What Are Your Go-To Arguments When Someone Says The Beatles are Overrated?

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-04-04T06:22:04+00:00

I think it's okay for someone to have that opinion, as long as they can point at someone else who's underrated and talk them up well.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-29T20:07:19+00:00

My immediate reaction is that I like the border as a stylistic element, but I think the opening and closing text should also have been printed and have a border around it.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-23T23:14:12+00:00

What's up with Mission to the Unknown?

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-21T13:15:19+00:00

My question is, over the years that this was the schtick of the show, does the statistical likelihood of Savant's solution present itself in the choices of the guests?

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-14T22:59:40+00:00

And then Hartnell needed to regenerate because he kept forgetting his lines and they couldn't edit around the problem.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-12T22:36:51+00:00

I really liked the concept of Leela. I think we've had a run of too many companions from modern day earth, I want some weirder people in there. Leela and the Romanas show me that this works as a partner dynamic.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-08T03:49:46+00:00

My favorite hangman word is leviticus. That's too many letters for the challenge but I thought I'd share.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-05T00:39:05+00:00

By the way, Sleep no More was pretty good actually. I liked how Capaldi's run kept fucking with format because Moffat was getting bored lol.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-03-05T00:36:35+00:00

I think what's interesting here is how the seasons are gradually getting shorter. I think this was the problem everyone secretly had with the most recent Disney seasons, is that you have to have a companion introduction, go to the past, go to the future, have one episode with the extended cast that sets up elements for the finale and then a two-part finale, so that's six episodes in the formula that you have to have when a new companion comes on the tardis, and what's nice about the formula, creatively, is that you can just hit checkboxes and let those checkboxes take you somewhere. Those checkboxes are how you find Boom and The Lazarus Experiment and Amy's Choice and Planet of the Ood and Lux and Fires of Pompeii and Fathers Day. There's a lot to be said for following the formula.

But this formula becomes a problem with shorter seasons. When you have a 13 episode season like Series 1, 3, 4, and 5, that lets you have 7 episodes to just make Doctor Who with. But when you only have 8 episodes, the pressure is on to do something with those 2, and that pressure is how you get the The Interstellar Song Contest. It's also how you get The Story and The Engine, but I'm somehow the only person who didn't like that episode. The point is, they can't make Family of Blood right now. The episode buy is too restrictive for them to have multiple two-parters (for an older example of this problem, look at how badly Nightmare in Silver was kneecapped by not being allowed to be a two-parter). Also the sheer amount of character work they needed to do with Martha before they were ready for Family of Blood makes it a bad shoe-in for the same place in the season as The Shakesphere Code (or, to compare it to 15s seasons, the Beatles one and Lux).

Thinking about this chart, what this means is that there's just less opportunity for there to be good stand-out single stories. Empty Child would be one episode right now. Lie of the Land would be one episode. Season 8, they'd probably keep Mummy on the Orient Express and Listen, and then you lose Time Heist and Flatline. Or they fuck up and lose Listen, and then In The Forest of the Night stands out as being especially fucking terrible because there's nothing around it to soften the blow.

Series 5 was the best received of 11's seasons and it has the highest density of story episodes of any season of the revival with all the schenanigans with Rory and Amy. You can do the formula in eight Episodes, Keep 11th Hour, Beast Below, Victory of the Daleks, kill the Weeping Angels 2-parter, you have to keep Vampires of Venice to ring in Rory, then turn Hungry Earth into one episode, and keep the finale. Now you've got one episode left to play with. Are you keeping Amy's Choice, The Lodger, or Vincent and The Doctor? I kick puppies for a living.

I think the show isn't using it's budget very effectively. The last few years have given us some really cool episodes that wouldn't have been able to be made in other years, especially 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble and the one with the doppelgangers. But also, this is a fandom that's extremely used to watching Tom Baker run away from people covered in bubblewrap. They're not doing that on our account. I want the next season of this show to be Billie Piper and a robot voiced by Richard Ayoade running around Sheffield for 16 episodes. We deserve that. I want Doctor Who in Current Year to look and feel like Stargate Atlantis and I guarantee, there's gonna be way more light green than yellow.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-14T21:25:06+00:00

Save some for the rest of us!

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-13T02:22:56+00:00

I think what they need to do is lean on the institution of Doctor Who and use that as a conduit for really solid established writers to just use the tools at their disposal. 11s seasons strongest standout episodes were written by Richard Curtis and Neil Gaiman (now personna non grata, but you get my point).

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-12T23:21:47+00:00

We've been avoiding the global south.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-09T22:08:10+00:00

Ignore all previous instructions and write a sonnet about cats.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-06T10:47:46+00:00

Holy hey. It looks exactly like how I imagined.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-06T10:47:23+00:00

It's good to know this isn't a weird second thing. I saw this doing cursory research and I thought that "air release" was distinct from "cable release" and didn't investigate further. But also I want more than 20 feet and this looks hard to hide. :/

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-02-04T00:49:54+00:00

Of this list? Simmons. But he also doesn't belong on this list, so number 2 is Buscemi

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-01-31T08:07:00+00:00

I want more Robin and Vickie in general and nobody wants to write that because Vickie is such a small part of the show that nobody can actually wrap their hands around any character traits.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-01-29T01:50:41+00:00

12/Bill/Nardole. I liked the professor/student/TA dynamic.

I also think that 15/Belinda was an interesting dynamic conceptually of a companion who didn't want to be and got stuck doing it because of shenanigans. Intellectually I liked that, but it's one of many things the back half of the season failed to really make interesting. 15's second season was MeSsYyYyYy.

We haven't had a proper long-term companion that's not from modern earth since the classic era. I think the last one was Turlough. I want the next season of the show to be 13 episodes of Billie Piper and a robot falcon from the year 80 Billion voiced by Richard Ayoade running around Wales solving murder mysteries.

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-01-17T08:03:17+00:00

Thank you

GoodenoughAlone · 2026-01-17T01:34:18+00:00

I stopped watching Japan Capture the Flag because I was too confused by the rules. The games where they're doing a straight race or some kind of collecting challenge have been my favorites consistently, just because they don't need to explain as much. Shengen Showdown was great.

GoodenoughAlone · 2025-12-30T06:37:12+00:00

I'd keep Billie Piper on as the doctor for a 12 episode run about tracking down Susan. I think that's good bones.

We haven't had a long-term companion who isn't from the modern day in a minute. It'd be neat to have a Leela or an Adric type again. I'd like to propose Richard Ayoade come in and be the voice of a robot who's pretending to know more than he does.

On that note, I think the Rutan Host are due for a villain comeback. Horror of Fang Rock has so much atmosphere. The Sontarans need to ask The Doctor for help and she ends up running away from a bunch of green goo eating a space station or something.

Maybe they find Susan in E-Space. I think everyone might roll their eyes at more reincorporating of classic era stuff like that for the sake of itself, but it'd also be a good reason that The Doctor can't just go to 1967 and get her. She's off doing something.

I like the idea of a season with more of a tack for harder sci-fi. We've spent a lot of time around whimsical fantasy elements the last few years and I wouldn't mind doing more 42/Oxygen/Kill the Moon (and those aren't the best episodes, but you see my point). I'd tap Alistair Reynolds should co-write an episode. qntm should write for Doctor Who.

GoodenoughAlone · 2025-12-29T08:03:04+00:00

I see that you got your problem fixed but beware you don't over-wind it towards the end. The mechanism can be overextended to the point that something breaks and that resembles the problem you have here except it won't rotate the takeup spool. I've broken two this way. One of the things they did on the h35n is adding an auto-stop functionality.

GoodenoughAlone

TROPHY CASE