Vee

That was my point. The dialogue was not uncharacteristic of the Carlotta I knew. She was religious and devout but extremely open and welcoming.

Carlotta was very gay-friendly going back to the '90s. Patricia Mauceri hardened her heart and her faith in the intervening years. She refused to play Carlotta - and while IIRC, the scene was more broadly comic than it had to be, nothing about it was out of character for Carlotta. Certainly not the line she quotes as refusing to have said - with Carlotta saying she knows her Bible and what it says and what her church believes, but she's going to choose for herself. That was absolutely her character. I loved her on the show and still miss her as Carlotta, but she's full of [!@#$%^&*] and she deserved to be let go.

The Doctor and Clara on location - in costume - in Cardiff. With video. I can't hear much of anything, but it looks like it's near the regeneration - Clara still has the same outfit from TOTD, while Twelve is in his new duds - and she is finally coming around. Quite a lot of a scene, bit of a silent film. Here's the crazy part - word is that after Clara finishes her phone call, Capaldi supposedly says I think it'd be a mistake to show it, but it is a ballsy idea.

Looks gorgeous.

Oh, my God.

Excerpted from Doctor Who Magazine, in a new interview with superfan Peter Capaldi:

Oh, God, that's the early teen Kevin with the creepy doll face. Look at little Erin and Chris McKenna. The show circled and circled the Max/Asa relationship so many ways, for so many years - he loves him, he hates him, his father hated Asa, he's Asa's son, he's pretending to be his son, their families were at war, they are family, etc. I never understood all the permutations of that. It was a deep thing for them. It's amazing and ridiculous that less than ten years later JFP decided to do the story yet again. I would've liked to see Max do a guest run on the new show - scheming with Cutter and Natalie in some more Buchanan business. He has the existing relationship with Natalie, and he could have made Cutter's divided new life and nature complicated.

First pix of Peter Capaldi filming. Unless I'm mistaken that may be the same outfit Clara was wearing in TOTD, so this may be from the first post-regeneration story - i.e., Capaldi's outfit is likely not final. It looks a little too similar to Smith's, because it probably is one of the Eleventh's. Oh, and the report confirms it's from the first story.

Oh, yes, but the Valeyard also was promised the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations, IIRC, if he got rid of him. Or something. The point is, the process has been established.

What was done in TOTD was also discussed more than once in the classic series - the Time Lords promised either the Master or someone else a full new set of regenerations if he did X or Y, I can't remember what. Or maybe it was the Valeyard, trying to get more life if he framed the Doctor for some corrupt Time Lords. And then the current group gave the Doctor just that on Trenzalore - a new set of regenerations.

I hope you enjoy her appearance on GH (played by Lisa Peluso, natch) in summer 2014. (Not the worst idea, really)

The last of Gabrielle. I haven't seen those scenes in ten years, and her murder was treated with such casual disregard after the day of. I was at least glad she died happy again - but I never accepted her death. The weirdest thing was almost exactly a year later, around Christmas or New Year's 2004, when Kimberlin Brown's short-lived Paige Miller was Bo's new insta-love, and she helped him out of his very, very muted grief for Gabrielle...by [!@#$%^&*] him on his desk at the LPD, beside Bo and Gabrielle's picture. That's Ashton Holmes seen briefly as Greg, Marcie's very sensitive, perhaps too PC temporary beau and Michael/Al's rival for her affections early in 2004. She had a stint doing a college radio show at Llanview U. a la Al and Luna (and River and then Nora last year) where she and guests, including Greg and Rae Cummings, would clunkily discuss offscreen issues like sexual harassment on campus. That sort of disappeared, like so many subplots. Holmes does a lot of stuff these does; he was in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen and on HBO's The Pacific, and he did Revenge. He was always so cute, but he always read as gay to me, so I found it odd they put him with Marcie. I found him much hotter than Nathaniel Marston though. But the character disappeared.

