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SirSamVimes posted:Danny was a cool dude and the scene where he calls the Doctor an officer in the Caretaker was excellent. Super loving good. Also, rewatching Waters of Mars and God drat did I forget how loving good it was, especially in the context of this utterly terrible year of episodes.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:40
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I AM ALLOWED TO NOT LIKE HIM.
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Jan 25, 2015 22:48
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2house2fly posted:I like Danny and I kind of wish he'd gotten a better story. This is pretty much how I feel. His story was at the heart of the "well that nearly worked" feeling I got from so much of this season.
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Jan 25, 2015 23:18
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Glenn_Beckett posted:Also, rewatching Waters of Mars and God drat did I forget how loving good it was, especially in the context of this utterly terrible year of episodes. Do you mean compared to season eight, or compared to "Planet of the Dead" and "The End of Time"? I think it's only really good in comparison to those two, but it seems to be very popular.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:15
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Metal Loaf posted:Do you mean compared to season eight, or compared to "Planet of the Dead" and "The End of Time"? In comparison to the year of specials. Season 8 is super good, except kill the moon, forest of the night, and the first half of deep breath. Though, I do think it's legitimately very good. One of the best of the revival, imo.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:18
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Rhyno posted:Danny Pink is terrible. Worse than Mels or Melanie even. mel is good in big finish
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Jan 26, 2015 00:26
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Glenn_Beckett posted:In comparison to the year of specials. Season 8 is super good, except kill the moon, forest of the night, and the first half of deep breath. Right, sorry about that. It was "this year" as opposed to "that year" that threw me off. I'm very mixed on "The Waters of Mars". I think the Dalek scene (included for contractual reasons, I'm told) fell flat - I didn't really buy into the idea that Daleks can instinctively sense when someone is so important to the time-stream that they can't by exterminated. However, the big sticking point for me is the Time Lord Victorious scene at the end. Now, I appreciate that loads of people love this scene, and I certainly like the idea of it, but for a long time I've had a wee bit of a notion that it didn't really feel entirely earned to me. Just a gut reaction that's stuck with me since I watched the episode, I suppose. Or maybe it's because I subsequently discovered TV Tropes and everyone there was wanking over how said scene was "High Octane Nightmare Fuel" or some such nonsense.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:33
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Glenn_Beckett posted:In comparison to the year of specials. Season 8 is super good, except kill the moon, forest of the night, and the first half of deep breath. I agree, the only flaw I think is that the ending doesn't really feel earned for what we got. We should have either had the Doctor change his mind and try to fix history earlier, or we should've had him keep to it a little while longer.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:33
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I'd say eight is the weakest moffat season. This season took until the end of kill the moon to stop being uncomfortable wrt doc/clara interactions. Which killed the first half of the season for me and a reasonable number of my irl friends. The mummy/flatland were good and the finale was really only saved by missy. I like capaldi but drat does it feel like hes being disserviced. Perhaps its a curse of doctors who are multiples of 6.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:35
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Glenn_Beckett posted:In comparison to the year of specials. Season 8 is super good, except kill the moon, forest of the night, and the first half of deep breath. Kill the Moon has a good idea (something weird is happening to the moon), but then veers off into bad-dumb territory. Listen was disappointing, considering it had the potential to be a really good episode, with a great introduction but it fumbles about half-way.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:40
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Little_wh0re posted:I'd say eight is the weakest moffat season. This season took until the end of kill the moon to stop being uncomfortable wrt doc/clara interactions. Which killed the first half of the season for me and a reasonable number of my irl friends. The mummy/flatland were good and the finale was really only saved by missy. I like capaldi but drat does it feel like hes being disserviced. Perhaps its a curse of doctors who are multiples of 6. I actually think Season 8 is the second strongest Moffat season when taken as a whole (and I include Last Christmas in this), behind the amazing season 5. Season 6 has far superior individual episodes but is an utter mess as a whole. Season 7 suffers from being split in half with the first half a hangover from season 6 and stretching out the (wonderful) Amy and Rory as companions storyline when Season 6 and the Christmas Special's epilogue had seemingly resolved that well enough already, and the second half being so wrapped up with the "mystery" of Clara that it forgot to make her an actual character in her own right.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:46
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I've enjoyed this season quite a bit, lots of episodes that are flawed on the whole, but with some very well done character moments. Decent pay off for the season-spanning meta-narrative. Lots of self commentary where it seems like Moffat and the staff are trying to fix or acknowledge some of the larger story/character issues that have cropped up in the past couple of years. 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. It really feels like a throwback to the worst excesses of the RTD era, where every week the earth was being destroyed and there's barely a mention about it later.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:46
