Mark

We get a bunch of US shows, but not the adverts.

It was extremely daft and didn't make a great deal of sense, but it left me with a big silly grin all over my face. Some good jokes, another splendid performance from Capaldi, Clara continues to impress me far more than she ever did prior to 'Day of the Doctor', and it all zipped along at a nice pace. It's not going to be a highlight of the season or anything I find myself inclined to revisit, but I enjoyed it more than I'd expected to.

Did anyone else notice the brief appearance by Patrick Troughton?

The bit at the end of episode 2 where the camera pans down underwater to a drowned soldier who suddenly opens his eyes was a central feature in several of my more vividly remembered childhood nightmares. I love that story.

I sincerely hope the day never arrives when anyone on Doctor Who refers to anyone as their bitch.

Firmly seconded.

Jason - I've not finished even one story yet (although I've previously seen a few others), so there's no guarantee I'll finish them :-)

Nobody could possibly reproach you for skipping ahead to Remembrance of the Daleks :-)

Yeah, despite some moderately dubious bits of plotting that was very good, almost certainly my favorite post-'05 Dalek story. That's more of a criticism of the Tennant & Smith Dalek episodes than it is rhapsodic praise of this one, mind - after giving Eccleston two of the best Dalek-centric stories ever, the new show has had a bit of a problem figuring out what to do with them ever since. This one was a bit bodged together from bits and pieces of lots of other stories, but it worked rather well. Nice to see the Daleks actually kill somebody onscreen for the first time since Moffat took over, too. After some surprisingly weak direction from the same director last week I thought this one was a lot more visually impressive. The action scenes were tremendously well-staged, and the use of lots of model work and practical effects helped a lot, and as Kory mentioned in his review the production and set design inside the Dalek were terrific.

A ballsy choice for episode two of a new Doctor, I think. He's a lot darker and more callous in this one than I'd necessarily have expected him to be, and it'd be a problem if the audience doesn't warm to him early on. I can't imagine it being a major issue, though - he's still funny and Doctorish in all the ways that matter. The "He was dead already" moment is the coldest thing he's done/said in a very long time, though.

Thus far I'm liking Capaldi a lot, but that was always likely to be the case given that he's one of my favorite actors, and has been my #1 choice to play the part for almost as long as the show's been back.

I noticed some similarities to 'Resurrection' too, some of which were so striking that I suspect they were deliberate - at the very least, the mention of Dalek duplicates early in the episode is definitely an explicit callback.

To be as fair as possible to poor old Colin, the first 4 episodes of the Trial season (The Mysterious Planet) are worth a watch too.

And unless you're a dedicated masochist, you can probably give McCoy's first story a miss.

Cherry pick Colin Baker. By which I mean, watch 'Revelation of the Daleks' and 'Vengeance on Varos' while studiously and politely pretending that the rest doesn't exist. Maybe listen to a couple of them there audio plays if you want more of his Doctor - 'Jubilee' and 'The Holy Terror' alone are both better than almost any Doctor Who that aired on the telly in the '80s.

Most of McCoy is worth watching - his first season is extremely rough, but it's worth remembering that in 1986 Doctor Who was a show that considered something as genuinely incompetent as 'Trial of a Time Lord' worthy of being broadcast. The fact that it only took 4 stories before it was capable of producing 'Remembrance of the Daleks' as a season-opener in 1988 is, viewed in context, a frankly remarkable achievement. The final two seasons of McCoy, even allowing for the dreadful 'Silver Nemesis', are both exceptionally good.

I really, really enjoyed that. The extra length really wasn't needed - they could easily have lost ten minutes or more without any impact at all on the story - but the relaxed pacing left more room for Capaldi's new Doctor to breathe (ba-dum fish). The plot was thin, but clearly deliberately so - its main function was to get out of the way of a new Doctor's introduction. And, completely unsurprisingly, he nailed it.

I especially liked the use of the 'new broom' analogy. Having replaced all the parts time and time again, is it still the same broom? "Of course it isn't, but you can still sweep the floor with it". Doctor Who, right there.

The problem is that most of the people who are - understandably - a bit pissed off at what appears, from the outside, to be yet another instance of bisexuality being sidelined or ignored aren't comic readers. It's definitely fair to accuse a lot of the reporters and bloggers who've written about this of lazy journalism, but it's not difficult to grasp why people who haven't actually read all 300 issues of Hellblazer, and are therefore unaware that the panels and stories being referenced aren't representative of the character as he's generally been written, might be angered by this whole thing.

I've seen a lot of vitriol and hyperbolic rhetoric being thrown around by fans of the comic over the past week or two, and too much of it is being aimed in the wrong direction. It's not something that paints us in a particularly good light.

Is this the thread for what we'd like to see in the show? I'd like to see entirely original stories, rather than stories adapted from the comics — that would help a viewer to cling to the illusion that the TV show adds to Hellblazer, rather than reboots it. If you see what I mean. The two can never be 100% compatible, but work with me here.

