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Jerusalem posted:I still think this episode "failed" where it was important, in terms of drawing me in and connecting with me - but the themes it explored had a ton of potential and the part where it best realized this was in that final angry confrontation between Clara and the Doctor. This could be a pull quote for the entire season, I think. The thematic stuff they're doing this year is, I think, some of the best the revival's ever done, but I think there's an alienating quality to even the best episodes, possibly even as a result, and it's hurting the show to a degree. With one or two exceptions, I think every episode has left me a little cold at first until I sat and thought about it.
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Oct 5, 2014 04:26
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docbeard posted:This could be a pull quote for the entire season, I think. The thematic stuff they're doing this year is, I think, some of the best the revival's ever done, but I think there's an alienating quality to even the best episodes, possibly even as a result, and it's hurting the show to a degree. With one or two exceptions, I think every episode has left me a little cold at first until I sat and thought about it. ... You know what? Good. I've had enough of Doctor Who-as-crowd-pleasing-instant-gratification for a while. I'm glad its becoming more considered and reserved and thought-provoking.
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Oct 5, 2014 04:35
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That said this is one of only 1.5 episodes this season I've felt failed to connect with me.
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Oct 5, 2014 04:42
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DoctorWhat posted:... You know what? Good. I've had enough of Doctor Who-as-crowd-pleasing-instant-gratification for a while. I'm glad its becoming more considered and reserved and thought-provoking. I think there's a balance to be struck, and I don't think they've quite got there (though I have some confidence that it will). But the stuff that works really works. I will never fault a creative work for its ambition, though. I'd rather ambitious failures (and I don't think current Who is anything of the sort) than lazy successes.
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Oct 5, 2014 05:04
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Note to self: Never let Peter Harness write on Doctor Who ever again. And bombard him with angry mail like it's Helen Raynor 2.0...
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Oct 5, 2014 05:24
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Grouchio posted:Note to self: Never let Peter Harness write on Doctor Who ever again. And bombard him with angry mail like it's Helen Raynor 2.0... If you actually took part in the Raynor harrasment, 
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Oct 5, 2014 05:33
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DoctorWhat posted:If you actually took part in the Raynor harrasment, And nevertheless my theoretical letter to Harness would be seething with rage. And this season is still the best since 1976.
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Oct 5, 2014 05:57
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So, J-Ru, the episode that you mentioned in Occ's thread that's worse than Voyage of the Damned... Journey's End right? Because god drat if I can't think of a lower point yet to come in 4-8 than that. Okay Planet of the Dead was really bad, but its worst crime is being boring as poo poo.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:14
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legoman727 posted:So, J-Ru, the episode that you mentioned in Occ's thread that's worse than Voyage of the Damned... Journey's End right? Because god drat if I can't think of a lower point yet to come in 4-8 than that. Okay Planet of the Dead was really bad, but its worst crime is being boring as poo poo. The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe. It's just awful, and even though I've tried to be forgiving of it in the past, I just increasingly find myself hating it as time goes by, remembering how bad and awful and not-good it is. At least Voyage is entertaining in a,"The gently caress was RTD thinking?  " way.As for Journey's End - that's basically RTD's run on the show summed up in a single episode. Incredible highs, stunning lows, and some awful missteps that utterly wreck the other good work he has done. Yeah it's got the Meta-Crisis Doctor and the utterly unnecessary and ill-thought out return of Rose and that TERRIBLE "happy ending" he gives them. But it's also got the Daleks' utterly insane plan to wipe out all realiTIES (not one, ALL OF THEM) which I love for the sheer mad audacity of it all, tons of great companion stuff, and a really sweet climax with the Doctor and Companions piloting the TARDIS. Plus Davros. Davros is a fantastic character and RTD absolutely knocked the characterization of him out of the park. Then of course there's The End of Time, which is one utterly dreadful episode followed by an episode that is much better if only because it isn't part one, and because of the amazing Matt Smith debut.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:24
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The ending just absolutely ruins Journey's End for me. God... just. gently caress that ending so badly, it is a god damned crime that Rose gets her perfect storybook ending while Donna gets all her character developments stripped away. Eh, screw it, thread poll. Worst post-Voyage of the Damned episode?
