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Better than last week's, that's for sure, but it still makes for a very uneven whole. Should be interesting to see if rewatching the two together softens the bigger missteps they took in part one. Capaldi worked absolute wonders with that climactic scene, though - he really does rightful indignation like no other Doctor, barring perhaps the Sixth and Seventh.
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Nov 7, 2015 21:59
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Mr Beens posted:There was an interview with Capaldi on the BBC website earlier where he thinks it should be on earlier (I agree) and that people should stop worrying about on the night viewing figures (also agree). Agree with both, the show would really suit being on around 7 or 7:30pm at the latest.
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Nov 7, 2015 22:07
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That was Chris Eccleston in Dalek levels of ACTING going on there. Not sure if it justified the other episode and a half of shite.
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Nov 7, 2015 22:09
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I'm pretty sure that when it wasn't on at the same time of year as Strictly Come Dancing it was on at around 7/7:30: but unless they move it to the Spring or change the day (which would be stupid, Doctor Who has always been a Saturday show) or something then they're kind of stuck at going out when they currently are. Dunno what I thought about that: it was better than the last one and the ending bit was quite nice, but it was nowhere near good enough to counter the poo poo that the first episode was. Capaldi was very good though: I think that he may have made the script seem better than it fundamentally was.
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Nov 7, 2015 22:16
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IceAgeComing posted:I'm pretty sure that when it wasn't on at the same time of year as Strictly Come Dancing it was on at around 7/7:30: but unless they move it to the Spring or change the day (which would be stupid, Doctor Who has always been a Saturday show) or something then they're kind of stuck at going out when they currently are. For some reason, at the beginning of the season, several people asked me why the show had been moved to Saturday. I still don't understand why they asked me that.
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Nov 7, 2015 22:18
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IceAgeComing posted:I'm pretty sure that when it wasn't on at the same time of year as Strictly Come Dancing it was on at around 7/7:30: but unless they move it to the Spring or change the day (which would be stupid, Doctor Who has always been a Saturday show) or something then they're kind of stuck at going out when they currently are. They could, I don't know, put it on in place of the tediousness that is Celebrity Pointless that is on before the dancing show each week. News -> Doctor Who -> Dancing -> Lottery. Every week for 8-10 weeks. Sequence starts at 6:15 +/- half an hour based on whatever sports is on before the news. Sorted. I can have my dinner whilst watching Doctor Who, then gently caress off and do something else until I go to bed. Mr Beens fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 22:26
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The "this is what war is" section was fairly good, although it went on for far too long and had Babbys First Political Analysis stuffed in for good measure. As for the rest of the episode, I'm really not sure what to make of it. It felt like nothing that was actually really set up, thematically, by either episode was really resolved. Meanwhile, the use of the ISIS imagery in the other episode was, if anything, made more distasteful by this episode - the reduction of all revolutionary conflict to "boohoo sometimes things suck get over it" is incredibly insulting. Very easy to say that as a middle class white guy who went to Oxford, less so if you've had the poo poo bombed out of your country on the orders of middle class white guys who went to Oxford. [edit] The Mark Twain quote comes to mind: quote:There were two 'Reigns of Terror', if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the "horrors of the... momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. [/edit] The episode can be summed up, I think, by the interrogation scene. You invent something new about your aliens just for that scene that wouldn't make a difference anyway (if heart rate was such a good indicator for lying then polygraph machines wouldn't be worthless). The quality of the writing in the scene isn't good enough for the scene to be inherently justified, the scene isn't required by the plot. Why is it there? Normally, even when an episode is pretty bad, it's pretty easy to pick out bits that worked well - or, say, bits that I'd want to keep if I wanted to make an episode with the same premise. This is true for basically every episode of Doctor Who, even stuff like Timelash or Time and the Rani. No so here. There's about one Capaldi line I'd keep, the rest can go. It's telling that the ideas that came up in this thread as to what could redeem the episode were drastically better than we saw on screen and I normally despise it when people make headcanon or whatever you want to call it. Clara got disgusted fast at the black toothpaste. You can get black toothpaste (and face soap, I have some as it was on offer). Although maybe it went black from being in storage for 31 years, it was clearly a left over prop from Repo Man 
MrL_JaKiri fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 22:40
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I put it to the jury that people only thought the episode was better because it had more Peter Capaldi shouting in it, which is fundamentally entertaining.