CATCH CORD

I finally watched TOTD. It got reviews that ranged from the sublime to the condemning, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But I think that's the best regeneration story since The Caves of Androzani, and probably one of the best, period. Really excellent, and unlike some past series finales of DW it wasn't kind of hollow in its cause and effects, drama-wise. I can understand why people felt it was overstuffed - it could easily have been a two-parter, but I thought it was easily the equal of Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, if not better, and certainly far better than The End of Time, which I am more charitable about than I used to be these days. Really a fantastic story, all around. Matt Smith's era could've used another couple years for me, but he had a solid run and one of the best final stories in DW history, IMO. Jenna Coleman's Clara is a standard companion at the moment, yes, but she did so well with what they gave her. Orla Brady was great, and the final reverie with Amy/Amelia - that was beautiful, and a major callback to Androzani, where the Doctor remembers all his recent companions, particularly the dead Adric. Just such an incredible moment. Really wonderful stuff, and it also closed the book on the fun but byzantine Eleventh Doctor mythology. And it must be said that Eleven's final scene was far more dignified - and mature - than Ten's, about the process of changing. It was also a metacommentary on the show.

That article is written from the point of view of an American reared entirely on contemporary American genre shows with no sense of DW before 2005. It would be quaint if I hadn't seen that article at least twenty times from other people in the last four years, all of which amount to the same complaints once leveled at RTD and all of which approach DW as though it is a static show in the mold of a seven-season American primetime genre show with a set premise and rules. His claims about the show's ratings and popularity are also utterly contrary to the actual numbers and facts - the show is more popular than ever. This guy is a vapid tourist.

IIRC, Michael Malone has said his original plan was for Rachel to shoot R.J. and for there to be a whodunit over his murder. I don't know how Troy ended up written out, I've always been curious about that triangle. For that matter, there's still a lot of fog of war among some of us who are relative latecomers (unlike danfling) as to how and when, say, characters like Brenda McGillis or Dan Wolek or Rafe Garretson were written out and by who. I know a couple of us were taken aback when Brenda Brock was quoted in Jeff Giles's new book as saying that Linda Gottlieb signed her for another year in the summer of '91 and she waited that year out, doing little or nothing. We all thought she was gone by then. Any data you have for us is always appreciated, Dan. I personally am also curious as to some of the story progression at that time, how they moved with the new characters - Wikipedia claims Blair debuted in late October of 1991 and then very quickly made moves on Cord - she's already friendly with Cord by Halloween - and subsequently watched him "die" in Jaba with Jake either in November or December. It also claims Andrew came on in October, but I don't know when. From what I've seen of '91, Andrew seems to have gotten very tight with Megan and company very fast by the end of October. And when did Alex and Carlo first hook up? There's more about the messy quadrangle with Kevin, Stephanie, Jason, Lee Ann, etc. in that period but I've already asked about way too much. I was under the impression Kevin/Stephanie was a Rauch pairing that Gottlieb and co. undid.

I think I may rewatch some GL as well before the New Year. Good times.

Rachel and Sheila in 1992, about color and identity. "I never know whether to say white or black." Wait and see just what - and who - comes up. Valarie Pettiford was still there when I started watching, but not for long. The Sheila I mostly remember was the uber-bland Stephanie Williams, who they weren't at all invested in and disposed of fast - looking back over the years since and seeing more of Pettiford, it's obvious how electric and wonderful she was. I often wished they would say Hank and Sheila reunited offscreen, and I always held out a tiny ember of hope that if Nathan Purdee were ever to return again - as he did for that pointless cameo in 2009 - they could bring her with him for a day or two. Of course, that's the kind of wish and dream reserved for an environment like this past year, where you can refocus a soap around people like Julia Barr and Michael Nader - not ABC. Based on this and other things I've heard it's clear they toned down Hank "The Cannon" considerably. I've often seen a lot of old press from the time about the heat with him and Alex early on, or the triangle with Sheila between his type of (as per the magazine quote) "unreconstructed black male" vs. establishment man Troy Nichols. I haven't seen much of that Hank on YT. Daphnee Duplaix was the only Rachel who had the same integrity and intelligence as Ellen Bethea's. I really did want them to reunite her and Kevin on the new show and let them be tentpoles - the new Buchanans.