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Oct 5, 2014 06:32
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I thought this was an unbelievably good episode, because it did such an amazing job of twisting the viewer's expectations of narrative arcs that we've seen repeated on this show ad nauseum. I know that a lot of people here are objecting to how silly the "Moon as an egg" plot twist was, but honestly, folks...who gives a poo poo? A, as many have pointed out already, it's "Doctor loving Who," and B, much more importantly, the whole sci-fi storyline is so unimportant compared to the character dynamics that it's not even funny. This isn't an episode about a world-ending sci-fi problem that the Doctor solves (or in this case, doesn't solve) by pulling a technobabble-filled solution out of his rear end. This is an episode about the Doctor's relationship with humanity, his ongoing commitment to making humanity grow by forcing them to make difficult decisions - and an instance in which he took it too far. A time when, in his zeal to prove a point, he abandoned his friends when they really needed him. This is a great episode because it exposes so very clearly a character flaw that has been present in every incarnation of the Doctor since William Hartnell: no matter how lovable he is most of the time, he can be an imperious, arrogant, unsympathetic, MANIPULATIVE motherfucker. That's part of why I'm loving Peter Capaldi so much, at least up to this point: because he really is plumbing the darkest depths of this character. Vastra was 100% right in the first episode of this season - the 12th Doctor is as unveiled an incarnation as we've seen. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what being a Time Lord is all about, in all its ugly glory.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:34
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I'd nominate Nightmare in Silver as the worst episode yet to come. Annoying kids is a pet hatred of mine & boy were these ones annoying. Also Cybermen being Cybermen. They've never worked for me outside the Dalek v. Cybermen sass-contest. And I had pretty high expectations, because it was penned by Neil Gaiman.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:34
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Is the netflix cut of Planet of the Ood modified? Because there are 2 points, one where the Doctor and Donna end up with the pr person, and one where they end up with ood sigma where theres no scene showing the meetup happening.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:36
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adhuin posted:I'd nominate Nightmare in Silver as the worst episode yet to come. Uuuuuh, that episode had Warwick Davis as Emperor of the Universe. Your argument is invalid.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:36
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Jerusalem posted:The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe. It's just awful, and even though I've tried to be forgiving of it in the past, I just increasingly find myself hating it as time goes by, remembering how bad and awful and not-good it is. The only good thing about that episode is at the end when the Doctor goes to visit Amy & Rory, it's a lovely, heartfelt little scene... And then he says "humany-wumany" or whatever the gently caress it was 
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Oct 5, 2014 06:42
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Majorian posted:This is a great episode because it exposes so very clearly a character flaw that has been present in every incarnation of the Doctor since William Hartnell: no matter how lovable he is most of the time, he can be an imperious, arrogant, unsympathetic, MANIPULATIVE motherfucker. I agree, which is why I find the claims from others (who clearly see things in a different way) who say that Capaldi's Doctor is not recognizable as the Doctor. I also agree with the notion that, as Vastra warned, the Doctor has basically opened himself up rather than putting up a front to put humans at ease and that this is a sign of his trust in, and belief in, human beings - in particular, Clara. It plays well with The Day of the Doctor, where the War Doctor couldn't understand why 10 and 11 seemed so desperate not to appear "grown up". This Doctor implicitly trusts Clara, but by opening up so much of himself to her he's risking alienating her because he's asking so much of her. howe_sam posted:The only good thing about that episode is at the end when the Doctor goes to visit Amy & Rory, it's a lovely, heartfelt little scene... That should have been Amy and Rory's last ever appearance in the show (Amy could still have her imagined cameo in Time of the Doctor), it was that good. That would have given Clara more chance to develop in season 7 too, which based on what we've seen in season 8 could have been great.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:49
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Jerusalem posted:Voyage, The End of Time I I just happen to have watched these before this episode, and it's a hell of a contrast. It's got issues but it's no Let's Kill Hitler either. I'm happy with a dickhead Doctor, its well past time he was. Seriously, look at those episodes and certain of Eleven's run and you couldn't get more cartoonish. To me, the balance has been skewed for a long time and it's going to take some pain to redress it. The confrontation with Clara says a lot about the self-interest, self-image and frankly a massive dose of self-delusion on both sides, which is what relationships are all about. Don't forget Danny either; very easy for him to be Mr Understanding when he too has a vested interest. In such arguments, everyone is wrong, and I felt that was a real strength of the episode. So that was the good part. Yes it upsets hard scifi nerds, boo hoo, that train left the station long ago. My biggest issue is with the characterization of Lundvik which lets so much of the premise down. The problem is there is none. Even worse, the slapdash production has her muttering half her lines so quietly I had to really tweak the gain to hear them and they turned out to be inconsequential, like the "backstory" she gives at one point which may as well have been left out for all the impact it makes. Someone mentioned the triple goddess, well she was a terrible Crone whose opinion I could care less about. Even Courtney is more believable a character than her. But again,  my immersion etc.I like the idea that he's the anti-Pertwee, although Three was pretty drat arrogant and fairly dismissive at times. I really lean more to a younger One with a big dash of Seven thrown in. Will the arc give the Doctor redemption? What if it doesn't? What will you say then? Was Seven ever redeemed, or did you have to accept his nature?
