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This drought is killin me, praying we get a new episode sometime before end of year.
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May 17, 2024 04:08
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Eh, if we're lucky we'll probably get something for the 100th anniversary, so make sure your mind's been uploaded to the cloud by then
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May 17, 2024 04:52
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Vinylshadow posted:Eh, if we're lucky we'll probably get something for the 100th anniversary, so make sure your mind's been uploaded to the cloud by then Don't do that, you'll have to make small talk with Chris Addison for 40 years. And I'm sure he's a nice guy but he'd get fed up of me asking him about Dot Comedy and Lab Rats inside of ten minutes.
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May 17, 2024 10:48
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Reminder: please use spoiler tags while discussing Boom until 7:35PM GDT (2:35PM Eastern) on Saturday.
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May 17, 2024 19:07
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In honour of a new Steven Moffat episode, idle rewatch thoughts on some Steven Moffat episodes this new one is hopefully better than! The Doctor's Wife This is another one that's just very pleasant to watch. Looks lovely, I'm a fan of how it recontextualises the whole series without actually retconning anything that's happened, a rare feat. I remember at the time I was tantalised by "the only water in the forest is the river" and wondering what it could mean, ooh what's the symbolism here. Completely forgetting how Idris actually functions, which is that she was just quoting verbatim what someone said in the future. I expect that sounding poetic out of context is why that line was chosen specifically, rather than something that might have been more satisfying to call forward/back to, like "on their wedding night" The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People The Flesh Doctor is the highlight of this one, Matt Smith acting alongside himself and referring to the other one as "m'learned self" is a treat. You can easily guess from how much of a meal they make of it that the original and the duplicate switched places. It's really weird at the end where the Flesh Doctor jovially acknowledges that he's about to die. Writing kludge to speed us along to the epilogue I guess. Not that I'm complaining, this story is not very fun at all and one of just a few I was seriously tempted to skip. But then it wouldn't be a full rewatch! What if Boom calls back to this episode and I miss the reference because I didn't see it? I didn't take notes but I think the bits that establish the Flesh as mostly not actually being alive are in part 1, which makes the Doctor cutting off the signal to Amy at the end of part 2 look pretty cruel, because the audience just spent the second part watching how in "the early days" the Flesh retained some memory when it got disconnected accompanied by some messed up visuals. On a rewatch it's more immediately clear that the Flesh Amy is just goop with no independent life because it collapses into a puddle immediately once the signal is cut, which the "early days" Flesh doesn't. Bit of a confusing plot point, but how lucky would we be if that was the most confusing thing about series 6. A Good Man Goes To War Vastra and Jenny is another one of those things where they seem to be unpopular but I just find them endlessly likeable. I like them being characters from a previous episode we never saw (to the point that Vastra calls back to that non existent episode by quoting something the Doctor said in it) and Jenny just being a regular Victorian young lady who's along for the ride, and her small smile when Vastra does the tongue joke. Speaking of jokes, when The Last Jedi was out did anybody notice that early line when Leia says to C3PO "wipe that nervous look off your face"? I immediately thought back to this episode when I saw that, Rory saying to the cybermen "Where is my wife? Oh don't give me those blank looks". Matt Smith does a great job when River turns up at the end, he feels like savagely angry. It's a lot more unsettling than him bellowing about Colonel Runaway. Let's Kill Hitler I've undertaken a feat of Herculean strength to try and move the lens I view this episode through. It's the resolution of a kidnapped baby plotline. By any reasonable measure, the parents should have their child returned at the end and bow gratefully out of the narrative. Instead, they find out that their daughter is lost to them forever and return to having weekly adventures. By any reasonable measure, this is ludicrous. When I first watched, I hated it so much that it poisoned my opinion of the whole of the rest of series 6. BUT! Moffat's style of remixing and reapplying similar themes to his stories does mean that this episode can be looked at differently. Instead of looking at it through the same lens as, say, Journey's End, where crisis is averted and plot threads are tied up in a satisfying and/or tragic manner, maybe this episode is better served by treating it as an analogue to The Big Bang, to which it's basically a sequel anyway. In that story, the crisis isn't averted. The worst happens, and then it gets fixed. The next step thematically would be to have the worst happen in a way that can't be fixed. SO! This episode isn't about rescuing the kidnapped child, it's about how about some things can't be fixed, but they can be helped. They do this by having a zany adventure over the course of which Amy and Rory fulfill their parental responsibility and teach their daughter who she is, with the help of the Doctor exposing her to joy, love, romance, and heroism. To put it pithily, Amy is made better by making River better. quote:CLARA: We've got enough warriors. Any old idiot can be a hero. Moffat really lucked out with some of the verbiage and plot points here. The Tardis voice interface says "regeneration disabled" which obviously means the poison somehow prevents him from regenerating. So then it's a bit weird when River purges the poison by giving him her regenerations. But it's completely compatible with the Time Of The Doctor reveal that he's on his last life. The ending even makes more sense that way- he couldn't regenerate the poison away because he didn't have any regeneration energy left, so River just gives him some. There's a good setup/payoff thing with the finale that works with that inferred theme of healing: the Tesselecta is shown here torturing River to punish her for murdering the Doctor; the same technology will later be put to much better use: stopping the murder from happening in the first place.
