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CobiWann posted:And some hugs.  Edit: Actually, since I'm posting links - here are most of the gifs I've posted over the years in the various threads: William Hartnell | Patrick Troughton | Jon Pertwee | Tom Baker | Peter Davison | Colin Baker | Sylvester McCoy | Paul McGann | Christopher Eccleston | David Tennant | Matt Smith | Peter Capaldi Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Nov 21, 2014 |
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Nov 21, 2014 00:13
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Almost one year ago now, the BBC culminated their celebration of the 50th Year since Doctor Who first aired with the special episode The Day of the Doctor, a 75 minute extravaganza that was simulcast in 94 countries to what felt like near universal acclaim. The special was very much tied in to the idea of the show being 50 years old, and was utterly unabashed about celebrating that, going so far as to recreate the opening of the original episode including use of black and white and the original opening theme/credits. It was absolutely the right move and helped make the episode feel as special as it should have, but there was always a fear that this might age it somewhat or make it difficult to enjoy outside of the 50th Year context. One year later, I still think Day of the Doctor is an exceptional episode of Doctor Who, up there with the very best the show has done and most definitely the best ever "multi-Doctor" story. It works both as a bridge between the classic and revival series, the RTD and Moffat eras of the revival, and as a capstone to the long-running theme of the Time War and the Doctor's "survivor's guilt", while setting a potential new direction for the show to follow in the future. It's also a tremendous amount of fun and has a beautiful resolution in which the Doctor discovers yet again that when forced to make an impossible choice he can and WILL find some crazy, nonsensical plan that allows him to forge an alternate path. It's a repudiation of the "mature" decision he feels he has to make to drat billions to save trillions - he'll be childish and stubborn and foolish and save EVERYBODY and just because it's impossible why should that stop him? Best of all, it's a human companion who gives him the inspiration to do that, who somehow both grounds him and reminds him of what an inspirational figure he can and should be. The episode opens at Coal Hill School, where An Unearthly Child introduced us to the Doctor's first companions. Clara Oswald now works there as a teacher, having apparently finally moved on from her role as a quasi-nanny for her dead friend's family. When The Name of the Doctor ended, Clara was lost and splintered and bemoaned to the Doctor that she didn't know who she was, a nod perhaps to her status through most of season 7 as the perfect companion: her character and motivations entirely dependent on whatever the Doctor needed at that time. While it wouldn't be till season 8 that we would finally get an idea of just who Clara Oswald is as a person, in this story we see that since that last episode she and the Doctor have developed a closer friendship without secrets or suspicions between them. Joining him in the TARDIS, their reunion is interrupted by UNIT "collecting" the TARDIS, having apparently not thought to check beforehand if the Doctor was inside. This leads to some lovely physical comedy from Smith, channeling a little Harold Lloyd as he echoes his initial appearance way back in The Eleventh Hour by hanging out of the TARDIS. Somebody noted shortly after this episode that Smith somehow manages to move his body in a way you'd usually expect from a cartoon, and it is a pretty great description of an actor who has often been referred to as an old man in a young body, an alien, Frankenstein's Creature, or Moffat's own "a young body assembled from memory by a committee of old men."   Kate Stewart of UNIT is looking for the Doctor because of an incident in the "Under Gallery" of the National Gallery, a secret place hiding pieces of art considered in some way a threat to the security of the United Kingdom. Here is where the links are first made to the other two Doctors who will appear in this story - David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and John Hurt as the mysterious "War Doctor", first seen in the last episode of season 7 as a hidden incarnation of the Doctor locked away in the deepest corner of his subconscious mind. It is the inclusion of this character that could have potentially derailed the special, thrusting a new version of the Doctor in and pretending like he'd already been there sounds like a recipe for disaster. Thankfully John Hurt isn't phoning it in at all and slips into the role like an old comfortable pair of slippers, and the writing/characterization is surprisingly strong given that this version of the Doctor literally didn't exist before 2013. One issue with the Time War was that it required at some point one of the pre-existing Doctors to have "failed", to have reached a point where they did what was necessary and were personally responsible for the deaths of billions. The guy getting that particular short end of the stick was Paul McGann, as Eccleston's immediate predecessor it was assumed that he was the one who eventually made that call, who gave in after the immense pressure became too much for him and betrayed the ideal of what it meant to be "the Doctor" and not only fought in the war but used a weapon of MASS destruction to end it. The Name of the Doctor and the wonderfully unexpected Night of the Doctor put paid to that idea at last, as the 8th Doctor was shown to have held to his ideals till the end, dying because he refused to leave the side of a human who hated him even though he could have easily escaped. Instead John Hurt's unnumbered incarnation of the Doctor stepped in to do what none of the other personalities could tolerate... and this special tells us the heartwarming story of how even when committed to doing the unthinkable this was an incarnation that still thought like, wanted to be, and ultimately deserved to be named "the Doctor". The 11th Doctor and Clara are shown a piece of Gallifreyan art that has somehow found its way to earth, an actual captured moment of time detailing the Fall of Arcadia, the second greatest city of Gallifrey. The Doctor flashes back to his time as the War Doctor, when he returned to his home planet on the final day of the Time War and stole the last of the forbidden weapons from the Omega Archive, a weapon so monstrously powerful that even with the fate of the universe at stake the Time Lord's didn't dare use it. It is "The Moment", first referenced in The End of Time, and what makes it so dangerous isn't its enormous destructive capabilities (it can destroy entire galaxies just by thinking about it) but the fact that it is sentient. The Moment is essentially the same as a TARDIS mind but capable of articulation with linear beings, and because it has a conscience it will put any who attempt to use it through an emotional and psychological wringer to force them to understand the ramifications of their actions. Played by Billie Piper (though more specifically as the Bad Wolf rather than Rose), the Moment demonstrates how ill-served she was by her time as Rose Tyler, especially the bizarre meta-Rose who she became in season 4. Piper's performance in this episode is excellent, and though she shares screentime with the other actors her only interactions are with John Hurt, removing any chance of once again wallowing in the awful Doctor/Rose "romance" of the RTD years. Questioning if the War Doctor has really considered the ramifications of using it to end the Time War, the Moment allows him to see his own future. Connected by, of all things, a Fez, the 11th Doctor finds himself in England in 1562 meeting the 10th Doctor in the middle of an encounter with Queen Elizabeth I, and shortly after they're joined by the War Doctor, which is when the already compelling story becomes something truly special.    Tennant and Smith play wonderfully off each other, bringing back that old classic Troughton/Pertwee bickering double-act. Things get even better when the War Doctor shows up and is horrified to discover how young he becomes, pondering if he is suffering a mid-life crisis after initially mistaking them as his successor's companions. Despite being entirely a Moffat creation for the late revival, John Hurt's Doctor somehow manages to come across as a classic series Doctor, confused and irritated at many of the idiosyncrasies we've come to expect of the revival-era Doctors. Kissing humans, waving screwdrivers around like water pistols, using nonsensical phrases like "Timey-Wimey" (the Tenth Doctor throws the 11th under the bus on that one!) - he grumpily proclaims that he doesn't know who they are, that he doesn't recognize himself in them at all. This is the necessary conflict, the initial humorous bickering giving way to accusations and recriminations as they discuss the end of the Time War while locked in a dungeon. The Moment gives them the nudge they need by reminding the War Doctor that their sonic screwdrivers are the same software in a different casing, a none-too-subtle reference to the Doctors themselves, and all three realize that they can bypass hundreds of years of calculations in a matter of seconds by taking advantage of their unique situation. Working out a calculation to essentially disintegrate the door holding them in, they congratulate each other on their cleverness before getting a wonderful ego-puncture when Clara bursts through the door which was never actually locked. There are two stories running through this episode, with the moral message of one obviously meant to serve as a parallel to the greater overarching narrative of the War Doctor's decision on whether to use the Moment or not. An old classic series race of shapeshifters called the Zygons have lost their planet, yet another victim of the Time War (and thus their presence on Earth is essentially the Doctor's fault) and made it to Earth in 1562. Using stolen Time Lord technology (the same stasis cubes used to make the painting of the Fall of Arcadia) they are storing themselves in suspended animation within various pieces of artwork, and will emerge once Earth's technology has reached a suitably comfortable level of advancement for them to enjoy. After a series of humorous cases of mistaken identity by the 10th Doctor (lampooning his penchant for brooding speeches, showing off his cleverness, and getting "romantic") he finds himself accidentally married to Queen Elizabeth I, which is the reason for all the frequent jokes about the Virgin Queen that have appeared throughout the revival. For some bizarre reason I never understood there were people who legitimately thought until this episode actually aired that the series was flat out saying the Doctor had sex with the Queen and that it wouldn't turn out to have been a bizarre misunderstanding/misinterpretation of events in an as yet unseen adventure. That particular running joke finally gets put to rest here as, shock of shocks, it turns out that those (bad) jokes were down to a bizarre misunderstanding/misinterpretation of events in a now seen adventure. Promising to return as soon as his mission is complete (a lie that will lead to the arrival of an older, far angrier Queen in season 3's The Shakespeare Code), the Doctors and Clara prepare to return to the 21st Century where the Zygons have started to emerge, using the 10th Doctor's TARDIS which gets even more confused about tenses when it discovers three Doctors onboard.   