u/WinchesterMediaUK

Is actors being dismissive of stuff based on its genre or style.

Some examples that spring to mind are John Laurie bitterly saying of Dad's Army "I was the best Hamlet of the 20s but now I'm famous for being in this crap", and Harry Landis giving a backhanded compliment to Friday Night Dinner by starting with "It's not Chekhov but for its type...".

It feels like pure snobbery frankly. So what if something is farce, or has dragons and magic in it? The question is if it's good on its own merits. A piece of comedy isn't suddenly rendered worthless because it gets a laugh by someone falling down a flight of stairs.

Luckily there are older actors like Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen who do stuff like studio sitcoms and soap operas because they genuinely want to, but it feels like a lot of their generation still has this mindset where only the superficially 'worthy' stuff has cultural value.

The Fishfeed was a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

Even if it had been adapted, it wouldn't have been big enough, the reed beds would have been too deep/shallow, Ben Blackwood would have cried too much or not enough, etc etc.

It's about a page and a half of book, and, narratively, is pretty much a footnote compared to stuff like Tumbleton and the Storming Of The Dragonpit, but one mention of it being the bloodiest battle ever, and people latch onto it like it's an absolutely vital plot point.

Does anybody know how to change the default text size and font from version 19 onwards. Changes were made a few years ago, and all of the available tutorials are now outdated.

Yes, sticking to the source material is important, but books, comics etc are a different medium from TV and some stuff doesn't translate.

One recent example that springs to mind is seeing people annoyed that the three Dragonseeds didn't fight at the Gullet in the latest episode of House Of The Dragon as in the book.

But the sheer cost and logistical challenge of doing that sequence with six dragons would be crazy. Plus it would completely remove any tension since Seasmoke, Vermithor, and Silverwing are fully grown monsters and practically untouchable while Vermax and Moondancer are still young and vulnerable to ballistae etc. Not to mention it would make the scene too crowded and pull focus from the POV characters.

It's easy to write a few lines in a book saying "This person was here when this thing happened", but actually visualising it and bringing it to life onscreen is entirely different.

And to be honest, I think if you don't read the books first, you're better able to enjoy the adaptation for what it is. I've seen mentions that the recent Channel 4 adaptation of A Woman Of Substance deviates from the books a lot but since I haven't read them, I took the TV series at face value and really enjoyed it.

While on the opposite side of things, watching the TV adaptation of White Teeth fresh off the back of reading the book as a teenager, I had a lot of issues with it (And still do in some cases), but fifteen years later, I've softened towards it a lot and appreciate some of the changes it did make, and the things it could only do as a TV series.

If an adaptation is genuinely poor in its execution, then criticising it for not following the source material makes sense. But going in expecting a page-for-page copy is just unrealistic, and stops you enjoying the adaptation as its own thing.

Obviously you can't really make a fair assessment of a show based on a single preview clip but these are some stray observations:

• The premise is already dated. Robot & Frank and Äkta Människor both came out in 2012, and Humans (AM's British remake) ran from 2015 to 2018. It feels like the time for tapping into the whole idea of household robots was about ten years ago so it already feels out of date.

• The title is a forced pun that Doctor Who already did in 2005 as a parody of Anne Robinson, and that doesn't even work because the robot character's name is Linda. Ann Droid appears to be some kind of in-universe brand name.

• Diane Morgan's performance is already grating after one minute. The cod-European accent and robotic body language feel far too overplayed for a single-camera sitcom, and considering that Linda is the title character, I can see it wearing incredibly thin. Especially since this is apparently a full series of six half-hour episodes.

• The jokes are the most cliched thing imaginable for a sitcom of this type. Human-looking robot speaks in a staccato voice, uses overly formal and scientific language, has no social skills, and takes everything literally leading to comic shenanigans. Doctor Who and Star Wars were doing this material fifty years ago. Even the "Where would you like me to piss off to" gag is lifted straight from Monty Python's Life Of Brian.

I hope that I'm wrong, it turns out to actually be good, and that the BBC just fouled up by promoting it with this clip but it honestly feels like a bizarre fusion of wacky fantasy sitcoms from the 60s with the production style of modern single-camera sitcoms.

It kind of has the vibe of a bad passion project that got only got picked up because it was a self-written vehicle for a big name like Pompidou (Matt Lucas), For Fact's Sake, and Shedites (both Brendan O'Carroll)

Now that we're officially in the Wilderness Years 2, there will probably be an uptick in fan films.

