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marktheando posted:No I heard that line. The scene is still poo poo I'm afraid. To save Clara, the Doctor spent four billion years repeatedly smashing his fist into a diamond wall and getting murdered. How is him "killing" a guy after all that unearned? Stabbatical posted:Is that John Hurt's face after some CGI trickery or is that just some other guy entirely? Looks like John Hurt to me. 
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Dec 8, 2015 15:45
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Stabbatical posted:Is that John Hurt's face after some CGI trickery or is that just some other guy entirely? It's footage of John Hurt from some 70's BBC program, "Crime and Punishment" I think Davros1 fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Dec 8, 2015 |
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Dec 8, 2015 15:50
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I think it's just a picture of hurt when he was younger.
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Dec 8, 2015 15:52
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And More posted:To save Clara, the Doctor spent four billion years repeatedly smashing his fist into a diamond wall and getting murdered. How is him "killing" a guy after all that unearned? How is it earned? We're talking in a narrative sense here, just because the hero does something hard doesn't mean they get to act completely uncharacteristicly for the next scene
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Dec 8, 2015 15:58
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MrL_JaKiri posted:How is it earned? We're talking in a narrative sense here, just because the hero does something hard doesn't mean they get to act completely uncharacteristicly for the next scene I got the impression that the General was basically telling the Doctor to kill him to use as a distraction.
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Dec 8, 2015 16:01
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MrL_JaKiri posted:How is it earned? We're talking in a narrative sense here, just because the hero does something hard doesn't mean they get to act completely uncharacteristicly for the next scene How is that not part of the narrative? The Doctor had the choice of either giving up or shooting the general. Him choosing the latter was earned over the course of an entire episode. After four billion years of torture, him doing something uncharacteristic to not have his plan fail is understandable. You should also note that even Clara doesn't recognise the Doctor anymore. He has completely lost it by that point. Davros1 posted:I got the impression that the General was basically telling the Doctor to kill him to use as a distraction. No, he was planning on knocking him out, but the weapon had no stun setting. The general also refused to back down.
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Dec 8, 2015 16:39
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Davros1 posted:I got the impression that the General was basically telling the Doctor to kill him to use as a distraction. Yeah, my read of the scene was that the General was pretty chill about being killed. Like, he tries to talk him out of it, but ultimately he just kind of sighs and effectively says "lets get this over with." Naturally, post regeneration she's pretty serious about tracking him down, which fits with Time Lords being pretty wildly different sometimes between regenerations, as we've seen with the Doctor. Edit: I'd have to watch it again to be sure though, I thought I was picking up on some small facial cues and whatnot but I could be wrong.
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Dec 8, 2015 16:41
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CommonShore posted:The next companion should be a bass player. I think you mean drummer... ...Possibly one with their own per-existing robot skeleton side-kick tagging along.
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Dec 8, 2015 16:48
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dr_rat posted:I think you mean drummer... Don't make me wistful for what can never be.
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Dec 8, 2015 16:49
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NowonSA posted:Yeah, my read of the scene was that the General was pretty chill about being killed. Like, he tries to talk him out of it, but ultimately he just kind of sighs and effectively says "lets get this over with." Naturally, post regeneration she's pretty serious about tracking him down, which fits with Time Lords being pretty wildly different sometimes between regenerations, as we've seen with the Doctor. Maybe the General was just tired of being a penis-haver. She seemed pretty pleased to be 'back to normal'.
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Dec 8, 2015 16:59
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dr_rat posted:I think you mean drummer... I think that the TARDIS can provide sufficient percussion.
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Dec 8, 2015 17:10
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dr_rat posted:I think you mean drummer... 
