Glad you all take the hit for us so we don't have to watch! I think you touched on this, but I think the saddest thing about RTD is how he is not interested in telling good stories or bringing people together...no, he is instead making these shows out of a place of smite and even hate. RTD seems motivated to burn down his own legacy just to stick it to the fans. This is not Dr Who but rather just a vessel for RTD to unleah whatever pent up grievances he has to the fanbase. At least that is how I see it. It's sad to see whatever the reasons are.
I believe that the "Everybody knows a [person's name]" line comes from the old 1962 Jimmy Stewart film: Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. In one scene, he and his wife take their teenage daughter to a party to have fun, but the girl is too shy to talk to anyone. Jimmy Stewart walks over to a group of teenage boys and calls, "Hey, Joe!" He then bribes the boy who answers to go dance with his daughter. The wife later asks how he knew the boy, and he responds something like, "There's always someone named Joe." It's not the exact same exchange, but each of these new scenes always make me think of that one.
Good review, thanks! If anythjng, some of the Monkees had musical experience when hired. They were told not to play their own instruments and the most they got to do was to write a song. Mike Nesmith actually got angry... the others did learn how to play. The third album, "Headquarters", is all theirs... save for a studio musician like what all bands of the time had used.
Reversing the 'notes' of the summoning chord is awfully close to how Mr. mxyzptlk is dismissed in Superman when they get him to say his name backwards - or how Tom Paris reversed the notes on the cosmic key in Masters of the Universe - so not so original. Love your reviews - Thanks so much!
The Maestro would have been better suited for either an episode from Are You Afraid of the Dark or Goosebumps. I like the idea of a spooky dangerous Music entity. But not portrayed by Jinkx Monsoon. They should have casted someone else. That music battle they had was awful, Monsoon didn't even play the violin. 31:45 I watched that years ago, on RU-vid. It's fantastic. And it shows you how talented NPH really is.
Doctor Who stories don't always have a twist at the end. A well-written song could have been really amusing, perhaps gently ribbing the show since 1963. But I agree with the Old Man, the whole thing was a bad idea.
Yes, definitely better than the previous episode. Maestro I just thought to be an over-the-top villain like a fair number of others in Dr Who history, and probably a credible threat to at least seal the Doctor and Ruby inside music instruments. I agree that this episode had potential based on a simple, yet actually decent premise 'Music is how humanity expresses themselves, alien entity tries to get rid of that' [though my parents wondered why Maestro sings/vocalizes if they wanted to get rid of music, maybe it was explained in the episode]. I also thought the ''alternative time'' scene that was probably a deliberate callback to the 70s Who story 'Pyramids of Mars' where Sarah thought her present day would not be destroyed when Sutekh started to end the world in 1911 - lingered on a bit too long. This episode was better enough, in a more balanced tone and decent scenes like Ruby playing piano on the roof - I was kind of enjoying it...until that musical number happened at the end. Sure, music has come back, yay. Sure, it seems to allude to a character/casting choice with the name Twist [who apparently was in Space Babies, but I don't care to look back at where they featured]. But goodness me, cringe 101! Steven Moffat's script and the episodes after better improve, otherwise I may not care to know about the arcs of Ruby's backstory/the old woman from the Ruby Road special/'The One Who Waits' or the Toymaker's legion/s or whatever.
The performance was definitely more over the top than most. I can think of two actors who coome close to being this ostentatious, but they were trying to act against the show's lead. Maestro needed to be toned down a little at times, but that's about it.
“Twist and Shout”, last song of the Beatles first album, not a Lennon/McCartney written song so likely very affordable for this show. A highlight of that album as well. But instead they went with that mishmash of a 1950s Twist song. It was so obvious to use it and actually put the Beatles back into the show in a natural, history righted, way. Just another misstep for this episode. Though the Maestro was no more “music” than the Toymaker was Santa bringing joy to good girls and boys. Don’t take villains at their word when they state their motives.
