Posts by Grease Monkey 1883 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
If you choose to do something in a public place then you can have no expectation of privacy. That's the law it's also (IMHO) morally sound too.
But the clincher here is that this dickhead gave a cheery thumbs up to the camera. IOW he was perfectly happy to be seen on camera right up until he realised that he was being filmed from a police car.
"6) Michael Jayston (look it up yoofs) :)"
Sorry but the Valeyard was no more the Doctor than the Dreamlord was the Doctor. Yes an alter ego or an incarnation of his evil side if you like, but he wasn't actually the doctor per se. A sort of biproduct of the regeneration of the 12th Doctor.
Curiously people have said that the Valeyard is the 13th Doctor, but he isn't. He is described in the series as an aspect of the Doctor that was produced by the regeneration of the 12th Doctor into the 13th Doctor. Just an aspect of the Doctor, not the Doctor himself. In fact it could be suggested that if the Doctor did manage to divest himself of his evil side then the 13th Doctor would be a right goody goody.
Be careful when analysing the canon. Try hard enough and you can find references which suggest that the Doctor and the Master are actually the same person. Which is obviously utter shite, but there are people who have picked up on it in the past.
Whenever people talk about the limit to the number of generations I wonder how much attention they've paid to the canon over the years.
Think about the Master. He actually used up all his regenerations once and was granted another cycle by the high council. So was the limit of 13 a limit imposed by the high council? If so then the limit would presumably disappeared along with the high council.
Also SJA is considered part of the canon in which the Doctor says he can regenerate 507 times. Is he lying?
Then there's the fact that River used her regenerations to save the Doctor when his regenerative ability was suspended. Does that mean that the Doctor now has River's remaining ten incarnations? If he does is that 10 added to the 13, the 507 or the 11 he's already had.
I don't think the writers will have a problem in finding a reason to give the doctor more generations.
I've never agreed with the "you can't complain unless you can do better yourself" argument. So I think Graham's point was a bit silly. However to all the Whovians who want the series to be stuck in a timewarp of whatever period in their youth they discovered the doctor I do have an answer.
DON'T WATCH IT.
I first discovered the Doctor when Pertwee played the part, and really got into it when Tom Baker took over. I think my interest probably peaked during the Douglas Adams period (even though I had no clue who he was at the time), but I still enjoyed the Davison and Colin Baker doctors. When McCoy took over the role however the show, in my opinion took a dive, so I stopped watching. I didn't complain and expect them to rewrite the show to suit me.
It's TV, its popularity is important and you can't get away from that.
It costs a lot to make, but it's popular so the cost is justified. Indeed it is one of the few programmes that the BBC make which costs the licence payer nothing because of the licensing and merchandising revenue.
Were it not so popular it wouldn't get made as the BBC would not be able to justify the expense. 45 minutes of Who will cost an awful lot more to make than 45 minutes of Eastenders. Do you really believe that even 8 million viewers is enough to justify Who's existence. The BBC can sell Who to other countries and licence loads of merchandising and DVDs and that is why it's made.
However I do think the proposed new Hollywood film may be a step too far. As soon as they started talking about it being a completely new re-imagining of the story and saying it would not be part of the canon I switched off. Remember the bloody awful Cushing films? The ones where the Doctor was actually a Doctor who's surname was Who and he had invented the TARDIS more or less in his lockup. That will happen again if some Hollywood committee is allowed to re-imagine the story. But then so many such projects die before they get into production simply because the various parties can't agree, so I don't think there's too much to worry about.
Take the sex out of Doctor Who? I think you need to go back and watch all the seventies stuff. You're never more than a few minutes from an apalling double entendre. In those days they were never going to put blatant sex into a teatime TV show, but a bit of good old fashioned British double entendre was not only acceptable. Indeed it was almost compulsory.
"the doctor getting out of dying was a massive copout, but did at least make a reasonable amount of sense"
The Doctor who endings have always had something of the deus ex machina about them. BITD of the old 25 minute episode with the weekly cliff hanger some of the copouts were frankly terrible, but we loved Who for it. I can remember playground discussions of how the doctor was going to get out of this week's predicament and we were nearly always wrong. Likewise all those people who predicted that the Doctor who was murdered by River would be a flesh avatar.
The trouble with a lot of the dweebs discussing who is that they want it to be an adult show, but you have to remember it is traditionally a family show. It has to be clever for the adults, but it can't be so clever the kids won't get it. But the main thing that kids loved about it when I was young and love even more about the new show is the whole big boys own adventure comic book feel. It's always been space opera. It is not supposed to be believable and never has been. There was never anything believable about a relative continuum stabiliser.