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Dec 8, 2015 18:04
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CobiWann posted:I just wish those fifteen minutes had involved a random President and not Rassilon. Granted, what Rassilon did with the Confession Dial and the level of dickishness involved fits the character... The thing that I think this episode indulges in the most is trying to upset long-timer Who fans like yourself by insisting that these continuous points of lore aren't important. Rassilon? Not really that important. All the years the Doctor has moped about, sad of being the last of his kind? Unimportant, sorry. Fans still arguing about whether to canonize that line in the Eighth Doctor movie about being half human? Directly called out as being VERY unimportant. There's almost this "stop caring about science fiction and comic books and go hug someone you love" moral in just casually blowing through so much of the series legacy without a bat of an eye in order to focus that much closer on the Doctor/Companion relationship, and I do think it had to be a deliberate "Nobody cares!" to the fandom. That's a bit tough to pull off, of course, because "nobody cares you guys, stop trying so hard" can be misinterpreted as a request to stop being invested in Doctor Who, which would compel you to quit watching it. They don't want that, after all; but what it seems to be asking for is people to stop seriously spending brain power and the ticking seconds of their precious lifetimes discussing the larger, often unseen universal factors surrounding this show. That it's supposed to be about an emotional alien-wizard-man and a curious person in a moving box. Stuff like Gallifrey and Rassilon and Skaro etc only exist because the plot demands such. Gallifrey exists because a viewer would reasonably ask, "well where did the alien wizard man with the magic box come from?" but it doesn't also have to be important. It doesn't have to loom in the distance over the daily plots of the show. There doesn't have to be an epic showdown waiting in the wings for the next series or the next special. Gallifrey is ultimately as important as whether or not the Doctor poops or sleeps on the TARDIS since we never actually see it. Which, I think was actually called out earlier in this season. Well, the sleeping part. Though they may want to get to working on some new mystery though, because now all the major loose threads of the Eccleston/Tenant/Smith era are wrapped up, and there's not much else to do but go forward. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Dec 8, 2015 |
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Dec 8, 2015 18:55
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And More posted:To save Clara, the Doctor spent four billion years repeatedly smashing his fist into a diamond wall and getting murdered. How is him "killing" a guy after all that unearned? From the Doctors point of view he was only there for maybe a week though.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:14
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marktheando posted:From the Doctors point of view he was only there for maybe a week though. They establish at some point that he actually remembers all of it.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:18
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Craptacular! posted:There's almost this "stop caring about science fiction and comic books and go hug someone you love" moral in just casually blowing through so much of the series legacy without a bat of an eye [etc] I'd argue though that this construction only really works if you care about this stuff a priori; I, personally, don't really give a poo poo about if a story has concentrated Who lore in it (other than that ones that do tend to be bad) and hence my reaction throughout the episode was "So what?". You have to be invested in something for this reversal to work, otherwise it's just including things that aren't interesting and going "Surprise! They were supposed to be boring all along!" yeah, no poo poo
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Dec 8, 2015 19:25
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Craptacular! posted:The thing that I think this episode indulges in the most is trying to upset long-timer Who fans like yourself by insisting that these continuous points of lore aren't important. I dunno, if those things weren't important they could have easily just not been brought up at all. They're not the focus of this particular story but they were all left in the air for another one. Really there was no reason to bother checking in with them EXCEPT as a shout-out to long time fans.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:49
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Craptacular! posted:The thing that I think this episode indulges in the most is trying to upset long-timer Who fans like yourself by insisting that these continuous points of lore aren't important. I'll give you that the return of Gallifrey didn't mean one whit to the Doctor at this point in time - his focus was on Clara, with maybe some on putting the people who put him in prison in their place. At the same time, if you're going to bring up those plot points they will be talked about and argued over. "It's only just a show, you should really just relax," I can live with. The Eighth Doctor saying he was half-human never meant anything the long run, so it's no skin off my nose. But ten years and the 50th anniversary being about Gallifrey standing and The End of Time being about Ten and the Master turning back Rassilon...if you're going to actually use them after they were established as being big deals for NOT being in this universe, then they should be treated as big deals when they return to this universe. While Gallifrey may have been nothing more than a means to an end for the Doctor, in a narrative sense it just felt like it should have meant much more. Hell, I'm fine with repeated uses of the Daleks and the Weeping Angels as long as they make narrative sense, even if I feel like they're being overexposed as of late. Because they've been there all along. Gallifrey hasn't. In the future, having it in the background is fine as you said, but it and the Time Lords coming back should have been more than a 15-minute plot device to show just how badass and determined the Doctor is.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:52
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Moffat is a big nerd who packs his scripts with references and meta-references to old continuity. He's just also a good writer, so he stops well short of needed to understand any of it to understand the plot.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:58
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I just realized that the season begins with the origin of the Davros on Skaro and ends with the final heat death of Galifrey. Some nice symmetry there. Actually, this series has a decent amount of symmetry: Ep 2 features Clara trapped; ep 11 features the Doctor trapped. Ep 3 ends with a suggestion of the Doctor's death; ep 10 ends with Clara's death. Ep 4 and 9 are both dealing with weird paradoxes, kinda (this is a stretch) Eps 5, 6, 7, and 8 have a bunch of themes with non-humans trying to coexist with humans (Ashildr, Zygons), and memory (Ashildr, the whole zygon peace).
