halm

In my household we've rewatched the latest four specials several times already, and May still feels like a long time away 🙂 So what do you all watch to tide you over until there are new Doctor who episodes airing again?

For a baseline, here are some of the things we've sought out to fill the very specific DW flavour of soft science fiction entertainment:

• Old episodes of Doctor who, obviously. Plus the noughties spinoffs.
• It's almost lazy to mention Star trek, and although we easily and often fall into that comfort rabbit hole I think there are other shows that are more in the Who vein:
• Fringe was an US show that borrows fairly heavily from both Who, X-files, and loads more. I don't think it'll be spoilers to say that specifically the image of Zeppelins to signify parallel worlds is an obvious callback to "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel". And there are a group of characters that seem to be a cross between Time Lords and the Watchers from Marvel comics.
• The ministry of time was a Spanish show about a covert time traveling agency. It has a lot of Who feeling, and time travel of course, but with its own premise that centres it on the rich history of Spain and good humouredly makes fun of Spanish national and regional stereotypes.
• The Lazarus project is along the general outline of The ministry of time — secret time travel authority that keeps history on the straight and narrow — but with its own, convoluted tangle of changing timelines. Only on its second season, this show' time travel shenanigans nearly did my head in, sort of like Dark when that was still good, but at a breakneck, Mission impossible pace.

Those are off the top of my head. What are your timey wimey or otherwise Who-alike go-to shows?

Some media outlets still use Twitter/X as a source for news and opinion, otherwise I wouldn't go near the site. Seeing some of the replies to a trailer for the upcoming Doctor who xmas special, I wonder why somebody feels the need to actively shit on a show they so clearly dislike:

Like most #DrWho fans, I won’t be watching. #DrWho is dead. The doctor is now black and gay, Sir Isaac Newton is now Indian, and the character of Rose is being played by a man wearing women’s clothing. #RIPDoctorWho #DefundTheBBC #DiversityHire

That quote alone has too many levels of wrong to pick over, but it will never not surprise me how little of the show's humanist messages these people have taken to heart.

Edit: Thanks for the "duh, Twitter" responses. I do think it's low hanging fruit to just blame the platform (which is, inarguably, a dumpster fire). Let's talk about reactionary fans instead, yeah?

TL;DR — at age 14, Peter Capaldi was so miffed that another teenager had been appointed by the BBC to run Official Doctor Who Fan Club, he ran a one man letter writing campaign to take over the post and club himself.

An analog era keyboard warrior, Capaldi sounds like he was a bit of a pest in his teens. The appointed Fan Club coordinator, Keith Miller, recalls that Capaldi "haunted my time running the fan club, as he was quite indignant he wasn’t considered for the post."

The linked 2013 article has some letters from show producer Barry Letts' secretary, Sarah Newman to Miller that reflects this portrayal of the Who star as a young pup. Miller ends by quoting a phone call with Sarah Newman following the "exterminated by Daleks" letter:

I asked how things were going with Peter Capaldi. ’Oh god, I wish someone would sort him out.’ Then she paused. ‘Actually, he lives in Scotland too – could you pop over to Glasgow and sort him out for me?’

By all accounts Capaldi was fairly terrible back then, but fortunately he channelled that deep fandom and knowledge of the show rather more constructively into one of the most layered and complex renditions of the Doctor that has graced the screen.

I guess he got tired of the same question asked over and over again? 🤣

Since it's unlikely the BBC will be sacking the show runner and exec producer, nor severing ties with Bad Wolf, Eccleston's ninth Doctor is indefinitely benched...

Update:

@thisisdee@lemmy.world supplied a link to a recording of the panel, and Eccleston provides a few more details, transcribed below. Just a few minutes in, Eccleston reminisces about looking out for Piper, this being her first big acting gig:

CE: This was pre MeToo, it was pre BlackLivesMatter, it was pre all this mental awareness stuff, wasn't it?

BP: Yeah. […] It was more lawless.

CE: It was lawless, as we found out subsequently.

On the shooting experience of one episode:

CE: We were filming an episode, and because the director was atrocious we ran three hours late. You know, the crew were not happy, we weren't happy.

He says he and Piper were late for the read-through of Dalek because of this, so if anyone is privy to the production schedule they can probably figure out if this is the same guy who was to blame for the exploding sofa...

On the circumstances of Eccleston's departure:

BP: I don't know if you remember this, but when you said you were going, I wanted to go as well.