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Oct 5, 2014 06:53
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Same feelings as the theads on this one; good start, egg nonsense scrambled a lot of things up, liked 12th getting his poo poo pushed in for his playing the Dr. Manhattan card. But the egg thing (and it's surrounding nonsense with the abortion allegory and the space dragon then shiting out a status quo moon) really submerged the cartoon shoe in the Moffat dip. Autonomous Monster posted:By the by, I could have sworn blind that "moon is actually an egg" is a pretty common mythological motif, but I can't seem to find anything with a quick google. Anyone? It's part of Evangelion's story for one thing.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:55
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ewe2 posted:Was Seven ever redeemed, or did you have to accept his nature? Just as Seven was cranking up his portrayal as a long-game playing chessmaster the show got Technically the show was never canceled, it just... didn't came back for years and years and years.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:56
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I quite liked the epilogue for it's dialogue. "Tell me the truth right not or I swear I'll smack you so hard you'll regenerate" and "It was patronising! Don't ever tell me to take the training wheels off my bike ever again!" were very well delivered.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:58
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Jerusalem posted:Technically the show was never canceled, it just... didn't came back for years and years and years. In the BF audios his character hasn't that triumphant moment either really. But that's not the point, we were never given the idea that there would be one and I'm wondering why people are expecting it now. I had another thought about Danny. There's going to be some big reveal about his past that we're being led up to which is why he's so wise and understanding, right? It'd better be something we can connect to, or that will be a massive failure right there. The kind of reveal perhaps where he can see Twelve's POV because they've been to the same place, but Danny has a different answer. Well, I can dream.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:08
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 They got the loving age of the moon wrong too Was a pretty good episode (with some really dodgy science) that lost me on the beach. Final "break-up" scene was fantastic though.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:08
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Doctor Spaceman posted:
No, no, no. The Doctor said '100 million years', right? That means the previous moon hatched 100 million years ago and laid a new one. We now know that doesn't have any lasting effects. Nobody will remember that happening, except maybe the Silurians... wait a second let me look that up. quote:The panicked Silurians sealed themselves in their underground hibernation chambers, but the technology was faulty, and never woke them. They were unaware the dangerous planetoid that they believed would devastate their world was instead captured by the planet and became the Moon. That's interesting. We can assume that that was our moon, in which case it was laid elsewhere and somehow (purposefully by the mother?) pushed in such a direction that it would be captured in an Earth orbit.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:35
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Jerusalem posted:Then of course there's The End of Time, which is one utterly dreadful episode followed by an episode that is much better if only because it isn't part one, and because of the amazing Matt Smith debut. Yes but in Part 1 you get 40 minutes of sheer incoherence followed by 5 minutes of pure loving hilarity. It's actually so bad it's good.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:46
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This Doctor is a troll, and deserved that smack talk at the end. This is like the opposite of the Pompeii episode where the human discovers how difficult the choices he faces are and resolves to make them easier. The Doctor, a guy would couldn't make the decision to maroon his own race without help from his other selves, abandons this one? It's uncharacteristic, anyway. Also, it's sort of stupid that humanity's continued perseverance to the end-times, a thing that he's been sort of impressed by since at least Ninth, turns into something he himself enabled. However, I can sort of buy that he didn't know the details of how humanity survives until he's witnessed it himself.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:48
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I hope someone hasn't already touched on this. So next week's episode takes place on the Orient Express... in space. Sound familiar to anyone? If not, re-watch the last five minutes of the season five finale. Thoughts?
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Oct 5, 2014 07:49
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Craptacular! posted:Also, it's sort of stupid that humanity's continued perseverance to the end-times, a thing that he's been sort of impressed by since at least Ninth, turns into something he himself enabled. However, I can sort of buy that he didn't know the details of how humanity survives until he's witnessed it himself. He's enabled it every time he's saved the human race / Earth though.
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Oct 5, 2014 07:52
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GonSmithe posted:Are you people seriously upset with the physics in Doctor loving Who?
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Oct 5, 2014 08:12
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I wasn't crazy about the egg plot but it was all worth it for the last five minutes. I remember back in Moffat's second series I thought there was a recurring theme of Amy realising the Doctor isn't perfect- he fails to save her daughter, he does that weird betraying thing with her older self, and he does whatever in that minotaur episode- which would lead to her leaving him behind and going back to the real world to live life as a grown-up. Then instead the Doctor popped her out of the Tardis and peaced out, and it felt like a cop-out, like Moffat couldn't bring himself to hurt the Doctor's feelings by writing a scene where his companion leaves him. This week a scene like that finally came, and I'm thrilled. I hope the overall arc is good because I'm a fan of the setup they're doing so far. Speaking of worst episodes... Let's Kill Hitler resolved a plot arc with the parents of a kidnapped infant learning that they would never get her back.
