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I should probably note that the linked video is by the Perry Bible Fellowship guy, and that as soon as you get bored of it (you will), it's worth skipping to the end. That episode was okay, but it felt very easy to compare it to Heaven Sent. A lot of the concepts are the same (the Doctor is solving a puzzle about his surroundings, discovers that those surroundings are a simulation, and engages in an escape in which he vows to stop the people who did it to him), but the execution feels a little over-crowded with other stuff. The "enemies who are all bluster and are scared away by Googling the Doctor" thing is sort of worn out for a bit too. I did like the Pope in the bedroom joke, the reason Missy is in the vault (we knew it was her, but whatever), and the reason Nardole is following the Doctor around. I also liked the aesthetics of the simulation projector room. Not looking forward to the next one, though. The new villains feel kind of generic, with zombie faces, robes and the Silence voice, it looks we're going to have the standard UNIT military type story, Peter Harness, yadda yadda. We'll see, I guess.
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# ? May 21, 2017 21:33 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:12 |
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DoctorWhat posted:Mario wants to stop dying... but first, we have to talk about parallel universes. "Mario, are you afraid of God?" "No, but mamma mia I'm afraid a' you."
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# ? May 21, 2017 21:38 |
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Burkion posted:What strikes me about the episode is that, for a very short time there, it was almost like the Doctor Who version of John Carpenter's The Prince of Darkness. No, they killed themselves "to save the world". The real world. It mucks up the data set, and teaches the invaders that humans are prone to mass suicide at the drop of a hat (which, okay, we do that sometimes but not as often as their simulation predicts.) All the NPCs we saw just committed suicide, but it's possible there are some who take more chaotic actions. Nothing matters and none of the people around you are real, so why not murder that annoying guy on the bus or rob a bank? If you're the POTUS why not launch a bunch nukes before you kill yourself and really mess with the simulation? If the invaders have complex simulations but not time travel, then rerunning the simulation costs them time. Time where the real humans are moving into the future and developing more complex technology and weapons of our own. It's not a huge advantage for us, but it is all the NPCs can do.
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# ? May 21, 2017 21:55 |
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No, no- See that's what I thought it was too. But I'm pretty sure the Doctor says the opposite. That they were just doing it to escape.
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# ? May 21, 2017 21:58 |
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Just because the Doctor makes an assumption doesn't make it true.
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# ? May 21, 2017 22:19 |
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The real question is how come computer Third Doctor didn't figure all this out during the UNIT years (the simulation is imprecise enough that it could have been the 70s or 80s). Mike Yates: 39! 1,000! 4,967! Haha. Look, I know that when I eat this steak, the shadow game is just telling an NPC that it's juicy and delicious. Ignorance is bliss! Look, zombie-face, when you put me back in your little game, I want to be someone important... like a Brigadier.
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# ? May 21, 2017 22:28 |
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Bicyclops posted:The real question is how come computer Third Doctor didn't figure all this out during the UNIT years (the simulation is imprecise enough that it could have been the 70s or 80s). Probably did. Lots of times. The zombie alien did say they'd killed the Doctor before.
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# ? May 21, 2017 22:30 |
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Namtab posted:He's gonna keep missy in a vault for 1000 years then she'll be free to resume wanton slaughter You just know she'd do her best Rita Repulsa.
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# ? May 21, 2017 22:42 |
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Yvonmukluk posted:You just know she'd do her best Rita Repulsa. The Doctor just forgets about her for 9000 years while loving around. It does seem really weird the Master and River never met up though.
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# ? May 21, 2017 23:01 |
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DoctorWhat posted:Just because the Doctor makes an assumption doesn't make it true.
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# ? May 21, 2017 23:21 |
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I liked it but I accept the complaints that it doesn't really hold up that well under scrutiny.Burkion posted:The Doctor just forgets about her for 9000 years while loving around. Not sure Missy would really sweat on the details anyway. "After 10,000 years I'm free!" - "It was only 1000" "Well it felt like 10,000!" Vinylshadow posted:I laughed a lot harder than I should have at the dudes freaking out about the Doctor's Fatality Index count It's funny comparing this to what he said to Bill some episodes back though. "Have you ever killed someone?" -" Well... sometimes options are limited. But I have an EPIC fatality index, and my longest killstreak is like 4 trillion or something."
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# ? May 21, 2017 23:35 |
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The Doctor, narrowing his eyes at the Weird Gaimanesque, Execution Planet Cult: Google, "The Doctor is gonna put a cap in yo rear end" on Youtube.
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# ? May 22, 2017 00:06 |
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I liked that, and was pretty rapt throughout. Good creepy 'what the hell is going on?' atmosphere. Agree with DoctorWhat strongly that it felt like a Big Finish story.