In the 21st Century, the UNIT science crew have been captured and impersonated by Zygons but also escaped and made their own way into the "Black Archive" to confront the alien menace. The Black Archive is another new addition to the show that pretends like it has been around all along, but like the War Doctor it is one that makes sense and is inserted smoothly into the show without feeling like it has been forced in. Filled with dangerous technology and information on every contemporary human companion (or alien companion that spent time on contemporary Earth), it has been designed to prevent the TARDIS from entering out of fear of how the Doctor will react to what they are hoarding and the information they've collected on him. Unfortunately for them, now the Doctor can't get inside while Kate Stewart and her Zygon counterpart find themselves in a standoff over an armed nuclear warhead beneath the archive that will destroy London if it goes off. The parallels between Kate's decision and the War Doctor's are obvious and not exactly subtle, and she is making the same decision that we know the War Doctor will eventually make - to let many die to save many more. The Zygon wants to live, of course, but is hardly the good guy in this since it is planning to conquer the Earth, so it is a problem with no solution that won't involve death or destruction. And to that the Doctors say bullshit, there is ALWAYS another way.   In what is essentially The Veil of Ignorance, the Doctors selectively wipe the memories of the Zygons and Humans present in the room so that neither knows which is which any longer. This causes both Kates to immediately halt the countdown because if THEY are the Zygon they don't want to die, and the Doctors declare that they're now going to work out a peace treaty between the races.... and they better make sure both sides get treated fairly because for all they know, THEY could be on the losing side if they don't. After spending multiple incarnations trying and failing to get humans to work out peaceful co-existence with other alien races (remember how badly things went in Hungry Earth/Cold Blood?), he's finally figured out how thanks to help from his other incarnations - he'll just temporarily remove all prejudice, sense of entitlement, or attempts to pull a fast one so they have no choice but to be entirely fair. The best thing is that this solution is earned, making use of various things introduced throughout the episode, a quality paralleled by the overarching narrative of the War Doctor's pondering of his own situation. In a truly sweet moment, the awkward but endearing UNIT tech Osgood and her Zygon duplicate work out which of them is human and which Zygon.... and both silently and happily agree to shut their mouths and say nothing and allow the perfect peace treaty to be formed. It's a moment that tells us that both sides are ultimately deserving of their place on Earth, and given the nature of the Zygons' shapeshifting abilities, it is a peace treaty that can exist without impacting on the status quo of contemporary modern earth, allowing it to remain familiar to viewers as being possibly the same as our own world. With the Zygon threat gone, the War Doctor is able to sit back and ponder what his own future brings. His initial fears and distaste for his successors is gone and he he now considers them with pride and a small measure of longing - these men are "the Doctor", they have earned that title in a way he feels he himself has not. Clara, proving her insight, is the first to figure out that he has not yet used the Moment, with both the 10th and 11th just assuming they'd met him AFTER he did it. Unfortunately for her, the War Doctor has taken the lesson from this adventure that he must do what he does in order to "light the fire" for his future selves, so that they will have the strength of character to help the universe left over after the end of the Time War, to be in place to solve this Zygon crisis now. He tells the still unseen by everybody else Moment that he is ready, and to Clara's surprise she looks away for a moment and he is gone. Back in the barn that he carried the Moment to (as it accurately notes, he doesn't want the TARDIS to see him commit this obscene act), the Doctor prepares to do the moment we have all been told over the previous seven seasons that he (or rather, A Doctor) did. In season 8's Listen we'd learn this barn had a particular significance to the Doctor, but for now all we know is that it is a desolate place where he came to be alone as he performed an act he and the rest of the universe would consider abhorrent. The Moment isn't done teaching him lessons though, and though she provides him with the "big, red button" he asked for she makes him wait a moment to ask him a question. What follows is one of the most inspiring moments of the episode to me: Moment: You know the sound the TARDIS makes? That wheezing, groaning. That sound brings hope wherever it goes. War Doctor: Yes. Yes, I like to think it does. Moment: To anyone who hears it, Doctor. Anyone, however lost..... even you. And then the sound of the TARDIS is heard, and before his astonished eyes the 10th and 11th Doctors show up in a place they CAN'T be in, in a time that all the laws of time say it is impossible for them to be. They know it too, the 10th Doctor saying the Time Lock should have prevented them from arriving and the 11th Doctor noting that this means that something has let them through. Why are they here? Because Clara has told them that the War Doctor hasn't made his decision yet, so they're here to tell him something. What is that? That he doesn't have to do it? That he shouldn't do it? No, they're here to tell him that not only should he do it, but that they will help him. Before the Moment's disappointed eyes, all three place their hands on the button and agree to share in the moment, gifting the War Doctor with the only absolution he could ever hope for - telling him that they were wrong and that he more than anybody else deserves the name of the Doctor, because he was the Doctor on the day it was impossible to be so. And that is what the entire story has seemed to build to, an acknowledgement of the status quo set in place by RTD in series 1 as a way to bypass much of the baggage of the show's continuity. The Time War had to end this way, the Doctor had to make the decision to kill all those people (and all those children) to save so many more. It's the mature thing to do, the acknowledgement that sometimes you can't pull a magic solution out of your hat, and that this wasn't a failure on the War Doctor's part but a decision that they are all complicit in, ALL Doctors - including those that follow, because they were him so they did it too, and now they'll do it again. Because it is necessary. Because it is the only option. Because it HAS to happen.  And to that the Doctors say bullshit, there is ALWAYS another way.  I have always said the best companions are those who ground the Doctor, and by that I mean they are the ones who show him a better way. They remind him of his "humanity" for want of a better word, of his need to not lose the details by looking at the bigger picture, to remember all those little "unimportant" people who are ALL so very, very important. It is best shown here when, of the three Doctors present, the only one who actually has a companion (the Moment doesn't count) is the one who stops for a moment and allows an outside voice in. Clara is in tears, telling him that she never imagined HIM as doing this thing that he's only ever told her about as a thing of the past, an action of a past incarnation. Clara points to them all - a warrior and a hero so what does that make him? She wants him to be a Doctor, and reminds him of what he told her in The Name of the Doctor - that his name is a promise. What was that promise? To never be cruel or cowardly, to never give up and give in. And in that moment, the 11th Doctor realizes that yes there IS another way, a mad way that has no hope in hell of working but gently caress it he's going to do it anyway! Why? Because he's the Doctor and being the Doctor means that when you've got two terrible options and have to choose one, you find a third way and at least TRY to take it. He's been breaking rules all his lives, so why stop now? Everything that follows is essentially a gigantic, unapologetic wallowing in the show's history. Coming up with a plan that, like with the Zygons, makes use of every element introduced throughout the body of the story so far, they return to Gallifrey in the midst of the final day of the Time War and report to the War Council of Gallifrey that they have a plan... a terrible plan that probably won't work, but they're going to do it anyway. Using the stasis cube technology and their individual TARDISes, they're going to shove the ENTIRE planet of Gallifrey into a single moment of time locked away in a pocket universe. The General of the War Council is horrified, they'll be lost outside of the universe with no way back, but the Doctor reminds him that they still have hope, a hope that one day that shall come back (yes, they shall come back), which is more than they have now. As the assembled Dalek fleet continues to pound the planet, the Doctor reveals an even bigger version of the earlier seen sonic screwdriver plan - the calculations to work out how to apply the stasis technology to the entire planet would take hundreds of years if not well over 1000 years.... but the Doctor has been working on this all his lives. Introduced by a pitch-perfect impersonation of Hartnell announcing his presence to the War Council, every single Doctor from the 50 years of the show's existence appears on the scene, much to the General's astonishment/horror - it's all 12 of them? "No sir," corrects his aide,"All thirteen!"   