that the BBC probably want something more RTD-esque, and I think that's what we'll get. The main thing I'm curious about now is the format of the show, and I'm sure they'll talk about this in the new year - if they're going to do something more or less serialized than we've seen before in the modern show.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The hardcore are usually wrong in that sense anyway, in that the highest-ever score for the show goes jointly to The Stolen Earth & Journey's End (both 91), episodes a lot of fans consider self-indulgent and wanky. And, of course, the ratings record (post the 70s, anyway) is held by Voyage of the Damned, which is also wildly hated by fans (and imo, wrongly - it's just a silly, fun romp) It's one of those funny things though, where I think if you listen to the fans you'll see the AI/ratings crumple over time, because they do hold the show and its creators to a general quality level across the board. But you need to break free of their considerations often around that, because when you do... it leads to those episodes.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Way better than Smith 's finale. Wonderfully restrained. Based in the score (and the rumours), that has to be the end of Gold, right? It had a very greatest hits goodbye feel to it...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I feel like it could still be Ben Foster. It depends on if Chibnall wants to do something all-new, but if he wants a continuation of Gold's sound and he doesn't want to do it any more, Foster is the next obvious step. He did Torchwood, which of course Chibs co-ran, he arranged a lot of Murray's work for the concerts and other shows like Confidential, and he's been stepping up as lead composer on some higher-profile shows - his work on the modern Thunderbirds reboot is really, good.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
This has been covered a bit before in this thread when someone was saying the logic of Heaven Sent doesn't really make sense, but , that episode is just perfect. It doesn't even matter if it makes sense. It's just fab.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Christmas day at 5:30pm.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Rory always gets fucked over - he wasn't even in that montage in The Doctor Falls, while Jenny and Vastra made it?! Well, the victory lap has to be taken as what it is, I think - The End of Time isn't the end of Tennant's run, it is the end of Doctor Who. Sort of. The excellent Eruditorum Press blog touches on this... that at one point, the end of Tennant's run was just to be the end of Doctor Who again for a while, wham, bam, done, see you in a decade, or something. The plans changed, and fans still aren't sure who deserves the credit for that, though it seems pretty likely it was a near-miss born out of RTD being terribly ill during series 3 and the show nearly falling apart during the latter half of that series. But the structure of the final stretch of The End of Time is arguably all about that... The funny thing is I think Moffat would've liked to have indulged this sort of thing too, but his departure has been so stretched out (by his own admission, he'd have been gone 18 months ago or more if it wasn't for him wanting to ensure his replacement was in place and already underway before he left) that a lot of the things he'd have done in his version of this, like a final goodbye to River and Missy, and the Doctor dreaming of all his companions -- he's done already. In DWM production notes he's said it's one of the reasons he decided to bring back the first Doctor for this episode - it was the one new, exciting, defining thing he could do.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
It's definitely not mandatory, though it is fairly interesting, since he'll be the first show-runner we've had since 2005 who that hardcore. That can work both ways, for better and for worse. The one thing it'll stop is that Moffat and RTD both recycled a fair few ideas from Big Finish. There are quite a few stories from their era that are based on or harvest ideas from Big Finish stories they liked, and in some instances, like Dalek, entire episodes are literally adaptations of Big Finish stories. Same for the Virgin New Adventures novels - I forget the name of the pub, but there was some pub in London near that publisher where Moffat, RTD, Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Matt Jones (The Impossible Planet), Nick Briggs etc etc used to hang out, and of course many of that group went on to have a huge part in the revived version of the show - and of course Lawrence Miles, part of that group but also a bit of a tit, never forgave RTD or Moffat for never inviting him to write for it. So, it doesn't matter at all - no doubt somebody from BBC Worldwide will be keeping him appraised of the plot lines in BF to avoid crossover, and hopefully Capaldi's departure means we are now two eras removed and Briggs can pick up the phone to Matt Smith. What's more interesting, broadly, is that we're getting our first show runner who comes from outside that Doctor Who supergeek world, from outside the group of people who still lived and breathed the show when it was off the air in the 90s. That's interesting, as it's sure to mark a tonal shift, innit.