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Podcast 22

Talk about anything to do with our Staggering Stories Podcast!

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Adam J Purcell
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Podcast 22

Post by Adam J Purcell »

Podcast 22 is now live. You will find it at the usual places.

This time we talk about:
  • Doctor Who: Silence In The Library and Forest of the Dead
    Steven Moffat taking over Doctor Who
    Fight Club: Gene Hunt vs. Jack Regan
    Taste Test: Stewie’s Domination Serum
Feel free to discuss! (I know I have a few comments..!)
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Adam J Purcell
Posts: 1238
Joined: Sun Dec 29, 2002 11:52 pm
Location: Sotus
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Post by Adam J Purcell »

Both this podcast and the Silence in the Library two parter seem so long ago now! Nonetheless I promised myself I'd write a few things down that we, I, forgot to mention in the podcast.

First and foremost, I did enjoy the story. It did suffer a little from the Moffat high expectations that I have. In many ways I hold his stories to a different standard than everyone else's. Not fair perhaps but given his excellent track record it is hard not to expect more. It was still good, just not the 'excellent' I was hoping for.

We didn't talk that much about the way that River (no, not that crazy one) and the Doctor have met out of sequence. This isn't the first time the Vast Toffee (MN), aka Moffat, has given us this. Sally Sparrow in Blink had the same experience. It is interesting that this very rarely happens in Doctor Who. Think of other big name characters, such as the Master, Davros, the Rani, the Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith. Any other recurring character you care to mention. Always meeting them in chronological order. It was almost an unwritten rule of the old series. The new series too, come to that, with Moffat's stories aside. It's a great concept to meet people out of order, also the idea of needing a diary to put it all into context was great! It was interesting that the TARDIS shaped diary that River uses appears to have entries in the order of the Doctor's timeline - River goes backwards through the diary as she is revising down her estimates of the Doctor's age.

Then there's the whole question of her relationship to the Doctor and the promise that we'll meet River Song again. I hope we do, she was a very interesting character and, as we noted, a very Benny Summerfield like person!

We didn't really mention Doctor Moon or who CAL was. That's no moon, that's a computer. Another interesting idea. It does raise the question if Dr Moon was ever a real person, as CAL was (Charlotte Abigail Lux). As ever, a great performance by Colin Salmon. A fairly inconsequential role at the end of the day, though. Just another layer of the mystery. Overall another nice idea for CAL to be given immortality in a library - where she had access to everything ever written. A good exit for River, too. Though it does raise the question if she can ever been extracted (as Donna was). River may not have had a body left, unlike Donna, at time of upload but it's all just matter/energy conversion isn't it? No reason it has to be the same energy as claimed from a body.

We did talk about, to some length, the whole situation Donna finds herself in once uploaded into CAL. I'm still dubious - another nice idea but not fully thought out. We also have had very little reference to her lost life after she was brought out of the computer. Did the fact that most of that life was 'off screen' and therefore little more than memories generated as she required them, mean that life had much less meaning once she was free? Did it start to dissolve, like a dream, after a day or two?

All in all, some very interesting ideas. Perhaps not all fully formed. Certainly not executed as well as, say, The Empty Child or Blink. Good nonetheless. The Vast Toffee's trademarks of fear and high concept that makes me optimistic for the future.
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