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Nov 7, 2015 22:41
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My biggest question from the first episode remains unanswered: Why would an anti-human Zygon nationalist pick a cute tee hee human name rather than a Zygon name?
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Nov 7, 2015 22:42
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MrL_JaKiri posted:As for the rest of the episode, I'm really not sure what to make of it. It felt like nothing that was actually really set up, thematically, by either episode was really resolved. Meanwhile, the use of the ISIS imagery in the other episode was, if anything, made more distasteful by this episode - the reduction of all revolutionary conflict to "boohoo sometimes things suck get over it" is incredibly insulting. Very easy to say that as a middle class white guy who went to Oxford, less so if you've had the poo poo bombed out of your country on the orders of middle class white guys who went to Oxford. Yeah, this was my main take away from the episode. Felt like being yelled at by your Dad about SOCIALISM=STALINISM!!!!! or suchlike. For a bloke who's spent two thousand years toppling despotic governments across the universe, the Doctor's surprisingly conservative when it comes to London in 2015
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Nov 7, 2015 22:55
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Barry Foster posted:Yeah, this was my main take away from the episode. Felt like being yelled at by your Dad about SOCIALISM=STALINISM!!!!! or suchlike. "What a dump"
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Nov 7, 2015 23:02
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Barry Foster posted:Yeah, this was my main take away from the episode. Felt like being yelled at by your Dad about SOCIALISM=STALINISM!!!!! or suchlike. I hate that he shouted her down like that. Capaldi was so fantastic, I really just wanted to love the episode. The way he belittled the Zygons as if it would all just be resolved once they stopped acting up was horrible, though. gently caress this episode. 
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Nov 7, 2015 23:09
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MrL_JaKiri posted:As for the rest of the episode, I'm really not sure what to make of it. It felt like nothing that was actually really set up, thematically, by either episode was really resolved. Meanwhile, the use of the ISIS imagery in the other episode was, if anything, made more distasteful by this episode - the reduction of all revolutionary conflict to "boohoo sometimes things suck get over it" is incredibly insulting. Very easy to say that as a middle class white guy who went to Oxford, less so if you've had the poo poo bombed out of your country on the orders of middle class white guys who went to Oxford. This did ruin the otherwise pretty good scene a bit for me, yeah. There was some good stuff in there, but more than once it felt like the Doctor was making dumber generalizations than he ought and Zygon Clara simply did not call him out even though she very easily could have.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:11
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I put it to the jury that people only thought the episode was better because it had more Peter Capaldi shouting in it, which is fundamentally entertaining. It also had less UNIT, so definitely better. But yes still not good.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:15
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marktheando posted:It also had less UNIT, so definitely better. It had more Kate Stewart referencing Lethbridge-Stewart, though, so similar total levels of UNIT Shitness
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Nov 7, 2015 23:15
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And More posted:I hate that he shouted her down like that. Capaldi was so fantastic, I really just wanted to love the episode. The way he belittled the Zygons as if it would all just be resolved once they stopped acting up was horrible, though. gently caress this episode. What's especially galling is that all the 'wars are hugely counterproductive and should be solved via leaders actually talking to each other' was right on and good, and Capaldi nailed it. They should've just cut the 'who would make your ipads, huh, commie?' bit beforehand. It added nothing.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:17
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I was so glad they actually bothered to include a "regular" Zygon this time around, sorely missing outside of lip-service from last week. The guy wailing,"I'm not on anybody's side, I don't want to fight, I just want to live here... I was happy!" did a lot, I think, to undercut the idea that the Zygons were getting the short end of the stick by being forced to remain hidden from general human knowledge. The older "brood" at least had practical experience of what it was like to be homeless, to have lost their plant, and they're ecstatic to have a place to live. The younger brood - as represented by Bonnie - have justifiable complaints about being forced to hide who they are, but were going about trying to force the issue in the worst way possible. In the end the biggest detriment to the story is the same thing that hobbled a lot of what RTD was trying to do - you can't make any really huge, wholesale changes to "modern Earth" in the show because then it stops being relateable to the audience. So the status quo is always going to return, as much fun as it would be to just have Zygons become part of the background extras going forward. This goes for the majority of the companions too, which is why it feels about the right time for Clara to move on (as good as I think she has been), she's becoming less relateable as a regular human/audience stand-in.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:24
