#my main issues with the chibnall era comes in the form of the writing

[brokenhardies]

tbh as a six fan i feel so bad for thirteen fans

bc there are a lot of thirteen fans who are willing to defend shitty writing and poor decisions bc thirteen's their favourite doctor and there's no other way to say she's their favourite bc thirteen has only been off the air for 2 years at this point. thirteen also has the bonus problem of being the first female doctor which means a lot of her criticism is clouded by misogyny and other icky incel alt right shit

meanwhile with six, a lot of his problems had the benefit of the wilderness years, big finish, the expanded universe, and even people looking back at his doctor and realising that there was some good in his episodes. a lot of his fans didnt become his fans until recently and even most of his haters are quite clear that they hate the writing decisions and not the actor himself

like until jodie gets some good material - maybe big finish? theyre doing fugitive doctor and dhawan master stuff that might improve the problems with those - a lot of thirteen fans are going to be clutching at straws and trying to figure out why they like her and how to say so in a way that won't upset the predominantly male fandom, as well as won't disagree with common and very bloody obvious criticisms of chibnalls era

[the-desolated-quill]

The Tsuranga Conundrum - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Ugh. I suppose it had to happen eventually. After four great episodes on the trot, it was only a matter of time before Chris Chibnall ran out of steam and returned to his usual output.

Okay. That’s not fair. The Tsuranga Conundrum isn’t that bad. It’s not like Cyberwoman or his Silurian two parter. In fact had this come out during one of Moffat’s series, I probably would have considered this episode a highlight. But Series 11 so far has been a true return to form for the show, with episodes like The Woman Who Fell To Earth and Rosa featuring some amazing moments of characterisation as well as intelligent and quite often powerful writing. Somehow Chibnall has managed to defy expectations and demonstrated just what you can do with a show like Doctor Who if you were to actually put the time and effort in. It’s for that reason why I feel like The Tsuranga Conundrum is such a spectacular dud.

It’s funny how i mentioned Moffat’s tenure as showrunner because this honestly feels like an episode from that era just as The Power Of Three felt like a throwback to RTD. All the episodes so far this series have had slow deliberate pacing, giving the audience time to truly get to know the characters and the setting. In fact the characters are clearly the main focus this series with the plot and monster (if there even is a monster at all) being secondary. This I feel is what has made this series so strong. It’s what made even a weak episode like Arachnids In The UK have an emotional kick to it. The Tsuranga Conundrum on the other hand feels like the complete opposite of this. Everyone is dashing about, spouting exposition, with the characters becoming almost an afterthought. Obviously if you’re into this kind of plot driven, fast paced Who, then more power to you. It just feels really out of place after the previous four episodes.

What also affected my enjoyment were the character inconsistencies and general stupidity. I have had nothing but praise so far for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, but this... I don’t know what has happened, but this is not a good episode for the Doctor. For starters the episode opens with Team TARDIS on a junk planet and coming across a sonic mine, but instead of doing something sensible like running away, the Doctor just stands there like a twit waiting for the thing to detonate. Then when she regains consciousness four days later on the Tsuranga, she tries to hijack the ship so she can get back to the TARDIS. Yeah! Fuck the other patients! It’s not like their lives matter or anything! That has got to be one of the most unDoctorly things I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry, but the Doctor would never do something like that.

But wait! A UO breaches the shields and enters the ship. The Doctor’s doctor Astos, having just ordered her to return to her bed, demands she checks the much safer port side of the ship while he takes a look around the more dangerous starboard side. It was his tone and manner that really got to me. Can you imagine him saying that to a male Doctor? And do you know what the worst bit is? She actually does what he tells her to do. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. Again, there’s no way the Doctor would do something like that. I don’t care what gender they are. The Doctor in any of their incarnations wouldn’t have submitted to someone else. They would have taken charge. And yeah, she eventually does once Astos gets killed, but that scene still irked me. When I first heard the words ‘Chris Chibnall is going to be writing the first female Doctor,’ this was the kind of thing I was afraid we would get.

