The way that Doctor Who is designed, though, is that everything in show is canon. Nothing gets handwaved by the fandom until the show itself handwaves it, such as the half-human aside in the Eighth Doctor movie. So, you have to use in-show explanations as to why you would handwave what is now canon. The Classic Doctor vs Remembered Doctor neatly ties up all the recent garbage being made canon with an in-show explanation, including Moffat's weirdness that began with Clara. I actually like Capaldi but I'm willing to shuttle him into the rebooted continuity as the Remembered Doctor's first regeneration.

Also, if Matt Smith is indeed the 13th Doctor in reality, consider that the Tennet's Doctor took a really long time to regenerate into Smith. The Valeyard was said to be plucked out of the time stream essentially during this particular regeneration (between the 12th and final regeneration) so the Classic Master had all the time in the world to perform some shenanigans to help create him during this time offscreen.

 

We were literally just talking about the availability of Doctor Who merch in the US so that should of been obvious based on the context.

I should be more specific in that regard. While the company as a whole still exists the one nearest to where I live and where my grandparents live have both closed down. Also the one nearest me didn't have a lot of Doctor Who stuff even when it was open. It was mostly just a small display of various Sonic Screwdrivers and not much else. I kinda regret not getting the Master's Laser Screwdriver when I had the chance to. The one over by my grandparents is a much bigger store that also had a huge library of Doctor Who DVDs. I actually bought the 5 Doctors there. I've found some DVDs at Wal Mart but those are all modern seasons, they never seem to carry any of the classic era releases. Barnes and Noble was the only place that I seen have them in store. Otherwise we've ordered most our classic era DVDs online. That store also had a lot more merch than just Sonic Screwdrivers. They also had an entire wall of randomly assorted Pop Vinals with a special display separate for just the Doctor Who Pops. For being a book store they didn't really use the bigger store for selling more books, I think both stores were about the same size if you only counted the actual sections of books in the store, but there was a huge difference in space for things that weren't books.

And I have bought a few actual books from them as well. SHADA, both Dirk Gently books (from two different Barnes and Nobles), several of the Series of Unfortunate Events before they went out of business and then I had to order the last 4 online. I only bought 4 sonic screwdrivers and that one DVD from them that were my non-book items.

I live in a small town and comic shops have never done well here. There was one I went into ONCE and in closed down a week later. Another one I went into a few times, also ended up closing down after a very short run.

Part of the problem they were both in small very secluded locations making it very hard to find, there was no clear sign advertising the business. So it's very easy to walk right past it even if you knew what you were looking for. The more successful stores I've seen in other cities typically have big open displays at the front windows which makes them super easy to spot. While it's still usually a small store it's not helpful to drawn in customers if no one can see the store from the street.

And yet another comment about window displays... I never thought to look in Hot Topic. The only one I know of people call it the emo teen store cause the style of clothing they always have on display up front is emo teen punk girls. I think I went in there once in high school but I don't really remember much of it. I mean I had switched at the time so all I really remember is seeing the outside the store then suddenly having a spiked bracelet on my wrist.

 

Jeez dude, that's kind of rude. Maybe he didn't see the previous conversation?

 

1. It was literally quoted in the same post he was responding to.

2. People on this forum have a nasty habit of intentionally ignoring context in my posts just to pick fights with me. I may have been wrong in this instance but based on past history can you really blame me for automatically assuming the worst when I see someone yet again, ignoring context? That's literally how every argument I've ever been in starts and I refuse to fall into that trap again.

 

Thanks. It's a long thread I just got into. SaberPrime mentioned Canada and his profile location didn't say USA, so I took a step back from assuming anything.

None of this was known to me.

 

I can understand how maybe 2 wasn't known to you but after going back and looking at who started the conversation, how did you not know about 1? Look how the conversation stated.

You had mentioned the US market in this post.

Dr Kain's original response to your post which also mentions the US.

My response to both your posts which again both mentioned the US market.

And your response where you ask me if I live in the US. Dude, not only were the quotes plainly visible in the post you were responding to but you freaking wrote the post I was responding to. So what you're trying to tell me is that you're not self aware of your own writing?

I didn't even realize this when I responded to this the first time but as I just pointed out, he started the conversation to begin with.