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I don't for a second think he's not a fan, I just think he's probably a different class of fan to Moffat and RTD, who both sort of fell into the breathless 'knows every bit of the lore' and 'never accepted the show being off-air' superfan category. I think that's arguably worked against them as much as for them, so I'm excited to see something
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Chibs is unlikely to want to write for a companion he's never written for in his first scene, though, surely? I strongly suspect the final scene will be very End of Time-ish - some fevered monologuing into a landing or a crash. I have this theory that the Doctor might never get to say goodbye to Bill - like she might leave him when he's unconscious, and then when he wakes up and finally begins to regenerate she's gone. Will Clara show up? Hmmm... RE set reports, god, does anyone remember the most idiotic wing of the fanbase freaking out about the captured-from-a-distance audio of Matt Smith in block 1 of series 5? It was that shouty "I am the Doctor and you are the Daleks" speech, and Outpost Gallifrey was on fire with fury. "He doesn't know how to say Dalek!!!" Hahaha. Amazing times. Everything seems much calmer around Jodie's set reports...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Forgot this was today...! Still sad that even for charity Eccleston declines to show his face, but hey - £600,000 raised ain't bad going at all.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Yeah, the picture is a joy to see...! Matt getting all grey there, too...! Ha. Cool to see Freema still involved from time to time, too - I still have hope that given that Chibs hired her to work on Law & Order UK when he was running that show (poaching her out of appearing in Torchwood Miracle Day) we might see her in a UNIT episode or something during his run... Maybe one day, hey-ho. Hey, Eccleston is a lovely man and is currently on one of the best and most socially progressive shows on TV at the moment playing a very difficult part, and during promotion for that show he's doing some fabulous outreach... But that doesn't mean it isn't a bummer that he's still so determined to not be associated with Doctor Who that he won't show up to this for a Red Nose Day auction. For me at least in this instance it's not to do with any sense of fan entitlement since I really could not give a damn if he ever comes back for a multi-Doc, or Big Finish, or ever deigns to do conventions - that's a perfectly valid decision to make an an actor. It's perfectly fine that he didn't do the "good luck" call to Jodie that Tennant, Smith and Capaldi did, too - again, up to him. We have his excellent run which is plenty - he gave a lot to the show. I just wish he'd entertain doing the charity breakfast, even if it just means Skyping in as Capaldi and McGann did - since no matter how much he wants to disconnect from the show it's a really good cause. I mean, I know knee-jerk overreactions are sort of your MO in these Doctor Who threads, but is saying it's sad to see him missing (and Tom, for that matter, but he's now and he did the previous one) really elevated to the level of ? I didn't say fuck Eccleston for not turning up, I said I was sad (or I thought it a shame, whatever) to not have him there.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Just a reaction to being taken well out of context and called a "batty, self-entitled fan" (which in itself is an insult), to be honest, though point taken, sure. I apologize. I assume that you now understand my intent was not what you took from it given that you didn't reply to the rest of my lengthy explanation.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The problem is really those characters, to be honest. Scarred from the struggle of writing the Eleventh Hour (which is, let's be fair, fucking incredible) Moffat felt like he wanted to surround Capaldi with familiar faces to support him, which is exactly what RTD did in The Christmas Invasion. I can't imagine episode without Jackie, Mickey or even Harriet Jones, but I absolutely can imagine a version of Deep Breath without those three - which is why, like you say, the show could easily lose fifteen minutes and be fine. Also, weirdly, I'm really not a fan about how the victory moment for the Doctor takes place from Clara and the others, whereas 10 and 11's first victories are in front of their companions, almost to reaffirm to them, and the audience, the Doctor's status. Anyway. Yeah. It wasn't a great start, but things sure got better!