As for the Doctor on the beech being a teselecta. There are those who ask why that doctor didn't move like a clunky robot. Remember the teselecta in lets kill hitler, it was faulty. It had dodgy knees. When the Doctor met the teselecta that he used in the final episode there was nothing about it that suggested it was a robot. The Doctor only knew it to be so because he knew that person was already dead.
Crappy special effects are not relevant. You have to view the old whos as being products of their time. The special effects in everything on TV were crap back then. And it wasn't just the special effects, remember how many shows had wobbly sets and the like? It was just part of TV. And you have to view the old whos in that context. I've recently watched some of the episodes from 2005 and 2006 and TBH some of the effects are a bit crap by today's standards, but I don't remember thinking they were crap back then. Indeed the more believable the effects get the quicker they seem to age.
Likewise some of the stories seem a bit dodgy, but again they have to be viewed in context. I know a lot of people laugh at the computers and other supposedly futuristic technology in the old shows, but you have to consider what was known back then. There's an awful lot of past sci-fi that is laughable when viewed today.
Either way you have to consider that with all sci-fi and fantasy the audience must, to some extent, suspend their disbelief.
Watching old who the one thing that I think my memory has failed me on is the standard of a lot of the acting, not so much the lead actors but those in supporting roles. Some of it was terrible, but I don't remember it being so. Again I think that is down to the passage of time. Generally speaking TV acting is better now than it was say 40 years ago. Yes there have always been brilliant performances, but the bit parts in TV BITD were often of am dram standard and a lot of that was probably down to budgetary constraints.
When Moffat wrote Blink he was probably the first Who author to really play with how the whole time travel thing could work within a story. In particular he messed with the idea of a temporal paradox, of which there were more than one in the story. I suspect that the whole speech about the big ball of timey-wimey stuff was thrown in as a joke at the expense of the people involved who couldn't get their heads around anything other than a simple linear narritive. Or perhaps more accurately those patronising gits at the BBC who thought that the audience couldn't get their heads round anything other than a linear narritive.
Before that there had been rules such as the doctor being able to travel back within his own personal time line (which got broken whenever the scriptwriters felt like it) seemingly so the authors didn't have to come up with such complex plots. I once read that the rule was introduced when one of the writers wrote a script where Hartnell's doctor ended up working with himself in a partneship and the producers realised it would be too difficult to shoot.
I think you're somewhat deluded if you think that RTD was the first to put an overarching story into Who. There were complete series with an overarching story going back to at least the seventies. The whole key to time thing was one, then there was the trial of a timelord and I'm sure there were others.
"its been a given since the first original series that he had a Granddaughter "
In your head mainly. They called each other grandfather and grandaughter, but I always made the assumption that she was sort of adopted although they never explained how or why. Perhaps he rescued her from somewhere.
As for the Doctor's Daughter. She wasn't really his Daughter was she? Just grown from his DNA (taken from his severed hand IIRC). The writers were just playing with people with that title, especially given who the actress actually was.
"She actually snogged the Teselecta Robot disguised as the Doctor, with a miniature Doctor inside. To which you could reply
it didn't have to be physical contact, just close enough..."
Ah no. The fixed point was that River would kill a robot that everybody thought was the Doctor. So she had to come into contact with the robot.
The Doctor figured that out. He knew the fixed point had to be River killing something or somebody who looked just like the Doctor, because he'd seen it. It din't have to be the Doctor himself. Most Whovians had figured that out, but the most common prediction was that the Doctor on the beach would be a flesh avatar.
"While it was unfolding it had the possibility to be rather clever but when you put everything in order it at the end it's on the wrong side of the 'a little bit too silly' line."
You've got an alien who looks completelt human and can regenerate when the plot, the actors career or the BBC's internal politics require it. He can travel in time and space in a little blue box which is an awful lot bigger on the inside. He can fix almost anything in the world (except wood) with his sonic screwdriver, but can't fix the chameleon circuit of his TARDIS. Time can be rewritten. He can't travel back into his own personal timeline, except when he does. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I'm sorry but I think you'll find that almost any Doctor Who plot is well over that line. But there's nothing wrong with silly.
Yet another berk with no idea of who the doctor is suppoed to be. Ecclestone was easilly the worst portrayal of the doctor that has occurred in the canon. Although the doctor regenerates he still needs to have certain character traits to make him the same person. Ecclestone didn't even try, partly I suspect because he didn't try, partly because his acting is somewhat limited* and partly because he knew almost from day one that he was a stop gap for Tennant. Worse still I'm still amazed that the BBC ever comissioned another series because most of the stories for that series were crap.