CE: I didn't know that […] The whole thing was politically manipulated by others. It interfered with our relationship, but that's another story.

On what would be required for him returning to the character of the Doctor:

CE: (without hesitating) Sack Russell T Davies, sack Jane Tranter, sack Phil Collinson, sack Julie Gardner, and I'll come back. So can you arrange that?

Q: Did you find it hard to be associated with the character, given —?

CE: (breaks in) Not at all. I love being associated with the character, just don't like being associated with those people and the politics that went on in the first series. The first series was a mess, and it wasn't to do with me or Billie. It was to do with the people who were supposed to make it, and it was a mess. And the first series of any show […] First series, nobody wants to know. The BBC were like, "We're gonna keep a big distance from this". And then as soon as it was a success, they were all up close going, "I was responsible for that!" but they were all like... at a distance, like "This is a folly" — "Eccleston's folly", "Piper's folly", "Russell T Davies' folly" […] They wouldn't come anywhere near us, and then they'd jump on the bandwagon. Those kind of politics I'm not very good at handling. I can't swallow that shit.

When an audience member expresses hia sympathy at what Eccleston went through on the set:

CE: Listen, it wasn't like being down the pit. It's just politics! Everybody's got a job, you all work with people you don't like. Whether you're an actor, [in] a plastic moulding factory or... You know, a boozer. Listen — I was getting paid a lot of money. It's fine. (Laughs) Please don't feel sorry for me!

Whatever problems existed with some directors on the first series, it was definitely not the case with Joe Ahearne, whose work and aesthetic both Eccleston and Piper wax poetic about; Eccleston has continued working with him and they still have projects in development.

edit — removed the link to the second hand source which was, admittedly, a trash site.

I have mixed feelings about Disco ending. I really dug the first season's look at a Federation at war, and following the person who arguably set that war in motion dealing with her culpability. Add to that a ship that is part weird science lab, part haunted house. And yeah, I could live with the Klingon redesign.

It was inventive, it took risks and broke some moulds — and not always successfully, mind you. But I stuck with it from the hopeful "First three seasons are for growing pains" Trek paradigm.

Then the show took some odd turns. Rather than focusing on the crew's adventures in space and science, season two constructed a cosmic conundrum around Burnham and her family. I was still on board for the characters, even bearded Spock no matter how shoehorned in he felt. The show's unapologetic optimism was still a big selling point, too.

With season three came the time jump into a future that absolutely does not feel like it's a thousand years ahead of the previous season. The jump in technology should be proportional to a Viking longboat rocking up to the ISS, but it felt like a step back. And at this point, the extended crew of the Discovery was thoroughly sidelined: Burnham's personal relationships took priority over everything else.

For one example: As great as Michelle Yeoh is, the show basically redeemed a murderous space despot because... she reminded Burnham of her Starfleet counterpart?! I'm going to stop you right there, Captain "This is Starfleet" — this is a person who kept rubbing in Saru's face how familiar she was with the taste of his species' flesh.

I'll keep watching Disco through to its end because I'm invested in the remaining characters, but this isn't the show I apprehensively fell in love with anymore. Its strengths are all but gone, its faults enhanced, and its commercial(?) failure seems to have convinced the Powers That Be that future Star Trek needs to be grounded in nostalgia for previous eras.

I will miss the first season's promise of new, daring Trek shows writ large, and as much as I liked Pike and his crew in season two, SNW leans too heavily and knowingly on the franchise's campier canon for my taste (I know I'm in a minority with that opinion, and I'm not here to argue for or against). With peak TV fading, I'm afraid we won't see anything as bold as TNG, DS9 — or early Discovery — again.

Yes, I keep a local copy of more or less all Doctor Who on a hard drive. No, I will not get into the particulars or ethics surrounding that. My question is only about keeping the series ordered in my Kodi home theatre setup now that apparently the show has started a new season numbering starting with the upcoming 2024 outing and, according to TMDb, also the current specials.

At the moment, the new specials (Children in need/Star beast at the time of writing) aren't included in my library, and I suspect it's due to incorrect naming. TMDb doesn't provide a year of first airing for the "Nu Nu Who" show, so I can't name the files "Doctor Who (yyyy)" as I have with the 1963 and 2005 shows.

Edit: I am specifically asking how to correctly scrape information from TMDb because the TV Database has currently not clocked that Doctor Who season numbering apparently is reset with the Disney+ streaming deal, and for that reason registers as a new show. /Edit

Any suggestions?