Radio Free Skaro #367 – Everybody Hurts
< Well, the most recent series of Doctor Who has wrapped up, and what a way to do it – a fangasmagoria from Steven Moffat containing notable nods to the past and tantalizing hints of what’s to come. “The Name of the Doctor” gave fans what they wanted (and more) in a 50th anniversary story, and it was six months early! But what did the Three Who rule think of this extravaganza? Also discussed in this episode were the now assured future of Doctor Who and the show’s return in Series 8, stats, more stats, and the potentially damaging effects of Eurovision. And now, six months to wait until more new Doctor Who…but what else does the BBC have in store before then? |
| Show Notes:
– The Name…of the Doctor! |
15 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro #367 – Everybody Hurts”
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You boys are obviously not total fan-boys since you don’t know that Matt Smith cracked his head open at nursery and had 24 stitches http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/mar/06/matt-smith-doctor-who-interview
Love you guys! I look forward to hearing you on Sundays and since I am a new who fan so I appreciate getting a bit of education on the older who. Keep up the good work.
agree 100% about warrens comment GB. the daft arguing about stuff they have no idea about annoys the life out of me.
Much more important than non-European countries taking part in Eurovision, Doctor Who’s Cardiff has been promoted.
So next season, there will be two Welsh clubs in the English Premier League.
Eurovision is awful. I guess that it’s charming on some level to have the nations in and around Europe come together in song every year but it just never ends. I’m sure it differs from country to country but in Sweden there’s the local contest to select the song for Eurovision and it is split into several qualifying rounds, semifinals and finals that all lead up to the proper Eurovision contest. It literally starts in early February and keeps going til May. Of course, since people love it there’s speculation and coverage in the media for months both before and after. You’re lucky you only have to put up with it for a couple of days and from afar is what I’m saying.
Was there new Doctor Who on? Right! The finale!
It was pretty great. I’m still not sure we got an answer to the question “Doctor who?” but I’d rather take no answer than one that is basically “Jeff Who” or something. It does look like we are exploring what it means to be the Doctor with Hurt’s version as a contrast to the Doctors we know.
It was fantastic to see the show tease the reveal of some supposedly important detail only to give us something much more interesting and mysterious to think about. Forget the name business, how does the Doctor die and when? I’m not saying I want to know but I love that we know he will. The idea that there is a definite end point in the Doctor’s life really adds to the mythos in the same way that the ideas that he ran away or Rassilon or the Time War do. It fleshes out the character and humanizes him while it brings into focus a vast field of unexplored possibilities. We got very few details, more a suggestion to carry in the back of our heads for maybe the next 50 years.
The flashbacks to previous Doctors were fantastic. Sure some looked a bit dodgy, two were from the same episode that itself wasn’t exactly part of the Doctors’ own time periods but it worked. It does bug me a bit that it now appears the Doctor chose the TARDIS he did because Clara told him to rather than because the TARDIS made sure it was unlocked, as was suggested last series, but I’ll get over it.
Other aspects weren’t perfect either. I have no idea how the “time stream” is supposed to work but that might be an indication of how dumb I am rather than the how dumb the concept was. The mechanics of the conference call seem iffy and that cut when the Doctor and Clara went from the catacombs to the entrance was a bit weird.
But I adore seeing River and the Doctor together again. That relationship has been brilliant in series 7. The hows and the whys of Clara’s impossibility were satisfactorily cleared up.
Vastra, Jenny and Strax weren’t nearly the flat caricatures seen in ‘The Crimson Horror’.
This episode did fanservice the right way. It didn’t seem bolted on to an unrelated story nor was there a lack of substance beyond the callbacks. What was done poorly in ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ was done well this time.
Great finale.
There was a shocking lack of hockey in the podcast episode though. I don’t care about sports, I’m just surprised.
It really depresses me that so many of the people who used to converse with Moffat on Outpost Gallifrey have been so harsh recently.There’s no way Moffat is responsible for Doctor Who only returning for a special this year,in it’s anniversary.He can only make the Doctor Who that the BBC are able to finance.I’m pretty sure the lack of production has really been necessitated by the BBC vacating Television Centre and moving all it’s current affairs and journalism resources to it’s new media centre.If people want to believe daft articles in Private Eye ,who cares? Moffat is really nothing like the person represented in those stories according to the two occasions i’ve ever met him.I agree with you that he is still currently the best writer working on the programme ,for all his faults and i think he still has much to contribute to Doctor Who.
Wow – my favourite episode of season 7B. The cliff hanger about the significance of the Doctor’s name fits in with what we have been told before. In A Good Man Goes to War, we are told that the Doctor means healer throughout the universe because of his benevolent influence throughout history. But we are also told that the meaning of the word Doctor was changing to that of great warrior because the vengeful and less merciful aspects of the Doctor’s personality were now becoming widely known. It also explains why the Doctor was deleting references to him throughout history. The Doctor has said previously that he did that because he was getting known as the Oncoming Storm and therefore “was becoming too big”. The Doctor did not want his secret to get out. This also fits in with the Doctor’s admission that “The Doctor lies”. I hope the 50th Anniversary episode and what follows in season 8 builds up on this.
I watched the season 7B finale & loved it, now have to wait 6 months for 50th Anniversary special which is the continuation of “The Name of The Doctor” 🙂
BTW: Denmark won Eurovision, my lady friend kept me updated live as she was watching it.
Squeeeeeeeeee!
Thank you Warren (voice of reason) for the talk of including old Doctors, even if the quality was not up to today’s standards. We have a 1080p, blu-ray HD program that has such a long history that the beginning years are in BLACK AND WHITE! To incorporate EVERY Doctor should trump any complaint about video quality.
Warning: I mean the next bit in a positive tone, and not a negative way at all…
This episode was the BEST fan-fic version of Doctor Who that could have been made. Steven Moffat, as we all know, was a legitimate fan before even beginning his work with the actual show; he even had his own ideas (or fan-fic) started before knowing he would ever see the show again on TV. To incoporate every Doctor in an episode is every fan’s dream, and to play with time so much and completely re-write Doctor Who (without having it completely blow up into a terrible mess) shows how much a die hard fan can completely wrap himself up in this historical show.
Anywho, thanks for another episode! Now to enjoy summer and hopefully wake up in Novemeber relatively soon…
Also, can we include Coupling in the Doctor Who canon now? I mean John Hurt?! REALLY?!
I have seen the finale four times now, where do you see the 8th Doctor? All the other doctors are given good screen time, but I don’t see McGann anywhere?
The McGann body double runs past Clara right before the Troughton footage lifted from “The Five Doctors”.
This is the shot in animated gif format:
Well, that was a brief glimpse. Thanks for the gif!
For anyone who might wonder what it means that Clara showed the First Doctor which TARDIS to take, when other mythology was established/retconned in The Doctor’s Wife, Neil Gaiman addressed that on his tumblr. Take a look at http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/50849488198/how-do-you-feel-about-moffat-retconning-on-how-the for what he said.
At least I saw this episode last night, and I can now listen to any RFS of any time without worrying about spoilers.
I loved the look of the old footage, especially Hartnell’s for its wavery off look. If it had been digital HD-perfect radiant color, I simply would not have liked it as much.