This week’s podKast reunites Christian Cawley, Brian Terranova and James McLean as they mull over a whole host of recent news items.
We get excited by the enthusiastic press reviews for Deep Breath, have a chinwag about the audacity of the Doctor Who World Tour and celebrate 15 years of Big Finish producing Doctor Who adventures (and here’s to another 15!).
Meanwhile, we have a think about just how Steven Moffat can possibly work in a decent explanation for Peter Capaldi’s face having appeared in Doctor Who previously, before agreeing (quite reasonably!) that IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER!
Finally, we offer you a trio of recommendations, all Doctor Who and each interesting in their own right…
[powerpress]
Kasterborous PodKast Series 4 Episode 27 Shownotes
- Deep Breath Press Reviews
- Doctor Who World Tour Stuff
- Big Finish Celebrates 15th Birthday
- Classic Doctor Who on RetroTV
- More Online Doctor Who Talk
- Capaldi’s Familiar Face
- Recommendations: The Deadly Assassin
, The Unquiet Dead
, Doctor Who: The Official Quiz Book
by Jac Rayner
The Kasterborous PodKast theme tune is arranged by Russell Hugo. Sounds familiar…
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I get the concept of fiction happening in a different reality (and that’s cool), but the use of “Theory” in science, is the highest level at which a scientific idea can take. Any idea in science that has earned the word theory, is pretty much fact. Germ theory of disease- theory of gravity- theory of evolution. Hypotheses however, can be complete bull.
Someone again is playing with something plastic all the way though the show- what is it?
I think it’s Christian.
Daleks wanting to fire a plague missile on Exxilon- surely the non Dalek forces could use space-suits to collect Parrinium, then clean the stuff after it’s collected?
I’ve just bought my tickets to see Deep Breath on the big screen!- I have ‘acquired’ the scripts, but have not read them….yet
Great episode though! just wondering if I should follow your suggestions, or wait for them to appear randomly on tv. I work at a video store (yes they still exist), and often put on Doctor who DVDs, and some folks spot the show, and are quite willing to watch whole episodes, and often end up renting the DVD in question!
I’m certain I wasn’t playing with plastic. I may have typed something at one point.
Thanks for the theory/hypotheses clarification 🙂
FYI Brian, RetroTV is broadcast, so you should be able to watch it sans cable.
Commercials in Doctor Who are somewhat blasphemous to me. In reruns they’re not so bad, but I will wait an extra day to download the episode so that the first viewing is commercial free.
That being said I think it’s really important for Who and Classic Who to be broadcast. (and in America that will mean commercials) Because this way people who might not be inclined to seek it out on Netflix or wherever, can happen upon it and discover it for themselves.
Hi,
Loving the podcast, but could you guys please not export your audio with seperate mono channels (one left and one right)? I know it’s a nit-pick, but I have turned off podcasts because of this issue before (I’ll let you off because I enjoy the Podkast immensely). I’d just center all your audio so it’s mono or dual mono, all in the middle. I find it quite irritating listening to independent left and right channels, it hurts my ears. I also commute a lot and sometimes have to take one ear out to get on buses or cross roads, and then the other half of the conversation cuts out.
A small niggle, but I feel strongly, haha.
Thanks
Hi Lukee
Not totally sure how to do that right now, but we’ll look into it 🙂
Thanks Christian.
If you need any help/advise, you can always drop me an email. I have a bit of experience in the sound area…
Lukee, would you mind downloading it again. I think I’ve fixed it for you – the podKast should never have been uploaded in that form, I’m not sure how it happened :s
All fixed now though, I hope 🙂
The main reason that people object to the science in these shows is because of inconsistency. If you want to say that a massive explosion could blow the moon out of it’s orbit without being destroyed or that gravity doesn’t work the way we understand it, that’s fine. But if so, then you have to live with the consequences. And they don’t. They bash around the way that mass or gravity works to make an episode work and then within that very episode they go right back to the way we understand gravity works to begin with. This really destroys suspension of disbelief. SF shows already have a burden to overcome and when you violate the rules you set out for yourself then why should anyone take it seriously?
Contrary to what many think, the laws of physics don’t change willy-nilly. There are places where they may behave strangely (such as near massive objects). That polar magnetic shift that you mention doesn’t violate the laws of science.It also doesn’t shuffle them around. But when we discover something that “violates” the laws of science, it doesn’t violate them at all. It simply means that our understanding of those laws is incomplete. To put it in a Doctor Who mode when 4th Doctor in The Robots of Death opines that Terran bumblebees violate the laws of aerodynamics and yet they fly, that’s rubbish. They don’t violate anything, we just don’t understand it all yet. But further understanding doesn’t invalidate everything that came before. Whatever the explanation turns out to be, it has to include all the other things we have observed.
Further science (except when it comes to quantum particles) isn’t about perception or personal interpretation. It’s why we use devices and gauges to measure things, not the end of our thumbs. The whole point of science is that is observable, measurable and repeatable. Anyone, anywhere, regardless of culture or language should be able to repeat your results because these laws are universal. Because without them acting as they do, the universe doesn’t work.
Finally, I think a lot of this comes down to lazy writing and not bothering to actually understand how this works or bothering to listen to the consultants that are hired to advise you on science and technology. I have no problem with fudging a crucial fact to make a story work. A lot of times writers get facts wrong that aren’t important to the story just because they can’t be bothered to get it right. Many writers and critics think it doesn’t matter because unless you are a scientist you won’t know or understand it anyway. That’s rubbish thinking. I’m a historian by training and logic and consistency does matter.
Interesting point. I would say I don’t think it’s always simply lazy writing. I find some of the Japanese fiction is a lot happier to negate science and realism if it ramps up the effect of a scene. Western drama does the same in a way, but I tend to feel it’s never really done in a way where the negation benefits the drama of the scene, just simply to reward a better explosion.
So I think sometimes the truth is lost to the moment. The opening of the Eleventh Hour is an example. There is no way the Doctor could hold on to the exterior as it crashes down towards London. The truth is negated for the excitement of the scene. It’s not lazy writing, just the writer gambling the moment is more important than the fact, and that if the moment is powerful enough, the audience won’t consider the facts – and some won’t even realise. Did it work for me? No, not really, it felt silly and trivial compared to the large explosive cliffhanger, but probably not for everyone. We could go one episode back and away from Moffat’s rather daft opener back to the 11th falling through the skylight and surviving. That payoff for the moment worked for me, but didn’t work for many. In both cases I don’t doubt Moffat nor Davies wasn’t aware it’s an unrealistic moment of science betrayed for the excitement within a scene.
Of course the fan can talk about energy fields around the TARDIS keeping him boyant to its proximity or some mcguffin, or that the 11th Doctor’s Time Lord body is far tougher than a human and even then he looked surprised he survived… but ultimately it’s all an excuse, but then ultimately, all fiction is an excuse, an excuse to indulge, so really there’s nothing there that can never really be explained away, and maybe that’s half the fun.