Let’s not forget that this is probably one of the worst (canonical?) Doctor Who stories broadcast — and adding insult to injury, it was watched by 13½ million people. It’s one of the most viewed Who stories ever, or was in its time.

My sincerest apologies in advance!

It was a fun novelty song when it lasted for less than a minute in the episode. A 24/7 feed makes me long for the world to end on Saturday.

Unfortunately, this is all spot on. Everything great about the Rani was in her first outing — Kate O’Mara is still pretty fun here, but any semblance of characterisation is lost in the usual regeneration confusion.

Can’t wait for your thought on “Dimensions in time” 🫤

[Edited “if” to “of”]

Same thing happened to me. If I block someone on Mastodon or another Fediverse microblogging instance, they’re blocked. Because that part of the Fediverse was built by people who had been harassed and doxxed off other platforms.

Here? Blocking just means you don’t see the troll, but they can continue to inflict all kinds of havoc on your post scores. Ironically, “karma” isn’t a thing on Lemmy like it is on Reddit, but votes are still used to rank your posts.

I guess there are a hundred great folk on here for every preteen edgelord, but that kind of nonsense really spoils the fun of this platform. Sorry to see you get downvoted for a perfectly reasonable post.

I just recall it being a terribly acted slog, but sometimes that’s a plus in classic Who.

I do not hate AI, because it doesn’t exist. I’m not delusional.

I do resent the bullshit generators that the tech giants are promoting as AI to individual and institutional users, and the ways they have been trained without consent on regular folks’ status updates, as well as the works of authors, academics, programmers, poets, and artists.

I resent the amount of work, energy, environmental damage, and yes, promotional effort that has gone into creating an artificial desire for a product that a) nobody asked for, and b) still doesn’t do what it is claimed to do.

And I resent that both institutions and individuals are blindly embracing a technology that at every step from its creation to its implementations denigrate the human work — creative, scholarly, administrative and social — that it intends to supplant.

But Artificial Intelligence? No such thing. I’ll form an opinion if I ever see it.

I mean, good for them. Now, if anyone has actual mental health issues, please get in touch with a trained, human therapist.

I had blissfully forgotten “The twin dilemma” 🤣

This is only two thirds of the Trinity, the two Ranis count as one, cos I say so 😑 The third is lying in wait, exactly 160 years away 🤔

Okay, so something that happens in-universe in 2185… or 1865? According to TARDIS wiki, nothing special enough to be televised happened in either of those years.

The return of LI’n’DA

Or the Krynoids.

I might settle for Kroll, though.

Morbius returns or I riot.

I didn’t realise you had teenage kids!

I like how you manage to find positives in this serial, which apart from the Rani’s first appearance is fairly inconsequential. It plays a bit like a series of preposterous events happening while the three Time Lords have a reluctant reunion in 19th century England.

Although it’s tempting to pick the story’s faults apart, the reasons it does hold together are mainly a) the authentic setting that ooze industrial revolution atmosphere (the Ironbridge Gorge museum where it was recorded has since become a UNESCO world heritage site), and b) the strength of the main actors that carry the ramshackle story through.

I do believe this is the first time I rewatched a Colin Baker serial… they don’t really beg for repeat viewings in themselves, but I realise that isn’t in any way to do with the lead’s talent. The fact alone that he pulls off wearing that coat is impressive. Lesser actors would have become second fiddle to such a wardrobe.

Arthur Ainley did ham it up as the Master — it’s safe to say the broad vaudeville traits of the character originated with him — but there is also measure and some restraint to his work. It’s against these two that Kate O’Mara really gets to shine as a new character that has implied back story with them.

O’Mara clearly has fun stepping into the eatablished conflict between Doctor and Master, and into her part of a grade A mad scientist — not clinically mad, but totally unscrupulous with no regard for the consequences of her work. As the Rani, she is obviously frustrated having to deal with the indulgent schemes of the Master.

Everything outside of that ménage à trois seems to be afterthoughts to keep Nicole Bryant and guest stars busy. Peri gets a few outstanding moments during her time in the TARDIS, but not in this two-parter, unfortunately. The Master has some nefarious plan to prevent the industrial revolution(?), but it’s not entirely clear what that would serve other than get the Doctor’s attention.

But with all that said — “Mark of the Rani” is an entirely adequate introduction to the Rani as a character. Certainly better than “Time and the Rani” or (shudder!) “Dimensions in time”…!

I think it’s worth looking into pros and cons, though. The scrapers are taking their toll on web UI users as well, so I guess something has to be done.

A similar thread came up recently asking for human curated search engines. I don’t have the answers for either, but we need a concerted effort to sift through the hallucinated bloat filling up the internet. And when I say “effort” — it’s not going to be a small task.

Basically, I think we haven’t seen the worst of it yet, and we really, really need a scalable solution if we don’t want to just abandon these interwebs entirely down the road.

Now now, no need to go for the nuclear solution! 😂

Anyway, there are plenty “AI”-generated books on POD already, as well as outright bullshit published in print…

Thanks for your efforts. Has the time come to put Anubis in front of the site to block LLM scrapers?