I watched that live at Christmas in my Mom's house a few months after I'd come out to my parents. I sobbed and sobbed. It was the perfect holiday cliffhanger, too.

And now for something completely different from this strange era, one of the first scenes for either Bruce Michael Hall's Joey or Bree Williamson's Jessica, at the very beginning of Malone and Griffith's return in February 2003. Joey cooks for Jessica and Viki, as his culinary skills had always been highlighted in the mid-'90s. I remember liking this a lot. But I loved everything about BMH's intro, with the handsome, mystery man wandering about town in a leather jacket, talking to people in the storm, helping Flash, and then undoing his collar to reveal he was a) a priest and Joey Buchanan. It was more of a proactive approach to the character than anyone had had in forever, and as I said before, it was also the last time anyone ever did. This was before he met Jen Rappaport, which is when it all went sour. We also didn't know just how ridiculous Malone II was about to get at this point - within days, Victor Sr. was back on our screens. Looking at this scene now, it's a little too simplistic, earnest and a tad drippy but its heart is in the right place. Joey has a lot of happy talk here but they said a lot more with less about Kevin and Joey when Dan Gauthier arrived in the summer and took over the role, and would sort of subtly command the relationship. It wasn't something that was actually confronted in-depth until after Joey was gone, when Jen and a very drunk Kevin shot the [!@#$%^&*] about Joey at Ultra Violet the following year and Kevin told her she had simply been a replacement for Kelly after he had taken her from Joey. We didn't get scenes like this again, really, until RC took over. And after a short while he forgot to do them, too. He did a couple near the end, with Todd, Viki, etc. hanging around the Llanfair kitchen like this, and that's still a set I miss most of all. I didn't get to see people just talking again until the PP reboot.

Wow. I remembered Matt Ashford howling "WHOOOORRREEEE!" but I'd forgotten how bugfuck nuts and hilarious the climax was here, with Rae finally going full-tilt into her sex pest mode to roleplay as Mrs. Haver again. Ashford is very good, actually, until that moment (and so is Linda Dano in her own histrionic way), but the whole thing is sheer opera. This is why this era, which believed itself to be so literate and atmospheric, was always on the verge of utter camp hysteria.

The way I understand it, Malone wrote the tie-in book in 2004, in which it was a simple subplot where Marcie wrote a book called The Killing Club with an offscreen "Professor Malone's" help (I know). She became a published author, much fanfare, etc. and then they ran ads telling people to go out and buy the real book. The actual RL book, the one Marcie supposedly wrote in-story and Malone wrote IRL, is entirely disconnected and, to my knowledge, untied to OLTL or any of its characters. I never read it. I can remember Jen and Flash/Sarah being attacked by Haver - that was how Sarah lost her singing voice for good, and she left town with Cord while still unable to speak - and a couple dayplayers were killed, including Kevin's private investigator Elyssa Collins, who had learned Walker Laurence was "Todd" (Victor) and one of Jen's stripper friends. Beyond that, no one I can recall, other than Gabrielle. But it's been a long time. The ingenious element of the MBK was that he kept switching identities as he moved around the country over many years - in Jersey or Atlantic City he had been "the White Rose Killer," in other parts of the States he was "the Green River Killer" or something. He kept swapping IDs and M.O.s out as he moved around the country to evade the FBI, a bit like the Zodiac. John had known him as the "White Rose Killer," who had of course killed his fianceé. I thought showing us that he videotaped it was kind of a ridiculous touch. That YT user appears to have almost all of the story, so you might well go back and look. After Malone left, Higley launched the "Killing Club murders" story, in which Marcie revealed she'd had a 'real' "Killing Club" in HS with her outcast friends and someone was murdering people based on her book and, IIRC, her past. The culprit turned out to be fellow outcast and classmate Ivan Potter, who had taken on the identity of literary agent Hayes Barber. I don't know if ABCD had intended for there to be a "Killing Club" storyline like that one while Malone was still there, but either way, the one that turned up onscreen in 2005 was all Higley (and absolutely terrible).

