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[GameplayWhore]

Unknown. Most people assume Paul McGann regenerated as a result of the Time War, but there's nothing official.

Hey, do we know for sure, like onscreen-canonical, that Eccleston is Eight? Did he or Tennant or Smith at any point give out which number they are?

 

[charlequin]

Hey, do we know for sure, like onscreen-canonical, that Eccleston is Eight? Did he or Tennant or Smith at any point give out which number they are?

a) nine and b) there are three places in the post-2004 rebooted show where they show "all" the Doctors to date ("Human Nature," "The Next Doctor," and "The Eleventh Hour"), and in each that list contains the First through Seventh doctors from the original run, Paul McGann from the TV movie, and then Eccleston and Tennant, so it's probably about as canonical as you're ever gonna get that there aren't any missing interim Doctors in there.

 

[mattiewheels]

I thinks it's funny that a guy in a tv movie can be considered an official Doctor (even after other movies made with actors like Peter Cushing weren't treated the same way), but apparently in the gap between productions they used his character in a lot of new comics and stories. It's just a strange way to become a Doctor, just one appearance. :lol

 

[charlequin]

I thinks it's funny that a guy in a tv movie can be considered an official Doctor (even after other movies made with actors like Peter Cushing weren't treated the same way)

Well, I mean, Paul McGann's movie was considered a pilot for a revived TV series, was created with the intent of being the "canonical" continuation of the series, and even put in some goofy footage of Sylvester McCoy at the beginning so he could regenerate into McGann and thereby establish it was taking place in the same continuity. Whereas Cushing's movies were pretty much never considered to be "canon" by anyone, including anyone working on them. :lol

But yeah. There were tons of novels and audio plays recorded with the Seventh Doctor (or previous Doctors) in the seven years between the show's original cancellation and the TV movie, so even though he only got one movie, all the people producing that stuff switched over and developed his character rather extensively from there. And because a lot of the licensing stuff allowed the people doing those to continue using older Doctors but not to create material with the post-reboot Nine/Ten/Eleven, the Eighth Doctor stuff has kept going even through to today. There are probably actually more stories about the Eighth Doctor in existence at this point than any of the others. :lol

 

[mattiewheels]

Yeah, that's whats so facinating about his one appearance, that he's had more ink spilt about his character than all the others. I can see that as wanting to fill the gap of not having Doctor Who shows, but I couldn't say. I need to see this movie, his Doctor must have something pretty special to him.

 

[Dr Zhivago]

a) nine and b) there are three places in the post-2004 rebooted show where they show "all" the Doctors to date ("Human Nature," "The Next Doctor," and "The Eleventh Hour"), and in each that list contains the First through Seventh doctors from the original run, Paul McGann from the TV movie, and then Eccleston and Tennant, so it's probably about as canonical as you're ever gonna get that there aren't any missing interim Doctors in there.

Matt Smith says he's the Eleventh Doctor in The Lodger (after the 'psychic headbutt'). He also wears the number 11 football shirt in that episode.

 

[GameplayWhore]

a) nine

That would mean I'd have to count Colin Baker.

Spoiler

whoops, my bad

Edit: I've been listening to audiobooks a lot in the past year or two. Does the BBC sell box sets of their DW audio dramas?

 

[GameplayWhore]

(back to 1996)

Ah, I see. The Master is now a giant, gelatinous sperm cell.

So, the Doctor is done in by medical malpractice. And with a really terrible choice of background music. It certainly is an original death. I mean, we've had (well, we will have, counting the 21st century) two deaths caused by radiation sickness, so they're not above copy-paste for changing Doctors.

It feels like the Americans here are acting the way that British folk think that Americans behave. "It's December 31st, 1999 ... PARTY ON! YEEEE-HAW!!!" This is kind of jarring, and notice how they reminded the viewer ... again ... about what particular date it is?

The Master is now a ghostly cobra thing. You know, the hokiness here would feel right at home among previous Doctor Who stories if it weren't being so super serious and hyperdramatic about everything at the same time.

I will put forth that I really, really like the regeneration sequence here. The effects are used really well, and it's well directed. It's better than any of the regens we've seen afterward and most of the ones we've seen before. Excellent parallels given to Frankenstein (the film, as being shown on a television in the story, not the book), really effective early use of polymorphic tweening. It's a bit overdramatised, and I do wish that they didn't use all these bizarre slidey and twisty camera views to present it (and everything else in this movie).

-----
(forward to 2005!)

Father's Day is that rare episode without a villain. "Season One" is turning out to be quite a bit more character heavy than I gave it credit for the last time I watched it.

Eccleston does "angry without shouting" very well. This is a trait that has eluded Smith and even Tennant for the most part. He also acts like he's been burned by previous companions to a degree that we really hadn't seen before. I mean, he occasionally had companions who were self centered or even working against him in some way, but he seems more aggravated about them in general than one would expect.

Hm. Didn't notice that before -- the first person to go was pruning. That's rather appropriate..

You know, I'd buy this storyline if we didn't see that episode a while back where they traveled into a future Earth that had been converted into an utter wasteland, gone back and changed history, and didn't have to contend with bad cgi monsters as a result. (scratch that, I guess; they sort of cover this later, though it's kind of a throw-away explanation)

I really enjoyed the Doctor's chat with the newlyweds, how he puts into perspective what being important is all about. He professed in "Rose" that everything pretty much revolved around him, but here he takes the diametrically opposite, humble approach of envying their lives as something that he cannot himself live.

lol at young Mickey and the Doctor telling Baby rose not to bring about the end of the world.

It's kind of heartbreaking when Rose has to lie to her father to avoid telling him that he's supposed to be dead. I like that they don't play him off as a fool here, as well.

Absolutely brilliant, the fakeout solution with the glowy key followed by the total falling apart of the plan and the death of the Doctor. They took away the easy route so we'd get to go it the hard way, with the emotions and the sacrifice that makes this a higher quality story than you'd normally get in a Weird Shit Goes Wrong With Time plot. The really sad part about the whole thing is that almost nobody knows the sacrifice he made.

When I watched this a long while ago, I thought it was a bit silly. But I guess now that I've been exposed to more Pete in subsequent episodes, the emotional content here reached me quite strongly. I had forgotten that Billie Piper could act really well back in that first season. I think she kinda weakened in that respect, perhaps due to fewer character episodes, in her later seasons.

 

[HolyCheck]

1996 movie ... too painful ... couldn't watch in longer than ten-minute patches ... anger can't be limited to one review!!!! will intersperse commentary on it in many posts attached to other episode rundowns ... only way to survive....

:lol :lol :lol :lol

Congrats on making it to the 05 season :O

I've been compiling all your reviews in a word document somewhere, I should update the last few soon, I'll be sure to send it to you when you've finished :O

 

[GameplayWhore]

:lol :lol :lol :lol

Congrats on making it to the 05 season :O

I've been compiling all your reviews in a word document somewhere, I should update the last few soon, I'll be sure to send it to you when you've finished :O

Thanks, but I still want to know what caused you to regenerate.

 

[HolyCheck]

Thanks, but I still want to know what caused you to regenerate.

Oh snap, never saw your edit where you asked!