I’ve got nothing against Jodie Whittaker of course. She’s still giving it her absolute all, but there’s just very little for her to work with here. Another scene that really stood out as weird was the scene where she asked Yasmin to pick a number to set the bomb timer to. Why?! That just seems like such a callous and inappropriate thing to do in that situation. Matt Smith’s Doctor I could buy doing that. That’s just the kind of dickish and plonkerish thing he would do, but Whittaker’s? It just feels like an excuse to do weird, kooky shit. And here I was hoping we’d left that behind with Peter Capaldi and the dreaded sonic sunglasses. Not to mention all the moments where the story stops dead in its tracks so that the Doctor can witter on at length about hope and anti-matter. Again, Jodie Whittaker does her best, but there’s a time and a place. It’s hard to marvel at an anti-matter drive when there’s a fucking alien eating the spaceship.

Let’s quickly discuss the Pting. I liked it. It’s a good design and a different kind of threat for Doctor Who. I’m impressed this series how Chibnall so far has managed to stay away from the usual ‘alien invaders wanting to take over the world’ schtick, finding different kinds of threats and motives for each episode. The Pting isn’t evil. It’s just hungry and looking for something to eat. That’s so innocent for a Who antagonist that’s almost charming. Unfortunately it’s undermined by yet more stupidity. The Doctor is alarmingly slow to catch on to the fact that the Pting isn’t interested in killing the crew. It just wants to eat the ship. I would have thought the computer describing it as ‘strictly non-carnivorous’ and seeing it scoffing down her sonic screwdriver would have been a bit of a giveaway, but there you go. She acts like this is a big revelation, but we knew this from the start, didn’t we? If the audience are further along than the Doctor, something has gone spectacularly wrong. And then Chibnall drops the clunker that the Pting feeds on energy. Wait... huh?! If it feeds on energy, why was it eating metal earlier? And if the Pting ate all the energy in Astos’ life pod, how did it explode?

Characters are another issue. Because the episode is zipping along at a hundred miles an hour, there’s barely any time to really get to know anyone. Lois Chimimba’s medic character I thought had potential, having to take charge of the ship after Astos’ death and maybe taking inspiration from the Doctor and following her example, but she’s too busy dealing with a comedy male pregnancy (that I didn’t much care for by the way. I didn’t think it was particularly funny and it just felt like Chibnall came up with it at the last minute to give Graham and Ryan something to do). You’ve got this famous general and her engineer brother who aren’t particularly interesting. There’s the usual sibling rivalry you’ve seen done millions of times before the eventual reconciliation where the two spout ‘I love yous’ over slushy music (this is the closest composer Segun Akinola has gotten to Murray Gold territory and I very much hope we don’t come any closer). Then the general pops her clogs due to Plot Contrivance Syndrome and the engineer ends up saving the day piloting the ship... which begs the question why didn’t he just pilot the ship in the first place if he knew how to do it? Makes the general’s death seem a bit silly really.

Whereas previous episodes managed to tug at the heartstrings with subtle, but effective moments of characterisation, The Tsuranga Conundrum goes the RTD route of bashing you over the head with gaudy sentimentality and melodrama. Nothing can be left to chance. Everything has to be spelt out so that even the idiots at the back of the class can understand the emotions on display. The Doctor’s speech about hope. Ryan talking about how his mum died and how his dad was never there for him. Ryan then using that experience to tell Yoss how to be a dad. The android giving the final eulogy about stars guiding you through bollocks (I’m paraphrasing obviously, but that was the gist of it). It all just feels incredibly forced and not in the least bit affecting. The one moment I think sparked a genuine emotion out of me was Graham and Ryan laughing about how Grace would react if she saw them delivering a baby on a spaceship.  That was a nice human moment that. I liked that.

It isn’t a bad episode. It’s certainly not the worst thing Chibnall has ever written. If I close my eyes and cover my ears during the stupid and annoying bits, I’d probably enjoy it. But compared to the previous four episodes, it’s hard not to see The Tsuranga Conundrum as a massive step backwards.

[aion-rsa]

Who Will Be Doctor Who’s Next Showrunner?

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When big changes come to Doctor Who it’s the Doctor who grabs all the headlines. That, after all, is showbusiness: children don’t ask for bedsheets bedecked with the faces of the show’s writing or production team. It’s the showrunner – much more than anyone else, including the actor playing the lead role – upon whom the fate and fortunes of the show rest. They decide everything from the look, feel and tone of the seasons, to the thrust and arc of the narrative, to who writes, directs and stars – from the smallest bit-part to the Doctor themselves. The buck stops with them, in other words, and a showrunner can very much make or break an era.

