#gigawho

[doctornolonger]

People are sometimes surprised when I mention that the unproduced story I regret the most isn't any of the many cancelled FP projects but Steven Hall's Fifty-Fifty, which would have wrapped up some of Big Finish's best character arcs with a conflict between the Seventh and Eighth Doctors at "the moment where 7 went bad".

It would have been the retroactive pinnacle of Wilderness Years, taking its two Doctors with such different characterizations and pitting them against each other. It also … doesn't make a ton of sense. Even taking into account the timey-wimey memory effects of a multi-Doctor event, how could such a dramatic character arc for the Seventh Doctor possibly come and go without the Eighth Doctor – his future self – having any idea?

This question keeps coming up in Doctor Who, and every time the answer feels contrived. Steven Hall would have solved it for Fifty-Fifty by introducing a "Temporal Wish" that allows parts of history to be rewritten without timeline damage. Elsewhere, Big Finish has resorted to hand-waving: every story where characters meet out-of-order has to involve an ad hoc disguise, a memory wipe, or a promise from one of the characters that next time they'll pretend not to have met (🥴). And don't even get me started on "season 6b"!

In what Ingiga cleverly calls Doctor Who: The Return, RTD faced the same question. What if we had more Tenth Doctor stories, not squeezed into any of the well-trodden gaps in his timeline but set after The End of Time – genuinely new stories, taking the character places that it never would've made sense for him to go (such as therapy)?

RTD answered this question twice. Once the regular way, the ad hoc way: David Tennant's contrived return at the end of The Power of the Doctor. And then, emboldened by the Power of the Showrunner, he solved it again – and he solved it for every story, now and forever.

I think down the timeline, they all separated. They all went like that. All the Doctors came back to life with their individual TARDISes. The gift of the Toymaker. And they're all out there traveling around in what I'm calling the Doctorverse. It's the Doctorverse. And I want to create a future in which Sylvester McCoy, he can survive and have an adventure. Because one of the things about The Star Beast is, to get you back and Catherine, we had to jump through so many hoops. Which is great story, but it's like, why can't you just arrive and step out the TARDIS? […] Because this is exactly what Big Finish does. It's exactly what everyone does in their imagination. […] It's time to just kind of open it up and say, they're all out there now.

Or as he put it a different time,

Doctors galore, with infinite possibilities. All Doctors exist. All stories are true.

Gig's latest piece rightly dismisses the "Flowchart" theory of bigeneration, but frankly, I think the fiddly stuff about "fix" vs "fixed" etc. is a red herring. The simple fact is that if Fourteen's post-Giggle memories flow backwards into Fifteen – if Seven's post-TV Movie memories flow backwards into Eight – bigeneration wouldn't solve the Fifty-Fifty problem.

Yes, RTD tries to have his cake and eat it too. In the dream logic of The Giggle, "emotional healing" is a mysterious essence that can be transferred through time independently of memories, just as incinerated roads can magically heal themselves in The Star Beast. But in terms of what RTD's trying to accomplish, in terms of what bigeneration is, I think it's okay to take him at his word.

Speaking of words, the leak called it "bi-regeneration", and even after the episode aired, much of the internet followed suit. But that's not what it's called. It's just bigeneration: not a type of regeneration, an alternative. And indeed, now we have this option – now we have Fourteen, not just Ten – why would we ever go back to playing the timeline-squeezing game? If Big Finish officially untethered itself from the past Doctors' timelines and, say, freed Eight from his interminable death march – would anyone miss it?

Lawrence Miles certainly didn't think so when he advocated a similar untethering 24 years ago.

When you watched Doctor Who as a kid, it kind of lost some of its edge from the start, because you knew for a fact how things were going to turn out. […] I've always felt that the Missing Adventures… or PDAs, or whatever you want to call them… have got a similar problem. The Doctor can't die [or go to therapy – n8.] We know the future, it's not even an issue. That was why I did what I did in Interference. Even if they don't like it, I hope people realize there's a purpose behind it all. It's suppose to justify the existence of the PDAs. From that point on, you can never be sure what the outcome's going to be.

