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..............Oh.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:21
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Well it had to happen eventually this season, that wasn't particularly good. It reminded me of some of RTD's more overblown stuff that smacked of first drafts. Including having his cake and eating it too by having massive earth-changing poo poo happen and then everybody just basically forgets about it ever happening. The Monks just never really hit for me as particularly interesting or compelling villains, they were at their most interesting in the first episode when they barely appeared and we had only the most basic understanding of how they operated. Everything since just indicated that there wasn't any further depth to them.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:25
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(trailer "spoiler") so... Ice Warriors episode with the Cybermen musical motif in the next time trailer. that's... well, they've got me curious at least
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Jun 3, 2017 20:26
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Oh it's a fake news metaphor. Haha, as soon as I read your post the Doctor straight up says,"Fake news central" 
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Jun 3, 2017 20:30
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Jerusalem posted:Including having his cake and eating it too by having massive earth-changing poo poo happen and then everybody just basically forgets about it ever happening, Wasn't this really only egregious with the Master two parter? And then it was followed by an episode where everyone evacuated London because of all the weird poo poo that happened there every Christmas.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:35
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Keisse J posted:(trailer "spoiler") so... Ice Warriors episode with the Cybermen musical motif in the next time trailer. that's... well, they've got me curious at least I've got a feeling that's just because the trailer guys aren't really familiar with what themes mean what.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:40
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Chucat posted:Wasn't this really only egregious with the Master two parter? And then it was followed by an episode where everyone evacuated London because of all the weird poo poo that happened there every Christmas. There was also the Giant Cyberman storming through Victorian London (which was loving awesome, even if it made no sense). The whole thing about people evacuating London every Christmas was a funny joke but symptomatic of the issue of RTD wanting to simultaneously have a world where aliens were a known and accepted thing (including invasions!) while also maintaining a contemporary London analogous to the real world. Moffat actually cleaned up a lot of that with the cracks in season 5, but it's been seeping back in because he wants to do big dramatic worldchanging stories. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but there's an easy impact to be had by having that big worldchanging event happen in "our" world/time, whereas one that takes place in an alternate reality/future would automatically have a level of detachment for the viewer because it's not "real". The Classic Series got around stuff like this by either setting it in a near-future that was still recognizable to the audience (the Pertwee era) or by being careful about making events largely localized in the "present". They also had the added bonus of every story largely being self-contained with very little serialization or seasonal arcs, so you could get away with having Cybermen invade London in the contemporary 1960s and have street battles with the military, then not return to that contemporary time for 2-3 years at which point you just ignore the former story and nobody but Ian Levine particularly notices or cares.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:44
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Did any of the Monk's actually speak in that episode? They were completely wasted and I still don't know anything about them. And that resolution was just godawful. It didn't even make sense, just the Doctor reciting a load of empty technobabble, power of love horseshit and then they won because reasons.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:44
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CityMidnightJunky posted:And that resolution was just godawful. It didn't even make sense, just the Doctor reciting a load of empty technobabble, power of love horseshit and then they won because reasons. it really was not very good
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Jun 3, 2017 20:52
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Bill's plan secretly backfired - now all of humanity worships her dead mother.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:54
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Preview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRbUpnO8hmQ Aftershow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkkVGPnXHSM Next week, old faces return and something larger lurks behind them
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Jun 3, 2017 20:57
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Improvement on last week but to be honest I don't think this really needed to be a three-part story. 
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Jun 3, 2017 21:34
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Michelle Gomez sure can act, huh?
