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DoctorWhat posted:Seconding this. Make every effort possible to make sure all episodes going forward are completely uncut relative to the original UK premiere broadcast. That's the only glaring omission I can think of, and I went through all of NuWho (ugh) on Netflix up to the ending of the Astronaut season. You can just link him to the video and tell him to check that out at the worst. EDIT: I have watched the Olympics since I was six years old, remember when they alternated every four years instead of every two, considered going around the world to one just to see a few events, and spend many hours pasted in front of video feeds from three different country broadcasters when they're on. I watched the Beijing opening ceremonies in a crappy old red video live at 5AM from someone streaming CCTV. I basically suck the IOC dick. And even I found the way they were framed in this episode to be corny as all hell. That said, I would have loved it if they only had an American presenter confuse the Doctor for some famous British celebrity that many Americans didn't know, or at least hadn't heard of at the time. I've watched so many bad NBC broadcasts, it just seems right. Because if David Tennant or a space alien that looks like him WAS to appear at the Opening Ceremonies, Matt Laurer would confuse him with Morrissey. It would happen, just trust me. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 06:27
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Toxxupation posted:Also because I know you nerds will ask about it, personal top ten worst episodes occupation has seen thus far:
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Sep 6, 2014 07:02
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School reunion owns,I can't imagine not liking it. The others on that list are indeed bad. E: also boom town has some truly redeemable stuff in the restaurant Glenn_Beckett fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 07:20
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Okay, after reading your review I've been thinking about why I dislike this episode so much, and I think there are two main reasons. The first is that for the majority of this episode it feels like they just weren't trying. There are quite a few episodes of Doctor Who that I would describe a bland and forgettable, but for most of them you still can see that the people involved cared about the episode. I'll use School Reunion as an example. Having never watched the original run, most of that episode fell flat for me. The story was bland and felt like fan-pandering, and the villains were kind of side-lined with nonsensical motivations. Even still, you could tell that everyone involved (except maybe the CG artists) cared about the episode they were making. They wanted to make an homage to the old series, and give a popular character a proper send-off. Tennant, Piper, and Sladen seemed to be having fun with their characters, and Anthony Head still managed to give a memorable performance for such a forgettable episode. The episode also means something to the over-arching plot of the series by giving Mickey some growth as a character, for what that's worth. It's not a good episode, but you can at least tell that it wanted to be. And maybe, if I had grown up with the old series and knew who Sarah Jane Smith was prior to watching it, it might even have been an enjoyable episode to me. Fear Her, on the other hand, has no purpose to it. The writing is poor and story is bland, but those are hardly unfamiliar problems for a Doctor Who episode. What's worse is that the actors don't seem to care about the episode. I'm not talking about the two mains when I say that. Tennant throws himself wholeheartedly into it like he always does, because he is still the little kid living his dream. Piper gives a better than average performance here as well, and it is amazing how much she has grown into her role as Rose since the first season. The problem is the extras. I hate to pick on child actors, so instead I'll blame whoever cast Abisola Agbaje for this episode instead, because I assume he or she is related to her in some way. There is no other way that someone would look at her acting and think "yes, this child should play the main focus of an episode of the most popular series on TV." Beyond her, all the other bit actors seemed to be having a competition to see who could seem the most wooden. At no point does a single person seem to be living in a neighborhood where all their children are disappearing. The emotional response is more akin to a neighborhood where the power has been knocked out for a little under an hour, so everyone is ambling out into the street to see if they can catch sight of anyone to complain to. If it turned out that this was the neighborhood where all the mannequins from the first episode had migrated to, I would still feel that their actors were playing them a little too reserved. That brings us to Chloe's mom. Her actress plays her more or less as wooden as everyone else, and Occ already did a fine job of hitting what's wrong with her character. Coming so soon after Idiot Lantern's lesson of "Go after you're abusive father even after your mother finally gathered the courage to kick him out because... love or something?" this character further damages Who's ability to depict an abusive home with any sort of class. Occ claims this isn't as grave a sin as last episode's blow-job slab, but I would argue this. Love and Monster's end is a really bad quick joke that someone thought was funny. It was in poor taste, but probably