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Rochallor posted:The movie Daleks are probably tied for my favorite Dalek design with the original revivial Dalek design. The movie Daleks get a big pass from me because they're the first to have a light shining out of the Dalek eyestalk instead of a goofy eyeball decal. I really like the very first eyestalk design in The Daleks, with the contracting and expanding camera shutter thing on the eyeball. It's such a great effect, especially for 1963, and I don't think they ever bring it back - from The Dalek Invasion of Earth on Dalek eyeballs are just blank, static and obviously wooden things and they stay like that until the revival. EDIT: Looks like it's still there in The Power of the Daleks:  It's definitely gone by Pertwee, though. Forktoss fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 20:44
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I doubt it's coming back. The modern design does something similar with the blue wibbly bit inside the eyeball though.
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Jan 6, 2015 21:37
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Forktoss posted:I really like the very first eyestalk design in The Daleks, with the contracting and expanding camera shutter thing on the eyeball. It's such a great effect, especially for 1963, and I don't think they ever bring it back - from The Dalek Invasion of Earth on Dalek eyeballs are just blank, static and obviously wooden things and they stay like that until the revival.
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Jan 6, 2015 21:58
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The thing that spoiled the NDP design was the large hump on the back. It meant the classic Dalek profile was gone. But the proportions didn't make sense. The base and bump skirt are huge, as is the weapon belt (of which the gun is stupidly massive) and then the banded neck and dome are just plopped on top and don't measure up, being far too small to match with the rest. If they had, the Dalek would probably be about 8ft high.  The hump did have a purpose. There was a silver panel which was meant to open so that the Dalek could swap out weapons and arms.  However we never saw this, and instead we got mis-proportioned humpback Daleks for little reason. If they'd sorted out the proportions to be more classic, while retaining the newer features they wanted, it could have worked, like this: 
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Jan 6, 2015 22:04
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Barry Foster posted:The idea of making them taller and more menacing was cool and good, but my god did they go about it the worst possible way. It's pretty telling that they dropped that design almost immediately (except for the white one, which was the least egregiously toylike of the lot). The idea of having them at eye-level was interesting, but I'm glad they didn't stick with it. I think Into the Dalek demonstrated pretty well that you can clearly show the Dalek as the shortest being in the room and not look silly or unthreatening (even with bed-hair!) 
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Jan 6, 2015 22:05
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The film Dalek design are probably what the production team would have wanted to have used in the original series had the programme not always have a £5 budget. Apparently they got in trouble after the first Dalek serial because they way outspent their budget building the four Daleks used in that: which is quite funny considering they managed to use a bunch of the sixties Dalek props right through to Remembrance...
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Jan 6, 2015 22:16
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Rochallor posted:Daleks were never eye-stalk level with the main cast before 
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Jan 6, 2015 22:41
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Yeah, the Daleks for the revival were initially designed to share the same eye line as Rose, for the purpose of their one on one dialogue scenes together. Moffat felt they didn't have to keep that anymore since Matt and Karen towered over them, and wanted them to be more imposing. He also mentioned the that new Paradigm were meant to look "sharp", i.e. the bronze ones were riveted together, while the new ones were supposed to look like one solid piece, any look like they would cut you if you even touched them. Then after they bombed, he back tracked and said "No, they're not meant to replace the bronze. They're like an officer class for the Daleks."