Hi. Thanks for another review, though again, had to work up to this one since honestly I find the way they’re wrecking doctor who at the moment really upsets me. A few points: First theoretically a beetles based episode of doctor who is a good idea, after all the beetles themselves (or at least a segment of them playing Ticket to ride), appeared in 1965 on the episode The chase with William Hartnl’s first doctor. So in terms of audience, it’s theoretically a nice way of bringing in new and old who fans and keeping up with the show’s continuity, which I believe was the reason for the mention of the first Doctor and Susan here. Of course, with all of the shitting on Doctor who fans, and the doctor generally the show and it’s writers have been doing, this was lip service at best. Indeed, I’ve watched the clip of the Disney Doctor (doctor not as Overlord dvd calls him), talking about the genocide of the timelords, and the best interpretation I can make of his giggle is that he’s laughing fondly at Ruby’s sympathetic hug, since he is entirely blasé about the death of the timelords, and indeed the whereabouts of Susan. I’ve seen some people claim he’s trying to make light of the situation, but that wasn’t how it struck me, especially with the rather light, overly quippy, and entirely gravatas free manner which seems to be the Disney Doctor’s default. Speaking of originality, , it’s easy to point to other works and claim plagiarism (I’ve seen music note battles both in the nineties kids cartoon flint the time detective, and in the playstation game Guitaruman), but there was one which particularly struck me. For the 50th anniversary in 2013, Big finish created several stories set in 1963. One of these was Fanfare for the common men, dealing with the band which Susan references in the original unearthly child. The plot involves the 5th doctor taking Nissa to see the beetles, then being astonished when the band isn’t the beetles at all, but a similar group called the common men. It turns out that the common men are actually time travelling aliens who feed on adulation, who have usurped the beetles place in history. It’s actually a clever story and quite a cunning way of getting around the rights issues, indeed though we hear several common men songs during the episode, which are deliberately said to be beetleseqsque, but not as good, a joke is made of the fact we never hear the original beetles. (in the final scene of the episode, the Doctor takes Nisa to a beetles concert, and just as he enthuses about Nisa hearing some of the best music in the universe, the end credits Doctor who theme plays :D. I don’t know if this was a deliberate borrowing from that, but the idea of someone changing history and replacing the beetles did sound very familiar. That being said, the idea of showing the original beetles as broken down and lacking ideas, and singing childish songs is just the sort of cultural vandalism we’ve seen far too much of in modern fiction, indeed one of the shows few good points is that it’s the beetles who finally get to vanquish the Maestro, albeit I didn’t get this was a love letter to the beetles, so much as just an excuse for a big song and dance routine, just like the ones Nguti Gatwa’s been running his mouth about wanting in the show for identity based reasons. I could see theoretically how a creature like the Maestro could work as a Doctor who villain. Doctor who has always been great at dealing with threats that are malevolent, embodied concepts, from the original celestial toymaker, to elder gods like Fenric, to the Mara in the classic series, to the Dream lord in that Mat smith episode, and even more in Big finish. The problem here is as you said with how the maestro was manifest. As a great example of a music based villain, Sweet, the villain of the buffy the vampire slayer musical episode, is flamboyant, dramatic, very musical and threatening as hell! I’ve checked out a couple of videos, and the Maestro doesn’t seem threatening, for a start because other than the change to the timeline and the nuclear war, it’s not really clear what his limits or his powers are, and his method of defeat, there just happening to be a cord which banished him, said nothing profound about music, the Maestro, Ruby, or the Doctor at all. This unfortunately makes the Disney Doctor ), to feel as far less of a worthy hero, and far more, frankly of a bit of a coward, particularly since from what I gather he completely lacks in gravitas. Unfortunately here’s where we get into hot water since here’s where I talk about ideology. This Jinks Monsoon person is apparently a professional drag queen. His inclusion here as the “embodiment of music”, especially with his emphatic insistence on being called they, (much like Beep the meep in the Christmas special), seems more an attempt to literally appropriate the essence of what music is, and actively punish the audience. Russel himself and several articles have claimed that the doctor was always “queer” because the doctor has a sense of lightness and joy about him. this seems to be directly in line with the ideology, appropriating and gendering concepts such as joy, friendship and music to take them away from people who don’t have that