Nobody picked up his suggestion back then, but then again, Miles lacked the Power of the Showrunner. If Tales of the TARDIS' therapeutic dreamscapes are any indication, it won't be long before other writers adopt RTD's in-vision musings as gospel.

So what will happen when Fourteen dies? Will he regenerate? Will he dissolve into sparkles, his ✨emotional healing✨ shooting back in time to become Fifteen? Or like the prior iteration of the "Tenth Doctor happy ending offshoot" idea, is he simply mortal now? The frank answer is that we'll probably never find out: that's simply not the kind of story that bigeneration is meant to tell.

Or maybe RTD's already told us. The quote earlier about "Doctors galore" came from the note accompanying his "Doctor Who and the Time War". That story shows us an Eighth Doctor who survived to the very last days of the Time War, with no War Doctor to be found; it's easy to imagine a bigeneration on Karn not unlike RTD's speculation that "Peter Davison once was left behind on the surface of Androzani and woke up and there was a TARDIS and he carried on having those adventures."

And in the story – released almost seven years after The Night of the Doctor showed us the birth of the War Doctor – Eight struggles, and he succumbs, and he regenerates … into Christopher Eccleston's Nine. Now there's a flowchart that I could get behind.

#bigeneration #the giggle #fourteenth doctor #fifteenth doctor #ingiga #gigawho #rtd 2.0 #doctor who the return #effortpost #doctor who and the time war #interference #fifty-fifty #50/50 #steven hall #seventh doctor #tales of the tardis

[tinker-tailor-soldier-tye]

Why dafuck has Twitter’s Moffat discourse suddenly rewound by about half a decade? I’ve spent years reading some incredible positive criticism of that era by people like Darren Mooney and GigaWho (who just put a great new article out, natch) only to suddenly be struck by galaxy-brain counter takes such as “Eleven’s Silence arc started out with foreshadowing that didn’t make sense, which makes it objectively bad writing” like hell no not this garbage again.

#doctor who #moffat #pro moffat

[ramialkarmi]

Internal documents reveal Tesla is blowing through an insane amount of raw material and cash to make Model 3s, and production is still a nightmare (TSLA)

Tesla, the electric car company helmed by billionaire Elon Musk, is generating an incredible amount of waste in an effort to manufacture parts for the Model 3 at its Nevada Gigafactory.

According to documents reviewed by Business Insider, scrap at the Gigafactory may have cost the company at least $150 million. 

The company's attempt to ramp up Model 3 production has also led the company to cut key parts of production, like ensuring that car parts are traceable.

Tesla is wasting a jaw-dropping amount of raw material and cash to make the Model 3. 

According to internal documents viewed by Business Insider, the company expects that as much as 40% of the raw materials used to produce batteries and driving units manufactured at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory need to be scrapped or reworked by employees before they are sent to Tesla's Fremont factory and assembled into Model 3s.

That is to say, for every 2,500 battery packs and driving units that leave the Gigafactory, an additional 1,000 pieces of "nonconforming material" is created. Half of that material will be reworked and put into other car parts. The other half becomes scrap.

Tesla has spent almost $150 million on scrap materials so far this year, according to internal estimates Business Insider has seen. That number does not include the overhead cost of creating that scrap (energy, man hours, etc). Tesla reported manufacturing 9,766 Model 3s in the first quarter of this year.

Tesla told Business Insider that $150 million is an overstatement and that the number is in millions, but not that high.

“As is expected with any new manufacturing process, we had high scrap rates earlier in the Model 3 ramp. This is something we planned for and is a normal part of a production ramp," Tesla said in a statement to Business Insider.

