Pratchett Attacks Doctor Who

[GrinningManiac]

Everyone who shouts at Pratchett, read the bottom of the post

Secondly, if ANYONE can have a go at other people for poor writing...if ANYONE has absoloute authority and judgement on a good story and clever plot, it's Sir Terry.

I completley agree with him, and I always return to watch the next excting installment

Still pissed off about the random Miss-Pond-Tries-To-Shag-Doctor thing at the end of last week's episode. That was completley out of the blue, awkward to watch and didn't do anything for me, in terms of entertainment or...erghum...fan service.

 

[MortisLegio]

I never got into Doctor Who for this very reason

 

[veloper]

I brought up Star Wars because Terry said that you can hardly label Doctor Who as Science Fiction, and Star Wars is constantly clearly labelled as Science Fiction.
BTW nice coding fail.

People who don't know their genres call SW sci-fi.
For the rest of us Star wars is fantasy. Prophesy, telekenesis, princeses, swords and all.

 

[MorganL4]

Terry is referencing an old Russell penned episode here. The new series (5) is headed by Moffat (the man who wrote Blink) and is a far more creative writer. I have higher hopes for intelligence in this series, but I will have to give my final verdict at the end of it.

I LOVE STEVEN MOFFAT

Jeff: "STEVE, BREASTS!!!"

STEVE: " BREAASTS!!!!"

 

[LorChan]

I will say that Pratchett has a point... all of the examples (yeah, all two of them) are from episodes written by Russel T Davies. Any Doctor Who fan knows he's not the best writer ever to work on the series, to say the least. He wrote great characters, for the most part, and got some real emotion out of this viewer, but you could fit starwhales through those plot holes. 'Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow' makes more sense than most of the science he writes.

Because I am a) a rabid Moffat fangirl and b) in love with the two Moffat era episodes that have aired in Canada as of yet that were actually written by Moffat, I will say that Moffat will be having none of that, thank you.

Moffat.

I only have one Discworld book, and I haven't read much of it yet, but I'm loving Pratchett's style, so that's cool, too.

 

[Sindre1]

Why don't he offer them to write an episode?

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Picky little bastard

 

[RobCoxxy]

He's picking at the hospital on the moon episode?
And the reason being that it's silly? Well, sorry, Pratchett, if a hospital on the moon is only the context of the episode itself

"WHO CARES ABOUT FINDING THE MURDERER IN THE HOSPITAL?! I WANT A FUCKING REASONABLE EXPLANATION AS TO HOW THE HOSPITAL GOT THERE, UNDAMAGED, AND AT GREAT LENGTH."

Give us a fucking break.

 

[Phase_9]

He may be right, but he doesn't have a moral leg to stand on. His sci-fi is pretty out there as well, and while I agree sometimes Doctor Who can get a little deus ex machina, the show isn't really about the mysteries, it's about the characters and how they develop and interact. That is where Doctor Who shines.

But I do agree it is a fun show to watch.

 

[Nihilism_Is_Bliss]

How pointless, what an idiot.
Dissing doctor who for not making scientific sense is absolutely pointless.
Doctor who is loved for it's ridiculously corny nonsensicality, and has been for over 40 years.

Besides, The Doctor is a freakin super intelligent time traveling alien that is hundreds of years old, what the shit does Terry know about science in comparison to him?

Doctor Who is older, more popular, more famous, and is not trying to be what Pratchett's work is.
Pratchett should sit down, shut up, and respect his elders.

 

[The Stonker]

I do like Terry he's a creative writer who actually puts EFFORD (I don't know if I wrote that wrong).
He tries to explain the whole world like some of the former posters not just flick a wand and then everything is good and healthy I think he is one of the best fantasy writers of our time and he trumps The Doctor in any way but I did like the older series then I mean THE OLDER not that's today but the older ones they were funnier and whackier.

So yeah I don't like Doctor Who in what it has been made today. So go Terry!

 

[JuryNelson]

It's the Wells v. Verne thing. Someone who takes a lot of pains to come up with plausible science doesn't like people who don't.

It is a little annoying when the Doctor winds up fixing things with bright lights, nonsense words and shouting. But nobody can deny that Doctor Who is damned entertaining.

 

[The Stonker]

How pointless, what an idiot.
Dissing doctor who for not making scientific sense is absolutely pointless.
Doctor who is loved for it's ridiculously corny nonsensicality, and has been for over 40 years.

Besides, The Doctor is a freakin super intelligent time traveling alien that is hundreds of years old, what the shit does Terry know about science in comparison to him?

Doctor Who is older, more popular, more famous, and is not trying to be what Pratchett's work is.
Pratchett should sit down, shut up, and respect his elders.