This, pretty much. One of the things I liked about the pilot, for all its flaws, is that with a few relatively minor details amended it would have been a perfectly decent first issue of Hellblazer by a new writer starting his/her run. Setting up a new supporting cast and a new locale, giving John a new(ish) purpose that can make for a serviceable ongoing arc, dark hints towards some big event that will doubtless be coming along in a dozen or so issues' time...we've seen the exact same thing done before several times, but in a way that makes it feel encouragingly familiar rather than predictable and tired.

Hmm. Far from perfect, but way better than I was worried it might be. Better as a TV adaptation of the character than as a pilot in its own right - it's got promise, but there are some serious rough edges that'll need to be smoothed out if it's too work as a series (and several things that I'll be surprised if they make it into the version ofthe episode that's actually going to air - not just a few iffy FX shots but some proper dodgy bits of visual storytelling, and it lapses into supernatural-TV cliché more often than I'd like). But Matt Ryan's Constantine is instantly and consistently recognizable as "our" John, and that buys a *lot* of benefit of the doubt from me.

There are far more elements drawn directly from the comic than I'd expected, too. It's very clearly the work of people who are deeply familiar with the source material, and who seem to have a very solid grasp on the character.

More detailed thoughts when I've watched it again. But on a first viewing, it gets a tentative thumbs-up. I'm in for at least half a dozen episodes, because there's definitely some potential there. I'll be interested to see how much will be changed before it airs.

so is this the show AND book thread? not having read the books, some of the things that were chnged but don't sit well with you readers work out fine for us watchers.

Yeah, I'm always interested in what non-book readers think of some of the changed plot elements coming to them cold. By and large I'm very sympathetic when it comes to alterations or omissions - they're big books, so some things were always going to have to go, and some of the plot/character changes have actually improved on the book versions, for me at least. Even most of the changes I don't personally care for at least make sense to me, and while I'd have preferred things to go slightly differently in a few cases I can't really criticise the show runners for the decisions they've taken on anything but highly subjective grounds. But there are a couple of instances where I genuinely think that the show version is lacking something, and I like looking to see what show-only viewers make of those.

Hooray!

When/if Jenkins is done we'll finally have all 300 250 issues collected in trade, won't we?

The Brienne/Hound fight was an excellent change, I thought - given the absence of the Bloody Mummers from the TV version of the story (and I think that is, on the whole, an eminently sensible omission - they've essentially served their purpose by this point in the narrative anyway, and removing them gives us another wandering double act - something the show has consistently done very well - in Brienne and Pod), Brienne's quest was going to come to a bit of a whimpering anticlimax, really. Giving her a final confrontation with the Hound doesn't change the shape of the overall story in any significant way, and serves as a decent punctuation mark to tie off this portion of both Arya and Brienne's respective stories.

As Shawn points out, Varys staying on the boat doesn't necessitate any major departures from the structure of the books' narrative either. He disappears from King's Landing for a while at this point anyway, and having him leave for a while now doesn't prevent him from showing up there again later on, once the political situation has changed a bit. It also gives us the chance to spend a bit more time with him as a character, if the show runners choose to go in that direction - he's got a pretty essential role in a lot of what's going to happen over the next two seasons, and the impact of that could well be blunted if he's absent from the story for a while in the same way he is in the books. There's a lot of character and backstory stuff that can be done on the page a lot more easily than it can on television, and keeping Varys onscreen for a bit gives them the chance to work that content into the story in a reasonably unobtrusive way.

I'm torn on Tyrion's departure from Jaime. On the one hand, it does rather undermine the finality of his departure from King's Landing, and his complete alienation from his family. On the other hand, I don't see an easy way they could have worked the story of his first marriage into the show without it coming across as a clumsy bit of exposition. Again, that's down to the differences between TV and prose as storytelling media, and without having taken a different route to get to this point in the first place, it was fairly inevitable that something was going to have to go - and, quite frankly, at this point in the show's history I think there's a reasonable case to be made for eliminating what would otherwise be a clumsy insertion of yet another fairly brutal rape serving no purpose beyond motivating yet another male character to revenge. Plus, given the relentless bleakness of so much of the story, I don't think it does too much harm for those two characters to part in a less painful way - you've got to give people something. On the other hand, I think Tywin's death lost a lot of impact as a result - I'll be interested to see how non-book readers respond to that ending.

That was liquid football.

Love these (the Star Wars baseball one was particularly good, and I hadn't seen it before). Keep 'em coming.

It's not about positive or negative role models, it's about basic acknowledgement of bisexuality's existence. There's bugger-all in the way of decent depictions of bisexuality in the media (male bisexuality, in particular, is just about non-existent, and female bisexuality is played almost exclusively for titillation), and when it does turn up its usually in the form of a clumsy Revelation Of Great Significance rather than just, you know, the fact of who a person happens to fancy regardless of their relationship status at the time.