There's a possibility that if someone else had made those posts that the person could of been on his ignore list which would also mean the quotes in my post wouldn't be visible but clearly he was in a conversation with you, both quotes would of been plainly visible, his own and yours which he had already seen before.

I have dissociative amnesia; I literally can't remember most of the crap I wrote and have to re-read my own posts just to get a sense of what I was talking about most of the time. How is it I'm more of aware of what I write then the two of you are?

Seriously all he had to do was either remember his own damn writing or read the quotes that were clearly visible in my post. There's no excuse to not be aware of what I was talking about if he did either of those two things.

 

https://twitter.com/TheCyberdevil/status/1481278323833638918

 

So many more I wanted done, hopefully this is just a temporary stop and we will get more when they get more funding. I wanted complete Troughton sets.

 

A shame, especially since The Highlanders and The Wheel in Space are very important stories for Troughton's era and should have been done over The Macra Terror.

Or who knows, maybe something miraculous happened that they don't actually need to animate the majority of stories anymore.

What I don't get is BBC America. Are they not part of the BBC?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't that the first on screen appearance of the Great Intelligence? I may be confusing it because the first re-introduction episode of the modern era also involved snowmen but I vaguely remember hearing some where that the Great Intelligence was originally introduced some time during the Troughton era.

I might actually have to check that one out if it is the episode I'm thinking of. The Great Intelligence appeared in a few Matt Smith episodes, seemingly changing and evolving into different forms each time he was in an episode. Would be interesting to see his actual first appearance in the classic era.

 

Yes Snowmen was the first appearance of the great intelligence and the Web of fear was the second. One of the same characters reappears and they make him look older as it's supposed to be decades after the Abominable Snowmen.

 

You know, all you had to do when he asked if you lived in the USA was say “yeah,” and move on with your life. But you just couldn’t do that, could you?

 

And all he had to do was remember his own post so what's your point?

Let me ask you something... if I asked you who "he" is wouldn't you get annoyed as well? Clearly I already know who you're talking about and if I had forgotten I can very easily scroll up and see who it is which I actually just did because my memory is horrible and I legitimately forgot his name. But why would it ever be YOUR responsible to tell me information that I can easily look up for myself in 2 seconds?

For that matter you didn't have to respond since we've already moved on but you couldn't let it go could you. Take your own advice.

 

The Flux has got to be the worst written storyline I have ever finished and that's saying something. Do I need to use spoiler tags here or what?

Anyway I finally watched the last few episodes and I have to say the pacing of the plot as a whole and the complete bullshittery to leave open ended questions is just... terrible, terrible writing.

Who are these so called aliens that were the big threat? They serve time, they work for time? I mean what the fucking hell was their entire reason for being, because they come off as simple plot components designed to push the plot along instead of actually doing anything. They get the Doctor and then they don't even try to kill her, just toy with her.

Then there's the fucking Division, what a waste that entire plot idea was. Oh, we're the anti-time lords, we interfere everywhere and recruit aliens from the entire universe so that we can CONTROL all of time and space or something like that. I mean, seriously, that's the big deal?

Dog Alien is the only one of his kind ever shown so when they say they killed his entire species there is no weight to that situation, not like in older Who era where you get to know more than one representative of the species before they wipe them out.

Time is also a really stupid notion, I half expected it to be Sacha Baren Cohen from Through the Looking Glass with how NOT threatening it actually turned out to be. And I'm calling it now, the entire fucking planet Time is probably where the fob watch wound up with her 'memories' in it so Time is actually just her memories trapped in a place until she's 'ready to get them'. Holy fucking Christ, I could write a more coherent narrative in my sleep, and I think I have on a few occassions.

Lest we forget the fact that her companions were sent away by Weeping Angels, but she could get them fucking back! How the fuck is that not a huge middle finger to the entire situation with the Ponds? The entire point of Smith's episode was that when the Weeping Angels send somebody away he can't get them back, he can't rescue them, he can't even speak to them or meet up with them via time travel to their new lives because all of their memories were erased or something along those lines. And now, what, these Division Angels can just blink people around in time and space and it's possible to rescue them.

