Vaderisnothayden

skyjedi2005 said:

Vaderisnothayden said:I'm in favor of he 97 SE being made available on dvd and blu-ray. It's part of Star Wars history and it's important to the study of how Lucas's Star Wars mindset developed. I have it on vhs. At least it doesn't have Hayden leering at the end.

 

He takes an outtake of hayden from episode III, and digitally cuts him into the scene, cause we all know Hayden was such a better actor than Shaw,lol.

If Anakin really died when he turned sith then just who the hell did Luke save/redeem on the Death Star II?

That was crazy. The whole POINT of that stuff in ROTJ was that Luke redeemed that old guy who had been Darth Vader. Jeez, it's like we need to explain Star wars to Lucas.

Well, in effect Lucas tried to kick the orignals out of the canon by making the SEs to replace them and, seeing as the originals are the definition of Star Wars canon (by being the real Star Wars -canon is ultimately about what's the real thing), that basically had the effect of kicking the SEs and all Lucas's later work out of the canon.

 Even then I still had hopes of Episode 3 turning it around, and I sort of enjoyed that at first (mainly because of Ian McDiarmid) before getting tired of it.  

I never had much hopes for ROTS. After seeing AOTC I knew ROTS was going to be absolute shite and that Lucas had lost the ability to do good star wars. But ROTS suprised me, because it was significantly worse than even I expected. It was so uninvolving that I had trouble staying awake during it.

Thanks. :)

That article is useful but I don't think it mentioned the 1985 VHS ANH at all, which is a major omission considering that was a new soundtrack.

Do you know if they remixed the sound for any of the other two films around that (mid 80s) or just ANH?

I read this claim that Star Wars on video was rare down until the 90s and that doesn't seem to fit with that article.

Jango isn't a Star Wars character. He's only in the prequels and they're not Star Wars.

Star Wars is the original versions of the original trilogy films. Lucas rejected those (and thus broke with Star Wars) in the mid-90s when he made the Special Editions to be the definitive versions of the films replacing the originals. Since then he's been making stuff that has a wildly different mentality from Star Wars and is out of continuity with Star Wars, seeing as it's in-continuity with his invalid 1997 and 2004 special editions. All his newer stuff (1999 onwards) not only has a mentality and story at odds with Star Wars, it is also founded on his mid 90s break with Star Wars when he rejected the real Star Wars. By rejecting Star wars he ensured that by very definition all his later work was not Star Wars. There hasn't been any new Star Wars films since 1983. 

Hence there is only one Fett. His name is Boba and he has nothing to with Temuera Morrison or Daniel Logan. He is also voiced by Jason Wingreen. He was never a little twerp kid and his father never claimed to be a simple man trying to make his way in the universe.

I’m trying to figure out the various release dates of the OOT on video etc.

I know ANH was rereleased in 1985 but I don’t know when it was released before then and I don’t know much about the releases after then before 1995 except that European widescreen for the trilogy was in 1991 and there was also Euopean vhs in 1994.

I don’t know much about when ESB was first released on video or it’s rereleases before 1995.

I know ROTJ was first released on vhs in 1986 but I don’t know much about its rereleases before 1995.

I know laserdisc for at least ANH started in 1989 and that the trilogy got released on laserdisc in 92, 93 and 95.

I read something that implied Star Wars on video was scarce between 83 and 91 or 95. That surprised me. Anybody know anything about that?

Anybody know anything about the release years/dates for OT on vhs before 1995? Original and rerelease.

Also, I read somewhere that the release date for the 95 “One Last Time” release was August 25. Does anybody know if that’s right?

Let me state some of the problems with the 97 SE.

