Radio Free Skaro #286 – The Knaves of Androzani
< Christmas has come and gone for another year, and Santa Claus has delivered another Doctor Who special for us all to devour like so much poorly digested turkey. Steven Moffat’s The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe certainly wasn’t the centrepiece of a holiday feast for the Three Who Rule, but more of a side dish of undercooked mashed potatoes that failed to elicit any strong reaction from any of the Three. Even multiple references to that most treasured of classic Who stories, The Caves of Androzani, couldn’t prevent this year’s special from being eclipsed by last year’s momentous A Christmas Carol, mentioned here only to provide this write-up a high note to end on. Here’s another depressing note, though: no more new Doctor Who for about nine months… |
| Show Notes:
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14 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro #286 – The Knaves of Androzani”
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bah humbug!
Not the three who rule for this episode, more like the three scrooges.
You 3 who suck must have really been sleeping through the show. Threat was a planet full of trees was about to get culled for industrial purposes. Unable to defend themselves their lifeforce needs a host to be preserved.
Hey triple dosers , did Peter J Ross pay you to do this episode of Radio Free ScarredUp?
Yads! You’re capable of more than three successive words in an Internet comment! Wait til rec.arts.drwho hears about it, they’ll plotz! 🙂
Don’t worry I will let them know
Good episode. I agree completely with your assessment.
While I mostly agree with your opinion of this episode, it does seem you guys have gotten more pessimistic of Doctor Who from when you first started. Is it all Chris’ fault?
That’s pretty unfair to me, I dare say. 🙂
They’re grown men and formulate their own opinions quite independently of me or each other… also, we tend to not discuss opinions before recording. Far more often than not when a position is said on the show, it’s the first time the others have heard it.
Michelle is spot on ! I say 9.3/10
Nope, Chris is spot on. We don’t share our opinions until we record, and singling out Chris doesn’t make a lot of sense either. Just because he doesn’t happen to cherish fanboy/girl favorites like Tennant doesn’t make him negative, it makes him a guy with an opinion.
My philosophy (and that’s mine only, the other Two Who Rule are capable of speaking for themselves) is that while I obviously love Doctor Who, I’m not going to cut it any slack simply because it happens to be my favorite program. If anything, I’ll be a little more critical because I expect more out of it. I don’t think it’s fair to our audience to mindlessly praise the show simply because we like it as a whole. That would be disingenuous and more to the point, really boring to listen to as a podcast.
As for becoming more negative as time goes on, that’s only true insofar as familiarity breeds contempt. RTD taking the Doctor in new directions for first couple years? Great. Repeating himself and upping the stakes to a ridiculous extent…not so much. When Moffat took over I found it a breath of fresh air, but if he backslides into same-y tropes and caricature, I’ll certainly note that as well. That doesn’t make us negative, it makes us honest.
Moffat did take Doctor Who into a new direction. After RTD fiasco’s such as Gridlock, Love and Monsters and Midnight, RTD was showing contempt to the audience in general.
And while 3 of you are all at it, prove to us that niehter of you had a .1 blood alcohol level when viewing TDTWATW
I don’t agree with everything discussed on the podcast[Warren’s feelings on the McCoy era ;)], but in the end, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. So just enjoy the podcast, and if you feel you can’t, don’t listen.
I’m going to take some heat off of the 3 by expressing an opinion I fully expect to be taken by the internet masses as even more heinous than theirs – I’m starting to tire of Matt Smith’s Doctor.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan (although, strangely, it was the anger scene in Beast Below that first got me loving him) and I shock myself by stating the sentiment.
The thing is that we can agree that
1) he is a great Doctor actor
2) his Doctor, through coincidence rather than design, reminds us of what was good in previous Doctors
3) his Doctor can save a scene
I think that we are getting to the stage that
4) his Doctor often saves the scene
5) it’s usually whilst saving the day in fairly similar fashion.
I’m hoping his self-stated return to the shadows heralds a new direction so that I can go back to enjoying just how good the portrayal is because otherwise I’ll go back to daydreaming of future Doctors (btw – would LOVE Patterson Joseph or David Morrisey but I think they’ll both be counted by execs as too obvious to be in the running now).
Now I’ve finished this and read back – is my grievance more that Steven Moffat has got a bit samey-wamey in his use of the Doctor and plot devices rather than anything Matt Smith actually has any influence over?