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Jan 6, 2015 23:01
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Bicyclops posted:It's bizarre, because of course, it absolutely could not have been a toy marketing decision, but boy howdy, does it feel like it was a toy marketing decision. IIRC there was a story in Private Eye which suggested exactly this explanation, it was something like "BBC Worldwide wants to make more money off Daleks, so bribes GMS to redesign the Daleks with the promise of £[large sum of money although comically small by American TV standards] for his budget, which will be made good through future booming sales of all-new redesigned Dalek toys". edit: here we go, here's a contemporary blogpost quoting the original scuttlebutt: http://www.kasterborous.com/2010/04/cynicism-of-the-daleks/ Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 00:12
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Bicyclops posted:I kind of liked No More lies, although I will admit it is very confusing and the relationship between Lucy and the Doctor seems to take an enormous friendly leap in the middle of nowhere. The production value sort of raises it above the mediocrity of the writing. It definitely saved itself after the first 20 minutes, good ending.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:14
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Davros1 posted:Yeah, the Daleks for the revival were initially designed to share the same eye line as Rose, for the purpose of their one on one dialogue scenes together. Moffat felt they didn't have to keep that anymore since Matt and Karen towered over them, and wanted them to be more imposing. He also mentioned the that new Paradigm were meant to look "sharp", i.e. the bronze ones were riveted together, while the new ones were supposed to look like one solid piece, any look like they would cut you if you even touched them. There's also the fact that Jenna Coleman is really short,so Daleks proportionately sized for the really tall Karen Gillan just dwarfed her. I'm not sure how much this directly contributed, but Jenna's first appearance was the first time we got the Old Daleks back.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:19
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The one thing I hated most from the Victory daleks were their new eyestalks. The blue ones seem iconic now, and I fail to see how multi-coloured LEDs would make them any better.Trin Tragula posted:
From the bottom of the article: quote:Speaking of Daleks, it seems that the Green Party have attempted to put the iconic aliens to “cynical misuse,” apparently using red, blue and yellow Daleks in a recent election campaign video, which has since been withdrawn following objections from the BBC. God bless the BBC.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:20
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Speaking of Victory of the Daleks. I always thought naming the Dalek bomb Dr. Bracewell was quite a clever nod to Bracewell Probes.quote:A Bracewell probe is a hypothetical concept for an autonomous interstellar space probe dispatched for the express purpose of communication with one or more alien civilizations. It was proposed by Ronald N. Bracewell in a 1960 paper, as an alternative to interstellar radio communication between widely separated civilizations. I mean the episode is still a little too goofy for my tastes, especially following the Beast Below and Eleventh Hour (I think I gave it a D in the Toxx comp) but I always enjoy cute little nods like that.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:29
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For Victory I just can't see Toxx overlooking the sheer brilliant lunacy of Spacefires. Anything that puts a big dopey grin on your face, even if it is completely balls-out retarded, is right up his alley; see his Christmas Invasion review.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:37
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Kevino07 posted:From the bottom of the article: I bet they're raging there's no purple Daleks for them to use. 
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Jan 7, 2015 00:44
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Forktoss posted:I really like the very first eyestalk design in The Daleks, with the contracting and expanding camera shutter thing on the eyeball. It's such a great effect, especially for 1963, and I don't think they ever bring it back - from The Dalek Invasion of Earth on Dalek eyeballs are just blank, static and obviously wooden things and they stay like that until the revival. Huh, I don't remember that at all! That looks a whole lot better than the ones in the rest of the classic series, maybe even the original new series design. This silly eyeball was the one I was talking about, I definitely remember it in Day of the Daleks and Remembrance, so I'd assume it's in the ones in between, too. 
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Jan 7, 2015 00:53
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Davros1 posted:Number 6 returns. And no, it isn't Colin. This is huge. Definitely a must buy for me. It's a tricky property to adapt without McGoohan but there's a lot of material to be mined there. A few years back a book company tried to launch of line of novels of which only one by Andrew Cartmel seems to have seen the light of day. If you can pick it up, it's well worth it. Hopefully with so many former Who writers working for BF they'll find a way to involve him. He did a terrific job. It had the premise that, as happened so often on the show: "Whoops, when 6 got away in the last episode he really didn't!" and found himself back in the Village (again, as Iron Maiden would say). Cartmel really wrote McGoohan's voice well. Obviously they won't go that route here, but any sort of continuation of the premise will be interesting I'm sure.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:55
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Cleretic posted:There's also the fact that Jenna Coleman is really short,so Daleks proportionately sized for the really tall Karen Gillan just dwarfed her. I'm not sure how much this directly contributed, but Jenna's first appearance was the first time we got the Old Daleks back. Except that in "Asylum of the Daleks", Jenna never shares a shot with a Dalek because she's inside one the whole time. And Karen was still running round, so it would make more sense to have the larger scale Daleks than the small ones if you cared about the Dalek to Companion size ratio thing.
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Jan 7, 2015 06:52
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As far as I remember the first time the old Daleks reappeared was Wedding Of River Song when the Doctor loots the data core or whatever off a broken one.
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Jan 7, 2015 06:58
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Watching the Time of the Doctor and I notice at the start the Doctor has apparently finally gotten around to putting a transmat into the TARDIS that I guess the writers just forgot about, presumably because transporters break plots far too easily.
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Jan 7, 2015 08:03
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2house2fly posted:As far as I remember the first time the old Daleks reappeared was Wedding Of River Song when the Doctor loots the data core or whatever off a broken one. Nope, that was a new one. A white one, in particular.
