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It's certainly the weakest episode of series 8 overall IMO.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:28
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It really, really feels to me like they filmed a first draft. There aren't really any problems (and the episode undoubtedly had many, many problems) with this episode that couldn't have been fixed with some aggressive editing of the script.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:28
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The thing I hated most about Forest wasn't the potentially dangerous message or anything like that, it's that most of the episode is so frustratingly pointless. Nothing happens for most of the episode, and I don't even mean 'slow plot' nothing. I mean NOTHING loving HAPPENS. It's aggressively eventless, too; it's clearly not that they can't think of anything to do with their runtime, it comes up with ideas and then drops them in favor of more Walking With Kids. EDIT: I said it when the episode came out, but it bears repeating: Set it in the zoo. The idea that the trees broke the animal enclosures is a great idea to elevate the short-term threat, but they don't do anything with it aside from that single scene with the tiger. Which is then immediately forgotten, replaced instead by Walking With Kids. The episode would probably still be awful if it were set in the zoo, but at least there'd be something in it. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 03:46
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This is the one episode, THE ONE episode, that nearly made me quit Doctor Who. gently caress this episode.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:55
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Oxxidation posted:Occupation is going to go loving Krakatoa if we ever get to this episode and that is going to be the only entertainment it will ever give me. I so hope you get this far. It will be beautiful.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:02
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The part about "don't take your medication" was bad enough, but what really got me was "don't take these children to safety because it's better that they die with their families than grow up somewhere without parents." I mean yeah, growing up as space refugees would probably suck (although you'd think the Doctor, with all of time and space at his disposal, could find somewhere to put them where they would be taken care of reasonably) but is it really a fate worse than death? It's just glossed over as if it's a perfectly reasonable thing to think.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:21
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That, plus Clara's passive acceptance of her and Danny's fate (let alone the rest of humanity), and the Doctor's own paper-thin resistance really came across as just forcing the dialogue onto the characters to get them to a "hopeless" position before grasping that the trees are there to help them. That said, the moment where Clara asks him not to make her say it, then tells him to his face that she doesn't want to live as "the last of my species" was quite strong. I'm glad they resisted (as far as I can remember) the urge to explicitly say,"JUST LIKE YOU, THE DOCTOR!" or hammer it home with clunky flashbacks.
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Jan 25, 2015 05:29
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Organza Quiz posted:The part about "don't take your medication" was bad enough, but what really got me was "don't take these children to safety because it's better that they die with their families than grow up somewhere without parents." I mean yeah, growing up as space refugees would probably suck (although you'd think the Doctor, with all of time and space at his disposal, could find somewhere to put them where they would be taken care of reasonably) but is it really a fate worse than death? It's just glossed over as if it's a perfectly reasonable thing to think. I think the Doctor is uniquely qualified to tell how living while the rest of your planet burned feels. Although I guess he knows it didn't really burn so it doesn't count.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:02
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I don't think it's a good episode by any means, if only because it never really feels like there's a threat and the premise is pretty difficult to buy (even for Doctor Who) unless Earth's population is suddenly that of a video game planet. I don't hate it, though. Its principal sin for me is being a bit boring, and it at least has its moments. Burkion, knowing your issues with it, I'm curious if you've ever seen Harvey or The Curious Savage and what your impressions of that type of fiction are. (That's not to imply that whatever your feelings on them are would excuse your complaints, because both come from a different era and are not dealing with children). I think you already know my opinion, which is that the writer made an unfortunate and unintentional mistake and did not intend to comment literally on a child's anti-psychotic medication, and that it does detract from the writing, but that I don't feel quite as strongly as you do. But there's just such a plethora of work from the mid 30s to early 50s with similar problems (even for its time) that I have difficulty levying the same complaints against.
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Jan 25, 2015 06:11
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computer parts posted:I think the Doctor is uniquely qualified to tell how living while the rest of your planet burned feels.
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Jan 25, 2015 08:21
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I've got a fairly big issue with any television episode where the entire "adventure" could have instead just been the protagonist and their sidekicks sitting around playing cards for their duration and nothing of substance would have changed. There's going to be a problem -> outside forces develop their own solutions -> there are no consequences to this solution -> everything is hunky dory just... bothers me on a level worse than the "it was all a dream" ending, because at least with the dream sometimes it's a fun ride or opportunity to explore things with long reaching consequences that the program's premise isn't equipped to deal with, rather than an active chastising for thinking that wanting active involvement by the protagonist is something desirable and cool. It says "No, just leave everything alone, and it'll be fine." Which, you know, as a medicine taker (I have very bad migraines), and someone who works regularly with the mentally ill, I know it isn't. And even more unfortunately, the "Something bad turns out to be something good" aspect makes me directly compare this episode to one of my very favorite, "Gridlock", where it suffers even worse in contrast, because "Gridlock" is one of the best episodes of nuWho, and, I'd even wager, best Doctor Who episodes period. There, it turns out that the traffic jam isn't some evil plot by the Macra or Novice Hame and the Face of Boe to enslave humanity, or a twisted ploy to remove undesirables from the outside world by an evil government; it was actually a last ditch effort to by the dying government to save humanity. But it's a salvation that can't last, and requires the Doctor and Martha to move it that extra last step, to really save humanity and let them move on. Enough to make me stop watching? Nah. Every show has bum episodes. But I didn't like it, especially after having high hopes due to the Blake reference in the title.