Everybody knows about Han shooting first being shite. Castrate Han, why not? Such bullshit. And it fucks with Han's character and Han is one of the best things in the trilogy, so it's pretty serious. Not to mention it fucks up one of the coolest scenes in the trilogy to fit in with bogus goody-goody morality. But what about Jabba? That Jabba was HORRIFIC. Total comical cartoon. The ROTJ Jabba had power and presence and intelligence and menace. The 97 Jabba cgi looks like it's designed purely for comical effect. Furthermore, there even seems to be some attempt to make it cutesey. That is NOT Jabba. It doesn't look or feel like the same character at all. CGIing Jabba to look like that shows a major lack of respect for the OT and what was established in ROTJ and a total lack of interest in consistency. And then there's Han stepping on Jabba's tail. Can you seriously imagine the Jabba from ROTJ letting Han live if he stepped on Jabba's tail? ROTJ Jabba was a great character, which makes the 97 ruining of him all the more tragic and awful. Mos Eisley: Lucas said he originally wanted to make it busier and bigger than he did in 77, or something like that. Well, he should have been able to see from the finished 77 film that what he ended up with in 77 was better than what he originally wanted. It had more atmosphere and flavor, that little town that he showed us. And it was more of its time. The 97 Mos Eisley is overdone and furthermore has TPM-style "comedy" and Bash Fender's ship from Shadows of the Empire stuffed in. The EU doesn't belong in the OT. Like I said, the 77 Mos Eisley was of its time. The 97 version was also flavored by its era and jars with the 1977 movie. There are multiple other very 90s-taste things in the 97 SE films that jar with the original 70s/80s films they're forced into, such the cgi Jabba and Jedi Rocks and its cartoon characters and the style of the ROTJ other-planet celebration scenes and the morality of Han shooting second.

ESB didn't have terrible problems in the SE, but scenes from ROTJ shouldn't be shoved in to ESB. Like what's Jerjerrod doing in ESB?

ROTJ has the Jedi Rocks Jabba's palace musical bit. Horrible overdone bullshit with cartoon characters who don't look real. When a cgi character comes off looking unreal it compromises the whole feel of the scene (and film) and compromises it feeling real and believable. This was a big problem with the Jabba in ANH too. And it's not the limits of CGI tech at the time or anything like that. The Jedi Rocks creatures and the ANH Jabba are done cartoon-style, so there's clearly zero real attempt to make them look real and they're clearly designed to be comical. They totally ruined Sy Snootles and that singing Yuzzum guy was horrendous. This scene craps on the whole movie. Then there's the celebrations on other planets at the end. The original end of ROTJ was very carefully designed so that the emotional mood gracefully and gradually moves from the mood of the Vader funeral pyre scene into the celebration mood, all crucially kept in the atmospheric setting of Endor at night. It works perfectly and as the closing section of the trilogy it is crucial that it work perfectly. The crass other-planet celebration scenes are shoved right in the middle of this, breaking up the flow and the atmosphere and scarring the beauty of ROTJ's ending. And then there's the change in celebration music. ROTJ's ending was the end of the trilogy and all the main characters were alive and well. It was a happy ending, despite the bittersweet element of Vader's death. But when you look at Star Wars as The Tragedy of Darth Vader it suddenly becomes sadder because Vader is the hero and he's dead. This is I think the reason for replacing the happy Yub Nub with the sadder tune the SE brought in. It's betrayal of the nature of the story and what the ending was supposed to be.

Finally, it is not valid to go back and fuck with a beloved classic like that and stuff in things from a different era that has different tastes and a different mentality. It's fucking desecration. A film is a thing of its time and it should be left that way, an expression of the cultural/social milieu of its time. When you fuck with that by putting in conspicuously later-era stuff you make something that is not genuine. A lie. Similarly, it is bullshit to make revisionist changes to the story of a classic. Nor is it valid to stick into a classic things that just don't work by the rules of the classic, such as cartoon characters into a trilogy that such characters do not not fit. Like splicing Mickey Mouse into Schindler's List. And it's not valid to put things into a classic that fuck up how it functions or ruin great characters. And this SE wasn't just meant to be a harmless alternative cut. Already in 1994 it was stated in Star Wars Insider 23 that the SE was meant to be the "definitive" version of the films. That means it supersedes the original. Think about that. A bastardized version that involves stuffing stuff from a different era into a classic being taken as the definitive version of the classic. That's total bullshite and an insult to the people who loved the classic. And in 1995 we got the "One Last Time" video/laserdisc campaign that told us that we were getting one last chance to buy the original versions of Star Wars on video/laserdisc (there was no dvd back then) because it would no longer be available after that. Think about that. The SE was being brought in and because of that the OOT would be no longer made available. In other words, the OOT was to be totally replaced and made gone. And remember this superseded replaced thing was the original form of a classic, the version beloved of millions. So this SE was a totally invalid endeavour and an insult.

skyjedi2005 said:

Again i have nothing against Tim Zahn i believe he saved star wars in the early nineties and his books would have made for a better movie trilogy than Lucas prequels.  It is so dissapointing though that he saved star wars just in time so lucas could destroy it, oh the irony.