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# ? May 22, 2017 00:18 |
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Burkion posted:No, no- See that's what I thought it was too. That's how I read it. It's a sort of existential crisis that causes them to just wonder about everything and just say gently caress it. The overly dramatic dynamite at CERN was it's own brand of non-specific gently caress you to the simulated universe. It's the version of nihilism that everyone assumes it is. Nothing matters. Why exist?
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# ? May 22, 2017 01:26 |
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Yvonmukluk posted:You just know she'd do her best Rita Repulsa. If that happened it would save this season imo
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# ? May 22, 2017 01:37 |
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Namtab posted:If that happened it would save this season imo Does this season need "saving" though? It's had like 1 middling episode and a bunch of good to great ones.
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# ? May 22, 2017 02:02 |
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I will be very glad to get past this next episode. Good or bad, it hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles. There's this sense of quiet dread that I've been having because of it. Mind you after that is the other shoe in the form of Chibnal so you know
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# ? May 22, 2017 02:16 |
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Bicyclops posted:Does this season need "saving" though? It's had like 1 middling episode and a bunch of good to great ones. Yeah, unless they horribly botch the last half of the season, this is shaping up to be among the top revival seasons so far.
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# ? May 22, 2017 02:20 |
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Man you guys are clearly watching a much different season than me
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# ? May 22, 2017 02:35 |
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And It Was All A Dream? Really? Really, Doctor Who? What a waste of an hour. And the season was going well too. I hope this isn't the downward pivot
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# ? May 22, 2017 02:59 |
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Namtab posted:Man you guys are clearly watching a much different season than me I dunno, what season are you watching? Shits been super tight right from the getgo.
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:12 |
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Ither posted:And It Was All A Dream? It Wasn't Actually All A Dream Were You Paying Attention
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:14 |
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Actually, this is the sister trope to 'it was all a dream', the 'it was all a lie'. The main effective difference is a variable quality level; the dream trope almost always means the whole story was useless but provides an interesting stage for things, while the lie trope could, depending on execution, either be a worthwhile and interesting addition or actively a waste of your time. Compare Last Christmas (dream, but interesting) to Time Heist (lie, kinda bullshit) and Heaven Sent (lie, really good). We'll see which one this was later, but it seems like it might actually be impactful on the story.
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:17 |
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What's funny about Heaven Sent is that a lot of what's revealed about the lie afterward is pretty trash, but it's still probably the best episode of the series (I like Hell Bent because of the stuff between Clara and the Doctor, but the Time Lord stuff is kinda meh).
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:23 |
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Dabir posted:It Wasn't Actually All A Dream Were You Paying Attention Dream. Simulation. Same difference.
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:31 |
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It really isn't the same at all, but I can see how you'd dislike the ultimate fate of the people we've been following just being deleted because they never really existed in the first place. For me part of its strength was in the characters facing up to their non-existence and grasping at whatever meaning/significance/purpose they could in a meaningless (for them) universe. Particularly the Doctor realizing he could give his real self advanced warning of the invasion, but also Nardole being willing to test his own existence by moving beyond the projectors.
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:37 |
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The best was Amy's Choice, because while it was all a dream, they all still lived it and their characters were thus changed and informed because of it.
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# ? May 22, 2017 03:58 |
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ashpanash posted:The best was Amy's Choice, because while it was all a dream, they all still lived it and their characters were thus changed and informed because of it. They were also actually in danger the entire time, and because of what was happening in the dream, just not for the reasons they expected.
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# ? May 22, 2017 04:04 |
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Cleretic posted:Actually, this is the sister trope to 'it was all a dream', the 'it was all a lie'. The main effective difference is a variable quality level; the dream trope almost always means the whole story was useless but provides an interesting stage for things, while the lie trope could, depending on execution, either be a worthwhile and interesting addition or actively a waste of your time. Compare Last Christmas (dream, but interesting) to Time Heist (lie, kinda bullshit) and Heaven Sent (lie, really good).
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# ? May 22, 2017 04:18 |
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Doctor Spaceman posted:And Turn Left, where almost nothing in the episode actually "happened" but which was still an interesting story and still affected how the audience viewed Donna. If anything, Turn Left is essential for making the end of Donna's arc land as strongly as it does. It's important that we emotionally, unconsciously understand what Donna's losing when she loses her memory, as much as comprehend what it means -- and Turn Left does a pretty good job of suggesting some of the life she'll end up going back to.
