Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

I would say that the Time War was a change of a whole other level, a quantum-level difference, one might say. You mentioned Star Trek; to me the Time War and what it does to the Doctor and to the series is almost--though not quite--as bad as the continuity changes that the Abrams-action-film-with-Star-Trek-label-attached-movie inflicts. Enterprise is a doddle compared with that.

And I think acceptance is the whole problem, though not in the way you mean it. If I could discount the Time War, or the Cybus-men, etc, they wouldn't piss me off so much. It does count, and that's exactly why it hurts.

But still, I don't want to burn down the new series the way some people want to burn down the TV Movie. What I want and am waiting for is for Moffat to come in and fix it. It's just when people bash the TV Movie and then turn around and praise the new series that drives me up the wall. Going back to your trek analogy again, it would be like someone bashing Next Gen but praising DS9.

And yes, there were flaws in the old series. But if I start itemizing them all, we'll be here six months from now, and this is supposed to be about the TVM, right? Which I liked. And, for the record, I liked 10 Doctors. I didn't comment often because the computer I was on, had problem posting to some sites, including this one. But thankfully that's been rectified.

That's different. The Time War changes up the formula, but doesn't negate what came before. It brings a different focus to the character and his motivation. They didn't say "This is the first Doctor and he left Gallifrey in the first place because a war destroyed him and his planet.." (which is a sort of Star Trekkie thing to do), but incorporated it into the overarching story of the series "Since we saw the Doctor last, his planet was destroyed."
The new Star Trek movie, similarly, is a time travel tale which sets the whole thing up as a parallel reality, thus allowing them to take liberties with continuity. Granted, there's a lot of things there that are continuity conflicts that *shouldn't* have been effected by the changes brought on by Spock's return, but we've come to expect that from Star Trek and, as that goes, this is the best new Trek since "The Undiscovered Country" with more classic series aknowledgements then anything that's come before. I went in prepared to hate it. I came out pleasantly surprised and looking forward to the 2 sequels they're contracted for.



Why can't you accept them? Bad things happen. The war destroyed Gallifrey. Doesn't mean there aren't other Time Lords anymore than there are *ahem* no more Daleks. And the new Cybermen? What's wrong with them? The costumes are inspired. Their voices are faithful to the originals. Granted, they're from a parallel universe Earth, but that's kind of in keeping with the original idea that they're from a parallel Earth in the same orbit as our Earth (Mondas). Annoying, perhaps, but acceptable. Or is it the fact that they gave them a new catch phrase? "Delete! Delete!" to make them more Dalek like? Otherwise, they're far better foes than the emotional dufuses we met in "Revenge of the Cybermen", "Earthshock", and everything they appeared in afterwords. I like the VERY robotic military march better than the stumbling "basketball player in moon boots" tripping over eachother in "Earthshock".
Add to the fact that every time the Cybermen appeared in the classic series, they'd been totally redesigned, these are in keeping.
("You will be deleted" is a better catchphrase then "EXCELLENT!")

I said the Time War as almost as bad, Not quite. Almost. And...not only was that not Trek. It wasn't even a good movie at all. Even as an action movie it failed.

And maybe I didn't make this clear. you keep asking me why I don't accept the new series. But the acceptance is the problem. I had to accept it, and that's why it hurts. If I didn't accept it, it wouldn't count, and if it didn't count, it wouldn't hurt.

And the Cybermen redesign is a fail. It's not that they are steel instead of silver, I could let that go. It's not that they are from an alternate universe; that's actually kind of clever. It's not even Lumic and his tiresome corporate-villain formula. That I could let go (though there is a problem with Lumic, and I'll get to that.)

Look at a Cybus-man. What do you see? You see a a thing stomping around chanting delete. It's not a Cyberman; it's a second-rate Dalek with arms and legs and a different kill-phrase. And Lumic is their Davros. It's a bad redesign. It's not changing with the times or trying to make them fresh; it's turning them into a bad Dalek pastiche. It's a change for a worse, not a neutral change or one for the better. There are a lot of problems in new Who like that.

I seem to like Tennant better than you, though. But that's a fair trade, as you love Eccleston and I can't stand him.