Star Wars didn't need saving. We didn't need new films or all the pile of merchandise that came after Zahn's success. If Zahn hadn't re-popularized Star Wars Lucas probably wouldn't have made the prequels or SE and we'd probably have the OOT on anamorphic dvd right now and blu-ray coming up. I could have done without the 90s Star Wars renaissance. Ok, there were still some good things that came out of that era and I have some limited nostalgia for it as the last period in which Star Wars meant the OT not Annie and the cartoon guys. But some people see it as Star Wars's golden age and that just bewilders me.  

Gaffer Tape said:

Wow, I could have sworn I'd had this conversation in this same thread no less than three years ago!  ^_~  But here we go again.  Just to clarify:  immaculate conception is not in the least the same thing as conceiving a child without a sexual partner.  And now we know... and knowing is half the... sigh, that G.I. Joe movie sucked!

Holy virgin birth then. We all know from TPM that Lucas intended Anakin to be all "Son of God" and godlike and holy and oh-so-special, with massive Christ echoes. Which there was curiously zero hint of in the OT. It's all part of the same revisionist bullshit as Annie having more midichlorians than anybody and being the bestest jedi ever and being the Chosen One (and here I thought that was Buffy), complete with a goddamn prophecy, and to make this work with the OT we have to have this crap that Vader was all broken down as a force user due to his bionics. (And his bionics are why he can't use force lightning, rather than the obvious original state of things in which force lightning was special to somebody as poweful as Palps and not just any old dark sider could use it.) This was all Lucas's original story of course, which was why there was zero sign of it in the OT and why it sticks out as being at odds with mentality of the OT.

cap said:

auraloffalwaffle said:

I particularly hate the Immaculate Conception idea.

What immaculate conception?  I always figured Shmi just got really drunk at a frat party, got knocked up, and didn’t remember the encounter.

Well, it could be that she did it with Yoda and didn't want to admit she screwed a little green guy. Or Jar Jar could have been the father. That would explain Anakin's intelligence level. I mean, the general impression you get from ROTS is that Annie turned dark because he was too damn dumb to know better.

Whiners said:

 

Do you realize how hypocritical you're being? First you're saying how they explained things in the prequels you would've liked to imagine happen in your demented little head instead, yet now you're making it sound bad that they're making questions like that with the new prequels! There was a 16 year difference in between RotJ and TPM, why would you not want those questions answered? I think it was great the way George Lucas gave people all that time to answer them, so people could wonder for years and then finally find out the truely canon answer, than just releasing the prequels three years after RotJ. Of course, you people know nothing about being creative.

Truly canon answer? How is that garbage canon? It isn't even Star wars, let alone canon.

And how does people finding fault with Lucas's work demonstrate that they know nothing about being creative?

Gaffer Tape said:Yeah, because, you know, it's just so darned creative to make three movies that totally contradict every bit of backstory mentioned in your previous three movies to the point that you have to go back to those three movies and make changes to them to cover your ass.

God bless creativity!

lol

 In TPM Maul says, “At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi, at last we will have our revenge”

So they will gain revenge by revealing themselves to the Jedi? This line doesn’t do much except reinforce the aforementioned rule of two. It is inferred that the Sith want revenge, but no motivation is revealed at any point in any of the movies.

Not to mention the line brings to mind images of Darth Maul standing before Yoda opening his raincoat.

ChainsawAsh said:

I sold my 3-disc set and bought the new, standalone edition of the first film.  A much better decision, in my own personal opinion.

But that's interesting about the Buford photo - I never noticed it, and it's refreshing to hear a filmmaker who respects the idea that films are a product of their era, mistakes and all.

Indeed. Yay for that.

TheBoost said:

xhonzi said:

I wouldn't mind an enture SE book when they're done with the Trilogy, but you're right... keep the SE's out of it.

 

 Id think that would be best, and really appropriate. If the SEs are viewed as a seperate work from a serperate era, I think they have their own unique values and even a little charm.

 

I'm with you on separate work from a separate era, with different values, but charm? Two horrible cartoon Jabbas, painful Jedi Rocks with annoying-to-the-limit cartoon creatures, Han Solo castrated (well, shooting second), Hayden ghost leering at the ewoks, Temuera-does-bland-Boba, overdone Mos Eisley spectacle (with TPM-style "humor"), Bash Fender's Shadows of the Empire ship stuffed in where it doesn't belong, other-planet celebration scenes stuffed into the end of ROTJ where they break up the emotional flow of the film at a crucial point (with added Gungan in the second version), eyebrows cut off Sebastian Shaw to fit a stupid movie made two decades after the original... no, I don't see the charm. Fucking mutilation and bad taste, plus a lack of understanding of how the films work. Not that they shouldn't be studied. They're part of Star Wars history and a crucial step in Star Wars's development into shallow crap. It's important to study them if you want to understand how Lucas went wrong on Star Wars.

skyjedi2005 said:

 

I wish Marquand put his own stamp so to speak on Return of Jedi.  What we ended up with was very much a remake of star wars 77 but not as good or original, as much as i love rotj i have to admit this is true.

