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John Drake

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John Drake last won the day on July 26 2023

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About John Drake

  • Birthday 01/06/1966

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    Settle
  • Interests
    Rugby League, Cinema, Doctor Who

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  1. Too many people forgetting the basic rules of this forum in here. Disagree all you want, but don't make personal attacks, or respond to them either. I can't be bothered trying to salvage it. Locked.
  2. Please stick to discussing the match in question and do not accuse match officials of being biased or corrupt or you run the risk of being immediately banned from the forum.
  3. Please stick to discussing the match in question and do not accuse match officials of being biased or corrupt or you run the risk of being immediately banned from the forum.
  4. Please stick to discussing the match in question and do not accuse match officials of being biased or corrupt or you run the risk of being immediately banned from the forum.
  5. Please stick to discussing the match in question and do not accuse match officials of being biased or corrupt or you run the risk of being immediately banned from the forum. FRIDAY 29th MARCH Hunslet v Keighley Cougars KO 19:30 SATURDAY 30th MARCH Newcastle Thunder v Workington Town KO 15:00 SUNDAY 31st MARCH North Wales Crusaders v Midlands Hurricanes KO 14:30 Oldham v Rochdale Hornets KO 15:00
  6. Please stick to discussing the match in question and do not accuse match officials of being biased or corrupt or you run the risk of being immediately banned from the forum.
  7. Disgruntled fans can find fault with anything, if they are so minded. RTD has brought other characters back from the 'classic' show, not least Sarah Jane Smith from Tom Baker's era, whose return was so successful she ended up with her own spin-off show that ran for five series until the actress who played her sadly passed away. He's brought back loads of old adversaries from the past, from the Autons (in his very first episode), Daleks, Davros, Sontarans, the Master, Cybermen, and other popular elements of its history including UNIT (whose boss is even a descendant of the original Brigadier character). Since he's returned for his second stint as showrunner, he's even gone as far as bringing back the hugely popular David Tennant and Catherine Tate to appear in three special episodes, one of which featured an old adversary, the Celestial Toymaker, last seen during William Hartnell's time. How's that for mining the past? So the return of Bonnie Langford isn't a case of one swallow, it's just part of a whole flock (or whatever a group of swallows is called... a gulp?). Still, despite all that, you will find plenty of people furiously arguing online that he's somehow disrespecting or ignoring the show's past, in an effort to make it some kind of 'progressive' caricature of itself, when anyone who has truly been paying attention to its past, would recognise it has often done things that were ahead of its time, that would nowadays be dismissed as that dreaded term 'woke', well before RTD ever got his hands on it. Given that RTD watched the show obsessively as a kid, it was possibly watching Doctor Who that gave him such a progressive outlook on life in the first place! I often think myself that so much of the criticism that surrounds the show these days is fuelled by people who have entirely missed the point of Doctor Who. It's a show about an eccentric, an oddball, an outcast, travelling round the Universe righting wrongs, fighting evil, trying to do good (the ultimate 'do-gooder', in fact), seeking out knowledge, learning new things, being unafraid of the unknown, all with a reassuring smile on their face and a big dollop of often very daft humour. I might be an old fart of 57 now, but I still watch new episodes with the enthusiasm of the kid who first started watching it in 1973 and hasn't missed an episode since. I feel a bit sad for those who can't do the same. I think they are missing out on a whole load of fun.
  8. I posted that comment to illustrate how daft a sweeping statement like 'Everything RTD does is motivated by identity politics' really is. Bringing back Bonnie Langford as a character she first played opposite Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy in the 1980s, when she was badly served by some dreadful writing, to give her a chance to play the part again with better scripts and better characterisation, is nothing to do with identity politics, and everything to do with RTD paying homage to the 'classic' series which he clearly loves and appreciates, despite some people having convinced themselves he is determined to trash or erase it from history. So much of the criticism dished out these days doesn't stand up to any scrutiny all.
