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That's not at all what that post is about, I'm sorry. "Scientific accuracy" in Doctor Who is obviously not really a starter but there's a reason that the episodes he mentioned are being questioned - because the "science explanation" within them makes little sense to even the layest layman. It's as if one of the children was bright blue and nobody mentioned or cared about it. If Doctor Who is about anything it's about the value of knowledge over ignorance. That is a fundamentally scientific and rationalist point of view, so how can he write and you praise a post that explicitly decries the concept of rationality? It's like criticising Queer As Folk by writing quote:Which suggests that there’s something else going on. One possibility is a cultural bias towards gay people not being soulless monsters who are all paedophiles
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Oct 27, 2014 00:29
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Yeah, sorry. I don't expect Doctor Who to be hard science fiction but I do expect it to at least pay lip service to the science we currently understand and teach.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:32
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It wouldn't really have been that hard to make the space egg not as ridiculous. Just... just say that it's drawing matter from another universe, and that's how it increases in mass and lays the egg. Or some other throw-away line that provides a rationale. Or maybe set it not on our moon period and rip off the Great Bird of the Galaxy from Star Trek.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:34
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It's weird, after Kill The Moon my initial reaction was disappointment with a not very good story. But I enjoyed the discussions it kicked off and as a result view it in a more positive light now than I initially did. With In The Forest of the Night, my initial reaction was of a very stupid but somehow endearing story. But after only a day the negative aspects are becoming more and more apparent and I'm already viewing it in a more negative light. Initially I would have ranked Forest above Moon, but already the places have swapped. It's going to be interesting rewatching the entire season with the "complete" story to see how, if at all, that colors my perceptions of individual episodes.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:36
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PriorMarcus posted:Yeah, sorry. I don't expect Doctor Who to be hard science fiction but I do expect it to at least pay lip service to the science we currently understand and teach. That's a bit strong, there's a whole lot of knowledge out there and no way the writers could know most of it. Just having enough stuff in there that someone aged 10 couldn't ask legit questions about is all that you need - pity that this episode and Kill the Moon didn't manage that low low bar.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:37
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Republican Vampire posted:It wouldn't really have been that hard to make the space egg not as ridiculous. Just... just say that it's drawing matter from another universe, and that's how it increases in mass and lays the egg. Or some other throw-away line that provides a rationale. Or maybe set it not on our moon period and rip off the Great Bird of the Galaxy from Star Trek. Or just make it an asteroid that everyone is dreading or some poo poo. It wasn't that good of an episode anyway so instead of trying to spin gold from poo poo we'd be better just flushing the toilet. There's only been three episodes this season I'd rewatch and even one of those is only because I REALLY love the Daleks and enjoy anything with them.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:38
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MrL_JaKiri posted:That's not at all what that post is about, I'm sorry. "Scientific accuracy" in Doctor Who is obviously not really a starter but there's a reason that the episodes he mentioned are being questioned - because the "science explanation" within them makes little sense to even the layest layman. Exactly! Episdoes like Kill the Moon, on their face, does not comply with real-world physics. The layman is expected to realize that it doesn't make sense, and then set that aside. It's not being deceptive or disinformative, it's actively and transparently being contrafactual and expects the audience to understand accordingly. The idea that Doctor Who has an obligation to explain its contrafactuals that Harry Potter isn't beholden to is arbitrary and silly, ESPECIALLY when DW's contrafactuals are explictly part of its stories themes and messages. MrL_JaKiri posted:If Doctor Who is about anything it's about the value of knowledge over ignorance. That is a fundamentally scientific and rationalist point of view, so how can he write and you praise a post that explicitly decries the concept of rationality? It's like criticising Queer As Folk by writing The issue with the meds, therefore (and this is where Phil and I clearly diverge), is that "medicating your mental illness is ~stifling~" is an actual belief people hold and which causes measurable harm to real people in the real world. No one is going to come out of watching Doctor Who thinking that the Moon is really an egg, or that Earth's forests can really do what Forest of the Night portrays. The audience is expected to understand that Doctor Who is not being honest when it invokes the blatantly fantastical. It's the closer-to-true often-pseudoscientific stuff, like the meds stuff this week, that actually glorify and reinforce ignorance.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:40