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Jan 7, 2015 08:33
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Metal Loaf posted:I bet they're raging there's no purple Daleks for them to use. If they wanted to make a literally insane, right wing analogy, purple should have been the way to go. Kevino07 posted:The one thing I hated most from the Victory daleks were their new eyestalks. The blue ones seem iconic now, and I fail to see how multi-coloured LEDs would make them any better. The new Dalek eye is better when not lit up, as it's literally meant to be an eye. Organic and whatnot: 
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Jan 7, 2015 09:22
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MikeJF posted:Watching the Time of the Doctor and I notice at the start the Doctor has apparently finally gotten around to putting a transmat into the TARDIS that I guess the writers just forgot about, presumably because transporters break plots far too easily. I just figure he broke it fiddling with it and hasn't bothered to get around to fixing it yet.
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Jan 7, 2015 15:58
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Bicyclops posted:I just figure he broke it fiddling with it and hasn't bothered to get around to fixing it yet. Don't worry, I'm sure the 16th Doctor will remember to fix it. And then promptly forget again.
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Jan 7, 2015 16:49
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The_Doctor posted:If they wanted to make a literally insane, right wing analogy, purple should have been the way to go. This is actually my least favorite aspect of the Dalek redesign. I think it's a bit silly and cheap looking.
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Jan 7, 2015 17:00
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Bicyclops posted:I just figure he broke it fiddling with it and hasn't bothered to get around to fixing it yet. Seriously. The Doctor can barely get his ship through time and space some days. Do you really want him fiddling with a machine to move all your atoms somewhere else?
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Jan 7, 2015 19:37
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Chokes McGee posted:Seriously. The Doctor can barely get his ship through time and space some days. Do you really want him fiddling with a machine to move all your atoms somewhere else? I'd trust Twelve a hell of a lot more than any other Doctor. He seems the most comfortable, adept, and in control when flying the TARDIS. No jumping around flicking switches and hammering the console, just calm, confident movements.
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Jan 7, 2015 19:48
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PriorMarcus posted:This is actually my least favorite aspect of the Dalek redesign. I think it's a bit silly and cheap looking. Yeah, same. It doesn't quite work.
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Jan 7, 2015 20:08
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DoctorWhat posted:Yeah, same. It doesn't quite work. It doesn't really make sense given that the Dalek exterior is basically a tank with the Dalek a little thing in the heart of it so why present the squishy eye right out in front?
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Jan 7, 2015 21:14
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Chokes McGee posted:Seriously. The Doctor can barely get his ship through time and space some days. Do you really want him fiddling with a machine to move all your atoms somewhere else? Isn't the TARDIS by definition a machine to move all your atoms somewhere else?
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Jan 7, 2015 22:41
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Blasmeister posted:I just watched The Beast Below recently, and it certainly doesn't fit together like the 'clockwork' moffat stories do (Why are naughty children automatically sent to their 'deaths'? Is the whole 'we'll stop if 1% protest' thing just a bullshit excuses to feed objectors to the whale, the rest of the system seems to work as stated even if it's kinda messed up? What are the winder/human things even really for? Did they not even see if the whale would move them on its own before torturing it to make it move?) And some of the emotional thrust is a bit more bluntly done - the comparison between the whale and the doctor could have been less obviously stated, for instance. But the setting, premise and the acting of the main parties were really well done and the climax does feel earned despite the shaky foundations. of all the things in the episode that made little sense, it really bothered me that the robots could have three fixed faces displayed by 180 degree rotations.
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Jan 7, 2015 22:53
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Random Stranger posted:Isn't the TARDIS by definition a machine to move all your atoms somewhere else? Isn't any contained vehicle?