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Jan 25, 2015 08:35
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Toph Bei Fong posted:But it's a salvation that can't last, and requires the Doctor and Martha to move it that extra last step, to really save humanity and let them move on. I think that's what they were TRYING to get across with the bit about the defoliant and the kids crafting the message for Maebh to read to the people of the world.... but holy God was that horribly executed, feeling like an afterthought more than a critical part of the story. Like they realized they'd written a story where, like you say, it turns out the story didn't require any of the characters in it at all and decided to add in one extra little bit where they were necessary. Whenever I think of all those people around the world getting a phone-call and some strange little girl telling them,"Don't be scared of the forest, sit back and wait, the forest will protect you  " it reminds me more than anything of the aliens in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, who send out messages in the voices of various world leaders insisting they're not dangerous, they're not infected with a horrible disease so there is no need to attack them or destroy them, everything will be ooooookaaaaaay. Like I said in my write-up, it seems more like the premise to START an episode, rather than a thrown-in aside to explain how the world didn't take any action that would eventually cost them their own survival.
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 08:50
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It is a bad episode. Worst of the season. It makes no sense, is boring and dumb.
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Jan 25, 2015 10:44
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Something I noticed was that the 'shops' they walk past at one point in the forest are a reuse of the Dark Water cyber tanks.
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Jan 25, 2015 10:48
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On the subject of things written (well, adapted) by Frank Cottrell Boyce, I'll put in a good word for The Revenger's Tragedy, a nutso adaptation of a not-Shakespeare Jacobean play. It stars Eddie Izzard and our man Christopher Eccleston, just before he got sucked in to doing The Second Coming with some guy named Russell T Davies.
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Jan 25, 2015 15:45
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Jerusalem posted:Whenever I think of all those people around the world getting a phone-call and some strange little girl telling them,"Don't be scared of the forest, sit back and wait, the forest will protect you Which reminds me, this is a post-Torchwood: Children of Earth world, although I guess that may have been one of those things swallowed up by the cracks in time. But the point is there have already been alien invaders who have used children as mouthpieces, and it was the start of the storyline and it was intensely creepy.
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Jan 25, 2015 16:30
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Organza Quiz posted:Which reminds me, this is a post-Torchwood: Children of Earth world, although I guess that may have been one of those things swallowed up by the cracks in time. But the point is there have already been alien invaders who have used children as mouthpieces, and it was the start of the storyline and it was intensely creepy. To be fair though nothing the child mouthpieces ever said was really wrong, and I don't think anyone outside of the government found out that they were wanting to take a percentage of the children. To be doubly fair it's perfectly fine for Doctor Who to ignore anything that happened during Torchwood.
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Jan 25, 2015 16:41
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Bicyclops posted:I don't think it's a good episode by any means, if only because it never really feels like there's a threat and the premise is pretty difficult to buy (even for Doctor Who) unless Earth's population is suddenly that of a video game planet. I don't hate it, though. Its principal sin for me is being a bit boring, and it at least has its moments. I have seen Harvey, I have not gotten to see the Curious Savage- living where I do, I rarely get a chance to see theater. The huge, important difference between Harvey and this particular episode is that Harvey was ENTIRELY about the issue at hand and made it very clear the difference between the main character, and other actually ill people. Not everyone can have a time stopping six foot tall rabbit friend who happens to be invisible after all. It was a genuinely light hearted affair, made at a much earlier time before a lot of what we know today was known, and at no point did a multi decade-al role model to children everywhere stop and say "Stop giving her meds, you're stifling her!" or whatever the hell he said. The episode didn't care about stuff like that, it just blazed on through without thinking. That one line was just a tiny part of the entire parade of bullshit. Harvey was, as said, the entire focus of the movie. And seeing a giant six foot rabbit who is also invisible and can also stop clocks is a wee bit more fantastical than hearing voices in your head that tell you to do things.
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Jan 25, 2015 16:46
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Some of you are saying that Forest of the Night was the worst episode of season eight, but I'd go one step further and say it's the worst episode of all of Moffat's tenure and a strong contender for worst episode of the revival. It's a master class in how not to tell a story with a disastrously bad message attached.