not meant to be taken seriously. On the other hand, Chloe's relationship with her parents is a pretty big part of this episode's story. The writers clearly wanted to send some sort of message with this plot, to say something about domestic abuse or caring for your child after separation or not neglecting a child with going through obvious psychological problems. With a little more effort, maybe one of those may have hit home. As it is though, it comes across more like the writer was given a decree to write an episode about a topic that he did not really understand or care about, and the whole episode suffers for it. Oh hey, I said there were two reasons I didn't like this episode. The second is that Olympic torch scene. My problem with it isn't as principled as DoctorWhat's, but simply that it kills my immersion. Doctor Who is a silly show where contemporary London is invaded by aliens every season, but watching the doctor on television running the Olympic flame into the stadium was the one moment of this series where my brain immediately took me out of the show. Because I watched the 2012 Olympics on television prior to watching this episode, and this is not what happened. I know that sounds stupid because this is a TV show that has never made any real effort to pretend that it is possibly real on any level, but I can usually turn my brain off and enjoy stupid TV. I know that this episode was written before the Olympics, but the point is that it was too close to the event. The torch scene was just too real an event for me to do that for, and the episode suffers, perhaps unfairly, for it. But I'm going to go back to this post after The Idiot Lantern: Captain Fargle posted:This is the stuff we learned about in history class when we were eight. The stuff we heard our grandparents reminiscing about and I don't mean that in the broad, sweeping, hypothetical sense. I mean that in the "I could literally just go downstairs right now and talk to my grandmother and have her tell me this" sense. Because this is part of Doctor Who's fun; the blend of real historic events with monsters and aliens. When they try to do that with something contemporary, the magic disappears and reality comes crashing in to my silly scifi show about a man and his box. And that may be the gravest sin a Doctor Who episode can commit.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:20
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I think, really, that a lot of the reasons we get down on 'Fear Her' is because it came after Love and Monsters. Love and Monsters was so terrible that everyone, back on first viewing, spent a week clutching at the hope that "It'll get better. This was a one off. It was just so utterly bad because it was doctor-lite." And then along came Fear Her, and it was just incredibly, unthinkably bland and mediocre with such a terrible, terrible failed-attempt-at-emotional-manipulation climax that everyone just got scarred by it for life. The hatred is a product of the environment at the time.
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Sep 6, 2014 07:34
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I had never heard the "people hate this episode because they hate the Olympics" thing before DoctorWhat posted it in this thread. I really don't think it's a factor for the vast majority of people. I think it's a pretty bad episode but that's largely because of the general feel of laziness and the horrendously cheesy bit with the torch. But as Oxx mentioned it was a last-minute script written after Stephen Fry backed out so it can kinda be forgiven.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:15
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Hating the episode because  FASCIST LONDON OLYMPICS is dumb and you should feel dumb. You should hate the episode because it's boring as gently caress.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:20
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MikeJF posted:I think, really, that a lot of the reasons we get down on 'Fear Her' is because it came after Love and Monsters. Love and Monsters was so terrible that everyone, back on first viewing, spent a week clutching at the hope that "It'll get better. This was a one off. It was just so utterly bad because it was doctor-lite." And then along came Fear Her, and it was just incredibly, unthinkably bland and mediocre with such a terrible, terrible failed-attempt-at-emotional-manipulation climax that everyone just got scarred by it for life. The hatred is a product of the environment at the time. That and the fact that most people watching, from what I've gathered by their reactions, didn't find the Olympics scene gloriously stupid they way Toxxupation did. Just stupid stupid. Insultingly stupid. Almost patronizingly stupid. I know I certainly felt that way after watching it and my immediate reaction to the whole thing was just "Uggggggggh." It just left a bad taste in my mouth and given that the only episode that polls worse is The Twin Dilemma I'm clearly not alone in that sentiment.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:20
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Hating the episode because I will hate things for the reasons I like. Bown posted:I had never heard the "people hate this episode because they hate the Olympics" thing before DoctorWhat posted it in this thread. I really don't think it's a factor for the vast majority of people. Oh no no no, it certainly isn't - though I must admit I feel it ought to be. No, most people hate it because it's "childish" or "boring". I hate it for the right reasons. 