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# ? May 22, 2017 04:25 |
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Yeah, you can do "it's all fake" stories, but something has to matter. Like in Extremis, the point wasn't "it's fake so we can gently caress everything up", it was "it's fake and here's how people figure it out and what even a fake Doctor can do about it". This episode could have stood fine on its own with the conclusion being now that the real Doctor knows what's going on the villains are doomed to failure (which they are, of course, but that would be a one minute epilogue instead of a full episode next week).
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# ? May 22, 2017 05:20 |
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Did I miss something with the glasses where there was something clever that explained how he got a message out of the simulation to the real doctor? Without that, the climax is pretty lame to me; he just asserts that he can do something and that's that I can't really think of a satisfying way to do it, but I'm neither an alien genius or world famous tv wrier and they should do better
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# ? May 22, 2017 06:40 |
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joe football posted:Did I miss something with the glasses where there was something clever that explained how he got a message out of the simulation to the real doctor? Without that, the climax is pretty lame to me; he just asserts that he can do something and that's that I just assume they hosed up real bad and perfectly recreated his sunglasses, which would surely have some kind of quantum bullshit wifi that would connect to a real world network. Like imagine you wrote up an email in virtual reality and sent it through the internet to some one. That email would still get to them, even though you didn't REALLY write it. Same idea here, only with whatever bullshit quantum stuff the Doctor uses.
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# ? May 22, 2017 06:43 |
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It wasn't a dream, it was a warning Not unlike "Sleep No More" but, ya know, good
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# ? May 22, 2017 07:35 |
joe football posted:Did I miss something with the glasses where there was something clever that explained how he got a message out of the simulation to the real doctor? Without that, the climax is pretty lame to me; he just asserts that he can do something and that's that The show is happy to have 'the doctor is very clever' as an overt assumption
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# ? May 22, 2017 07:39 |
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happyhippy posted:WE ARE THE EXECUTIONERS OF EVERY SENTIENT SPECIES IN THE UNIVERSE. INCLUDING TIME LORDS Well how else are Time Lords supposed to execute people other than outsourcing it? There's the Oubliette of Eternity, but that's a relic that hasn't been used in years...
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# ? May 22, 2017 07:55 |
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Box of Bunnies posted:Well how else are Time Lords supposed to execute people other than outsourcing it? There's the Oubliette of Eternity, but that's a relic that hasn't been used in years... Or ever, in fact!
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# ? May 22, 2017 07:56 |
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:The show is happy to have 'the doctor is very clever' as an overt assumption Yes, he is good with computers. He once programmed a virus that affected every clock in the world using only a cell phone in a few minutes. That is impossible, and so is this. He is the Doctor he does impossible things.
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# ? May 22, 2017 08:19 |
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Jerusalem posted:Or ever, in fact! You know, I don't know why they even bother keeping that thing around. It's just taking up space.
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# ? May 22, 2017 08:23 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:12 |
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Facebook Aunt posted:Yes, he is good with computers. He once programmed a virus that affected every clock in the world using only a cell phone in a few minutes. That is impossible, and so is this. He is the Doctor he does impossible things. Actually, this one is considerably possible. There's multiple levels of technology here, which would make it harder, but not impossible. Simplifying this down to a human-technology level, we're talking about a part of an application sending a message to something external. There's plenty of ways to do that depending on what you want to do, all you need is some sort of protocol that's common to both the sender and the destination. We're talking about a simulation of the Doctor sending a message to the actual Doctor through the use of a device both have, so that's no worry. Then, of course, there's the issue of it actually making the network connection, which is an issue they don't address; I don't care how powerful a computer is, it can't tweet without an internet connection. We don't know much about the system running the simulation, but it's a fair assumption that it isn't completely isolated. There's a few possibilities here, and only one of them actually makes it impossible to make that connection: -The simulation is running on a central network for the invaders. As there's no way in hell said network doesn't have access to external communications SOMEHOW, that's what sim-Doctor can use. -The simulation is running on a machine tangentially connected to the invaders' network, but has no other networking or communication capabilities. In that case sim-Doctor can't do it directly, but formulating a way to push that message through that single communication tunnel is very possible. -The simulation is completely disconnected from all other computers, and can only be interfaced with in person. That does make it impossible, but you'd need to be exceptionally cautious to actually think to do this, and these are clearly not aliens being cautious enough to do that. The real roadblock for this sort of thing in this case is getting incompatible technology to interact; we're talking about a computer made by currently unknown and unnamed aliens sending a message to what is presumably a homebrew system made by the Doctor. There's still a few ways to do this, but they'd require significant work. In this case it was an emulator--an application running within the simulation to imitate a standalone device. That's not so easy of course, but the aliens put that in the simulator themselves, so they solved the problem for him. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 08:53 on May 22, 2017 |
# ? May 22, 2017 08:48 |