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Oct 5, 2014 08:15
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legoman727 posted:The ending just absolutely ruins Journey's End for me. God... just. gently caress that ending so badly, it is a god damned crime that Rose gets her perfect storybook ending while Donna gets all her character developments stripped away. Journey's End caused me to give up on New Who until Eleven's first episode. To strip away everything Donna had become was pretty much a fate worse than death and felt incredibly spiteful.
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Oct 5, 2014 08:31
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legoman727 posted:Eh, screw it, thread poll. Worst post-Voyage of the Damned episode? The easy answer is Planet of the Dead, but I also disliked the Unicorn and the Wasp and the Silurian 2-parter in Matt Smith's first series a lot. Let's Kill Hitler deserves all the hate that it's getting as well. Gordon Shumway fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 08:33
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Mach 30 posted:I hope someone hasn't already touched on this. So next week's episode takes place on the Orient Express... in space. Sound familiar to anyone? If not, re-watch the last five minutes of the season five finale. Thoughts? It was very briefly touched on earlier. Yes it seems to be a direct reference to the potential adventure hinted at the end of The Big Bang. Of course the suggestion was that they went off and solved that mystery between seasons, but maybe the Doctor got distracted/ended up on the WRONG Orient Express (maybe even the wrong Orient Express... in Space!) and is only just getting around to it now!
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Oct 5, 2014 08:46
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Jerusalem posted:Then of course there's The End of Time, which is one utterly dreadful episode followed by an episode that is much better if only because it isn't part one, and because of the amazing Matt Smith debut. Also Timothy Dalton's performance basically justified all of Part 2. I don't care that he doesn't do much during it - the man made the Time Lords seem dangerous again just by gloating and scheming (which is pretty impressive when, you know, they're mostly supposed to be extinct). He really is a good actor - it's such a shame that he was in such dreadful Bond movies.
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Oct 5, 2014 09:04
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Majorian posted:such dreadful Bond movies. Shut the gently caress up about the second best james bonds films. (The first is lazenby)
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Oct 5, 2014 09:06
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BSam posted:Shut the gently caress up about the second best james bonds films. Did you get molested by good screenwriters when you were a child? quote:(The first is lazenby) "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is genuinely and unironically one of my favorite Bond movies, even though Lazenby is pretty wooden. Diana Rigg makes it. Also the theme is so loving good. e: To keep things on topic, my least favorite "Doctor Who" episode of the new series still probably has to be "The Runaway Bride." I'm sorry, but I just don't have much patience for Donna. I appreciate that Russell T. Davies created a companion who wasn't in unrequited love with the Doctor, but "shrill and dumb" is not a character combination that I cotton to all that much. She had her moments, I'll admit, but I just think those early episodes with her are unwatchable. Also, the plot with the Empress of the Racnoss was duuuuumb. Majorian fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 09:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9_h0egj9YYGordon Shumway posted:The easy answer is Planet of the Dead, but I also disliked the Unicorn and the Wasp and the Silurian 2-parter in Matt Smith's first series a lot.
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Oct 5, 2014 09:16
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Doctor Spaceman posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9_h0egj9YY Yeah, on one hand, I get that it's as formulaic as a "Doctor Who" episode gets, but on the other hand, I don't feel like it was executed poorly. It's a mediocre episode, but I don't think it's a terrible one.
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Oct 5, 2014 09:20
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BioEnchanted posted:I quite liked the epilogue for it's dialogue. Hey now, that threat's not idle either. A smack to the head's how he went from Six to Seven  .
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Oct 5, 2014 09:24
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Majorian posted:Yeah, on one hand, I get that it's as formulaic as a "Doctor Who" episode gets, but on the other hand, I don't feel like it was executed poorly. It's a mediocre episode, but I don't think it's a terrible one. I put it off for ages because of its bad rep. When I actually got around to watching it, I didn't mind it as it was like a non-poo poo version of Black Orchid.
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Oct 5, 2014 09:25
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Doctor Spaceman posted:I never quite got why people hated The Unicorn and The Wasp so much. I didn't think it was great, but it gets so much more bile than I'd have expected.
About the only good thing about it is the charades scene and Donna going  during the big parlor scene.
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Oct 5, 2014 09:26
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