(Really, I'm surprised that we're having this discussion at all. I thought your issue was with the TVM-bashers, not with someone who pointed out that the new series made as many if not more mistakes than the tvm, which is the same line of reasoning as you defending the tvm because the old series had flaws too.)

I guess we'll just have to disagree on this point. Because I enjoyed it. And that makes it a successful movie of any kind in my book..


Ah, okay. I misunderstood. A couple of times. Sorry.



Okay. Well, see, now here's another point where we simply disagree. The emotionless automaton, stomping around is more similar to its original concept. With one controlling intelligent one and the rest as simple drones, these Cybermen more closely resemble the official descriptions of the monsters than what they became in later Classic Who episodes. I agree that Lumis in his Dalek chair was an unfortunate choice. It does bother me that it too closely seems to follow the "Genesis of the Daleks". So, agreed. Bad origin, though the original Cyberman history does follow these basic lines. They were faithful to their origins for the most part.
When these new cybermen showed up, I sighed with relief and said "FINALLY! Emotionless Cybermen!" and so far, they've avoided the whole idiotic gold alergy thing. These Cybermen are a lot stronger than their wheezing, top-heavy ancestors.



Oh, I LIKE Tenant fine! I just wish he'd tone down the slapstick a few notches. I like my Doctor cleverly witty, not circus-clownish.



More TVM dismissers. I didn't expect to bring NuWho into this thread myself, but it's not so much just about the Fox film, but about finding peoples' actual REASONS for hating one thing over another, rather than just the general agreement to hate things.

There's a certain mob-psychology that goes on in a lot of things, fandom especially, where the community will agree that one thing is better than another and it is accepted unthinkingly by the masses. I was TOLD I was to hate and not accept the Fox film.

Just like I was TOLD to hate The Dungeons & Dragons movie. Which, I will be the first to agree, is a very bad movie. But the REASONS people will toss out for its badness are usually just parroting back what they heard rather than the truth.
ie: The effects were HORRIBLE! Well, no they weren't. Those monsters were actually really quite impressive. Did we watch the same movie? I feel very strongly that it was Jeremy Irons who really killed that film. But most people won't say that because he's an untouchable icon. But he Shatnered the everlovin' crap out of that filmed and destroyed a lot of otherwise almost watchable sequences.

Which is essentially my feelings on the TV Movie.



Yet even without the gold weakness they are even easier pushovers for the Doctor and/or the Daleks than the old Cybermen at their weakest, in Silver Nemesis.

As for the emotionless thing...I kinda viewed that like the Dalek claims of superiority. Window dressing. Now that it's true....they're just Borg. Bleah. (Plus which, in new Who TenDoc said to the Daleks "You may have programmed out all your emotions..." further blurring the line between the two.)



Shatnered. Aahahahahha. Hahaha. That's pretty funny!

You think? The new Cybermen take a few hits on the armour before going down. The Daleks dropping them was a nod to superiority of the Daleks. In Nemesis, Ace takes them all out with a rubber band and a handful of gold coins.


That makes them more Dalekky, no?


Yes, but let's not forget that the Borg are pretty much the Cybermen done properly. They were a great villain until, like everything else in Star Trek, they got watered down and boring.
It also cannot be forgotten that the Cybermen really were Dalek retreads. They were created because they couldn't get permission to use the Daleks in "The Tenth Planet" and these guys were whipped up to take their place (literally! Tall guys in silly silver outfits, skimasks and spotlamps taped to their heads!) From the very start they were pale Daleks. Which, in my opinion, makes the final showdown so much more poignant in the new series. 4 Daleks happily take on a planetful of their pale cousins, the Cybermen.

Wooooooaaaaaaahhh!! I missed a lot...

Um, where do I start?
I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie yet. I'm not really a Trekkie but the occasional movie just seems too epic to ignore. Plus I kinda like Patrick Stewart's Captain. And seeing anything from a really old movie/tv series remade faithfully for a new audience.

Anyway, it seems that what one lot of people like about things is what the other lot hate, and vice versa. I've seen that a lot in fandoms and it's weird. I'd just nail it down to personality and what people tend to notice more as annoying over other things. For instance:



As for me, I sort of prefer old Who, but that's because I've got tired of the way RTD has been handling it so far. It's just gotten a little too magical, what with overuse of Daleks and stuff (though I was glad to see Davros back) and David is the new Tom in terms of popularity. It's not cynicism for the fandom or anything, just that if things are way too popular and I don't really really have reason to like them then I don't think they need my love and attention as well. That's just me and my philosophy and that.