So while speculation rages about who will take on the mantle of the 14th Doctor, it’s Chris Chibnall‘s replacement as showrunner who will ultimately carry the weight of the universe on their back. Realistically, a candidate needs not just writing but also producing experience (Chibnall had co- and executive producer credits on Torchwood, Camelot, Law & Order:UK, Broadchurch and more before landing Doctor Who). Because the UK TV industry has significant work to do on widening access for writers and producers of colour, that requirement frustratingly narrows the field for such jobs at present. But let’s have a look at a few options; some shoo-ins for the top spot, some just wildcards, but all of them with something real to offer.      

Pete McTighe

Pete McTighe has the experience and qualities you’d want in a prospective Doctor Who showrunner: he’s been a long-time admirer of the show since the Classic days; he’s written for the show (Series 11’s ‘Kerblam’ and Series 12’s ‘Praxeus’); he’s helmed trailers for the Classic series’ Blu-ray sets; and, perhaps most crucially of all, he has hands-on experience of calling the shots. McTighe’s prison-drama Wentworth (pictured above) first aired in 2013 and has since racked up award after award in its native Australia (McTighe is British). It’s also been something of a critical darling worldwide, routinely praised for a realism and a grittiness that cleaves close to the best HBO dramas. BBC mystery thriller Pact concluded in June and Wentworth‘s final season airs later this month, meaning that McTighe now has a hole in his schedule. Might he be about to fill that jail-shaped gap with a police box? Quite apposite too, perhaps, that McTighe was able to take a show like Prisoner: Cell Block H (as it was known in the UK), a beloved old soap opera from the 1970s/80s, with rickety, wobbly sets and a low-budget aesthetic, and transform it into a lean, mean, emotionally-satisfying, rollicking thrill-ride with contemporary sensibilities. The man has form.

Sarah Dollard

Another Australian connection, this time in the form of bone fide antipodean Sarah Dollard, who wrote ‘Face the Raven‘ and ‘Thin Ice‘ during Peter Capaldi’s tenure. Prior work commitments prevented Dollard from writing for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, something she lamented at the time.

For those of the ‘Doctor Who has become too political’ persuasion, Dollard’s thoughts on the writing process for ‘Thin Ice’ should serve as both a rebuke and reassurance: “There was no way to write about a woman of colour going into the past on Earth without acknowledging how the colour of her skin would have impacted how people reacted to her there. Obviously, it also had to be entertaining and true to the tone of the show, so I tried to make it an intrinsic part of the story, rather than just add-on.”

Dollard cut her teeth on Australian soap opera Neighbours, and wasn’t long before she was writing for sci-fi and fantasy favourites including Merlin, Primeval, Being Human, Doctor Who, A Discovery of Witches (pictured above) and, most recently, an adaptation of the award-winning Young Adult horror fantasy Cuckoo Song (yet to air on Netflix). Availability could be an issue in whether Dollard could return to Doctor Who as its showrunner, given her busy schedule and writer-producer role on Netflix big-hitter Bridgerton.

Toby Whithouse

There was a time when Toby Whithouse was the heir apparent to Steven Moffat. At least in the eyes of Whovians. In 2015 he said this about speculation that he might be taking over the show post-Moffat: “No-one at the BBC has ever had this conversation with me. No-one has asked me, no-one has approached me about if Steven leaves, when Steven leaves. These are conversations that happen purely among fans, not on any official level.”

Still, he has the pedigree. Not only did Whithouse create Being Human for BBC Three (also one of Sarah Dollard’s first UK writing jobs), but he also wrote for the first three of modern Doctors, notably the episodes ‘School Reunion’, ‘The God Complex’ and ‘Under the Lake/Before the Flood’, showing terrific range, and a deft and respectful approach to the show’s mythos and history. Recently, Whithouse has written for the BBC’s new sci-fi series Noughts and Crosses (pictured above) but seems to have drifted away from Doctor Who. Acknowledging that this is just another conversation happening “purely among fans”, might the allure of the big chair tempt him back?

