Vee

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."

Extended BBCA trailer for The Time of the Doctor.

Oh, I believe him. They're cheap as !@#$%^&*] at AMC. They want to be HBO on fifty dollars and some layaway.

Rose was a favorite of mine. And the relationship with Scott Holroyd's Paul.

I loved Cassandra Creech. I have never understood why another soap didn't snap her up - well, I do know, it's because they mostly don't care about black women. She did a bit a few years after this on GH as a lady assassin working for Faith Rosco, and she was great.

Is that Craig Lawlor as Adam? Jesus, he was wonderful and I don't know why he left but when they brought Adam back later it was some completely different character who had no resemblance to the boy everyone watched grow up. P&G seemed to delight in mutilating those young legacy characters in the last decade.

New TV trailer for The Time of the Doctor.

Steven Moffat confirms no split in Series 8.

Speaking at the BFI's Eleventh Doctor celebration event in London this afternoon, attended by CultBox, Moffat confirmed explicitly: "There'll be no split."

Series 6 was split between the spring and autumn of 2011, while Series 7 was split between 2012 and 2013.

The writer revealed: "I’ve got the whole [of Series 8] in my head right now."

Series 8 begins filming later this month and is expected to start airing on BBC One in August 2014.

I find that hard to believe. It seems odd he would make such a request out of nowhere, much less that Moffat would have such a vehement response. I also find the hamhanded attempt to tie it directly into another rumored event to be way too convenient - particularly when the commonly-held speculation about that particular preexisting rumor had nothing to do with Eccleston and everything to do with Moffat and Skinner.

Looking at it again, it actually just looks like a repackaging of an ancient raft of bullshit peddled by fangirls very early this year - claiming that Skinner and Moffat terrorized Eccleston and that Moffat's "paranoid hatred of Russell T. Davies" caused him to go on a quest to annihilate all traces of the Davies era. In reality, Moffat and Davies are good friends.

The Radio Times reports on Peter Capaldi's costume.

Play the Telltale game! Season 2 of the game starts up week after next.

Clara introduces him to the family as her boyfriend.

I don't think RTD's show was about character any more or less than Moffat's - I think they just go about it differently. I felt RTD did wonderful work but I also thought he tended to hang onto the same old ideas for a long time; who does the Doctor love? Who loves the Doctor? I thought he lost his way when it came to how they handled Martha's relationship with the Doctor, as well as Rose's final exit.

I don't think Amy's entire purpose was the Doctor - I think the character flourished even more once her 'mystery' was solved. In terms of both that and River I found Moffat's handling of women to be far more mature than RTD's. Time will tell if Clara does the same. River, OTOH, just always worked for me.

The Cybermen haven't been scary since the '60s. Both The Pandorica Opens and Nightmare in Silver came close to fixing them but not quite.

If they'd go back to an updated version of their original appearances in, say, The Tenth Planet and Tomb of the Cybermen - i.e., tattered cloth standing in for torn flesh, strange, high jangly voices, gaunt, spindly creatures - then it might work. But it would scare the [!@#$%^&*] out of kids.

For example:

I love both of those things. Fight me IRL.

New poster for The Time of the Doctor.

Colin Baker narrates Behind The Lens - The Day of the Doctor:

Something I didn't notice in DOTD: At Coal Hill School, where Clara now works, the sign outside apparently labels the "Chairman of the Governors" as "I. Chesterton."

I'm likely not going to be able to watch The Time of the Doctor on the day of due to my being out of town with family, or at least not in the way I want, on my big screen TV - maybe if I can rig up my USB to their TV after downloading it. I'd rather watch it on BBCA, but my parents don't have it up there. Ugh, anticipation.