Here's a point where I disagree to your disagreeing. I don't think the new Cybermen (or Cybus-men) are really that in keeping with the original concept, which was having spare-part surgery victims, literally the walking dead that we saw in Tenth Planet. It may be an episode from 1966 but it REALLY stands the test of time for me. I can just see them coming at me down the hallway...
I kinda assumed in Earthshock and such that they are simply mocking Earthlings by being pompous and overpowering, and it makes them more dramatic. The script editor, Eric Saward said he had problems with emotionless creatures like Daleks and Cybermen because their dialogue is less satisfying. So the Cyberleader is supposedly "playing up" to the Doctor's use of emotions.
But in the end these are just two different takes on the same idea, and perhaps a Robo-Zombie Cyberman (even if it did get angry and stuff) may have been slagged off as a ripoff of the Borg if they tried making them in the new series. As it is, the Cybermen look terrific, if a little Robocop-ish. I liked the way their brains are showing on the Cybercontroller and on the Cyberleader in the Next Doctor. That sort of cross-section in the costume (like visible jaws, cloth masks instead of helmets etc) makes them more post-human and more 'real' to me. Plus just having living brains taken out and put inside a robot suit takes away the full horror that Cyber-conversion is supposed to be.
(In case you can't tell, I'm mad about Cybermen, in fact I'm not really that into Daleks by comparison)



Aw. Those Cybermen in Silver Nemesis were my favourite. So bling... No wait, I mean... well, that would have been weird, wouldn't it? What would they wear instead of gold? Anyway...

And I tend to allow things to get off-topic, since in my own thoughts there tend to be a lot of tangents. Having mentioned the Borg and Cybermen in one paragraph, I can sense one coming along now.

(I should shut up now. This really isn't even remotely about the tv movie anymore....I should shut up..I'm getting too old to try to debate this stuff...I know I'm not changing anybody's mind...)

Both Daleks and Cybermen having emotions does not make them the same. The Daleks are about hate; the Cybermen are about the dangers of what mindless embrace of technology can do to you (which, credit to RTD, is something he did get right with the Cybus-men.)

And the Borg are Cybermen "done right"? No, the Borg are those pale cousins you spoke of.

Now when both Cybermen and Dalek lack emotion, then they ARE alike.

Both old school and new school Cybermen can resist normal gunfire. As even the Siiver Nemesis Cybermen could do. But the Doctor takes out a whole run of the Cybus-Men with one casual flick of a device at the beginning of Age of Steel, and that whole "emotion supressor" is an even bigger weakness than gold.

And the old school Cybermen would have put up a much better fight against the Daleks, rather than the pathetic showing of the Cybusmen. And if the Daleks had won that much tougher fight, it would make them seem more ascendent, not less.

I really am going to shut up about this now. I didn't come here to get in a big long pointless argument with somebody who's comics I admire.

I'll say this; if you were in charge of New Who instead of RTD, it would be much better.

Edit: SixisLove sad some good things too. I also prefer old-school Cybermen to the Daleks.

I don't mind, I like hearing different sides of the argument (as long as there's no "Proud Loathing" or general roughness)
Probably best to just let the tv movie come back when it feels like it. Of it's own accord!

(whistles and makes clicky sounds) Movie? Here movie! C'mere!

...anyway. Wow. Since this thread has now wandered all OVER the place, I think I'll just try to clarify what I really meant by "Hollywooded Up". Since it seems everybody misunderstood me, in different ways. :P

I did not mean that I have anything against bigger-budget special effects. NO problem there at all, unless they're used to excess just to show off (coughnotnaminganynamesgeorgelucascough). I'm perfectly fine with things looking realistic and/or pretty.

No, what I meant by "Hollywooded Up" has nothing to do with budget, or the _technology_ of movies changing with the times. I meant it in the sense of WRITING.

