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The robots were all incredible creepy, and it took me a minute to remember what they reminded me of. Specifically their eyes.
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Nov 18, 2018 21:43
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Jerusalem posted:The system didn't kill the other employees, that was Charlie reprogramming the dispatch robots to kill anybody who got too near Dispatch where he was holding back the other dispatch robots for the big teleport. The system did try to lure Yaz there, but only because it knew she was one of the Doctor's crew and (we can assume) figured she'd be better equipped to handle it - which she was, Lee Mack didn't consider the robots threats which is how they killed him, but Yaz immediately got freaked out and made a run for it. Huh? I didn't really get that impression at all. Again, I might have just missed one of Charlie's last lines (I know he said he studied cybernetics and a buch of other things to pull this off) but I thought they'd established dispatch was all automated (except for the cleaning staff) and no (non-cleaning) humans were allowed down there anyway. I guess, after learning what was happening and hearing your take (which seems reasonable), I'm struggling to get what happened to Lee Mack. Shouldn't it have told him to go back before it killed him if it sent a message meant for Yaz that he answered? Yaz thought at the end that it would have killed her if she followed that call so it wasn't clear to her by the end that that had happened. And the whole scene was still in the warehouse, not dispatch (which getting to required jumping down a chute or teleporting, although I can imagine there were stairs or a lift somewhere). We still have the issue of 'kill first, don't clarify to humans' AI. (Unless the call for Yaz was from Charlie's machinations, in which case that would make sense to me. He's clearly willing to kill people for the 'greater good'.) quote:It absolutely did deliberately kill Kira and more should have been made of that, I agree. Yeah, that felt overlook felt weird especially after The Doctor spent time saying she had a good attitude and defended her against the manager. I think if I think about this too much, I'll wreck it a bit for myself even though I had fun watching it. However, one good point is that I feel like this episode had the sections where Whittaker got to play some moments that really sold her Doctor and what she's about. I think the bits where she was standing up to the management really showed how she could somehow take control of a situation and try to make everything right again.
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Nov 18, 2018 22:00
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Twirly was very much like Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf
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Nov 18, 2018 22:09
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super cool how this episode stans hard for a megacorporation
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Nov 18, 2018 22:20
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This is why we need a UBI
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Nov 18, 2018 22:26
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DoctorWhat posted:super cool how this episode stans hard for a megacorporation
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Nov 18, 2018 22:27
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what a crock of shite
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Nov 18, 2018 22:32
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What the gently caress was that ending. A) it was the laziest 'twist' ever B) faceless megacorporations are actually the good guys? 
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Nov 18, 2018 22:38
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What the christ was the point of that? Giant corporations are great and workers rights campaigners are monsters? gently caress off.
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Nov 18, 2018 22:41
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loathsome garbage. what a bummer for a sunday to go by without a new episode of doctor who, instead they aired this.
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Nov 18, 2018 22:43
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Also, couldn't the Dr have just had the robots teleport to their current location and then not have them blow up the desperate man? Why did she need to kill him? The only threat they posed was the bubble wrap.
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Nov 18, 2018 22:54
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I don't think the episode was trying to say Mega-corporations are good at all, but that the wrap-up isn't defined enough to stop that from being a perfectly legitimate way to read the episode. That more than anything else has been the issue I've had with this season so far (which I'm really enjoying): a lot of the resolutions just kind of happen and leave way too many unanswered questions or leave too much room for interpretation. Normally I'd applaud a show not holding the audience's hand and explicitly spelling out everything, but some level of guidance would be appreciated. The Power of Three and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship had the same problem, I think it's just generally how Chibnall handles single standalone episodes which is a shame. Broadchurch has shown that (largely) he is good at wrapping up plots/character arcs in longer form storytelling, but when it comes to a 45-50 minute episode with a beginning/middle/end, the jump from middle to end can be a little jarring. Bardeh posted:Also, couldn't the Dr have just had the robots teleport to their current location and then not have them blow up the desperate man? Why did she need to kill him? The only threat they posed was the bubble wrap. She wanted to get rid of the bombs, if she hadn't, Charlie might have been able to regain control/lock out Twirly. She told Charlie what was going to happen and begged him to come back to them so they could all get to safety, but he refused. Edit: Or maybe he reminded her of Adric and her natural desire for his explosive death overwhelmed her!
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Nov 18, 2018 23:08
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Necrothatcher posted:What the christ was the point of that? Giant corporations are great and workers rights campaigners are monsters? Oh thank christ, I thought I was the only one who picked up on that. It feels like if you presented this situation to any other doctor the whole place would have been razed to the ground after it comes out in the wash that the robots killed someone to “make a point” with “space amazon workhouse” being on notice from minute one due to its inherent nature and only allowed due to being an employment in a real poo poo situation I’m surprised Brooker hasn’t tried for Black Mirror. Then again, this Doctors’s been sloppy with letting Trump allegories and space death match organisers get away without comeuppance and not caring when a companion pulls a Jason Todd to blast a dood (an asshat who totally deserved it to be sure but still) into the stone age so what’s letting a few new age mavericks loose to share half the workload of an overworked human staff in an amazon future fuckhus? ConanThe3rd fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 18, 2018 23:11
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trouser_mouse posted:Twirly was very much like Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf Doctor: You're in the future and we don't need you to sell us anything. Twirly: ....the future is confusing. 
