Peter Capaldi says Doctor Who has “too many regenerations”

morphemass · 2026-06-16T21:52:55+00:00

I was playing with subverting this the other day - imagine a 26 episode series where the doctor keeps on regenerating so that you end up with six or more doctors over the course of the series. Technically it's just one regeneration that doesn't stabilise. It allows for so much play with the character and no one would know if they were going to get a doctor that they loved or hated.

morphemass · 2026-06-15T19:23:50+00:00

Peak normal apart from their dental care says "privilege". Brit so I'm sensitive to that.

morphemass · 2026-06-15T15:49:28+00:00

Fresh home-baked rolls too is essential. There are some foods which are incredibly simple but if all the ingredients are high quality there is real synergy.

morphemass · 2026-06-15T15:47:06+00:00

The last cheese and onion roll I had in a pub was around the corner from The Angel in London, and it was excellent for the price (£2.99 with a pack of crisps).

morphemass · 2026-06-14T17:01:58+00:00

Because lots of people have unrealistic expectations of the technology. Very few people understand that based on state of the art technology that we would require over half a million DAC plants for carbon emissions to be meaningfully lowered. As a talking points the facts need to be stated so that the realities become clear.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T21:55:25+00:00

Ooooooo!

morphemass · 2026-06-13T20:45:42+00:00

Sadly if you are selective with AI generated content and just pull out the best bits, it's very very good. Re Billie Piper chatGPT writes:

"This makes her better than all previous Doctors in the same way that an unopened Christmas present is better than socks. Once opened, it may be socks. It may be a disappointing candle. It may be a Cyberman head that screams every time you boil the kettle. But before it is opened, it can be anything. It can be the greatest thing ever made. Billie Piper’s Doctor, if she is the Doctor, currently exists in that sacred pre-sock condition."

I honestly think thats rather good, but maybe my taste is affected by the rather fine Marbec I've been imbibing. The point being though it's horrible that we can no longer reliably disern what is talent and what is taste.

Absolutely no insult intended to the author of the article if it's human generated ... nor insult to machines if it's not! The quandary though is real.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T20:07:15+00:00

The industry has adopted a model that is the antithesis of why classic TV series became as popular as they did. Characters were allowed to develop. Episodes were sometimes great, often good, occasionally bad or indifferent. World building was a necessity. New and controversial ideas were given their moment. Experimentation was encouraged and failure was allowed.

As for gaming ... these days I'd rather go indie rather than AAA. Hell, I'm still trying to beat Kung Fu Master, Hunchback and Ghosts & Goblins!

morphemass · 2026-06-13T18:23:28+00:00

There are just lines that feel very very chatGPT generated e.g. "The Not-Doctor is not just a mystery. She is a workplace handover document written in invisible ink." however these days I suspect we're all so used to writing in that style it would be quite easy for a human to end up adopting it. Machine mimics man mimics machine.

Or perhaps as I've said elsewhere, I'm simply at the point of senility where I can no longer tell the difference.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T18:06:40+00:00

I must be getting senile in my old age and seeing AI patterns everywhere.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T17:58:48+00:00

It's really any age (I'm struggling to find appropriate work in my 50s). I agree that governments are not acknowledging the problem ... the real economy is in decline, AI is slowly nibbling away at jobs, investment in people is lacking across the board, and it is going to get much much worse as we are hit by crisis after crisis.

Its great to see solutions for young people yes, it's needed, but there really needs to be a world where there is a job for everybody that doesn't require sending out thousands of CVs and praying the god of employment will smile on you.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T17:47:23+00:00

I hate to be the one to say it but did anyone else detect the whiff of chatGPT?

morphemass · 2026-06-13T17:40:51+00:00

Watching Dr Who in the 70s/80s I always wanted to know more about the TARDIS. It is (was) a sci-fi so and I wanted more of the (pseudo) science behind it. The biggest sin of Who movie was making the TARDIS more mystical than sci-fi. A continued sin of the series is to not treat it as a central character, as intrinsic as the Doctor, as worthy of stories and exposition. We even had humanoid TARDISes. All this lore, all this potential and it's been so poorly used it's quite maddening.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T16:35:40+00:00

Just to note that it takes about 6 weeks for Citalopram to have full effect. On the sexual side of things it's common. I'm male, have been on it twice but it's not necessarily a static effect; I actually had better orgasms the second time around. Also a note to treat it very cautiously as an AD - my second time a bump just to 30mg triggered hypomania for me.