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Dec 8, 2015 20:03
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josh04 posted:Moffat is a big nerd who packs his scripts with references and meta-references to old continuity. He's just also a good writer, so he stops well short of needed to understand any of it to understand the plot. In my opinion, the more stuff you pack in that's irrelevant the more tightly you have to grip onto your core story. If at any point people are confused, the non-nerds in the audience may well assume that they had to have understood the nerd crap to appreciate the episode and you alienate a load of people. CommonShore posted:I just realized that the season begins with the origin of the Davros Is the Davros like the Tegan from The Visitation?
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Dec 8, 2015 20:07
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I forgot to delete the article when I changed it from Daleks.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:08
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MrL_JaKiri posted:In my opinion, the more stuff you pack in that's irrelevant the more tightly you have to grip onto your core story. If at any point people are confused, the non-nerds in the audience may well assume that they had to have understood the nerd crap to appreciate the episode and you alienate a load of people. True; the sliders probably fall into this category, cool though they were.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:16
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See also: "Were we supposed to know who that was?" questions
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Dec 8, 2015 20:19
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josh04 posted:Moffat is a big nerd who packs his scripts with references and meta-references to old continuity. He's just also a good writer, so he stops well short of needed to understand any of it to understand the plot. a good writer doesn't stuff his script with unnecessary trivialities.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:08
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Attitude Indicator posted:a good writer doesn't stuff his script with unnecessary trivialities. It's all unnecessary. There is nothing necessary about Doctor Who.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:20
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CommonShore posted:Actually, this series has a decent amount of symmetry: Making almost every story a 2-parter was an interesting decision that I think ended up working out well, as it demonstrates again and again that we don't have the full story. It's interesting that the only singular episode is all about a guy telling a made up story in order to achieve a hidden aim, which is what the Doctor ends up doing through the first part of Hell Bent, and Moffat was doing in general across the season with all his "HYBRID!  " stuff.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:27
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Attitude Indicator posted:a good writer doesn't stuff his script with unnecessary trivialities. This isn't even slightly true. There are loads of writers of various ability levels across all mediums who are famous precisely for their ability to pack irrelevant shite into the script, be it pop culture, quips, continental philosophy.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:29
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CobiWann posted:But ten years and the 50th anniversary being about Gallifrey standing and The End of Time being about Ten and the Master turning back Rassilon...if you're going to actually use them after they were established as being big deals for NOT being in this universe, then they should be treated as big deals when they return to this universe. I mean for whatever reason or another, whether it was to make it approachable to new fans, or add some legendary mystic feel, RTD decided that Time Lords and Daleks needed to be ditched. And in the past few years it's like Moff looked at that and simply disagreed. So, Skaro is back (if possibly in civil war due to that sewer thing) and Gallifrey is back and the show isn't any more unapproachable or worse for it. And the time war doesn't seem to be likely to erupt any time soon because the Doctor both exiled the person said to be the person responsible for starting it, and rewritten Davros's history a bit so the Daleks have an understanding of mercy and won't fight to the bitter ends as before. And now those places are available for stories, and there might even be some sort of Day Of The Doctor project in the future where Nine/Ten/Eleven is pulled out of time to visit it. And I'm sure that Rassilon-in-Exile will make a reappearance again eventually. Really, the "Gallifrey is back" moment of jubilation already happened, it was Eleven's conversation with The Curator. While Twelve is emotionally invested in finding it, by the time he does he's simply not in a mood to care because four billion years can do that. Building upon Night/Day of the Doctor reverting RTD's Time War result while maintaining it's consequences, Twelve finally closes out what still was left of RTD's universe and sets everything back as it used to be. It's pretty much a win all around.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:30
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Angela Christine posted:It's all unnecessary. There is nothing necessary about Doctor Who. [X] Mad man [ ] Box [ ] Pretty companion(s) [ ] Science fantasy menace [ ] Quarry [X] Nerdrage
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Dec 8, 2015 21:31
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Attitude Indicator posted:a good writer doesn't stuff his script with unnecessary trivialities. gently caress you, Thomas Pynchon!