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Kill the Moon has only two real flaws. The first is the rather pointless "Hinchcliffe-as-poo poo" segment near the beginning, though Courtney's pretty great in it so I can forgive it. The second is, obviously, to do with the... loaded nature of its central premise, as the core dilemma of "kill one totally-innocent creature to save X number of people" becomes awkwardly corrupted by the surface-level similarities to the Abortion Debate and anti-choice sentiments. To the episode's credit, the episode is very aware of this problem, and makes efforts to mitigate any such anti-abortion sentiments, but how successful the story is at mitigating those sentiments is highly subjective. The "scientific accuracy" of the episode is beyond reproach, which is to say that if you seriously think that the blatant contrafactuals and physics violations actually constitute an inherent problem, then you're thoroughly missing the point of the episode and I have to worry that you might be missing (some of) the point of Doctor Who, or, indeed, the point of all human creative endeavor. I have yet to hear a cogent argument as to why "the moon is an egg" is an invalid premise for Doctor Who and I doubt one exists.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:51
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Also it's very very boring
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Jan 26, 2015 00:55
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@DoctorWhat - In place of 'suspension of disbelief', I think there's an observable phenomenon where once a person has decided something is not-good, they keep enjoying things by getting angry and funny about them. Think Red Letter Media reviews, but partly subconscious. Really hating something can be loads of fun, as I know because ITV showed 'The Man with the Golden Gun' earlier and holy poo poo.Jerusalem posted:I actually think Season 8 is the second strongest Moffat season when taken as a whole (and I include Last Christmas in this), behind the amazing season 5. Season 6 has far superior individual episodes but is an utter mess as a whole. Season 7 suffers from being split in half with the first half a hangover from season 6 and stretching out the (wonderful) Amy and Rory as companions storyline when Season 6 and the Christmas Special's epilogue had seemingly resolved that well enough already, and the second half being so wrapped up with the "mystery" of Clara that it forgot to make her an actual character in her own right. Did people not like Last Christmas? I thought the reception for it here was pretty good.
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Jan 26, 2015 00:57
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When did I talk about "suspension of disbelief" in that post?
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Jan 26, 2015 00:59
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I mean, as to why people insist that the 'bad science' in Kill the Moon is unforgivable. People often say it breaks their suspension of disbelief, and I remembered you saying you don't believe in suspension of disbelief. e: To be clear, I'm suggesting that people's insistence that concept of 'The moon is an eye' is inherently bad is because their enjoyment of the episode it appears in is based on proactively not liking a thing being lots of fun. josh04 fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jan 26, 2015 |
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Jan 26, 2015 01:02
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docbeard posted:This is pretty much how I feel. His story was at the heart of the "well that nearly worked" feeling I got from so much of this season. I really liked where they wanted to go with it, but I feel like they never quite gave him the experience to give his assertions meaning. He's not wrong, but it doesn't really feel like his claims are earned since his entire basis is 'I've seen people like this before', which we just have to take his word for since we've never seen such. If he'd taken even one trip with them, if he'd been along for Kill the Moon, or Mummy on the Orient Express, or even been present for Flatline, his words would have had so much more weight because there's no way we could really refute it.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:04
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josh04 posted:Did people not like Last Christmas? I thought the reception for it here was pretty good. I assume people loved it since it was so great, I was just saying I included it as part of the season as a whole as opposed to its own separate thing like other Christmas Specials have felt like.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:05
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Last Christmas was really fun and I loved it.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:10
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But I'll be forever sad about that last second swerve
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Jan 26, 2015 01:11
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DoctorWhat posted:Kill the Moon has only two real flaws. I didn't have a huge issue with the "moon is an egg" but was kind of disappointed how quickly a replacement was put into place. The suggestions earlier in the episode that the Doctor and his companions see in the future could be a hologram or other replica of a destroyed moon seemed a little more interesting than a sort of last minute throwaway "hey it laid another eggmoon" that they ended up going with. That being said I thought the central conflict of the episode was nicely constructed and executed, it felt like a good Trek-style moral debate.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:25
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Jerusalem posted:I assume people loved it since it was so great, I was just saying I included it as part of the season as a whole as opposed to its own separate thing like other Christmas Specials have felt like.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:38
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:I didn't have a huge issue with the "moon is an egg" but was kind of disappointed how quickly a replacement was put into place. The suggestions earlier in the episode that the Doctor and his companions see in the future could be a hologram or other replica of a destroyed moon seemed a little more interesting than a sort of last minute throwaway "hey it laid another eggmoon" that they ended up going with. It was a morality play. Clara did The Right ThingTM and was rewarded, along with the rest of humanity. I can understand not being totally satisfied with that plot element, but I don't think it's a core flaw of the episode. It's just an arguably-awkward moment of reconcilliation between the Big Concept, the sci-fi paintjob, and that dread beast Canon, all in order to clear the stage for the episode's actual ending (Clara's fury at the Doctor).
