Tom Coates Profile picture
Oct 9, 2018 8 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Okay, let’s take a break from all this horror and talk about #DoctorWho for a moment. First things first, I thought it looked beautiful, great production design, amazing cinematography, the casting was great, the lighting was wonderful, much of the CGI looked a generation better.
As to the plot, well, I think you have to look at first appearances of new Doctors as doing two things - telling the story of the week story and establishing the show’s new status quo and the new Doctor. Honestly that doesn’t normally lend itself to a great main plot...
... and this was no real exception. The baddie was beautiful but also a bit lame, his motivation a bit crappy, his plan confusing and the resolution was a bit formulaic. Like a 6/10 story of the week. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing special.
The establishing of the new Status Quo on the other hand was just great. Interesting characters that felt real and rounded. A good reason for them to hang out. A Doctor who was struggling to put things together. The new sonic, the new outfit, the new attitude. All really good.
I thought Jodie Whittaker did a really great job. It took me a full season to see Capaldi as the Doctor, a few episodes for me to see Ecclestone as him. Tennant and Smith happened for me by the end of the first episode. Jodie was 90% of the way there by the end for me...
... and I’m pretty sure I’ll be totally sold by this time next week. All in all, I was very excited by the end and have no idea where they’re going with the season. It feels like it has absolutely no furrow it has to travel down, and I have no idea which way it’s going at all.
Sad not to see the TARDIS, wasn’t super keen on the end title music, but I’ll reserve judgement until the credits next week to see what they’re like. But right now, all in all 9/10, would cheerfully watch again.
AND A QUICK REMINDER TO ANYONE WHO HAS FOLLOWED ME RECENTLY: I work in tech, I build companies and software products for a living, I speak at conferences, I care about politics, I dabble in 3D rendering and I’m a big Doctor Who fan. So this stuff is going to happen now and then.

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More from @tomcoates

Oct 2, 2018
I’m sort of interested in this but I think it’s a bit underwhelming really. No one really wants that kind of engagement with TV. But I do think there are some fun things they should be able to do, which I’m surprised they don’t...
Imagine if you made a murder mystery from five different viewpoints, but you distributed it at random to different homes, so that people couldn’t get the whole story from one place and they *had* to talk about it to their friends or go to their friends houses.
Or maybe you choose which character you will follow in the following week’s episode? Or you very quietly change one plot line across multiple homes, and don’t mention it, and then everyone freaks out a couple of episodes in because they all saw something subtly different.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 24, 2018
Does anyone know of a graph of voting percentage organized in cohorts by age? I’d like to know whether the generation born in the fifties has *always* had high turn-out or whether it has really escalated as they’ve got older.
Found this from Pew which is interesting and covers the last twenty years or so: pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018…
From this graph alone you can’t tell much except that Gen X has definitely had more turn out as they’ve aged. But at a *glance* it looks like older generations start from a higher base. Hard to tell with only twenty years of data.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 24, 2018
Anonymous accounts are actually important for a range of reasons, to allow people to have social media lives outside their work, and to talk about personal stuff and have an identity even when they’re under threat.
However, the ability to easily create dozens of social media accounts is a bad thing. It gives massive power to trolls and harassers, and there’s only a limited amount that can be done to fight them while unlimited accounts are available.
Ideally, you’d find a way to limit the number of accounts someone can easily maintain, you’d have the ability to ban a *device* for a period of time, you’d build in techniques to slow switching between accounts, you’d tie them together in some way.
Read 12 tweets
Sep 21, 2018
@andybudd I’m sorry, I just don’t agree with that. I’m not sure how you can argue it.
@andybudd Honestly this stuff is *profoundly* irritating to me. I would consider myself a product designer after being in the industry for twenty odd years. I think through the business case, I think through the users, I think through their core needs, I think about business needs...
@andybudd I would do user interviews, I would structure and think through the shape of the product. I do not consider myself a UX designer at depth because a UX designer in my experience would go deeper on specific design techniques to optimize elements of the design...
Read 11 tweets
Sep 20, 2018
Have to say, this full timeline of Russia’s mentions, actions and interventions in the 2016 election (and the contact with Trump) is pretty extraordinary when all laid out in order: nyti.ms/2Dqn1JF?smid=n…
I was a little sceptical at first - not about the information presented, but the way it was presented - because I thought placing potentially unrelated actions together might force a story on what might be coincidence or unrelated actions, and to some extent I think it does...
... but the sheer volume of connections, the sheer number of stated positions and actions and bits of evidence and tweet campaigns and meetings collated sort of speaks for itself.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 15, 2018
@MattPirkowski James Damore is an idiot who expressed some stupid opinions. It is right that he was fired for them, and he should have apologized for it and moved on.
At least partly this is because his statements may have left Google vulnerable for lawsuits. Any woman he ever intereviewed, managed, or worked with could quite reasonably argue that he’d expressed profoundly sexist attitudes and that his views may have resulted in discrimination
Should he be able to express his opinions on Twitter? In my opinion, as long as he did not resort to harassment or abuse, and he didn’t incite other people to violence or harassment of women, then yes.
Read 4 tweets

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