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Sep 6, 2014 08:23
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Bown posted:I had never heard the "people hate this episode because they hate the Olympics" thing before DoctorWhat posted it in this thread. I really don't think it's a factor for the vast majority of people. I think it's a pretty bad episode but that's largely because of the general feel of laziness and the horrendously cheesy bit with the torch. Yeah, I don't really have any issues with the Olympics as a concept, but it feels detached from the rest of the story (I had the same problem with the Coronation in The Idiot's Lantern) and I think the execution of the saccharine sweet "IT'S HOPE, IT'S COURAGE, IT'S LOVE!" is shockingly bad. I have no problem with the inspirational message they're TRYING to convey, but the execution is godawful and it is barely tangentially related with the theme of the main plot (love and togetherness to combat fear).
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Sep 6, 2014 08:26
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I have to say, I've been looking forward to the reviews of the final episode all season. I got the hugest grin on my face you guys, Christmas has finally come.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:28
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DoctorWhat posted:I will hate things for the reasons I like. Hating an episode from 2006 because of how the 2012 Olympics were handled is pretty dumb.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:28
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Hating an episode from 2006 because of how the 2012 Olympics were handled is pretty dumb. (It's not just the 2012 Olympics)
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Sep 6, 2014 08:42
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It's not like the 2012 Olympics were the first Olympics ever, the people who made this episode must have been aware how hilariously corrupt this institution is. e:beaten.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:43
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I hate the Olympics stuff too, but... This thread is actually making me really miss the RTD era of Doctor Who. The show has changed a lot since 2006.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:44
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30.5 Days posted:(It's not just the 2012 Olympics) It's really not. The 2012 Olympics were just particularly brutal and "close to home". It's every Olympic Games, every Royal Wedding, every - need I say it - Jubilee. These are the things the Doctor should be fighting, not embodying.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:45
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Less episodes whitewashing and glorifying tragedies like the Olympics, please. And more episodes about World War II! EDIT: Given how many times I've seen children under five beat up inflatable cartoon daleks, or nerds snap up comics and audio dramas, I think if The Doctor fought the forces of consumer capitalism regularly then DoctorWhat would be angry with it's WALL-E like hypocrisy. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 08:48
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Not a Twat posted:This thread is actually making me really miss the RTD era of Doctor Who. The show has changed a lot since 2006. Having just recently finished rewatching all of the RTD era, I don't miss it at all. I enjoyed it when it was here, I appreciate it a lot for what it did, and there is a lot to be said for the rollercoaster experience that was the show during RTD's time in charge, but I wouldn't like the show to go back to that style. It very much worked at the time and made what we have now possible, but it was far too schizophrenic for my liking. Even just looking at the episodes covered by this thread so far you can see how wildly the quality see-saws between amazing and terrible (though everybody would disagree over what was amazing and what was terrible).
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Sep 6, 2014 08:55
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DoctorWhat posted:It's really not. The 2012 Olympics were just particularly brutal and "close to home". It's every Olympic Games, every Royal Wedding, every - need I say it - Jubilee. Oh no, my purposely accessible family-oriented television show can't outright state how evil the English monarchy and the IOC are. C'mon son, what did you expect? Besides, there are far bigger demons for the show to tackle.
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Sep 6, 2014 09:04
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DoctorWhat posted:It's really not. The 2012 Olympics were just particularly brutal and "close to home". It's every Olympic Games, every Royal Wedding, every - need I say it - Jubilee. I was following you until you started going after the monarchy. I can't believe you'd attack a fellow Doctor Who fan like that. Anyway I thought part of the reason people piled on Fear Her was because the writer acted like an rear end and insulted everyone who criticised it.
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Sep 6, 2014 09:29
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Matthew Graham co-created Life on Mars so he pretty much gets a life-pass from me.