Also, how the fuck is that painted message to the dog alien not faded as all fuck to be completely illegible after over 100 years? There is no fucking way just painting a huge message on the ground is going to last from 1904-2021 so people can actually see it. What a fucking dumb idea, I would have at least thought they'd put more thought into how to communicate with the Dog Alien then just, oh, we'll paint this giant message on the Earth visible from fucking Space and nothing and nobody will ever question it, erase it, and time itself won't erode it to non-existence by the time of 2021.

The Grand Serpent, what a fucking joke, he's been working behind the scenes to corrupt Unit or Control Unit since it was born? And he doesn't know what the fucking Tardis is when John Pertwee's Doctor had one throughout his entire time working with Unit? Ok so he first sees it before Pertwee would have showed up, but after the fact he should have been able to put two and two together and, I don't know, thought the fucking Tardis they found in the little village in 1967 might be a threat to his plan.

By the way, they didn't flat out say it, but when they stopped the anit-matter did they reverse its effects and restore the entire universe? FUCK THAT BS! That's not how Matter and Anti-Matter work, hell Captain Kirk encountered an entire Anti-Matter universe in an original Star Trek episode and the minute anything from Anti-Matter came in contact with Matter that's it, the entire universe should have been fucking blinked out. Any self-respecting science fiction writer should know that, the properties of Anti-Matter may be unknown in our world, but to say it can be controlled and used like a fucking bomb or something to just destroy whole galaxies and then can be FUCKING reversed.

Ok, so I know I haven't watched the New Years special yet, and I know I come off really angry and ranting here, to which I say it's warranted. This hack of a writer couldn't come up with decent Science Fiction if they paid him... and they are paying him.

Then you've got the fact that Dog alien was one of her Companions when she worked for Division, I mean how long lived is this race supposed to be? Because dogs don't live that fucking long and even if it were a humanoid it shouldn't be able to live for millions of years or whatever.

Anyway, that was The Flux in a nutshell, a poorly conceived irritating piece of shit that totally fucked over quite a lot. I was open minded enough to think it were possible to accept this new idea into the Doctor's mythos, but seriously, if this is the best they can come up with they are full on shitting themselves.

Oh, and that warning about their Master... yeah, The Master ain't dead, he'll be back, guaranteed they'll cram him into the last story for Jodie's regeneration and completely somehow cock it up even more.

At this point I think they should just let the ongoing storyline die for a bit, put it back up on the shelf until somebody competent comes along to make it better, or at least not royally fuck everything up by barely answering the questions they create during the storyline.

Oh well, New Years Special to watch and I'm all caught up until whatever POS story they concoct for the next adventure.

And am I imagining it or was that whole tunnels under London thing with time portals totally unnecessary? I mean couldn't Cardiff have served and at least tie in the Torchwood mythos? Yeah, probably not a good idea, why let them fuck up Torchwood too.

 

Yeah, the Weeping Angel thing was odd but I just wrote it off as being some timey whimey loop hole. That's the least of the show's issues.

 

I have to correct something here. To over simplify the situation as just the Doctor can never rescue anyone a Weeping Angel sends back in time is completely wrong. The Doctor has done that, multiple times in almost every episode the Weeping Angels have been in. The Pond's situation was unique because they weren't just sent back in time once, they were sent back in time a second time after creating a massive paradox.

If anything in the episode was breaking the rules it's that Weeping Angles touching someone twice now instead of just sending them back in time again it dusts them. They don't survive. If anything is a massive F you to the Ponds it's that because this would mean the happy ending of the Ponds living happy lives together in the past after leaving the Doctor never happened, they would of both just died, dusted, right then and there. But I kind of hope this is some new ability Division Angels have that isn't meant to be a retcon to the Ponds departure.

Realistically I'd agree with you but it's not like we haven't seen this done in time travel stories before. Doc's letter to Marty in Back to the Future, the idea that the U.S. post office would actually hold onto that letter and deliver it to where Marty was standing is complete bull shit. For one thing the post office only delivers to a posted address. They'd never even accept a letter addressed to "some guy standing the middle of some random street" Even if you couldn't get them to accept such a letter, it'd NEVER get delivered. The thing would probably end up in the same place that children's letters to Santa Clause end up. We're suppose to believe that people in the post office not only saved the letter but actually took bets on if anyone named Marty would actually be there when they tried to deliver it? Not only that but paper also erodes with time. The Declaration of Independence is kept in an air tight case and despite what movies would have you believe it CAN'T be removed from that case. It would crumple and turn to dust if anyone tried to actually handle the real copy because it's so old that keeping in that air tight sealed case is the only way to actually preserve it's current condition. Basically... considering it was raining when Doc's letter was delivered it would never survive for Marty to ever be able to read the damn thing.