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Oh, that's true enough, yeah. Though also I sort of feel like it would've been better if Clara had seen him kill more freely (albeit still reluctantly) than her previous Doctor - that would've given her hesitation to join him even more weight, surely? Alas. I'm glad they moved away from it though.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
This is mad though, as really for all intents and purposes the fake-out scene is the real 'regeneration' and then he has a quiet, contemplative scene afterwards - but this is really just the inverse. Tennant has that sort of scene earlier in The End of Time before he gives himself over to fate, basically, raging and then giving in and all that. Smith just had that scene at , but let's not act like his regeneration was remotely subdued. Eccleston's was, though - a kiss, a contemplative speech, gone.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I dunno that I'd really qualify that as milking the regeneration itself, because surely what people were talking about (or at least, the way I interpreted it) was how the moment of change is presented - be it explosive or more subdued. Ultimately, RTD had an opportunity Moffat didn't, which was that when he wrote a post-regeneration introduction Rose was arguably the most popular part of the show and certainly critically Billie was regarded as the reason why the series even 'worked' at all, so he was able to give over an episode which really isn't actually about our new Doctor until the last fifteen minutes - the first three quarters of it are all about Rose. I don't really think it's milking, but it's a strong narrative technique - you, like her, spend the episode longing for the Doctor to arrive, and so when he does you don't question him. Whereas I think the scripts of both Deep Breath and The Eleventh Hour are building blocks where practically every scene exists to convince you a little more that it is the Doctor until, at the end, you accept. By the logic of milking these are both different ways of milking the regeneration anyway, from "I'm still cooking" and seeing the outfit gradually come together to the who-am-I struggle - every regeneration has its version of this, but I think the goodbye is more interesting to consider than the hello, tbh. But RTD's situation going into Series 2 was hugely unique and Billie really was once-in-a-generation in a Liz Sladen style, so I don't expect to see that sort of take on regeneration for a while, certainly not this one. By his own admission Moffat probably could've managed it had Karen stuck around, but Clara didn't have the klout necessary really - she hadn't been around for very long at that point, which was why he stuck in the Pasternoster gang and stuff. It's the same melody that then basically expanded to become that piece, yeah. It's not the same music/arrangement/etc though. A bit like how, say, the piece that plays when Smith is regenerating (the big regeneration & speech, not the aftermath in the TARDIS) is a passage lifted form the piece that plays in Series 4 when River dies/lives (which I always thought was a nice thematic touch).
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I don't think she's even that terrible (she's' certainly not good, though), but there's just something awfully weird and cheap-looking about the whole episode. Somehow even the street, a real street, looks cheap. It must have been the way it was shot.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Hilarious fish man death aside I'm sort of OK with The Doctor's Daughter? Really strong and surprisingly subtle performance from Tennant in that one and some great stuff from Tate - "dadshock" and all that, and her working out the solution to the whole mystery. The problem is that all the Martha stuff could be deleted and it would make it an enormously better (and 15 minute shorter) episode
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Ah yes, that ending speech is bad. I'd forgotten about that. The moment before it, with her in his arms, and after, with the sort of quiet, rueful departure, those are better. I'm specifically thinking of the moment where she claims to be a Time Lord and he snaps at her, snarls at her, has something really awful and nasty there for a moment - that's a great piece that we didn't see much of from him.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
They're going to show early?! Mental. Then again, I suppose we already know "how he dies"... and maybe they'll cut 13's first scene off the end.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The time has come for Murray Gold, though I hope the new composer chooses to carry forward references to some of his cues, whoever they may be.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I've believed for a long time aside from the very ill-considered blowjob joke (and the cruelty of that 'life' - I don't feel like it's in the Doctor's character to even bring somebody back in that way even if he could) I think Love & Monsters is actually one of the best crossover sci-fi and slice-of-life episodes of TV ever written - it's just let down by the above and by the monster design (which, to be fair, game from a nine year old). If we're talking worst episodes, btw, the worst episodes of New Who are Fear Her (shit) and In the Forest of the Night (hilariously shit). I always wonder what on earth happened with the latter, because it's just awful. At least with Fear Her we know that it was a combination of Doomsday sucking up all the money so there was no budget and Stephen Fry's script falling through quite late so it was fairly rapidly written. There's a lot of really dubious distinctly average stuff, though, and it's usually a 'theme' episode like Curse of the Black Spot, Kill the Moon, etc. I think Series 7a is probably most guilty of this in that I think that production decree that every episode should be able to be sell-able in a single like "Dinosaurs on a spaceship! Robot in the wild west!" meant that they all fizzle out in weird ways. Even Asylum of the Daleks, which is a good episode, sort of squanders its core concept in that 'the daleks too insane even for the daleks' amounts to ones that are, er, a bit broken. The difference between 7a and 7b in quality is enormous.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