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Sep 6, 2014 09:40
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death .cab for qt posted:There are some great gags in this episode, too. The Doctor "parks" the Tardis between two blue garbage bins that have just enough room to fit a police box--but parks it the wrong way, and has to exit and reenter the timespace continuum so he can turn the drat thing 90 degrees clockwise. That led to this video that isn't funny at all apart from when I've had just the right amount of beer, at which point it becomes the funniest thing in the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjx57S1Ff8c
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Sep 6, 2014 09:47
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Fear Her has a few really really dumb bits (ala Aliens of London, Love and Monsters) but unlike Aliens of London or Love and Monsters it's so loving bland that you can't pick out the diamonds in the rough and go "Oh, well at least it tried." Being bland and awful is worse than just being awful.DoctorWhat posted:All right, here I go. This is why Fear Her - or, rather, the last 5 minutes of Fear Her (the rest I, unfortunately, really rather like) - disgusts me. Do you hate every episode where UNIT is the good guys? Or where the police are shown to be nice? (Actually ones where the police aren't nice are generally because they've been taken over by aliens, which is supposed to work because policemen are really our friends) The Olympics is a really confused event, in that it's a fairly honest event for thousands of still largely amateur sportsmen (and the ones who are professional are almost always not paid very much) who want to do their best at the highest level... but it's run by a load of corrupt idiots - both at home and abroad. While a lot of draconian poo poo happens at every olympics this is largely restricted to things like marketing laws. The really horrible stuff was pretty much just the Tories in charge in the UK, and G4S being worse than useless.
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Sep 6, 2014 11:46
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Fear Her has a few really really dumb bits (ala Aliens of London, Love and Monsters) but unlike Aliens of London or Love and Monsters it's so loving bland that you can't pick out the diamonds in the rough and go "Oh, well at least it tried." Being bland and awful is worse than just being awful. I actually have more respect for love and monsters than fear her, because at least that episode differentiated itself somehow. It tried some stuff that hadn't been seen yet on the revival. it failed horribly and is a mess, but at least there was some sort of vision behind it. fear her is just everyone phoning it in. the biggest problem with DW is that the premise of the show alows it to pretty much do whatever it wants, but they rarely do. You can set an episode wherever and whenever you want and do lots of crazy stuff, but most of the time we get a lot of running from daleks in hallways with lots of pipes.
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Sep 6, 2014 11:58
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Big Mean Jerk posted:Oh no, my purposely accessible family-oriented television show can't outright state how evil the English monarchy and the IOC are. C'mon son, what did you expect? Besides, there are far bigger demons for the show to tackle. I will have you know that there is no greater issue than the displacement of bums and whores. If my children can't walk past groups of gang bangers, crack whores and violent, piss-soaked lunatics on their way to school every morning, they're not getting the full London experience.
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Sep 6, 2014 12:04
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Boring really is the main descriptor for this episode to me. A show for entertainment shouldn't be boring. This episode just is. And it's a shame because it has some really interesting ideas in there. That makes it worse. It's not offensive or anything, just dull. I do like the Scribble though. There should be more scribble creatures in Sci-fi.
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Sep 6, 2014 12:18
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The writer of Fear Her said that he wrote the episode for his daughter, which is a bit weird when you look at the themes of the episode.
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Sep 6, 2014 12:35
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I mever understood the Fear Her hate either. I watched it once, it struck me as aggressively boring and I haven't bothered watching it since.
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Sep 6, 2014 12:49
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armoredgorilla posted:I mever understood the Fear Her hate either. I watched it once, it struck me as aggressively boring and I haven't bothered watching it since. The Olympics sequence is excruciating, but yeah there are worse episodes.
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Sep 6, 2014 12:57
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Once again, echoing what most people have said; this wasn't horrible, just boring and plodding. The "all you need is love" ending felt like a low-rent 80's children's special. And, although the child actor won't be in line for any Oscars, I thought the mother's performance was even worse.