Kate Herron

Kate Herron may be a reasonably fresh face in the entertainment industry, but already she’s proven herself capable of taking on the sort of awesome responsibility that would make even a grizzled veteran wince. There can be few franchises heavier with expectation than Marvel (along with, perhaps, Doctor Who and Star Trek), and few characters as beloved as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Kudos to Herron then, for dazzling Kevin Feige with her talent and vision, earning directorial control of the first season of Loki and carrying it out to general acclaim.

Plenty have said that Loki was some of the best Doctor Who we’ve seen in years. It’s hard not to see where they’re coming from when considering the way Loki balances humour, heart, and sci-fi, whilst dabbling with time and dealing with multiple variants of its main character.

Herron recently announced that she wouldn’t be returning for Loki Season 2: ‘I’m really happy to watch it as a fan next season, but I just think I’m proud of what we did here and I’ve given it my all. I’m working on some other stuff yet to be announced.’ It’s this enigmatic ‘other stuff’ that has sent the Doctor Who rumour mill into over-drive. Might Herron be trading one time-wimey extravaganza for another? Might there be a further clue in this other snippet from a recent interview? Time will tell. 

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Mark Gatiss

In some sense, Mark Gatiss is Doctor Who. At the very least the show is encoded in his DNA. Very few people have done so much in, and for, the Whoniverse, and Gatiss has pretty much done it all. He’s written novels set in the Classic Who Universe; he’s acted in the modern iteration of the show (‘The Lazarus Experiment’, ‘The Wedding of River Song’, ‘Twice Upon a Time’); he’s written for the show (most notably ‘The Unquiet Dead’); he’s narrated documentary segments about the show; and he wrote the acclaimed 50th anniversary stand-alone about the early days of the show at the BBC, ‘An Adventure in Space and Time‘.  He’s even been both the Doctor and the Master, albeit in Big Finish form. About the only aspect of Doctor Who Gatiss hasn’t embraced is being in charge. Given how prolific Gatiss is outside of Doctor Who, and how the Sherlock and Dracula (pictured above) co-creator gravitated away from the show in recent years, it’s unlikely – though of course not impossible – that he’d take over from Chris Chibnall.  

J. Michael Straczynski

Now, Twitter is neither a negotiating table, nor often a particularly accurate representation of objective reality. Still, there’s no reason to suspect that J. Michael Straczynski’s recent enthusiastic offer to replace Chris Chibnall is anything less than sincere. Less tangible is the real-world prospect of the job ever being offered to him. Not because he couldn’t rise to the challenge – the man is a sci-fi behemoth, his work straddling the mediums of the graphic novel, TV and cinema, and encompassing damn near everything from Murder She Wrote to Marvel, DC to World War Z, and Ghostbusters to Babylon 5 (pictured above)– but down to the BBC preferring to hand the reins of its flagship family sci-fi show to someone UK-based. It doesn’t stop us wondering, though, how the man behind the deliciously cluttered, cultured and brilliant Babylon 5 would transform the Whoniverse.

Vinay Patel

For Series 11, Chris Chibnall wanted a range of fresh, representative voices that would better reflect the diversity of the show’s audience, and open up new avenues of dramatic possibilities. Vinay Patel is one of that influx of new writers who excelled himself by turning in arguably two of the Whittaker era’s best-regarded episodes. ‘Demons of the Punjab’ (pictured above) shone a light on a part of post-colonial history never before illuminated by Doctor Who, and did so with heart and conviction. ‘Fugitive of the Judoon’ proved that Patel could handle a more whacky, twisty-turny, lore-filled story.

Patel started as a corporate film-maker, but wasn’t satisfied with his lot, so poured his talents into an MA in writing for stage and broadcast media, an inspired choice that led him to the theatre, and then on to the BAFTA-nominated drama Murdered by My Father. His writing is intensely personal and political, barbed but with heart, intersecting notions of power, family, history and belonging.  

Whether or not Vinay Patel has a realistic shot at the top spot – he’s still relatively untested in TV (but then so was Kate Herron before Loki) – it’s a shame that a show so committed to representation on-screen has so few prospective showrunners from a BAME background. Wherever Patel’s talents are next channelled, though, it’s obvious he has a blindingly bright future ahead of him.