"Indeed, we have always explained that Model 3 margins would increase after costs begin to fall from elevated scrap and other early ramp issues — and they have. Our scrap rate for batteries has decreased by almost 60% since January as we have improved our manufacturing processes. It’s also important to remember the reason we scrap parts: because we want to ensure that only the highest-quality parts are used to create the best vehicles for our customers. This is a part of the reason why Tesla's customer satisfaction scores for Model 3 vehicle quality and condition are at an all-time high of 93%,” the company said in its statement. 

Whether Tesla is improving its process or not, this kind of inefficiency is expensive, especially so early in the process, industry experts told Business Insider. Gigafactory manufactures the batteries and drive units (the electric motor, inverter, and gearbox) that go into Tesla's new much vaunted, but also much troubled, Model 3 vehicle. 

This is all a byproduct of the march to reach Tesla CEO Elon Musk's manufacturing target of 5,000 Model 3 cars per week by July. 

What it is not a part of is Tesla's overarching goal of building eco-friendly cars, or Musk's ambition to create the most efficient and technologically impressive auto manufacturing process the world has ever seen. The process has been frustrated by battery supply issues and bottlenecks, by over automation and recalcitrant robots — and it doesn't seem like that's over by any means.

"That seems like just an awful lot of money. As an investor, I'd ask is this a good use of my funds? And what kind of transparency is going on here?" Rebecca Lindland a Senior Director and Executive Analyst at Kelley Blue Book told Business Insider. 

"When I've seen scrapage piles its a handful of units... front bumpers, door panels and maybe you'll see a crate of 20 pieces... You can't sustain a 20% rate of scrap and expect to make money," Lindland continued.

Gigawhat?

In its first-quarter earnings report, Tesla told investors that it had "largely overcome the bottleneck" in its battery module line at the Gigafactory. 

But internal documents viewed by Business Insider and an employee familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous, tell a different story — one of incredible waste, hasty manufacturing, and continuous problems. "Production hell," as Elon Musk himself has called it, is still a chaotic scramble of issues.

A specific example for you. In February, a misprogrammed robot that handles battery modules repeatedly punctured through the plastic housing (called a clamshell) and into some battery cells, the employee said. Instead of scrapping all of the modules, some were fixed with adhesive and put back on the manufacturing line, the employee said. According to internal documents Business Insider reviewed, this foible affected more than 1,000 pieces. 

A Tesla spokesperson maintained that the incident impacted far fewer parts, and that none of the punctured parts were released back to the manufacturing process. However, Business Insider reviewed an internal log that showed the parts were put into hundreds of vehicles. We sent Tesla an identification number for one of the cars, and the company would neither confirm nor deny that the piece was in a finished vehicle. It simply said that if the piece was a safety concern it would not be used.

In mid-April, thousands of bandoliers (a part used to create battery modules) were manufactured with an adhesive that was mixed incorrectly, according to the employee. Images shared with Business Insider show these parts simply sitting on the Gigafactory floor.

Tesla denies the claim. 

"To be clear, these pieces are neither connected nor energized — and, instead, are kept in a temperature-controlled room where they pose no safety threat. If these parts were built into a battery pack, energized and interconnected, only then would they be operational. That is not the case, however, and there are no safety concerns," the company said. 

The cost of scrap has become so dramatic that internally, Tesla documents sometimes quantify the amount of money wasted by comparing it to another eye-popping number — like the scrap cost's equivalent measured in miles of $5 footlong Subway sandwiches (137.11 miles, in one case).

Two charts showing inverter scrap costs from the start of the year to the end of May were accompanied by a calculation of how many new Model 3 vehicles someone could buy with the money wasted — 103.42 Model 3s, to be exact.

A similar set of charts calculating scrap costs for rotors noted that the scrap cost could have purchased 4,878 hats for Elon Musk's Boring Company, which are priced at $20 a piece. 