So in this the 50th year celebration of Doctor Who we get not only the appearance of the original 7 classic series Doctors and the TV movie's Paul McGann, but the first ever appearance of the 12th Doctor himself, Peter Capaldi. Every Doctor appears together in a scene that left me gasping the first time I saw it, an exhibition in excess that absolutely works thanks to the unique nature of this special episode. So Moffat ties everything up in a neat little knot as he so often attempts (successfully in season 5, not quite as well in season 6), getting his cake and eating it too as he leaves the impression of the Time War intact while "cheating" the result and removing Gallifrey from the universe instead of destroying it. The Daleks destroy themselves in the crossfire of their surrounding fleet suddenly no longer having a target, even showing a single Dalek being blown away, one that will presumably fall through time and space screaming and end up in the season one episode Dalek. We don't see the Emperor but know he'll end up in a similar position, but neither of them will be privy to the exact actions of what the Doctors did - all they'll know is that something happened and Gallifrey and the Time Lords were gone, the Time War over and them left to try to rebuild their once formidable armies, something they will ultimately fail to do. Joining the 10th and 11th Doctors in the National Gallery in a world now presumably occupied by both humans and Zygons, the War Doctor ponders that he'll never know if they actually succeeded in saving Gallifrey or not... and also realizes that due to the screwed up nature of hanging around with his future incarnations, he will have no memory of the fact he ended up at least TRYING to save Gallifrey. As far as he will know, he took the Moment into that barn, did something, and Gallifrey and the Daleks were gone. The Doctors will live with that guilt until this moment when they are the 11th Doctor... but that's okay, he and they can live with that because they know they did the right thing, and he finally accepts the name of the Doctor, because he finally lived up to that promise he made to himself. The War Doctor says his goodbyes and leaves, not at all surprised (quite pleased even) when he realizes that he is regenerating, echoing the 1st Doctor's words when he declares that he is wearing a bit thin. Sadly, we cut away from his regeneration JUST before we can see Eccleston's face, a result of the actor eventually deciding not to take part in the special (though he did strongly consider it and it wasn't a snap,"gently caress off I don't want anything to do with it" reaction). Meanwhile, the 10th Doctor convinces the 11th to tell him where their fate is leading them, since he won't remember any of this either. Learning about their fated death at Trenzalore, he unknowingly echoes his future "I don't want to go!" from The End of Time but otherwise departs in high spirits, and though he won't remember "fixing" his actions at the end of the Time War, I'd like to think residual happiness is responsible for his irritably cheerful attitude towards the Ood at the start of The End of Time.   I've basically been all  this entire review and I think with good reason, because it's a really goddamn great episode. That said, yeah of course there are issues and problems with it because no work is perfect. Again, I have to say that many issues I might have had more trouble with were smoothed over by the overall sense of joy that permeates the entire episode, the unabashed celebration of the show that is Doctor Who. The War Doctor IS a complete retcon of events and a shoving in of an entirely new Doctor into established events, the kind of thing that Joseph Lidster gets so wrong but that Moffat - in this case - got so right. The absence of Chistopher Eccleston is a drat shame, but anybody who says that the War Doctor is just the 9th Doctor with a find/replace run through the script is being ridiculous, as the characters couldn't be more different. It would have been nice to have the classic series actors dub in new lines for the "ALL THE DOCTORS!" scene rather than just sampling pre-existing episodes. The Time War is also such a mind-bending concept that any even tiny slice of that action is inevitably going to be a disappointment because it can't match up to the crazy poo poo you come up with in your own head. I think they go some way towards blunting that by having the action take place so explicitly on the LAST DAY of the Time War, when all the crazy time-bending, reality-altering weapons and strategies and craziness has been reduced to a flat out infantry attack on the capital city of the losing side. It's effectively The Battle of Berlin - the might of one force has been reduced to nothing but frightened and underequipped conscripts getting blasted from all sides as their leadership squabbles and falls apart. Remember that Rassilon was in the process of trying and failing to teleport the entire planet into Earth's orbit while all this was going on, and that shortly after he and the Master were probably rolling around on the floor of the High Council room strangling each other only for the General to send in his troops in to arrest and detain them both. All the big weapons other than The Moment are gone, and if you think about it the entire episode is about one of those super-crazy weapons being used, screwing with time and space and turning literal events into a metaphor for the execution of events that are already in the past. In one final glorious moment of celebration, Tom Baker appears to offer Matt Smith's Doctor a cheeky suggestion about the direction the show might take in the future. There are two ways you can take this scene - you can try and figure out how and where this future regeneration might fit into the show, which would be silly, or you can enjoy what was a fantastic moment where perhaps the most popular Doctor of the classic series (and the oldest living "Doctor) met the incumbent in the role so together they could celebrate 50 years of the show. Baker's "Curator" provides the final tidying up, explaining he is the one who acquired the painting ("under remarkable circumstances") that started this all off, and gives the final push into acknowledging the inspirational and heartwarming message of this episode. When it began, the painting was considered titled either "No More" or "Gallifrey Falls", neither of which were particularly positive messages. By the end of the episode, we learn that it is called,"Gallifrey Falls no more", and speaks to the clearly positive and joyful theme of the special. The Time War was an interesting and even necessary addition to the show to help provide a fresh start and a level of pathos to the character. After 7 seasons though I think the idea had been mined for as much drama and conflict as could possibly be had without committing the giant mistake of trying to show the war at its height. This special wraps things up about as well as could ever be hoped for and provides a new direction for the show - the 11th Doctor narrates, explaining that like everybody else he dreams, dreams about where he is going. For too long now he hasn't really been going anywhere, everything has been in response to his ending of the Time War, but now he can put that behind him. Now he has a new thing to do, to find his home planet and possibly restore it to the universe, to bring his old home "home" and give lives to those 2.47 billion children that it turns out he never killed. Rather than running/recovering/getting over the before now unseen events of the past, he is moving forward with hope towards a new goal... so long as Trenzalore doesn't get in the way and he runs out of time to do so. In short, Day of the Doctor is a tremendous episode of the show, a feel-good celebration of everything that has come before and a promise of more to come. You only get one chance to make a 50th Year Celebration work, and Moffat and his cast and crew absolutely knocked it out of the park.  
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Nov 22, 2014 08:59
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That was a much longer review than I was expecting it to be, sorry! But please talk about Day of the Doctor because it's about the right time of year to do so and holy poo poo was it good!
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Nov 22, 2014 09:02
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DoctorWhat posted:The actual best part of Day of the Doctor is the unspoken punchline of "Let zygons be bygones", and I will maintain this opinion until my dying day Even better than using waxwork Tom Baker in the line-up in the closing shot?
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Nov 22, 2014 09:09
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I loved Robot of Sherwood but it was a very silly episode (which is part of why I loved it).
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Nov 22, 2014 11:11
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DoctorWhat posted:It's a real goddamn shame Gridlock is so continuity-heavy, because if it weren't, it'd be the perfect introductory episode for the show as a whole. Ouch, Gridlock is certainly not an episode I'd recommend - good ideas but they're not strung together into a particularly cohesive whole. I'd still say The Eleventh Hour is probably the best episode of the revival to act as an introductory episode. ewe2 posted:Fez's are cool though. ASAP PRONTO LOL I love the Doctor's insistence (and Clara's bemused disbelief) that he could absolutely have a job if he wanted ("have it on my desk... do I have a desk? Get me a desk!"), which even gets touched on at the end when he happily declares that he could be a curator if he wanted. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 18:38
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Jsor posted:Still, I really wanted some absolutely ridiculous thing where Wilf, Craig, Jack Harkness, most of the surviving old Doctors, and whoever else got together and did silly things probably involving Gallifrey. It is fun to imagine what an RTD 50th would have been like, if only for the trainwreck factor. I do think he probably would have just cast the old actors in despite the age difference and just thrown in some handwaving technobabble to get the explanation out of the way so he could play with his toys. It probably wouldn't have made any sense at all and been enormously frustrating in parts, but it would have been a hell of a lot of fun. I'm very, very glad we got what we got instead though. egon_beeblebrox posted:So I'm about halfway through Zagreus and Uhhhhhhhhh.... It tries so hard, I'll give it that. But it's soooo long and bloated and the big climactic resolution just kind of stumbles along in a thoroughly unexciting way. Irony Be My Shield posted:I like the idea of just picking up at the start of Moffat's run. I was wondering though - the library two-parter from series 4 is sortof important as an introduction to River Song and is also good, does it make sense to try and work it in somewhere? If I was recommending somebody to start at The Eleventh Hour, I'd say watch the whole of season 5 and then if they felt like it jump back and check out the Library 2-parter. If anything it might encourage people to check out more Tennant, which in turn might encourage them to check out more Eccleston. I used to recommend Rose as a great starting point, and it still is as far as the RTD era goes. But it already feels like a bygone era of television despite only being 9 years old. Compared to the production values on the current show it's kind of incredible how quickly it has aged. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 21:36
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The Sontaran 2-parter suffers from Martha being jammed into the story for no reason (and doing nothing) - as an introduction it throws too much at the viewer whereas Rose or The Eleventh Hour all set the scene pretty well for a new viewer. Deep Breath is like The Christmas Invasion in that it starts with the Doctor already a known quantity for the other characters. The companion acts as audience stand-ins for existing viewers coming to terms with the Doctor's new incarnation, but they're completely up to the play with who and what the Doctor is already. Season one and season 5 by comparison allow the companion to be a stand-in for new viewers learning all about who the Doctor is and what he is all about.