identity, ---- I actually went to a poetry reading last year where the poets were constantly praising: “female friendship!” or “queer joy.” As though straight people, and especially straight men were incapable of friendship or joy, (and lets not get into the mine field of the way so many race advocates demand “black” joy or friendship). Every bit of marketing surrounding Gnuti Gatwa’s Doctor has focused on him being “gay”, and “black”, indeed to answer the old man’s final point about outfits, Gatwa himself in interviews has stated he wants his doctor to wear a lot of “queer gender none conforming outfits”, which is likely why he changes clothes so much. Changing clothes is not a problem, but it does seem to go along with the fact that this Doctor, and indeed this show, seems more bent on being as much about aggressively pushing “identity”, and castigating anyone who objects, than it does about telling a story. Indeed, the Maestro character seems more to exist to be a non binary drag queen who engages in loud song and dance routines opposite Gatwa’s doctor, than he does to be a conceptual doctor who villain. Might he have worked in another role? I don’t know. Could a drag queen exist as a sympathetic character? Quite possibly. Could a non-binary person who goes by they them pronouns exist as a sympathetic character? Less likely I suspect, since every instance of non-binary I’ve encountered seems to involve castigating everyone who doesn’t call the person non-binary, (most have just usually defaulted to some degree of female anyway). (my wife read an introductory book on the concept of non-binary, since she wanted to give the idea a fair hearing, and it basically defaulted to misandry and a desire to destroy all gender). But to me, this is just more reasons why this is no longer Doctor who, and from what I’ve heard of Episode 3, apparently the castigation and cultural vandalism continues.
That Big Finish story sounds so much better than what we got in this second episode. I am so tired of getting borrowed stories that are less than the original. But I guess that's what happens when the characters' identities are more important than the characters or the story. Personally, I struggle to understand how reducing people to their identities is inclusive. It seems to me that these labels just divide us, and there's a lot of self-segregating going on. And you definitely can't have a discussion about this without suffering the consequences you mentioned above. I'm hoping the fever of this fad breaks soon and we can get back to telling stories where the story matters more than how a character identifies.-Mollie
@@mollieandtheoldman Fanfare for the common men was an okay story. It had a likable guest character, and an interesting plot following the common men through their usurpation of Beetles history through the sixties into the seventies, it also gave the villains differing perspectives which was interesting. While not one of the greats, it certainly was miles better than any Tv doctor who we've seen for a good few seasons. As to identity, unfortunately, even though judging by how well (or not), a lot of heavily identity based stories have been doing people are getting increasingly tired of this ideology. However, since the people in power in the writing and publishing industry have effectively turned it into a cult, whereby it's quite okay to lose money or receive dislike from the fans so long as they're parroting "the message!", we probably won't see any change until the culture and the people being highered to write and produce change. "Identity", is bad enough when it's tied to immutable characteristics such as a person's skin colour, sex or sexual attraction, and the idea that simply being! female or dark skinned; or for that matter male or white, automatically makes one a good person. however the problem in particular with "queer", and "non binary, and at least trans-gender as opposed to trans-sexual", is that they seem bent on active exclusion and destruction, since they're defined basically by rejecting and indeed changing everyone else, EG the way that there is an attempt to replace the ideas of "male or female", with "male presenting", or the way trans-gender advocates insist that people who are not trans refer to themselves by the frankly insulting term "cis." I'll admit where non binary is concerned I have my own issues, but when my wife investigated the idea, reading the book "they them their" by Eris Youg, in an attempt to give the idea a fair hearing, she said the book quickly descended into castigation of the idea of having two sexes in general, and of men in particular. Thus the identities Davies and Gatwa are pushing here seem to be at the extreme end of the extreme ideology, and are therefore even less likely to jell with audiences, as opposed to say Captain Jack or River song who were quirky, fun and interesting characters, who were definitely male and female respectively, and very much had their own story and personality, and weren't defined just by their adherence to a movement.
The Doctor never bi-generated ( thats just so dumb) it was the Master playing a trick , so we now have the Master pretending to be the Doctor ,and the real Doctor is ....