You kind of have to use some suspension of disbelief here and ignore how implausible delivering a message from the past to the future would actually be or apply that same criticism to every story that has ever done this.

How about in the 50th Anniversary when the Doctor scratches a massage into a support beam for someone to find in the future. Even though he knew the tower would still exist in the future, what if someone else were to come alone and scratch something else into the support beam or sand it out? Even if his message did survive what if no one ever looked there? The message was found pretty much because the script told her to look in that exact spot. She had no other reason to look there not knowing that the Doctor had scratched a message there. She didn't even know if the Doctor was in the past or the future. So it's a little too convenient that the message not only lasted that long but that the person the message was intended for happen to look in that exact spot almost immediately.

OK you're technically correct here but you some how came to the right conclusion for all the wrong reasons.

The Grand Serpent was barely even established as a character in the Flux. I totally forgot that he had any connection to Vinder. It was never clear what his plan even was. There was honestly no reason for him to even be in the story at all. He never actually did anything. He was just sort of there and served no purpose. Now he does have an interesting way of killing his victims and in a different story that could actually develop him more as an actual character he might have been a really cool villain but he was completely waisted in the Flux.

As for the stuff about him not recognizing the TARDIS... That scene where he first sees it seemed to be taking place in Pertee's first episode. The man in U.N.I.T. mentioned that they had just found it in the middle of a field next with some poor fellow passed out next to it which is how Pertwee first appeared. Though if I remember correctly, I believe Troughton also had met with U.N.I.T. before so they should already have some familiarity with the TARDIS before Pertwee showed up. Of course even during Pertwee's era there were some soldiers who were new to U.N.I.T. and didn't know about the Doctor so that all still checks out.

What doesn't check out is the fact that Vinder immediately recognized what the TARDIS was despite never actually seeing one before. It was something he had only read about in his training, and the Grand Serpent being from the same word, in the same military that Vinder was a part of would have also had the same training. So how it that Vinder was able to recognize the TARDIS but the Grand Serpent was totally oblivious to what it was? And if he was controlling U.N.I.T. the entire time even before Lethbridge ever met the Doctor, then he also should have already been familiar with the TARDIS and not only that but the Doctor should have also known who the Grand Serpent was. How did they both work together in U.N.I.T. for YEARS and not once ever interact with each other? Especially given the oddity of the Grand Serpent never seeming to age which was brought up several times, you'd think the Doctor would hear about someone not ageing and want to meet this person to investigate.

It's also never freaking explained how the Grand Serpent ended up on Earth in the first place. How is traveling through time? For what purpose?

Even if he knew what the TARDIS was, he didn't know who the Doctor was either so why would he view the Doctor as a threat to his plans if he doesn't even know who the Doctor is... but again... he worked within U.N.I.T. along side the Doctor for YEARS and some how they never once came into contact with each other? The only two non-humans within U.N.I.T. who both have reputations of having non-human abilities and neither of them ever knew the other existed? How the F?

Um... did you just totally for the "Alien" part of that? You're trying to apply how long a quadrupedal Earth dog lives to a bipedal alien that just happens to look like a dog. By that logic aliens that look human shouldn't live any longer than the average human does... but they're aliens, they don't actually have our biology. A lot of aliens in science fiction are able to live for millions of years and they just give the excuse, they're aliens, their biology is different than ours. Which actually makes some real world sense. Different species actually do have different life spans. Sea Turtles can live a long ass amount of time in the wild. A human, a rat, and a turtle all born at the same time, the human will out live the rat and the turtle will out live the human, assuming they all die of natural causes in old age and aren't killed by other means before then.

