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I really didn't like the random old guy kramering in to sacrifice himself in the Doctor's place. I kind of figured that The Doctor would somehow pour the Matrix into the Cybermasters' minds, blowing out their emotional control and basically immediately reconverting them back into Time Lords (granted in cyber-bodies, but they had the capacity to regenerate so they could be de-converted), and also revealing the truth of the Time Lords so they couldn't deny it any more. Heck, the Master had both the Matrix and the Cyberium as part of him at the same time. I mean, I did feel it was a bit fanwanky, but the actual reveal didn't seem much of a leap from the Cartmel Masterplan.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:10
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Jerusalem posted:I'm getting mad about Doctor Who online, what have I become At this point, it's not you It's the show
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Mar 1, 2020 21:10
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Anyway on the plus side I love that the self-appointed visionary leader of all the Cybermen ended up being a joke. No irony there, I love that he was just a stupid, lovely little man whose conversion failed and his big super plan was to... turn everybody into full robots, then a disappointed Master just casually kills him and that's that, he's done.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:11
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If nothing else you can tell Sacha Dhawan was having a ball being Time Travel The Joker.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:22
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That was such a weird episode to watch. Mainly because ...Jerusalem posted:Even the episode itself is saying the retcon is pointless. What's the point of pulling the rug out in such a grand fashion if your main character has completely reconciled herself with everything that's been revealed in the space of half an episode? I don't think we're going to see Whittaker give a different sort of performance from now on, or that any new dramatic opportunities will be opened up in future episodes. Does Chibnall just want to leave his mark on the series? I've been keeping up with this series in fits and starts, and tonight's episode was the only one I've watched live. It's been a really weird watch, because there have been lots of really interesting individual elements throughout, and some good performances, but I don't think there's been a single episode that's stuck the landing and been consistently well-told from start to finish. It's a real shame, because for its faults I thought the first Chibnall series showed real promise.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:25
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I missed the first ten mintues because of the BBC messing around with the times again. I'll loop it when its on iplayer. I liked the 12th Doctor status quo as the Time Lords being isolated in a pocket universe feeling sorry for themselves. Wiping them out again seems pointless? The Doctor's origin being [Blank] raised in a stuffy society [blank] stole time machine, adventures is really all you need. So the Doctor is from another dimension or something? And not a time lord? And had pre-Hartnell lives? And running out of regenerations has never been a problem? It seems a bit pointless. It reminds me of the nonsense they put in the Eighth Doctor Adventures Books, which if you haven't read them, are deeply insane. Jodie Whittaker and Sacha Dhawan were both great though.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:25
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Jerusalem posted:I'm getting mad about Doctor Who online, what have I become Now that I’ve betrayed....
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Mar 1, 2020 21:30
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Blah, just blah. It's been said before about the revival stuff, it suffers when "fans" get to write Doctor Who and we get fanwank put out, vs people (fans or not) just wanting to write a good story. That and writing like modern "prestige" TV, Doctor Who doesn't need a massive sprawling arc and to answer all the mysteries, it can be - forgive me - timeless. Sure you can grow the world of the show, but you can do it moving forwards and as long as you don't massively break the basic points (+/- when such things may actually need work), just leave the foundation as hand waving and smoke and do some adventuring.
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Mar 1, 2020 21:37
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I was just thinking about the Eighth Doctor Adventures and remember when the Doctor met a bunch of cultists who worshipped time paradoxes and wanted to start a war between Time Lords and an unnamed race by stealing the Doctor's corpse and cloning his hip 90s companion to turn him into a bad guy called Grandfather Paradox, then they change the third Doctor's regeneration and then the Tardis blows up and the Doctor gets a new Tardis who is a lady with a Tardis in her head, and then Gallifrey blows up before the unnamed race shows up and they're never mentioned again, and then the Doctor has amensia and has to wait one hundred years for the Tardis to grow back and then he still has amensia, then his second heart starts to rot and then some guy puts it in his chest and then some crystal skeletons start killing the Doctor's companions because parallel universes make them angry and then k-9 is behind a wall and the Doctor has the Matrix in his head and the series ended without any resolution. Then Big Finish and the Night of the Doctor were like 'lol non-canon'. The lore doesn't need massive rewrites. Work with the lore, not against it! There's tons of fun stuff to play with without big 'nothing will ever be the same' twists. How does Rassilon fit into this big retcon? And how did the Master blow up Gallifrey anyway? OldMemes fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Mar 1, 2020 |
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Mar 1, 2020 21:55
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Maybe a scientist was experiementing and they developed something called a Loom and the Doctor as a child was a failed experiment dumped on Gallifrey, notorious shitheap of dimension 328G
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Mar 1, 2020 22:05
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So this episode established the following: - The Doctor isn’t from this universe - isn’t a Time Lord from Gallifrey - has been around for the whole of Time Lord history - worked for the Division fixing problems, rather than as a free agent of their own will - will continue to regenerate forever - didn’t actually need to be granted extra regenerations at the end of Time of the Doctor - has been to Earth in 1963 prior to Hartnell, and had the TARDIS stick as a police box - regularly underwent memory wipes?