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Jan 7, 2015 23:31
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Kill the Moon (or Doctor Who and the Space Spiders, which would be the name of the Target novelization) is not good. In fact, now that I've had time to reflect on it after its initial airing AND the context of the full season to view it in, I can say it is actually pretty bad. The very, very, very best part of the episode comes AFTER the climax and feels like it was written by somebody else entirely, which could very well be the fact given the way writing on this show works - it reminds me a bit of how the Silurian 2-parter in season 5 was drab and bland and disappointing right up to the last few minutes where Moffat clearly takes over and suddenly it becomes incredibly compelling. Even though the final sections with Clara come naturally out of the events of the story (and surely Moffat provided the writer with the basis of what he was looking for) they stand so clearly apart in terms of quality that it feels like something from a different episode. It's sad, since Peter Harness is by all accounts a very good writer, but to me this felt like a by-the-numbers collection of "things that happen in Doctor Who" put together without any of the spark that makes those types of stories interesting. The moral conundrum, which could have been fascinating, just left me cold, and I think that may be partly down to the efforts (whether conscious or not) to avoid treading too deeply into potentially offensive waters with what could quite easily be viewed as an abortion debate. Clara's two lives came together in the previous episode and now they seem to remain interlocked, as the Doctor now openly strides down the corridors of Coal Hill school with her instead of hiding in rooms and grabbing her when nobody else is around. If anybody questions why the replacement caretaker is now dressed up like a magician (with a HORRIBLE pattern on his shirt) and hanging out with one of the schoolteachers, nobody is saying anything. Clara seems to accept his open presence now, but remains concerned because of his interactions with one of her students - Courtney Woods, who has made sporadic appearances throughout the season as the troublemaker student at the school - and the bad influence this has been on her. Yes she's been getting up to typical schoolkid stuff with fake ids (so she can get into museums? asks the wonderfully naive Doctor) but she's also been acting out because apparently the Doctor with characteristic bluntness told her that she wasn't special, that she was in effect a nobody. Clara is horrified at the thought, the Doctor doesn't understand the problem, and Courtney herself is approaching it in typical kid fashion by trying to make things right in the only way she really understands. Last time she was on the TARDIS she vomited, so this time she has brought some cleaning products in an effort to show the Doctor that he doesn't need to worry about a mess if he takes her along for another ride. Irritated and uncomfortable at being confronted by Courtney over his comments to her, as well as Clara's whispered insistence he tell her she IS special, the Doctor decides to compromise by making Courtney the first woman to ever walk on the moon - basically, avoiding the issue with a distraction, which will come back to bite him on the rear end at the end of the episode. Just as an aside, he also points out to Clara about how danger is everywhere in the world and not just in their own adventures. He comments on how just crossing the road can be dangerous, and I wonder if that was put in there deliberately or was just a happy coincidence. The trouble with Courtney is that she is written very much in the Moffat mold of child characters, and it takes a talented child actor to pull that kind of attitude/dialogue off. It's not a reflection on Ellis George because she's simply delivering the material as written, but she comes across as shallow, smug and stupid. That may be a very accurate reflection of how most young teenagers (male or female) are, but it's shallow writing and doesn't particularly make for a character that I can in any way root for, identify with, or more importantly actually like. She gives me unpleasant flashbacks to Mels from Let's Kill Hitler and Angie from Nightmare in Silver, really the only young child that has really worked well in a Moffat story has been little Amelia Pond, and I have to figure that was down to Caitlin Blackwood being able to find a way to make the writing sound like it was coming from a kid's point of view and not the attempts of a middle-aged man to capture the voice of a young kid. Throughout most of the story (and the season), Courtney is just annoying and frustrating to have around, reacting in ridiculous and inappropriate ways to any given situation (like making a point of joking about Mr. Pink during a hugely tense moment later in the episode while discussing an incredibly important thing). Where she works best are in her unguarded moments, like when she quietly murmurs about not wanting to kill a baby, or when she reacts angrily to having her opinion dismissed/thought stupid when Lundvik acidly makes her,"It's not a chicken" comment. The rest of the time she's aggravating and the attempts to capture her youthful obliviousness feel completely out of place given the context of the scenes they appear in (she retreats to the TARDIS in fear, then is soon calling up the others as they flee space spiders to moan about how bored she is). When they arrive on the moon things are immediately, obviously out of place. For one thing they appear to be inside a structure, and for another there is regular earth-style gravity. It turns out they've landed on a shuttle that is about to land on the moon, and it does so in a very un-moon like manner, more like a skidding, controlled crash onto some grass. The room they're in is full of bombs, and three astronauts appear and demand to know who they are, threatening them with weapons. In one of the strongest individual scenes in the episode, the Doctor completely takes control of the situation not with psychic paper or the arrival of a more pressing mutual threat, but with savage mockery of the ridiculousness of their threat. Yeah okay sure, kill the little girl, then kill the school teacher, then kill the old man, that's a reasonable reaction to events! As he mocks, he seemingly dances