I started a job at a government branch and I didn't want to be so easily found online :lol :lol, my old name you can pretty much track me down to my front door :lol :lol [don't try ;_;]

I was just chatting to evilore in a thread and mentioned i wanted to change it and he was ever so kind

 

[GameplayWhore]

I started a job at a government branch ... my old name you can pretty much track me down to my front door

You'd better write "No HolyCheck Here" on the door just to be sure.

-----
(you know, I suffered from depression through all of the '90s -- I blame the '96 movie)

Everything is SOOOO DRAMAAAATIIIIIC! Why see what he looks like in one mirror, when he can do so in twenty mirrors at once? And then he falls to the floor on his knees with his arms outstretched, screaming into the sky, with Big Drama Music playing in the background, thunder and lightning going off all over the place. WTF, director? Don't you know that the dramatic moments are supposed to be reserved for the actual moments of drama?

Cute touch where he tries on the oddly familiar looking scarf.

WHOOOOO AMMMMM IIIIII???? ... You're my ONLY hope! ... WHAT IS THIS!?" <-- Well, I see that McGann graduated from the Colin Baker school of acting. On the other hand, Eric Roberts is actually doing pretty good with the material (such as it is). He's played two characters so far, and they seem genuinely like different people. As the Master, he actually seems like he's just wearing the body he's in. This must have been an amazing bit of acting, because the writer and director are very intent on turning him into a poor man's Robert Patrick.

-----
(it was around this time period (2005, not 1941) that my life turned around and settled within acceptable limits of awesome)

The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances is the second Moffat story I saw, after Doctor Who and The Curse of Fatal Death, which I recommend highly to anybody who's ever watched any amount of Classic Who.

"I think you should do a scan for alien tech. Give me some Spock, for once, would it kill ya?"

Wow, Rose gets so close to the kid at the beginning. I didn't even remember that because it happened so long before everything went mega creepy. That'd be when the phone rings. The true test of creepiness is when something happens that shouldn't be happening, but in a subtle fashion that doesn't always hit you over the head at first, like a disconnected phone ringing -- seen here -- or the door in young Amy Pond's house that opens up just a little more each time she passes it. That's what Moffat really has by the balls.

Pretty good foreshadowing in this episode with the nanogenes. Most of the clues to solve the story's mystery are there from fairly early on.

"I try never to discuss business with a clear head."

I like that Jack's presence isn't a coincidence. He's the reason that they're all there instead of just happening to be a convenient and pretty new side character. Although I love the guy dearly, Wilf's retroactive introduction is kind of an example of the spottier sort of character introduction, the kind done through massive coincidence that's a bit less rationally effective.

"Human DNA is being rewritten... by an idiot"

Aww, I kinda feel sad at the poor kid (well, patients) when the Doctor scolds him (them). :/

Good thing the Doctor didn't notice Jack conning some schmuck when he visited Pompeii a couple years later. Funny episode, there. We know that Jack was probably there, and we also would later find out that the doomed land had a dead ringer for Amy Pond hanging about.

Heheh, "end of the tape".

The dialog in this episode is altogether amazing. I'd quote more, as I occasionally have in the past, but I'd pretty much end up just posting the script.

Another episode without a villain, I should note. I really like when an author can get around the crutch of having an evil nemesis for the hero to contend with. Avoiding this, perhaps the biggest trope of them all, can really lead to far more interesting stories.

Hm, looking back at "The Curse of Fenric", I suppose maybe it is fairly common to be a single mother in the 1940s.

Also, Jack riding the bomb wasn't at all suggestive of any sort of innuendo at all.

Spoiler

and, no, I have not yet seen that movie named after a Doctor about a guy named Jack wherein there is vaguely similar bomb-riding

It's a good thing that the nanogenes don't try to make the Doctor fully human. I mean, as we recently learned, he's already halfway there.

Some time after this, I got my girlfriend of the time hooked into the show. It was sort of a trade-off: She got into this and I, for a time at least, got into Lost. I just looked up my old IM chats with her, for kicks:
Her: i had a very emotional time watching Doctor Who last night
Me: You mean like anger? "Why are there so many Dalek episodes!?"
Her: haha no. one episode was really good but really sad, and the other was the creepiest thing i've ever seen. can you guess?
Me: Was it the gas mask episode?
Me: That was was pretty creepy, I recall.
Me: "That one"
Her: yeah, oh my god, i'm never watching that one again it was good though
Me: haha!
Her: and it was 2 episodes, too!
Me: Yeah, but it had a happy ending.
Her: i know
Her: but still
Me: Yeah, this was the episode that made sure that people forgot about the farting aliens.
Her: but then the farting alien came back in the next episode

(it looks like the "really good but really sad" episode was Father's Day, since that immediately preceded this one)

 

[Dr Zhivago]

Although I love the guy dearly, Wilf's retroactive introduction is kind of an example of the spottier sort of character introduction, the kind done through massive coincidence that's a bit less rationally effective.

The actor playing Donna's father died, so Wilf was turned into her grandfather to replace him.

 

[GameplayWhore]

The actor playing Donna's father died, so Wilf was turned into her grandfather to replace him.

I know that. I'm talking about the "oh, what a remarkable coincidence that you were the only person left in London last Christmas and you also happen to be my new companion's grandpa!" thing.

 

[mattiewheels]

I'm making my way through the Pertwee episodes, and the shift in the show is losing me a little bit. I like the actor who plays the Brigadeer, he really puts his stamp on the role. But the UNIT episodes kind of run together with the government officials and scientists bickering amongst themselves while dealing with random alien encounters.

Pertwee is an interesting choice for a Doctor. He's got an elegant charm and works pretty well as a James Bond-type amidst the whole UNIT backdrop, but I'm not sure if I like that type of Doctor. He's really good at playing cool, and I do like him, but it just feels like the character's taking a detour. Got to admit, The Curse of Peladon feels much more like a classic arc and Pertwee gets to branch out a lot more, but I'm really anxious to get on with it and see Tom Baker's run.

 

[GameplayWhore]

I'm making my way through the Pertwee episodes, and the shift in the show is losing me a little bit. I like the actor who plays the Brigadeer, he really puts his stamp on the role. But the UNIT episodes kind of run together with the government officials and scientists bickering amongst themselves while dealing with random alien encounters.

I had issue with the fact that the setting seldom changes. We're always on Earth, so the opportunity is missed to exploit some of the more interesting Who potential. Running around exploring strange rumours and trying to save the planet from what ensues may have been newish then, but it nowadays it equates to essentially being Torchwood but without the gratuitous sex to distract us when the stories are bad.

Granted, it's awesome when the stories are solid. &#9829; Inferno &#9829;

-----
(that '90s movie made some interesting choices that confused me...)

Huh. How did the Master get into the TARDIS without a key? And in a pretty cool but probably completely inadvertent coincidence, the Master kept his creepy eyes from "Survival".

Huh. The black hole that powers Gallifrey is in the Doctor's TARDIS. I guess they're using some sort of crazy form of wireless power transmission to keep the rest of the Time Lords going.

Huh. This regeneration of the Doctor is half-Human. A very overdramatic half-Human at that. In a brazen violation of the "show, don't tell" philosophy of writing, they're resorting a lot to explaining every detail of the Doctor Who universe in painful detail, sometimes repeating things we've already been told in the past hour. Of course, there's so much detail being spewed here that I didn't even notice if they explained that the Eye of Harmony is a black hole. This is pretty important, as it's needed to justify why exactly the Earth will be "sucked through" it.