As in, the typical "Hollywood Blockbuster" tends to use elements that moviemakers KNOW will sell, that will appeal at least somewhat to the broadest popular audience. So, they all have the same typical plot elements. Big wham-bang actiony stuff, endings must always be happy (or a cliffhanger, for the next sequel) and the guy absolutely MUST get the girl. If two people of opposite genders have adventures together, they absolutely must, repeat, MUST! end up in a dramatic clench sometime before the credits roll. Especially if they're both attractive. It's _required_.

Whereas, oldschool Who and Hitchhiker's Guide (I'm including the radio plays, books and TV miniseries here--and YES, I know they all contradict each other) both had that certain _something_ that makes a program or whatever a _cult_ favourite. The appeal isn't as broad, and doesn't hit that many people...but those it does hit, it hits HARD.
Instead of millions of people having a good time for an hour and a half and eating popcorn...and then mostly forgetting about it, you have _thousands_ of people who are just FASCINATED by this whole new world they just had their minds opened up to, _must_ write down these fanfic ideas before they forget them, draw this picture, make up a costume from what they can find in the thrift store and call their friends!

Okay. THAT. Is what I meant by "Hollywooded Up". They put in _generic_ plot elements, that would be blandly acceptable to everybody, instead of leaving it strange, quirky and intense. They caved in and made it _ordinary_. The Doctor is an attractive male travelling with an attractive female, so they MUST fall in love! Arthur Dent has a thing for the cute scientist, so they HAVE to kiss. Gag. Me. With. A. Spoon.
(Yes, I KNOW New Who still has plenty of quirk and intensity. I _know_ that. It's just...well if it didn't need love stories to be popular in the '70s, why does it absolutely HAVE to be like everything else, now? People were _just_ as hormonal in 1975 as they are now, and yet they didn't lose any audience because Four never kissed Sarah Jane...)

Anyway. Hollywooded Up is NOTHING to do with special effects. I have nothing against special effects. Nothing to do with budget or technology. It's _writing_. And making previously adorable, quirky cult things that had their own, individual feel...

...more like everything else.

It's really not _just_ the romances, by the way--I know I go on about that all the time. There are other "dumbing it down" elements TOO, just...those are the ones that stick out the most, to me. When I think of British stuff, _real_ British stuff, I tend to think of weirdness, dark endings and bad things being allowed to really happen to main characters. The Earth really DOES blow up. Blackadder karks it. Everybody's _dead_, Dave. "NO! IT'S EVIL! DON'T TOUCH IT!"

They DON'T have the mainstream-Hollywood tradition of everything having to end up with wedding bells in the sunshine. Which is why the Hitchhiker's Guide movie just...does not _exist_ as far as I'm concerned. (Although as we got out, we _did_ hear a conversation where this one woman was like "OHMYGOD! I've never _seen_ anything with that kind of humour before! Can you reccommend anything else?!" so if it can act as a gateway drug to the real stuff, then fine.) All the other versions still had the correct _feel_. THIS one, just flat out tacked on summer popcorn blockbuster plot conventions and it felt so...WRONG...

Anyway, the TV movie did the same "Look! They're both PRETTY! That's PLENTY enough reason to ignore 26 years of continuity and have him kiss her!" is what I'm on about, god_damn_ it...
Seriously, though, also, _logic_ wise: If he HAD to kiss a Companion, really, couldn't it be somebody more _worthy_ than the person who CAUSED HIS LATEST REGENERATION?! I mean "Wow you cut (one of) my heart(s) by accident I'm in love with you!" like _what_? Seriously...
(Wonked out on Lindos hormone? Heh.)


Oh, and to sum up my reaction to the other stuff:
--No, we _don't_ have to accept all 30 years worth of Who history or accept none of it, because (a) we're fans, we disagree and nitpick, it's what we _do_ and (b) the show's continuity contradicts ITSELF all the time.
--I was fine with the new Cybermen except for "Delete".
--The older Cybermen COMPLETELY remind me of the Borg only earlier (especially in, say, "Tomb of the Cybermen", where they were freaking _assimilating people_, aaa!)
--The gold thing is lame but I'm okay with the '80s version anyway, for some reason.
--Daleks do have emotions, just...not very _nice_ ones...
--The Star Trek movie was fun, _but_, as a nitpicking fan, I have to say: Vulcan (and Romulus!) should not have blown up and Spock is acting AWFULLY like the same way the Doctor started acting as a side-result of _Gallifrey_ blowing up...
--Kicking Kirk _off_ the SHIP? Really? For real? Are you SERIOUS? (Don't they have a brig?)
--And last but not least, "The Tenth Planet" can still be damn creepy if the first time you see it is on a tiny computer monitor at 3 in the morning on a leaden grey, blustery, winter night.