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Nov 22, 2014 22:38
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Noxville posted:Also it's a bit rubbish I love the Sontaran 2-parter 
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Nov 22, 2014 22:46
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CobiWann posted:I love the Sontaran 2-parter PriorMarcus posted:I love the Sontaran 2-parter 
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Nov 22, 2014 23:21
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Season 6 doesn't hold together very well as a full season, but it has some of the best individual episodes of the revival's entire run. And River is fine, the quality is diluted by the number of her appearances but people get really hyperbolic about making out like she became the worst thing ever. At her worst (when played by Alex Kingston) she isn't even remotely close to as bad as Lady Christina. The only time she comes close is in the awful, terrible, not-very-good "Mels" character who sucks in terms of performance, writing AND in concept.
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Nov 23, 2014 02:53
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Jsor posted:Out of wonder, why do people hate Let's Kill Hitler so much? Admittedly I only saw it once, but I remember liking it in a "oh my god this is the most ridiculous thing ever" sort of way. I enjoy it the same way Occ likes The Christmas Invasion, basically. It's actually a lot of fun in places, but it has a number of really glaring problems: - It wraps up the questions raised at the end of the heavier A Good Man Goes To War in an incredibly unsatisfying fashion. - It botches the "first" meeting between River and Doctor from her perspective, keeping her on an equal/superior footing to the Doctor which completely goes against her recollection of events in the Library 2-parter, which had helped to explain the pleasure she took in dangling her future knowledge over his head (unaware he was holding back his own). - It includes a massive and ham-handed retconning of Amy and Rory's childhood that is awfully handled, makes no goddamn sense and stands out like dog's balls as utter nonsense. - The actresses who play Mels as a child and an adult are both awful at delivering the type of material that Alex Kingston just seems to have a natural handle on. - Mels is so heavily incorporated into the early part of the story, an unwelcome intrusion into the Doctor/Amy/Rory dynamic, especially considering how they parted ways at the end of A Good Man Goes To War. - It marks for many the point where Moffat became more interested in style over substance, based on comments he made about "slutting up" the show, so they point to this episode as the point where his quality as a showrunner took a downward turn (I disagree). - It muddles River's backstory even further and both makes no sense and completely fails to understand that hanging out with your parents when they were the same age as you isn't the same thing as being raised by your parents. - Amy and Rory far too smoothly handle the reveal of who Mels was, quickly abandon their recently reunited daughter, and jump back into the status quo of fun adventures with the Doctor which makes no sense from a character or narrative point of view. It's a pretty perfect encapsulation of Season 6 as a whole - it's messy, lacks cohesion or flow, but includes some truly stupendously good elements to it alongside some utter nonsense. It's really a best of times/worst of times kind of thing. Let's Kill Hitler basically demonstrates some of the best of Doctor Who AND the worst of Doctor Who simultaneously.
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Nov 23, 2014 03:10
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Oh yeah, and let's not forget the TERRIBLE epilogue with River. Respected Professor of an enormously prestigious Galactic University: So Miss Song, why do you want to study archeology? River Song: I'll be perfectly honest...I'm looking for a good man  How that episode doesn't end with that professor going,"Haha get the gently caress out of my office" I'll never know.
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Nov 23, 2014 03:21
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I really enjoyed the Angels 2-parter, but there is no doubt that the Weeping Angels in it are very different from the ones in Blink. Weren't they mostly reused because they were Matt Smith's favorite monster? thexerox123 posted:The statue of liberty part is easily one of the stupidest things in all of Who... and not in a good way. It makes no sense whatsoever. The only thing I can think of is that Moffat wanted to out-RTD RTD's giant Steampunk Cyberman in Victorian London. But given he did the Statue of Liberty AND later did a super-giant T-Rex in Victorian London I'm starting to suspect he's the one who gave RTD the idea for the giant Cyberman in the first place.
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Nov 23, 2014 04:12
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MikeJF posted:Incidentally, anyone who hasn't gone back and watched Silence In The Library now we've seen River's life needs to, that initial meeting is amazing and heartbreaking when viewed in retrospect. I thought,"Funny thing is.... this means you've always known how I was going to die" was a powerful line even when it initially aired, but once you have the knowledge of all the stuff they've been through since then it becomes an even stronger moment.
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Nov 23, 2014 09:00
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Dabir posted:Watch every story with River in it in chronological order. Is that even possible considering she appears in multiple incarnations in more than one single episode? She's in A Good Man Goes To War as a baby and as an adult so it would be set both before and after The Wedding of River Song, and she's a child and two distinct adults in The Impossible Astronaut?
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Nov 23, 2014 09:19
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Angela Christine posted:From his point of view it isn't a romantic story at all. Yeah and I've always been surprised at how many people take the relationship at face value, considering it is established from their very first story that he's operating under a sense of obligation/guilt. This isn't to say that he doesn't genuinely care for her or like her, but he's basically forced to act his part in their relationship. People complain a lot about how smug and superior River is, but she is ALWAYS operating under a misunderstanding of what the Doctor is constantly holding back from her. Dabir posted:watch it three times 
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Nov 23, 2014 10:00
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Ms Boods posted:Happy 51st anniversary, folks. I keep wanting to be pedantic and say it's actually the 50th Anniversary, but then I remember that even amongst us spergy Doctor Who fans nobody actually cares about that distinction  The_Doctor posted:I can get behind this: Wouldn't have worked in the episode, but this is still a cool concept and surprisingly well edited.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:28
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MrL_JaKiri posted:1st anniversary: 1964. 50th anniversary = 1964 + 49 years = 2013. This isn't a millennium in 2000/2001 issue. Well poo poo, no wonder I'm single.
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Nov 23, 2014 22:16
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CobiWann posted:TWO Jerusalems?!? We're Gentlemen.... of the Old School.
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Nov 24, 2014 00:23
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CobiWann posted:Synopsis – Adric is back, as Psychodrome sees Matthew Waterhouse slide right back into the controversial role with a script that highlights the fears, concerns, and insecurities of not only the companions, but those of the Fifth Doctor. 4/5 Sounds quite interesting, I do have to say that part of Big Finish's appeal is that they get to actually give characters a chance to develop some depth and explore some themes that seemed to be lurking under the surface of the mostly self-contained stories from the 80s. I can't say I'm particularly excited to hear MORE Adric, but that's because I'm only familiar with him from television and it might be nice to see somebody actually try to provide some context to his actions. And more Tegan is ALWAYS good.
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Nov 25, 2014 02:53
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A Christmas Carol was so great I consider it an honorary part of season 5, thus furthering 5's status as the best season of the revival so far. It gave me such high hopes for future Christmas Specials from Moffat. Then the next one he did was The Doctor, The Widow & The Wardrobe. 