Huh. The shades are having a Clark Kent effect on the Master. The Doctor isn't recognizing him in the slightest.

Huh. The Master just vomited weird acid on the Doctor and his new companion. That was random. Perhaps it's one of the abliities of the Cheetahmen that we just happened to not see in that episode.

-----
(that's not to say that Russell T. Davies doesn't generate his own share of "huh?"...)

I think Bad Wolf may be one of those episodes that won't necessarily age well. It's a sort of parody -- albeit a serious one -- of reality programming. As a person who watches very little television, I'm not too lost, but I'm sure that references to existing shows are simply soaring over my head right now. I can only say that I'm glad I saw that one episode of "The Weakest Link" a few years ago, the one that starred a bunch of Star Trek actors. Because of that, I wasn't totally lost.

Awww, I missed an episode set in 14th Century Japan. That sounds pretty cool; I'll have to go back and... wait a second, the episode before this is the farting alien sequel! Bastards, having a cool historical adventure without actually filming it! >:|

Hmm, this is not very interesting. They need to go back to naked Jack or at least blow something up.

...eh, disintegration is a pale imitation of explosion. And Jack got dressed.

Oh, good going Doc, your actions a century ago doomed the Earth to a future of infinite reality shows.

"Hey, there" "Hi" "Captain Jack Harkness" "Linda Moss" "Nice to meet you, Linda Moss". "You mind flirting outside?" "I was just saying hello" "For you that's flirting."

As soon as they left the shows and started beating up guards, this episode arrived in familiar territory.

It's pretty cool how the title of this episode's prequel -- "The Long Game" retroactively gets its title. We didn't know about it then, but that whole story was just a part of this larger, longer-term story, and it was so entitled to mock us in advance.

"Open the door and let us out, the staff is terrified!" "That's the same staff who execute hundreds of contestants every day" "That's not fair, we were just doing our jobs." "And with that sentence you just lost the right to even talk to me"

Hmmm, interesting. The reality shows were all a secret plan by the Daleks to make Humanity complacent while they built up their population and fleet, with a side order of secret abductions. I think this is a bigger "huh" than anything from the '96 film.

I do love how the Daleks freak out after the Doctor refuses their order for him to refrain from interfering.

Incidentally, have they ever covered exactly how the Daleks procreate?

 

[HolyCheck]

I had issue with the fact that the setting seldom changes. We're always on Earth, so the opportunity is missed to exploit some of the more interesting Who potential.

One of the things that bothers me most throughout who, all of them do it, they seem to get into a funk where they just remain on earth (albeit different time zones) budget constraints is my guess.

Awww, I missed an episode set in 14th Century Japan. That sounds pretty cool; I'll have to go back and... wait a second, the episode before this is the farting alien sequel! Bastards, having a cool historical adventure without actually filming it! >:|

the RTD audience likes farting aliens over cool adventures

in other news! stressing out atm.. going to New zealand in a few weeks time.. have booked nothing but plane tickets.. and i barely have anymoney... camping adventures ahoy.

Incidentally, have they ever covered exactly how the Daleks procreate?

I don't recall it being touched on.. I always just assumed cloning :lol

 

[GameplayWhore]

in other news! stressing out atm.. going to New zealand in a few weeks time.. have booked nothing but plane tickets.. and i barely have anymoney... camping adventures ahoy.

Nice. I'm in the midst of planning my first and possibly last super expensive vacation. Next August to September, I'll be be going to the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Nevada, then spending a week being a tourist in the nearby hot spots (San Francisco, Yosemite Park, etc), then spending a week camping at Burning Man. It's going to be a fantastic adventure!

I don't recall it being touched on.. I always just assumed cloning :lol

So Rule 34 does not apply to Daleks?

 

[HolyCheck]

Nice. I'm in the midst of planning my first and possibly last super expensive vacation. Next August to September, I'll be be going to the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, Nevada, then spending a week being a tourist in the nearby hot spots (San Francisco, Yosemite Park, etc), then spending a week camping at Burning Man. It's going to be a fantastic adventure!




So Rule 34 does not apply to Daleks?

i ... do not want to google to find out ;_;

nice yeah i'm going camping too.. never really done it alone so it'll be interesting

 

[maharg]

So Rule 34 does not apply to Daleks?

There's a Playboy photoshoot of a naked Jo Grant (Katy Manning) straddling a dalek plunger. So... not only does Rule 34 apply, but Playboy got there first.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Playboy got there first.

Heh, I remember seeing that earlier this year. But I meant a display of whatever it is that makes Daleks actually multiply. Unless you're suggesting that Daleks need human genetic material to make new Daleks, which is just silly (...er, don't read seven paragraphs down, because it'll invalidate what I just said here).

-----
(things looking slightly up back in the '90s)

Scene with the cop at the traffic jam was pretty awesome, though. Chase scene afterward is pretty nice, too. "Hey, man, when I get all that gold, you know what I'm going to do?" "I don't want to know" "(laughs) You kill me!" "You want me to kill you?" "No! No, I mean you make me laugh, man. You're a funny guy" "I'm glad one of us is amused"

This is a ten minute or so sequence that sort of bogs up the film, a scene or two that are genuinely enjoyable which merely required wading through fifty minutes of muck to reach.

"Doctor?" "Yes?" "I only have one life. Can you remember that?" "I'll try!" "Thank you!"

I do appreciate this Doctor's penchant for kleptomania. It's a nice little tricks that means they don't have to bring out the sonic screwdriver to forward the plot all the time.

lol, backup key hidden in a compartment at the top of the police box. And the motorcycle zooming full speed through the TARDIS doors was a completely pointless but amusing scene. And Grace just tossing back random meaningless technobabble at the Doctor. At this point, she's just given up with his explanations.

-----

Hm. So the Daleks reveal that they are essentially Half Human now (I now blame Katy Manning). I guess the Doctor should feel a bit of kinship with them on account of their shared ancestry.

I'm at the scene where he gets rid of Rose. I've been seeing that hyperlinked every now and then on this Forum. It's a nice few minutes (as is the bit shortly after where the trio on Earth band together to wreck the TARDIS with a truck) that parallels the chase sequence mentioned above -- you have to get through a lot of sludge before it picks up, and I don't know if it's really worth it.

Hmm. The story sort of just ambles along with lots of death and destruction but not much happening plotwise. Then -- BAM -- a literal deux ex machina. Everything's magically reset to normal at the climax, and the only reason why it doesn't feel like an episode of Star Trek: Voyager is that they sort of lobbed on a regeneration, which in execution felt like a [more metaphorical] deus ex machina of its own.

So the whole resolution of the Bad Wolf mystery is that this new godly Rose goes back and creates the hints that she had previously seen. I'm a little sketchy, since none of the messages really had any impact. She says that the message was to lead her there. But the Bad Wolfs didn't really do that. They came to the station randomly. I guess you can say that seeing the last instance message convinced Rose to open up the TARDIS to get back (and that MegaRose planted the message to the reality show controller lady which told her about the Doctor and where exactly in the time vortex he'd be to pluck him out, which it in itself a bit of a head scratcher), but it all seems incredibly sketchy and contrived.

And Tennant seems quite dorky during the first thirty seconds we see him.