There was some talk that the BBC wanted to use Richard E Grant who had done some voice parts as the doctor for the BBC. There are various versions of the story, but the Beeb didn't get their own way because either Grant was not available or Davies only wanted an actor for a single series because he had Tennant lined up for the role when he became available. Either way Grant would have made a much better Doctor than Ecclestone.
* He's good at what he does, but don't ask him to do anything too different.
"In particular the doctor would usually solve everything without blowing anything up or shoving his sonic screwdriver up their nose."
Hardly. Not only was the "classic" Doctor a lot more violent than people seem to remember he often got out of things more by luck than judgement. I seem to recall Douglas Adams once describing the typical doctor who plot as being the Doctor and Sarah Jane running around, getting captured, learning and important bit of plot, escaping, running round, repeat until close. It often came with something of a deus ex machina ending too. As for the Doctor solving everything, it was often down to his companions or a third party to actually come up with the final solution. Sometimes it even happened by mistake.
"The doctor would usually go between the two sides and convince both sides that the other side were awfully nice chaps. Then they everyone would sit down for tea and cucumber sandwiches at the end. Huzzah"
Actually the plot was more often than not the doctor trying to mediate, failing and having to resort to something different. Usually resulting in death and destruction, sometimes by accident. Often served up with a large helping of the Doctor agonizing about being a man of peace. Pretty much like the tenth Doctor story with the Daleks and the Empire State building.
I'm not a fan of Davies mainly because he introduced too much of the soap opera to the show, Moffat has of course managed to turn that on it's head and into a joke on several occasions. But you do have to remember he remains a lifelong fan of the show and did manage to bring it back with a lot of the elements that made the original great, but squeezed into a more modern format. Where a lot of people make their mistakes in criticizing him is in assuming that he wrote all the stories. Far from it. He was "lead writer" which put him pretty much in the role of the old script editors.
Don't get me wrong I enjoy the classic Doctor Who as much as the next man. I have nearly all the surviving recordings in one format or another. And that, I think, qualifies me to comment. I find that a lot of people seem to have faulty memories when it comes to Doctor who, in particular the idea that he was a man of peace and managed to solve everything amicably.
Oh and I'm sure you didn't mean that there is only one canonical episode? What did you mean to say there?
Is that canon? No, it's rule one. Davies used the parallel universe thing far too often. Especially when he wrote himself into a corner, such as that nonsense where Rose was sealed into a parallel universe and could never come back and then kept on coming back with different teeth. Moffat has tried to avoid that sort of thing relying on the much more subtle rule one (no, not No Pooftas). And he doesn't even bother explaining it most of the time, he credits the viewer with some sort of intelligence and expects them to work it out.
@Paul Naylor Ecclestone was probably the least Doctor Who-ish of all the doctors with the exception of his predecessor. But then McGann was never given a chance to develop his character. Remember Ecclestone was on record as saying he was not a fan of the show and wanted to do something new with it. TBH I suspect that given that he knew he was only contracted for one series and that he was effectively a bed warmer for Tennant that he was never going to try too hard. Tennant was of course much nearer to a proper Doctor Who character, there always has to be the absent minded professor type overlaid with a huge dose of arrogance with a side order of big personality. Ecclestone had only the arrogance.
And as for your comments about Davies, he hasn't had anything to do with the show since the nonsense that was the 2009 christmas special. He was replaced by Moffat, the author of the Blink episode you were so keen on. If you're going to spout your opinions, do try to make sure they're up to date.
Oh and as for US sci-fi crediting the viewer with any intelligence is not something you find often in that genre. Everything has to be painted with a very broad brush and then explained twice in case you didn't get it. Or is that just filler?
"famous-ish actor but with no current link to Dr Who"
Actually that's one of the places I see a potential problem. Who has usually got away without using big name actors in the main role. If they do use a big name I fear that the film will become a vehicle for that actor rather than a Doctor Who film. And they're always going to go for a name in this sort of film because they wan't the box office draw that comes with it. Particularly in regions where the Who brand is not going to provide that draw on its own.
Look at what happened when they put Ecclestone in the role. Quite a name in the UK with a reputation for playing dour agressive notherners. And how did he play it? As a dour agressive northerner with a touch of Bruce Willis' vest and a horribly clashing overlay of whimsy. IOW an Ecclestone vehicle with only the slightest nod to what had gone before. Indeed some have suggested that Eccleston was using the series to try to make a name for himself as more of a blockbuster actor. Whatever the cause Chris was not a convincing Who.