about, explaining that he is testing the gravity, more concerned with that than the obviously empty threat of execution, and as he does it is casually thrown out there for future writers to concern themselves with that the Doctor is no longer sure if he has a limit on regenerations - for all he knows he could regenerate forever, which would make Lundvik's job all the more pointless as her gun would run out of ammunition long before he stopped dying/coming back to life. But while that scene is strong, is is also symptomatic of the larger problem with the episode - Lundvik and the others have to acknowledge the absurdity of their threat, but then they just kind of move right along and accept the presence of the other three as a given. If the episode had done a better job of selling the desperation of their situation that might have worked, but while the backstory of the world they live in is commented on it is never really addressed beyond lip service, and so the crew comes across more like naive simpletons than desperate people pushed to the edge of survival. Then the space-spiders show up.   These things are awful, not least because they remind me too much of the dreadful Apollo 18. A previous mining crew that came to the moon 10 years earlier in search of mineral resources were wiped out by an unknown cause, but Lundvik's crew aren't here to investigate that. That callous indifference of the world to the miner's fate touches on the idea of humanity in the year 2049 being self-obsessed navel-gazers who have long since stopped looking to the stars, more explicitly acknowledged by Lundvik when she talks about space as a dark, lifeless, hostile place. That's supposed to serve to make the climax of the story all the stronger, but whether intended or not the writer appears to have had too soft a touch in getting across this barren philosophy of life humanity has in the near future (too near, really, it is too close to our own time to really be able to accept). In any case, it turns out those miners were killed and eaten by space-spiders, dog-sized red and black spiders with no eyes and surprisingly human looking teeth that are now coming after the fresh blood that has arrived on the moon. Sadly even with the use of darkness and careful framing, it's too easy to see how bad the spiders' CGI looks, and they so quickly become irrelevant to the actual story that they end up feeling like a complete waste of time. The constant shots of the masses of them fleeing the break-up of the moon only serves to remind us that they're there and yet having no impact on anything (the two male crew members could have easily died in other ways), they're basically present in the story as a red herring/trailer-bait, and once the actual "problem" is revealed I almost get the sense that the episode is rather embarrassed about having to acknowledge they're still around. To make matters worse, after Courtney successfully manages to kill one with a cleaning product and make a quip about germs, the Doctor figures out that they're not actually spiders but giant bacteria which.... then why are they spiders? Including making cobwebs!?! That leads him to his discovery of what is actually happening when he leaps into a pool of a mysterious liquid (which we never see, presumably due to time/budget constraints) which in turn leads to the major moral conundrum at the heart of the episode.   I swear these totally aren't spiders, you guys! The best thing about the moral conundrum, sadly, is in the discussion that arose out of it in the thread after the episode aired. Whereas the Flesh 2-parter in season 6 was a great pair of episodes that kicked off some great discussion, this is a poor episode with a very muddled moral message that nonetheless kicked off a very interesting tangent of discussion. Putting aside for the moment the lunacy of the premise itself - the moon is a giant egg and the baby inside is about to hatch - I think it is interesting to look at what goes on between the three characters, the attempts to mollify/negate the abortion subtext, and Clara's attempt to sidestep responsibility by making the world complicit in the decision. When the Doctor explains to the others that there is a baby inside the moon, he does so with great happiness and excitement because it is something new and interesting and wonderful.... and it is wonderful to see how his face falls when Lundvik immediately asks how to kill it. As the three women argue - it is no coincidence that is a child, a young woman and an old woman, basically representing The Threefold Goddess - the Doctor suddenly declares that this is a decision for them to make and that he has no part in it. Clara can't believe it, but he firmly holds to the conviction and simply steps into his TARDIS and dematerializes away, leaving them stunned and abandoned on the moon. Lundvik has the control device to blow up the bombs and destroy the moon (the extra weight caused the increased gravity, and it is wreaking havoc on the earth and THAT is why she came up in the first place in the second-hand shuttle) and has already started up the countdown, so they basically have an hour to decide whether to deactivate the bombs or destroy the moon to avoid risking the destruction of the earth by either the broken up pieces of the moon or the newborn creature itself. There is seemingly a rather clear abortion subtext here - let the "baby" live and risk the life of the "mother", or kill the "baby" to ensure the health of the "mother"? - and three women being the ones to make that decision would SEEM to put this very much in the pro-choice side of the (far more complex) argument. But then things get muddled (perhaps deliberately to avoid the clear abortion subtext) when they're contacted by a man on Earth from Ground Control, and Clara is able to use that contact with the earth to push the decision off their shoulders and onto the entire world's. She explains the (mad) situation and asks them to make their choice by leaving their lights on or turning them off, since this can be seen from the moon. It does make sense to include the entire world in a decision that affects them all, but like the idea itself it basically falls apart under even the barest of scrutiny. What about the dayside part of the world, don't they get a vote? What about all those people asleep during the night? Who makes the choice to shut down the streetlights? What if the powergrid is taken off by a power