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Dec 8, 2015 23:20
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CommonShore posted:The next companion should be a bass player. Good thinking. You realize Strax will want to play drums now, don't you. I miss that potato. Amppelix posted:I'm just seeing the horrible future in which every companion is more important than the last and the farewells continue getting more drawn out and contrived. I'm fairly disgusted that Clara has a dramatic death and then doesn't and then wants the death after all and then 'Cake and Eat It' Moffat decides "oh no she gets to have adventures with MaGuffin No 2. in a deux ex machina doing stuff", destroying the point entirely. Oh and Time and/or the Universe is fractured, except it's not because so there, how juvenile a conclusion can you get outside of fanfiction? Might as well put her in another universe if you can't handle the simple task of writing out a character. It's like the bad bits of 11 again where I love the Doctor and everything else is garbage I have to put up with to enjoy his performance.
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Dec 8, 2015 23:22
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If only there was something in the script about the wanting-to-have-your-cake-and-eat-it desire to have Clara not die and keep having adventures forever.quote:"Summer can't last forever."
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Dec 8, 2015 23:30
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Craptacular! posted:I mean for whatever reason or another, whether it was to make it approachable to new fans, or add some legendary mystic feel, RTD decided that Time Lords and Daleks needed to be ditched The Time War is probably one of the single best ideas in the history of Doctor Who. It can't be pointed out too often the soil that the revival grew out from: Doctor Who had been increasingly obsessed with internal continuity for the final few years on television, and that process had not been reversed with its switch to spin off novels written by whoever. The Time War was a way for RTD to create his own, new, continuity while not offending the die hard continuity snobs too much (The old continuity still existed! It's just gone the way of Rubbish George in BTTF) and letting the whole audience find out what this universe is like together.
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Dec 8, 2015 23:42
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Craptacular! posted:I mean for whatever reason or another, whether it was to make it approachable to new fans, or add some legendary mystic feel, RTD decided that Time Lords and Daleks needed to be ditched. And in the past few years it's like Moff looked at that and simply disagreed. You mean besides RTD bringing back the Daleks himself in his first season. He also brought Timelords back in his 3rd.
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Dec 8, 2015 23:48
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MrL_JaKiri posted:gently caress you, Thomas Pynchon! ho hum, there's a small difference in storytelling between Pynchons 1000 page novels and a 60 minute episode of TV. See Heaven Sent vs Hell Bent. Which is the most focused story and which is the better one? hint: it's the same one.
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Dec 9, 2015 00:00
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MrL_JaKiri posted:How is it earned? We're talking in a narrative sense here, just because the hero does something hard doesn't mean they get to act completely uncharacteristicly for the next scene It was the entire point.
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Dec 9, 2015 00:00
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Attitude Indicator posted:ho hum, there's a small difference in storytelling between Pynchons 1000 page novels and a 60 minute episode of TV. Twin Peaks?
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Dec 9, 2015 00:12
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Attitude Indicator posted:ho hum, there's a small difference in storytelling between Pynchons 1000 page novels and a 60 minute episode of TV. Ignoring that this isn't really the topic being discussed, as the perceived 'focus' of 'Heaven Sent' is largely to do with it being a one-hander set in a bottle than anything to do with references and script-writing, Heaven Sent has probably more script misses than Hell Bent - the room with arrows pointing to the floor, the weak symbolism of spades being everywhere(?), that monologue written on the wall which never gets used. The monster behaves in inconsistently, generally to whatever standard is needed for the Doctor to escape at that given moment. And at the end of the episode, the Doctor gives a message to a child, then gives a message to the confession dial, even though the two messages are ostensibly to the same people. Wuh? The episode is great because Peter Capaldi acts the hell out of it, not because the script is especially fantastic. Hell Bent, on the other hand, has three nested stories all of which pay off exactly how they need to despite interlocking: An origin story for the Doctor (in which he comes from nothing, flips off the high council, finds a companion and steals a TARDIS), a dialogue between the Doctor and Me on the nature of death and loss in fiction which ties up the season themes, and a goodbye scene between the Doctor and Clara in which they separate amicably without one of them having to die. The most people can find to complain about is that Rassilon was too old or something, or that the Doctor shooting someone is too out of character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzmnPs64K74
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Dec 9, 2015 00:21
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Attitude Indicator posted:ho hum, there's a small difference in storytelling between Pynchons 1000 page novels and a 60 minute episode of TV. That's a meaningless comparison. Want me to make a dozen where the opposite is true?
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Dec 9, 2015 00:50
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