The downside there is that fan films need CGI to avoid cardboard monsters, stock images, and just being filmed in the woods, car parks, somebody's back garden etc. But a lot of fans just don't really understand the craft, and are enthusiastic newcomers who struggle to get the effects working.

In particular, it would help to overcome the logistical problems of using practical effects, e.g. how to do a Dalek story without the hassle of getting hold of a Dalek prop and taking it out on location etc, or where do you actually build a practical Tardis set. DW2012 for example specifically bought and put up a shed in his parents' garden to use as his Tardis set.

So with that in mind, would a CGI tutorial series specifically focused on Doctor Who be of interest to fan film makers? Covering how to make Daleks, Weeping Angels, title sequences etc, and how to get stuff working without spending silly amounts of money on software.

Kind of Doctor Who CGI For Dummies.

Personally I'm more than a bit sceptical about the BBC putting the show out to tender because that's how we ended up in this position in the first place, but clearing house like this can only be a positive step forward.

Disney and Sony are both out of the picture so, depending on who the new production company is, there are no longer multinational conglomerates sticking their oars in. Which hopefully means a more streamlined process with no counterintuitive bollocks like midnight releases, double-episode premieres, and trying to MCU-ify the whole thing.

But crucially, with the RTD2 era well and truly over, it means we can start again. All those loose ends can be swept under the carpet or given to Big Finish, and Doctor Who proper can finally refresh itself without the baggage of the last four years or the obsession with nostalgia.

New Doctor, new Companion, new everything. Personally, this the most positive I've felt since 2018.

This applies to almost any hobby really but specifically with Doctor Who, I don't get the need to buy new DVD releases or action figures on day one.

It's not time-sensitive like seeing a film at the pictures, and let's face it, we are a pretty niche fandom in the grand scheme of things so this stuff isn't going to vanish off the shelves.

I don't own The Curse Of Fenric on DVD but I can go to HMV and buy a copy 23 years after release. But particularly with the TV Movie 4K, I've seen people having online tantrums that their copy wouldn't arrive on the release date and ordering a second copy from another supplier (I've seen that done for other Doctor Who releases as well in the past), and being annoyed that a write-up on it is being featured in a later issue of Doctor Who Magazine.

I get having hobbies and enjoying stuff but honestly, the world isn't going to fall in if you don't get your Doctor Who Blu-Ray at the earliest opportunity.

I have my own issues with it and I hope to do a fan-edit one day that tightens it up (That lengthy Grogu in the swamp sequence is getting the chop for a start) but a good chunk of criticism of it is just people looking for problems that don't exist.

Even before it came out, people were shitting on the colour grading of the whole thing based on a single clip of the desert speeder chase, and people are now making up problems.

Several people are claiming that the swamp hermit just happened to have the snake venom antidote on him when we very specifically see him preparing it from different ingredients, there are criticisms that Zeb can now fly spaceships (Which was established in the cartoons, just not as a specific talent), suggestions that bombing the Hutt Palace was some kind of war crime, that the tiny Mechanics' ship breaks canon because it's so small but can travel at Lightspeed, and this doozy of a Tweet from Star Wars YouTuber Eckhart's Ladder:

https://x.com/EckhartsLadder/status/2057721502120698182

Just because something isn't shown in explicit detail, it doesn't make it a plot hole. We don't need specific details on who flew the the Mandalorian's ship from one planet to another for him offscreen because it doesn't impact the story.

By all means, discuss and critique, but when you're getting into daft bad-faith arguments like this, it just brings to mind that Harrison Ford quote about A New Hope when Mark Hamill pointed out a continuity issue with his hair:

"Kid, it ain't that sort of movie."

It feels like we're at peak Sydney Sweeney fancasting thanks to Season 3 of Euphoria, with fans wanting her as Lara Croft, Helen Of Troy, a future Bond girl, and undoubtedly many other roles.

So, as someone who has never seen her in anything and doesn't get the hype, I have to ask: what specifically do you like about her as an actress?

For example:

I like Emilia Clarke because, in lighter roles, she is effortlessly charming and likeable. One of those actresses who just lights up the screen.

I like Daniel Mays because of how well he plays the devil in disguise. Having that undercurrent of menace bubbling alway until he finally lets rip and goes full villain.

So what is it about Sydney Sweeney?

If people haven't been keeping up with online discourse, a growing theory is that all the promotional stuff with online text sequels to each Series 2 episode twenty years after broadcast is to lay the groundwork for this year's Christmas Special being a sequel to Doomsday and a return for David Tennant.

