28 replies to this topic

[Nuallain]

Earlier this year, the BBC posted a series of webisodes (which they originally called Vortexts before changing to the much dafter TARDISodes) on the web and downloadable to cell phones. Each TARDISode is a one minute prequel to episode about to air. Each one went up the minute the previous Doctor Who episode finished on BBC One, except for the first one which went up a few weeks before New Earth aired.

I thought this could be a thread for Sci-Fi viewers to see and discuss the TARDISodes without fear of running into spoilers on the BBC site. I'll post direct links here each week. First up:

TARDISode One: New Earth


So there you go: Hospitals. Talking cats (in wimples). Grateful patients. Screams in the dark...

What do you think?

[Eegah]

The first thing that comes to mind is the mysterious "Academy" from Firefly, though I'm sure that's not quite it. Very nice make-up job on the cat people.

[Ember Keelty]

My first thought is that they're replacing the dying people with clones or androids or something. I don't know why, it's just the feeling I get. And, yes, the make-up is AMAZING.

[Barrymore Yorke]

This is still my very favourite TARDISode. I love cats, but cats (in wimples) (can't forget the parentheses!) freak me out, maaaan!

[Bayta]

Hospitals! Cats! Talking cats (in wimples!)

Is it Friday yet?!?!?!?!?!

ETA: Thanks, Nuallain, for the direct link. Last time I was on the BBC site, I was spoiled horribly. I stay away now. So, I really appreciate the link.

Edited by Bayta, Sep 25, 2006 @ 11:25 AM.

[BlueOwl]

I was getting a strong Twilight Zone vibe. Specifically, that episode (was it called "Eye Of The Beholder"?) with the woman who spends the entire episode with her face covered in bandages while recovering from surgery to "cure" her hideously deformed appearance, and we find out at the end that she's a conventionally beautiful women on a planet of pig people. I'm sure they're going to go that route specifically, but it still seems like a Twilight Zone-ish "warped future with a shocking surprise twist of some sort" type story.

Bayta
Hospitals! Cats! Talking cats (in wimples!)

So that's what those Flying Nun type outfits are called, "Wimples"? Are they a type of religious garb, specifically, or just some kind of weird English nurses' outfit? (I've seen them before, I think in old paintings & representations of hospital-type settings).

I haven't even tuned into SciFi since the end of Season One, am I to assume SciFi is not using these "TARDISodes" as on-air promos for Dr. Who? They would seem to be natural ready-made teasers for each week's episode, unless maybe Billie Piper & Chris Eccle-, sorry, I mean, "this David Tennent guy", never appear in any of them. I can kind of see how they might want their on-air promos to occasionally include the actual stars of the show.

Edited by BlueOwl, Sep 25, 2006 @ 12:00 PM.

[MatthewMcIntyre]

So that's what those Flying Nun type outfits are called, "Wimples"?

The wimple is the headpiece, the whole outfit is the habit. I think the association is that hospitals were originally religious institutions (possibly this is why senior nurses are still referred to as sisters).

In Chaucer's general prologue to The Canterbury Tales he describes the Nun as follows:

Ful semyly hir wympul pynched was,
Hire nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas,
Hir mouth ful smal, and therto softe and reed;
But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;

Basically he's having a go at her for pinching back her wimple so that people can see her face.

Online Canterbury Tales here.

[Eegah]

TARISode two: Tooth and Claw

http://www.bbc.co.uk...d...wm=1&nbwm=1

It really threw me with the meteorite and "300 years later." The rest was pretty ho-hum and nothing we couldn't have guessed from all the werewolf pimping in the preview.

[Nuallain]

Yeah, sorry. I was moving house at the weekend and the only internet cafe I could find insisted that TWoP didn't exist for some reason.

So, slam ... 300 years later... See Osama walking, See Osama spooked, See Osama see the wolf... munchety crunchety..

[BlueOwl]

I was thinking it kinda looked like Leonardo DaVinci, but Ossama's good too.

[FrightenedAuk]

Are we up to three now? This link should work, I think.

[Mack the Spoon]

Huh. Not very exciting, IMO. Obviously, being DW and all, not boring, but... meh. No Giles? No SJ? No K-9?

Edited for spoiler-tags, just in case.

Edited by Mack the Spoon, Oct 7, 2006 @ 5:12 PM.

[Eegah]

Weird, that was a lot like the beginning of an episode rather than an unconnected little teaser like the last two. Makes me wonder how the actual episode starts.

[FrightenedAuk]

Personally, I'm just surprised Mickey can't get into the Torchwood servers. Doesn't he have the password to the entire internet?

[Queen Gwenyvere]

The password to the Torchwood servers is apparently not "buffalo."

[DianaD]

Maybe it's wolf :)

[Nuallain]

argh!

Bit late, but still:

The Girl in the Fireplace

It's yer traditional horror film 'oooh... it's you. You gave me a fright there for a second. What's with the big butcher's knife? Wha... WHA... ARRTRTRKJTGRKJTGKG~~!' moment. Only, like, on a spaceship.

[SmileyMan]

FrightenedAuk: Personally, I'm just surprised Mickey can't get into the Torchwood servers. Doesn't he have the password to the entire internet?

Not since Goddard changed it.

[Nuallain]

Rise of the Cybermen

Hundreds of thousands are missing, eccentric billionaire up to something fishy. Mickey Smith... man with a van?

[rackstraw]

Mickey Smith... man with a van?

And who is this Gemini bloke anyway?

[FrightenedAuk]

Age of Steel

I can't tell what the hell is going on there even having seen "Rise of the Cybermen."

Bet Mickey's useless in this alternate dimension, though, where "Buffalo" not only is no longer the password to the entire internet (possibly excepting Torchwood), but likely never was. Unless that's one of those cross-dimensional constants. I mean it was the entire internet.

[Promethea]

I know everyone always says that, but I never got that impression, about 'buffalo'. I just thought it got him access to UNIT's secret server, how did the "entire internet" come into it?

[FrightenedAuk]

Eh. Mostly just because it's funny. But the show did go a little over the top with the ease with which Mickey accessed, like, launch codes simply by repeatedly entering the same password in multiple places. No matter what Mickey was trying to do, Nine said, he should just keep typing "buffalo." We simply extrapolated logically that if "buffalo" was some kind of master key for the UNIT servers, that would have had a dozen layers of different, rotating, 16-character letters-and-numbers no-dictionary-words-permitted pass protection, that it must also be the key to everything else on the internet.

[Promethea]

Ah. Gotcha.

[rackstraw]

The Idiot's Lantern

Television will rot your mind...

[Nuallain]

The Impossible Acting, er, Planet!

I should whack a huge disclaimer on this one that neither of the two actors in this one appear in the episode itself. 'Cos they? Is stinky, stinky actors.

Edited by Nuallain, Nov 13, 2006 @ 11:08 AM.

[BlueOwl]

What does the squid-faced thing at the end say? I couldn't make it out. (I assume the episode itself will tell us what that light bulb thing that it's holding is.)

I'm not sure what possible connection to the episode this scene could have if neither of the actors appear in the actual episode, the whole thing seems to be setting up this "Captain's" voyage to that..., what, planet with a black hole power source? (Gallifrey? I doubt it. At least, I sincerely hope not.)

[Queen Gwenyvere]

BlueOwl, the squid-faced thing, called an Ood, says "And the Beast shall rise from the Pit."

[Eegah]

I am so excited for this episode after hearing all the Brits talking about how fantastic it is, and the Cthuhlu creature has me very excited.