Oh, I thought the work she did in those last scenes with Haver - she was his prisoner for like a straight week of shows, maybe a week and a half before these scenes, and he used to just talk to her over the intercom in a rubber room - was her best on OLTL. I agree Linda Dano is a soap legend, but she wasn't on my show. She's always seemed like a very nice lady IRL. I couldn't stand her on the show, but I thought she got an incredible exit here which they unfortunately undid shortly afterwards. The unbelievable tone-deafness they displayed, hyping 'a previous victim found alive' in the soap press - when it was widely known everyone hated Rae and adored Gabrielle - still amazes me. The brief scene of her (dead) body being very clearly surrounded by gasoline and set ablaze, which was incredibly gritty for soaps, is in the following clip not posted here. They made up some nonsense about how the cops burst in right after Haver left and saved her from the flames. Okay. And yeah, so much of the show was extremely atmospheric at this time, and often very forced. Right after this, IMO, is when the Haver storyline totally tipped into over-the-top madness with the same poetic bent that couldn't sustain it, which was frankly the norm for Malone II. It's all in that series of clips this lovely person put up - I'm rewatching a lot of this for the first time since I was in college. The Troy angle was well-done at first - when they had Gabrielle meeting up with him at a dive bar right outside town in the fall of 2003, after losing Al. They had some good scenes together. But he was being let out as a red herring, to trick the LPD into believing the case was all about Nora and Troy. They dig even deeper than I'd remembered into Haver's psychosis - later, around clip 51, they bring in his mom who goes into pretty rough detail about his childhood. None of this would be out of place on any primetime police procedural made since 2004, but back then, and on a soap opera no less, it was really something. John was also a richer character at this time, but he fell apart after this ended. And he really does look gross. His relatives, Undead Michael, Shannon and the first, terrifying Scary Death Lady Eve McBain, are already incredibly annoying. They tried testing Scary Eve with Bo, too, which annoyed fans to no end.

He looks worse than I remember. This is when a lot of us still liked John, too, and rejoiced in him with Natalie. For me, that began to evaporate the day they created the artificial spoilers of Paul, Kathryn Fitzgerald, Evangeline, etc. almost immediately after the climax of this story - John and Natalie hit the sheets, then before they could make love, he pulled back. It quickly became clear someone at the show had no interest in John ever moving on with his life or not being an emotional cripple, which was the whole intent of the original MBK story. You haven't even hit the Hypnotized Jessica scenes yet. That's four or five later down the list. This was in Ashford's brief break from DAYS, just after he'd been offed by Reilly in the Salem Stalker story. He was done here around May and went right back to DAYS to turn up on Melaswen. And Michael Malone was sometimes a fantastic storyteller. Most of his run at this time was terrible, or had good ideas done horribly. He could not execute on his own.

Some of the Music Box Killer storyline from 2003-2004, which IMO despite its many flaws was one of the best, most realistically detailed depictions of a serial killer and his methodology and psychosis on soaps, with what might be the best performance of Matthew Ashford's career as the culprit, Dr. Stephen Haver. As with all things in this era the MBK story was far from perfect - it was weighted down by some goofy [!@#$%^&*] and very bad choices, like the murder of Gabrielle and the use of Jessica as god-like Haver's hypnotized love slave. But the parts of it that worked really, really worked. Like these scenes with Linda Dano's Rae, where she was Haver's hostage and was seemingly killed by him after he forced her to embody the central figure of his madness, his mother, the promiscuous folk singer and dancer. They improbably resurrected Rae at the close of the storyline, which was a mistake, as everyone was hoping for Gabrielle - these scenes, where she is forced to sing "Overcome," he turns out the lights, and then is shown to burn her body, were incredibly harrowing. "Goodnight, Mother."