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Jun 3, 2017 21:41
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DoctorWhat posted:Michelle Gomez sure can act, huh? I find her to be a highlight of any episode she's in
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Jun 3, 2017 21:47
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So the Monks really were just imitation brand knock-off versions of the Silence. The Silence have been here for years, secretly guiding humanity from the shadows. The Monks are pretending they've been here for years, openly guiding humanity from the spotlight. Yeah they aren't a 1:1 copy but it did feel like it was retreading some familiar ground, except it was done better before. The Doctor tricking Bill into shooting him felt dumb and unnecessary, especially with everyone laughing about it. I almost expected him to say "it's just a prank bro!" to explain it. The monks giving the doctor any kind of autonomy makes no sense given that idealogically he's their complete opposite. And the idea that he could trick them seems dumb when their main technology is simulations to understand their enemies and simulations to predict the future. "This guy's beliefs completely clash with what we want to do, everything we know about him says he's going to get in our way and oppose us, he often relies on trickery and guile instead of brute force.... but he's saying he wants to work with us. He's probably on the level, right? Might as well let him do his thing, right? GASP HE BETRAYED US. WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS. US I GUESS, IF ONLY WE LEFT THE PREDICT-O-MACHINE ON." I mean imagine if you had an enemy that could read minds.. that was ultimately defeated because it forgot that it could read minds. And why bother with the setup episodes if none of it ends up really being relevant? And I do think there's scope for an interesting episode when The Doctor is facing a foe that can predict all his plans (as long as it doesn't get a bit too Curse of Fatal Death). You got an idea how the monks operated, but not really what they wanted. Everything they did was so they could be in power, without any indication of why they wanted to be in power. The resolution was some unsatisfying asspull bullshit. About the only things I liked was the idea "No matter how bad things are, if you can convince people it was always this way then that's 90% of the work done." and the contrast between Missy's problem solving vs The Doctor's problem solving.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:01
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I liked the scene where Bill confronted the Doctor and I'm disappointed it was entirely fake. I assumed he'd just been brainwashed somewhat.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:03
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Okay, so are we sure Toby Whitehouse wrote this episode? Because this had all the nuance and subtlety of a Peter Harness script.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:11
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Whithouse has always been outspoken -- the final season of Being Human had the BBC run by zombies. He's very much left, though, where Harness is... centre right? This has basically the exact opposite moral to Inversion of the Zygons.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:17
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Hardly anything loving happened. I got to the end and was genuinely surprised it used all 45 minutes, it felt more like 20 at most.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:26
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There's a difference between "outspoken" and "unsubtle", though. I mean, you look at an episode like "School Reunion"; the Jamie Oliver allegory was relatively easy to pick up but it wasn't literally stated like Harness is wont to do. Speaking of Jamie Oliver, I can't believe it's been twelve loving years since the whole cheeseburgers through the schoolgates thing.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:26
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So does this mean all of humanity remembers the times the Daleks and the Cybermen tried to take over the world? How about the Weeping Angels? Or did we forget about them all too?BioEnchanted posted:Bill's plan secretly backfired - now all of humanity worships her dead mother. Honestly, I was kind of expecting that to happen.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:36
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Dabir posted:Hardly anything loving happened. I got to the end and was genuinely surprised it used all 45 minutes, it felt more like 20 at most. Yeah, this was my problem with it as well. The Doctor manipulated his companion into stealing a gun and killing him. This is a good thing, apparently. The Master scenes were pretty great though. I'm hoping Missy really is starting to reform, and then John Simm shows up to remind her what an utter dick they are and tempt her back to the darkside. The 'This is Gallifrey' theme was a nice callback.
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Jun 3, 2017 22:48
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You know it's a bad episode when it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkAVfsw5xSQ
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Jun 3, 2017 22:54
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I didn't like how it betrayed its premise almost immediately, everyone even the Doctor being brainwashed and Bill having to do something about it sounded really interesting. I don't know why they had to spend so much time building up to that fakeout when they could have spent any amount of time at all on the monks, why they dress up as monks, or what they get out of ruling the world. I don't get the point of the line last week having the monks "take a form you are comfortable with" or whatever when there was no "true form" reveal. Why do they even dress like monks? Is it an atheist message about religion preaching lies to control people? Why does Bill's mental construct of her mother beat them? Is it like a bookend to Extremis, the monks getting defeated by the real-world presence of a fictional character? How does the fake version of Bill's mother beat the monks' fake version of history? Wouldn't a lie be beaten by the truth? Also, it's not the episode's fault but I was expecting "i want you next to me because it's the safest place on earth" to be a clever reversal and the Doctor actually thought he'd be safest with Bill since she's keeping the fake memories going so the monks wouldn't want to harm her. Why were they zombies in monk outfits?! Overall, I think Extremis should have ended with a Family Of Blood style montage of the Doctor beating the aliens and done something else for the two following episodes.