I do blame the lawyers. But I would have hoped that once they didn't secure those rights that they would have picked another influential musical artist for this story that they COULD get a license for their music. IMO, this story didn't HAVE to be the Beatles to tell the same story -- Old Man
I can't type what I want to say, I will be releasing a small video 'audio only' on my channel by tomorrow and hopefully I will try to keep my anger and screams to a minimum, Title would be "Why Doctor Who Runs". Title subject to change. PS: I am only 5 min in your video I will watch rest after I complete my video and it might be fun to see weather my points might overlap with yours
you forget that in rtd2 no opportunity will go unused to "ham fistedly" remind all who watch that there are few if no people in the whoniverse that do not have preferred pronouns so get used to it or stop watching. as far as having a beatles song or actually seeing dr 1 and susan , they didn't care. education is not entertaining but of course now a days neither is Whio
Not blowing us away with these stories Russell. This episode would have been a better season opener (of the 2 so far) as it hints at a song within Ruby, and it introduces some concepts like the costume changes for the time period and it showed the consequences of changes in the time-line much better than the silly Butterfly effect. With Maestro taking away the music in the world, I am reminded of The Neverending Story (book) where the nothing was taking away the hopes and dreams of people in the real world to make them easier to control. The narcissistic characters; the Doctor laughing reminds me of Burnham laughing about starting a war, are just so tone deaf!
But The Maestro looks like a lounge singer from the 50's. Or rather a drag singer from the '60's. Do I want to look at that? No. But I totally agree that it was an interesting idea and this episode is far better than the horrendous one last week.
discovery is crap..no question..however..there is also what i like to call the 'whatever' generation.. if you try to discuss or debate anything, they simply say whatever, signifying that they dont care and..more importantly..that somehow they are right and you were wrong.. defeat and blame are not two definitions that define this generation.. thankfully, my generation was a song by the who, instead of lennon wearing round glasses in a wrong era on doctor who... peace to both of you.. rocky
This is what happens when ideology constrains every aspect of your life. This episode is also confusing. Is music good or bad? With no music there is war that destroys everything, with music there is still war. The bad guy could have been an interesting counterpoint to Picard's argument against Q
That explains pretty well the concept that Mollie was talking about in the video. She wanted the entity to be a neutral thing because it seems that music can be used for both good and bad. The way this was set up - what was it saying? -- Old Man
Clearly you don't understand ideology. Considering the modern writing problem is that these people are too philosophically illiterate to land anything borderlining on ideology. It's all starting to feel like they're using AI to write their outlines. And not just on this show, but others as well. It just feels like nobody really put any thought to the construction of this story. Just a bunch of elements that don't make sense, or fit together.
I had a good time with the episode, it was much, much better than Space Babies, which was unwatchable. Jinkx Monsoon didn't bother me too much; Yes, I guess it might have been more interesting if the Maestro was a more ambiguous figure, but it was an over the top scary monster- well, "scary" Monster and that was fine.
The Beatles imposters were so cringe! A great review though. Well balanced. Dr Who now represents the shallow and pointless 'entertainment' I used to dislike. Once upon a time there was nothing like Who on TV, it was so unique and special, even when it wasn't so great. Now it doesn't seem to have a unique identity any longer, and even the messaging lacks any real meaning beyond its own fanfare. This was a decent idea, so over-cooked yet under-developed. Lacking characterisation and relying as you rightly pointed out on manufactured trauma. Complete with a Batman villain which is OK if you like OTT villains. Imagine if Sharaz Jek was played as pantomime (a reference for older fans)?
Maestro definitely felt more like a Batman character. Even the characters in Doctor Who that came close with intentional camp still feel comparatively subdued.
By intent of the plot? Looking through the 60th, it feels like another universe and meddling by super-villains. In-story continuity in this wasn't 100%, but hopefully the arc starting with the 60th's specials, including the "Tales from the TARDIS", sum up with a terrific reveal. Probably universes collapsing and the Doctor is imprisoned in the memory tardis as the 1966 Toymaker episode had the eponymous character luring people with a memory window and all... that said, this season has been bizarre at times and that's probably a factor in it.