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May 17, 2024 23:25
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Went back looking for something and turns out I never posted my big rear end post about the first 2 eps and now it's lost to time tl;dr show good Edward Mass posted:Reminder: please use spoiler tags while discussing Boom until 7:35PM GDT (2:35PM Eastern) on Saturday. Can we make fun of the Doctor for stepping on a mine that looks like a roomba? A boomba?
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May 17, 2024 23:31
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Oh hey new steven moffat episode coming out in a few minutes. Time is a flat circle.
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May 17, 2024 23:54
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Ooh, the Church Militant and Villengard, nice.
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May 18, 2024 00:11
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Don't know whether to laugh or be infuriated by Thoughts and Prayers
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May 18, 2024 00:18
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I love this pairing between Gatwa and Gibson, they gel so well.
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May 18, 2024 00:28
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"I'm a much bigger explosion than I look.... and I know how I look."
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May 18, 2024 00:36
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this is episode is very very good
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May 18, 2024 00:44
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Confusedslight posted:this is episode is very very good It's excellent, the Moffat/RTD pairing continues to rule.
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May 18, 2024 00:45
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Jerusalem posted:Don't know whether to laugh or be infuriated by Thoughts and Prayers It's beautifully succinct in boiling down what's already a meaningless phrase into something all but divorced from having to express anything at all. It's basically 'gesundheit'.
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May 18, 2024 00:46
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Loved the episode right up until the very end. Not the climax of the story, though it was a bit of an asspull, but the Doctor whooping it up when two people just died in front of their loved ones. Doctor Who often has this problem where we get a "happy ending" where the people smiling and waving the Doctor off should be devastated wrecks. And yeah, some of that was mitigated in the denouement, but not all of it. It was some really severe tonal whiplash.
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May 18, 2024 00:47
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Random Stranger posted:Loved the episode right up until the very end. Not the climax of the story, though it was a bit of an asspull, but the Doctor whooping it up when two people just died in front of their loved ones. Doctor Who often has this problem where we get a "happy ending" where the people smiling and waving the Doctor off should be devastated wrecks. And yeah, some of that was mitigated in the denouement, but not all of it. It was some really severe tonal whiplash. I get what you mean, and it did stand out to me too, but I also can forgive it considering the Doctor had been working so hard for so long to keep his emotional state in check to prevent the explosion, and then he was free and clear AND he got to see a miracle of sorts when something that was just the barest scraps of the memory of a father was enough to shut down a monstrous, soulless corporation and turn it into something helpful. So him just kind of exploding with emotions at that point made sense to me. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 01:01 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 00:55
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the line "i like fish fingers and custard and i will be coming back from time to time" is surely moffat speaking directly to the audience right?