company's executive board, thus negating the decision of individuals who might want to keep the lights on etc. So all three stand and watch as the lights gradually go out and the earth is left dark - they've made their decision - the baby must die, they can't and won't take the risk that things will just turn out okay. So time ticks down, and then just to muddle the whole "is this pro-abortion or not?" thing even further, at the very last second Clara and Courtney simultaneously hit the switch to deactivate the bombs and THIS is what pops up:  So the decision is made to let the baby live, which is accompanied by a big ABORTED sign. Simultaneously the Doctor returns and orders them all into the TARDIS, returning them to earth and leading them outside in time to see the moon break up and disintegrate, and a giant space dragon to appear in the sky. As they stare in awe (and a little horror) at the thing, Clara insists that the Doctor - who has claimed this is a grey area of time - tell them what the repercussions of their decision will be, and he closes his eyes and then (to the swell of triumphant music) lays out a glorious future for the human race. Seeing the birth of a new and alien form of life directly opposite their own planet inspires them to look to the skies again - they finally move on from the earth, spread out across the universe, and endure to the end of time. Hilariously, maddeningly, Courtney announces that the budget has apparently run out as she cheerily describes the newborn dragon giving birth to a new egg that just so happens to be as big as and in exactly the same place as the old moon (so it gave birth to something bigger than itself?). The Doctor tells Lundvik - who is upset that she "failed" because she was willing to let the creature be killed - to head off to NASA and get the space program going again and cheerily takes Clara and Courtney back to their own time, with Courtney now satisfied that she is special. The Doctor is beaming, everything worked out wonderfully, and that's where the main story of this disappointing episode ends.... and this is where the episode gets REALLY good.  Throughout the season, Clara has had to come to grips with a lot. She couldn't deal with this new (old) Doctor, she was put off by his hostility and callousness, and she didn't know how to deal with the changes to the man she thought she knew so well before then. But after being convinced by the final phonecall of the 11th Doctor to stick with it she did accept he was the same person, and ever since then she has been almost desperate in her attempts to excuse away his rougher edges, putting it down to an indifference towards strangers and always safe in the knowledge that no matter what, he truly cared for and respected her at least, that she and he could look at each other as equals (I'd argue the mostly playful insults both direct at each other was a sign of that). But here she reaches breaking point, as she quite rightly tears into him verbally for the condescending way he just treated not only all of humanity, but her as well. She lets it all out, and it's really quite magnificent, a hell of a performance by Coleman that is equally met by Capaldi's bewildered reaction as the Doctor's guard slips and we actually see him not only on the backfoot but scrambling to defend himself, for once not coming across as callous or unconcerned with the perception of others. This scene works so well because it has been building up all throughout the season, and seeing it all explode out is simply great. Doctor: Do you think I'm lying? Clara: I don't know. I don't know. If you didn't do it for her, I mean. Do you know what? It was, it was cheap, it was pathetic. No, no, no. It was patronizing. That was you patting us on the back, saying, you're big enough to go to the shops by yourself now. Go on, toddle along. Doctor: No! That was me allowing you to make a choice about your own future. That was me respecting you. Clara: Oh, my God, really? Was it? Yeah, well, respected is not how I feel. I nearly didn't press that button. I nearly got it wrong. That was you, my friend, making me scared. Making me feel like a bloody idiot! Doctor: Language. Clara: Oh, don't you ever tell me to mind my language. Don't you ever tell me to take the stabilizers off my bike. And don't you dare lump me in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable. You walk our Earth, Doctor, you breathe our air. You make us your friend, and that is your moon too. And you can drat well help us when we need it! Doctor: I was helping. Clara: What, by clearing off? Doctor: Yes! Clara: Yeah, well, clear off! Go on. You can clear off. Get back in your lonely... your lonely bloody TARDIS and you don't come back!  The way the Doctor's face closes down showcases more than anything how deeply hurt he is by this, and once again he walks away and leaves Clara behind. When Danny finds her he immediately offers a sympathetic ear, and once she explains everything that has happened to him (this is something she can do now that both her worlds have collided) he offers her the best advice he could possibly give her - don't break things off with the Doctor while she's still so angry with him. Take a few days, calm down, see him again and THEN end it - that's what he needed to do to make his break from the Army life he loved so much, that is what she will need to do to make her break away from her life with the Doctor she loves so much. She's unsure, and it is kind of disappointing that once again Clara is putting off the responsibility for making her own decision, or that it is a man giving her the sage advice she needs. So the episode ends on an uncertain note - the Doctor is gone, Clara is alone in her apartment looking up at a moon that she now knows is actually an egg set to hatch in roughly 35 years, and her future is uncertain. It's a great downbeat ending to an otherwise pretty poor and muddled episode. Clara has finally faced up to the fact that the 12th Doctor isn't the man she thought he was, that he is in effect not "the Doctor" but a complete stranger, so different from 11 before him that he might as well be an entirely different person. It's the culmination of everything that has been going on throughout the season up to this point and marks the lowest point of the relationship between the Doctor and Clara.... and that's what makes the next episode where she once again meets THE Doctor so wonderful. 