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Mar 1, 2020 22:18
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also breaks river song
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Mar 1, 2020 22:21
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I kind of admire them for deciding to Break Canon
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Mar 1, 2020 22:25
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The_Doctor posted:So this episode established the following: Pretty much. But hey, it's fixed that one ambiguous scene from 40 years ago! And none of it matters anyway because the Doctor's already over it! Willing to bet The Division is the next series arc, which is also the part I don't give the slightest poo poo about and expect I'll actively hate once we learn more.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:32
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Oh god, I just realised this is the same thing JJ Abrams did by retconning Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi. Rian Johnson made it so that Rey came from nothing, and that didn’t matter, because she’s still very strong with the Force. Then JJ came back and decided that wouldn’t stand, so now she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter. The Doctor being just a normal Time Lord who got bored of their stuffy academia, and ran off to see the universe has been replaced by being Super Special and Different.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:36
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That was utter tripe. Looking forward to Chibnall eventually leaving even more than I was after Ranskoor Av Kolos.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:43
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Why did they backtrack from missy’s character development so much tho, also I audibly said “gently caress this” when the cyber time lords appeared
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Mar 1, 2020 22:50
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Comics did it first anyway.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:54
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Ah, this sounds so loving dumb I'm going to have to start watching again. I'll take Goddamn Stupid Who over Boring Who any day.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:03
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I think Artron energy is still important because eventually, even if the Doctor had the ability to continue regenerating, eventually the ability would run out of gas.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:35
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I was kinda hoping it was gonna turn out that The Deep Dark Secret was that humans became Time Lords somehow. only because it would've meant that out of all the Doctors it was frickin EIGHT who vaguely remembered it, oh the irony Maybe my scale for 'that's ridiculous' got blown out by (especially the design of) the CyberLords, but I don't think I hate the Timeless Child/eleventy billion pre-Hartnells reveal. It's just...there. That might be worse. Also it should have been the Master because 'master copy' geddit
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Mar 1, 2020 23:38
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The terrible spoilers that sounded too stupid and lovely to be true, were completely correct. gently caress. Can we have a new showrunner to retcon this poo poo please. Edit- Why was Ruth's TARDIS a police box? Also I laughed really hard at the cyber-timelords reveal. It's such a shame, because everything except the writing in this episode was really good. Whittaker and Dhawan especially were on top form. Ruined Gallifrey looked great. All ruined by that stupid as hell reveal. And I was waiting for two episodes for old guy to be revealed as a secret Time Lord or something, but he was just there to do the heroic sacrifice. marktheando fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Mar 1, 2020 |
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Mar 1, 2020 23:48
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marktheando posted:I was waiting for two episodes for old guy to be revealed as a secret Time Lord or something, but he was just there to do the heroic sacrifice. When he turned up at the end, I briefly hoped he was going to reveal that he was Rassilon or whoever and he'd give the REAL explanation. But nope.
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Mar 2, 2020 00:09
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I actually really enjoyed that. Doctor Who has been on an axis of Bland -> Bonkers that has nothing to do with Bad -> Good for years now, and this gave us Bonkers in abundance. Cyber-Lords (why the gently caress did they call them CyberMasters?) looked great, and felt suitably blasphemous. Like, if the cybermen take over Gallifrey the result is going to be an abomination, which I thought they captured well. Sacha Dhawan is a delight, and I like how completely unhinged he is. Too many "crazy" villains come off like Jared-Leto-as-the-Joker (not the character, but those fake behind-the-scenes stories of him sending people bullets in the post to prove....something) but The Master felt very rational in this, just working from completely hosed up logic and priorities, and loving every minute of it. Was that Gat in The Division flashback? I kind of hope it wasn't, and that killer eyeshadow is just a requirement of being in the Timelord-CIA. Edit: Whilst checking IMDB to see if Gat (Ritu Arya) was in this episode I did discover that she's in season two of Umbrella Academy. Which means - there's a season two of Umbrella Academy! 