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May 18, 2024 00:58
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Not one Moffat's best Tone is super weird in parts, especially at the end with the Doctor dancing with a kid who just lost their Dad. Also kid is sort of an idiot, and written to be completely ignorant of war? They were also a mile away from base, why is a kid wandering out that deep into a battlefield? Darwin award level poo poo. You know how in a lot of sci-fi all the made up parts can be as weird as they like, as long as the logic groks together well? Especially Moffat stories? I didn't get that here at all, and it just comes across as all a bit half arsed. Things like the AI using the Doctor to jump across to the Ambulance.. and just.. how does that work? How does the soldier shooting the Doctor with, I'm assuming a full power rifle, not blow his arm off? Because he's currently a magic quantum event? Cause the mine converted him into a bomb, now he's invulnerable to anything but the mine? Also the smart solution seemed to be "Have the Algorithm calculate how much of a loss it will be if I explode and turn half this planet into a crater. Would that still be acceptable?!" I dunno, felt like Moffat must have gone through something and he's preaching to the audience via the script. I'll give it another rewatch later, but I don't think I like the episode. (Ncuti still acting his chops off. Dude can emote well)
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May 18, 2024 01:24
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The kid being there in the first place is a contrivance to make the script work, rather than in service to it. The premise is "Power of Dad overcomes the AI", which falls apart if the kid isn't on the battlefield in the first place. Just have it be a love interest instead of a kid, and it still works. None of the parts of this script really work. It's all just convoluted nonsense. Hell even Space Babies works. Baby farm -> abandoned -> worker stays behind to help -> station goes a bit haywire to try to keep things working -> oops, I accidentally a booger monster. You don't get that same flow here. Rare miss by Moffat
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May 18, 2024 01:34
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Mundy had her rifle set to minimum. Like, did you miss the part where it's the same gun Ruby takes and Mundy is totally cool being shot with? Seems pretty clear the intention is it'll sting, maybe even burn a little, but isn't 'blow you to bits' bad at that level. And the AI thing was pretty blatantly going off physical connection. Doctor is plugged into ambulance, and Doctor is holding the AI. Sure it's silly, but not really a leap by Doctor Who standards. Also, yes, the smart solution would be what you said, but it's not satisfying to win that way if there's no personal antagonist (You want someone to storm off, mad that they've been outfoxed at their own game, a computer algorithm won't do that). Moffat's always been very much into the idea that the power of human emotion can overcome heartless number crunching, this is just another example. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 02:08 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 02:05
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I'm not gonna try to quote just part of that post on my phone but re the arm. The gun was on reduced power or whatever wasn't it? She told Ruby, shoot me in my arm, it's OK I have it on level 1. Or something like that As for the tone, I thought that was weird at first but I realized the kid sees death differently. She was fine that her dad was dead, she got to chat with his AI and look at pictures. I think Mundy probably would have been more upset but she's also a soldier person who's been presumably watching a ton of people die cause of the ville whatever protocol. Plus, I'm sure shes happy since she knows the war just ended and the landmine that was about to blow the planet in half was averted Gaz-L posted:Mundy had her rifle set to minimum. Like, did you miss the part where it's the same gun Ruby takes and Mundy is totally cool being shot with? Seems pretty clear the intention is it'll sting, maybe even burn a little, but isn't 'blow you to bits' bad at that level. During Chibnalls run I had a lot of 'wtf that doesn't make any sense that would never happen on doctor who' moments. Then I went back and looked and realized that doctor who has always been about whatever wacky techno babble is needed to move the plot along. It's always been the furthest thing from hard scifi and I couldnt blame that on Chibnall. 14 was just whipping up shields with his sonic not that long ago. Forgot my thoughts on the episode. it was OK. Not bad not great. I liked the anti capitalism stuff though. I liked it but I didn't love it. The doctor ignoring what happened with the snow and ruby entirely once everything was safe was weird. Not even a single word about it. Resdfru fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 02:08
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Say the line, Bart! robot things eeriely repeating the same phrase. Mid tier RTD/Moffat, but that's pretty drat good to me. It was nice to hear his particular style of dialogue again.
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May 18, 2024 02:27
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What was with the mantra the Doctor was using to calm himself? Something about a moon and the President's wife?
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May 18, 2024 02:39
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Gaz-L posted:What was with the mantra the Doctor was using to calm himself? Something about a moon and the President's wife? It's a reference to a few different things Missy says across Season Nine
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May 18, 2024 02:45
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Gaz-L posted:What was with the mantra the Doctor was using to calm himself? Something about a moon and the President's wife? "I went down to the beach and there she stood dark and tall at the edge of the wood. "The sky's too big, I'm scared," I cried. She replied,"Young man, don't you know there's more to life than the moon and the President's wife?" I don't know if it is an existing poem or something cobbled together by Moffat for the show, but the mantra was intended to calm him down to avoid setting off the landmine. I recall during his time as showrunner he had an episode where he included a bit about the Doctor running away with the President's wife (or daughter?) which it might have been a reference to? I wasn't a fan of that line the first time it came up, it plays into that same "The Doctor was always a free-spirited wanderer/adventurer even before he left Gallifrey" stuff I didn't like about Chibnall's writing, since I'm a big proponent of the Doctor only truly really becoming the moral force for good they are now based on their exposure to and travels with Ian and Barbara initially and then all the companions that followed.