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Nov 18, 2018 23:12
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Bardeh posted:What the gently caress was that ending. A) it was the laziest 'twist' ever B) faceless megacorporations are actually the good guys? If that's the kind of message the show is okay with promoting now, it's reinforcing my feeling that this season might be my last for the forseeable future. It's nothing to do with Jodie, who is reliably good regardless of the material, it's the quality of that material and the feeling of not really being engaged with anything that happens. And stuff like telling us corporate exploitation is basically okay because they're all just nice people deep down, right?
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Nov 18, 2018 23:18
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I wasn't gonna get too deep into it when it was announced but man, the announcement that The Doctor is literally getting a Barbie Doll sent chills down my spine when it happened. It makes me start to take seriously the claims that Capaldi's lack of marketability was a big part of his gap year and eventual ousting - and when Season 10 had the Doctor declare, in no uncertain terms, that Capitalism is a mistake, and then this episode airs... aaaargh.
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Nov 18, 2018 23:23
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DoctorWhat posted:and when Season 10 had the Doctor declare, in no uncertain terms, that Capitalism is a mistake, and then this episode airs... aaaargh. Which ep was that again? Memory’s a bit fuzzy.
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Nov 18, 2018 23:26
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The whole 'systems aren't bad, it's the people who use them' rang about as hollow and clueless as the Zygon Inversion's awful anti-conflict messaging. The dismissal of the system's actual killing of a person wasn't just a script anomaly, it was a symptom of the wilful ignorance that makes this kind of botched Amazon/Primark etc. allegory fit together. Which is a shame, because there was a lot of fun in this episode right up until the ending.
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Nov 18, 2018 23:28
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ConanThe3rd posted:Which ep was that again? Memory’s a bit fuzzy. Oxygen.
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Nov 18, 2018 23:28
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Oxygen is loving top-tier all-time revolutionary Who, right up there with Paradise Towers and The Ribos Operation and Jubilee.
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Nov 18, 2018 23:33
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Oxygen is legit one of the best episodes of the show's entire run, classic included. Just absolutely loving incredible. Bring back Jamie Mathieson!
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Nov 18, 2018 23:41
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Oh god, the weird crystal fingers around the outside of the console go up and down at the same time as the time rotor, and it looks terrible.
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Nov 18, 2018 23:54
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gently caress this episode, I was enjoying it up until its horrid pro-Amazon "twist"
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Nov 19, 2018 00:21
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amazon is about to devastate my home city and man, I want Doctor Who to make me feel more capable of stopping that, not accuse me of being "heartless".
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Nov 19, 2018 00:31
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I don't think this episode was necessarily "pro corporation", just warning of the dangers of not keeping an eye on automated systems.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:33
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I like that the Doctor was supposed to be the one in maintenance until she soniced the job assignment chips.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:33
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"we'll ask the CEOs to maybe add some humans to the board of managment" "glad to hear the system has been fixed" *flies off in tardis* e; can't wait for next week when the Doctor defeats an evil eco-terrorist protesting a logging company Ruptured Yakety Sax fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Nov 19, 2018 |
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Nov 19, 2018 00:38
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DoctorWhat posted:I wasn't gonna get too deep into it when it was announced but man, the announcement that The Doctor is literally getting a Barbie Doll sent chills down my spine when it happened. It makes me start to take seriously the claims that Capaldi's lack of marketability was a big part of his gap year and eventual ousting - and when Season 10 had the Doctor declare, in no uncertain terms, that Capitalism is a mistake, and then this episode airs... aaaargh. Like... the show's always had a bit of a leftist streak, but it also sold toy Daleks like a year after it started, so if the idea of merch and marketing makes your skin crawl... I'm actually not really sure how to advise you to engage with pop culture, because at the end of the day, the notion of 'doing it for the art' is frankly just as much horseshit as the idea that Amazon are 'the good guys'. Artists are people who deserve to be compensated for what they do, and if one of the ways they're allowed to do that is because the show justifies it's value via merch, then that's not a bad thing.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:41
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I’d say this is probably my second favorite of the season so far, with last week’s being the best. I didn’t have high hopes for it at the start; it seemed like it was going to be just another creepy robot episode, but the twists kept things interesting and I absolutely didn’t see the real villain’s reveal coming. He wasn’t an especially memorable antagonist, since he was basically just the standard crazy terrorist archetype, but having him hide in plain sight allowed for a bit more characterization than if he had just been blatantly evil from the start like most Who villains. Still, a few annoying elements weighed the episode down a bit. I thought it took a while for the plot to really get into gear, and as with most of this season it often felt like it was struggling to juggle so many characters and give all of the companions something meaningful to do. Other shows manage large casts just fine, but I think that this one is having a hard time adjusting away from the Doctor plus one companion format they’ve mostly stuck to throughout the revived series.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:43