  9. You’re criticising a series that hasn’t even been broadcast yet. You’ve decided to hate it before watching it. Honestly, I just don’t get that at all. If you don’t enjoy the show anymore, that’s a shame. But others do enjoy it. I thought The Giggle was fantastic, and I’ve seen every single surviving episode of the show multiple times to be able to judge it in context. But that’s just my opinion. I wouldn’t claim to speak on anyone else’s behalf but my own. Fan forums are not representative of public opinion. People who like stuff tend not to post in these places, because they can be incredibly toxic and depressing. I never go near them these days, for that very reason. Can you imagine what the uproar would have been in 1966 when they decided to invent the notion of regeneration if the internet had existed back then!? Just because something has never been done before doesn’t mean it should never be done. Doctor Who is the product of the imagination of hundreds of different writers, producers, directors and actors over 60-plus years. Every era has been different. New ideas, reinventions, constantly evolving, that’s why it’s still on air now. The show’s very first producer, Verity Lambert, trashed the original vision of the show’s creator, Sydney Newman, who had insisted there should be no ‘bug-eyed monsters’ in it, when she almost immediately commissioned The Daleks story. Thank goodness she did! Russell T Davies, and all those show runners and producers before him, have simply been following in Verity Lambert’s pioneering footsteps by keeping the show fresh, inventive, daring and full of new ideas. Pushing boundaries, not confining themselves within artificial ones. The new series features a character called The Doctor, travelling through time and space in a spaceship that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside and looks like a 1960s Police Box. That’s it. That’s still the show that Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson created in 1963. The greatest show in the galaxy.
  10. The title of the video alone is enough to put me off wasting minutes of my life watching it. I enjoy Doctor Who, in all its forms. I can even sit through Time and the Rani these days and find something to love about it, when I thought it was absolute dreck back in 1987! Honestly, if YouTube and the internet had existed in 1963, Doctor Who would have ended after its first season, sunk under a tide of criticism that the plots made no sense, the acting was poor, the lead actor fluffs his lines, they made the audience sit through three deadly dull episodes about cavemen, and two more where the cast just wandered around the set of the spaceship to save on budget. As for the historical stuff, yaaaaawnsville, where's the monsters???!!!
  11. All (well, most of) the old stuff is still available to watch, whether on DVD, beautifully remastered Bluray sets, or on demand on BBC iPlayer. Fill yer boots. Revel in the nostalgia. I do! But demanding a TV show be made in the 2020s as it was in the 1960s is just self-indulgently silly. The Beeb itself cancelled the original run of the show in 1989 because too few people were watching it and elements of it had been turned into pantomime. Without all the modern bells and whistles, and 21st century production values, Doctor Who just wouldn't be getting made at all now. There'd be no new episodes to endlessly critique and moan about on the internet, and not enough interest to sustain the kind of investment that currently goes into remastering the old shows for Bluray or animating lost episodes either. If Doctor Who doesn't reach new audiences, via deals with platforms like Disney, then eventually it'll have no audience, cos all the old fogies like me will be dead, and the BBC on its own won't be able to afford to make it either.
  12. If someone had told me back in 1989 when the BBC cancelled the show after scheduling it up against Coronation Street to kill it in the ratings, that Disney, one of the most iconic entertainment brands in the world, would one day take an active interest in funding new episodes and promoting it to new audiences around the world, I'd have thought they were having a laugh at my expense. I just don't get the criticism of Disney's involvement at all. I think we have the best of all worlds now. The BBC still retain ownership of the show, it still has a British show runner, someone who grew up with it and understands its appeal, and who also happens to be one of the finest writers in television today, and we have the sort of money being spent on it that makes anything possible on screen, without wobbly sets or dodgy special effects. On top of all that, we get to watch it when we want, as many times as we want. What's not to love?
  13. Please stick to discussing the matches in question and do not accuse match officials of being biased or corrupt or you run the risk of being immediately banned from the forum. FRIDAY 22nd MARCH Hull KR v Salford Red Devils KO 20:00 Leeds Rhinos v St Helens KO 20:00 (BBC iPlayer) Wigan Warriors v Sheffield Eagles KO 20:00 SATURDAY 23rd MARCH Batley Bulldogs v Castleford Tigers KO 15:00 Huddersfield Giants v Hull FC KO 14:00 Leigh Leopards v Featherstone Rovers KO 14:00 (Sportsman) Warrington Wolves v London Broncos KO 17:30 SUNDAY 24th MARCH Halifax Panthers v Catalans Dragons KO 15:00
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