ROTJ is as good as ANH. It just has different strengths and weaknesses.

Can't they make this book a little smaller than the last one? The size of the last one was ridiculous. Books that are to be read rather than just left on coffee tables should be easy to handle, not big cumbersome things. And there's way too much of a thing of Star Wars fans being milked for cash through lots of big overdone luxury giant hardbacks/coffee table books. I think they deliberately make the books unwieldy just to make them fancy and jack up the price. And so many Star Wars fans just go along with it. Real books are meant to be read, not left on coffee tables. And there's a general trend nowadays (not just in Star wars) of making books bigger than they need to be just so people can think they're clever for reading a book that has physical bulk. So often, the same text can be put out in a much smaller format that's easier to handle and doesn't take up so much precious bookshelf space. And the Star Wars situation is just another facet of the sad situation that Star Wars merchandising has become.

And yeah I know there was a paperback version of The Making of Star Wars that was smaller (at least the British version), but if you got that there was stuff left out. So I was stuck getting the giant motherfucking Making of Star Wars and constantly trying to figure out where to put the bloody thing.

Some guys do indeed lash out at women a lot. It's a problem that a lot of effort has been put into tackling, but with limited progress. There's two things there, gender attitudes and violence attitudes. Some people have seriously negative attitudes toward the gender they don't belong to. Sexist attitudes and gender-hatred are major problems society needs to tackle. A lot of common attitudes need to be rethought. And some people seem to think it's ok to carelessly lash out at other human beings with violence. It's all too common. Human nature is violent. Male on female violence, male on male violence, female on female violence, female on male violence. There's a lot of it. Violence being casually thrown around is a problem that society has to confront. You're always hearing in the news about some new horrible violent crime. People need to get more civilized.

As for specifically male on female violence, I've got a cousin whose husband put his hands around her throat. He also had a thing for punching their kids. Luckily she successfully left him and took the kids with her. At first the authorities weren't very helpful but that improved. I'm very glad he's out of the picture. The throat thing is pretty significant, because strangulation is one of the primary ways women are murdered. It was a worrying situation before she got out of there.

No, there was a lot more to his Doctor than that. Generally, he was hitting multiple different notes simultaneously. And in no way did his performances share the faults of Tennant's performances. His Doctor was utterly different from Tennant's unconvincing lightweight Doctor. Eccleston is definitely the best Doctor after Tom Baker. And overall Eccleston's season was the best Doctor Who stuff ever made. High quality showmaking combined with a great Doctor and a good companion. Things dropped a good ways when they switched to Tennant.

Bingowings said:

It would have been nice to see more of Eccleston but he did seem to be hitting one note most of the time (once again down to the often silly material he has to work with).

Hitting one note? I don't see that at all.

skyjedi2005 said:

The jedi script was a noticeable drop in quality from empire strikes back, the script chores Kasden did on jedi were more out of thanks to lucas and loyalty. But he had very little input into the story.

His ideas were ignored Like killing Han Solo, which i agree which Lucas being against.  But i do agree with Kasden's idea that a second death star wars just dumb and not  original.

The ROTJ script was good stuff. The second death star didn't make a huge amount of sense (why make another one with exactly the same GLARING weak point?), but it worked very well for closing the trilogy.

xhonzi said:

I see what you did there...  Farts... very clever.

Clever isn't the point. The point is mocking something that badly needs to be mocked.

ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, but the Making Of didn't have Jefferson Starship playing a song in the middle of it.  They probably got the rights to broadcast it, but never got the rights for other types of distribution - that's why so many TV-DVD releases today have the music replaced with generic, royalty-free music, and why many haven't been released at all.  Look at any DVD release of That '70s Show, season 1 of Scrubs, and older shows like Mission: Impossible or WKRP in Cincinnati.  They even had to replace the theme song for one season of Married ... with Children, for Christ's sake.