Business Insider also reviewed dozens of pictures of scrap piled high inside the Gigafactory. Some of it is flammable material used to create lithium batteries. Our source told us that some of these batteries present a hazard as they're connected. Tesla countered that this is patently false, that all nonconforming materials are kept in a temperature controlled room, and that they pose no safety threat.

What's more, our source told us that a significant amount of scrap is stored at a warehouse on Gigafactory's campus off of Ireland Drive. Tesla said that's not the case, though, that the Ireland Drive facility houses only parts received from suppliers. 

Gigawho?

During Tesla's first-quarter earnings call, Musk said that some of the bottlenecks Tesla was experiencing were due to over automation. To fix that, he told investors, Tesla "temporarily reduced automation in these areas and introduced semi-automated or manual processes."

Basically, he turned off some of the machines. That alone had industry analysts we spoke with raising an eyebrow. Machines, when useful, are supposed to provide services humans can't, like consistent quality and torque, on top of lifting heavy objects. If they aren't useful, though, turning them off shouldn't matter.

Either way, the employee told Business Insider that the process for deciding what stays on and what goes off has been less than scientific at times. Some machines in the Gigafactory have been turned off simply because they added more time to the manufacturing process than Musk liked when he observed them working on the Gigafactory floor.

An example: In May, Gigafactory employees turned off the "criticality" of the "genealogy" on a specific component in the Tesla battery pack, according to an internal email viewed by Business Insider.

In layman's terms, that means they bypassed putting a tracking system on that specific part (the bandolier) in that stage of the manufacturing process in order to speed things up. 

It's common practice for automakers to create a genealogy for every part in a car. That way, if something goes wrong, the part's source manufacturer, production time, serial number, lot number, expiration date, and more can all be traced. It follows the part through its entire life in the manufacturing process before it gets to your car. This is especially important during recalls because it ensures that companies can locate potentially defected parts.

Now that's no longer the case for at least one part in the Gigafactory-made batteries. Tesla said they are being tracked by lot number because laser etching the parts individually was causing them to be scrapped. The company did not provide Business Insider with the number of parts in a lot, or explain why laser etching the tubes was causing them to be scrapped. It said that while it would not get into internal procedures, any modifications it made to the genealogy were to make the process better.

According to Business Insider's source, Gigafactory maintained its new policy and the parts were not returned.

"His [Musk's] obsession with production speed — he might achieve it, but at what cost? Reaching 5,000 in June or July is going to be a small success if there's further pain down the road," said Mark Schirmer of Cox Automotive Inc.

Tesla has never turned an annual profit, a source of consternation for Musk who, though fairly intolerant of criticism, has acknowledged that Tesla "isn't a real company" until it does. 

In the first quarter, the company's net cash used in operating activities increased by $328.6 million from the same period a year before. This was in part due to the Model 3 ramp up. Expense has not been spared, but what investors should ask themselves is — could it have been?

"If he's going to be an auto manufacturer he has to be held to auto manufacturing standards," Lindland said. "If Honda or GM had these kinds of scrappage rates or waste Wall Street wouldn't stand for that... Nobody would be saying, 'you're just a hater.'" 

If you have more information about manufacturing at Tesla, feel free to give me a shout at [email protected]. 

SEE ALSO: Tesla flew in six planes full of robots in an effort to speed up battery production at the Gigafactory

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: BlackRock's $1.8 trillion bond chief shares an epiphany he had that reshaped his entire economic outlook

#Tech Insider #Arab #Entrepreneurship #sillicon alley insider

[doctornolonger]

The first six minutes of Who Cares' review of "The Giggle" are the most satisfying visualization I've seen of how the 60th celebrated Doctor Who's anniversary so well: it may have omitted multi-Doctor schenanigans and the Centenary's cameos galore, but – just like the 50th – it was a culmination of the Doctor's character arc from the whole show up to that point.

And that's just the first six minutes! Kudos to Neo, Gig, Oliver, and Missy for capping off NuWho in such spectacular fashion.