The amazing thing about that scene is that Freema really really goes for it but it just makes it funny because it's so absurd
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Read what I said again - I said the leather jacket For Eccleston was also scripted, but unlike Moffat's pirate style clothes for Smith the leather jacket stuck, in part because it was vital to RTD's vision of a post time war, damaged version of the character. Haha.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I'd completely forgotten Chibs was exec producer on Law & Order UK - I wonder if this makes a run-in with Martha more likely during his run? Chibnall of course famously sort of sabotaged RTD's plans for Martha, where she was to appear in both Torchwood: Miracle Day and Sarah Jane Adventures by offering her the Law & Order role specifically because he was impressed with her Doctor Who turn. She backed out of the Who universe projects for the Law & Order shot (and RTD wrote about it a bit in The Writer's Tale, saying, y'know - he'd do the same thing!) - he clearly rated her highly, so... hmm...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
I think for year one he absolutely will clean slate, but I can see one or two people sneaking in ala Sarah Jane into the rebooted show, more and more lore relayered in. We're now twelve years removed from the RTD era's beginnings, and by the time Chibnall's first episode airs we'll be thirteen years out, and a full decade out even from Martha's first appearance - so I think we're starting to creep to the point where somebody could show up again, tbh.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Only just twigged the coat has a big old hood, too. I'm guessing that was something from the reveal they'd already decided on or wanted to keep, and I think that's a good iconic thing a Doctor has never done before (apart from Capaldi's flirting with hoodies under his coat) - the same way Tennant's Doctor used to put on the big coat for big silhouette moments, here they have the hood...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Never forget that Moffat's initial first pick for Smith's costume was this, with the stripy undershirt for what he described as a 'pirate' look, but Smith campaigned hard for the tweed and bow tie
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Moffat himself talked about this in his DWM column around the 50th/when Matt left (and it's been talked about at comic con etc since) that's when all those pictures were first printed - during the 50th fever - but Moffat scripted a "pirate-like" look initially once Smith was cast, but then as soon as Smith started trying on costumes it went in a completely different direction. They tried on loads of stuff, but that look was based on what Moffat scripted, like how RTD scripted the leather jacket even before Eccleston was cast - but that one stuck as it was key to his vision of this damaged version of the character etc etc. The tweed was all Matt - he wore tweed to his audition, and despite producers/Moffat trying to steer it away, it absolutely stuck. Quoth Smith: "For the first meeting, I went in a tweed blazer, which is why he wears a tweed blazer. I thought, ‘Well, he’s old, so I’ve got to make him feel kind of professorial.’ I had a tweed blazer which I loved and which, obviously, I can never wear again! I was really annoyed at the time because I thought I looked really cool in it." This sort of back-and-forth between the writers and the actors is the way of the show, though. RTD didn't want Tennant to have the overcoat, and used to write him taking off the jacket into scripts very specifically to make sure Tennant couldn't sneakily keep it on for most of an episode (this as per DVD commentaries & podcasts from Series 2). He seemed to warm to it over time, though.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Yeah, in one of his (often very candid and excellent) DWM columns. Moffat's a good writer who came a cropper of schedules, struggles to find a stable production team, and arguably his own being too in demand with Sherlock etc. Like, I think there's a problem in the fanbase that goes in two directions - one being unnecessary vitriol (IE he's a hack fraud, or whatever - no, he kept the show alive for many years and actually introduced it to a whole new audience abroad, though to be fair the success of Torchwood on BBC America helped to lay the groundwork) and the other end being the writers being beyond reproach where you can't even discuss certain aspects of the show. We've had this debate before, though. Discussion, dissection, criticism =/= hatred, fwiw. Lots of nice things are said, too! And hey - I'm the guy who will stand up and defend Love & Monsters, so we all have our crosses to bear. That costume note is really just intended not as a malicious attack on Moffat but just an interesting wrinkle in the history of the show - once he cast a young man (after to cast an older man) he began to envision a younger Doctor that was more swashbuckling and trendy with a costume that looked like it fell out of a H&M catalog but with added quirk. I don't even think that's a bad direction - and honestly, bits of Jodie's outfit feel like that. But Matt steered it away from leaning into the youth and we ended up with tweed and suspenders. It's meant to be a fun note, the sort of thing fans can chew on and wonder what might've been.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Here we, here we, here we fucking go Assume public filming is kicking off pretty soon; they only do these to avoid the leaks from long lens pap shots...