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Jan 26, 2015 01:42
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The ending of Kill the Moon really did a great job continuing the "make Clara more than just a plot device" work they've done this season. Jerusalem posted:I assume people loved it since it was so great, I was just saying I included it as part of the season as a whole as opposed to its own separate thing like other Christmas Specials have felt like.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:57
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I'm here innocently listening to the Dalek Empire 4, when surprisingly familiar, annoying voice starts to speak. I didn't realize Noel "Mickey the Tin-dog" Clarke was a Big Finish Alumni and apparently in a big role in the series. He's probably going to ruin this play for me. Not because anything he does in episode, but because I'm constantly reminded about his awful character in Main Who! 
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Jan 26, 2015 02:23
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josh04 posted:Did people not like Last Christmas? I thought the reception for it here was pretty good.
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Jan 26, 2015 02:28
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:Hey, are your older reviews posted anywhere off forums? Really enjoying them but weighing if I should get the archives update to read them. Nah, just on the forums (linked in my first post in this thread, just click the little question mark under my name) - archives are well worth it just for having ease of access to everything ever posted on SomethingAwful over the last decade and a half.
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Jan 26, 2015 02:31
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Watching Pyramids of Mars for the first time in a while and definitely digging Sutekh. For a character that sits in a chair for the majority of the storyline dude's a pretty fun villian. Jerusalem posted:Nah, just on the forums (linked in my first post in this thread, just click the little question mark under my name) - archives are well worth it just for having ease of access to everything ever posted on SomethingAwful over the last decade and a half. Cool, it's a good excuse to upgrade.
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Jan 26, 2015 02:49
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josh04 posted:Did people not like Last Christmas? I thought the reception for it here was pretty good. It was alright (and It's actually a little bit of a shame the fake-out ending couldn't stick, because it would've been a great twist), but my only real problem with it was that if you're doing a Christmas special in what is fundamentally a family show, the bare bones of it shouldn't be the adults AND the Doctor casually stating that Santa isn't real to the kiddies watching at home.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:19
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It ends with the implication that Santa is real, just like every Christmas special that features him.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:25
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2house2fly posted:It ends with the implication that Santa is real, just like every Christmas special that features him. I know, I know. What bugged me about it was that even the Doctor's going "nope, not real, how absurd", through the whole episode when usually he's quite happily saying otherwise to that sort of thing.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:30
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I know, I know. What bugged me about it was that even the Doctor's going "nope, not real, how absurd", through the whole episode when usually he's quite happily saying otherwise to that sort of thing. Twelve was a rock-ribbed skeptic through the entire season, except possibly Forest of the Night (worst episode). His grumpiness over Santa Claus and eventual acquiescence was perfect and delightful.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:34
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I know, I know. What bugged me about it was that even the Doctor's going "nope, not real, how absurd", through the whole episode when usually he's quite happily saying otherwise to that sort of thing. Um, this is perfectly consistent with his behavior in Robot of Sherwood. This Doctor still has a childlike sense of wonder, but it's buried under an angry skeptical scientific exterior, kind of a reverse of the previous doctor.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:51
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Burkion posted: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. I know this was a bit ago, but I'm just getting to it. I'm going to go on a tangent, so please feel free to ignore and scroll by, everyone. Except maybe Burkion, I figure he's written enough words about this that he probably won't mind reading a few  Interesting... You and I disagree on Harvey. It's been awhile, but I think it's pretty intentionally left unclear in the play if Harvey is real or he's entirely the product of Elwood's imagination or invention, and that, while it does indeed sacrifice his productivity and the doctors would be able to cure him of his delusions, he is a more affable person when he is allowed to be a drunk hallucinator. I know intent doesn't always matter when it comes forgiving insensitive material in fiction, but when it comes to mental health issues, because