#the giggle #fourteenth doctor #rtd 2.0 #doctor who the return #bigeneration #but also ... #twelfth doctor #Youtube #who cares #ingiga #gigawho

[doctornolonger]

My friend Gig from Who Cares? has a great new piece on “Companionisation” in The Power of the Doctor. (Warning: spoilers for Love and War!)

#gigawho #who cares #the power of the doctor #chibnall era #farewell #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

The Moffat era: Doctor Who series 5–10 (via gigawho)

#gigawho #steven moffat #doctor who #eleventh doctor #twelfth doctor #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

Followup: I forgot to mention about the presence of Ireland in The Timeless Children. as unexpected as it was it was mostly a massive red herring. A red herring covered in blood which read "THIS IS NOT THE ENEMY" but still.

The bizarre Ireland flashbacks were my favorite part of series 12. They were completely inexplicable and it felt like the sort of ambitious, crazy, “oh god I can’t wait to see how this connects” thing that Moffat would do. I was a bit disappointed that it all turned out to be a metaphor, for reasons much better phrased by my friend Ingiga at GigaWho; in any case, while I spend as much time as the next guy teasing Big Finish for their boxsets about obscure and uninteresting characters, I’d certainly be more interested in seeing hearing more Brendan Who. James Goss, are you reading this? Give me that strange, lyrical spinoff series, continuity be damned!

As an aside, did you know that as far as I know, there’s never actually been a Doctor Who story set in Ireland? Isn’t that just bizarre? This fact might be a few years out of date, so I’d welcome correction!

#ama #the timeless children #series 12 #doctor who #timeless child #chris chibnall #gigawho #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

Sorry, since your answer to my question was tagged as a shitpost I can't tell if you're joking...(I have trouble discerning sarcasm, I'm autistic (apparently Lawrence Miles is too), it's hardly my fault) I mean I don't like the Timeless Childe thing but it's hardly a show-destroying cataclysm. as much as I like the current Master he is a bit lacking in depth. Anyway. My idea for the worst Dr Who story arc involves the Doctor losing his Brain from a severe twinge of cosmic angst.

I tagged it as a shitpost just because it was kind of a shitty response to your question. Maybe series 12 wasn’t necessarily cataclysmic, but there’s a strong case to be made for it being the start of the end for Doctor Who. In any case, I agree entirely that your cosmic angst idea is infinitely worse. 😆

#ama #gigawho #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

I had a ton of fun recording this review/discussion of the series 12 finale with the “Who Cares” gang. Check it out on Youtube or wherever you get podcasts (Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, PlayerFM...) There are also extra notes at whocares.fun!

#who cares #doctor who #the timeless children #thirteenth doctor #gigawho #/who/ #series 12 #timeless child #podcast #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

The Barn Trilogy: “The Day of the Doctor”, “Listen”, “Hell Bent“ (via gigawho)

#gigawho #the day of the doctor #listen #hell bent #clara oswald #war doctor #twelfth doctor #steven moffat #doctor who #purest kino #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

Introducing Resolution: An Interactive Adventure, the very first ever Choose-Your-Own Doctor Who podcast!

Choose guests’ opinions, topics, and even fates as you weave your way through the multiple paths, skits, songs, and endings of this meditation on Resolution and the Chibnall era so far. Many voices and piping hot takes converge in one journey where you decide not only the outcome, but also the people to hear from and what opinions to tolerate! Featuring @big-finish-sketches, Ingiga, myself, and many many more, all lovingly compiled by Neo.

Choose your future. Choose your resolution. Choose Who.

#who cares #doctor who #resolution #chris chibnall #thirteenth doctor #podcast #doctor who podcast #choose your own adventure #gigawho #neo #big-finish-sketches #niki haringsma #ingiga

[doctornolonger]

#series 11 #doctor who #thirteenth doctor #chibshow #ingiga #the battle of ranskoor av kolos #gigawho