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Jan 25, 2015 17:54
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Random Stranger posted:Some of you are saying that Forest of the Night was the worst episode of season eight, but I'd go one step further and say it's the worst episode of all of Moffat's tenure and a strong contender for worst episode of the revival. It's a master class in how not to tell a story with a disastrously bad message attached. It's definitely in the running, yes, and unfortunately its strongest competition, at least under Moffat's tenure, was just three episodes prior. At least Forest of the Night can be safely, entirely skipped. Kill the Moon had the Clara meltdown at the end, but the only arc-relevant bit of plotting in Forest is that Danny found out Clara was fibbing, didn't care, and asked her to come clean, which is something Clara could/would have done without any prompting from Danny at all.
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Jan 25, 2015 18:00
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One thing that I learned from how this season played out was how much I didn't like Clara at times. She has this overly self centered, selfish bend to her character I do not like but it's never presented as a bad thing or called out, like the Doctor's faults. Maybe that's why she's coming back next season. Mind this might just be trying to compare her actual character to the non entity that was in the latter half of season 7.
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Jan 25, 2015 18:04
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Burkion posted:One thing that I learned from how this season played out was how much I didn't like Clara at times. DId you miss the lines about Clara being a "needy egomaniac game-player"? Or, you know, EVERYTHING ELSE about her character arc this season?
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Jan 25, 2015 18:06
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Burkion posted:One thing that I learned from how this season played out was how much I didn't like Clara at times.  Forest is a bit weak, much like Nightmare in Silver in it's misuse of a 'celebrity' script. Have trouble straight-up hating it though, the kids are lots of fun. josh04 fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 18:10
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"I don't deserve anything, no one deserves anything. But I am owed better." That whole segment was amazing, save for the silly *blort* sound effect seriously what was up with that
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Jan 25, 2015 18:13
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DoctorWhat posted:DId you miss the lines about Clara being a "needy egomaniac game-player"? Or, you know, EVERYTHING ELSE about her character arc this season? Except she never really LEARNS anything from it. We see in the Christmas Special she's still just about the same as always, only focusing on Danny's death all the harder. She out right states that she would toss all of the TARDIS keys right back into the lava if she had the choice and the Doctor never really addresses these issues of hers in anything other than a joking manner. She tries to betray the Doctor out right and completely and nothing really comes from it. Again I'm hoping it's something that'll actually get addressed next season, otherwise it's kind of a big flaw in her character. She doesn't really have to face repercussions for what she does- Danny doesn't care that she lied to him about the Doctor, the Doctor doesn't care that she tried to betray him...
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Jan 25, 2015 18:25
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It's paid off when Danny dies for a second and then third time in the finale and then in the Christmas special.
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Jan 25, 2015 18:32
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I'm waiting for him to come back as a Centurion. Soldier for life!
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Jan 25, 2015 19:24
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NarkyBark posted:I'm waiting for him to come back as a Centurion. Soldier for life! No, only the great and powerful Rory gets that distinction. And it worked because it juxtaposed Rory from being a nurse to being a soldier. Danny would have to come back as...Florence Nightingale? I'd watch that episode. The Doctor and Clara going back to see Florence Nightingale and she has Danny's face and voice. ...and can do mad flips.
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Jan 25, 2015 21:15
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dirksteadfast posted:No, only the great and powerful Rory gets that distinction. And it worked because it juxtaposed Rory from being a nurse to being a soldier. Danny would have to come back as...Florence Nightingale? I'd watch that episode. The Doctor and Clara going back to see Florence Nightingale and she has Danny's face and voice.
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Jan 25, 2015 21:41
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Random Stranger posted:Some of you are saying that Forest of the Night was the worst episode of season eight, but I'd go one step further and say it's the worst episode of all of Moffat's tenure and a strong contender for worst episode of the revival. It's a master class in how not to tell a story with a disastrously bad message attached. Did we all just forget that Love & Monsters exists?
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Jan 25, 2015 22:08
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Gordon Shumway posted:Did we all just forget that Love & Monsters exists? Love and Monsters is much better than Forest of the Night. For one thing, about half the episode is fun and amusing.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:12
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Danny Pink is terrible. Worse than Mels or Melanie even.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:13
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He's pretty good.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:15
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Oxxidation posted:He's pretty good. I can't stand the actor even a little.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:16
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Rhyno posted:Danny Pink is terrible. Worse than Mels or Melanie even. No one is worse than Mels.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:23
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Rhyno posted:I can't stand the actor even a little. I wouldn't push him out of bed for eating crisps, that's for sure.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:24
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Danny is a cool guy and I like him
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Jan 25, 2015 22:30
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I like Danny and I kind of wish he'd gotten a better story.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:33
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Count me as another member of the He-Man Danny Likers Society.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:37
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Danny was a cool dude and the scene where he calls the Doctor an officer in the Caretaker was excellent.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:39
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