Tennant was more of a known name than other Doctors, but he wasn't a big star and at least he had something of a history of playing eccentrics that suited him to the Doctor. Go right back to Campbell in Takin' Over the Asylum. So even though Who with the team of RTD, Tranter and Tennant was always going to be something of a Tennant vehicle at least Tennants previous character roles would have suited the Doctor. Yes there was too much emotion in the character, but that's RTD for you. I just felt that he played it a little too much Casanova, but overall it was pretty good.
Given the working relationship between Tennant and Tranter I have a horrible feeling that they might want to put Tennant back in the role. Not that I don't like Tennant, I do, but I feel that doing that would damage the brand as it would weaken the position of whoever happens to be the TV Doctor by the time the film is released.
Erm, the McGann thing wasn't a film per se. It was supposedly a feature length episode with an option on a new series to follow. In light of how bloody terrible it was I was very glad the option was not taken up.
Likewise the first two films were disasters. Quite appart from their being terrible films, the whole "reimagining" was nonsense. The idea of the lead character being a human being who happened to be a Doctor who's surname was Who was truly ridiculous.
I actually think the idea of the proposed film is fundamentally flawed. It could have worked back in 2004 before the new Who came along, but we are now six series back in. The series is firmly established in the public consciousness. Any film that is not part of the canon will no doubt be seen as disapointing by fans of the series. And any fans who are introduced to the series by the film will no doubt find the series disappointing as it will have little connection with the film. As such it can only dilute the brand.
Unfortunately I don't see anybody having any reason to make this film other than trying to make money in the short term. Just because somebody wants to pay for the movie rights that doesn't mean the BBC should sell them - they need to think of the long term strengh of the brand rather than making a quick buck. Badly managed something like this could harm the brand and kill the goose that laid the egg in the first place.
Likewise just because Who is a huge hit on British TV and a minor hit elsewhere that does not mean it's popularity will translate into big cinema audiences. Obviously any project like this is going to end up being big budget. There's no way they can take it back to the sparseness of the sixties given the way the series has developed. Yes there have been lower budget episodes in the new who, but much as I loved Blink I don't see that sort of story being a big box office draw. Any Doctor Who film these days will be big on action, effects and budget. As such it's going to have to have big audiences to make any money. TBH, much as I love the Doctor old and new (with the exception of the 7th and 8th Doctors) I can't see it doing big box office. And again I don't think that would be good for the brand.
"Tranter was the BBC's controller of fiction between 2006 and 2008, so she oversaw much of the television reboot of Doctor Who under Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat."
Since Who came back in 2005 and must have been in the pipeline for at least a year before that the above sentence makes no sense. IOW the controller of fiction for the making of the 2005 and 2006 series (or at least the commissioning and writing of the 2006 series) was not Tranter. I would have said that by the time Tranter took that particular seat the reboot was pretty much complete.
"You wouldn't be extradited from the USA because it doesn't happen... one way only."
Oh god, not another one! Check the history of the current treaty and you'll see that more extraditions have been granted from USA to UK in that period than the other way. But who am I to let facts get in the way of your ill informed BS?
The ASA are a complete waste of space who make up the rules as they go along and are completely unable to apply those rules evenly across the board. Now regardless of what you think in this particular case I think any reasonable person would surely think it's long sice time the ASA was abolished and replaced with something that could do the job properly.
Cycling is viewed as a dirty sport simply because cycling set out to catch the cheats. There are plenty of other sports that pretend doping doesn't exist. Cycling runs the most rigourous out of competition testing programme of any sport. And they also carry out more in competition tests that other sports. Were you, for example, aware that pro-cyclists must inform the authorities of their movements (no, not those sorts of movements) in advance so that samples can be taken at any time. Cyclists have been punished for failing to inform the authorities of their whereabouts or providing false information.
Some sports have virtually no out of competition testing and in competition tests mean nothing without it. Especially in sports where top level competitions are few and far between. Swimming is a prime example of this.
It would be a good idea if the olympic comittee set a minimum standard of dope testing (preferably using cycling as a template) for both international and national sports authorities. They should then bar any sports from the olympics which did not meet those standards and any country from a competing in a sport where their national body do not meet standards.
The beauty of such a system would be that the olympics are so high profile that sports would have to comply because the publicity would be so damaging to a sport if they were to be barred from the games. Likewise the sports themselves would make sure that the national bodies complied since it would be damaging to the sport if major competitors were barred from the olympics.