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Jun 3, 2017 23:33
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It was crap. I was even ok with the second episode, I liked the ending. This was just Doctor Who Ex Machina from the boat prank til the end. There wasn't even any tension with the ginger fella having his tape player smashed. Maybe the monk's simulated this and they'll be back in the finale? I'm not sure if it would be worth a bad 3 parter for that.
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Jun 3, 2017 23:39
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As disappointed as I am with Chibnail as showrunner, I'm really happy it's not going to be Whithouse. I actually really liked the design of the one monk we got to see out of the hood. I couldn't tell if he was different from the other ones, but uncovered he looked a lot more ratlike and creepy.
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Jun 4, 2017 00:08
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I actually thought that was an interesting ending, and didn't personally interpret it as 'power of love' bullshit. It's a clever little play on how they defined the Monk's power as explained through the Missy scene; they infect people's memories, they couldn't do anything with Bill's image of her mother not because of love, but because it's not a memory. Bill remembers jack poo poo about her mother, every single thought about her is an out-and-out fabrication and she knows it. Since that's not the part of her brain that they can actually do anything with, she can overpower them with it. There's some interesting ideas in this episode, it probably would've stood much better were it not for the fact it followed on from last week's. Extremis was fine and had some good ideas, this one's fine and has some good ideas, it's just Pyramid at the End of the World dragging it all down from 'fine' to 'bad' and stretching it out for far too long. I liked in this one how the color palette's muted for most of the episode, with the only exceptions being the Monks themselves and the inside of the vault. And I did like the entire concept of the Monks, and basically hypothesized something like them before we knew what their deal was; an alien race that's not actually good at conquering so much as making their enemies surrender. Basically nothing about the Monks is legit intimidating or impressive, it's all scare tactics. This was kinda just Last of the Time Lords with a less charismatic antagonist and slightly less bullshit conclusions, I can't hate that too much.
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Jun 4, 2017 02:46
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I didn't hate that episode either. It was a strange conclusion to this 3 part Monk story though; I think given time I'll appreciate it more for the positives. There wasn't anything that made me dispise the entire thing and there were stand out moments. Before the fake out, 12 was really quite good at being a bad guy collaborator.
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Jun 4, 2017 03:04
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AndyElusive posted:Before the fake out, 12 was really quite good at being a bad guy collaborator. Oh, poo poo yeah. That opening monologue just made me realize how good Capaldi is at polite terror and menace. He'd be able to play a great cult leader or kind figurehead of a dictatorship. I immediately thought of Dr. Breen at the start of Half-Life 2.
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Jun 4, 2017 03:08
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Man this was just a nothing wet fart of an ending. Made me really appreciate and miss the season 3 finale though!
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Jun 4, 2017 03:09
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Wonder why no-one brought up the idea of just taking Bill off-world and away from the transmitter.
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Jun 4, 2017 03:18
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Senor Tron posted:Wonder why no-one brought up the idea of just taking Bill off-world and away from the transmitter. Or the idea of the Doctor not pretending to be a collaborator and in doing probably getting a bunch of people sent to labor camps with literally no upside except taking up 15 minutes of the episode. Or the Doctor not going to Missy with no upside to finding out what he already knows and taking up 10 minutes of the episode. It wasn't only a problem in this episode, but I'm getting really tired of the one-off gadgets with very specific purposes. Like the Doctor's weird temporary sight thing in Extremis or Nardole's thing that...traces broadcasts except they're designed to be untraceable except this jobber can trace them. Like, just have Nardole say he traced the broadcast.