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
TARDIS is back to the RTD-era colours and very similar dimensions (so it's smaller, darker blue and looks like wood again, RIP fairytale bright blue), though the Police Box bit at the top is more like the shape from the 80s. HMM.
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Thread: Doctor Who-ERA |OT| It's Almost Time... But Not Yet
Hahahaha. Incidentally, since this brings up Class, I wanted to mention I felt it was really awful (and sort of indicative of the loss of oversight Moffat had in his later years) that Capaldi appeared in that show. It was a YA show, a teenage show - much the same as Torchwood - and the logic was the Doctor, the TARDIS and the Daleks could never appear in Torchwood because kids would want to watch it, completionist. Class occupies much the same sort of space as Torchwood, with blood splatter, swearing etc etc - and if you're eight and a Doctor Who fan you probably shouldn't be incentivised to watch it, but an appearance by the Doc is always sure to do just that. Just a thought.
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Thread: Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection｜OT｜For Me, It was Tuesday
Considering the Japanese collection was this exact same release originally and they simply delayed it to replace the US versions/ROMs with Japanese versions after fan anger/outcry at Japan getting versions of the games they don't recognize, it is very safe to assume it'll be exactly the same game but with the Japan-correct builds. Not sure how Capcom USA outsourcing is 'lazy', though - they're essentially a publisher, aside from the Dead Rising team up in Canada and QA people they don't have any in-house developers to use. That aside, this was, in a sense, their collection to make afaik - Street Fighter is fairly unique in Capcom in that the Street Fighter IP copyright is registered to Capcom USA, whereas everything else is registered to Capcom Japan. I always figured that's why you see a greater level of collaboration between East and West on SF development-wise compared to something like RE or MH, too.
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Thread: Wristwatches |OT| Keeping time with class
I think my next watch is the Moonwatch. I've currently got a typical Semaster 300 (the Bond watch, basically) in black - that's my day-to-day wear watch. I've also got an Aqua Terra in blue with the blue crocodile leather strap for more dressy occasions. Occasionally I break out a Seiko SRPA29 - useful for when I'm worried about wearing a more expensive watch as it's a lot cheaper - and a Huawei Watch smart watch that I've sometimes worn for work events when stuff is really busy and the smart aspect would be useful. I also wanna express, as in the post above, my love for the basic old Casio watches. I still have two versions of the same Casio watch that I wore from about age 14 until about 21 - one metal strap, one leather. I'll never let those go; they're wonderful little pieces. There's only really two watches on my 'watch bucket list' right now - the Moonwatch and a Rolex Sub. The Moonwatch is the cheaper, obviously, so that's my next target. I also really like the Omega De Ville range from the 60s, but finding one in good condition at a good price is rarer than I'd like.
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Thread: Wristwatches |OT| Keeping time with class
Ah, was a typo - meant De Ville. They're super thin and low profile for an Omega and utterly gorgeous.
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Thread: BREXIT |OT| A minister always pays his debts
He's had a rapid fall from grace with them, so it's less about them supporting a cancellation or nullification of Brexit and more about trying to sew the seeds of hatred among their Brexit-supporting base to ensure DD will never be PM.