 

[charlequin]

And Tennant seems quite dorky during the first thirty seconds we see him.

It's a really bad introduction and the Xmas special makes it worse. Tennant is actually super funny looking for like his first four or so episodes and I blame it on nobody telling him to stop making weird unnatural faces all the time until they get to the goofy werewolves episode.

So the whole resolution of the Bad Wolf mystery is that this new godly Rose goes back and creates the hints that she had previously seen. I'm a little sketchy, since none of the messages really had any impact.

The Bad Wolf thing never really pays off in a satisfying way on any kind of intellectual level at all which is kind of a shame because it's so semiotically brilliant. "Torchwood" is really forced as an arc word and the S3 arc meme is more set up to be a retroactive "aha" thing, but I really felt like the buildup on the Bad Wolf thing was really well done. (Then again, I basically always think Who is at its best when it's ripping off Grant Morrison.)

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

I'm watching series 1 for the first time after skipping it in favor of jumping into tennant as the doctor after hearing so much love for him.

Edit: Your post charlequin made me appreciate how great the series arc in 5 was. Arguablly the best in the new series?

 

[charlequin]

Edit: Your post charlequin made me appreciate how great the series arc in 5 was. Arguablly the best in the new series?

Well, 5's kind of the only series that actually has an actual arc. All the other ones are just meme meme meme meme meme meme explanation of what meme meant INCREASINGLY IMPLAUSIBLE DEUS EX MACHINA ENDING.

(I mean, S5 has an increasingly implausible deus ex machina ending too, but it has that after actually spreading the series story arc over the entire run of episodes. :lol )

 

[pnjtony]

Well, I mean, Paul McGann's movie was considered a pilot for a revived TV series, was created with the intent of being the "canonical" continuation of the series, and even put in some goofy footage of Sylvester McCoy at the beginning so he could regenerate into McGann and thereby establish it was taking place in the same continuity. Whereas Cushing's movies were pretty much never considered to be "canon" by anyone, including anyone working on them. :lol

But yeah. There were tons of novels and audio plays recorded with the Seventh Doctor (or previous Doctors) in the seven years between the show's original cancellation and the TV movie, so even though he only got one movie, all the people producing that stuff switched over and developed his character rather extensively from there. And because a lot of the licensing stuff allowed the people doing those to continue using older Doctors but not to create material with the post-reboot Nine/Ten/Eleven, the Eighth Doctor stuff has kept going even through to today. There are probably actually more stories about the Eighth Doctor in existence at this point than any of the others. :lol

Goofy footage? Sylvester McCoy was in the movie for like 15 to 20 minutes. It wasn't archival footage or anything.

 

[charlequin]

Goofy footage? Sylvester McCoy was in the movie for like 15 to 20 minutes. It wasn't archival footage or anything.

No, no, I mean, I know it wasn't archival. :lol The whole thing is just ridiculous in this completely nonsensical and genre-busting way, like the Doctor got lost and accidentally landed the TARDIS into Robocop 2.

 

[GameplayWhore]

I mean, S5 has an increasingly implausible deus ex machina ending too, but it has that after actually spreading the series story arc over the entire run of episodes.

While I haven't liked his execution at the end, I think I've found that there are elements of RTD's story arcs that I vastly prefer over Moffat's, most notably the thing about timing being not as predictable (eg, what a surprise that the Big SFnarg Mystery started in the first episode of the year and ended in the last episode of the year!)

-----
(the nineties nightmare continues)

I've always hated the Gallifreyan form of crazy dress, but Eric Roberts is taking it to a new level here. It's not entirely out of character for the Master to get all gussied up -- he did it in that episode where he was leading a cult -- so I suppose it's in character. (edit: wow ... "it's not entirely out of character ... so I suppose it's in character". you can tell I put in that part right before guzzling my giant double cup of morning coffee)

Huh. Apparently, the sole reason why the eye was able to be opened is that the Doctor wasn't Human enough. So if you're not from Gallifrey, and you start poking around in that room, the black hole opens up and eats your home planet. I'd like to shake the hand of the designer of the type 40 models for thinking of this most interesting security-oriented self-destruct mechanism.

...where did they find the weird bondage device that they use to hold the Doctor in place in front of the Eye? Does this Doctor have some interesting side rooms we've not been told about in his ship?

I'm kind of confused as to how Grace understands how to rewire the TARDIS like that. I know the Doctor preset the coordinates, but it looks like she's doing something really complicated when he should have just given her a button to press or something. In fact, I'm having trouble following exactly what's happening here at all. They have no power, so they're jumpstarting the TARDIS using ... the Eye while it's opened? Maybe? Argh, I'll have to go back and watch again for it to fully make sense. Except that I won't.

-----
(time to get festive)

I only just realized now that The Christmas Invasion wholesale ripped off the intro to Rose, with the extreme closeup into London from orbit. And I don't mean conceptually -- it's the exact same graphic, and it only ceases being similar when we get to the highest possible magnification.

lol, I love how the TARDIS sound -- just this once -- is going on for minutes while Jackie and Mickey run around trying to find its source. Usually, it lasts for four or five cycles, and it's all done.

I'd like to see them go a full season without using the "Doctor Who" joke. I think we had it once in the TV movie, once during the regular Season One, and now again. I like it better when they say "Doctor What?"

Jackie's awesome. "Anything else he's got two of?" I'm enjoying her character a lot more this time around than when I first went through all this with her.

I really liked Harriet Jones initially. It makes me sad to know what eventually happened to her character. In fact, a lot of side characters get a raw deal. Mickey is a pretty nice, loyal boyfriendy type who regularly risks his life for others, and he just sort of gets put on the wayside by his girl because she's more interested in some random honkey she's been traveling all over with because he's gotten a recent makeover. And the white boy likes to make fun of him, too. Sure, Rose eventually transforms into Action Rambo with toggle-able acting skills, so that's a plus for her, but I make the angry face when I think about Clive or Donna or Pete Classic or even Robo Rory. These writers really like ploughing their side characters into the ground.

"He's not my boss, and he's certainly not turning this into a war" &#8592; this is really reflective of International opinion of the US government back then. The comment sort of seems a bit out of place, especially given what Harriet does in the end of this episode (turns it into a war, albeit an incredibly brief one).

Hah, hidden in the chatter about Torchwood is a mention that they just lost a third of their staff. This is pretty in line with what we later see in the series -- it's a tough job with a high turnover rate. Did they ever make further reference regarding this particular loss of manpower?

This is the one television programme where the heroes can just tell the big scary threat of the week to just hold on for a few minutes while they just go on with some random pleasantries. It's quite amusing to see the head villain standing there dumbstruck while the Doctor has his little chat with everyone there.

Cracking up when the Doctor mocks the scary alien monster voice.

The whole six words thing seems kind of lame in retrospect. It's a nice lead-in to the Saxon storyline, but the writers here are making the Doctor too vaguely awesome for my comfort. Yeah, I like it when he does amazingly cool stuff and even when the amazingly cool stuff fails to make sense, but this is stretching my suspension of disbelief, especially with how rapidly it progressed. You know, Prime Minister saves country with supergun; later that day Prime Minister sacked for being emotionally unfit for her job. It's just too much, too quickly.

 

[charlequin]

I really liked Harriet Jones initially. It makes me sad to know what eventually happened to her character.