of how complicated the very idea of mental health is in the first place, I do think it's best to give writers the benefit of the doubt. One of the most awkward experiences of my life was in late high school, when we were at a theatre competition, one of the plays presented was an original piece written and directed by a faculty member at another high school that took place in a mental institution. People with depression were depicted as hallucinating and suffering from mania and every mentally ill character was depicted as violent and dangerous. I was elected to speak to the director about how offensive it was, because I was directing our entry at the competition. The adult director was very angry to have an adolescent telling him what was offensive and what was not, and explained in detail about how the piece was metaphorical, and the characters were meant as a commentary on his home country, and that the insanity was an insanity of society and not of individuals. Well... he was maybe a little harsh on a teenager and he probably shouldn't have been writing for high school, but looking back now, I do understand where he was coming from. "Insane" and "sick" and "crazy" are all words that we use to describe maladaptive behavior and cognition. When we believe that our culture has maladaptive behavior or cognition encoded within it (and that this is also encoded within the authorities responsible for defining mental health), the language gets foggy. When language gets foggy, so do the symbols for our stories. None of this is to write a blanket excuse for fiction that hurts or discourages people with mental illnesses. If it makes huge groups of people feel oppressed in the way they're oppressed every day, it is ultimately a failure of a story, particularly if it encourages people to do things that will make their lives worse, like not take their medications. I just think that it's ultimately more complicated than a lot of people are willing to acknowledge. Anyway, I hope some of that makes sense.
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Jan 26, 2015 07:03
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josh04 posted:@DoctorWhat - In place of 'suspension of disbelief', I think there's an observable phenomenon where once a person has decided something is not-good, they keep enjoying things by getting angry and funny about them. Think Red Letter Media reviews, but partly subconscious. Really hating something can be loads of fun, as I know because ITV showed 'The Man with the Golden Gun' earlier and holy poo poo. If you're bagging on a movie that opens with Christopher Lee bellowing "Nick Nack! TABASCO!" at the top of his lungs, I don't even know what to tell you. Also, has Christopher Lee done Who yet? Because it seems like he should have.
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Jan 26, 2015 10:28
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DoctorWhat posted:The "scientific accuracy" of the episode is beyond reproach, which is to say that if you seriously think that the blatant contrafactuals and physics violations actually constitute an inherent problem, then you're thoroughly missing the point of the episode and I have to worry that you might be missing (some of) the point of Doctor Who, or, indeed, the point of all human creative endeavor. I have yet to hear a cogent argument as to why "the moon is an egg" is an invalid premise for Doctor Who and I doubt one exists. You're smushing together a lot of stuff here. "The moon is an egg" is a perfectly good idea, but when you get young-ish children getting confused and annoyed over the episode because "that's not how eggs work" (or words to that effect) perhaps you have strayed a little far from the path. There is obviously a difference between that and me whipping out one of the text books that I've got under this monitor (An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory by Peskin and Schroeder and Graph Theory by Bondy and Murty) and flicking through to find exactly the page that details why the episode is inaccurate*. Also I like how you've implicitly decided that Hard Sci Fi is not part of human creative endeavour.
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Jan 26, 2015 10:37
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*In case you didn't know, all post-grad maths and physics text books feature sections in them entitled "Why Doctor Who is mathematically/physically (delete as appropriate for the topic of the book) inaccurate".
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Jan 26, 2015 10:38
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:Watching Pyramids of Mars for the first time in a while and definitely digging Sutekh. For a character that sits in a chair for the majority of the storyline dude's a pretty fun villian. It's the voice.
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Jan 26, 2015 10:40
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I'd have cared a lot less about the bad science in Kill the Moon if they hadn't spent a bunch of time at the start of the episode talking about how the moon was unusually heavy and that the increased gravity was causing tides that caused massive destruction and so on. They made me think about the science at the start and then spent a lot of time ignoring it. Also the spiders were loving lazy and showed up whenever they needed to fill a few minutes with an easily disposable threat. They serve no other role.
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Jan 26, 2015 10:45
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