Reece Shearsmith & Steve Pemberton

An unlikely prospect, we’re forced to admit, but a delicious one. The pair are, of course, no strangers to the Whoniverse. Steve Pemberton played Strackman Lux in the fan-favourite Tennant-two-parter ‘Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead’. Reece Shearsmith featured in Season 9 episode ‘Sleep No More‘, written by Shearsmith’s old friend and fellow League of Gentlemen star and co-creator Mark Gatiss. Shearsmith also portrayed Patrick Troughton and the Second Doctor in ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’.

However, it’s Shearsmith and Pemberton’s astonishing work on the raven-black comedy-drama anthology series Inside No. 9 (pictured above) that makes them such a tantalising prospect for the top spot. They’ve proven that they can play around with places, times, and tones like true artists, offering up silent, screwball comedy one week, then cruelly funny farce the next, followed by something so truly beautiful and heart-breaking it’ll make your soul flat-line the next. They’d be wildcards, certainly, but quite possibly a cross between a game-changer and a Godsend for Doctor Who.  

Sally Wainwright

Sally Wainwright, like many of the candidates on this list, began her career writing for a soap opera, in her case the long-running and much-beloved BBC Radio 4 show The Archers. She was soon poached by the bosses of UK TV soap Emmerdale, but swiftly sacked when she said in a newspaper interview that Emmerdale“was shit, because the script editors re-wrote everything” and went on to Coronation Street.

Sci-fi fans can be sniffy about soap operas, as if sci-fi writers emerge from a cocoon fully-fledged and ready to write about far-off galaxies and alien races, but that’s tosh. If it weren’t for soaps, Paul Abbott, Jimmy McGovern, Sarah Phelps and countless other of the UK���s best screenwriters wouldn’t have had their starts. Step forward Sally Wainwright, who now stands as a behemoth in the UK TV landscape, having helmed arguably two of the most important and popular shows of recent years, Last Tango in Halifax and the astonishing Happy Valley. Her talent has now gone global. She’s currently in charge of HBO-BBC co-production Gentleman Jack, and is working with Sandra Bullock on a new TV series.

Sally Wainwright’s output and vision is supreme; her writing is raw and electric, real and illuminating, her characters so lived-in and realised that you could take them from the screen and put them in your living room and mistake them for your own family. Wainwright is probably too busy to take on the job of showrunner, but what a boon for Doctor Who her helmship would be.

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Doctor Who Series 13 will air on BBC One and BBC America this autumn.

The post Who Will Be Doctor Who’s Next Showrunner? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[pilotheather]

aye, really starting to loathe the “yaz kills either graham/ryan whilst under the dalek influence” like-

1. first of all. hate this presumption that graham/ryan have to die. personally, im fine with companions dying - clara’s penultimate exit in face the raven was done beautifully, i think, and i will FOREVER resent them not leaving it like that. however with graham and ryan? literally, i just feel like... it’s so cheap. it offers nothing, babes! and it’s just infinitely LESS interesting than if you just kept them alive.

all the companions, in my opinions, still lack development. i do love them! i really am warming to them. but we’re two seasons in, and the fact of the matter remains they just... haven’t gelled too well with the show proper and they aren’t as fully realised as they should be by this point. and frankly, its not one singular problem moreso it’s an interwoven web of issues (hence it’s hard to really unpick that, without unravelling the whole mess) that have affected the show completely. the point is, despite being here so long, they just still feel so unexplored as people and a little unknown to us and idk!!! i think killing them, wouldn’t offer much in the way of anything interesting - other than, like i said, a very cheap way to instigate tragedy, and springboard some trauma-induced development for yaz&13 - because we aren’t really gaining more than we’re losing here, man.

clara’s exit in face the raven WORKED because it had been building up to it all season. i also dont like amy/rory’s exits (but that’s v potentially my own biases) but theoretically, i can see the vision for that- and the reason why that would be so tragic, is BECAUSE amy&rory are so fully formed at tht point that that loss hits. im not sayin graham&ryan dying would NOT be sad, but it’s... just too soon, still, for me. and when, narratively speaking, they’ve been setting up them thinking about leaving anyway? at least, ryan has? just doesn’t feel quite right at all and just like i said: a pointless attempt, at taking their exits, and doing weird tragedy shit with it for the sake of it.

especially when the ALTERNATIVE is they can stay on in the same way martha did: on earth, totally fine, and with the opportunity to reappear in later seasons. they can progress offscreen in ways that can be satisfying, in the way martha did. she moved on; she became someone different; and yet that change was still guided by what we had seen. same can be done with ryan and graham, finishing their stories and making them all the more satisfying.

