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Capaldi is definitely the best actor at delivering boring exposition since Tom Baker. I could listen to that man say anything. I really liked the episode overall; obviously it depends on how it sticks the landing. But it looks like we're only going to have the one token corridor run, hopefully. If the show is going to be doing a bunch of two-parters, making them distinct episodes is definitely the way to go. As funny as the cards were, I didn't like the way Clara was acting immediately afterwards. It seems as though she should have gotten a line, or at least a look, to express some kind of sadness over Danny when the Doctor was talking about death. But she's fine then and excited to get back into action later on in the TARDIS. It feels like a missed opportunity. I suppose that's mostly Whithouse's fault, though Moffat should have recognized that as a problem, too.
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Oct 4, 2015 01:58
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I don't know that that's not deliberate, considering the Doctor's words to her when they go to see about the cloister bell. He seemed to be concerned that she was acting more excited about it than even him.I wonder if that's the lead up to her leaving, the Doctor kicks her off the TARDIS because she's becoming too much like him.
Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Oct 4, 2015 |
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Oct 4, 2015 02:14
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It took me way too long to realise that the reason that they didn't kill Lunn was because he never went into the ship to see the brainworm and thus would have been a useless ghost.
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Oct 4, 2015 02:58
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Gaz-L posted:I don't know that that's not deliberate, considering the Doctor's words to her when they go to see about the cloister bell. He seemed to be concerned that she was acting more excited about it than even him.I wonder if that's the lead up to her leaving, the Doctor kicks her off the TARDIS because she's becoming too much like him. At least she's getting a personality now. She is leaving after this season iirc, so who knows what's going to happen to her character. It may be in character for he to decide to go bugger off into space and time and continue to go on adventures. On the other hand, her yearning for adventure might be her trying to get over Danny (I think that was his name) and that'll get brought up at some point.
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Oct 4, 2015 03:06
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Phwoar, that was a bit of all right. No DOCTOR'S GREATEST EVER FOE, no HORRENDOUSLY EVIL UNIVERSE-DESTROYING EVIL PLOT, no HERE'S THE REALLY EMOTIONAL SAD BIT, EVERYONE CRY AT THE SAD BIT. Guest characters with a bit of a chance to breathe. Can we play you every week? Of course, it could all go to pot in part 2. Hope it doesn't.
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Oct 4, 2015 03:51
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Did anyone else get a Waters of Mars vibe from the ghost guys? The cards really surprised me, it was a great callback to the communication theme of Capaldi's Doctor. One dumb dialogue note, right at the beginning they step out of the Tardis and Clara asks if the base has a crew. Wondering if there's a crew makes more sense than asking a dumb question of someone who obviously doesn't know.
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Oct 4, 2015 04:57
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Stabbatical posted:Ah, now that was a good episode. Clear, solid plot, so far, good characters, even the Sonic Sunglasses were well-used and understated. The cue-cards gag was hilarious. Very tight all around. I just checked out Whithouse's other writing credits, and his stuff is generally really solid, so hopefully next week will be just as good. This one felt much more like Classic Who. A simple yet conditional threat, a self contained setting, lots of questions being asked that served both the characters and the audience, and consistent pacing throughout. Nothing took me out of the episode like the first two. If they can maintain this for the rest of the season, I'll be happy to pick up another season pass and a DVD box.
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Oct 4, 2015 06:36
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I really like the structure of this two parter so far. First, I appreciate that it starts as a base under siege, guest cast picked off until only one or two left, type of thing, but after the oil company stooge, nobody else dies, and it becomes about figuring out what those things really are and what they're for. and then, that the Doctor has to go back in time to resolve this, is very cool, and then you've got the cliffhanger image of Ghost Doctor AND the giant Chekhov's gun that is the lifepod. Is...is it possible the Doctor is in there? I mean, he was pretty confident it WASN'T the pilot, so that's the logical guess, right?
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Oct 4, 2015 06:51
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if there's a box that contains someone mysterious, 99% of the time the Doctor's in it. The Pandorica, the coffin from BF: A Death in the Family, etc.
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Oct 4, 2015 09:31
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Rochallor posted:Capaldi is definitely the best actor at delivering boring exposition since Tom Baker. I could listen to that man say anything. I thought there was some good facial expression acting when the doctor said she needed another relationship - just enough to know that the loss of Danny still hurt.
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Oct 4, 2015 09:41
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Yeah, I got the impression during that conversation that Clara was desperate to get him off the subject while beaming out a sunny disposition and trying to avoid thinking about things. Not to say she isn't genuinely having fun, but that she still has unresolved issues and she's basically trying to pretend everything is fine so she doesn't have to dwell on them.
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Oct 4, 2015 09:50
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A base under siege AND a sci-fi mystery? What more could I want from Doctor Who?