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Well I liked that. Shame about last week. It pretty much seems like a lot of filler that could have been done a lot quicker and I really think this would have been better overall as just one episode. Actually, I realise what I mean is they should just jettison the last episode. Not exactly start it off in medias res but maybe the Doctor just lands in the TARDIS this episode and everyone else has done their stuff from last episode off-screen when the Doctor wasn't there either and actually, yeah, just chuck us in here and let the audience work out what the Zygons were up to. Piss on last week. gently caress it, it just works better stand-alone if you ignore Invasion. So that's what I'm gonna do. I wonder why there wasn't an episode last week. e: oh, caught up with the thread, I guess a few people think it'd be better as a single McDragon fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 23:24
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Barry Foster posted:What's especially galling is that all the 'wars are hugely counterproductive and should be solved via leaders actually talking to each other' was right on and good, and Capaldi nailed it. They should've just cut the 'who would make your ipads, huh, commie?' bit beforehand. It added nothing. I think it can be argued that revolutionary wars, being inherently an inter-class struggle rather than intra-class conflict like, eg, the first world war, don't have that apply to them. It's interesting that - in reviews, on twitter - people have leapt on the concept of The Doctor being the one to make the sacrifice, by forgiving. But he's not giving up anything. The Zygons are.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:25
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I think it can be argued that revolutionary wars, being inherently an inter-class struggle rather than intra-class conflict like, eg, the first world war, don't have that apply to them. Oh yeah, certainly, didn't mean to imply otherwise, had the latter in mind
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Nov 7, 2015 23:37
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Barry Foster posted:Oh yeah, certainly, didn't mean to imply otherwise, had the latter in mind Well that's what we had in the episode!!!
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Nov 7, 2015 23:49
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Well, that was interesting enough to make me want to go watch last week again and try to pay attention this time. What an odd little story. Next week looks like some more lovely classic-style goodness.Mr Beens posted:That was a good episode. With some shuffling of stuff and tight editing I reckon you could boil this whole 2 parter into 1 episode. Cut all the running about all over the world cruft, spend 25 minutes at the start getting Clara captured and the zygons in the room with Kate and Osgood setting up the standoff, Doctor arrives in the tardis, proceed as it was. This sounds like a challenge, and I've got far more pressing things to avoid doing. Watch this space.
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Nov 7, 2015 23:50
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If only the Timelords could just council with the Daleks (I know thats not what The Doctor was trying to say, but it does lead to a funny mental image)
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Nov 7, 2015 23:58
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So watching it And this Clara bullshit is extremely stupid. SHE CAN MENTALLY SUBCONSCIOUSLY CONTROL THE ZYGON? How the gently caress? How does that work? How does that make any kind of sense? How does Clara have TiVo memory through her duplicate? I mean this is better than the filth of the last episode don't get me wrong, but holy poo poo this is still bad writing
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Nov 8, 2015 00:22
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I liked it better than last week's episode. I thought Capaldi was good in it.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:27
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This episode was whatever to me. Capaldi was nearly the only thing great about it, hats off to Coleman because her Zygon was also fun to watch. I still enjoy and tolerate Osgood as a character well enough but I got tired of hearing the words "Osgood" and "box" together real quick.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:30
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The Zygon Inversion gifs       
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Nov 8, 2015 00:31
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Nov 8, 2015 00:31
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I am still concerned that our government can allow 20 million of Zygons in without even informing us. Now, I have nothing against them coming in reasonable quantities, so that they can integrate into our society and help integrating other Zygons. Bringing the whole lot in one batch means nothing but future radicalisation and there's nought we can do about it but hope that the next time they decide to destroy our civilisation, an empty box with buttons will do. It's also troubling to see that we can be pressured by an outside force to forgive terrorists instead of bringing them to justice all because they are aliens from another planet.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:47
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Good episode. Although I wish they would have spent more time outside the room with the Osgood boxes, e.g. show more interactions between humans and Zygons. I don't understand how it is possible that humanity treated Zygons like cattle. After all, how would anyone know who is a Zygon or not? Burkion posted:So watching it At this point it seems like you are just looking for an excuse to get upset. It's one thing to dislike the two episodes but you are completely irrational about it.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:53
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It's too bad that Jenna Coleman is leaving because they finally got their dynamic down and it's kinda awesome.