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Nov 25, 2014 22:06
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Speaking of Christmas Specials..... The Time of the Doctor. The 800th episode of Doctor Who, the last Matt Smith episode, the 2013 Christmas Special, a wrap-up of almost all the major hanging plot threads of the Moffat era, a follow-up to the near universally acclaiming 50th Anniversary special.... this episode is a LOT of things. As a result, it fails to really hold together as a cohesive story in its own right. It has moments of utter brilliance, some points that hit you hard emotionally in the gut, some great ideas.... but also equal amounts of rushed sequences, an overabundance of cameos, some misplaced humor, and some important story elements that don't stand up to anything but the barest passing scrutiny. There is an almost RTD feel to the whole thing: the narrator; the excess of monsters showing up for cameos; the lengthy asides with the companion's family; the Doctor looking foolish after getting a bit full of himself; and the broad brushstrokes of inventing magnificent sounding concepts that come out of nowhere but get treated like they were always around - The Church of the Papal Mainframe feels like a more competently executed Shadow Proclamation. It isn't quite as self-indulgent as something like Journey's End, but it IS self-indulgent in a way that the 50th Anniversary could get away with but feels less suitable here. It still works in parts, and very well, but I do get a sense of Moffat throwing ALL his toys together almost without rhyme or reason because it's his last story so dammit they're going to be there! Throughout all of time and space a message is being sent, a message that nobody can decipher but that nonetheless fills every race capable of picking it up with a sense of unrelenting dread. Most of the advanced races in the universe send ships to the planet of origin, but arrive too late as they find the planet shielded by the Church of the Papal Mainframe. A powerful organization that has essentially co-opted ALL Churches under a single roof and worships each as need or circumstance dictates, the Church sets up a stalemate for the assembled races. Some are powerful enough to shatter the Church's shields and land on the planet, but that will kick off a war with the other assembled races they might not be able to win. The ones not powerful enough to break the shields can only sit back and wait to see what happened. None will leave, because all are terrified of the source of the message and want to find out more about it, if only so they can destroy it and end the dread. Into this stand-off appears the Doctor, just as curious about the source of the signal which even he can't translate. After a couple of humorous false starts where he accidentally walks into and offends the ships of both the Daleks and the Cybermen, he gets sidetracked by a call from Clara. It's Christmas back on earth and Clara has decided to be the adult this year and host Christmas dinner in her flat... but she's also been happily lying to her family all this time about having a loving and caring long-term boyfriend and now she has to produce one... and the Doctor is it! It's a very sitcom-y situation to throw into the middle of an inter-galactic standoff but the Doctor, being the Doctor, cheerfully agrees to manage both. Juggling both priorities, he shows up at Clara's house naked (appearing before the Papal Mainframe in the nude is a sign of trust, faith, and non-threat) and completely misunderstands her objections, creating a holographic projection of clothes that only SHE can see, much to her family's shock (and her nan's delight).   During the RTD years, families of companions were a near constant presence and for better or worse we got to know them. Moffat-era companions have not been the same, whether mostly non-existent like Amy's, mostly unseen like Rory's, or present only in brief flashbacks in Clara's case. Here, Moffat sets up a typical Doctor/Companion's Family awkward dynamic that falls a little flat because we don't know ANY of these characters, they're completely blank slates. Apparently Clara has a stepmother and their relationship is strained, but that means nothing when this is the first time we get to see it, and it also makes little sense given Clara's own predilection for acting as a nanny/quasi-mother figure to other people's children (and her becoming a teacher?). As a result, the times where the story cuts away to Clara's awkward dinner scenes, or the touching moment between her and her nan with the poem fall flat or fail to have quite the emotional resonance they could have. Wacky Jackie started life as a very one-dimenional character, but by the end of season 2 she was able to give her daughter a fearful warning about the danger of her lifestyle and have it mean something because we'd come to know her as a character. Clara's family are complete strangers to us, the only time she has even mentioned her parents was when talking about her deceased mother in The Rings of Akhaten. Her father, stepmother and even her nan thus end up meaning slightly less to viewers to Handles the detached Cyberman Head, which gets a surprisingly emotional farewell late in the story. The Doctor and Clara return to the Church of the Papal Mainframe, where there is a little bit of physical comedy from Jenna Coleman (Clara is technically naked herself) as she tries to figure out exactly where to place her hands to retain her modesty. There they meet Tasha Lem, a completely new creation who certainly feels to me like she is absolutely meant to be (or be revealed to be) River Song. So much about the way she acts, little references made both to River and to her ("you've been fighting the psycopath inside you all your life", "I'd have never gotten this far without River Song" etc), the nature of the Papal Mainframe as a giant computer system ala that which housed River in the Library, Tasha's easy ability to fly the TARDIS, Tasha's lack of aging, and River's own winking line in The Name of the Doctor about the fact that she hadn't faded away as a data ghost yet just screamed to me that Tasha was actually River. That is never confirmed though and as far as I know nobody has ever said this was the intended meaning. If that is the case, then Tasha is very much proof of the oft-made claim that Moffat has a very basic template of female characters. Whatever the case, she is afforded a familiarity and referenced history to the Doctor that she hasn't earned, we're told that her and the Doctor have a mutual respect for her based on all those adventures that have never been referenced before because the character never existed before this episode. Tasha knows that the Church can't hold back the assembled races for long so she asks the Doctor if he will teleport down through the shields and investigate the source of the message. He is more than eager to do so, of course, as the message hasn't filled him with fear but rather excitement, which he at first puts down to his natural curiosity. Upon arriving though, things get a little more serious, as he discovers what the signal is coming through, and where it is coming from.  The Cracks in Time were the major source of concern in the excellent season 5, Moffat's first season of Doctor Who. He brings them back here in a way that makes sense but absolutely stinks of being chosen to shortcut the sense of,"poo poo is getting real!" As he explains to Clara, the universe was destroyed on the 26th of June, 2010, which surprises her because she certainly doesn't remember it. He casually explains that he helped put the universe back together afterwards, but that scars in reality remained afterward and now something is trying to push in from the other side. It makes perfect sense, anything trying to get in would find the weakest point to do so. It is just a pity that Moffat insisted on showing us that the Doctor so feared that the Cracks would eventually return that he saw them in "his" room in The God Complex, a huge misstep that ruins the perfect way they handled that in the episode by leaving it up to the viewer's imagination. Handles earlier insistence that the source of the message was Gallifrey now takes on entirely new meaning - beforehand the Doctor dismissed that as impossible, but the cracks change all that, and in a rather fun callback to The Five Doctors he produces the High Seal of Gallifrey, which enables Handles to decode the top-level Gallifreyan security code of the message and tell him what the question is. It is, of course, the oldest question, because the message is being transmitted through all of space AND time, and as we know by now the oldest question is,"Doctor who?" The message is decoded for ALL the assembled races, all of whom immediately pick up on the meaning, including Tasha. That's when everything comes together, as we learn that the town called Christmas is located on the planet of Trenzalore, destined to be the place where the Doctor dies to prevent him answering the oldest question and ending the universe. The Time Lords are on the other side of that crack, and if they hear the Doctor's name they'll know they can pass back through where they'll discover the most advanced races in the universe waiting for them, terrified and ready to fight because they remember the Time Lords as the bastards who almost wiped out the entire universe in the Time War.... and the Daleks are there too. And this is both a great strength and a terrible weakness of this episode. Moffat here makes an attempt to actively tie up every hanging thread, every major plot element of his three seasons in charge of the show. The Cracks in Time, the Church of the Silence, the oldest question, who blew up the Doctor's TARDIS in season 5, why the Church tried to kill him before he could get to Trenzalore, his fated death on Trenzalore already seen as an established fact in The Name of the Doctor etc. All of that is thrown in to the story and resolutions or attempts at resolutions made, some satisfactorily and others less so. The Cracks in Time we already knew were created by the exploding TARDIS. The TARDIS was blown up by the renegade faction of the Church of the Silence, but no explanation is given for HOW or whose voice it was we heard saying,"Silence Will Fall!", leaving us to extrapolate that it was River herself who unconsciously set the TARDIS to explode, and the voice was purely in her own head. The reason the oldest question is,"Doctor who?" is because the Time Lords want to make a quiet and safe return to the universe and the only person they trust to tell them it is okay is the Doctor, and so they want him to tell them his name, something only he would know (or Tasha Lem, if she is indeed River Song). Why is Trenzalore a place where no lie can be told? Because the Time Lords are projecting a Truth Field that makes it impossible to lie. The Papal Mainframe became the Church of the Silence in order to keep the Doctor from saying his name and letting the Time Lords back in which would inadvertently restart the Time War, and a renegade faction who fought the key to this was killing the Doctor was kicked off by Madame Kovarian, which turned out to be a Destiny Trap that lead to the Doctor arriving at Trenzalore in the first place. It's great that an attempt is made to explain all of this, or at least provide the information for us to extrapolate answers from.... but it all gets thrown out there quickly amongst everything else going on, the 60 minutes of the episode are packed to the gills with information as Moffat tries desperately to wrap everything up in time for Matt Smith's departure. Not helping matters is the presence of such a large number of cameo aliens, all packed together so tightly that they either fail to have impact or end up looking comically inept. The Sontarans almost look the most foolish, but of course they're meant to be comedic characters (which annoys me, since Strax is a comedy character but Sontarans in general shouldn't be), so sadly the enemy that looks the most foolish are the Weeping Angels, which basically appear for the sake of appearing and are then laughably dispatched by a simple mirror slapped on the ground in front of them. They're certainly a long way away from the figures of dread they were in Blink. The origin of the Silence is casually given by the Doctor as if it is something he has always known, again suggesting previous adventures/information he gained that we the viewer weren't privy to. The Cybermen show an ability to adapt but are as easily dispatched as ever, and the Daleks are quite deliberately left a non-entity outside of their first appearance till roughly 35-40 minutes into the episode where they suddenly strike. While it's cool that the Daleks have done the same basic thing they always do of running into a wall they can't possibly get through and coming back later to stubbornly smash their way through it, it does mean that we get a completely missed opportunity to see a confrontation between Daleks and the Silence, who are just as easily co-opted by the Daleks as everybody else in the Church.   