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Jerusalem posted:Yeah if the end of Extremis had just flowed into something else entirely and we'd never seen the monks again, or even had a simple comment like,"Remember that time we stopped that invasion by those dead monks?" it would have been better than what we ended up getting. Having the Doctor realize he was a simulation but then figuring out he could send a warning to the real Doctor was a really nice twist, but they bungled the follow-up. I'm 100% certain that there were two unrelated ideas ("aliens need humans' consent to invade" and "aliens brainwash everyone, even the Doctor") and Moffat had this simulation idea kicking around, and he decided that they'd just make it a three-parter. I guess it's a bold idea to have three episodes by different writers form one story, but "bold idea" is the kindest thing I can say about it.
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Aug 19, 2017 09:42
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Honestly, it feels as though Extremis, Pyramid and Lie of the Land are three entirely unrelated episodes. Almost as though the writers for each episode weren't told anything about what the other episodes were about, aside from 'here's these monks they're the bad guys.'
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Aug 19, 2017 11:47
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fractalairduct posted:Honestly, it feels as though Extremis, Pyramid and Lie of the Land are three entirely unrelated episodes. Almost as though the writers for each episode weren't told anything about what the other episodes were about, aside from 'here's these monks they're the bad guys.' The remote eyeball healing was what killed me. Their other powers were to run incredibly complex simulations until they could accurately predict the behavior of every individual human, fast construction and deployment of mind control statues, and apparently shooting lightning from their fingers. Those are all within believability for a species that invested heavily in electronics and computer tech. None of that technology explains being able to heal mysterious eyeball damage remotely, instantly and without seeming to do anything at all. And it was really bad eyeball damage. Nothing in the TARDIS could heal it. All of space and time to choose from and the Doctor couldn't just pop over to the nearest catgirl hospital to get it fixed. Incurable eyeball damage fixed remotely in seconds. What? That's the power of gods, not technology.
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Aug 19, 2017 12:13
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At least Pyramid At The End Of The World, on initial broadcast, felt like it was building up to something. Lie Of The Land failed to cash in on any of that and it has a shitload of other problems. It's my least favorite Capaldi era episode.
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Aug 19, 2017 12:43
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Facebook Aunt posted:The remote eyeball healing was what killed me. Their other powers were to run incredibly complex simulations until they could accurately predict the behavior of every individual human, fast construction and deployment of mind control statues, and apparently shooting lightning from their fingers. Those are all within believability for a species that invested heavily in electronics and computer tech. You know, if they were going to run with 'the Doctor is blind now', they really should have stuck it out until the regeneration. Then again, anything would be better than what we got.
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Aug 19, 2017 12:51
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Pyramid has an interesting enough premise - what would it take to do a deal with pretty much the devil? It's almost impressive how much it's ballsed up, from having a plot that's 90% hole to Harness chucking the series budget down a hole trying to make the glorious republic of Turmezistan a Thing in Dr Who canon. Lie of the Land is passable-ish if you skip Pyramid and make it a 2-parter.
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Aug 19, 2017 12:52
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Murderion posted:Lie of the Land is passable-ish if you skip Pyramid and make it a 2-parter. Maybe the following 30 as well.
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Aug 19, 2017 12:53
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"Pyramid at the End of the World" - definitely my less preferred story with the word "pyramid" in the title. (By which I mean there's no contest at all because "Pyramids of Mars" is a top five all-time story for me.)
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Aug 19, 2017 13:02
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fractalairduct posted:You know, if they were going to run with 'the Doctor is blind now', they really should have stuck it out until the regeneration. Yeah, I was quite excited for the possibility of a blind Doctor just continuing to Doctor on mostly unfazed and was really irritated when they treated it as a huge terrible tragedy which he had to hide from his companion!!!!! and then fixed it almost immediately.
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Aug 19, 2017 14:24
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fractalairduct posted:You know, if they were going to run with 'the Doctor is blind now', they really should have stuck it out until the regeneration. Yeah, that would've been pretty cool. I was honestly rolling my eyes pretty loving hard when the doctor was all "yeah I'm blind forever now  "I'm more surprised he wasn't cured in the very next episode.
