Radio Free Skaro #202 – Nothing At The Top Of The Stairs
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The news of a fourth series of Torchwood becoming a reality dropped like a bomb in the Doctor Who fandom world, as many had written off the idea once FOX stepped away from the table. With Warren unavailable, Steven and Chris are joined by Chip from the Two-minute Time Lord podcast to talk about Torchwood, cover the latest episode of Doctor Who (Gareth Roberts’ “The Lodger”), as well as the news of the week. Will this be another Planet of the Dead, or will Gareth Roberts redeem himself in the eyes of the RFS gang, particularly the relentlessly unforgiving Chris? What does our esteemed guest think of the latest Who? |
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6 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro #202 – Nothing At The Top Of The Stairs”
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Doctor Who: Radio Free Skaro 
Can I just say you have the best theme tune of any podcast ever. Dr Who meets Hawaii 5-0!
I liked the episode. Very different, and yet it wasn’t jarring. Awesome next week trailer!
I have to say that I agree the season so far has not felt like its been 11 episodes. This season has been very fast paced.
By the way, guys, the thing you all missed in your discussion of the Pandorica trailer is that the Doctor was using a #9/#10 sonic screwdriver and not his own.
Hmm… (let the conspiracy theories begin!)
Whoops… Never mind… That was from before it had gotten destroyed in the first place.
My bad! (I’ll go stand in a corner now.)
Hey Three Who Rule!
I was driving along today and for some reason this just kind of came to me, out of the blue, and so I thought I’d put it up here and get reactions from you guys and the community about this.
Based on TOS Dr. Who episodes, and (since RTD said he basically counted novels as canon and SM has not rejected this) novels have collectively described a TARDIS as a vehicle which crafts a pocket dimension “bubble” around it, kind of like (I guess) how starships in Star Trek project a shield bubble.
Now, the chief difference between having a shield around something and being contained in a pocket dimension is that a shielded object is still “there” but an object in another dimension, from the perspective of someone in this dimension, is “not there”. It isn’t present.
By way of example, I live in Florida. If for some reason I wanted to blow up the Kremlin building in Moscow, simply creating an explosive and detonating it in my back yard wouldn’t have any kind of impact on the Kremlin building, simply because of the utter non-presence of the building at the location of the explosion. (Or, as was well-put in a Monty Python sketch once, “It’s a clear case of non-presence.”)
The reason I mention this is that, both in the classic series and the new one, it seems like writers just don’t like to think clearly about this. By any practical definition, a TARDIS that’s up and running normally should be unassailable. The entry point interface (i.e. the “Police Box” or roman column or whatever) is, if you like, “in front of” the TARDIS.
And going back to my Star Trek “shielded starship” analogy, if you discharge weapons at a shielded ship, all that happens is you hit the shields. The impact (no pun intended) is felt by the shield emitters first, and the generators second. So if, for the sake of argument, you just kept firing until the shields went down, you’d have a mostly un-damaged starship at this point.
Likewise, if you attack the so-called “exterior”, the worst you should be able to achieve is that you’d knock the chameleon circuit “emitter” off-line, and maybe in theory you’d damage or kill the chameleon circuit system itself. But why would you see the rest of the TARDIS take damage? Why would it be buffeted around, etc.?
And moreover — this is probably what brought this to mind in the first place — how is it that this other ship generating the illusion of a second story, et al, would have the capacity to have any kind of impact on the Doctor’s TARDIS? There’s nothing to suggest it was inside the Doctor’s TARDIS’ self-generated pocket dimension.
Also, if we take, say, Logopolis, into account, then we can see that even putting one TARDIS inside another TARDIS doesn’t (malevolent intent notwithstanding) cause problems with the first TARDIS’ operations, or ability to occupy the space it’s in, etc.
Sorry, I know this probably seems stupid to mention, but it bugs me and, just like having a show where say a tree in character’s yard has variously different kind of tree leaves on it than it should, this irritates me just the same.
Mike