The actual reveal that the Church has ALREADY been overrun could have been very cool, and Tasha's angry exclamation of,"I died in this room screaming your name!" followed by her muted, surprised,"Oh that's right... I died in here...." is excellent. Unfortunately it is preceded by a badly edited and ill-placed visual reveal that all the members of the Church (including the Silence) have already been caught and converted by the Daleks. Dalek conversion of human(oid) subjects is always a rough area, because by their nature they shouldn't use/rely on anything other than Dalek... but then again they've ALWAYS had slaves/robo-men/pet monsters going all the way back to their second story in 1964. That body horror might work better with the Cybermen, but nobody would buy the Cybermen as being capable of overcoming the Church. But then the conversion process is almost too simply overcome by the Doctor pissing off Tasha and getting her to break the control of the Daleks and retake control of the Church - Moffat wanted the Church to be overrun, he wanted the Church to be won back, but he had so much else going on in the story that the entire conquest/rebellion takes place in the space of 2-3 minutes. So it comes down to the Doctor backed up by the Church against the Daleks, as we all knew it really had to. The other races who stick around to fight are either destroyed or end up cutting their losses, their dread of the Time Lords' potential return overcome by the very real risk of their destruction if they remain. But this leaves the threat of the Time War even more relevant, because not only have the Daleks built up their forces in preparation for the return of the Time Lords, but they have recovered information on the Doctor that was suppressed in Asylum of the Daleks. This is basically setting them back on the path to exploring the potential technologies that saw them raise to the same level as the Time Lords in the first place, so the Time War restarting is a near certainly if the Time Lords return. Yes the Time Lords would come in peace, and yes this new Dalek Empire isn't quite on the same "ability to alter reality itself" level as the former Dalek Empires, but set the two fighting again and the Time Lords will soon be back on a war footing and the Daleks will be fueled by the necessity of war to innovate and raise to overcome the obstacles put in their way, as they have traditionally done for the last 50 years. Throughout all this, the Doctor has had multiple outs. At any point he could have said his name and the Time Lords would have burst through the crack and had his back. Once Clara returns with the TARDIS he could have easily escaped to anywhere in time and space and left Trenzalore to burn - he could have easily taken the entire population of Christmas with him so nobody died too. Even without the TARDIS he could have had the Papal Mainframe pick the inhabitants up and leave the assembled races to destroy the planet. But for once we see the Doctor make the decision to stick around, to actually stay in one place and face up to his responsibilities. He put Gallifrey into the pocket universe, he can't just leave them without the question answered. But he can't answer the question and risk the lives of the people of Christmas. But he can't leave them undefended either, so he takes on the responsibility to be their Sheriff, to let them have as normal and safe a life as he possibly can while fighting off the various alien races trying to blast their way in. The dashing young man slowly grows to match his actual age, as hundreds of years pass and Matt Smith ends up looking more and more like William Hartnell - the old man who fled Gallifrey is now the old man defending Christmas and waiting on Gallifrey's return.  I think there are two conflicting issues with the theme of the Doctor waiting around hundreds of years though. We're told rather than shown in the space of a few minutes the progression of centuries, during which NOTHING changes except for the Doctor himself. The impact of the Doctor's long wait isn't shown, the small town of Christmas remains almost totally unchanged till the Daleks takeover the Church and then there is just a bit more debris lying around and the odd fire here and there. The society doesn't evolve or change, they remain the same quaint place out of time they were when the Doctor and Clara first arrived. Does the population not change? Do they not have a way to get off the planet themselves? It is a colony after all and not a place of indigenous lifeforms. If it is a farm-world, is this the ONLY town or are there others? How do they farm in a location with only a few minutes of sunlight? How do they farm with multiple alien races constantly attacking the village? But on the other hand I think the location, the theme, the use of narration etc are all designed very deliberately to invoke the same sense of storybook/fairytale atmosphere as was so prevalent throughout the excellent season 5. This is the end of the 11th Doctor's story, and I think Moffat wanted to end it like it started, as a fairytale - from Amelia Pond and the Raggedy Man to The Man Who Saved Christmas. Clara, just starting to finally develop some sense of depth to her character (and boy does that pay off in season 8) is tossed back and forth in this story. Pulled out of her own story into the Doctor's, thrown out again and forcing her way back in, sent away again and then brought back by Tasha Lem... she finally faces the Doctor as he truly is, an impossibly old and kindly man who just wants the best for everybody. The scene where she gently helps the old, somewhat confused man to pull the Christmas cracker and reads the poem to him is really, truly sweet. Like her nan he wants a joke, and grumbles that he doesn't get it when she reads the poem, an extract whose meaning is rather obvious both within the story and as a commentary on the end of Matt Smith's run. quote:And now it's time for one last bow The 11th Doctor's time is over, and like he had earlier told Clara that means the Doctor's time is over. The War Doctor and 10's aborted regeneration both officially count in the "rules" of regeneration, and so despite the fact he is the 11th Doctor this is his 13th life and once he dies, it's truly over. He knows he can't escape this fate, he already saw it when The Great Intelligence showed him his tomb, and after centuries of defending this one small village it is time to face the music. The Daleks have arrived, the Prime Minister confident enough at last to make an appearance in its ship and demand the Doctor come and face his death. Despite the Truth Field the Doctor "lies" to one of the villagers that he has a plan, admitting to Clara that his "plan" is nothing more than to talk for a bit, hope something happens, and then take credit like normal. He walks to face his death after insisting that Clara find somewhere safe to hide, explaining that even he can't break this rule or change his own timeline... maybe if the Time Lords were still around, but they're not, and even now he won't break and say his name and bring them through to fight this battle for him. So he leaves, and Clara once again proves why the Doctor needs a companion. As he staggers slowly up the stairs to face the exultant (but still not quite confident enough to openly attack him) Daleks, Clara storms up to the Crack in the wall and finally gives the Time Lords' an answer. She repeats the same thing that was hammered home in The Name of the Doctor, that they've completely misunderstood the Doctor by asking him to tell him his name. His name IS the Doctor, that is who he really is, and he has protected and guarded them for centuries and now he needs their help. They've been asking him to give an answer that is meaningless to him, all that talk over the last 7 seasons about the Doctor's name being so important comes down to misunderstandings by others (the Time Lords, the Great Intelligence, River Song etc) that created the same destiny trap that Madame Kovarian tricked herself into - he is the Doctor, and he needs somebody else to help him now.   As the Dalek Prime Minister roars from its saucer that the Doctor's defenses have finally been broken and that they are finally going to kill him for good, something rather magical happens. The Doctor won't stop mocking them but knows he has nothing left, no tricks to pull.... but then just as they declare that the rules of Regeneration are known to them, the Time Lords reopen the crack in space/time in the sky above Christmas and let flow free an unspecified amount of regeneration energy, gifting the Doctor with more life, more time.... and more tricks to pull. Matt Smith's sudden transformation from tired, somewhat senile old man to gleeful mocking of the horrified Daleks ("We blew it again, guys!") is fantastic, as he laughs that if there is one thing they should have learned by now, it's that you never tell him what the rules are supposed to be. Marshaling and directing the destructive force of the Regeneration process (a new addition to Regeneration only seen in the revival, but well established by now), he wipes out the Dalek fleet, saving Christmas from the last of the besieging forces and conveniently destroying those Daleks aware of who he is (Moffat gets his cake and eats it too), assisted at last by the Time Lords in the most competent display of their power seen since their very first appearance in The War Games when they were more akin to the terrible, judgmental power of Greek Gods. Really, this episode is a big ol' mess that is saved by an excellent performance from Matt Smith in his final episode of his run as the character. Frequently hidden away behind make-up for much of the episode, he still manages to get across a strong and emotional performance that holds everything together. He's ably assisted by Jenna Coleman as Clara, who does particularly well in her final couple of scenes with him as well as her tearful appeal to the Time Lords to save the Doctor for once. The best is saved for the last though, when Clara returns to the TARDIS an undetermined amount of time after the destruction of the Dalek fleet. Tasha Lem and the Church of the Papal Mainframe are forgotten as she finds the phone off the hook and the Doctor's old clothes strewn about on the floor. To her great relief she finds HER Doctor waiting for her, young and healthy again, dressed in clean clothes and looking ready to jump off on another wonderful adventure with her. But it isn't to be, as the Doctor sadly but sweetly tells her that his time is up, the new Doctor is coming and soon he will be gone. In his final moments he sees the first face his face ever saw, little Amelia Pond playing amongst his vision of the children's drawings that decorated his tower in Christmas before Amy Pond (in a wonderful cameo by Karen Gillan) walks down the stairs and says her final goodbye to "the raggedy man". He has one final message for Clara before he goes, and it is about as perfect a final line as you could get, a moment that for me makes up for many of the episode's other obvious shortcomings. The Eleventh Doctor posted:We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me. I will always remember when the Doctor was Matt Smith, too The Time of the Doctor is a compelling episode, but it is a messy and self-indulgent one that is saved by the goodwill of the 50th Anniversary Special and the strength of Matt Smith's always excellent performance in his final appearance in his run. He came into the show perfectly and went out perfectly too, and while everything that came in-between was of varying quality, you could always rely on him to carry the best material to ever higher levels, and the worst material to be at least passable. Nine regenerated happily with a final goodbye to Rose Tyler, Ten regenerated alone saying he didn't want to go and fighting it every step of the way. Eleven though, has said all he needs to say and done all he needed to do. Despite Clara's tearful objection as she begs him not to change, he just sweetly smiles and then without fighting, frustration or fanfare, he's gone.  