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Mar 2, 2020 00:15
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I was excited that they were gonna go insane and actually kill off jo at the end and just move onto ruth it would have been bad but at least it would have been something, and i really like ruth despite seeing nothing of her
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Mar 2, 2020 00:21
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For the first two thirds I didn't really know what to make of it, since it was mostly executed really well (with minor quibbles like the Cybermen not being able to hit anything and the corny use of the theme tune in the memory sequence). Dhawan and Whittaker in particular were both excellent. The problem was that the story it was telling was one I fundamentally didn't want to happen. Take out the Timeless Child part and it would've been perfectly fine. It was kind of a relief when the CyberLords turned up with their stupid  faces and gave me something firmly bad to point to.
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Mar 2, 2020 00:38
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Here's the thing with Doctor Who. It's almost never, almost, the actor's fault. Generally speaking, there has never been a case where acting has harmed Doctor Who. You can't look at Colin Baker's performance and say that's what's wrong with the Twin Dilemma. The actors get very, very little say over what they do and what they're allowed to do. And this isn't something you can blame on the writer, either. For Doctor Who, these problems fall on the Show Runner. Always have with new Who, always will. The Show Runners are who have final say over scripts, they're the ones who decide what is appropriate for Who and what is not. This is why I would say RTD was a better show runner than Moffat, for an example. Sure, RTD had some amazing lows, but most of his faults and flubs are funny. Moffat is just depressing because you know he could do better, but he was so often not interested in doing that. This? This is not a story the show wanted, needed, or should have. It's a story Chibnall wanted. The only thing that can come of this that would benefit the show going forward is for this entire episode to be ignored and buried, just like previous mistakes. Because that is what this is. The Looms was something terrible that could have been, but never were. The Doctor's father and the Master being his brother was something awful that could have been, but never was. This IS terrible, and if future writers have any common sense, it will be undone. But in the here and now? This is inexcusable. It's a slap in the face of Hartnell, of the show runners of the past, of the fandom as a whole and the future of the show itself. CyberLords are whatever, dumb goofy bullshit. Making the Doctor be the most important thing ever and giving them such a shoehorned tragic, mysterious past and also not having it impact her at all No. It doesn't work. It's not good. It speaks volumes about Chibnall that this is what he wants to do and it makes me worried about the future of the show going forward. It also destroys continuity in ways Moffat never dreamed of which is amazing, since he had Clara meet the Doctor as a child in the barn
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Mar 2, 2020 00:49
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Crazy that Chib is doing Extremis-for-2-entire-series, but it was a good episode. Hope he doesn't end up doing lie of the land and pyramid!
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Mar 2, 2020 00:59
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I'm still convinced Jo Martin's Doctor is between 2 and 3 which is why the TARDIS is in the shape of the police box. Especially since they actually have HD quality footage of Pertwee stumbling out of the TARDIS in Spearhead from Space that they can incorporate into the big finale next season or whatever where that gets revealed. I simply can't believe that this "change" is intended to stick, for all his faults I have never gotten the impression that Chibnall was the type who would force his fanfic "origin" ideas onto the show. Even if it turns out he was, I also can't see any future showrunner just not discounting it entirely and giving it the same buried and forgotten treatment that "half human on my mother's side" got. God what a stupid, stupid loving "twist".