What happens with Harriet Jones in The Christmas Invasion is total bullshit (one of several reasons it's one of my least favorite episodes.) She does what she needs to do given her job and the (entirely legitimate) issue that she can't rely on the Doctor to be there next time, and in response he's a total dick to her, basically just to prove that he can be. (Which I guess sets up Ten's overall arc pretty well, if you want to take it that way.)

Spoiler

I like that when she comes back much later she's there to help the Doctor out but she's still entirely unapologetic about what she did -- that, combined with the fact that screwing her over is basically what makes the villain plot in Season 3 possible, made it feel at least in the end like the narrative was rightly chastising what the Doctor did as a bad choice.

In fact, a lot of side characters get a raw deal.

This is why I kind of like that post-reboot the Doctor's picked up a character trait from John Constantine and people make a point of how bad an idea it is to hang out with him. All of Ten's companions wind up in certain ways better off than they started for having traveled with him, but every one of them goes through hell to get there. (Even after Moffatt takes over and reinjects more of a fairytale wonder angle, Amy and Rory both suffer extraordinarily just for having met the Doctor.)

Mickey, apart from the in-character raw deal all the companions get, also gets an out-of-character raw deal from the writers for a long time. I'm pretty uncomfortable with how the first black companion's job is basically to stand around for the Doctor to be all racist against, call stupid, and steal his girlfriend. :lol

Spoiler

Him ultimately turning into a dimension-hopping commando is pretty awesome though.

The whole six words thing seems kind of lame in retrospect.

It's bad writing.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Yikes. I'm getting left behind again. This past weekend was Santacon, for which I was furiously costuming all week. It was quite big, and I had fun, though the epicness was more epic in previous years.

I'm also closing on the house I'm buying tomorrow, which gives me even less time to work with! I do vow to finish this marathon by the end of the year, though, excepting any episodes I may not have access to (this year's special, for example, may take a little longer than same-night for me to see on account of Yankness).

-----
(one last trip back to the era of grunge music and bad American remakes...)

Wait.... "Humanian Era"? That's pretty interesting, considering that Humans pretty much had the run of Earth and a good chunk of the universe for something like ten billion years. The Tardis index file is unclear as to whether the explicit term has been used before. Seems like a bit of an awkward one. It reminds me of "Vulcanian", the word originally used to describe Vulcans from Star Trek.

Wait. Why did going back in time prevent the transference of the Master into the Doctor's body? Why is the Master suddenly talking in a scary demon voice? Why were the humans magically brought to life at the end by the black hole with no explanation?? WHY IS THIS MAKING NO SENSE AT ALL!?!

I do like that the Doctor warns Lee about the next Christmas. Sort of ties into the then-unplanned new Who series, given that most Christmases these days involve alien invasions and monsters threatening the world. I just hope he didn't decide to take a trip to London.

This was overall absolutely terrible. McGann had potential (as did Roberts before he got sucked into a special effect at the end), but the writers did whatever they could to squander and destroy any charisma he tried to bring into the character.

-----
(and from now on, no more American crap ... at least until series otter)

...I can't believe that the first three years of Doctor Who (if you count the xmas specials as year starters, as I do) began with the exact same effects sequence, zooming into England from orbit. Scratch that, what I can't believe is that I didn't remember it at all. It really is a nice shot, and I would have thought it would have stuck in my head.

Wow, they really start The Runaway Bride off in Maximum Rage Mode. I can understand in retrospect why so many people really, really do not like Donna. She does play it way too hard, but I guess they wanted her to schtick it up, given the character's suddenly unexpected situation. Her acting is fine when she isn't screaming.

"Who are you getting married to? You sure he's human? He's not a bit overweight with a zip round his forehead, is he?"

He's kind of a dick about not admitting that the TARDIS is a time machine. He sort of uses personal timeline mucking as an excuse to not tell her, but from their temporal perspective, nothing has happened yet beyond her walking up the aisle and vanishing. There shouldn't be any problem with just dropping her off five seconds later, and the only real counterpoint here is "Handwavey!".

Hmm, this is part of the Torchwood storyline, which started that previous xmas episode. They really did keep it going for quite some time before the payoff. I like it when the buildup is so gradual that you don't always know when it started (in this case, a series and a half before this special) and there isn't an ending to the revelation so much as there is a slow evolution of the concept.

I kind of like it when Donna slaps the Doctor inside Torchwood while he's motormouthing. I enjoy when he (and similar Doctors, like Seven) gets going, but sometimes he really goes into a hyperactive rambling that goes a bit too far and starts to get a tad overbearing.

Whoa. They drilled to the center of the Earth without accidentally destroying the planet in a hellfire of weird hot green wolfman-generating goop! I find this an unacceptable violation of continuity. I will put it on the pile, which I am currently storing inside Iapetus. Turns out it's hollow ... well, not anymore.

As I mentioned before, I like Dona's acting when she's not hyper-raging. She does heartbroken really well, fantastic look on her face that really transmits that emotion without her needing to even say anything. I feel sorry (...so sorry) for her whenever she puts it on.

"The whole process is beautiful, but only if it's being observed" <-- that's a nice way of putting perspective into perspective

Huh. His pockets are dimensionally transcendental. I know that was just sort of a quick pun (like Jack's butt-gun over a year earlier), but this would explain a lot about the sheer volume of contents found in Tom Baker Doctor's person whenever they captured him and searched his belongings.

I don't quite get why they attacked the giant spider web ship with a tank instead of with the great honking big Torchwood death cannon from last year.

Still, it's nice having the occasional epsode where the Master saves the day at the end.

 

[GameplayWhore]

It's a house. I own a house now. Houses are cool.

Spoiler

I'm on call today from 10am to 1am for the gas company, and as soon as I hear from them, I have to zoom over and open the place up so they can remove the lock on the gas valve and take an initial reading.

-----

Hm. We skipped all of series 3 and a full run of a companion. But I guess it's okay, since we'll see her later on.

Voyage of the Damned looks like it's really pushing the silly side of Who.

That sonic screwdriver certainly has some incredibly random yet specific powers. Popping a cork from a distance without actually seeing that you're aiming at it.... That's crowd is lucky that the glasses didn't explode or something.

Hah, there's a familiar fellow at the newspaper stand!

They're killing suspension of disbelief a bit here with all these conventional 20th century Earth forklifts and pistols on a futuristic spaceship.

The whole sideplot with Bannakaffalatta (I had to look that up) being a cyborg felt tacked on. The only purpose was so that he could become a superweapon and save everybody. That and the flirting side plot would have been nice with a bit more fleshing out, but as presented they were Angstrom-thin.

The rambling line of reasoning for why these non-weeping angels shouldn't kill the Doctor was pretty brilliant. Incredibly logical, but you had no idea exactly that it was coming. This was worthy of McCoy.

When Max says "The ladies, or so I'm told, are very fond of ... me-tal", he sounds for all the world like Dr. Evil.

These people are way too into self-sacrifice in this episode. Why didn't Astrid just jump out of the forklift after Max was over the point of no return? Sure, she's not guaranteed to make it, but I think the odds looked pretty good for her.

I don't really appreciate how everything looked bleak, the ship was about to collide, then everything was totally okay and the ship was flying again, and the explanation only really came afterward. I didn't notice any particularly helpful foreshadowing of this. I guess this is one of those "bad writing" things again?