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Nov 8, 2015 01:14
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I wasn't paying too much attention, but both the Osgoods are now Zygons?
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Nov 8, 2015 01:59
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Not necessarily. At least one of them definitely is, but the point is that it doesn't actually matter.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:04
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saucerman posted:I don't understand how it is possible that humanity treated Zygons like cattle. After all, how would anyone know who is a Zygon or not? Bonnie is referred to as acting like a petulant child several times, including the big speech. She's literally a teenager complaining about the world being so unfair because it won't let me be me, except in her case it was unfair that she had to hide her identity her entire life, and that identity happened to belong to an alien race powerful enough to start a devastating war.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:05
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Andrew_1985 posted:I wasn't paying too much attention, but both the Osgoods are now Zygons? You clearly weren't paying any attention at all if you actually care either way. Both Osgoods are Osgood. Deal w/ it. As for the elephant in the room... If this thread isn't satisfied enough with the episode that the consensus is that my toxx needs resolution, so be it. I personally believe that Inversion very much rejects xenophobia and islamophobia, as did Invasion, but Inversion isn't about that specific subject very much, either. So I guess it's iffy. Maybe. DoctorWhat fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Nov 8, 2015 |
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Nov 8, 2015 02:23
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Well, that was a drat good episode of Doctor Who...that did virtually nothing to address the deeply troubling message of last week's.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:32
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jivjov posted:Well, that was a drat good episode of Doctor Who...that did virtually nothing to address the deeply troubling message of last week's. I mean, I'm not sure there WAS a message last week. I think the story would have been better told as a single 75-80 minute story than as two 45-minute parts. The first episode certainly doesn't stand on its own. And Inversion comes down hard on the side of coexistence, although I feel as though the "burden of assimilation" stuff was... I didn't love that, really.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:35
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I don't know if it saved it exactly, but it was definitely better than the first half. The downside of this half was that it left all the ZISIS stuff just hanging there, all ugly and not really resolved. It shows that it was largely unnecessary, and could easily have been removed with no loss to the story.
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Nov 8, 2015 02:54
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saucerman posted:I don't understand how it is possible that humanity treated Zygons like cattle. After all, how would anyone know who is a Zygon or not? 20 million Zygons were born in the UK. They were kept in what must have seemed little better than overcrowded cattle pens for weeks or months while the humans scrambled to find places to send them all. Then they were shipped off with no choice in their final destination, and abandoned to fend for themselves in strange places. Some of them were sent to unsuitable places where a group of odd 'British' people would not easily integrate, just to get rid of them. The humans who knew who they were treated them like a huge hassle, a burden. MrL_JaKiri posted:My biggest question from the first episode remains unanswered: The kid is messed up. She never saw the Zygon homeworld, she was born on earth. She spent her whole life speaking english. Watching human TV and absorbing human culture. Not that strange that she has internalized some mixed messages about what is valuable and attractive. Or maybe Bonnie was the name of her initial human identity and she's just holding onto it out of spite.
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Nov 8, 2015 04:03
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I thought that was an okay two-parter in all, with some stupid bits, the standout for me being that Kate survived by just... shooting the zygon. imo they should at least have had a line acknowledging how flat that is, like "it expected me to believe they killed everyone except this one policewoman and vanished, I was ready for it the whole time" or whatever to make Kate seem less dumb for being taken in in the first place. The Doctor's big speech definitely missed the mark for me, very much a middle class British man's perspective on war and terrorism. Maybe he is kind of an officer after all!
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Nov 8, 2015 04:30
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