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Oct 4, 2015 10:03
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Under the Lake gifs      
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Oct 4, 2015 10:10
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Oct 4, 2015 10:11
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After watching The Ambassadors of Death for the first time tonight I was reading about it afterward and came across this quote from Terrance Dicks on Wikipedia:Terrance Dicks posted:One of the situations I inherited [as Doctor Who script editor] was Ambassadors of Death and the ongoing tangle with that. David Whitaker...had gone through four or five drafts and you come to a stage where you write so much it just gets worse. What was happening was that the need for the script was very urgent and I stormed into [producers] Peter [Bryant] and Derrick [Sherwin] and said, "Look, we've got five drafts of this. David's fed up with it, he doesn't know what to do. What we need to do is pay David in full and Mac [Hulke] and I will finish." And that's basically what we did. I made sure that David got a full script fee for all his episodes because he had been buggered about by the establishment and Mac and I took the bare bones of his story and almost did a "War Games" - wrote new scripts very quickly - and it shows. It had its moments though. Which then led to the entry for Inferno: Wikipedia posted:Despite Douglas Camfield receiving sole credit as director, Episodes 3-7 were directed by producer Barry Letts[2] after Camfield had a minor heart attack on April 27, 1970. Letts later stated that Camfield's preparations were so meticulous, that he merely followed the other director's plans. Camfield remained credited as director, as BBC regulations at the time forbade any person from being credited for more than one production role, and they did not want Camfield's illness to become widely known, lest it harm his career. What a solid group of dudes. 
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Oct 4, 2015 10:11
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The episode was pretty good. Toby Whithouse has really delivered some outstanding stuff since series 7. Let's hope that his future episodes are going to be about more than just ghosts trying to communicate, though. He's done three of those in a row now.DoctorWhat posted:if there's a box that contains someone mysterious, 99% of the time the Doctor's in it. The Pandorica, the coffin from BF: A Death in the Family, etc. Maybe that also means they're not saying "temple", but "Tardis". I believe there was a cut whenever someone got to mouth "temple". It would be pretty easy to spot the difference otherwise. Those words sound and look nothing alike when pronounced. And More fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Oct 4, 2015 |
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Oct 4, 2015 10:11
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So literally everything was caused by the Doctor right? He took the power core, moved the coffin and hid inside, made a hologram of him as a ghost to get Clara to realise something, wrote the words on the ship etc etc.
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Oct 4, 2015 10:15
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Was it mentioned that the top hat ghost looked like whatever race David Walliams was in the God Complex? The race of cowards?
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Oct 4, 2015 10:15
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Overnights: 3.7 million, 16.3% share, 5th for Saturday, but once again directly competing with the wheels coming off England's sweet chariot. That at least will not be a problem in upcoming weeks!
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Oct 4, 2015 10:18
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The_Doctor posted:Was it mentioned that the top hat ghost looked like whatever race David Walliams was in the God Complex? The race of cowards? Yep the Doctor namedrops the race and points out that they're cowardly so seeing such an aggressive one was odd. It''s funny, because if they hadn't said what race he was, I would have just thought it was a ratty looking Victorian Gentleman. 
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Oct 4, 2015 10:20
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0346nnh A short but neat behind-the-scenes about Cass, the deaf character. I was actually wondering if her character was deaf or unable to speak or both.
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Oct 4, 2015 10:52
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We are living in an alternate universe composed of some weirdo's fantasy-casting, where late 70s-early 80s pop-punk rocker Peter Capaldi went into acting instead and somehow got the role of the Doctor. This is the only explanation for how he can look this cool as a CGI ghost. This is a really good episode, and one of the rare pieces of a two-parter that feels like, even if the second part lets it down, is solid enough itself to stand as a good story. It's a really good standalone, that just happens to lead into another one; I want to see more not because the story was incomplete (like with Magician's Apprentice), but because it's a complete story that clearly leads into a larger one. Also I could hear everything that was said, unlike the last two that had Murray Gold Murray Golding all over the place. And while this could change pretty heavily later in the season, I do like how the sonic glasses were used here. They're robust enough that they're not just pointing a magic wand at the problem, the writers get to be clever about the application.
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Oct 4, 2015 11:23
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Cleretic posted:It's a really good standalone, that just happens to lead into another one; I want to see more not because the story was incomplete (like with Magician's Apprentice), but because it's a complete story that clearly leads into a larger one. I'd love to show someone just this episode, and not the second part. "Jup, he's dead, and will haunt you forever. The end."
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Oct 4, 2015 11:34
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Trin Tragula posted:That at least will not be a problem in upcoming weeks! I was going to say but then I thought it'd be a bit 
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Oct 4, 2015 11:40
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I thought this episode was a bit too cliche for its own good. Sealed-off base with a handful of supporting characters who get attacked one by one by a mysterious alien force, and the focus of the plot is solving what the intentions of said force are and why it's killing? Now admittedly, second guy didn't actually die so the pattern was immediately broken, but come on. Second part is looking to be a bit more interesting in setup, what with the characters now being separated into groups, but I was kind of ready for the resolution of this story by the 40th minute. Cool scenes though once again, and deaf girl is a pretty great character, so I guess good episode over all. Also, they really went and ditched the screwdriver, didn't they? It's kind of weird seeing the Doctor without his magic wand to wave at things threateningly (although Capaldi wasn't doing much of that anyway). I wonder how many episodes/seasons it'll take before it's back again.