I do appreciate that the selfish jerk won in the end. It's a nice trope subversion. And I really liked Mr. Copper, the expert in Earthonomics. He was the butt of a lot of the story's jokes, but the actor also had fantastic charisma and was given a memorable sendoff.

 

[charlequin]

I guess this is one of those "bad writing" things again?

VotD is pretty low on my list in general, but a lot of the weirdness is less bad writing specifically and more purposely sending up 1970s disaster-film tropes.

And I really liked Mr. Copper, the expert in Earthonomics. He was the butt of a lot of the story's jokes, but the actor also had fantastic charisma and was given a memorable sendoff.

He comes up again later, too.

 

[GameplayWhore]

[Mr. Cooper] comes up again later, too.

Wait, he does? I totally don't remember that in my memory from the first run of watching New Who. That's pretty cool, and I'll have to hunt it down (unless it's later on in this list).

 

[charlequin]

Wait, he does? I totally don't remember that in my memory from the first run of watching New Who. That's pretty cool, and I'll have to hunt it down (unless it's later on in this list).

It's not. Blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference in

Spoiler

The Stolen Earth

.

 

[GameplayWhore]

It's not. Blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference in

Spoiler

The Stolen Earth

.

Hmm, that's the Dalek episode that has a cameo by, like, everybody, wasn't it?

Edit: At first, I thought you were saying he appears in "Blink".

 

[GameplayWhore]

Three episodes in a row involving snow. It's 20°F around here, so I'm frowning at the constant reminder that it's freakin' cold! And we skipped another full run of a companion, one of my favourites. Bah, Humbug!

-----

The Next Doctor is pretty awesome. The character, I mean. He has the best attributes of several older Doctors but with his own fairly distinct personality. He's feels like sort of a merge between Colin and Davison with maybe a little bit of Troughton sprinkled in.

I'm going to have to look up "Allonsey". Seems to be a pretty generic battle cry, but it's kinda grating, especially in stereo.

The (new) Doctor's acting is pretty phenomenal. He's masterfully foreshadowing the revelation at the end with the look on his face when he casually talks about certain things, like the missing children.

Also, Tennant does a wonderful sonic screwdriver impression.

"I think if you remember correctly, you said I was to be heralded." "All hail the Cyber King. All Hail the Cyber King!" "But you promised me, you said I would never be converted." "That was designated: A Lie" ... "Oh, for the love of God, have you no pity?" "Correct"

The child laborers seem to have only needed to work for about five minutes to bring everything up to full power. Surely, with the twenty or thirty Cybermen they had on hand for days, this particular workforce should not have been necessary at all.

The Doctor shows Miss Whatshername the terrible things she's been doing, which causes her to be horrified at her actions and then self-destruct. But before she was converted in the least, she seemed completely aware of what she was doing, and she didn't have any problem with it whatsoever. It felt like a really unsatisfying ending to an otherwise enjoyable mindless cgi action scene.

Yeesh, I really like Jackson much better earlier on when he's broken and not when he's jubilant and super-worshipful of the Doctor.

Hmf, these Christmas specials seem to tend towards a high level of self-indulgence. Since there's no companion to mentally undress Tennant, they have to have all the survivors do it instead, and it really goes way over the top. I kind of liked when the Doctor was just this old guy who got into trouble and was just clever enough to get out of it. Being a modern god actually takes away a lot of his likability.

 

[charlequin]

I'm going to have to look up "Allonsey".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/allons-y

 

[GameplayWhore]

Huh, I didn't notice before that I got de-juniored. Must've passed the post limit recently. Somehow with all the red username posts around here, I figured by the end of the year I'd get a private message along the lines of "You have entertained us, but now your usefulness has come to an end. *click*".

Kinda cool that I'd get upgraded at the same time as I leveled up in real life. Finally bought me a nice bachelor pad with just enough funding to make it pretty and perhaps afford a trip to Worldcon and Burning Man next year, if I'm careful about finances and work out why exactly the heat feels so good despite being set at only fifty degrees.

-----

The End of Time

Ahh, I forgot that Simm did the laughing thing, too. It makes an otherwise epic-feeling intro feel the slightest bit cheap. He's got a bit of an infectious laugh, though -- I almost want to join in.

The Ood was one of the nicest creations in New Who from a perspective of group development. They were pretty much random death machines when they started but somehow became incredibly fleshed out in only a few episodes. It felt pretty natural, too (well, for a Doctor Who species). They are on my short list of things from the RTD Era that I really hope the Moffat Age doesn't completely sweep under the rug.

First time I saw it, I was really put off by the whole aspect of ritualism used in the Master's return. Now that I've gone through much of the show as a whole, it seems far more in line than I ever had suspected. I need only look back to when the Master himself performed in his own ancient pagan rituals a few decades ago.

The lunch chat between the Doctor and Wilf, where they talk about mortality and about Donna's current state and so forth, is gold. They spend so much time trumping up how godlike the Doctor is that it feels much stronger whenever Tennant is shown in a more vulnerable light.

The beating of the drums is a lot like Bad Wolf. It seems to build up pretty well over the long term, but it's meant to guide a character towards an ultimate goal. Like the earlier Bad Wolf meme, there's nothing that it actually does to guide the character. It's just there and is treated like a portent, but then it turns out it was planted kind of after the fact pretty much solely because it was always there.

They all seem incredibly optimistic about Obama ending the recession, at least from the perspective of th in the extreme hindsight we now have.

So, wait, who was the lady in white? It's interesting that they've planted yet another long-term mystery but, er, I get the feeling that Stephen is not going to pick up the slack on this one. :/

"Oh my lord, she's a cactus!"

lol, Wilf's cell phone can communicate through "heavy radiation shielding" that is capable of blocking alien supertech.

(halfway through, too much partying yesterday, will make it up soon...)

 

[charlequin]

Huh, I didn't notice before that I got de-juniored. Must've passed the post limit recently. Somehow with all the red username posts around here, I figured by the end of the year I'd get a private message along the lines of "You have entertained us, but now your usefulness has come to an end. *click*".

I'm not a monster! I wasn't going to ban you because you liked a bad episode or something. :lol

Spoiler

I can't speak for maharg

The Ood was one of the nicest creations in New Who from a perspective of group development.

The Ood rule. Best element of the post-2004 show period, IMO. Almost any random sci-fi show would do the Satan Pit episode, use the Ood for a cheap scare, and maybe tack on a little "be nice to the Ood" coda at the end, but I absolutely love that they went out of their way to come back to it and address the problem head-on. Really, the closest thing to an element of the Ood story I dislike is that it's bullshit that Donna

Spoiler

forgets about visiting the Ood planet.

In general, the frequency of callbacks, sequels, and revisits to places, characters, or themes is one of my favorite things about RTD's Who -- it really helps support the "time travel" angle, as well as propping up a lot of the show's thematic elements. I think the stuff where they visit a place, and then a year later they're like "oh yeah, what about going back to X?" almost always work better than their actual pre-planned "arcs."

So, wait, who was the lady in white? It's interesting that they've planted yet another long-term mystery but, er, I get the feeling that Stephen is not going to pick up the slack on this one. :/

There are two or three fairly popular fan interpretations (and I twigged to one of those when I watched it) but RTD had something different, and fairly unambiguous, in mind when he wrote it:

Spoiler

"I like leaving it open, because then you can imagine what you want. I think the fans will say it's Romana. Or even the Rani. Some might say that it's Susan's mother, I suppose. But of course it’s meant to be the Doctor’s mother."