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The Doctor's a granddad. https://twitter.com/SawbonesHex/status/1064202960887001091
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Nov 19, 2018 00:48
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I never got the vibe that the Kerblam company was okay and hunky-dory or that the show was fully on board with it. It's obvious that the society that the company comes from is basically in the poo poo and the warehouse is a clearly overbearing, jargon-filled hell, with under-resourced managers/caretakers, which takes advantage of the luckiest of the desperate who have to work for a living. But having The Doctor resolve a smaller problem instead of the major one (i.e. the economic and social system) has been what she's done all series so far. She stopped (at least) thousands of people (who just happened to be using a presumably monopolistic space-goods distributor) from being killed and (generally) solved the mystery of why people were being disappeared from the warehouse. Sure, she didn't personally smash the whole company there and then but that's not what The Doctor does on the whole in many of these situations. The even more brutal future-capitalism and commodification of Oxygen is left to fall to a revolution later on without his intervention. Even in The Happiness Patrol, where he did help a revolt against Helen A, it wasn't led by himself and it came after she had already started a deliberate state-led mass-slaughter program against those who wouldn't conform. Necrothatcher posted:What the christ was the point of that? Giant corporations are great and workers rights campaigners are monsters? It depends on if Charlie was a working alone (i.e. as some kind of a Unabomber type) or with others. He's not started a union or (on-screen) tried to organise anyone, he's just gone straight to 'kill people who buy goods until things change'. It depends on if we're supposed to think he represents workers' rights supporters in general. As he is not shown as trying to unionise, I don't think he is. If the cleaners at actual Amazon warehouses used the couriers to start bombing people with their parcels, it'd be seen as unconscionable. If anything, he's a violent and isolated young man. He barely speaks to anyone at work at his break, except Kira. He comes across as a bit of an incel.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:48
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Enjoyed that, but they overused "team splits up in biggest warehouse the galaxy, just walk back in at exactly the right time and place"
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Nov 19, 2018 00:52
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Gaz-L posted:Like... the show's always had a bit of a leftist streak, but it also sold toy Daleks like a year after it started, so if the idea of merch and marketing makes your skin crawl... I'm actually not really sure how to advise you to engage with pop culture, because at the end of the day, the notion of 'doing it for the art' is frankly just as much horseshit as the idea that Amazon are 'the good guys'. Artists are people who deserve to be compensated for what they do, and if one of the ways they're allowed to do that is because the show justifies it's value via merch, then that's not a bad thing. look I collect Transformers I'm well aware of all of this.
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Nov 19, 2018 00:56
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Good episode. Thought the plotting was a bit tighter which helped a lot.
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Nov 19, 2018 01:00
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Davros1 posted:The Doctor's a granddad. God, I've got a 36 year old friend who looks like Colin Baker in that photo
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Nov 19, 2018 01:19
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Harlock posted:Good episode. Thought the plotting was a bit tighter which helped a lot. First episode I truly enjoyed as it was the first time I felt it was a proper Doctor Who episode. (Last week was good, but it just didn't have a Doctor vibe to it) And as you say, this writer didn't leave his homework until the last minute and rushed the ending. Also, it was good to see her have a little edge to her.
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Nov 19, 2018 01:32
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DoctorWhat posted:super cool how this episode stans hard for a megacorporation I've long hoped sci-fi would stop being so phobic about technology and science and progress, so the robots and automation being a good thing was fine, but the lesson we learned in the end was... make your company 51% people who shouldn't have to work to begin with, were capitalism not running amok? What a mess. Right up there with Don't Adopt, and Don't Take Your Pills as just missing the mark so utterly.
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Nov 19, 2018 01:44
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the show has never truly resolved/stopped one of its capitalistic hell futures has it? It's always, "well this is resolved + a move/promise is made by those left behind to change things". The Doctor always leaves and then we revisit capitalism's shittyness again in an future season.
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Nov 19, 2018 02:06
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Just finished the episode. Boy, I was really on board with that one until the twist. Even then, I feel like we could have gotten past it, but having the Doctor say "it's not the system that's the problem, it's the people using the system" about a futuristic Amazon warehouse is really poorly timed. It has a lot to enjoy in it despite the bad resolution, though, and Team TARDIS were fun to watch. "This disgruntled worker trying to send a message about the lack of jobs was a terrorist bad guy" just isn't a theme that works for me, particularly when the clean up was "Uh... we're demanding jobs for more people and fewer robots!" instead of, you know, "We've automated everything, maybe people don't need to work for basic survival anymore."
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Nov 19, 2018 02:14
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Davros1 posted:The Doctor's a granddad. Awwwwww. That's a cute kid. 
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Nov 19, 2018 02:18
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