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PriorMarcus posted:Yeah, sorry. I don't expect Doctor Who to be hard science fiction but I do expect it to at least pay lip service to the science we currently understand and teach. Yeah, to compare this episode with Kill the Moon, I don't really care how the forest got there or that the trees are magic solar flare deflectors. Those things make no sense but they're the premise of the story so I let them have it and go on. Kill the Moon, OTOH, sets up the premise of the story as the moon is gaining mass and then explains it badly. Once you start explaining you better have an explanation that makes sense even if it only makes sense narratively.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:41
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Random Stranger posted:Kill the Moon, OTOH, sets up the premise of the story as the moon is gaining mass and then explains it badly. Once you start explaining you better have an explanation that makes sense even if it only makes sense narratively. Kill The Moon clearly believes that the storytelling economics it is beholden to are better spent on the morals and themes it endeavors to explore than with psuedoscientific gobbledygook, and I frankly agree. The precise atomic or biological mechanism by which the Moon is violating mass/energy conservation doesn't actually factor into the plot at any point. It's NOT relevant to the narrative and therefore doesn't need to make sense.. Whether you find those themes engaging or well-handled is up to you, of course, but I see zero reasonable distinction at all between how the Forest worked this episode and how the Moon worked a few episodes back. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 00:46
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Jerusalem posted:It's weird, after Kill The Moon my initial reaction was disappointment with a not very good story. But I enjoyed the discussions it kicked off and as a result view it in a more positive light now than I initially did. I like In the Forest of the Night because it gives me a great starting point for ranking this season's episodes as it's clearly at the bottom.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:55
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DoctorWhat posted:Phil Sandifer spent two-ish years writing absolutely brilliant reviews and analysis of Clasic Who. Then, right after wrapping on Survival, he started becoming increasingly unhinged. You actually liked crap like this? "It is not until the start of the third episode that we begin to see the Daleks as monsters, though that is accomplished in a scene that is, in hindsight, deeply uncomfortable. Susan, emerging from the TARDIS, encounters a Thal. The camera holds on Susan as she reacts to it, finally saying that she had expected the Thals to be disfigured, but that "You're perfect." With that, the camera cuts to a strapping blonde Adonis of a Thal, indicating the definition of perfection. The degree to which this definition is Aryan is all the more chilling given that Carole Anne Ford, who plays Susan, is Jewish." I'm going through a few of them now and many are puffed up with the worst sort of self-inflated bullshit.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:55
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Jerusalem posted:With In The Forest of the Night, my initial reaction was of a very stupid but somehow endearing story. But after only a day the negative aspects are becoming more and more apparent and I'm already viewing it in a more negative light. This is pretty much what's going on with me as well. It's a shame, because I do think Forest did some things pretty well (the cinematography, most of the interactions between Clara and Danny, Danny in general, and that first scene between the Doctor and Maebh is completely wonderful). Even if you dismiss out the unpleasant messaging, it's got far too much going on, and far too few of those things are particularly well developed. Fairy tale and literary allusions that come to nothing combined with a needlessly convoluted plot, and it all just smacks of someone throwing the first draft up on the screen and hoping for the best. DoctorWhat posted:Kill The Moon clearly believes that the storytelling economics it is beholden to are better spent on the morals and themes it endeavors to explore than with psuedoscientific gobbledygook, and I frankly agree. The precise atomic or biological mechanism by which the Moon is violating mass/energy conservation doesn't actually factor into the plot at any point. It's NOT relevant to the narrative and therefore doesn't need to make sense.. Kill The Moon would probably have been better served by not even addressing the science beyond SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE MOON. But yeah, the big difference is that Moon was otherwise pretty well-written and Forest wasn't. Moon was neither the first nor the worst example of completely ludicrous science on Doctor Who.