So when you have something that's played live during the program, the studio might very well think it's not worth it to pay the royalties for home video distribution (which, for Jefferson Starship, would probably be fairly high) if they don't think they'll make their money back.

Yeah, I'm aware of all that. But the fact remains that there's a good chance the idea of bringing out the special on video occurred to them before Lucas decided he wanted it gone, so they may have had some idea what to do about the Jefferson Starship bit. Maybe they would have simply cut the song (hardly a great loss -the Starship bit was probably the most un-Star Warsy part of the special out of a whole lot of un-Star Warsy things, and I found it even more annoying than the wookiee porn and the cantina musical number).

Of course, I don't think that's why the Holiday Special hasn't been released - I just think George hates it and never wants it to see the light of day.  Once he's dead, and he isn't personally responsible for these decisions, we'll probably get awesome Blu-Ray releases of the 1977, 1980, 1981, 1983, and 1997 versions of all the films, and a very nice DVD of the Holiday Special.  But that might be a while ...

As long as he doesn't put it in his will that they should never be brought out.

We don't need prequels. The original trilogy works quite well by itself. Nobody ever needed more Star Wars beyond that. If only we'd all realized that way back. It's been a hard-learned lesson. Six-movie saga, nine movie saga, twelve movie cycle... all a load of bull. The trilogy is a self-contained story that works by itself. The rest is just backstory that never needed films. Sure it would be nice to see how Anakin REALLY turned into Vader, but it's not necessary. From the OOT we can gather that he was a good guy who was corrupted by darkness probably by Palpatine (who else?) maybe through anger and hate and turned probably sometime between the twins' conception and birth and that sometime after he went evil he got all fucked up and became "more machine than man", complete with bionics and a breathing mask. He was probably associated with the emperor around the time the twins were born and at some point after he went dark he worked for the empire hunting down the jedi and rose to an important position in the empire. Before he went evil, he'd been a clone wars vet, a powerful jedi knight and a good friend to Kenobi, who was a general in the clone wars and served Leia's adopted father in them. Jedi knights fought in the clone wars. Yoda trained Kenobi as a jedi and Kenobi took it upon himself to train Anakin and fucked up. The republic was replaced with the empire after it had stood for at least 25 thousand years, with the jedi as its guardians for 25 thousand years, and in the end the jedi were hunted down and killed off for the empire, so by the time of ROTJ there's no jedi around except Luke. Owen Lars wasn't keen on Anakin fighting in the clone wars. The republic had a senate that was probably pretty important in its government and the senate continued when the republic became the empire. The empire may have come in roughly around the time the twins were born. Leia and Luke's mother survived until Leia was small and then died and was obviously a nice person but sad. Leia was adopted by the Organas on Alderaan, who were presumably Alderaanian royalty. The twins had been hidden when born so the emperor wouldn't get them and Vader may not have known about them, and he certainly didn't know about Leia. Seeing as the coming of the empire was the dark times, we can assume the republic was the ok times and was basically good. Anakin was a great pilot when Kenobi met him and we'd be within reason to assume he was an adult or near-adult at the time. A lot of things are either said outright in the OT or implied or suggested and more we can guess, leaving us with a good picture of the backstory (not necessarily the exact backstory Lucas had, but at least close to it, and definitely a backstory that is suggested by the films and which works for it). So from the original trilogy we can extrapolate all the backstory we need for the OT. It would certainly have been nice to have a more detailed picture and answers to some questions, but the trilogy works without that. Prequel trilogy unnecessary.

SilverWook said:

Lucasfilm does not pretend the HS doesn't exist. The characters have listings on the official site, and Hasbro released a Boba Fett based on the cartoo segement.

Doesn't count. They've refused all these years to release it on vhs or dvd, which is as good as trying to erase it from history and from what I've read Lucas has made it clear he wishes it were gone. Character listings in the official site's bullshit and toys are nothing compared to the issue of it being on legitimate dvd/vhs or not. And Lucasfilm is not Lucas. It's been demonstrated that Lucasfilm and Lucas can diverge in attitudes (such as on the canon issue). However some of his employees might feel about the special, I think it's clear Lucas is against it and I'd bet that's why it's never been released. Whereas he may not bother stopping them making the odd toy from it or sticking some stuff from it on their site, as long as the thing itself doesn't get the real recognition an official release gives.

SilverWook said:

If they finally decided to officially release it, there might be music rights to sort out with Jefferson Starship, etc. Nobody was thinking of a video release back in 1978.