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Sep 6, 2014 13:09
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Irish Joe posted:I will have you know that there is no greater issue than the displacement of bums and whores. If my children can't walk past groups of gang bangers, crack whores and violent, piss-soaked lunatics on their way to school every morning, they're not getting the full London experience. Hey, maybe this line of thinking isn't sociopathic enough for you to understand, but "bums and whores" and other poor people are also human beings whose lives are more important than Coca-Cola's dividends. MrL_JaKiri posted:Do you hate every episode where UNIT is the good guys? Or where the police are shown to be nice? (Actually ones where the police aren't nice are generally because they've been taken over by aliens, which is supposed to work because policemen are really our friends) As it happens, I'm very much not keen on the UNIT era.
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Sep 6, 2014 14:12
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DoctorWhat posted:I mean, for gently caress's sake - the London Olympics are/were the exactsort of cultural cancer that the Doctor ought to be dismantling, like in Paradise Towers, The Happiness Patrol, or State of Decay. Watching the Doctor carry the Olympic Torch is one of the most wretched perversions I've ever observed. You're not from the UK are you? I know you travelled over to Cardiff. Because, look, I totally understand not liking the Olympics and what they do to some countries, and like every major development project the difficulties that arise, but culturally, they really, really were a positive thing for this country. They did generate a nation wide sense of pride and community, and the increased focus on sports and youth activities is still being pushed to this day. It's something we are very proud of as a nation, and the Doctor carrying the torch might of been bad because it was sappy nonsense, but I don't think it was bad for reasons your attributing to it. I mean, Christ, there's far more offensive views the Doctor and the series expresses over its run than the Olympics inspiring hope in a nation, especially coming less than a year after we had been bombed following the announcement we would be hosting them. marktheando posted:The writer of Fear Her said that he wrote the episode for his daughter, which is a bit weird when you look at the themes of the episode. This isn't really fair, he actually agreed to write for Doctor Who because his daughter was a fan. He had to throw this episode together at the last minute when another one suffered production problems. PriorMarcus fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 14:13
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PriorMarcus posted:You're not from the UK are you? I know you travelled over to Cardiff. I'm from New York, so trust me, I know all about "local pride" in the aftermath of tragedy. ...I don't think I have anything more to say on the subject, actually.
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Sep 6, 2014 14:16
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DoctorWhat posted:Hey, maybe this line of thinking isn't sociopathic enough for you to understand, but "bums and whores" and other poor people are also human beings whose lives are more important than Coca-Cola's dividends. Whores are, by and large, slaves to Irish and Eastern European gangs, and bums are typically mentally unstable, violent drug addicts who pose a very real threat to the safety and security of others. Anything done in service of removing both groups from the city should be applauded, not condemned based upon your misguided notions of social justice.
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Sep 6, 2014 14:27
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The real cultural menace is your posting
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Sep 6, 2014 14:32
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No Irish Joe need reply.
Kurtofan fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 14:41
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PriorMarcus posted:You're not from the UK are you? I know you travelled over to Cardiff.
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Sep 6, 2014 14:57
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Sleep of Bronze posted:While seconding all of this, I think it's worth adding that basically all of Britain assumed we were going to gently caress the Games up really badly, right up until somewhere between Romney's gaffe a couple of days before it started (sod off, we'll moan about it but you aren't allowed) and the realisation that Danny Boyle had actually somehow pulled off an opening ceremony we could applaud. Doctor Who expressing some kind of hope about it was pretty crazy at the time, as far as I remember. I'm quite impressed that the positive outlook turned out to be the one 99% of the country would agree with. Fear Her was 2006. Worries about the games being ready didn't start until 2011 at the earliest, and July 2012 (so a month before the games) was when the poo poo hit the fan with G4S not having enough staff/mistreating the staff and the generaly stuff about people being moved on/banned from transport.
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Sep 6, 2014 15:06
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I am just glad occupation hasn't gone the girls like David Tennant therefore worst Doctor ever route.
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Sep 6, 2014 15:08
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Fear Her did the one thing Love and Monsters could not: it made this thread briefly terrible Grade: F-
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Sep 6, 2014 15:13
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