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Oct 4, 2015 13:59
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The Doctor describing the beacon: "It could be [a distress call], or a warning. Might even be a call to arms. It could mean 'Come here, they're vulnerable, help yourself.'" I don't remember what episode, but wasn't the Cloister Bell once described very much like that? (Well, aside from the last bit.)
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Oct 4, 2015 15:29
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The glasses make more sense for when the sonic is used as a Star Trek Tricorder. It was always a little strange when he would look at his screwdriver and dole out extended technobabble and such.
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Oct 4, 2015 15:32
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CaptainCaveman posted:The Doctor describing the beacon: "It could be [a distress call], or a warning. Might even be a call to arms. It could mean 'Come here, they're vulnerable, help yourself.'" The Cloister Bell means catastrophic danger. If it is ringing, things are bad.
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Oct 4, 2015 15:33
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The Cloister Bell means catastrophic danger. If it is ringing, things are bad. It's been overused the last few years though. It would really mean a lot more if it wasn't used multiple times a season.
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Oct 4, 2015 15:39
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The Cloister Bell means catastrophic danger. If it is ringing, things are bad. Well, yes, I know that's how it's normally used, but I could've sworn it was once given a longer description, including specifically the "call to arms" bit. But I could be misremembering. Diabolik900 posted:It's been overused the last few years though. It would really mean a lot more if it wasn't used multiple times a season.
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Oct 4, 2015 15:42
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The Cloister Bell means catastrophic danger. If it is ringing, things are bad. To be fair, New Who has been all about stories with massive stakes and catastrophic danger. Pulling back the stakes a bit now and then would help ground the show more and make the big problems actually feel big rather than routine.
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Oct 4, 2015 15:55
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Considering things are being set up to seem like the doctor has died, circumstances may have well fooled the TARDIS as well, therefore the cloister bell is extremely appropriate. Although, my thoughts are he's in the suspended animation box (does anyone not think this), and being in that state, as far as the ghost signal is concerned, is jut as good as being dead
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Oct 4, 2015 16:12
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Terry Grunthouse posted:Considering things are being set up to seem like the doctor has died, circumstances may have well fooled the TARDIS as well, therefore the cloister bell is extremely appropriate. Although, my thoughts are he's in the suspended animation box (does anyone not think this), and being in that state, as far as the ghost signal is concerned, is jut as good as being dead I generally agree that the Cloister Bell's been overused in New Who, but I'd say this episode is one where it ringing is appropriate. Just because the TARDIS clearly does not like being there or anything to do with those ghosts.
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Oct 4, 2015 16:16
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Absolutely loved that episode. Felt like some classic scary 70s Who. Also... the kids were scared shitless. As in, one was actually too scared to go the toilet alone. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. 
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Oct 4, 2015 16:59
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your evil twin posted:Absolutely loved that episode. Felt like some classic scary 70s Who. Yeah I'm not sure what it quite is, but Under the Water really felt like a classic old-school Doctor Who serial .
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Oct 4, 2015 17:22
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Quite a paucity of original ideas in that one. I mean "evil company man" character, arbitrary episode-ending flooding plot device that shows up out of nowhere, time-travelling to find "the source of the problem". It's like they took a collection of Tom Baker-era ideas and threw them into the episode blender. I'll be interested to see if episode 2 can make up for it, but this one was pretty boring to me. And what the hell have they done to Clara's character? Last season she was really strong, but here, she's a non-entity.
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Oct 4, 2015 18:10
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CaptainCaveman posted:Well, yes, I know that's how it's normally used, but I could've sworn it was once given a longer description, including specifically the "call to arms" bit. But I could be misremembering. Yeah, during Logopolis, the phrase was definitely "man the battle stations". Figuratively, of course. This one did feel more like a classic episode. Pretty good so far.
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Oct 4, 2015 18:15
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The good thing about this 2 parter (so far) is that the first episode was a complete episode in and of itself. So, while the 2nd episode will explain the mystery, they still told a story leading into the next story.
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Oct 4, 2015 18:24
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I'm rather happy with the use of time travel to find the source of the problem. The Doctor's got a time machine, what's the point of having one if you don't ever use it as such in an episode?
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Oct 4, 2015 19:20
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Plavski posted:Quite a paucity of original ideas in that one. I mean "evil company man" character, arbitrary episode-ending flooding plot device that shows up out of nowhere, time-travelling to find "the source of the problem". The flooding mechanism doesn't come out of nowhere. In the pre-credits, the spacecraft's engine exhaust triggers the fire alarm and the base reacts accordingly.
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Oct 4, 2015 19:26
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