I wouldn't be so sure they wouldn't have thought of that. Just two years after the special came out, the tv documentary The Making of Star wars was out out on video. If they could put out a docummentary on video then they could surely put out an actual piece of screen fiction. I think even back then it was noticeable that the Holiday Special wasn't out on video. 

Fang Zei said:

Anyone can download the Holiday Special from google video.

Not good enough. It deserves to be out on respectable dvd release like the piece of classic Star Wars history it is. The issue is this business of Lucas (as it looks to me) wanting to erase Star wars history. I think the treatment of the Holiday Special was the first sign of the attitude that has put the OOT in its present situation. Back before the SE, even bloody Ewoks episodes got VHS releases back in the day, but the Holiday Special with the actual OOT main characters and actors, made during the classic film era? Nope.

Did the prequels really make more money if you take inflation and the change in money from one era to the next into account? They certainly had a lot less cultural impact. The originals were a massive presence in the film years. The Phantom menace was a big cultural event because of the expectation created by years of waiting for something to follow the OT (in other words it was big because of the OT), but the other prequels were just big blockbusters like any other. They weren't this huge event that the old films were in their time.

As an aside, I looked up books about Lucas on Amazon. There were a good dose of Lucas books coming out in 97 through 2001 (from circa the SE to after TPM and before AOTC) and then it drops off. The only book of significance in more recent years was the 2005 The Cinema of George Lucas, which seems to be a big coffee table luxury book that doesn't have a huge amount of depth. But it seems to me that there's been no biographies in recent years and no studies of his films in general (ones with his name in the title, anyway) other than that one big coffee table book. It's like he got a lot of attention when he got back into action with the SE and TPM and then it dropped off. Did people give up on reading about him after AOTC was so bad? I mean, I know that for me AOTC was the turning point. I was way too tolerant of the SE back in the old days and while TPM was a disappointment it had its good points, but AOTC had no merits whatosever and was for me the sign that told me Star Wars was fucked (though I should have figured that out in 97 with Han shooting second and Roger Rabbit Jabba).

skyjedi2005 said:

  Tom Baker will always be doctor who to some fans, in the same way that Sean Connery will always be remembered as  James Bond to old school bond fans.

When i think of dr who i think of the chessyness of the special effects, the cool theme song and that colorful scarf Tom wore, and watching it on an old tv set on pbs before we had cable.

Tom Baker is a spectacular actor wiith a unique talent and mentality. The old show was mostly crap but he shone through in it nonetheless. Really special performance. The Doctor has never been so much the eccentric alien as when Tom played him. Second best I'd say is Eccleston, who did a marvellous job. After that I'd put Pertwee, who was a perfect archetypical Doctor. I often found Doctor Who (the old show) damn near unwatchable but I watched it anyway because I was fascinated by the different takes different actors had on the same character and because some of the actors did a great job. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are both underrated and turned in their own unique takes with panache. Whereas I think Troughton is overrated. I think there's a lot of pretension involved in Troughton fandom -I think a lot of people think it's clever and intellectual to make a fuss about Troughton. Hartnell's peformance I found unrelatable and basically a hopless caricature. Except for some bits in Castrovalva, Davison's performances were usually bland as hell. I thought the guy had no personality and couldn't act until I saw him elswhere. It's just that his Doctor is probably his worst work. It's like Samuel L Jackson as Mace Windu. Is there any chance George Lucas secretly directed Davison's tenure?

skyjedi2005 said:

Does anyone like the look of the new doctor who?

Does anyone actually think the new companion actress is as attractive as Billie Piper was in 2005?

Replacing Tennent is stupidity knowing how popular he is.  Its like Replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig to be James Bond

Replacing Tennant makes sense because he did a lousy job as Doctor. But I don't think they're getting anybody better. And the James Bond franchise should have been closed down ages ago. Neither Brosnan nor Craig have been much use in the role. Brosnan's version just wasn't plausible and Craig's version is like a block of stone, not much fun to watch. The last reasonable Bond was the underrated Dalton. But the franchise is way too stone-age in its mentality and no amount of attempts to modernize it can hide that. It was only at all acceptable back decades ago when attitudes were different and even then it came out with extreme stuff (such as Bond raping Pussy Galore). The only Bond really worth looking up the films for is Connery, ten times the actor the other Bonds have been, but the films were damn prmitive back in his time. 

I never found Billie Piper especially attractive (Freema Agyeman is a different matter), but she was very good in the role and added much to the show.