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May 18, 2024 02:50
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Okay, the "dad to dad" thing felt like something they dwelled upon. I'm starting to think the Doctor mentioning his family might really be about more than the connection to Ruby trying to find her birth mother. I liked the beginning of this one a lot more than the end. There was a point when it felt like Stephen Moffat Doctor Who idea soup and for reason some that just kind of works, lol. The "too late" love story felt like it was from a different episode. Like I don't mind revisiting that horror concept from the library two-parter, the angel two-parter, etc. (loved one dies and is replaced by some horrifying simulacrum of them), but for some reason trying to incorporate it into two stories instead of one, like he was rushing to get out every concept he'd ever wanted to do with the construct, was what gave it the tonal dissonance at the end. They didn't really gel together emotionally in a way that you can play a Murray Gold soundtrack over it and have the Doctor say something about death. Anyway, minor complaints, to be honest. It wasn't one of Moffat's best, but it still had a real "Oh, hell, Doctor Who is back" feeling. Bicyclops fucked around with this message at 02:56 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 02:53
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Jerusalem posted:I don't know if it is an existing poem or something cobbled together by Moffat for the show, but the mantra was intended to calm him down to avoid setting off the landmine. I recall during his time as showrunner he had an episode where he included a bit about the Doctor running away with the President's wife (or daughter?) which it might have been a reference to? I wasn't a fan of that line the first time it came up, it plays into that same "The Doctor was always a free-spirited wanderer/adventurer even before he left Gallifrey" stuff I didn't like about Chibnall's writing, since I'm a big proponent of the Doctor only truly really becoming the moral force for good they are now based on their exposure to and travels with Ian and Barbara initially and then all the companions that followed. The first time we hear that anecdote it's Missy telling a story about the doctor running off with "the president's wife" and she admits she's lying about part of it. The second time we hear the story (from Ohlia, I think?) it's "president's daughter". I've always assumed it was an oblique (and therefore deniable) lore drop about Susan.
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May 18, 2024 03:00
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Interview with Moffat; Contains spoilers for BoomJerusalem posted:Oh uhhh... yeah, this also contains a MASSIVE loving SPOILER FOR NEXT SEASON so don't read this interview if you don't want to know https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/doctor-who-steven-moffat-boom-easter-eggs-casting-reveal-1235903042/ https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/steven-moffat-doctor-who-boom-interview/ quote:When Steven Moffat returned to Doctor Who, the Time Lords laughed. Vinylshadow fucked around with this message at 03:14 on May 18, 2024 |
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May 18, 2024 03:02
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The Doctor told the truth to Clara later:quote:CLARA: Was she nice, the President's wife?
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May 18, 2024 03:03
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Vinylshadow posted:Interview with Moffat; Contains spoilers for Boom Oh uhhh... yeah, this also contains a MASSIVE loving SPOILER FOR NEXT SEASON so don't read this interview if you don't want to know (I didn't want to know  )
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May 18, 2024 03:09
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I liked that episode a lot. I’d say it was not as good as Moffat’s previous episodes under RTD (that’s a very high bar) but I would put it towards the top of the list of episodes he wrote when he was showrunnner.
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May 18, 2024 03:46
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Bicyclops posted:The "too late" love story felt like it was from a different episode. Like I don't mind revisiting that horror concept from the library two-parter, the angel two-parter, etc. (loved one dies and is replaced by some horrifying simulacrum of them), but for some reason trying to incorporate it into two stories instead of one, like he was rushing to get out every concept he'd ever wanted to do with the construct, was what gave it the tonal dissonance at the end. They didn't really gel together emotionally in a way that you can play a Murray Gold soundtrack over it and have the Doctor say something about death. That was something I liked. A lot of the episode was about escalating the situation. Okay, maybe we didn't need the Doctor to be a really big bomb that would kill everything, though that gave us a "why don't they just runaway?" excuse. But the way complication piled upon complication and hopes were constantly being built up and then shattered worked really well in the episode. That aspect of the script was really sharp and "Here's a cathartic release as these two people in a bad situation found each other... whoops, he's dead," plays into that structure. I wouldn't want every episode to be an assault on your feelings like that, but for this story I think it works. And, yes, they are really hammering the family theme hard this season. That's not a complaint; RTD obviously said "We're doing a story about family!" and then geared everything in the season around that. Now if we don't get something that ties it all together in with a bow at the end, then I'll complain, but right now it just feels like it's the theme of the show for this season and they're trying out all the options they can.