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Thread: Xbox One X |OT| The Scorpio King
Here's me nattering about it on VG247:
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Thread: Shenmue I & II Remaster (2018; PC/PS4/XB1 - $29.99)
I wasn't sure about this and I've seen it mentioned in a few places as if it was definitely happening... but nowhere seemed certain. I checked with Sega, so here's your confirmation either way: No time skip in Shenmue 1:
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Thread: Shenmue I & II Remaster (2018; PC/PS4/XB1 - $29.99)
Is the time skip feature actually ? I'm seeing a lot of people talking about time skip being added to Shenmue 1 as if it's fact, but I can't see anywhere where this is officially being mentioned...
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I've said it before, but I would really like to see T Hawk back. I feel like we could use another 'pure' grappler, and I honestly feel like you could do some interesting stuff with his MO of grappling with air superiority for approach in this game. Honda is a given, but if we're talking SF2 I'd actually take Hawk over Fei.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
Honestly, I find it difficult to believe that next year won't either lead with or end with Honda to finish the original SF2 12. I do wonder if we'll get new characters, mind. Surely the powder must be running a bit dry there? I feel like next year might be the ideal one to take a breather, reinterpret some classics, then come back with another newcomer (or more than one) in S5, which might well be the last. Viper and Sodom feel obvious, as Sodom we know was considered for vanilla and then dropped, and Viper is one of the few characters to appear in character stories (with a new design, no less) who isn't actually in the game proper.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
That's quite a turn-around from her opinion of him in SF4, where I'm pretty sure she called him an "emo loser", hahaha.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
The thing is, there's not an enormous amount of incentive to screw people over since it's not squeezing real cash out of anyone. Hopefully it stays that way.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
This Shadaloo soldier is particularly easy to cheese with Chun, or any other character with a decent multi-hit move that'll break armor. You can seriously just spam legs at them for the most part and their mega chip damage will do the rest
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
Data mining has flagged up that in the back end the current CAs are referred to as CA1 and there are empty slots for a CA2 on each character, so it seems fairly safe to guess that there'll be updates over time to systems in a similar way to AE.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
It's obviously key to keep expectations in check, but ever since the cinematic story I've thought we're probably due Decapre as a free bonus at some point. She's way too close to a 'real' character. It's worth noting that as per datamining sometime in December when they dropped one of the prep-for-AE patches, they patched it to support more characters - as I recall, it upped the number of potential slots in the back-end to 54. That's enough for through season 6(!) and ten more than USF4, but most notable, I think, is that it's a weird uneven number - it's three more seasons plus two spare slots. As soon as I saw that I thought... they must have this planned out, right? Like, assuming the game is successful, even if they don't yet know the characters they know how many seasons they want to do (and 6 would line up with SF4's lifespan) and so those extra two stand out, and make me think at some point - paid or free - we'll get a couple of 'bonus characters'. I do actually think there's a strong chance we'll get characters monthly now, though. They clearly have their act together a bit more than before, and I think it'd be better for the pro tour if the season was 'complete' before the halfway point in the season. Plus, if they do this they can focus the back end of the year on fanservice cosmetic content like stages, costumes and music, all of which make bank for them.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I really hope they're going to give us the ability (presumably a FM unlock) to put the other SF character select/versus/victory themes from arcade into rotation when we're playing online. Preferably have it be random, even, so it's a little different every match.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I think at mid-level Silver/Gold tier play it can be pretty useful in the sense that you can use the grounded dash variant to dash in, land a throw and then gain control of them on wake-up, and it can be used to extend combos in some cool ways, but it's nowhere near as versatile as VT1. I don't think it's useless though, just deeply situational.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I think this'd be a cool way of doing Honda in SF5. Give all of his moves high amounts of grey life damage, but then give him a V-Skill that's very easy to land, does little actual damage but can act as a 'converter' to turn the chip into real damage. So then his flow becomes pressure/grey life damage >> V Skill. Or maybe he only has that high grey life pressure when he's in V-Trigger, something like that.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