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Aug 19, 2017 15:06
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fractalairduct posted:Honestly, it feels as though Extremis, Pyramid and Lie of the Land are three entirely unrelated episodes. Almost as though the writers for each episode weren't told anything about what the other episodes were about, aside from 'here's these monks they're the bad guys.' Well, Extremis was like a secret first episode of the three-parter. It worked really well as a lead-in to the two-parter, but the story itself would have worked by itself. The two-parter was bad though. It also would have worked well as a set-up episode to something else later in the season, like how The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People set up the cliffhanger that Amy had been replaced by a doppelganger.
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Aug 19, 2017 16:56
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I don't understand the thread title.
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Aug 19, 2017 16:58
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The_Doctor posted:I don't understand the thread title. It's one of the jokes from the Five Doctors RiffTrax from the other day
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Aug 19, 2017 17:01
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As Bill Corbett said, you get healthcare, we get this.
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Aug 19, 2017 17:31
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Slowpoke! posted:Well, Extremis was like a secret first episode of the three-parter. It worked really well as a lead-in to the two-parter, but the story itself would have worked by itself. The two-parter was bad though. It would have worked best if the real doctor just fixed the problem immediately thanks to the information because then none of the rest would have happened
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Aug 19, 2017 18:05
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Deal with the devil huh? Why not literal? Bring back the Beast! Have the Monks as his servants, make the temple a bit more demonic. Have the setup be that the Monks have foreseen the end of days (the Doom Bacteria) and called in their master to claim his due. The Doctor needs Missy's help to carry out the plan whose result we saw in The Satan Pit. Didn't that episode say the Doctor did that?
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Aug 19, 2017 20:43
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Apparently the Play Safe short they played before The Five Doctors featured voice work from Bernard Cribbins!
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Aug 19, 2017 20:45
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Maxwell Lord posted:Apparently the Play Safe short they played before The Five Doctors featured voice work from Bernard Cribbins! Was that like the "Don't Go Near Haunted Lakes" PSA with Donald Pleasance?
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Aug 19, 2017 20:57
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After The War posted:Was that like the "Don't Go Near Haunted Lakes" PSA with Donald Pleasance? "The branch is weak... Rotten... It'll never take his weight." Another Doctor Who connection with safety PiFs is "Robbie" which was presented and narrated by Peter Purves. It's about a boy who loves to play football, then has to have his feet amputated when he's hit by a train.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:00
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After The War posted:Was that like the "Don't Go Near Haunted Lakes" PSA with Donald Pleasance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNPMYRlvySY It'd have to be longer. They couldn't Riff on this because it's too short.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:05
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Yeah, that one. It's started off many a late-night "scary PSA" YouTube-fest.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:07
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Oh 70s gov information films.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g
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Aug 19, 2017 21:08
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The_Doctor posted:Oh 70s gov information films. Gets pretty scary at 1.38 there.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:14
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The scariest public information films are, in ascending order, the one with the Frisbee and the electricity substation, and Apaches. gently caress Apaches forever, just tell kids not to gently caress around on farms don't show a kid drowning in a slurry pit.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:32
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Where does Finishing Line sit?
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Aug 19, 2017 21:37
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Up there for sure, but still no Apaches.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:40
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Apaches is pretty rough (saw it on a video when I was in school) but the child actors having blank non-reactions to their friends dying horribly gives it a weird quality. The biggest gut-punch in it is the looooong list of real children who died in farm accidents that scrolls up the screen at the end. There's one from the late 80s called "Electric Graffiti" where a kid stumbles across a substation some older children had broken into and gets electrocuted, and it's got this pretty gruesome scene where the doctors are looking over him going, "Plastic surgeon probably won't be able to fix that," and, "Right cornea... completely destroyed. Left cornea... seems similar." It's the DoE road safety ads we have in Northern Ireland that I've always found particularly tough.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:43
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I've not seen any of the NI ones but if they're worse than those old PiFs then I really don't want to. I've only got hazy recollections of seeing them as a kid as I think they'd mostly been retired by the time I was watching TV, though the Charlie Says stuff was still doing the rounds. Still, YouTube has them all, so I have solid freshly made adult memories of them instead.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:46
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Fil5000 posted:I've not seen any of the NI ones but if they're worse than those old PiFs then I really don't want to. I wouldn't say they're necessarily worse than those older ones - they're not Apaches or Play Safe or Robbie by any stretch - but folks from England or Scotland I know who've them seen say they're a lot harder-hitting than what they'd usually get.