There. :P

...Notorious

Yes yes, I get the whole 'dumbing down' element as well. I guess it shows the difference on either side of the Atlantic. I preferred the HHGttG movie because it didn't end so soberly. They just went off and the Earth was rebuilt anyway. I suppose I may have to be a Brit to fully understand poignancy despite the headaches it gives me.



It's getting pretty close to Antarctic weather conditions here. Except the for snow, though.
I wonder when that'll be on DVD...

Oh, I'm glad you didn't ream me out or anything. I felt _dumb_ about some of the things I said and was like "Oh no, that's too extreme! I have to go edit that out!"

..._hours_ later when people have already had plenty of time to read it. :P

Yeah, well, I mean...I don't acutally like, _prefer_ dark endings? And I'm not British either, but...
Well the _way_ they brought back Earth was so...CHEESY. Everybody going back to even doing exactly what they were doing? I can understand if they had rewound time, but a whole _new_ Earth being exactly same the down to the guy who was sipping a cup of tea across the street in Birmingham being in the middle of reading _exactly the same word_ in the morning paper? Come on!

I mean...
Well really, I'm used to Hitchhiker's Guide being funny...but BLEAK. Whistling in the darkness. Actual cheerfulness just didn't quite...work. Now, mind you, I don't like it ALL the way bleak. "Mostly Harmless", I _didn't_ like. (Except for like, the parts with Elvis and whatnot. Ford Prefect playing Jackie Chan to get into the Guide building without being caught. Random. Those bits.) In fact, I _said_ I didn't like it years ago, out loud, on the Internet.
...on, um, Douglas Adams' own board.
...and he heard me.

(As you can see, I have a long history of being obnoxious about things I don't like right into the author's face. So it isn't just _you_, Rich. :P)

However even _he_ decided he had made a mistake with that one, so, yeah. Anyway, Hitchhiker's Guide for me has always been..."wacky", but cynical, _dark_ humour. The movie...
I thought Zaphod was supposed to have two heads that you could see, like, _at the same time_? (And surely with modern technology they COULD have done that better than in the TV version?)
Mos Def may have _played_ Ford okay, but Ford has always been one of my favourite sci-fi characters EVER and they just _wrote_ him wrong..!
Alan Rickman as Marvin's voice? HELL yeah! Perfectamundo. But that design was _way_ too cutesy.

And then the whole Trillian and Arthur thing was just the last big slab of eye-rolling cheese on top of the whole big dairy farm.

But, I'll say this: The planet-building room on Magrathea? OHMYGOD_GORGEOUS_. Wow. Seriously. THAT is always what it was _meant_ to look like, from the descriptions in the book and whatnot. And until now, they couldn't even come _close_ to showing it. But in the movie? Okay, THAT was a good use of modern special effects technology. I'll give it that. You could really _believe_ that they do, indeed, make entire _planets_ from scratch in there.

Yeah, I know I'm way off-topic. So I'll vaguely try to bring it back by saying that...one thing I liked about "The Tenth Planet" is it was like, really effectively...claustrophobic, and isolated feeling. You really _felt_ alone and trapped, nowhere to go, under the ice, along with those guys in the arctic base. Knowing that the Doctor is going to kick the bucket for the first time adds this overtone of ominousness...and I'm not sure it's _entirely_ generated by the foreknowledge. (Maybe it's just me, but it seems regeneration episodes always have a point at which suddenly you feel: WAIT a minute. This is _serious_, this time...)

And the Earth slowly losing all its power, with people freezing...and some of the characters dying up in space...yeah. It's pretty intense, if you can keep from laughing at like, the odd costumes and rather bad attempts at the occasional American accent. (Although the one General guy was really good--because he wasn't faking it. He was Canadian!)