There would be one thing fundamentally different, at least, which is that with the poison there's actually a reward for hitting someone then playing keep away, as the damage tick-down continues until they land a hit on you. With Honda, you could make it more of the opposite, because with the grey life thing you'd have to remain in their face at all times in order to stop it from recovering. It's the inverse of the poison mechanic.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I mean, the real question is why bring back Honda when you could bring back Hakan
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
Like Smash Bros, it's really difficult to compare DBFZ to any of the other fighters due to the sheer power of the IP involved. SF5, MK and Tekken are the trifecta of games that can be analysed together, I think. I don't think DBFZ really impacts SF or makes Capcom rethink SF - the path for SF is to stoke SF2 nostalgia and Capcom knows this - see all of SF4 - they're just spreading it out a bit more with SF5, but I'm sure we'll get Honda next year and they'll make an enormous deal out of the original 8 being together again, etc. I think the harder pill for Capcom to swallow is that DBZF proves that they can't blame MVCI's failures on maybe there not being a taste for a licensed fighter in a Japanese style - DBFZ proves that Injustice's success isn't due to being grim-dark and Western - they just fucked MVC up.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
For what it's worth, I get rock solid 60 everywhere except for drops to the 50-55 range during match intros or endings - something I've always presumed is due to the game talking to the server before/after a match. This is both at 4K with a 1080ti and at 1080p on a 770.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I really feel like next year will be all returning characters again like season 1, but 4 and 2 could also make a lot of sense - I feel like they'll want to do Honda to close out the original SF2 World Warriors, and I honestly think they can easily do one returning character from SF4 (Viper, obviously) and two from SF3, which comes to your 4 then. One thing I'm curious about is if they'll ever do any characters for free as a bonus. I wondered if they might do that for the 30th, honestly, but was surprised that it wasn't a thing. I feel like if they wanted to do it a doll (Decapre, I guess) would be the way to go what with them existing in part in the story, but hmm.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I know it's mad, by the way, but the SF2 character I'd like to see back most of all is T. Hawk. I know this sounds like the thinking of a crazy person, but I just feel like he'd be a character they could probably do something interesting and fun with.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
I believe this too, but I think they'll also quash a good chunk of the 3 lore, like Chun retiring to train kids or whatever. I think there's no way in hell they make a game without Ryu, Ken, Chun, Cammy, Zangief, Dhalsim and at least one of the 4 kings now. That's like the unshakable foundation at this point. Some of these characters need new reasons to live, mind, since with Bison dead and the Dolls rescued Chun and Cammy have both had their revenge, for instance. I assumed for a while that they were leading up to either an all-new second cinematic story or a retelling of SF3 within SF5 at one point, but somebody at Capcom told me that at least for AE the costings didn't match up to do a second cinematic story since it was apparently quite expensive. I hold out hope they might still do that with Super SF5 or whatever they end up eventually doing when they no doubt do another soft relaunch packaging of the game in another two years.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
They said you'd never need another disk - and this is true. If you picked up SF5 at launch two years ago, this update is free for you to download and the additional DLC is exactly the sort of thing they promised prior to launch. All the new modes and AE content is free, while the new characters are DLC as has been clear for years. "We have paid attention to the way that we've managed things with SF4, and we will be mixing things up this time around. , but we'll be revealing details of how our post-launch content happens at a later date, but it will be good news." - SF5's Producer
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
The main thing that I like about these DLCs is the fact that in the menu you can then choose what you want on a per-mode and even per-character basis. I tend to have everything turned on but randomized, so for instance in a fight vs a Ryu there's a chance it'll be Ryu's SF5 theme, or his SF2 theme, the stage theme, or one of a few story mode tracks associated with Ryu. You can turn stuff on and off at a granular level, so if you despised a particular character theme or arrangement you could make it so you never hear that specific theme. One thing I'm curious about is if the SF2 pack will be updated for Blanka and Sagat, if they'll patch those themes in for those two for people who own that pack already. I think if you're playing a lot it's the sort of variety that can help keep you sane, honestly. Any SF3/4/Alpha music DLC would now be an instant purchase for me.
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Thread: Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition |OT| Gone Gold
The disc contains the AE update which is how we've been getting twitch streams of the new content and the new balance from people who've got the discs early. There's still a hefty day-one patch with additional stuff though. For a start Sakura and her stage isn't on the disc since they're part of Season 3.
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