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Nov 26, 2014 04:31
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Astroman posted:For what it's worth, the Tales of Trenzalore collection of short stories does give some background on Trenzalore and Christmas, how it's a human colony, how they sustain themselves on a planet of almost constant darkness and snow. And the stories are great to boot. I'd highly recommend it as reading, particularly during the holidays. Obviously I can't speak to the quality or otherwise of those stories, but I do think that you shouldn't have to read/view/listen to content in a different media to get a "complete" story. I can't suggest a way they could have fit any kind of explanation (or even visual image/line of dialogue we could at least use as a basis for interpretation) in to the already jampacked story, but then again maybe that just goes to show that too much had been jammed into the episode in the first place. Moffat was focused so much on wrapped up his hanging plot threads that I think he just never stopped to think,"Okay maybe this quaint little Christmas town being subject to a centuries-long siege by Daleks, Cybermen et al needs a little fleshing out/backing up?" But then again, I can equally see that he just didn't care because he was more concerned with the storybook atmosphere. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 06:27
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thrawn527 posted:[*]One thing I've seen come up a couples times in Doctor Who is his fascination with new creatures he's never encountered before. Here it's the fish who can float through fog. He just sort of stops everything and has to examine something that is beautiful and new. It's only happened a couple of times in the revival that I can remember. (I'm thinking of the Cybermite in Closing Time and David Tennant first seeing the Warewolf creature in Tooth and Claw.) Was this a thing that happened a lot in Classic Who? Because I'm a big fan. That one that immediately leaps to mind is The Green Death from the Pertwee era. Giant maggots are slithering around the countryside and one of them reaches adult form as a giant mutated fly. They manage to kill it but when the Doctor actually gets a chance to see it he stops and says with a mixture of curiosity and regret,"What a beautiful creature."
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Nov 26, 2014 22:09
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Yeah it pays to remember that the Pertwee era was a pretty radical departure for the show, his first season in particular. It takes a little while to get used to but once (if) you do, things REALLY click and it becomes a blast watching this medallion man Venusian Akido-ing his way through an army of henchmen so he can get to his souped up car to chase down a corrupt civil servant working for a foreign Government that turns out to be aliens who are being aided by, gasp, THE MASTER! 
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Nov 27, 2014 21:38
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I'm thankful for a place I can talk about Doctor Who that isn't filled with insanely spergy freaks or screwed up fetishists (at least not openly!), so thank you all for that I'm especially thankful for Peter Capaldi, who is one of those actors I never even considered for the role but who, the moment I heard his name suggested, made me go,"But that would be perfect casting.... " and then we got it!
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Nov 27, 2014 22:59
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CobiWann posted:Adric? There wasn't a lot of him to go around and I fear he may have spread himself thin. You have to question the boy's cardio because he really got blown up. His complexion looks a little ashen, perhaps because he really bombed as a character.
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Nov 27, 2014 23:10
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CobiWann posted:It's Black Friday, and guess what that means... Oh sweet, I can finally grab season 3 and 4, listen to those and then FINALLY listen to Dark Eyes. Haha, some poor people have ONLY watched 372 hours of Doctor Who?  Oh my God what have I become.... 
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Nov 29, 2014 00:52
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2house2fly posted:Hell yeah Tom Baker gets the sex number He got that when he drunkenly stumbled into the wrong phonebox one night.
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Nov 29, 2014 06:58
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DoctorWhat posted:... what the actual christ??? Toxx is reaching out to you for collaboration on a book project!
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Nov 30, 2014 00:53
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I just got a ridiculous case of the giggles when out of nowhere I remembered "Missy" responding to,"Doctor.... who?  " with this out of nowhere obnoxiously loud, semi-irritated summons of,"DOCTOR CHAAAAAANG!"Goddamn did I love Michelle Gomez as the Master, and I hope she'll be back.
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Dec 1, 2014 03:46
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Astroman posted:Going back and watching Missy's already great scenes knowing she's the Master makes them even better, if such a thing were possible. It's great, because EVERYTHING just makes this weird kind of sense now. Even the bizarre stuff like her chomping the air for no reason in Deep Breath now makes me go,"Oh okay, it's because she's the Master and she's a loving lunatic" and it all just works somehow
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Dec 1, 2014 07:09
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Vincent and the Doctor is legitimately one of the best episodes of the revival. Nobody should feel bad about liking it, because it's brilliant and that is a good thing to like. Yes the actual alien monster is completely unnecessary to the story, but who cares, it's a minor part of the actual story and doesn't detract from it at all.