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Mar 2, 2020 01:16
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This whole series has been Chibnall's attempt to explain the Morbius Doctors, hasn't it? If the Timeless Child has to be a thing, should have made them Omega, would fit with him helping creating Time Lord society and then getting hosed over.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:20
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Or Hell, Rassilon I'll never understand why New Who took Rassilon, this near mythical, Godlike figure of ambiguity and omnipotence, and made him just a generic bad guy. That's a problem from RTD, where he at least had a good actor who didn't get to do poo poo, and Moffat compounded it. It would have been so easy to just say that was some random Time Lord who took the name Rassilon But no instead he gets to be an angry man who yells at clouds
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Mar 2, 2020 01:23
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marktheando posted:This whole series has been Chibnall's attempt to explain the Morbius Doctors, hasn't it? Doctor Who V38 Patch Notes Fixed - Explanation given for Brain of Morbius scene - Note, this was in response to zero submissions reporting any actual issue Broken - Almost everything else as a result of above bugfix The_Doctor posted:So this episode established the following: The episode also established that none of this meant anything or had any bearing on the character whatsoever, to really hammer home how completely unnecessary it was.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:28
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Never really been bothered by the concept of continuity in Who - it's so loose and contradictory given the nature of the show - but that was fan wanky as hell in all the worst possible ways. It has been quite impressive for Chibnall to swtich the dial from series 11 "oh god please loving do something, this is coma-inducing", to series 12 "here's some bonkers poo poo that will please no-one".
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Mar 2, 2020 01:31
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Jerusalem posted:Doctor Who V38 Patch Notes lol yeah. What a loving hack. The cast and crew deserve a much better show-runner.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:35
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Captain Jack: dont give the last cyberman what it wants [it will lead to a disappointing finale] He tried to warn us
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Mar 2, 2020 01:38
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It kind of reminds me of a weird thing I remember seeing a few people arguing for years and years ago (might not have even been here but some random place online) about the Doctor getting a new TARDIS because the original is too old.... but also the TARDIS would look exactly the same as the current one inside and out. It would just be... newer. So a change for the sake of a change, that actually alters nothing and has no impact other than to piss people off for no reason.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:41
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It's so disappointing because the episode is pretty strong outside of the dumb twist. The Master/Doctor conflict is incredibly well done here.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:46
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Rochallor posted:Ah, this sounds so loving dumb I'm going to have to start watching again. I'll take Goddamn Stupid Who over Boring Who any day. Yeah, this episode was bugfuck nuts and it owned. I am glad Whittaker got a big stupid RTD-styled finale (especially with just how much better the show has gotten at putting its budget onscreen), and appreciated the "what, what, what" at the end.
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Mar 2, 2020 02:25
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The_Doctor posted:Oh god, I just realised this is the same thing JJ Abrams did by retconning Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi. Rian Johnson made it so that Rey came from nothing, and that didn’t matter, because she’s still very strong with the Force. Then JJ came back and decided that wouldn’t stand, I'm super sick of stories about special people being special because they're special. I just re-watched Into the Spider-Verse the other day and its message of "anybody can wear the mask" is not only a more hopeful, appropriate message for these incredibly difficult times, it's also just plain more interesting. I was hoping against hope that it turned out The Master was the timeless child, so that he could contend with the fact that he's as special and important as he's always wanted to be, but it still doesn't matter, and he'll still never be satisfied, because The Doctor is just a better person than him despite coming from nothing. Plus it makes The Master's name a bitchin' pun. This was an act of cultural vandalism. Thankfully, Doctor Who gonna' keep on Doctor Whoin,' so somebody's gonna' fix this or yadda yadda past it and we'll be right back to our TV pals going whenever and wherever there's an adventure to be had.
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Mar 2, 2020 02:27
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WSAENOTSOCK posted:I was hoping against hope that it turned out The Master was the timeless child, so that he could contend with the fact that he's as special and important as he's always wanted to be, but it still doesn't matter, and he'll still never be satisfied, because The Doctor is just a better person than him despite coming from nothing. Plus it makes The Master's name a bitchin' pun. This is also what I'm holding out for, if there has to be a Timeless Child (there doesn't) he would fit in a lot better for all the reasons you mentioned and more besides. And yes there are few things I hate more in media than "chosen one/divine right of blood" bullshit so this in particular has struck a sour note with me. Especially as since has been pointed out many, many, many times before: the 1st Doctor might have been better than most Time Lords but he was still a huge rear end in a top hat who looked down on humans until regular interaction with them made him a better person and he became the moral compass of the show after Ian & Barbara left. Retconning that as he/she was always a highly moral person at odds with the Time Lords for scores (or hundreds, or thousands) of lifetimes before Hartnell is pointless at best and actively making GBS threads on the Doctor's early development in the show at worst.
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Mar 2, 2020 02:39
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