Instead of editing my former post then I'm going to well "not" flame you.

Terry Pratchett is an excellent writer besides the Doc isn't as good today as he was a couple of years ago because the writers are lazy plus if you really want to go into "respect your elders" then shouldn't every single fantasy writer look at J.R.Tolkien or the medieval mythological stories? Of course not it's called creativity my chap.
Wise men open their mouths when they have something to say but foolish men always have to talk something in that direction-Plato.

So if you haven't read Pratchett then do it you won't be dissapointed except if your a gerbil.

 

[Red-Link]

Pratchett has a narrative running through a bunch of multi-hundred page novels, right? Dr. Who has a bunch of 1-hour episodes that have little to no narrative connection to the others, right? I don't know about you, but I'd rather see The Doctor solving the problems than listen to him take the whole time to go Carl Sagan on us and explain how the problem was even possible in the first place. With all the stuff that goes on in Dr. Who, explaining things with more than one sentence and a nod of the head would just take way too long. Now, having a special where they pick some things and go over the real-world theory/science... that could be fun.

 

[Fbuh]

I never really watched Doctor Who, but I take my Pratchett seriously.

 

[Flying Dagger]

Truly advanced science, would appear to us mere humans as magic, as I do believe someone somewhat more eloquently put it.

I think once you are at the point where he can travel in time, if he couldn't work out how to solve a lot of the problems faster then the audience, there'd be a bigger injustice in that.

The only gripe I have with doctor who (in the current series) is that they started foreshadowing in the first episode. And they didn't do it subtlely. The bad wolf foreshadowing was so good, and the face of B'Oh 's message to the doctor were also examples of great but subtle foreshadowing.
This only got worse last week with "I'll see you at the pandorica"

Also - Is there anyone else who reckons River Song is Jenny?

 

[Flying Dagger]

I've stopped liking Doctor Who, I just don't like the way the series tries to make each episode grandiose and powerful, trying to tug at your heartstrings and creep you out using the same techniques over and over again.

Oh this is so accurate.
they should save those "end of the world" episodes for series finales, and have the normal episodes just concern more minor issues.

The first series did this a lot better, even if the doctor was kind of crap, the storylines were much better.

In the fourth series there was more of a call for this, from the "turn left" episode, but still...

Isn't it lovely how freedom of speech goes out the window when we don't agree with the speech?

Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to agree with what he's saying.

 

[Flying Dagger]

Ive not bothered with the rebooted series, I Used to watch the Right. In Flesh and Stone, it does state that the Angels don't have to turn to stone, it's just a defence mechanism when they think someone's watching them. So they may still be stone even when someone's not watching them. (The old trick in Blink is like sticking a mirror in front of a swamp dragon)

The "eye" trick only came from the progenitor Angel that the Bishop's were chasing. The one's in Blink were scavengers, not warriors. That's why they time-rip people instead of absorbing their cortexes and snapping their necks.

The memory wiping was caused from the time-spillage (which conveniently also erases the stupid Cyberman attacking London plot from Xmas)

You can see the stone change is subconscious defence when Amy is walking through them.

Any more questions?

I believe the actual, original, explanation is that it's quantum based, they exist as stone when observed, and revert to normal when unobserved. following the principle that things do not exist unless observed.
That's scientifically sound, but is completely dicked on in the latest couple of episodes.

And the stone statues moving is awful. entirely removed what was scary about the whole premise.

snip

If they had found a many eyed bug that could see in the dark, that would have been a MUCH better ending then the one they had. Or even by filling the cavern with bats. Echolocation is a form of observation so it would have worked.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Bad editing of the quoting.

The original Angels were scavengers, and thus were quantum locked. The new Angels aren't so much quantum locked as quantum aware. That means they can get away from the quantum state if necessary...which makes them much scarier.

The many-eyed bug thing simply wouldn't work, and would be a RTD Deus Ex Machinae. Chekov's bug didn't exist to begin with, and you'd imagine the house with Sally Sparrow would have had quite a few spiders in to begin with...

 

[feycreature]

I can see the points he makes. It is definitely soft science: we start with a police box bigger on the inside than the outside which can FLY THROUGH TIME, psychic paper and a magic screwdriver. We're not going to get scientific accuracy from that. Some people prefer a more strict scientific approach, and I dig that, and just because Terry Pratchett writes fantasy doesn't mean he doesn't have a different taste in sci fi. They are different genres. I can deal with it if one person whose work I like has issues with something else I like. It's not really my problem, I'm not usually there to deal with it, and if I were watching Dr. Who with Terry Pratchett I really don't think I'd complain about a bit of angry commentary.