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Dec 1, 2014 22:08
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So today I'm going to talk about that Doctor Who story where a charismatic leader plots to bring back the last surviving members of the human race from the end of time into the current day. Said humans are in such terror of the end of existence that they've repurposed their bodies into horrifying amalgams of flesh and metal in their desperation to survive. The charismatic leader's charisma turns out to be based on a form of mind control, and their plan is only made possible by having gotten their hands on the Doctor's TARDIS and manipulated it to allow these paradoxical events to happen. In the end, the plan is foiled thanks in part to the collective power of all the human beings getting pooled and used against the enemy, sending them back to the end of time. In the midst of all this is a companion who has to strike out on their own while the Doctor is captured, and ultimately proves the catalyst for motivating the human race to do what they need to do. I am talking, of course, about Singularity from Big Finish. Made in 2005, 2 years before The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords, this audio has some remarkable if ultimately superficial similarities to the finale of season 3 of the revival. Far less campy, this is a story that very much plays it straight and goes for a decidedly bleak tone. It's helped by being a 5th Doctor story, his benevolent, relaxed Doctor is a perfect fit for the morose tone where 6's bombast and 7's crafty manipulation wouldn't have gelled. The 8th Doctor could have pulled it off too, but there's something about this being a 5th Doctor story that just feels right. In Moscow in the mid-21st Century, Lena Korolev arrives home to discover her last surviving family member - her brother Alexei - has left home to join the Somnus Foundation, which she considers a dangerous cult. Somnus has been growing in numbers over the last decade or so, having shifted from its roots as an actual scientific institute into a quasi-religious order akin to Scientology. There, new recruits who are deemed worthy are given a "true name" and seemingly change entirely, and there seems no rhyme or reason for who is deemed worthy or not, and how their former lives reflect on their new ones. Street toughs suddenly become scientific geniuses, the indolent rich become dedicated and driven people devoted to communal existence etc. Convinced that her brother is in danger, Lena attempts to break into the Somnus Foundation to find him and finds herself menaced by their security personnel. She's saved at the last second by the Doctor and Turlough, who appear on the scene having arrived in Moscow for what Turlough thought would be a spot of tourism and is frustrated to discover is actually down to the Doctor exploring an odd temporal split. The Doctor/Turlough relationship has always been fascinating, particularly at this point where the Black Guardian link has been severed but the Doctor has also been left without a buffer between himself and the odd alien with dubious morality. Nyssa stayed on Terminus, Tegan stormed out of their lives in a rage, and now it is just the two of them. Turlough is sick and tired of Earth and wants to get out amongst the stars again, and he's also sick and tired of the Doctor constantly sniffing out trouble for them to get into instead of just kicking back and relaxing or just going sightseeing. This story explores somewhat the nature of Turlough's character, and his own continuing belief that he is not a very nice person at heart. The resolution of the story seems to be trying to imply that at the heart of it all he is a good person, but Turlough himself questions whether his actions are ever anything but selfish, which leads another character to suggest that maybe the Doctor isn't as altruistic as he seems and is himself a selfish person. We're meant to disagree with that I'm sure, we know the Doctor means the best and we should probably hope that Turlough does too deep down in his heart of hearts. Still, the story gets good mileage out of the disdain other characters have for the Doctor, and the notion that maybe he doesn't have humanity's best interests at heart. This doesn't just come from the antagonists of the story who blame the Doctor for their current situation, but also supporting characters like Lena who question the morality of the Doctor's chosen lifestyle and the choices he forces on them. At one point, the Doctor casually pops himself, Turlough, Lena and a conspiracy theorist named Pavel back in time 11 years just to satisfy his curiosity about the origins of the Somnus Foundation. He seemingly never once ponders what Lena or Pavel might do in this situation, and Lena immediately sets off into the night in the hopes of saving her mother's life. This forces Turlough to track her down and gives him the horrible task of having to convince her to let her mother die, which brings out her guilt as she admits that she is responsible for her mother's death in the first place, having euthanized her dying, cancer-stricken mother that night. She returns to the TARDIS and angrily denounces the Doctor for his own meddling, saying that his very presence changes events, and goes so far as to almost call down on the Doctor the Somnus Foundation that she hates. He stops her in time and tries to explain things to her, at which point things really kick off and Lena effectively disappears from the story, capitulating to the siren-call of the Singularity having earlier told Turlough she was tired of being strong and just wanted to let down her guard for one and let somebody else take care of her and make her decisions for her. That is what the primary antagonist of the story - Qel (quell) - was hoping for across all of humanity. Her plan is to psychically draw in the mind of every human being on the planet into a single consciousness, one that she will join with but then direct. This is the last point in human history where enough of humanity will be together in place to allow her to execute this scheme, after this point off-world travel becomes a thing, the human race spreads out across the stars and colonizes planets and solar systems and galaxies across the universe. Qel is a refugee from the end of time, the last dying grasp before entropy overwhelms everything and the universe ends. She and her few surviving brethren have decided their only salvation is in the past, they will form a singularity out of the human race and become the Godhead, changing history irrevocably and becoming the dominant form of life in the universe. Then THEY will be the ones to ascend into an alternate realm of existence when entropy takes hold, something that was denied to Qel and her people in the original timeline. It turns out that the Time Lords did this themselves at the end of time, but that they refused to bring humanity with them. The last survivors of the human race were left with nothing but shock and a burning hatred for the Time Lords, and the Doctor in particular since - though he wasn't amongst the Time Lords who abandoned them - he was the one who for untold eons cropped up to save the human race from extinction... only to fail to arrive to save them from death at the end of all things. Capturing the TARDIS and effectively torturing it in order to force it to attempt an impossible dematerialization to escape, Qel uses the energy generated to kick her plans into high gear, meaning the Doctor will be inadvertently responsible for the split in the timestream and the successful formation of the Singularity. Of course nothing is that straightforward, and the story is hampered severely by the lack of a primary antagonist. This is actually a plot point, as Qel and another future-human named Seo (in Alexei's body) squabble endlessly over who is technically in charge of their people/mission. This squabbling makes the future-humans seem more pathetic than dangerous, and considering they come from trillions of years in the future, the fact they're so easily manipulated and outsmarted by the Doctor isn't saying much for the future of humanity at all. The Doctor in fact takes the threat entirely in stride, never quite seeming to take anything particularly seriously. Though I noted earlier he was the right Doctor for this story, and I'm sure the easygoing attitude masked his deep concern, on the surface he treats everything so lightly that it is hard to take it seriously. His TARDIS is being tortured to death, Turlough's mind has been sent to the end of time, Moscow has become a collective consciousness seeking guidance... and he's just rather smoothly taking it all in, cracking jokes and casually outsmarting the bad guys. The Fifth Doctor was most often the Doctor who got in over his head and had to thrash about a bit before he could get a messy grip on the situation. Here he never seems particularly out of sorts, and always feels like he has complete control over what is going on. Turlough proves himself the hero of the hour by shaking off the apathy that overwhelms the exiled minds of the humans at the end of time and figures out a way to hamper the connection between eras and get himself back into his own body. This leads to the bit I mentioned earlier where he is left to wonder if he is just naturally a selfish person or not, since even his own heroic actions were based on his own personal self-interest. It's pointed out to him that when people say he is more like the Doctor than he thinks, it may actually mean that the Doctor is more like HIM. I'm not entirely sure what message the writer (James Swallow, who has worked on a ton of sci-fi over the years) intended, but I like to think that it was that Turlough needs to understand that acting out of your own self-interest to do a good thing is STILL doing a good thing, and the fact that you thought to do the good thing in the first place is itself a sign that you're not a bad person. Still, the story is rather bleak, what with the whole idea that at the end of this universe's life, the human race is left desperately scrabbling to survive with NO hope of salvation, and that there was an out but that it was cruelly denied them by the Time Lords. However we only ever get the future-human's side of events, and the fact is that everything we heard in this audio indicates that this particular lot of humans weren't really deserving of salvation anyway. Does that condemn ALL of humanity? Who is to say the Time Lords didn't take those who did deserve better with them? In any case, the story ends on a downbeat but earnest note when the Doctor - alone now - travels to the end of the time where the last future-human - Seo - is breathing his last. He isn't there to save him or judge him or gloat, but simply there to observe the final end of the human race in this universe. After lifetimes of saving humanity, the Doctor can do nothing for them now other than offer them whatever comfort he can, and like a father with a sick child he simply shushes the terrified Seo (who pleads for forgiveness, all arrogance and fury stripped away at the end) and quietly tells him to sleep now, it's over. It's an unsettling ending, and mirrors Lena's own recounting of her decision to end the pain of her dying mother. I'm in two minds of how to take it, because on the one hand it is deeply depressing, but on the other, the thought that somebody who loves you is there at the end to be with you and offer words of comfort is... well, comforting. Singularity is a mixed bag. The Russian setting is a little distracting with the accents, there needed to be a singular antagonist for the Doctor to play off against, the Doctor could have used being a bit more concerned about everything going on etc. But it's also unsettling in a good way, tackling a rather depressing potential future and not shying away from letting things end with a finality you wouldn't normally expect from Doctor Who, where there is ALWAYS a way out. The parallels with the end of Season 3 are still there, the fate of the future-humans is as unsettling as the fate of the Toclafane, but at least the 5th Doctor was there for the former to offer what comfort he could. This story is worth a listen, if only for the things it will potentially make you think about. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 00:54
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After The War posted:I liked the Daleks telling Davros how much they hated his story! Now I have the vision in my head of Davros reading The Princess Bride to the Daleks.  "NO KISSING STUFF!"
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Dec 2, 2014 03:31
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Did it at least come as part of the Beneath the Surface boxset that includes The Silurians on it?
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Dec 2, 2014 04:26
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Wait wait... so she bought you the two BAD stories from that boxset?
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Dec 2, 2014 04:32
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 07:17 |
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I like the E-Space Trilogy, though Full Circle is kinda weak. Warrior's Gate is REALLY weird but that's part of the appeal of it and as an ending to Romana's travels with the Doctor it is pretty great. State of Decay flat out rules though.
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Dec 2, 2014 10:34
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