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Oct 27, 2014 00:56
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Cliff Racer posted:You actually liked crap like this? That was literally his second ever review. He really finds his voice later on, and the revised book versions of his posts (so far up through the end of Tom Baker's run) are considerably improved. But honestly, I don't find anything terribly wrong with what you quoted. He's examining (Classic) Doctor Who from oblique angles that no one else had exactly tried before (or at least not compiled and broadly published) and those are interesting angles to look from. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 00:58
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I would be more prepared to ignore the horrible science in Kill The Moon if there wasn't a scene in it where the main characters sit down and try to work out the logical, scientific consequences if they were to remove the Moon, for example the effect that this would have on the tides.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:02
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DoctorWhat posted:Kill The Moon clearly believes that the storytelling economics it is beholden to are better spent on the morals and themes it endeavors to explore than with psuedoscientific gobbledygook, and I frankly agree. That's fine, but in that case don't bring up the topic in the first place. Once a story raises the topic, and more importantly makes it central to the story, then things can go badly. As I pointed out, the problem with the storytelling in Kill the Moon wasn't that the science was bad, it was that trying to explain the bad science was worse.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:05
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DoctorWhat posted:Kill The Moon clearly believes that the storytelling economics it is beholden to are better spent on the morals and themes it endeavors to explore than with psuedoscientific gobbledygook, and I frankly agree. The precise atomic or biological mechanism by which the Moon is violating mass/energy conservation doesn't actually factor into the plot at any point. It's NOT relevant to the narrative and therefore doesn't need to make sense.. But there is an explanation, and it's insultingly stupid. The Doctor declares "Aha! It's gaining mass because it's an egg!" and we as viewers are expected to nod along sagely and go "Ah, that explains everything."
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Oct 27, 2014 01:06
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Cliff Racer posted:You actually liked crap like this? Why are you surprised that the Colin Baker fanboy enjoys the output of a grandiloquent cretin?
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Oct 27, 2014 01:10
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DoctorWhat posted:If not for The Kingmaker, I'd happily write off all Five-and-Peri stories between Planet and Androzani as, well, "not counting". The character dynamics just don't line up with what we saw on-screen (which is a rather frequent problem for Peri, it would seem Yeah, it was really fun. It's like a lot of Big Finish humor in that the jokes are sometimes punctuated by an explanation which makes you really understand the joke, but definitely way less so, and some of the serious questions posed by Gloucester were interesting. All of the surprises were fun and didn't feel like cheating and the back-and-forth between Gloucester and Buckingham always worked well. Peri was fine in it as far as Peri goes and Nicola Bryant is actually quite good at nearly everything except the accent, but jeez. edit: for what it is worth, I liked Kill the Moon.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:11
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Trin Tragula posted:Why are you surprised that the Colin Baker fanboy enjoys the output of a grandiloquent cretin? Because I'm watching in order and am only up to Season 13 (Tom Baker's second, if any of you lost count.)