So of course we're going to be fucking delighted whenever it's mentioned that a character is bi without it immediately a character-defining element. It doesn't have to form a major part of that character's life, not least because, for good or ill, quite a lot of bi people out here in the real world actually are close to invisible (just because you settle into a comfortable gay or straight relationship doesn't mean you instantly stop being bisexual, but it does mean that most people can't see it at all unless you make a point of mentioning it occasionally*). But it's nice to get the occasional reminder that yes, we do actually exist as something other than a plot point.

All of which said, I'd be astonished (pleased, but astonished) if that one time Constantine mentioned having had a couple of boyfriends will make it into the show as a character trait, and I don't think that actually matters much at all. But I don't think it's too surprising, or too unreasonable, that there are people out there for whom this is actually a bigger deal than it would otherwise appear to be.

* In which case, of course, you're either playing into the stereotype by "making an ostentatious load of drama out of it", or it'll be interpreted as "just a phase you were going through". But hey, baby steps.

"You must be that little Dornish brat I taught a lesson to all those years ago. You've been chasing me your whole life only to fail now? I think that's about the worst thing I've ever heard."

I must admit, even I found the latest episode gratuitous (that entire sequence isn't too far off the way it goes in the book, but it's contextualised slightly differently - in the book it's still tragic, but played for emotional depth rather than as an "isn't this shocking?" midseason twist).

It's a good show, but we're now approaching/into the point at which the books go somewhat astray for me. The show runners have made enough changes that I've got some hope that the TV version isn't going to go off the rails in the same way, but yeah...there are points at which the brutality and nastiness feel less like bold and powerful plotting and more like cheap, slightly pointless misery porn.

All of which said, and because it's far from all bad or all miserable...way to go, Sansa. She gets a lot of stick for being weak and passive, but over time she's developing into one of my favourite characters, and Sophie Turner absolutely nailed it in the latest episode.

Heh.

Also: now I REALLY want to have/make a captain's chair...

Seconded. Which is a shame, because I don't actually think Ben Affleck would make a bad Batman (and that's quite a nice-looking take on the DKR costume). But after Man of Steel I simply have no interest at all in Zack Snyder's interpretation of these characters.

a world in which innocents are routinely mutilated, degraded and killed ... or if they survive, have theur innocence destroyed, turning slowly into cynics. Cynical tyrants ... meanwhile, generally succeed, and those who are plain evil ... are for the most part allowed free rein. People with integrity, or noble people, who try to make the situation better end up betrayed and killed . And the ultimate winners are the malicious, self-serving schemers.

 

...There is a pattern here. This isn't a story of the triumph of the human spirit, it is the opposite. We're being told that the world is a dark place, full of terrors, where the human spirit is by necessity crushed, or else extinguished. Hope is futile. Emotional attachment a weakness. Loyalty or compassion cruel jokes.

Aside from loyalty and compassion being treated as jokes (for which I think there are a number of counter-examples - Brienne, Davos, Jon Snow, and a few others), and while I think your take on a few specific characters isn't entirely accurate, I wouldn't argue with much of that. But I don't think it's making any claim to be a story of the triumph of the human spirit, and I don't think that's an inherently bad thing. If the role of art is to hold a mirror up to the world (and while that's far from the only thing it's good for, I think that's certainly a valid purpose for a fiction to serve), then I'd defend Game Of Thrones on the simple grounds that I don't think what you describe above is an unrealistically distorted mirror. I won't be surprised if you disagree, but I've always admired the fact that you're a lot less cynical, and more hopeful, than I am. There's a good deal of worth and truth to be found in stories of the triumph and nobility of the human spirit too, but those aren't the only stories with truth to them, and they aren't the only ones worth telling.

I wouldn't want every story to be close to this brutally dark and cynical (and while there are exceptions, I'm certainly not denying that it's a pretty brutal, bleak story), but this is a series which concluded its first episode with an innocent child being thrown out of a window by someone who never comes close to atoning for it, and ended its first season with the protagonist - the one genuinely, unequivocally decent man at the heart of the story - being unjustly murdered by a psychopath who was freely able to get away with that murder. This can't be something that's crept up on you slowly as the show has continued, it's something that's been front and centre from the very beginning. I remember discussing it with you after the first season, in fact, at which point I suggested that this may very well not actually be the show for you.

Purely for myself I'm glad you're still watching it, because I think you've got some interesting things to say about it - and I'd love to have this conversation properly over a few beers at some point soon. But for your sake, I really think you'd probably be better off just dropping it, because - while I don't think all of your predictions are on the money (not a book spoiler, I hope - they've changed enough at this point that I'm happy to say that I've got no real idea where several major plot strands are heading anymore) - your take on what the show ultimately has to say is as correct now as it was four years ago, and that's not likely to change.

It's not the way he'd sound based on the comic - less Liverpudlian, more Welsh - but that isn't a problem for me. Assuming he gets the rest right, which is hard to judge from a couple of isolated snippets, I think it'll work.

I'm entirely OK with them diverging from the comic because, quite honestly, after the fantastic first volume I find Preacher to be a largely disappointing waste of an excellent premise.