Plus... the Doctor is a TIME TRAVELER! Division has access to gawd damn time travel! Who's to say that the Dog alien even actually lived for millions of years or whatever. His time with the Jo Martain Doctor could have only been 15 years ago from his perspective. There's no telling what time period he was originally from, when Division dropped him off, or what happened because we don't even know the full story of what happened.

Unfortunately... I actually agree with you here... I really hope this turns out to be wrong but anything involving the Timeless Child has been complete garbage and instead of reconning that shit that even I hate and can't defend, he doubled down on that nonsense in the Flux and now I'm totally expecting it to come back and bite us in the ass once more when the regeneration story comes. Honestly the Timeless Child is fucking things up so bad that I don't think even Russel T. Davis coming back can fix it. And it doesn't matter who the 14th Doctor is if the history of the show is damaged beyond repair before we even get there. Chibnal should have been fired and replaced after the failure that is the Timeless Child, still show the following New Years special because it was already finished and isn't really relevant to the Timeless Child BS, but then don't do series 13 without a new show runner. They had a chance to get rid of him and fix it but because Chibnal is allowed to finish his third series before a new show runner takes over he's never going to be able to reverse this shit once Chibnal's done with it.

 

1) I haven't seen it in a long ass time, but I don't recall the Ponds being hit twice by the Weeping Angels. I may need to re-watch some Smith era.

2) The Back to the Future Movies are not the same as the Doctor Who Universe, and there is a huge difference because it wasn't 100 years or more that Doc's message had to get to Marty, he left his letter in 1885, then to 1955 where Marty was is roughly 70 years, give or take a few days, and we don't know if Doc treated the paper with anything he had in the Delorean from 2015 that would have preserved the material, since it did kind of look like it had been laminated or something from what little I can recall of the scene.

The message for the Alien Canine was regular paint bought off the shelf, though granted it doesn't really match the period they were aiming for because those paint cans looked a little too 2020s for a scene meant to be in the early years of the 19th century. I'm fairly certain Paint Cans didn't look the same as they did back then, but I'm getting off on a tangent, the point is, that message was more of a blatant BS moment than what Doc did for Marty. Also it wasn't the Post Office, it was Western Union, I think that was a courier service or something if I'm not mistaken. The point is, my argument was not about how they left a message, but how lazy the writer made it.

3) The Grand Serpent is a complete non-entity I agree, and the fact that they just imprisoned him behind a locked door of Time just screams recurring villain idea. That ultimately falls flat because it would have been better if they never bothered to be included, I mean realistically the Sontarans shouldn't have needed him, but since Chibnal got the Doctor and Company to kick them off the planet in their foothold situation during the second episode of this convoluted mess they needed someway to get them back. And it was another instance of lazy ass plot contrivances, for one thing how does UNIT even have the power to override the shield around the Earth? Really piss poor writing.

4) I see, but the point still stands they did not ANSWER any questions about the Dog as a species or as Companion of the past iteration of the Doctor, the guy disappeared for an entire episode and didn't really serve much of a point. He could live as long as they fucking want, but if they don't explain it to the audience we're left with more asinine and pointless questions about a character we are meant to feel for when we've only just been introduced to him and there isn't enough reason to give two tail wags about the ruddy creep. It doesn't help that the first we were introduced to him is the opening stinger where he's left the Doctor in a death trap meant to kill her and yet why would he do such a thing if he was a former Companion? The guy is way too contradictive in how he's portrayed to be of any real use.

 

No offense dude, but your posts are the definition of
I am fairly certain that people just miss stuff when reading through your posts.

I'm not telling you how to post, but if people are regularly missing context in your posts, it probably isn't on them.

 

My point still stands that the idea of ANY courier service actually taking a letter addressed to "some dude standing in the middle of a road" realistically doesn't make any sense. You also have to take into consideration that in the 1800's there were no roads yet. People back then wouldn't even understand Doc's directions to deliver the letter in the first place since the road it was being delivered to wouldn't exist yet. Realistically they would of just laughed in his face and and had him committed or something. Maybe they'd take the letter just to humor him and get him off their property but it would more likely be tossed in the trash the second Doc left the building rather than saved for any actual delivery.

I'm not ignoring the rest of your points, I actually agree with 1, 3, and 4. There's just nothing more I could add that hasn't already been said so there's no just no point in addressing them directly.