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Oct 27, 2014 01:16
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DoctorWhat posted:Harry Potter Harry Potter's core theme is not a rationalist one. Doctor Who's is. DoctorWhat posted:The issue with the meds[...] Cool, this has nothing to do with what I wrote and I'm not sure why you're going into it. DoctorWhat posted:I see zero reasonable distinction at all between how the Forest worked this episode and how the Moon worked a few episodes back. Forest rests on an idea that 7 year old children* would find problematic. It tries to make a scientific explanation and fails utterly, as with Kill the Moon. *I looked up where in the syllabus "Oxygen helps things burn" is. "Fire is hot" is, as far as I'm aware, assumed knowledge on the part of the schools but not for writing a Doctor Who episode. MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 01:18
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I really don't why you thought talking about your disagreement on the treatment of mental health compared with Phil Sandifer in any way relates to someone who claims to like a pro-rationalist programme umming and ahhing about how modern society has too much drat rationalism and you agreeing with him. For a quick comparison look at State of Decay. In that story the vampires are just vampires. The only explanation for them being vampires is that they were bitten by another vampire. It's a fundamentally fantasy-type idea that nevertheless works in Doctor Who because a) there is lip service given to the vampires being aliens and so it all makes sense really we're just not going into that right now and, much more importantly, b) the story being about how good science and knowledge are and how bad people are that try to control it. This is very different to getting pre-teen science badly wrong in ways I can't really begin to fathom.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:32
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docbeard posted:Kill The Moon would probably have been better served by not even addressing the science beyond SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE MOON. But yeah, the big difference is that Moon was otherwise pretty well-written and Forest wasn't. Moon was neither the first nor the worst example of completely ludicrous science on Doctor Who. I'm going to say that I liked Kill the Moon, because its badness was mostly relegated to debate; sure the actual elements of what was going wrong with the moon didn't hold up to scrutiny, their attempt to solve the issue was... flawed at best, and while it probably wasn't intended by the writer you can definitely read an abortion message into it. If you don't bother to have those debates, and most people don't (hell, I didn't until I decided to visit this thread) it's a good episode. It's got good pacing, it has some clever ideas, it actually looks pretty nice, and it tries some adventurous concepts regarding the Doctor himself. This episode, on top of being scientifically ridiculous, really problematic, and honestly a bit stupid, was also a terrible episode. And that makes the bad parts shine through all that much better.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:32
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Trin Tragula posted:Why are you surprised that the Colin Baker fanboy enjoys the output of a grandiloquent cretin? I don't think you get to use the word grandiloquent and call someone else grandiloquent at the same time.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:35
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I really don't why you thought talking about your disagreement on the treatment of mental health compared with Phil Sandifer in any way relates to someone who claims to like a pro-rationalist programme umming and ahhing about how modern society has too much drat rationalism and you agreeing with him. To be honest, I mostly just liked the Gamergate punchline at the end of that one and didn't feel like seeking out a less... loaded post of Phil's to defend/champion. For some much-needed personal context: Sandifer's early work was a major formative influence on how I think about media and society. The phrase "it opened my eyes" is a tremendous cliche, but it's the best way of describing it. (Pre-Survival) TARDIS Eruditorum, Jack Graham's Shabogan Graffiti, and [everything Rob Shearman has ever written] all helped me develop my critical thinking skills and social awareness.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:40
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Random Stranger posted:That's fine, but in that case don't bring up the topic in the first place. Once a story raises the topic, and more importantly makes it central to the story, then things can go badly. As I pointed out, the problem with the storytelling in Kill the Moon wasn't that the science was bad, it was that trying to explain the bad science was worse. Both Kill the Moon and In the Forest of the Night remind me of the bits on the podcast TOFOP/FOFOP where Wil Anderson tries to explain how science works in the show Fringe. "You know how when you have an orange and inflate it? It's just like that!" Were the writers of these episodes homeschooled or something? Are they having production troubles again? I'm really trying to understand how a crew of hundreds of people looked at the script and decided to film it anyway. Jet Jaguar fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 01:43
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Jet Jaguar posted:Were the writers of these episodes homeschooled or something? Are they having production troubles again? I'm really trying to understand how a crew of hundreds of people looked at the script and decided to film it anyway. The idea that the production team is scientifically-ignorant enough to think that the "science" of Moon or Forest "makes sense" literally is absolutely bonkers. They obviously KNOW FULL WELL how "wrong" they are. They just don't consider it a priority.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:53
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DoctorWhat posted:To be honest, I mostly just liked the Gamergate punchline at the end of that one and didn't feel like seeking out a less... loaded post of Phil's to defend/champion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_H77Ledl_I