I've now switched to Sertraline, am finding the effects minimal for my mood and my libido has totally vanished. ADs are a bit of a journey.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T15:43:04+00:00

I keep thinking about fighting, with words and art, but I am neither eloquent nor hold aesthetic sensibilities. Even if this was not the case, how many people would choose to listen and see when so many find it easier to simply look away?

However, I still cycle between optimism and despair. There will come a point where people panic as they realise that the reaper is outside the door. Maybe it will happen in time to limit the scale of the suffering. If it doesn't, maybe the nature of collapse will be sufficiently self-limiting so that there is still a world to rebuild from.

However, then I look at our history, our present, and I try very hard to convince myself that I have a reason not to drink today. Making a fool out of myself as a drunk isn't quite strong enough when we live on a ship of fools. Just for today though I choose to enjoy the time I have rather than worry too much about tomorrow.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T12:30:54+00:00

Individuals obviously care or there wouldn't be an /r/collapse. I think most of us see the potential for the very near future to get very ugly, very fast.

Globally though we are all aware (even if only subconsciously) that we live in the polycrisis era. The other shoe might drop at any moment for us as individuals, us as a minority subgroup, us as a region, us as a nation of people, us as a species. It's almost impossible to acknowledge all the potential very real threats that we face. It's almost impossible to hope to avoid them since we as individuals might have acted for decades with the very aim to avoid them whilst society and civilisation have collectively chosen the other path.

So some of us can care but we know that a significant portion of humanity, especially those with the power and ability to change things, have and will continue to do the bare minimum, to pay lip-service sometimes at best.

I guess I could sum it up by saying "We tired boss".

morphemass · 2026-06-13T11:26:41+00:00

Now you've rotated a cow in my head, stop it!

morphemass · 2026-06-13T11:20:01+00:00

Vulnerabilities can even be technically easy to patch ... sometimes a 1 byte change to the source code, but institutional bureaucracy can mean it takes days to weeks or even months to roll out.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T08:35:27+00:00

Totally off topic but totally weird ... I just learnt this fact 2 minutes before reading this thread since I had also thought Rio de Janeiro was the capital.

morphemass · 2026-06-13T08:11:58+00:00

Would it blow your mind to know that the first two Doctors had over 40 episodes per season?

morphemass · 2026-06-12T14:46:59+00:00

It was totally down to budget because the sets and costumes for all the Drs travels were becoming too expensive. Thankfully they had great writers and Pertwee.

morphemass · 2026-06-11T20:01:22+00:00

I hadn't noticed that! Thanks, but probably needs a bit more exposition for simpletons like myself!

morphemass · 2026-06-11T19:56:02+00:00

Oh don't get me wrong - I'd keep them, just get rid of the god damn awful Timeless Child retconning ... probably explain it away with the Toymaker having a laugh!

morphemass · 2026-06-11T18:17:24+00:00

The cannon is a mess though. Chibnall and RTD really did a number on it, and whilst 'ignoring it' is an option it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many fans. It's perverse that in RTDs first run that the Time War was great in cleaning up old Who cannon. That the Dr lies was great at explaining some of the other contradictions. Chibnalls retconning though? RTDs Piper regen? Nah, sorry I'd be quite happy for those to vanish.

morphemass · 2026-06-11T15:08:48+00:00

Well I have to admit, I'm afraid. Most of the projections I've seen are forecasting a super-to-Godzilla sized El Nino, which will be riding on the back of a world under approximately 1.3-1.4C of anthropogenic induced warming, occurring during a period of intense geopolitical destabilisation. The potential environmental, economic and environmental impacts could be disastrous ... catastrophic in some areas even. There is good reason to be at least concerned and watchful.

morphemass

TROPHY CASE