 

[Dr Zhivago]

Supposedly, the Ood

Spoiler

are shown in the S6 trailer to be shown after the Christmas episode.

 

[charlequin]

Supposedly, the Ood

Spoiler

are shown in the S6 trailer to be shown after the Christmas episode.

\o/

 

[GameplayWhore]

I love how the Dalek ships post 2004 have remained generic flying saucers. It fits them pretty nicely, given their general sort-of radial-ness, and it shows remarkable and unusual ability for the show's creators to resist updating things to fit a modern era. Also, the ship graveyard on Gallifrey looks marvelous.

I like how they treat the Master here as a brilliant man who took the wrong path instead of some incarnation of Evil Itself. On the other hand, I'm not too happy at the implication that the Master is the man he is because of the drumming that they retconned in a season or so ago. On the third hand, I liked how Dalton describes the four-beat rhythm as the beating of a Time Lord's heart.

"God bless the cactuses!" "That's *cacti*" "That's racist!"

Tennant must be as tough as ten Bakers to survive that fall from the spaceship, likely a hundred stories up or more, through a glass ceiling, to a hard ground floor.

It was pretty lame-o that Dalton, without knowing anything about how the Master took over the entirety of the Human race, can just wave his magic gauntlet and reverse the whole process, effectively pressing the reset button as one would with a Power Glove. Also, I'm pretty shocked that Obama-Master just stood at that podium for the whole night and morning.

So the Lady in White was one of the two Time Lords who voted "No" on whether or not to bring about the End of Time. I think I may have missed it, but who was the other one?

I am totally in love with the Judoon language, but why are they called "Judoon" when that name is a word that cannot possibly be in their lexicon?

Holy crap, for some reason, I didn't recognize Alonso the first time I saw this!

...jeez, when is this guy gonna die?

There are two or three fairly popular fan interpretations

Yeah, I remember the word on the street about the Lady in White being the Doctor's mother. I didn't see any evidence of that at all, but for all the world, I could only notice that he very, very pointedly focused his eyes on the roundabout Time Lord getting married in the background in the scene when he was asked about her identity. :O :O :O

Spoiler

adding fuel to the fire ha-haaa!

Certainly not a perfect special, but every scene of this two-parter with Wilf in it is great. I really need to go back and watch that actor's earlier involvement with DW.

 

[HolyCheck]

YOU'RE SO FUCKING CLOSE.

 

[The Elite]

Doctor Who Whore.

Look forward to reading through this thread now.

 

[GameplayWhore]

YOU'RE SO FUCKING CLOSE.

Looks like I'm gonna make it. This two parter is a bit big, just warning you in advance that your eyes might bleed from the wall of text (though I'm breaking it up into three days of posts). The end of it will be my Christmas afternoon gift to you all.

-----

So.... New series, new Doctor, new head cheese. I particularly like the intro changes for this season. The Eccleston/Tennant intro was very snazzy, but it was basically felt like a higher poly version of the Baker/Davison special effects vortex. This one isn't terribly different, but they went out of the way to make it a vortex seemingly composed of something physical, if still somewhat abstracted. If you squint a little, it screams "I'm cgi!" somewhat less than the old way did.

I like how they try to tie in bits and pieces of the season with the beginning of The Pandorica Opens. It's done a little awkwardly and relies a tad on marvelously unlikely coincidence (the painting made by a guy the doctor just had an adventure with just happened to be found by some people that the Doctor just had another adventure with?), but they get points for trying. And the Doctor just happened to check out the site of Song's message around the time that he knew her instead of the thousand or so years before or after that in his personal timeline. And that even though Humanity dominated much of the universe for uncounted years and existed out in space in general for trillions of years speaking the Queen's English the whole way (admittedly, this is a guess on my part, what with all the TARDIS translation mumbo jumbo), none of them ever sauntered over to look at a universally famous message. And no Earthonomics majors or Mutter Spiral Archaeologists in a substantial chunk of a quadrillion years of the universe's existence chanced to look at the message.

Aha, that spoiler warning animated gif with River and the Doctor crossing each other in a generally backwards fashion came from here! I'm getting an immense amount of satisfaction in general in the mechanics of this particular relationship. I can't wait for it to go sour / to always have been sour.

"aaAAaah, but we've got surprise on our side. They'll never expect three people to attack twelve thousand Dalek battleships 'cause we'd be killed ... instantly, so it would be a fairly short surprise"

The hentai cyberhead was a great effect, from the moving bits to the rusty agey effect on the right side of its face. That GAFfer who's on the effects team that handled this deserves to be knighted or something. The pac-man face eating part of it was a little over the top but still nicely handled from a technical perspective. I don't think modern Cybermen have been at all chilling or creepy until we got to see this partial model.

The Doctor's big speech to scare away the alien armadas has this solidly RTD feeling while it's happening, but by the end of the episode, you realize that it's a total subversion of that trope -- the Doctor isn't scaring them away with tales of how awesome he is; they're just playing along and making a fool out of him. Still, it would have been truly great to see him getting randomly vaporized halfway through his speech.

I didn't notice it at first, but since Tennant's departure was the last thing I watched prior to this, it sort of flew out in front of my face when the Rory duplicate, in the midst of being forced to change from one personality to another, says "I don't want to go!", which is precisely what Tennant says in the midst of being forced to change from one personality to another.

By the way, marvelous how disguised robots sound normal when they're disguised but as soon as you know that they're fakes, they make all these clicking and whirring sounds as they move about. This seems to be an incredibly common trope in sci-fi. I did a search for "disguised robots whirring" to see if tvtropes or someplace similar had a listing on it, but all I found (oddly enough) was this possibly horrible fanfic where the Doctor meets the Easter Bunny. It was fifth in that google search and the first that didn't involve either the Transformers or the band named "Robots in Disguise".

I would like to note that I totally love the dude who keeps playing the head of the Sontarans. He's keeping a nicely designed race going strongly, so it was particularly wonderful to see him make the jump from old New-Who to new New-Who.

I do say, the cliffhanger here is pretty amazing. I don't think that things have every looked quite so glum at the end of a penultimate episode. Universe blew up, Doctor's trapped forever in a giant box, one companion just died, other companion is bummed that he's a robot who just killed his fiancée, third companion is in an endless time loop where she keeps running into a wall.... If there was ever a way to totally end the show for good (and piss off the fans in a major way), I guess this'd be it.

 

[charlequin]

I particularly like the intro changes for this season.

The series 5 version of the theme song sucks though.

The Doctor's big speech to scare away the alien armadas has this solidly RTD feeling while it's happening, but by the end of the episode, you realize that it's a total subversion of that trope -- the Doctor isn't scaring them away with tales of how awesome he is; they're just playing along and making a fool out of him.

I really enjoyed that, even though I pretty much find most of the complaints about that trope to be annoyingly grognardy.

I do say, the cliffhanger here is pretty amazing. I don't think that things have every looked quite so glum at the end of a penultimate episode.