Also, I don't know what it is, but I have this odd fascination for...kind of the "early space travel" era, in science-fiction? Anything that's _after_ where we are now, and before, say...warp drive and gravity plating. Basically, if we can get to other planets/solar systems, but...just _barely_. Generation ships. We can get to Barnard's Star, but the crew has to be put into suspended animation. Not enough energy for the trip _and_ luxuries so the life support has to be set at "kinda chilly" all the time. When you get to the planet, it turns out the company that WAS supposed to send along terraforming equipment had budget cuts, and you have to construct primitive lean-tos against the harsh environment out of the spaceship itself. And then you get attacked by mindworms.

...wait, that's "Alpha Centauri". :P

That kind of thing. I dunno why, but that more kind of rough, on the edge, dangerous type of space story has always gotten to me..and "The Tenth Planet" kinda has that...whatever it is. So yeah.

...Notorious

Notorious, I don't mean to sound like a broken record, broken record, broken record....

But once again, the new series makes all the same mistakes and then some.

RTD scripts dumbing down? Some of his stuff is so bad it makes me wish I was dumber so it wouldn't annoy me so much. Do not get me started on Journey's End or the @#$@#$@# Slitheen.

Yeah, the new series destroyed the Earth.....millions of years in the future, after all the humans had moved to new planets.

Doctor and companion as "beautiful people"? Check.

Ah, but what about the Time War, you say? No different than destroying Superman's home planet, I answer. Or Vulcan in the new unTrek movie.

Yeah, the Cybermen assimilate people; they were doing that years before the Borg.

And besides, Hollywood embraced the tragedy years ago, so long as it makes them money. Star Wars prequels anyone? Titanic? Even the Matrix Trilogy didn't exactly end happily.

(Why do people like dark endings anyway? I always thought real life provided more than enough of those, myself.)

So, RTD! Here boy! Even worse than the movie, aren't ya boy! Yes you are, oh yes you are.....

Well I guess it doesn't matter since he's penned his last story now. Apparently the last letter he typed for it was the letter n.

>>


<<


Sorry, I was half expecting something terrible to happen there. My real life has gotten bizarre recently, and that in particular is why I don't like dark endings. I think I could just about watch a kids movie if it would cheer me up effectively enough.

Um...I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. I was _saying_ that the things I don't like about the movie are the same things I don't like about the new series...

...or at least I THINK I was...If I didn't make that clear, even in the huge MOUNTAINS of text I wrote on this topic, I apologise.
(Oh, and I'm with you on the Slitheen. Oy. FART jokes? In _my_ Who? Are you serious? DO NOT WANT!

As for dark endings, well, I don't like them either--and my life is bloody _depressing_ lately. And it's not going to get any better. These are things that don't GET better.
BUT, under certain circumstances, dark endings can sometimes be fun. I don't know what it is, but while I don't like bleak endings where all the good guys die after I've gotten attached to them, that certain type of..._gleefully_ creepy science fiction/horror SHORT story that ends with, say, the whole crew having their minds taken over by the alien menace can be lots of fun. I don't know what it is, but the "Bwahahah, teeheehee!" Halloweeny side of me likes those. For some reason.

Also, I can kill off a Sim if I do it quickly, but let me actually _play_ them and it seems I'll spare ANYone's life. That has to be the only reason why Don Lothario _didn't_ suffer a...tragic swimming-pool incident...
So, yeah. It has to do with how long I've known the character, I guess. If it's a short story they're more expendable. :P

Anyway, with Hitchhiker's Guide, I like to think of it as ending at the end of "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish". The Earth is destroyed, but our characters are _alive_, as happy and healthy as they ever are, hitchhiking out amongst the stars again, and ready for their next adventure! It's open-ended and hopeful. Well, in that cosmic hobo, no idea where we're going next sort of way. Which was fine by me.

THAT level of darkness--that bad things have happened in the past but _we're still here_, now--that I'm okay with. "Mostly Harmless", however...brrr.
(As for the bit with the messageboard...he only dropped in about once every two weeks and there were _lots_ of people saying they didn't like that book! I had no idea he'd read MY message, out of all of them...
Incidentally my name there was "Chevy Lumina", and you CAN find a post of mine if you look it up via the WayBack Machine. But it's not _that_ post, that got archived. It's not a particularly interesting one, for that matter. But hey.)

...Notorious