2. piggybacking off of that. literally, this scenario of yaz killing them: what would that DO for yaz exactly? like.. what big payoff are u expecting from her? you’re just... horrifically traumatising her. and im wondering, like- where would that leave her in s13?  because she’s supposed to still be here, then, and supposedly travelling with the doctor. and again it just feels so damn cheap: because yaz really does still feel like she’s at the beginning of her story, despite being here for two years (and god am i a little mad abt that; it’s so, so sad that she really could be replaced with a cardboard cutout for most of s11). explore what we HAVE of her, first, before trying to go so damn dark with her. it’s not going to have the payoff you want. you have to work a bit more, to do something like that first. using some fucked up shit like that, just as a springboard for character development it just- it feels so damn lazy to me...  and again, i do not feasibly see how this could properly segue into s13 on that damn note. like the conse

3. and just... god in general. i just. okay again with chibbers and his writing. literally i dont want to sound so negative abt chibnall bc like SOME ppl really do just fucking attack . KILL. over every damn thing, without a breath and its like... okay babe. okay. and i mean, granted i can be a little like tht with moffat tbh - and so  i get ppl do get a little FERVENT when it comes to shit they dont like but- BUT MY POINT IS. i really dont hate-hate this era of who. s7 will still be my least favourite, even if i do still regard this all as bottom of the pile stuff- and that is frustrating, because it really does have potential! but anyway god. what was my fucking point. oh yeah. chibnall. if this was the case.... if this really did fucking happen. god no offence but fucking hell i do not trust chibnall to treat such a heavy scene well enough. not with the way s11 and s12 have been. and its just because... again this is all the WEB OF ISSUES with these seasons... but all of it just boils down to: every single script really needed a second or third pass over. ITS LIKE, things are kinda right, but its always jsut...wrong and its soi many things that just dont quite work and  instead all work in tandem to bring this ship down.

too many companions, leading to a bloated tardis; leading to none of them getting enough focus; leading to weaker characters whose dynamics with each other aren’t always hitting. there’s swathes of s12, where the doctor is just completely disconnected from the companions altogether. she just doesnt talk to them. and there’s a difference between her being detached, and her just.... LITERALLT FORGETTING THEY EXIST. i remember- was it ryan who disappears at one poimt, and she JUST DOESNT NOTICE? and then all of them disappear in fugitive? like its just so... the companion-docgtor relationship is so INTEGRAL to the whole show!!! it makes story beats less effective; not even that, the whole energy is brought down, because they just don’t TALK properly (and the dialogue... good god, is it stiff: and whilst i hated 11′s era of mutated LOL THAT’S SO RANDOM. THE HORSE IS NAMED SUSAN. BOWTIES FEZ FEZ HOW MANY MARKETABLE RANDOM SHIT CAN WE THROW AT THE PAAAGE it felt like characters were bouncing off each other... there’s now these long pauses, places where it should have been snappier, awkward remarks thrown in there and then) . it, again, bloats EVERYTHING bc half the time you have to just give stuff for these ppl to do and its like man, why! why ! its all so.... sloppy in a way that’s sad bc it was ALMOST right. things are ALMOST right here but it doesnt QUITE work and it needs pulling together into something neater, tighter.  AND GIVEN ALL OF THAT. i do not think, with the way he’s been handling things, this man would ever be capable of pulling off something as fucked up like that in a way that has any weight even disregarding the two above points

4 lastly. just fucking dont kill ryan man. c’mon. how many main, black characters have we had? hmm, let’s see. martha, mickey, danny, bill. we’re going at a 50% survival rate, with the other two facing pretty poor treatment in the writing room in general. no, im not letting it go: you cant literally refer to mickey, who was the first, like, leading black character on the show, as a fucking DOG repeatedly.  if you’re gonna decide to diversify the tardis, pay your dues; dont fucking axe him for what, again, really just feels like empty emotional tortureporn. ryan deserves better.