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Aug 19, 2017 21:55
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That Threads one was pretty dark too.
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Aug 19, 2017 22:33
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Facebook Aunt posted:None of that technology explains being able to heal mysterious eyeball damage remotely, instantly and without seeming to do anything at all. And it was really bad eyeball damage. Nothing in the TARDIS could heal it. All of space and time to choose from and the Doctor couldn't just pop over to the nearest catgirl hospital to get it fixed. Incurable eyeball damage fixed remotely in seconds. What? That's the power of gods, not technology. I think the general idea (which I agree was not communicated well or actually established consistently, maybe this is just how I'd have written the story) is that the Monks can do drat near anything but only if they have permission to do it. I rate Extremis pretty highly, there are elements of Pyramid I like a lot even if it doesn't quite work, and Lie of the Land is also an episode from Doctor Who's tenth season.
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Aug 19, 2017 22:34
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I wish there was a ten minute PiF version of threads. Enough people are traumatised with it as a two hour drama, imagine how much worse it would have been if it was just dropped into the schedules where there would otherwise be a gap in transmission?
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Aug 19, 2017 22:37
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Fil5000 posted:I've not seen any of the NI ones but if they're worse than those old PiFs then I really don't want to. Here's one of the most famous if you're interested.
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Aug 19, 2017 22:49
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Here now, let's lighten the PSA mood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r1UiNZ3G4Y
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Aug 20, 2017 00:02
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Flight Bisque posted:Here now, let's lighten the PSA mood. I'll not have you disparaging the seriousness of Doctor Who. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6zVTqoNE_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKkbaj6jSw
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Aug 20, 2017 00:22
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Facebook Aunt posted:The remote eyeball healing was what killed me. Their other powers were to run incredibly complex simulations until they could accurately predict the behavior of every individual human, fast construction and deployment of mind control statues, and apparently shooting lightning from their fingers. Those are all within believability for a species that invested heavily in electronics and computer tech. I think the idea was meant to be that the monks really are on the level of gods, albeit with a weird (but not unprecedented in myth) catch that they can't use their powers without being given permission, and that could have been a good premise, given good writing. But, yeah.
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Aug 20, 2017 02:49
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Keisse J posted:I think the idea was meant to be that the monks really are on the level of gods, albeit with a weird (but not unprecedented in myth) catch that they can't use their powers without being given permission, and that could have been a good premise, given good writing. And you can beat them by shooting them. With guns. And this is a thing they do. This is a thing the Doctor decides to have his gun toting militia do. And it works. Did you know that the Doctor occasionally starts up gun toting militias? Now you do.
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Aug 20, 2017 02:56
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I can't believe they set up "the Doctor is brainwashed to be evil" and then just pissed it away. How hard would it have been to have a story where the big quest isn't to get to the Doctor but to get to the vault to free the Master, the only other person who could defeat the monks.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:11
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There seems to be an enormous amount of overlap between people who like Doctor Who and people who like MST3K and I am glad of it.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:13
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2house2fly posted:I can't believe they set up "the Doctor is brainwashed to be evil" and then just pissed it away. How hard would it have been to have a story where the big quest isn't to get to the Doctor but to get to the vault to free the Master, the only other person who could defeat the monks. The weird thing was how pointless a plot thread that was. It falls apart the moment you think about it. It's purely there to make the viewer go 'oh no the Doctor has gone bad' which they're not going to believe for a moment.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:31
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