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Jun 4, 2017 03:37
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2house2fly posted:Why does Bill's mental construct of her mother beat them? Is it like a bookend to Extremis, the monks getting defeated by the real-world presence of a fictional character? How does the fake version of Bill's mother beat the monks' fake version of history? Wouldn't a lie be beaten by the truth? Broadcasting anything over the link would start to overwrite the false history. Missy even suggested rendering her brain dead so the link would just broadcast static, because that would be faster than killing her and having the link simply stop working. In effect, that's what Bill did: broadcast static. There was no message, to reinforcing real history like the Doctor wanted, just static. Various images of a pleasant young woman, devoid of context or meaning. Very simple images. The 'static' started overwriting the fake history program in people's memories. Because there was no message on the signal, it allowed people to think and remember for themselves. Too bad about all the people who died though. Oh well, Bill is safe so everyone is happy.
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Jun 4, 2017 03:48
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So hey why did we shoot all those people? I unno
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Jun 4, 2017 04:06
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Wasn't there a monk on the ship? Did they just take care of it off screen and not say anything or did the writers forget?
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Jun 4, 2017 04:19
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Burkion posted:So hey why did we shoot all those people? Also six months of video, photo and written recordings.
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Jun 4, 2017 05:16
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2house2fly posted:I don't get the point of the line last week having the monks "take a form you are comfortable with" or whatever when there was no "true form" reveal. Something that actually quite bugged me is that we see one of the Monks shot dead during the little confrontation inside the pyramid. After last week had them demonstrate the ability to pluck planes and missiles out of the air, and to physically replace people in space, seeing one of them get plugged by a bullet and just drop dead felt really off. Cleretic posted:I actually thought that was an interesting ending, and didn't personally interpret it as 'power of love' bullshit. It's a clever little play on how they defined the Monk's power as explained through the Missy scene; they infect people's memories, they couldn't do anything with Bill's image of her mother not because of love, but because it's not a memory. Bill remembers jack poo poo about her mother, every single thought about her is an out-and-out fabrication and she knows it. Since that's not the part of her brain that they can actually do anything with, she can overpower them with it. I liked that part, it made sense for all the reasons you mention plus it was a nice callback to the Doctor's earlier completely altruistic act of giving her photographs of her mother paying off in a way he never expected. The episode itself just wasn't particularly good and as mentioned there is a whole lot of nothing going on before wrapping it all up and the world just going back to the way things were before. That said, I did enjoy,"We think they were filming something or something? "
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Jun 4, 2017 05:30
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Jerusalem posted:Something that actually quite bugged me is that we see one of the Monks shot dead during the little confrontation inside the pyramid. After last week had them demonstrate the ability to pluck planes and missiles out of the air, and to physically replace people in space, seeing one of them get plugged by a bullet and just drop dead felt really off. I was watching with a goon friend of mine, Seer235, and commented that it's a shame the bad guys aren't immune to bullets anymore. The Brigadier would have been so much happier if he had to deal with these chucklefucks.
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Jun 4, 2017 06:28
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Jerusalem posted:I liked that part, it made sense for all the reasons you mention plus it was a nice callback to the Doctor's earlier completely altruistic act of giving her photographs of her mother paying off in a way he never expected. I do like that it's not a simple "power of love" ending, but I hate that the Doctor then goes and takes credit for it. The script has a big moment for Bill and then the Doctor shoves himself right into it.
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Jun 4, 2017 06:52
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I don't really understand why Missy is becoming good/having regrets about being evil/etc. I'd assume it's an act but the Doctor seems to take it seriously. Did I miss something that led to her change of heart? It kinda just seems like she said she would be to bargain with the Doctor and for some reason she's sincerely having a change of heart but that doesn't make any sense.
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Jun 4, 2017 07:01
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