Which definitely seems like something RTD would do but sounds like an absolute disaster. It would be the third time and fifth episode he's used to give himself a lap of honour and redo his greatest hits in three years.

Doomsday was my first full episode so I definitely have a soft spot for it, but Doctor Who is in a perilous position as it is right now, and the last thing we need is to go full Season 22 and make everything about stuff from twenty years ago. Once Upon a Time Lord should been enough of a sign about why that should be avoided.

I'm hoping against hope that it's actually to promote Circuit Breaker but nothing would surprise me at this point.

If people haven't been keeping up with online discourse, a growing theory is that all the promotional stuff with online text sequels to each Series 2 episode twenty years after broadcast is to lay the groundwork for this year's Christmas Special being a sequel to Doomsday and a return for David Tennant.

Which definitely seems like something RTD would do but sounds like an absolute disaster. It would be the third time and fifth episode he's used to give himself a lap of honour and redo his greatest hits in three years.

Doomsday was my first full episode so I definitely have a soft spot for it, but Doctor Who is in a perilous position as it is right now, and the last thing we need is to go full Season 22 and make everything about stuff from twenty years ago. Once Upon a Time Lord should been enough of a sign about why that should be avoided.

I'm hoping against hope that it's actually to promote Circuit Breaker but nothing would surprise me at this point.

Obviously it's all academic at this point, but an interesting thought is when Ncuti Gatwa actually decided to call it quits.

The only concrete date we have is that the Belinda's House reshoots took place in Penarth starting on February the 5th 2025.

All of the studio stuff is harder to nail down because the clapperboards are conspicuously absent from the Unleashed episode, and the datestamps on the released script are clearly fake, but the timeline as we know it gives two possible shooting dates

Gatwa's run of The Importance Of Being Earnest ended on January the 25th, leaving a ten day gap before Penarth. It's definitely possible that some stuff was shot then since it was all reused sets and costumes but cramming all of the non-Penarth stuff into that gap doesn't seem plausible.

At this point, Bonnie Langford was on tour in Les Miserables, which explains why she only appears on a video screen during the reshoots, and the Conrad scene was originally shot during principal photography and re-edited.

So a realistic start for the reshoot filming is late January at the absolute earliest, while there are claims that Billie Piper was cast and filmed separately around early April. So, as poorly shot as the scene was, it suggests that everything else was locked by around the end of March.

The process of actually writing the new scenes and scheduling cast, crew, locations etc makes things harder to pin down since it could have all been done in the almost three months where Gatwa was working full time on Earnest.

Which suggests that Gatwa's decision to leave came in Autumn 2024. Potentially at any point after Season 1 aired but the movie The Roses was already filming at that time and Gatwa's casting in Earnest was announced five days after Season 1 ended, which could suggest otherwise since the official casting announcement through to the end of the run was a seven month contract.

Either way, while Disney were very clearly dragging their feet on the issue, the timeline suggests that Gatwa could have been preparing to leave a lot earlier than previously thought, since he would have been auditioning and negotiating to do Earnest before Season 1 ended, and a decision from Disney was due.

There are still conflicting accounts of why he left Bridgerton after one season, with nothing to really substantiate any of them.

But just five years ago, he had the world at his feet:

* Emmy nomination.

* Guest hosting Saturday Night Live.

* Doing Cbeebies Bedtime Stories (which regularly gets big names like Chris Evans (the Marvel one), Eddie Redmayne and Dolly Parton) twice in six months.

* Tipped to star in a remake of The Saint.

* Various outlets pitching him as the new Doctor Who and James Bond.

Five years later, that remake of The Saint still has yet to materialise, and he has only had a handful of supporting movie roles before finally getting the lead in You, Me, And Tuscany, releasing recently.

It would be unfair to call it a David Caruso situation without knowing the full story (particularly since Covid could be a factor), but the speed and level of his drop-off is still pretty astonishing when you consider that his Bridgerton co-stars Nicola Coughlan and Jonathan Bailey have gone nowhere but up on the back of it, and that his onscreen wife Phoebe Dyneover still returned for five episodes of Season 2.

I also wonder if this phenomenon is something that could affect Ncuti Gatwa moving forward. He has several new projects in the works, but his premature and abrupt departure from Doctor Who last year included a lot of obfuscation and outright lies, particularly from the BBC and production company Bad Wolf.