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Oct 27, 2014 01:53
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Don't forget Listen's premise about evolution of perfect hiding and all that the doctor yells about at the beginning. The premise reminds me of The Tingler, where a scientist declares we feel a shiver up our spine when we're scared because we all have a weird fear-eating parasite there that only can be weakened by screaming. It's an oft mocked premise that would fit in among the episodes we've had this particular season.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:55
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DoctorWhat posted:Sandifer's early work was a major formative influence on how I think about media and society. The phrase "it opened my eyes" is a tremendous cliche, but it's the best way of describing it. (Pre-Survival) TARDIS Eruditorum, Jack Graham's Shabogan Graffiti, and [everything Rob Shearman has ever written] all helped me develop my critical thinking skills and social awareness.  You had me till this post. Good show. You just pushed my credulity a little too far. (I'm man enough to admit when I've been fooled)
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Oct 27, 2014 01:55
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As I've said - Phil went off the deep end years ago. But he's not an idiot, just really horrendously wrong about a lot of things - which is worse than just being dumb, really.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:56
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Acne Rain posted:Don't forget Listen's premise about evolution of perfect hiding and all that the doctor yells about at the beginning. Yeah, that was really stupid. It didn't need much changed to make sense, though, although as I think was mentioned at the time we've already seen that species (it's the Silence). While I'm complaining about things can I complain about the time skip between The Impossible Astronaut and The Day of the Moon again? Man that gets me annoyed. And also has X the Moon as its title.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:00
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DoctorWhat posted:As I've said - Phil went off the deep end years ago. But he's not an idiot, just really horrendously wrong about a lot of things - which is worse than just being dumb, really. Idolise Larry Miles, he's funnier
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Oct 27, 2014 02:00
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DoctorWhat posted:As I've said - Phil went off the deep end years ago. But he's not an idiot, just really horrendously wrong about a lot of things - which is worse than just being dumb, really. You are being a coward - bending your opinion of someone you claim to respect intellectually (even if you wouldn't particularly want to hang out with them) to impress a bunch of people bearing open contempt to the very idea of what you're claiming to be 'inspired' by.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:04
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I have yet to watch this week's episode due to finalizing wedding plans, but this thread has exploded. This was either an amazing episode that generated a lot of discussion or a very bad one that generated a lot of discussion. 
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Oct 27, 2014 02:06
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You won't get this from Phil Sandifer:
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Oct 27, 2014 02:08
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josh04 posted:You are being a coward - bending your opinion of someone you claim to respect intellectually (even if you wouldn't particularly want to hang out with them) to impress a bunch of people bearing open contempt to the very idea of what you're claiming to be 'inspired' by. I don't respect Sandifer intellectually, and have not done so for over a year. I have accused him, on multiple occasions, of profound intellectual and academic dishonesty. I also think that he has a persistent tendency to be horrendously, irresponsibly callous and nasty and inconsiderate about the lived experiences of marginalized/oppressed people, especially those who challenge him or call him out. I do acknowledge that he possesses quite considerable intelligence, which I think is a meaningful distinction. Writing him off as an idiot understates both his actual accomplishments AND his profound failures.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:08
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You will however get cultural and textual analysis of Doctor Who from Larry Miles (and Tat Wood) and they're less up their arse about it than Sandifer, which given it's Larry Miles shows quite how far from the pack PS has strayed.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:10
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Just wanna point out: DoctorWhat is basically a fetus. All of us were easily bent to peer pressure at that age, and all of us had super dumb ideas received from people we rightly or wrongly respected.
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Oct 27, 2014 02:10
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MrL_JaKiri posted:You will however get cultural and textual analysis of Doctor Who from Larry Miles (and Tat Wood) and they're less up their arse about it than Sandifer, which given it's Larry Miles shows quite how far from the pack PS has strayed. When the rest of About Time becomes available for my Kindle I will happily read every word of their stuff, but only volumes 3, 5, and 7 are available digitally at last check (and I've read all of those).
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Oct 27, 2014 02:13
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CobiWann posted:This was either an amazing episode that generated a lot of discussion or a very bad one that generated a lot of discussion. It's very definitely an episode of Doctor Who, yes. 
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Oct 27, 2014 02:16
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