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Jan 8, 2015 00:47
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So Occ, for whatever reason, would like this thread's take on what it would be like to watch the Doctor Who revival chronologically - as in, chronological to the time period of each episode. So Fires of Pompeii et al would be near the beginning, and Utopia would be waaaay at the end. Answer as vaguely or sincerely as you want, it's a dumbass question if you ask me
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Jan 8, 2015 03:17
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Oxxidation posted:So Occ, for whatever reason, would like this thread's take on what it would be like to watch the Doctor Who revival chronologically - as in, chronological to the time period of each episode. So Fires of Pompeii et al would be near the beginning, and Utopia would be waaaay at the end. If you did it PROPERLY properly it would be pretty dumb, for the episodes which take place in more than one time period, the main one springing to mind would be Girl in the Fireplace we'd basically see Rennettes point of view, then later in the watch we'd see the Doctor and Rose and Mickey on a spaceship and every now and then the Doctor would disappear for a bit.
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Jan 8, 2015 03:26
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In my opinion it would be a silly idea and wouldn't really accomplish anything. Meta-narratives tend to take place across the course of a single season only (particularly during the RTD era) which would just confuse things even more. Linear chronology would screw up cause and effect, and some episodes jump between different time periods or exist in time periods that don't strictly exist or fit in anywhere on a standard timeline so would you watch an entire episode or just a scene? The show isn't intended to be watched that way and wouldn't benefit from it as far as I'm concerned.
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Jan 8, 2015 03:27
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The words "complete narrative trainwreck" spring to mind. E: Also, what do you do with some of the meta-time nonsense? Like, after the universe is rebooted at the end of Series 5, is everything after that still on the "same" timeline? There's also the idea that burning Gallifrey really, really happened and then was overwritten later in the Doctor's personal timeline that we saw in Day. It's hard to fold that stuff into the idea. Not to mention the couple of times alternate universes were involved. Also, do I need to have The Wedding of River Song running on loop in the background while watching it this way? Even if you take out all the spergy stuff I just said, the narrative just wouldn't work. Doctor Who episodes are self contained, in that you can watch stories in whatever order and they mostly make sense, but not that self-contained. They still have character arcs and ongoing subplots that just get ruined by this. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 03:28
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Jsor posted:
Oh god make it stop!
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Jan 8, 2015 03:33
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So I'm in the middle of The Rani Elite and it's great. The new Rani is doing a fine job of selling the amoral scientist without being quite as campy as O'Mara. Though they at least reference one of the campest moments of the tv Rani episodes in the most awesome way! "Leave the girl, clearly it's ME you want! :iamafag: That is why Big Finish owns. Oxxidation posted:So Occ, for whatever reason, would like this thread's take on what it would be like to watch the Doctor Who revival chronologically - as in, chronological to the time period of each episode. So Fires of Pompeii et al would be near the beginning, and Utopia would be waaaay at the end. I think that's for weaksauce fans. Go big or go home--watch ALL of both series in chronological order. 
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Jan 8, 2015 03:34
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Jesus wept, he asked the question because he thinks that Lost benefits greatly from being watched in chronological order. Lost.
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Jan 8, 2015 03:38
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