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May 18, 2024 03:55
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Boom spoilers: I mean, Moffat doing his stuff very deliberately (and there's Susan Twist as the ambulances, so there, whatever there turns out to be). I thought the "thoughts and prayers" was brutal and effective, and the political criticism was on-point. OTOH, watch all the people who liked to loved this episode dance around why this ending works and Closing Time's doesn't. This one's even more tenuous: AI recreation is more human than the James Corden character? (If he were playing himself that might be different.) I bought the Doctor's glee as a release of emotion after the situation gets resolved, as well as a recognition of how it was resolved. I mean, the episode is textually claiming the AI dad is more than just a simple AI, so saying "he's dead, he's not gone" registers. What mom being "gathered" has yet to be revealed, of course, and that may be important later (especially as the Doctor promises to come back later and check in on these characters). But his joy isn't just survival and saving Ruby and Splice, it's joy at his own faith being justified: his faith in love, in fatherhood, in the human spirit, great enough to transcend death. I will say though that Cant's death lands at the moment it happens and then vanishes entirely. I'll say that "the Doctor ends a war while standing on a landmine" is accurate but the episode didn't give me anything I expected in how that worked out, to the extent of offering solutions that didn't work. But it absolutely fits into this season's "callbacks to lots of past episodes," not just in terms of Moffat's usual tricks, but one of the Doctor's solutions being the Mummy on the Orient Express solution. I've already mentioned the Closing Time callback, and of course the corporation is an ongoing Moffat callback. "Snow isn't snow until it falls" seems like a season-arc important statement. No idea how as yet. "Time Lord" being special as opposed to "the Doctor" being special does pretty much suggest we're getting another Time Lord at some stage, though whether it's Susan or not remains to be seen. Speculation: I wonder if the Susan Twist character(s) are a future/past figure (a Time Lord or Pantheon member) or if we're getting something really sneaky and it's the Great Intelligence? Definitely something Timey Wimey, but from when?
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May 18, 2024 04:46
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drat, I really liked that. However Splice was an absolute idiot. Everyone’s tensely shouting at eachother, and she’s just happily ignoring it all to look at photos with her dAId? Also the epilogue went on for slightly too long, hugs and all. But fine, everything before was really good, and tense and emotional, and a couple of times while watching I realised I was holding my breath. Which is pretty good going for Doctor Who. Also, they’ve been travelling 6 months and haven’t done an alien world yet?
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May 18, 2024 04:48
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I really enjoyed this episode. So much better then the first two in my mind.
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May 18, 2024 05:10
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The_Doctor posted:drat, I really liked that. It does make me think, as others have speculated, there is a good chance the initial episode order has been changed up, and Devil's Chord was meant to be a little later than it was.
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May 18, 2024 05:46
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Jerusalem posted:It does make me think, as others have speculated, there is a good chance the initial episode order has been changed up, and Devil's Chord was meant to be a little later than it was. That would make sense, yeah, fair enough.
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May 18, 2024 06:03
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This episode was on track to be an all-timer Moffat one-off, but about the time Canto gets bumped off it's too loosely held together to land well. Still a perfectly enjoyable episode, but it's frustrating to think how close it is to being a stone-cold classic and just not quite getting there. Also, pretty sure they used the Volume for like the one time a quarry would have been perfectly acceptable, so big boo on that.
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May 18, 2024 07:17
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This one felt like a Mash-Up of The Best of Moffat's Favorite Tropes. I enjoyed it a lot. Not the best; not the worst; just good Dr. Who.
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May 18, 2024 11:45
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 14:35 |
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Rochallor posted:This episode was on track to be an all-timer Moffat one-off, but about the time Canto gets bumped off it's too loosely held together to land well. Still a perfectly enjoyable episode, but it's frustrating to think how close it is to being a stone-cold classic and just not quite getting there. I dunno if they actually used the volume, but at the end it felt like a matte painting and that was good to me. It made it feel like classic sci-fi. Sometimes the fact that a vista doesn't quite feel real adds to something.
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May 18, 2024 12:55
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