What's actually funny to me about this (and the Angels cliffhanger earlier in the season) is how different it is than the RTD cliffhangers. If there's anything that defines the cliffhangers in reboot series 1-4, it's that they're all false or meaningless, almost to the point that I assumed they were doing it on purpose: every single cliffhanger sets up an increasingly ominous and impossible situation which is resolved instantaneously through either a ludicrous DXM or some totally unforeshadowed ass-pull in the first two minutes.

This is actually another thing that people complain about a lot, but once I twigged to the pattern I actually really enjoyed it as a bit of genre-aware tweaking of the whole serial-cliffhanger idea. Both of Moffat's cliffhangers are much more traditional TV cliffhangers and set up the problems that the whole second part deals with instead of a situation that's immediately fixed.

 

[HolyCheck]

By the way, marvelous how disguised robots sound normal when they're disguised but as soon as you know that they're fakes, they make all these clicking and whirring sounds as they move about. This seems to be an incredibly common trope in sci-fi. I did a search for "disguised robots whirring" to see if tvtropes or someplace similar had a listing on it, but all I found (oddly enough) was this possibly horrible fanfic where the Doctor meets the Easter Bunny. It was fifth in that google search and the first that didn't involve either the Transformers or the band named "Robots in Disguise".

Tempting read... lol.

Futurama made note of this in one of their episodes this season. They had robot versions of Fry and Leela... then when they were out of their human skins their voices + sound effects changed completly.. and they asked why.. and no one knew lol

 

[GameplayWhore]

You know, the more I think on it, the more the new Master origin bugs me. He turned evil because as a child some Time Lords beamed a really annoying rhythm into his head. That seems really sketchy. I would have preferred if they had something with a bit more forethought and maybe more grounded in realism than mysticism -- maybe he had his first regeneration *really* early on, like right after he was given his Time Lord diploma, and that made him a bit obsessed with the idea of living forever. I know I'd be very insistent about my own mortality if I discovered that a few potential centuries of my life had suddenly vanished just as I was getting started.

The series 5 version of the theme song sucks though.

I think I'm a purist when it comes to the song. I really like the theremin sound (or whatever is makes the more ethereal part of the music), and it seems a bit cheap whenever they try to deviate more and more from it. Both post-2004 heads have been guilty of this. Can't say which one I like the least, though I can note that the low point of the theme music was probably in the mid to late 1980s, not now.

-----

Warning: Much of the following is slightly pedantic.

The ending bit of the last part, which is repeated at the end of the "Previously on" part of The Big Bang, is incredibly pretty, but I just can't get behind the whole thing about it making no sense from a nitpicker's point of view, since all those galaxies we're seeing in the background are vastly different distances away, so they exploded at vastly different times. in history. But it looks really cool to see them appear detonate simultaneously, so I'll chalk this down to a heaping amount of artistic license.

"Dear Santa"... I'm surprised Christmas still exists. The stars went away before the New Testament was finalized, and the people at that time, a hundred years later, would have been more skeptical about the idea of a mythical "star" leading people around. I would have thought that the direction of religion would have taken a big giant left turn as a result.

I do like the name dropping of Richard Dawkins. Being a star-hugging loon seems somehow fitting for him in this new history.

Holy crap, how was the New World discovered without being able to use the stars for navigation at night? Wouldn't history be quite a bit different without the staggering behemoth of the British Empire? You'd think technological progress would have slowed down somewhat.

I bet she really has to pee after all that hiding in the museum.

Hey, I know it's the end of the universe and all, but doesn't this count as the Doctor interfering with his own personal timeline? I guess those time-vulture dragons don't exist anymore on account of nothing existing anymore, and the Time Lords also don't exist anymore for similar reasons (or maybe they do -- they're stuck in their little time envelope while the rest of existence never existed, which means that they got what they wanted from last season!), so they won't complain, but you'd think it'd be brought up in some way, eg: "I can do causality loops now. Causality loops are cool"

By the way, did the sonic screwdriver open up the Pandorica because, as with Amy, the Pandorica is confronted with the same thing being both inside and outside simultaneously? I was just a bit confused on that part of the sequence of events.

The Pandorica being open in the future brings the Dalek back from never existing. Why didn't it do this when it was opened up in the past, right in front of what looks like the same Dalek?

Rory's loyalty to his dead girlfriend is incredibly sweet. I think he's one of my favourite companions overall, or he will be if he keeps at it well.

"Two thousand years. How did you do it?" "Kept out of trouble." "Oh. How?" "Successfully" <-- I'm liking that people other than the Doctor get to give flippant answers like this

Okay. I know people have complained about how having somebody going back in time to set things in motion that caused them to get to the point they're already at is lacking a true origination point, but I don't really have a problem with this. I do, in particular, have to give props that the Doctor throws out the museum flyer that Amelia hands him and grabs a fresh one. That stops the little niggling problem of a single object travelling in a loop through time, a situation which should see the flyer eventually turn into dust after the thousandth or so iteration.

Hey, wouldn't the TARDIS exploding have dramatically different temperature fluctuations compared to Sol? I mean, wouldn't we not have the eleven year sunspot cycle and that nasty mini ice age in the beginning and middle of last millennium which affected the course of history so dramatically?

"____ are cool" is one of the best taglines that has ever come out of this show. Smith's delivery of the lines help by being just so hilarious.

Despite my nitpicks, the general concept behind the Pandorica and the TARDIS exploding everywhere and everywhen and how they fix the mess is pretty cool, and more or less very nicely thought out. Everybody survives in a way that is extremely well told and believable, at least as believable as it can be with such incredible subject material.

-----

Well then, forgot to get a gift card for one of my giftees. Looks like I'll have to brave the insane shopping lines today after all. Oh well. Remember to bar your doors and load your guns tonight, Santa's a-huntin'!

 

[charlequin]

You know, the more I think on it, the more the new Master origin bugs me. He turned evil because as a child some Time Lords beamed a really annoying rhythm into his head.

People being evil because some bad juju gets in their head is a pretty well-established trope. That said, the thematic benefit to the drums really has to do with how they mirror the Doctor's backstory: the Master gets screwed because he does what he's supposed to, the Doctor gets away scot-free because he's weak and he runs away from his responsibility; it's both of them teaming up that lets the threat of the Time Lords be stopped. I think it works well in that context even if it's probably better ignored (or at least, treated as a very minor leitmotif only) from now on.

"Dear Santa"... I'm surprised Christmas still exists.

Based on the way stuff goes later in the episode, it seems like stuff is getting swallowed up in "real time" and most of the world changes as little as is absolutely necessary to incorporate those changes.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Based on the way stuff goes later in the episode, it seems like stuff is getting swallowed up in "real time" and most of the world changes as little as is absolutely necessary to incorporate those changes.

Yyyyeah, there's an ongoing thread with that this season and elsewhere in Who. But they keep talking about people and things never having existed in the first place. You can't just say that something never existed and then say that it still caused other things to happen. Because there's supposed to not exist an "it" to cause those other things to happen at all.

I'm going to grumble a little more about that tomorrow, I expect.

 

[charlequin]

Yyyyeah, there's an ongoing thread with that this season and elsewhere in Who. But they keep talking about people and things never having existed in the first place. You can't just say that something never existed and then say that it still caused other things to happen. Because there's supposed to not exist an "it" to cause those other things to happen at all.

How did you make it through all those episodes if you care even a little bit about halfway sensible temporal mechanics? :lol