Just watched the video with sound for the first time. That thing really is lame isn't it? The builder expects 100 to 120mph terminal for a quarter mile? Well the Ballistic Eagle mentioned has exceeded 200mph terminal for a quarter mile. 120mph terminal for a quarter mile was achievable on a production sports bike about thirty years ago. Gievn that jet bikes tend to be pretty slow off the line and make up the time by being extremely fast towards the end of the quarter they need a really high terminal speed to post a good time. As such I doubt the ET for this thing would be as fast as a modern 600cc road bike.
Sooo, it's not particularly fast and it's not pretty. Why would anybody spend that sort of money on it?
Nah the frame wasn't even based on a 29 Harley frame. It was simply styled after one. And TBH it looks like many frames from that period. I don't understand quite why the builders had to specifically name a 29 Harley frame when they could have mentioned loads of manufacturers' frames from at least 10 years either side of that date.
It's been run to 70mph? Oh well that proves it is capable of 200mph and would be safe at that speed.
One more time: With rigid suspension and skinny tyres it would slap itself into oblivion long before it got to 200mph. And that's if the rider could actually stay on it with no aerodynamics and no bum stop. Unless it's been tested to 200mph you can't go round saying it will do 200mph, just on the basis that it has enough thrust (theoretically) to do 200mph. There's a hell of a lot more to attaining a top speed than having the power to do so.
I see no evidence in the ebay sale (which has, incidentally been withdrawn) that this thing has ever even run, let alone at 200mph. Looks like it's purely a show bike.
Anyhoo 200mph has been exceeded with internal combustion power. So that seems pretty lame for a jet bike, let alone a twin jet bike.
As for the claim that it's the only twin jet engined bike in the world, that's a pretty big claim. I know I've seen twin jet engined bikes before. I'm pretty sure the Ballistic Eagle has two jet engines and that is a real competition bike that gets used in anger rather than just being polished.
200mph, skinny tyres, crap brakes an no chute. Presumably that's a one time deal - you do 200mph you die. Those tyres don't look like they're rated to anything even close to 200mph. Actually it's fully rigid so 200mph would probably be a pretty terminal experience on anything with more bumps than the average billiard table.
And like so many custom bikes it wears a Harley badge even though it wasn't manufactured by them and contains very few of their parts. Why do they do that? I knew a man who built a bike with a Harris frame and an engine that was Kawasaki based, but contained hardly a single Kawasaki appart from the cases yet the only badge he put on it was a Kawasaki badge on the tank.
As you can probably tell I absolutely detest show vehicles. It's a vehicle so go should always take precedence over show.
I know drag bikes that have hit that sort of speed without a fairing, but that's for a very very short time and those things have bum stops so all the load isn't on your arms. The thing that's really missing on this bike is a bum stop. Firstly imagine the initial acceleration, then imagine the aerodynamic drag on your body and all of that load would have to be taken on your arms. You'd slide off onto that unprotected back wheel long before you hit 200mph.
It's a show bike I doubt the owners ever intended it to be used in anger. They probably wouldn't even want to fire up the engines for frear of bluing the chrome.
A sad waste.
How the hell can they expect anybody to believe their release cycle? So 8.0 was a major version and the beta of the next major version is already out there a few days later? Yeah right.
As others have pointed out as soon as you install 9.0 most of your plugins will stop working until a V9 compatible version is released. And of course by the time the plugin developers have released a 9.0 compatible version FF 10.0 will be out. How long before plugin developers get tired of this and abandon FF altogether?
Sorry Mr Coward, but I have to say that you're wrong. No matter what Mozilla say FF is haemorrhaging users. The stats for a (non-IT) site I administer showed FF in a strong second place a year ago. This month's stats so far show FF has dropped to fourth!
MS IE: 52%
Chrome: 16%
Safari: 15%
Firefox: 10%
Opera: 4%
Others: 3%
That's spread over just short of 200,000 visitors. Yes it's just one site and not necessarilly representative of the whole internet, but the thing is that FF has dropped from over 20% a year ago to just 10% recently and it's been a pretty steady decline. And don't do the usual FF fanboi thing of trying to excuse the popularity of Chrome and Safari on smartphones - iThings account for just over 3% of visitors and Android for just below 3%. And as for Safari 2% of those users are on Windows and Safari.
IME stats for IT sites show FF is more popular among techies than none techies, but it still lags behind Chrome. However the thing is that IT geekboys are not the largest market for browsers, not by a long way.
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